Book Review: Paradigm by Ceri A. Lowe

Paradigm
Paradigm #1
Author: Ceri A. Lowe
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Released: June 13th 2014
Review Source: Bookouture | Netgalley

Alice Davenport awakens from a fever to find her mother gone and the city she lives in ravaged by storms – with few survivors.

When Alice is finally rescued, she is taken to a huge underground bunker owned by the mysterious Paradigm Industries. As the storms worsen, the hatches close.

87 years later, amidst the ruins of London, the survivors of the Storms have reinvented society. The Model maintains a perfect balance – with inhabitants routinely frozen until they are needed by the Industry.

Fifteen-year-old Carter Warren knows his time has come. Awoken from the catacombs as a contender for the role of Controller General, it is his destiny to succeed – where his parents failed.

But Carter soon discovers that the world has changed, in ways that make him begin to question everything that he believes in. As Carter is forced to fight for those he loves and even for his life, it seems that the key to the future lies in the secrets of the past...

What I loved about this book was that the very first sentence of the summary had me intrigued, like there wasn’t an option not to read. “What if the end of the world was just the beginning?” The mysterious What If. Intriguing, right?

Paradigm is a dystopian novel, following the lives of Alice Davenport and Carter Warren, two people who exist 87 years apart. A catastrophic event what they’re calling The Storm shakes Earth to its very core, and the world they once knew is gone, replaced with a depopulated world. Any remaining wandering people are picked up by Paradigm Industry and taken underground until society was established in the “real world” again.

What I liked: Paradigm is told by two people, Alice and Carter, in two different time frames. Alice tells the story of how the world changed, the after effects and the creation of new society. But Carter's, a 15-year-old boy, story is told years later in the present post-apocalyptic world. I thought this was well done and wasn’t confused like I expected to be. It worked well with the book.

Overall, it was a good read. I found it to be slow paced sometimes but I enjoyed it.