A Thousand Pieces Of You

Rating

4+ stars

Date Read

3/6/16 -9/6/16

Age Group

15+

General Thoughts

Mystery, murder, fate, interdimentional traveling, Russian royalty, and a whole new level of spying.

Pretty epic, if you ask me. And what a cover...


The daughter of two geniuses leaps into a careless interdimentional hunt for her father's murderer, along with one of her parents' grad student assistants, Theo.

The risk of becoming atomic soup when using the Firebird prototypes is very real. It's also a risk she's willing to take if it means avenging her father.

Futuristic London

Even if the man she's now determined to kill is the same one she had imagined of falling in love with.

This is basically the widely accepted summary for this book and it really doesn't sum anything up.

But, anything else would be pushing my luck with spoilers.

Dancing with the Tsar

Marguerite

So, here's a grocery list with Meg's character traits:
Loyal, stubborn, strong, smart.
Unexpectedly funny.
Not cynical exactly but not exactly witty either.
Just enough to make you occasionally crack a smile.
Modest. Relatively.

A bit annoying with her painting.
I mean I love painting but I don't think of everything as a canvas. And I most certainly did not understand how to mix colours together while painting on the furniture.
Disoriented and grieving.

Paul Markov

Paul is a genius. Mysterious. Stoic. Introverted. Doesn't talk much. So I guess it's easy to feel like you never really know him, never really can know him. And that's why no one, in the midst of their grief and sorrow, thought to doubt the sketchy evidence, look beyond the clues, think of him as a person and deny his guilt.

Paul

He's not social and doesn't try to be. He graduated high school at thirteen and so he really hasn't spent much time with his peers. Although no one would actually call him socially awkward. He's way too intelligent for that. But still, he doesn't have Theo's seemingly unshakable self confidence. Instead, Paul has a kind of quite power thing going on. And he's very... Open. Open to possibility. Not a sceptic but he really doesn't take things he cannot prove for granted, nor does he deny the existence of things he cannot prove. He's not dogmatic, he's very open minded. He even believes in the existence of destiny, based on mathematical parallels. It's very refreshing.

Meg

Theo

Theo is cocky, arrogant, selfish, flirtatious, brilliant. But he's also secretly insecure. He sounds unstable. A time bomb. Not someone you should be relying heavily on.

He's also adorable. Absolutely lovable.

Theo

Lieutenant Markov

OK so, having two entries under the same name to review a book character, who's essentially the same as an aforementioned one (Paul), only in a different dimention, and so a universe away... It does sound weird. This book has plenty of weird like that. I mean, does it count as a love triangle if the heroine is in love with the same person but in two different universes? I guess it all comes down with how much you believe in memories making us who we are, experience forming our character.

Romanov Russia

Because that's exactly what makes Romanov Russia Paul different from the contemporary one,

Lieutenant Markov is Paul. He's also not Paul. He's Grand Duchess Margarita's personal guard. And he has one other thing in common with his awkward physicist alter ego.

He's very much in love with her.

ConTech

By Page 30

Sometimes the author throws sentences just to inform the reader on something, or point something else out, but those sentences do not exactly fit in inconspicuously like subtle hints. More like "HEY, YOU KINdA NEED TO KNOW THIS SO THAT THE PLOT CAN MOVE ON"
ie. Theo stating that she used a reminder just so she can say that she did not, then Meg thinking that he seems a bit freaked out, which was already obvious by his reaction and as so redundant as an observation.
(I know the example does'nt exactly make sense out of context but you'll understand if you read the book, promice)

Underwater base

By Page three hundred something

What did I just read. Who am I. What just happened. Why do I do this to myself.

Is there a sequel???

Writing Narrating Plot

Not a lot of book heroines can pull off borrowing their alternate reality selves bodies, completely violating the latter's personal lives by stealing them for any period of time, being torn between a couple of guys (all of whom are brilliant and gorgeous BTW), improvising about dimentions they know nothing about and still fitting in. Not just that, but managing to be likeable in the process. 

Witty, modest and artistic Meg is bow-worthy for all of the above (and maybe also because one of her alternate shelves is the tsar's daughter). 

 The plot could have gone astray pretty easily. I mean, interimentional travel opens up a whole new set of possibilities and an author is in grave risk of abusing it. Claudia Grey didn't. Or maybe she did but in the most fun and *realistic* way possible.

From gadget-filled futuristic London, to a glittering Romanov Russia, to a dimension only slightly different than ours to an underwater station somewhere in a pacific, the plot is definetely impressive.

And the writing? Well I have half a mind to go read Evernight right now, that's how enjoyable it was. And that coming from a student in the middle of her final exams, half an hour past midnight.

So yeah, not five stars but A Thousand Pieces of You did rock.

Especially that dancing in the library sequence...

And how was it so perfect almost cheesy romantic with such an overwhelming plot? You'd think there wouldn't have been time for romance when you're running after a murderer across dimentions (I seem to be mentioning that dimention thing a lot but it's so freaking innovative and futuristic and the heart of the book). You'd be wrong. There's plenty of time to fall in love with a thousand versions of the same genius strong and stoic man. A thousand pieces of him.

All in all

Awesome, although probably not for everyone. There's a lot of overwhelming hopping-into-different-bodies-from different-dimentions, a lot of questionable ethics on interdimentional traveling, and talk around war strategies evolving with technology.

But there's also a perfectly likeable heroine, and two perfectly brilliant guys (or three if you count lieutenant Markov...). I was hooked. Maybe I'm weird. And yet, I definitely recommend this if you too like this alternate-realities sort-of-weird. Or if you're just looking for something original and confusing but well-executed and memorable.

XOXO

Aggie Pearson