Sunday, May 4, 2014

*Gizmos Book Reviews* Scan (Scan #1) by Sarah Fine, Walter Jury

**I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.**

*My Review*

Scan is the first book in a new series by the writing duo Sarah Fine and Walter Jury. The story is told in the first POV by 16 year old Tate Archer and is truly a non-stop action filled science fiction adventure that leaves a breath stealing ending in its wake.

Tate is a character who has been told his entire life that he needs to train hard (Brazilian jiu-jitsu), eat properly, take his vitamins, and supplements, and to be prepared for anything by his overbearing father Frederick. He is also a teenaged scientist prodigy like his parents, who can create weapons out of simple things like oranges, or super soakers. 

His father is a scientist who builds weapons and never told Tate the reason behind his training, or the fact that ALIENS live among us, or look like us, or are now the dominate species on Earth which puts Tate in a very difficult situation when he stubbornly steals one of his fathers inventions to get back at him.

Tate's actions sets off events that lead to severe consequences for everyone involved, and a eye awakening surprise that affects everyone from his estranged mother Mitra who left 4 years before, to his older college bound girlfriend Christine who gets her own surprise revelation in a most shocking way.

The main idea of Scan is that 400 years ago, Aliens crash landed on Earth and slowly integrated themselves into the very fabric of our society, eventually becoming the dominate species on the planet. There are so called "PURE" human families like the Archers, who are trying to figure out ways in which to fight back, and retake the Earth from the H-2's, which leads us to the Scanner, and what it all means to both sides.

The only real problem I had with Scan, which WON'T put me off from reading the sequel Burn, was the so called romantic interest and the age difference between the characters. I'm glad that there wasn't any sex scenes, it would have totally destroyed my enjoyment of the story. Scan is not the first book, and probably won't be the last, where the younger male character has an older girlfriend. See the Ashfall series by Mike Mullin, and the Courtlight series by Terah Edun as examples. I can't understand the attraction, but I shall remain intrigued as to where this heads.

When all is said and done, Scan brings up some interesting questions as to what it truly means to be human, vs what a real alien is supposed to look like. What does the existence of the Scanner really mean for the future relationship between aliens and humans? You could also choose to go in the direction of whether or not there is tolerance involved, and apparently with Tate, things may be heading for an interesting direction.

*Recvd 04/29/2014 via NetGalley* Published: May 1st 2014 by Putnam Children's

Author - Sarah Fine, Walter Jury
Title - Scan (Scan #1)
Published by Putnam Children's
Released: May 1, 2014
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction
Format: EBook 336 pages



1 comment:

  1. I NEED to read this book! I'll read anything that has Sarah Fine's name attached to it though. I'm glad that you liked it so much and that it seems to be a pretty deep story line! Also I don't see many books that have a younger male in love with an older girl, so I'm excited about that.

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