Arena One by Morgan Rice

I couldn't finish this book.

It was that awful.

Especially having read Karen Chance and found the writing style to be so similar that it couldn't possibly end well...

At the beginning, it wasn't too bad. You find Brooke and her sister Bree hiding in a small cabin couple hours outside of New York after the latest American civil war. Which began when the democrats and republicans became so divided that citizens began taking sides and cause the civil war to start. After nuclear bombs were dropped on US soil, the war ended, but enough destruction had been reaped on the country that everything was in shambles. As far as we know, society is now a cross between "28 Days Later" and the "Hunger Games". The two sisters are hiding, barely surviving, and are constantly in fear of being taken by slaverunners who steal people to fight in Arena One.

Pro - Premise is good, back story is good.

Con - No real plot, action sequences are overblown and no character development exists.

You get a small notion of who Brooke and Bree are in the beginning, just from learning how they've survived. But once Bree gets kidnapped by slaverunners, Brooke is like a psychopath running with blinders on. She does crazy shit after crazy shit, like ramming the slaverunner truck 4 separate times, with no care for the potential consequences. We just get a lot of "thank god we didn't die" sentiments throughout the book, without her ever stopping long enough to consider whether or not it's a good idea to continue. Every time a break in the action allows her to stop, she blacks out from being so beat up from all the trauma she's been through. The author never gives Brooke a chance to grow as a character, she's just running around like a mad woman. The only pauses that Brooke takes are when she meets a cute guy. She says "he's unusually attractive" a few times before returning to her narrow psychopathic mission. WTF! is that the only reason she stops to listen to someone - Because he's cute? Of course, there's already a love triangle brewing. On top of the danger that her sister is in - so much pointless drama.

I have 30 more pages left to go, and I don't think I can make myself finish this book. It's so stupid. The book reads more like an outline of a movie action sequence than of any real story. And the action sequence is so long and unrealistic that even the Fast and Furious crew would never attempt it. BTW, Arena One, where slaves fight to the death... is only about one chapter in the whole book. Seriously.

I'm just disappointed because the premise is so good. I was expecting this to be like "Gladiator" - where Bree is kidnapped and Brooke enters Arena One to save her. I thought we'd get to learn about how all the prize fighters live and find ways to survive in this terrible environment. I was hoping Brooke would fight her way through to the top and be able to buy Bree's freedom... or something. But not this. Arena One is just this limited Ultimate Fighter ring where all fights are to the death. So how they manage to keep a bunch of interesting and difficult fighters around makes no sense, since everyone must die. Also, the audience of Arena One, is not interesting. It's just a bunch of nuclear survivors who relish the sight of destruction. You don't get to learn about their society, you don't get to learn why they watch these fights, and you don't get to learn about what makes them different from the Crazies who are treated like genuine zombies.

You could argue that you don't learn anything because Brooke never tries to, since this whole book is written from her point of view... in which case, I argue, why would she not want to find out as much as she can about what she has to face? Why would the author purposely hide these tidbits from us, the reader? All this information would only serve to make the story richer...

At this point, this story just feels like a shallow teen drama of the week set in a poorly formed post-apocalyptic backdrop. So disappointing.