Book Review: The Museum of Second Chances by AE Warren

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked the premise for this, a post apocalyptic world with bad ass genetically enhanced humans, but I felt the story got a little lost in the details.

Elise is a Sapien, living with her family within a small community of other Sapiens - humans not genetically engineered, and held responsible for the destruction of nearly all life on the planet. Due to near extinction, and driven to preserve life, a series of higher life forms have been genetically engineered - those with a few 'extra traits' and those so altered they have ceased to resemble humans as we knew them. Faster. Stronger. More intelligent. They rule over the lives of Sapiens, and seek to regenerate the earth by bringing back to life those animals that have since been made extinct. A second chance. But this second chance comes as a price, as Elise soon realises when she seeks employment within one of the museums that houses these animals.

The plot was well written, well paced, and there's a decent build up of action and character building to the final scenes. The world's back story was also reasonably well described, slough I would have liked more insight into the supposed rebellion Elise's parents were a part of, and what happened to the rebels. It's all left very much up in the air. Also, not much is mentioned in the way of the 'outside' world, other than the Sapien community Elise is a member of and the main base where 'her' museum is. The other 'bases' are mentioned briefly, but not much is known about them or expanded on, which would have been helpful to the plot. I did like that they were named after the nucleotide bases of DNA though. It strangely reminded me of the film GATTACA with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke (watch it, it's really good).  There's also a rather large 'information dump' near the beginning of the plot when Elise joins the museum which didn't really hold my attention very well. It was too much all at once and left me a little confused.

The main thing I enjoyed was the camaraderie between the characters. Elise is a solid main character, although I was unimpressed with her supposed 'hidden talents'. I thought they were unnecessary and didn't add anything to the plot. However, she's likeable and has Kit's best interests at heart. Samuel is socially awkward, clever and reserved. I liked that although there was a hint of sexual tension between the pair, it never fully took over the plot and the friendship progressed naturally and wasn't forced. Georgina was one of my favourite characters. She is good natured, outgoing and warm hearted, sacrificing her position to be friends with lowly Sapiens. Kit by comparison is the most enigmatic, and I felt the least connected to him. He communicates so infrequently with Elise, for his own reasons, that I felt as emotionally unattached to him as everyone else. He only really comes into his own at the end of the book.

Fintorian, in comparison to the main group of friends, seems more like a bit of a pantomime villain. We see him so infrequently that I never really forged an opinion of him other than he's suppose to seem almost ethereal. It perhaps would have helped to have seen some other members of his 'race' to gain a better insight into whether his personality was really so bad, or if that is the general concensus of his species.

I did have some niggling bugbears throughout the novel too. One involved a scene with Kit and Elise, where Kit shows Elise a carved statue of a baby Neanderthal wrapped in a shawl. Kit is a Neanderthal who has been kept completely secluded from the outside world, unable to even visualise anything that falls outside of the time period in which he originally inhabited. He has also never been allowed to hunt or kill other animals to make clothes. If this is true - how does he know what a shawl is? To me, the description of a shawl means a knitted garment, or something more modern. That's just a personal issue however, and in no way reflects the overall well written story.

I did think that the story itself finishes quite abruptly however, and things are left a little unfinished in my opinion. I like a story that's all wrapped up at the end, and this felt more like it was building to a crescendo that never fully arrives. I had just got really into the story, and grown to enjoy these characters and then it stops. The story could have done with being slightly longer, and I would have liked to have seen more of the world outside the base.

Overall, a good story but left a little unfinished for my liking.

The Museum of Second Chances is available to purchase now from: Amazon