If you enjoy reading my reviews, please like my page on Facebook: Bella Foxx
Format: eBook
Pub. Date: 2012
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Type: Fiction ~ Library Book
Pages: 402
Read: 07/22/2013
Rating: Liked it ♥♡
Luddite – one of the 19th century English workmen who destroyed laborsaving machinery that they thought would cause unemployment
Luddite – any opponent of technological progress
When a genetic experiment gone wrong caused the Reduction, those who were not effected formed a ruling class and imposed laws that outlawed technology, establishing protocols that froze advancement and have cut them off from the rest of the world. They are referred to as the Luddite Nobility. The upper class charged with taking care of the “Reduced”, but in some cases taking advantage of them. Elliot North is a Luddite Noble who is still in love with Kai, a servant and in the class referred to as COR, Child Of Reduced. The COR do not like this name, they prefer to call themselves Posts, since they no longer have the effects of the Reduced, now children born are either Reduced or Posts. Both classes are kept in servitude to the Luddites, unless they are able to run away and survive life off the Luddite Estates. Kai was one who ran away, Elliot, bound to her estate and the responsibilities of it, let him go without her.
Now the Post-Reductionists are trying to change things, bringing back technology and wanting to explore, looking for other lands, and Elliot’s estate is foundering, she worries she will not be able to provide food over the winter for the Posts that live there. She takes the bold step of renting land to the Cloud Fleet, a group of shipbuilders, their best pilot and explorer is Captain Malakai Wentforth, who is Kai reinvented. Prosperous now and over Elliot.
The story is told in the present and from letters that Elliot and Kai wrote to each other before he ran away. In this manner we learn of how much they loved each other and how much heartbreak they must be now experiencing.
Everyone in this story has a secret, I got a little annoyed that Elliot couldn’t figure something out that I picked up on from the start. However, with the responsibilities she shouldered it was difficult to remember she was only 18. Also the Jane Austen references and quotes from Persuasion lost me, I’ve never read any Jane Austin, but appropriate since this is a love story, set in a strictly regimented society.
This book is called a romance, but it is more than that as it talks about life and overcoming obstacles and compromise. I would recommend it, but not to action, thriller fans. It is part of a series but can be read without the other books.
city girl drinking craft beer 