Review | The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

A mysterious disease is sweeping across the United States. A disease that only affects American’s tweens and teens. The outcome: death or frightening abilities that the youth cannot control. In response, the government sets up ‘rehabilitation camps’ to keep communities and America’s youth ‘safe.’

On the morning of her tenth birthday, something about Ruby has changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock Ruby in the garage and call the police. Ruby gets sent to Thurmond, one of the most brutal of all of the government’s ‘rehab camps’ for youth. Children are separated into five different groups according to their abilities: Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, and Orange. It becomes clear to Ruby very quickly that being categorized as a Yellow, Red, or Orange, will not bode well for her.

After six years of being locked up, Ruby has the unexpected opportunity of escaping Thurmond. Problem is, once out, she doesn’t know who she can trust. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she likes him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

The group of runaways is desperate to find the place they’ve heard is the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River.

I really enjoyed The Darkest Minds. It’s X-men-ish. It was engaging from the start and I enjoyed the way that back story was introduced throughout it. The book certainly has aspects of a dystopian society, but that theme is not the central one. The result of what happens to the US government in the wake of the disease crisis was interesting and seemed realistic. I really liked Ruby’s character and the group of friends she meets up with. And I thought the decision that Ruby makes at the end of the book was a very powerful and interesting one. I can’t wait to see what happens next in the trilogy!

My only beef with The Darkest Minds was that I think it would have been more interesting if one of the characters Ruby encountered had been a good person rather than a bad person. I wish that the book as a whole created more good characters with the type of powers that Ruby had. It seems so often, in dystopian fiction, that the majority of characters are evil except for the heroine. Yes, bad guys. Always. But lots of good guys too? Hopefully. I get tired of the bad guy laden stories.

I look forward to the sequel, Never Fade, which is due to release October 15th, 2013.

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Overall Rating:  

Parent’s guide:

• Sex: a few light kissing scenes
• Language: 5 or so swear words including 2 f-words
• Violence: children dying from disease, children being tested like guinea pigs, children being held prisoner in brutal camps, the implication that whole groups of children are exterminated, some gun violence and supernatural fighting scenes