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emilykayvsthelibrary's review against another edition
it feels like i’m reading a sequel, almost like it needs more context or like i’ve missed some key details
rosepetals1984's review
5.0
Quick review for a quick, enthralling read. I thought this was just as strong as "Archetype". If there's something to say in writing a satisfying conclusion to a duology, I thought this book did a fine job. I couldn't help but feel like once I put the book down, it seemed as if all the threads that were established in the first book were tied nicely by the conclusion of this tale. It throws quite a few curveballs and heart-pounding events into the mix as well.
"Prototype" picks up around the time the previous book left off, having Emma traversing in Mexico in searching for her parents, while at the same time battling her inner demons for leaving Noah and her daughter Adrienne behind. But the moment I realized Declan was back in the picture, I knew so much in the way of events and relationships would go down. And it certainly didn't disappoint in that regard. Once again, I identified much with Emma's experiences and the revelations that she comes across, between reuniting with the Resistance, meeting new companions (friends and foes), trying to come to grips with the life she leads and how it makes her different from the others around her, being a mother, and also trying to take down Declan and his enterprises. I definitely found many of the twists and turns to be refreshing, surprising, and keeping me on the seat of reading. In the end, I definitely see myself coming back to enjoy this series again, and I definitely look forward to reading more from M.D. Waters in the future.
Overall score: 4.5/5 stars.
"Prototype" picks up around the time the previous book left off, having Emma traversing in Mexico in searching for her parents, while at the same time battling her inner demons for leaving Noah and her daughter Adrienne behind. But the moment I realized Declan was back in the picture, I knew so much in the way of events and relationships would go down. And it certainly didn't disappoint in that regard. Once again, I identified much with Emma's experiences and the revelations that she comes across, between reuniting with the Resistance, meeting new companions (friends and foes), trying to come to grips with the life she leads and how it makes her different from the others around her, being a mother, and also trying to take down Declan and his enterprises. I definitely found many of the twists and turns to be refreshing, surprising, and keeping me on the seat of reading. In the end, I definitely see myself coming back to enjoy this series again, and I definitely look forward to reading more from M.D. Waters in the future.
Overall score: 4.5/5 stars.
andye_reads's review
4.0
I really like this series and that was a great ending! The audiobook was good too. Kristine Hvam always does a fantastic job.
authorheatherw's review
4.0
Hmm, this is definitely one of those cases when I wish I read two books back to back. I liked Prototype, but I remember LOVING Archetype. I reread my review and I was in awe over how awesome the story was. I did enjoy the sequel, but I found a few parts frustrating. I’d still recommend the series, but I just wasn’t the feel the romance as much in this one.
I was still a huge fan of Emma’s character in Prototype. She’s smart, strong, and I could empathize with her mixed up emotions over the relationships she has with Declan, Adrienne and Noah. The beginning of the book really helped me jump right back into the story. Prototype had a lot more action than the predecessor and I felt the suspense scenes were very well done.
I think my main issue with the novel was the romance. Noah seemed way too wishy-washy for me. I wanted to scream at him about a million times, “Man up already!” I mean I just didn’t get his character in the way I felt I had with Declan. I understood Declan wasn’t a good love match after his atrocious behavior, but there was still a hope either he would change or a third option would pop up. There were also a few major things that happened in the plot that had me saying, “Well, isn’t that convenient?”
These problems are minor though and I think most fans of Archetype will really love Prototype. I’m also glad the story was concluded in two books and not drawn out in a long series.
Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of the book for review!
I was still a huge fan of Emma’s character in Prototype. She’s smart, strong, and I could empathize with her mixed up emotions over the relationships she has with Declan, Adrienne and Noah. The beginning of the book really helped me jump right back into the story. Prototype had a lot more action than the predecessor and I felt the suspense scenes were very well done.
I think my main issue with the novel was the romance. Noah seemed way too wishy-washy for me. I wanted to scream at him about a million times, “Man up already!” I mean I just didn’t get his character in the way I felt I had with Declan. I understood Declan wasn’t a good love match after his atrocious behavior, but there was still a hope either he would change or a third option would pop up. There were also a few major things that happened in the plot that had me saying, “Well, isn’t that convenient?”
