“Unbound” review

Sophie Enloe, Copy Editor

Published on December 15, 2015, UnBound is one of the books in the Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman. The book features stories of characters in a dystopian world where there is a law that people can be signed away to be unwound. The unwinding process takes people apart and distributes their parts for money, repairing others, or experimentation. The book is relatively easy to follow even without reading the previous ones. 

The characters in the book all have their own unique experiences, and it all revolves around the unwinding rule. Once a child turns 13, their parent can sign them off to be unwound. Runaway unwinds, or AWOLS, try to survive and not get caught because their lives depend on it. Most of the world agreed to have the unwind law, but there are some safe places. Reservations where the ChanceFolk live and Thailand disagreed with the unwind law and are safe. Although these places are safe, there are still parts pirates who disregard their no unwinding policies and kidnap people to unwind them for money. The parts can end up in experiments to create rewinds that were initially intended to become soldiers or monstrosities. 

I would rate this book a solid five out of five because it was interesting, and reading it kept me on my toes. I didn’t expect a lot of the plot twists, and the foreshadowing and referring back to parts of the book were great. I recommend this book to people who love horror and sci-fi books. As for the age range, I’d recommend the book to people ages 14 and older because it includes some profanity and can be a bit graphic.