Resistance by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

Release Date: January 30, 2017

The Announcer calls my name, but she does not speak to me. This macabre spectacle has nothing to do with me. And everything to do with them. This is all for the thousands below – the compliant citizens of Otpor, the witnesses to my Execution, the silent and transfixed. This is their moment. Their reconditioning. 

In a future post-apocalyptic Paris, a rebellion threatens to upset the city’s perfectly-structured balance and plunge its citizens into anarchy. 
Two generations after the Execution of Kane 148 and Otpor’s return to Orthodoxy, forbidden murals are appearing on crumbling concrete walls – calling citizens to action. Calling for Resistance. 

The murals will change the utopian lives of all citizens. But, for Anaiya 234, they will change who she is. 

A Peacekeeper of the uncompromising Fire Element, Anaiya free-runs through city’s precincts to enforce the Orthodoxy without hesitation or mercy. Her selection for a high-risk mission gives Otpor the chance it needs to bring down the Resistance and Anaiya the opportunity she craves to erase a shameful legacy. 
But the mission demands an impossible sacrifice – her identity. 

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With this accomplished debut offering, Kopievsky presents a dark dystopian tale with complex characters, exquisite world-building and high tension. Divided Elements (Book 1) - Resistance is a welcomed addition to the intelligent speculative fiction tradition of dystopian literature.

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3.37 stars

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"Control the fire."

Resistance follows a dystopian society where everyone is assigned an element when they're four years old, and raised to be a working member of society within that element. WARNING: THESE PEOPLE APPARENTLY DON'T HAVE ELEMENTAL POWERS. Not gonna lie, I was kinda disappointed.

Fire: the ruthless, emotionless peacekeepers of the world. They seek order and orthodoxy no matter what it takes.
Air: the artists, basking in all forms of emotion whether it be through music, feelings, or resistance.
Water: the scientists, desperate for improvement and basking in research rather than emotions.
Earth: the workers, forced to do the labor of the world and seen as heathens by others for their lack of intelligence and skill.

My favorite part of this was definitely the character development Anaiyah faced. Born as a fire element, but forced to be genetically altered into an air element, she faces a lot of inner turmoil. Her inner dialogue is constantly going between the air and fire mindsets. It's so prominent that even the writing changes during her shift.

The writing style goes from the clipped, cut tone of the fire element Anaiyah is aligned with in the beginning to the confused emotions and new sensations she experiences as an air elemental. While I definitely think the way her own inner turmoil is written is interesting, but I still had a hard time reading because I freaking hate present tense.

The tense isn't the only thing that caused this book to feel slow to me. The beginning and middle were very difficult to be interested in. Not only was it boring, but I felt like I was reading Divergent again. Then, when the middle came around, I was just constantly in a state of "I know this plan is going to go bad because 1. you're lying to everyone and 2. this is a dystopian novel." The last 10% was the most interesting part for me. It sets up the sequel well and stirs emotions that have you dying to know what happens next.

"Sometimes I get lost in being me that I forget who I actually am."

The idea of how society suppresses one's identity is there, but it's always there. To specify, that's always a theme within these dystopian novels. Resistance doesn't bring anything to new to the genre (other than a beautiful cover). I found that not only was the plot predictable, but the overall idea of a divergent main character stuck in this new environment, finding out that the world is not the way she thinks is so overused.

Throughout reading, I was constantly reminded of Divergent and The Maze Runner. Resistance has similar ideas to Divergent with factions, but it also is kind of... ok barely unique in the types of segregation is there. Within this divided world though, there was a lot of strange new slang that was never explained. In fact, a lot of aspects of the world are barely explained.

The world building could be a lot better. Kopievsky's opened this whole world while only revealing a small fraction of it. The other factions are not delved into, nor are the real persecutions everyone faced. For me, this lack of information made it difficult for me to sympathize with the Revolution.

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

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