Thank you for the opportunity to review this book. I am sorry I did not get to read it before the archive date, I've been going through my outstanding books during the pandemic and really am not feeling dystopia books at the moment! Maybe in the future I'll read this and come back and change my review.

Mirror X by Karri Thompson is book 1 in the Van Winkle Project series. It is a young adult science fiction dystopia about a teen called Cassie Dannacher, who has recently returned from space to find earth has been decimated by a plague. Mirror X is a fairly formulaic novel that brings nothing new to the genre. It takes a while to get going but once it does Mirror X is enjoyable enough to keep you turning the pages. There is enough intrigue and mystery to entertain and keep the reader guessing. The characters and romance need a little developing but hopefully we will find out more in the next book Ascendancy, which after the ending of Mirror X I will be sure to pick up.

Can you believe it comrades? I have finally found myself back in the YA world – crazy I know, step aside romance porn, we are going in. But lets face it, it is romance based mixed with one of my favorite duel genres, science fiction and dystopian, hell with a synopsis like this can you really expect me not to read it?

Though I love the synopsis I will say this once, the thing about dystopian, sci-fi mixed genre is that depending on the storyline it can either be believable or it can be far-fetched. MIRROR X is definitely a far-fetched scenario. Between the possibility of preserving a dead body for more than a thousand years, the description of the 31st century and the advancement in technology (though really nifty) it is nonetheless not on my radar of believable imaginary realty. So if you go into this thinking, ‘hey I can probably throw myself into the book‘, as a reader you would be going in with a very incorrect view. I personally enjoy far fetched story plots, I think that is the point of fiction and I liked where Thompson took the backbone of Cassie in the science world.

Speaking of Cassie she was an interesting breed of character. Cassie is just a person who is learning the world again from a thousand years later, she very much embodies her personality of an adolescent teenager. One minute she is attempting on escaping yet all the while kissing young doctors and being a teenage girl. Very back and forth. I definitely understand that aspect, I definitely wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, she has been ‘asleep’ all these years and well shit, that is enough to make any kid crazy – but at a point she still felt immature. There was no growth, no depth there beyond that of her personality from previously. It at many points irked me. More importantly I felt she ultimately adjusted to her situation all too quickly, though I think this is more a convenience of plot to get things jump started.

Obviously I mentioned kissing doctors – oh young mister Michael. Not going to lie, he was also a bit off for me. Something about his personality and plot dynamic rubbed me a certain way and I am not sure how I really feel towards him as a character, I think this more so because I did not like how he lied to Cassie or the fact that he was overly obsessed with Cassie, it was almost cryptic.

And on top of this, there is a huge romantic dynamic that is strong. Cassie and Michael are just… well they are just all revolving. I think that is the word I want to go with, Cassie bases many of her life altering decisions around her romance. Because Cassie seemed to have this insta-attraction factor with Michael, it more seemed to overshadow the rest of the plot and quite honestly made Cassie feel inferior.

Probably my favorite dynamic is the secondary characters – you cannot top some of these characters. Some were more of the lighter side of the romance and main characters that really made the plot of the story a real treat.

Overall I really enjoyed a great deal of aspects within the novel, especially with MIRROR X as book one, there is definitely potential here. The biggest issue I had was the pacing, bottom line there was too much drag on one aspect and then we would shift to a more rushed situation only few pages over. It was too much yet too little all at the same time. For me, as a reader it created a huge disconnect on the characters verses the plot. I will also admit that because the romance (though I love a good dystopian romance) overshadowed majority of what I felt really needed more depth, again just gave a lack luster feel.

I am curious as to where this series will go – really interesting concept, I do like the characters and I really hope for more development in the future.

"Mirror X" has an interesting premise- Cassie was cryogenically frozen after her untimely death at 17-years-of-age in 2022 and is brought back to life over 1000 years later. Obviously, the world has changed, but how? The description given says she is retrieved from space (which I was interested in), but this was not the case. The description is also very vague in terms of what she finds when she awakes, and with good reason- the book takes a very long time to get to the point.

**Note: The rest of my review may contain SPOILERS, because I don't know how to talk about it in terms of the vague description of the book provided.**

So, what we learn pretty quickly is that Cassie is in a genetics hospital, and she is not allowed to leave. A plague 500 years ago caused all the women (only women) to become infertile. In terms of disease progression, this seems unlikely, but OK, let's accept this and move on. They have discovered a way to clone humans that used to live and do so in artificial wombs (although human women have uteruses but ovaries do not function). Alright, so everyone living is a clone and men have working testes but women don't have working ovaries. Goodness knows why (so they can lord it over women? Seems like it).

Anyway, apparently, they cannot use the DNA from a human more than once (why? We can easily replicate DNA in 2018 without degrading it. Why can't they do this in the future?). And their survival rates of the embryos in the artificial wombs is not great.

So what do they have planned for Cassie? Not only do they want her to donate all her eggs, they also want her to be constantly pregnant and give birth to babies. I can kind of understand agreeing to egg donation, but WTF on the constant pregnancy? When she refuses, they will do so against her will, and in fact, already have (surprise, she's pregnant!)! So why even bring her back to life if they could do that while she was still deceased? I am not sure. Maybe it's because the 19-year-old geneticist Michael developed a crush on her while she was dead. It seems to have some political reason. The world is divided into three presidencies with population control and Cassie is a new pawn there.

So anyway, Cassie was brain dead after the crash. So in the future, they tell her it's a piece of cake to regrow neurons. This struck me as a big idiosyncracy. They can regrow neurons- which we are so so so far from currently being able to do- but they can't replicate DNA very well- which we can do well now. Not to mention they would be swimming in stem cells with umbilical cords and all the living matter from the clones (not to mention the embryos they burn), so I really don't understand why this is so limited. Considering women also have working uteruses, why must Cassie be constantly pregnant? I do not agree with forcing a 17-year-old, who you just brought back to life to carry a baby, much less to tell her she will be doing it for the rest of her life. Pregnancy and childbirth is hard on the body and it just seems cruel. I had a really hard time with this- not only the scientific leaps/gaps that don't make sense but also the ethical concerns around this. I could see donating eggs, and in a world where neurons can be regrown, they should certainly be able to make IVF work. But why the pregnancy for her?

Also, with the life is sacred message, I wonder about the flip side of Cassie's essence (how is she so fully herself?)- I don't know, it appears she was just dead and now she is alive and remembers every instance pre-death with the same desires and goals. There are some big moral questions that seemed brushed the side for the most part. Also, more anguish over her potential lost career and college experience (and PROM) than over everyone she ever knew being dead and gone.

To add to these things, there's some big time instalove between Michael and Cassie. I could appreciate if there was some attraction and then they spent some time together, but they rarely seem to see or talk to each other- a few random conversations here and there, so I didn't really buy into the relationship.

While I think this was an interesting premise (leaping ahead to a different future), I could not buy into all the scientific discrepancies and what they forced Cassie to do. This just wasn't a good book for me, and I would not be interested in continuing with the series.

Please note that I received a copy from the publisher. All opinions are my own.