I have spent the last hour, since completing this, wondering if I should alter my low star rating as I see reams of four and five star ratings and rave reviews highly praising this book. I am honestly at a loss as to what I was missing here! 
 This is by no means a bad book. It is well-written, has an orderly structure, the characters feel authentic, and there was some depth to the narrative. The problem I had is that this adhered to the predictable dystopian story-line and I could guess at the book's direction from only a few pages in. 
 Some interesting topical subjects were broached, which opened up discussions about the ethics and values about this fictional society. The scenes involving these were by far my favourite. Other parts were so brutal and graphic as to make for some seriously uneasy reading, and I really appreciated the book for delivering such intense scenes. Everything surrounding this was, however, bland in comparison. 
 I really wish I could have found more to appreciate here, but this was a little generic in the plot evolution and that spoilt all the suspense that was supposed to be generated in me. This is not the first dystopian that I have had a lukewarm response to, and I am gathering that it is perhaps my overexposure to this genre, rather than any specific fault of the book. Maybe we need to part ways, for a time, and when I return to other similarly packaged novels I will be more receptive to the events occurring.