The book Dazzling Heights written by Katharine McGee takes you to a far off Sci-Fi world where building’s reach a thousand floors. The book provides a message proving that money and wealth does not always bring satisfaction to the heart. Dazzling Heights is a sequel to The Thousandth Floor providing a deeper look into many cliffhangers that McGee left after the end of The Thousandth Floor. Surrounded by extravagance and futuristic technology, the elite teens of the top floors of the 1,000-story Tower in New York City still manage to be miserable. Vicious and ambitious Leda Cole can be seen struggling to conceal her murder of Eris Dodd-Radson by blackmailing her witnesses over their darkest secrets. Another character, Avery Fuller and her complicated relationship with her adopted brother, Atlas; there's also hacker Watzahn “Watt '' Bakradi and his highly illegal quantum computer; and scholarship-student Rylin Myers and her criminal ex-boyfriend. Newcomer con artist Calliope Brown and her mother also seek to exploit the richer residents. The economically organized Tower also can be seen as racially segregated; black Leda fights to overcome her middle-class origins, and lower-floor (and therefore lower-class) Iranian-American Watt and “half-Asian” Rylin falter as foils for the mostly white 1 percent. While the multiplicity of narrators causes tiresome plot repetition, it mimics the self-absorbed world of the Tower’s top tier.
I personally thought the book was an excellent beach read. The book is simply a ⅘ because the plot can be seen repeating itself many times. Similarly to its predecessor The Thousandth Floor. I feel like the author did an excellent job highlighting the segregation of races and wealth. She was able to connect this problem in a fascinating way that kept me intrigued and wanting to read more. Her exaggeration of the thousandth floor highlights that many people in less fortunate situations are lower classed or in this case on a lower floor. It showed that the uppermost floors were always able to see the sunlight and they always knew there was hope, the underclass however are never able to see the natural sun providing a gloomy less hopeful overlook of life.
This book is definitely a book I would recommend. Having many ups and downs the book keeps you on the edge of your seat, wondering what is going to happen next.
Comments