From the coauthor of Beautiful Creatures, Icons is the first of a series about four teens growing up in a world where the Lords, a mysterious group of aliens, has taken over Earth and has decimated a majority of the population. The four come to discover that they are the only people on the planet who may have a chance of fighting back; if only they could learn to work together.
While the story concept is interesting, the book itself is a complete disaster. For the plot, think The Hunger Games meets I Am Number Four; it's what would have happened if Ender hadn't won the game. The world is utterly demolished, people are either being used as slaves to build a mysterious structure for the Lords, starving on the streets, or working for the Lords to keep the other two groups in line. The writing is confusing, making it difficult to follow who is speaking and what is occurring. For where the characters are located, there is barely any description, so it is challenging to picture what their surroundings are like.
What is clear, however, is that Stohle is attempting to write in the style and to create a book that is equivalent to the works of past great dystopian writers, as is evident by the name of the Jarvis-like, omnipresent, computer doctor: Dr. Orwell Bradbury Huxley-Clarke.
This book had the potential to be a thrilling, futuristic sci-fi novel, introducing a new exciting series to the market. However, because of the choppy writing, the rushed tempo, and the lack of character development, Icons falls short of the high expectations set before it.
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