Article 5, Kristen Simmons

FINALLY. I'm finally doing this review! God dang!

New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have been abandoned.

The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes. 

There are no more police—instead, there are soldiers. There are no more fines for bad behavior—instead, there are arrests, trials, and maybe worse. People who get arrested usually don't come back. (Full description here.)

It's been a really long time since I actually finished this book. Don't ask me why I didn't do a review earlier, I couldn't tell you.

For starters, Article 5 is another one of my favorite dystopian books. But unlike Inside Out, Divergent, or the MATCHED series, it's set only a decade or so from now. I guess we never really know, but it doesn't seem too far in the future. The story takes place in Tennessee and West Virginia in a post-war situation. I think it was supposed to be WWIII.

That was really weird to read. I remember reading "WWIII" and thinking, Hey, that's a typo! It's supposed to be WWII but no. It was meant to say that.

Any-hoo, after this war the government decides to change the first ten amendments in the American Constitution; also known as the Bill of Rights. These are the basic things like freedom of speech and religion and stuff. Well, the government in this book is all-powerful (you know how it is with these things) and they've changed these to things like:

• Article 1: The United States embraces the Church of America as her official religion.
• Article 2: Literature and other media considered immoral are hereby banned and shall not be owned, bought, sold, or traded in any capacity. 
• Article 3: Whole families are to be considered one man, one woman, and child(ren).
• Article 4: Traditional male and female roles shall be observed.
• Article 5: Children are considered valid citizens only when conceived by a married man and wife. 

These are right off the back of the book, I swear. They're called the Moral Statutes* now.

So you can see some (if not all (I think all)) of these new amendments are ridiculous. I can't say anything for any other countries, but I know America nowadays would not put up with these.

So that's the setting. Now we mosey on over to the main characters.

First character: Ember Miller. I really like the name Ember, along with the character. I don't know what I'd do in her situation. First: her own mother is arrested just for having her! Like, what! That's not a spoiler, by the way, it happens in the first chapter and if you've seen anything about this book you'd have already known that. Well, Ember's pretty awesome. At first she's just a normal girl with friends and stuff and then BAM! her whole life is changed and even though she's kind of whiny, I still like her. I have a soft spot for complainers, what can I say.

Chase. I don't remember his last name. If I look it up . . . Jennings. Chase Jennings. Sounds 'bout right. Honestly, I know I say this about every boy in every book; I love him. He's so cool. Like, seriously, he's awesome. Such a rebel. Not that you'd know it until half way through the book. At some points he's beyond mysterious and stoic and such. Brooding. But then at others he's completely open and most of the time, kind of sad. Poor Chase. I feel for him. But he's still so cool. 

Well. That's pretty much all the main characters. Not much there. Probably more in the second book, Breaking Point. I think it comes out in February. Some sites say February 2nd, some say the 12th. Can't really rely on the interwebs, can we? I want it so bad, though.

*For like, the entire first five chapters of this book, I thought they were called the Moral Statues; like the Statue of Liberty. I finally realized there was a third T in there so I had to look up how to say it. Stach-oots.