My bookshelf was looking very scarce of Sci-Fi books. I have a lot of dystopian billions of contemporary young adult books but not a lot of science fiction. To be completely honest, I have no idea why because I absolutely love the genre. Plop me down in front of a science fiction tv show or film and I will happily watch it without any fuss, give me a science fiction and I will devour it whole. So why don’t I have a lot of Sci-Fi books? I have no idea, but I changed that very quickly.

One of the first Sci-Fi books that I bought to add to my small collection was Reboot by Amy Tintera.

Five years ago, Wren Connolly was shot three times in the chest. After 178 minutes she came back as a Reboot: stronger, faster, able to heal, and less emotional. Wren 178 is the deadliest Reboot in the Republic of Texas. Now seventeen years old, she serves as a soldier for HARC.

Wren’s favorite part of the job is training new Reboots, but her latest newbie is the worst she’s ever seen. As a 22, Callum Reyes is practically human. His reflexes are too slow, he’s always asking questions, and his ever-present smile is freaking her out. When Callum refuses to follow an order, Wren is given one last chance to get him in line—or she’ll have to eliminate him. Wren has never disobeyed before and knows if she does, she’ll be eliminated, too. But she has also never felt as alive as she does around Callum.

The perfect soldier is done taking orders.

One second…

This was my reaction whilst I was reading this book. How can anything be so amazing?

I absolutely loved the concept of Rebooting. It’s basically this: if you die and you’re under eighteen, then you get Rebooted into a super soldier. So you’re basically a soldier zombie. Awesome eh? The longer you’re dead, the stronger you are, the quicker you heal and the more badass you are. Like with normal zombies, Reboots can only be killed by shooting at the head which is why they wear some weird looking helmet.

I loved how Wren was this tough, sarcastic, hardcore fighter who loved going out on missions and killing the bad guys. I love how – when she was training her newbies – she would just break their legs or their jaws so that they could ‘toughen up’. #goals.

Even though she was a soldier, we saw slithers of humanity slip through her wall when she was with Ever and then when she met Callum.

Callum is adorable and I want him. He was such a wonderfully thought out character who wanted to protect and save Wren even though she hardly ever needed protecting. He looked out for her and didn’t want to hit her back through the training because he didn’t want to hurt again. I’ll say it again: Callum us adorable and I want him. Even though he was this brilliant character and him and Wren get together, the book isn’t about Callum. The book isn’t about their romance. It’s about Wren and how she is discovering new parts of herself that had been locked away ever since she got Rebooted.

“Fine,” I said, holding my gun out. I didn’t need it anyway. With the way the guy was shaking, I could take his gun, break his neck, and dance on the body in two seconds flat.” 
― Amy Tintera, Reboot

Their romance was so quirky and wonderful. They weren’t this sickly-please-pass-me-the-bucket kind of couple that you can sometimes find in contemporary YA. They were let’s-train-together-and-slice-this-bullet-out-of-your-body kind of couple. They were great and now I’m getting all of the feels.

The only thing that I can say was a bit off about this book was the ending. It was predictable. However, it was still an effective ending and since I had a glimpse of the last book in the duology at the back of Reboot, I had a chance to start the second book and now I am so so so excited to read it. The ending made complete sense after I had read the snippet of Rebel and I can see now how Tintera is going to make the second book work.

Reboot is an amazing science fiction – dystopian book that is includes heads being shot off, bullets being ripped out of bodies, people’s bones being broken enough times that you start to imagine the ‘crack’ of it happening, yet it also includes a side of romance that doesn’t make the effectiveness of the plot any less.

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