Review: Origin
Origin by Jessica Khoury
Publication Date: September 4th, 2012
Format/Source: Paperback, purchased.
Rating: 3.5-4/5 stars
Part of a series? Yup! It is the first in the Corpus trilogy/companion series.
Goodreads / Purchase: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - The Book Depository
Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home―and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.
Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin―a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.
Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.
Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin―a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.
Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but in case I didn't or if you missed that, I'm not really a sci-fi person. At least not sci-fi in book form; I love Doctor Who and Star Trek and Marvel, so I'm not a total sci-fi stranger. I just haven't been interested in many a sci-fi YA read. I've been trying to change that recently, so I decided to pick up Origin at the Scholastic warehouse sale I went to last month because the group of ladies in the aisle next to me gushed about it. (Yes, I eavesdropped a little bit. OOPS.) Now I'm glad I took the chance because though it wasn't amazing, I still really enjoyed it.
The story starts with immortal Pia who lives in the middle of the jungle with a group full of scientists who are trying to figure out how to achieve immortality on a wider scale. She's been really sheltered her whole life, but she doesn't it that way until she gets to the other side of the fence and meets a boy. She then has to figure out whether she should continue to trust the scientists, who she's known her entire life, or Eio, the boy she's just met, and the members of his village.
Let's just get the parts of the book I didn't like so we can get to the parts I really liked. First, Pia called all the scientists Aunt and Uncle, which wouldn't have bothered me because I do that myself (not with evil scientists, but ya know, same concept), except there were so many of them. I had a hard time keeping track of them all, and it was downright confusing. And second, I wasn't immediately drawn in. The exposition seemed to last forever, so it was a few chapters in when I really started liking what I was reading.
Now on to the pros! I loved the way Pia was written. Even though she was this supposedly perfect person, she felt very real and easy to relate to. And once the action picked up, man was this book a page-turner. I read this during finals week, and I picked it up as soon as I was done with each of my exams because I was dying to get back into it. Lastly I appreciated that it wasn't super heavy on the sci-fi. The sci-fi aspects were incredibly important, but they weren't over explained to the point of boredom. So that was nice.
If you're looking for an action-packed sci-fi tale, consider picking up Origin. If you want to get into sci-fi, it's a good place to start.
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