review: pulse by patrick carman

Because I enjoyed Patrick Carman’s Dark Eden, I was excited to read his latest book. Unfortunately, I just didn’t really get Pulse. I kept turning to the vague back cover copy as I read because I couldn’t figure out what the book was supposed to be about other than teens living in what’s left of the United States after some unnamed event created two States that some people live in, but others live outside of. Some of these teens are supposed to have a “pulse” (hence the title), but who has a pulse and what exactly it is isn’t revealed until very late in the book. Pulse really picks up toward the end, but the front half dragged and was a little confusing. There’s a lot of Faith sleeping while things move around the room and Tablets mysteriously disappearing and reappearing. I did like the commentary Carman was making with the Tablets (the teens are super-attached to their issued from birth Tablets that have GPS trackers and have replaced the need for school teachers), but that was the only thing to hold my interest in first few sections. One of my pet peeves is for a book to force a sequel; Pulse seems like it was written entirely as a prequel to whatever book the start of the series should actually be.
2/5
Review copy from Amazon Vine.