Inheritance

Locations
Call Number: Teen Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Sequel to: Adaptation.
When teens Reese and David are kidnapped after revealing that they were adapted with alien DNA, Reese is forced to reconcile her new love for David, a human, with feelings for Amber, an Imrian, and make a world-changing choice.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

School Library Journal Review
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Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

"A Sequel that Blows the First Book Away" submitted by torikaebaya on February 4, 2017, 1:14pm A wonderfully gripping and heartwarming piece of science fiction, YA and LGBT lit, Inheritance is the followup book to the cryptic near-but-not-quite-apocalyptic X-Files homage of a novel, Adaptation. As a long time fan of Lo's work, I was thrown by the uncharacteristic setting and plotlines in Adaptation and found it much less enjoyable than her previous books. However, read in sequence, Inheritance answers all of the questions posed by its prequel as well as far advances the plot and builds solid characterisation. In truth, I put off purchasing Inheritance and instead read a library copy since I'd been so let down by Adaptation. This problematic decision will be soon rectified however as Inheritance far exceeded my expectations.

Although I appreciated Adaptation for being an X-Files homage (Julien's bin42.com being a kind of teenage Lone Gunman was particularly amusing) and thought its ideas were dark enough to satisfy the genre. Though being a SF-SF Cali-scrub bildungsroman it was fairly lackluster. Amber Grey was adorable, but then petulant and supposedly a turncoat (which I never believed for a second) and David Li was... obligatory hottie? Reese actually made a convincing protagonist, pushing for the truth about what'd happened to them and the June Disaster. But the climax was confusing and the reveal only gave you a sense of "I told you so" about Amber that Reese upsettingly chooses to ignore. All-in-all, Adaptation was unenjoyable... by itself.

I wish Inheritance had been released simultaneously with Adaptation as the first book was such a let down. Inheritance throws Reese into a heart-throbbing (telepathic?!) relationship with David, who's definitely a hottie and all about being with Reese, and beings to shed more and more light on the shady characters from Adaptation and their various agendas. Where Adaptation was nothing so much as fear of the unknown, Inheritance switches perspective and as Reese's loyalties slowly draw further and further toward the Imria (her struggles with the Jedi-like mental training makes for a fun read), the reader is given a chance to feel her persecution for being different, both for being part-alien as well as for her burgeoning non-traditional sexuality and lifestyle. The plot is less predictable and more stirring than I would have imagined and I blew through 400 pages in two days. I think what i enjoyed the most about Inheritance was how the characters growth was incremental and we don't necessarily come to see them as larger than life, so much as simply teenagers thrown into extraordinary, trying situations and doing their best to cope.

I highly enjoyed Inheritance and think it was perhaps my favorite novel of the last year. Malinda Lo is really an accomplished novelist and I wish, not for the first time, that her work would garner greater attention.