Immurement by Norma Hinkens

We here at Paisley Piranha are delighted to be a part of the YA Bound Book Tour for Norma Hinkens’ Immurement. Read on for our review.

Official blurb:

When the earth’s core overheats and the sovereign leader vanishes, a young girl becomes the survivors’ only hope.

What little land is habitable is patrolled by cutthroat gangs of escaped subversives, but that’s not the greatest threat facing sixteen-year-old Derry Connelly, her brother Owen, and a ragged band of Preppers holed up in a bunker in the Sawtooth Mountains. Mysterious hoverships operated by clones are targeting adolescents for extraction.

Owen is one of the first to disappear. To save him, Derry must strike a deal with the murderous subversives, and risk a daring raid to infiltrate the heart of the extraction operation.

But will the rookie leader falter when forced to choose between her brother and a clone who ignites something inside her she didn’t know was possible?

Review by Katy Haye:

I love pace above all else in the novels I read, and Immurement had it in spades. From the opening line: “The sun’s always two fingerbreadths or higher above the Sawtooth peaks when the Sweepers come,” I was hooked: world, place and threat all in a single sentence.

Immurement was fast and easy to read, with fabulous hooks to carry me from one chapter to the next. It was really hard to stop.

What I didn’t like so much, unfortunately, was the main character, Derry. Given that she was meant to be a leader, I found her incredibly indecisive. She kept both changing her mind and making what seemed to me to be downright stupid decisions. Now, that wouldn’t matter so much – we all make mistakes, especially under pressure, and she’s only 17. But what I couldn’t accept was that the older, more experienced adults just went along with her, every single time. I ended up shouting at the page, “Don’t roll your eyes and comply, TELL HER that’s an insane idea.” I’d have loved a few more arguments – or for the adults to have their own agendas as to why they decided on one course of action over another. I thought there was conflict here that could have been mined between the characters, but it was just glossed over. Now, I am aware this is the start of the series and there may turn out to be an excellent reason why Derry is the default leader and everyone defers to her without question, but if that’s the case, I needed some hints here.

And I was a little disappointed by the romance. Derry and Jakub at the start were fabulous, a solid partnership in the face of parental disapproval. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll just say I wanted a big, emotional scene at the end, but I got a bit of a damp squib – it didn’t seem like they cared for each other very much at that point, compounded by the fact that Derry immediately started to feel attracted to someone else. They’d both been through a lot and I wanted their relationship to build up instead of being torn down.

Overall, this gets a 3 from me. The world-building was great and the hectic pace was fabulous, but I spent too much time disagreeing with what Derry was doing to really engage with her.