These problems are minor though and I think most fans of Archetype will really love Prototype. I’m also glad the story was concluded in two books and not drawn out in a long series.
Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of the book for review!
amysofta's review
5.0
I received this book from the publisher thought Net Galley for an honest review.
This ‘series’ has been a whirlwind ride from the moment I won a copy of Archetype to review last year and I can’t believe its over. I’m not ready for it all to end! I want to know more. I don’t want to leave this world behind. There is so much potential for more stories in the world Ms. Waters has created. Sure Emma and Noah’s story is wrapped up and I’m satisfied with how we leave them, but there are more characters I adore, answers and changes needed for this world that I could explore this universe for several more books. Please!
Prototype picks up around a year and half after Archetype ends with one hell of a cliffhanger. We are again in Emma’s head and much of this story centers on building up the chemistry between her and Noah, in the last book we get her and Declan together. In my last review I was torn about how I felt toward these two men that claim Emma. Sure Declan was set up to be the bad guy, but I could see he was more a made monster then a natural one. This book does little to redeem Declan and that is my only disappointment with the entire series. I would have liked him to turn out different, in character and outcome, but I understand every story needs a bad guy and he played his part well. I just grew a little attached to him in book one is all. Like I said though this story is Noah’s and we got to know him quite a bit better. He surprised me with how vulnerable he was and am impressed by the person he is/was/became. Emma spend much of the story comparing her two selves and wondering how it affects other’s feelings towards her. Is she the same person as she was before, or is she a different Emma? Does she have right to reclaim her life post-cloning.
I believe the story is a sci-fi with a dystopian leaning in it, but I feel at its heart this is a romance. The love triangle dominates the story line with just a hint of something more at the edges. I would have loved to explore these edges, hence my pleading for future books. The world Ms. Waters created is very interesting and captivated me with the questions it brought up. How did the world come to this point? How did women loose their rights? How is the world broken up now? What of the government? How did people stand by and let this happen? What about the environment? Answers to these questions would be great and I would like to see the world grow and watch as women regain their rights. Also what of the clones? What will become of their futures and their rights?
I don’t want to give too much away so I am going to end the review soon. I ended the story in tears, happy ones. It was a hell of a ride and much of it I sat with dread not knowing how events were going to play out. I could so see things going several ways and I felt as if I was constantly on the verge of having my heart smashed into million little pieces. There were highs and lows, twists and turns, plenty of action and parts that made me think. I come away from this book wondering how I feel about personal rights and what really makes us who we are. Is it our genetic make up, our memories, our choices or something more? And how does that all affect how we love?
This ‘series’ has been a whirlwind ride from the moment I won a copy of Archetype to review last year and I can’t believe its over. I’m not ready for it all to end! I want to know more. I don’t want to leave this world behind. There is so much potential for more stories in the world Ms. Waters has created. Sure Emma and Noah’s story is wrapped up and I’m satisfied with how we leave them, but there are more characters I adore, answers and changes needed for this world that I could explore this universe for several more books. Please!
Prototype picks up around a year and half after Archetype ends with one hell of a cliffhanger. We are again in Emma’s head and much of this story centers on building up the chemistry between her and Noah, in the last book we get her and Declan together. In my last review I was torn about how I felt toward these two men that claim Emma. Sure Declan was set up to be the bad guy, but I could see he was more a made monster then a natural one. This book does little to redeem Declan and that is my only disappointment with the entire series. I would have liked him to turn out different, in character and outcome, but I understand every story needs a bad guy and he played his part well. I just grew a little attached to him in book one is all. Like I said though this story is Noah’s and we got to know him quite a bit better. He surprised me with how vulnerable he was and am impressed by the person he is/was/became. Emma spend much of the story comparing her two selves and wondering how it affects other’s feelings towards her. Is she the same person as she was before, or is she a different Emma? Does she have right to reclaim her life post-cloning.
