Amanda's Reviews > Nemesis

***3.5 stars***

I think I went into Nemesis with too high of hopes. From the blurb this looked like it was going to be an intense mystery about two kids who are murdered every other year on their birthday and then wake up like nothing happened. I thought that was the story I was getting. Turns out, the real story is mostly not even about that. So maybe it’s just I was confused when I was expecting one thing and then got something else entirely. It’s like I thought I had Coke in my cup but when I took a sip it was orange juice. It’s not a bad surprise but it’s still jarring.

First, let’s talk about what I liked. Nemesis gets all the points for originality. This was definitely one of the most unique stories I’ve read and that’s saying something since I obviously read a lot of books. Finding something that’s truly original is very rare and luckily Nemesis had originality in spades. Also, Nemesis is basically about the APOCALYPSE and Brendan Reichs makes the carnage truly terrifying. Even the mystery is well wrought. Everything feels incredibly sinister the entire time and you can feel a malevolence seething under the surface.

My issues boil down to the bait and switch story line I mentioned earlier, not being really invested in the characters, and the big reveal being illogical. I really wanted to like the main characters but I didn’t. I didn’t understand their emotions. Tack has a smart mouth and not a lick of common fucking sense. Min is incredibly self-righteous. Noah is such a “follower” that I think it’s impossible for him to have an original thought. I think the problem was that so much effort was put into building the mystery and the story that the character development fell a little by the way side.

Let’s talk about the big reveal because when I got there I was like:



Since I don’t want to spoil things I’ll discuss here: (view spoiler)[OK so I get that there was no way to save the planet and so now humanity is basically extinct. But why save a random group of kids in Idaho? They downloaded a bunch of asshole teens into a computer and then set them against each other Hunger Games style? WHAT POSSIBLY COULD EVEN BE THE POINT OF ALL THIS? I’m sure it will be “explained” in the next book but I can’t fathom a possibility to make this at all a good idea. Also, these kids’ consciousness’ were downloaded into a physical computer underground on Earth which is basically a wasteland of lava and shit now. Like…. What would happen if the computer broke? What is powering it? Who is left to manage the place where they’re housing the computer? This seems like a super flimsy idea with too many variables where something could go wrong. (hide spoiler)]

Structurally, I think the story lends itself to a trilogy more so than a duology. It just made the story even weirder because now we have 2 completely different stories happening in the same book. However, side note: this would make an excellent TV show. Overall, I enjoyed the originality of the story but I wasn’t really thrilled with it. I may read the sequel, Genesis, but I’m not exactly holding my breath to find out the conclusion… you know?