Blurb

Me?

A leader?

Okay, I did prove that there’s more to Inside than we knew.

That a whole world exists beyond this cube we live in. And finding that led to a major rebellion—between worker scrubs like me and the snobby uppers who rule our world. Make that ruled. Because of me, we’re free. I thought that meant I was off the hook, and could go off on my own again—while still touching base with Riley, of course. He’s the one upper I think I can trust. But then we learned that there’s outside and then there is Outside.

And something from Outside wants In.

I LOVED Inside Out, though interestingly I can’t really remember much of what happened in it.

Where are we going? Good question. According to Logan, our computer expert, our metal cube-shaped world is traveling through Outer Space. And since Outer Space is incredibly huge, it will take us a total of a million weeks to get to a planet where we can go Outside and live. We’re not sure what exactly Outside is since many of Inside’s computer records have been deleted.

According to our remaining records, another so-called “rebellion” happened around week 132,076 when Admiral Trava reported saboteurs had tried to destroy the computer systems with magnets, erasing all the historical files. But Logan says it’s bogus and he suspects the Trava family deleted those files so they could rule the people of Inside.

Before that first rebellion, Inside was ruled by a Committee comprised of all the nine families, but the Trava family didn’t want to share. Since they were in charge of security, they had the weapons and they took control. Each family had been responsible for the different systems that keep us all alive. Air, water, hydroponics, shepherds, recycling, the infirmary, the power plant, and the kitchen. Yeah that’s a lot, but when you’re living in a big metal cube in the middle of Outer Space, you need every one.

The Travas separated the people into uppers and lowers (a.k.a. scrubs), and kept us confined to our levels (uppers on levels three & four, scrubs on levels one & two). They sowed the seeds of distrust and created the Population Control Police (a.k.a. Pop Cops) to make sure we all followed the rules. Their propaganda worked. The scrubs, including me, thought the uppers were living in big apartments with big families and cushy jobs, while we lived in overcrowded barracks with no privacy and were forced to clean and maintain the systems (after all, rust and dust are the twin evils of Inside).

Outside In failed me. Or maybe I failed it, I’m not sure. I have spent the last four hours reading this book, and yet I don’t know I could tell you what REALLY happened. I could perhaps mention a few names, and that some exiled Outsiders try to come back and take over the ship. But HOW it happened, WHY it happened, WHO the outsiders were and HOW Trella and co saved the ship, I couldn’t tell you. I’m not even sure if Snyder knew, but more on that later.

I spent the first half of the novel really disappointed. Trella, after having SO much faith in the first book that a better world existed, has given up. She struggled and fought and recruited people and lost people because she believed there was a better way of living, a place where everyone could co-exist and be happy. And in this book, she’s decided “hey man, I did all the hard work in the last book, how about I chillax poolside and you slackers get off your arses?”

And sure, Trella deserves a pat on a back and a nice long rest, BUT when she’s the one who had the vision of change, who not only recognised things were bad, but recognised how to fix them, then she’s gonna be the only one who can make it better. No one else had the vision of a better world, so no one else can be left in charge to figure out HOW to make it a better world. It just seemed very uncharacteristic of Trella.

The climb was easy because we were weightless, but difficult due to our cumbersome suits and magnets. I marveled over the audacity of this attempt, at what—or rather, where—we were. On the outside of Inside. In Outer Space. It was humbling, thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

When we finally reached the top of Inside, we all took a moment to drink in the amazing sight of Outer Space and to catch our breaths.

 A very weak ending to what was a fun and exciting story arc. As I’m sure there isn’t going to be another book in this series, there are many questions left dangling that should have been answered. Like who are the “Insiders” really, where are they from, what are they, who are the “Outsiders,” etc., etc. I wasted time reading two books and am left without a real ending explaining most everything, if not all.