I believe the story is a sci-fi with a dystopian leaning in it, but I feel at its heart this is a romance. The love triangle dominates the story line with just a hint of something more at the edges. I would have loved to explore these edges, hence my pleading for future books. The world Ms. Waters created is very interesting and captivated me with the questions it brought up. How did the world come to this point? How did women loose their rights? How is the world broken up now? What of the government? How did people stand by and let this happen? What about the environment? Answers to these questions would be great and I would like to see the world grow and watch as women regain their rights. Also what of the clones? What will become of their futures and their rights?
I don’t want to give too much away so I am going to end the review soon. I ended the story in tears, happy ones. It was a hell of a ride and much of it I sat with dread not knowing how events were going to play out. I could so see things going several ways and I felt as if I was constantly on the verge of having my heart smashed into million little pieces. There were highs and lows, twists and turns, plenty of action and parts that made me think. I come away from this book wondering how I feel about personal rights and what really makes us who we are. Is it our genetic make up, our memories, our choices or something more? And how does that all affect how we love?
tachyondecay's review
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Not sure what my record is for “longest time between book and its sequel,” but Prototype might be the holder. I read Archetype over 6 years ago. Since then, this sequel has sat on my to-read list, never quite making it to my bookshelf. Until now! I recently conducted a joyous purge of my to-read list as part of migrating it to The StoryGraph—somehow, Prototype made the cut, but I was galvanized to finally borrow it from my library. I remember so little about Archetype, though, and that might have been to this book’s detriment. I didn’t enjoy this as much as my review of Archetype suggests that 2015 Kara enjoyed it. Maybe this is because I’m a different person, maybe it’s the book—maybe it’s both!
Little time has passed since the conclusion of the first book. Emma is a clone. In the first book, she awakes with little personal memory. She’s told she is married to Declan Burke, the rich dude who paid for her to be cloned. In reality, she was married to a resistance member, Noah Tucker, although her last name is Wade, so, you know, already a lot to keep track of. Emma used to be part of the resistance! She has a daughter! And now she is on the run from Declan Burke, searching for her parents—also former resistance members—and struggling to find freedom in a world where neither clones nor women, especially fertile women, are particularly free. Oh, and she never uses contractions, even in her first-person narration, and I don’t remember if the first book ever explains this but it’s weird.
My review of Archetype focuses on two ideas. The first is whether or not the novel “feels like” what we call young adult literature. The second is how its themes and motifs tie into novels with similar premises around an ultra-overt form of patriarchy. I say “ultra-overt” because all forms of patriarchy are obsessed with controlling the fertility of people who can reproduce—just see the latest round of anti-abortion laws in the United States. But books like Archetype/Prototype and The Handmaid’s Tale crank this up to 11 in the hopes that it will prompt people to pay attention to the inequality that women face today.
In my original review I said this lovely nugget:
Look, in the way I presently identify and perform my gender, I’m not a woman. So I’m not trying to speak for women here.
I love the presently in there, since it so carefully qualified something I had no idea at the time would change but ended up changing! Oh, 2015 Kara. I wish you had been slightly bolder in exploring what was going on in your heart and your mind….
Like, I still can’t speak for women here and couldn’t even if I were a cis woman. But Prototype definitely hit differently now that I understand that I am a trans woman. I can’t bear children. Lots of cis women can’t, so that doesn’t make me feel any less like a woman. Moreover, I’ve never particularly wanted kids, so I’m not too worried about finding alternatives. And yet, the particular premise of this book—cloning women to “cure” their infertility—prompted me to think philosophically about this.
If the technology in this book existed, we wouldn’t have to use it on cis people only. We could clone trans people new bodies that are congruent with their genders—just tweak a chromosome here, a gene sequence there. If I had access to a cloning technology that would put me into the cisfeminine analogue of my body, would I go through with such a procedure? (I am delicately side-stepping the issues of continuity of identity much like this book sweeps them away.) I know, of course, that in the real world trans people probably wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the list of beneficiaries of such technology. As this book observes, after controlling the fertility of women, the next item on the list is preserving the lives of rich and powerful men. Still, it’s an intriguing and perhaps even unsettling idea.
Prototype walks a fine line with this discussion of cloning technology. Like I said above, it evades some of the deeper philosophical question even as it verges on the pseudoscientific and metaphysical at times. I get the impression Waters doesn’t really want to spend too much time on the implications of this technology so much as use it as a vehicle for the story she’s telling about a woman trying to get back to her family. And you know what? Fair. I might not like that storytelling decision, but I respect that Waters makes it and sticks with it instead of half-measures.
So even though there is a subplot here about overturning an evil cloning corporation, don’t mistake it for the real story. This is about Emma, Noah, and their daughter Adrienne attempting to overcome all the obstacles trying to keep them apart. One of those obstacles is, in no small part, Emma’s own doubts about her authenticity of self and where she belongs. I wish that we saw her struggle with that more fully—the scenes where she is confronting Declan or in his power ring hollow, the way she talks about how much she desires him even though she hates how he treats her. I’m not trying to deny that people often still want to be with their abusers even while recognizing them as abusers—but Emma’s voice feels lacking in nuance. There’s too much telling going on.
I also wasn’t a fan of Emma’s constant insistence on motherhood as her anchor for her identity. Again, I don’t want to invalidate anyone here who sees their status as a parent as their anchor. It just feels like a weird choice for a book that is, on one layer, a critique of our society’s obsession with people who can reproduce only existing for the purpose of reproduction. I suppose we might interpret the fact that this Emma didn’t physically birth Adrienne as Waters trying to tell us that motherhood is about your emotional connection to a child rather than the physical bonding of birth. That’s a plus for parents who adopt, I guess. Nevertheless, like my complaint about Emma’s voice, my critique here isn’t so much what Waters is trying to say but rather her skill at saying it.
In short, Prototype strikes me as a book that swings big but doesn’t quite succeed in hitting the emotional notes it aims for. I’ve said this before in reviews: I would rather see a book swing big and miss than not try at all. So in that sense, I liked this book. I don’t regret reading it 6 years after the first one. That being said, I don’t see myself raving about it and recommending it any time soon. Even though I believe this book is exploring some valuable territory about patriarchy, womanhood, and relationships, there are much better books out there doing the same thing.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Violence, Toxic relationship, Sexism, Misogyny, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Kidnapping
Moderate: Confinement, Chronic illness, Terminal illness, Sexual violence, and Infertility
Minor: Pregnancy
nadinee24's review
4.0
Great conclusion to the story. Emma is a very different character from the first book, which makes her journey in Prototype all the more enjoyable. The only issue I had with this duology is the lack of world building. I wish there was more to really ground the story.
Overall, this is a fantastic duology that you should not hesitate to read!
Overall, this is a fantastic duology that you should not hesitate to read!
billies_not_so_secret_diary's review
4.0
ARC, to be published July 24, 2014: the continuation of the book Archetype.
Prototype starts around a year later, as Emma searches for her parents, when it is quickly ended when her 'husband', who she thought was dead, announced to the world he was looking for her and was willing to pay a lot for her safe return.
This entire story was great, happy, sad, action, suspense, hope, fears, etc. Set in the future where women are rare, rarer are those who are fertile, and who are men's possessions. At first the reading was a little choppy, but then again it matches how the character is feeling, she is still missing memories of her 'other life'. Once the reading smoothed out, I didn't want to stop!
I was really happy with the story, kept my interest and the ending, it ended.
Prototype starts around a year later, as Emma searches for her parents, when it is quickly ended when her 'husband', who she thought was dead, announced to the world he was looking for her and was willing to pay a lot for her safe return.
This entire story was great, happy, sad, action, suspense, hope, fears, etc. Set in the future where women are rare, rarer are those who are fertile, and who are men's possessions. At first the reading was a little choppy, but then again it matches how the character is feeling, she is still missing memories of her 'other life'. Once the reading smoothed out, I didn't want to stop!
I was really happy with the story, kept my interest and the ending, it ended.