Hardcover: 336 pages- List Price: $16.99
- Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books (November 15, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1442422017
- ISBN-13: 978-1442422018
- Kimberly Derting’s Website
Buy The Pledge at:
In the violent country of Ludania, the language you speak determines what class you are, and there are harsh punishments if you forget your place—looking a member of a higher class in the eye can result in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina (Charlie for short) can understand all languages, a dangerous ability she’s been hiding her whole life.
Her only place of release is the drug-filled underground club scene, where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. There, she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy who speaks a language she’s never heard, and her secret is almost exposed. Through a series of violent upheavals, it becomes clear that Charlie herself is the key to forcing out the oppressive power structure of her kingdom….
CdnMrs: The Pledge had a lot of potential. I was really intrigued by the idea of the classes being separated by language. In the book, the classes are further separated by the school their children attend, what the children learn in school, by dress and by the neighbourhood they live in. Many times throughout the book I was reminded of similarly oppressive regimes, Apartheid era South Africa was one that frequently came to mind, as did regimes in the former USSR and other Eastern European nations in the years following WWII. The Pledge could have easily come across as a knock off of Orwell’s 1984 for teens, but the world building was original enough that Derting didn’t fall into this trap. In fact, if there was one thing that I really liked in The Pledge it was the world building.
I lied,there were two things I liked. I was really happy there was no love triangle for Charlie to be caught between. For a while I was nervous about this, but thankfully there was none. Yay!
Seleste: I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect when reading this. A dystopian for sure, but the language thing was what really intrigued me. I went in expecting it to be a world much like ours where you get one language and have to actively avoid learning others, and Charlie just happened to be a girl who “knew” them all. To find out only the latter part of that expectation was true really threw me (more on this in a bit).
Like you though, I was expecting a love triangle and was very happy to see it not happen. I don’t mind love triangles as a general rule, but I completely wasn’t seeing the friend-romance. It was nice that it wasn’t forced in there anyway. I also liked that most of the characters were truly interconnected via the main plot line. Even those that weren’t served a purpose that was logical within the confines of the story. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good.
CndMrs: On the not so positive side, I found a lot of the book was spent explaining how bad things were, explaining the differences between characters and describing characters and there motivations, but very little was spent getting down to any actual action and conflict resolution. I don’t know if this was Kimberly Derting’s way of upping the mystery and suspense of the novel, but it just made most of the book a redundant regurgitation of things the reader already knew. Had Derting delved deeper into actual important plot points (ex. the story of the queen, the rebels, the queen’s favourite grandkid, Xander, the baby sister’s gift, the history of Ludania royal family, etc) perhaps the book would have seemed better balanced. Instead, I felt like I’d been introduced to a bunch of characters who were having a hard time and eventually rose up against it, but by the time they did so it was so minor that if I had blinked I would have missed it.
Unfortunately this kind of imbalance, for me anyway, makes the book rather forgettable.
Seleste: My problem was a little different in that I never really managed to get past the downside of the language thing. I tried to get on board with the magic thing (though I hadn’t expected it from the blurb) from the beginning, but of all the things that were explained (as you mentioned over and over again) the language barrier wasn’t given a magical explanation. Actually, the fact that it was general knowledge that the queen even had magic didn’t come out until about halfway through the book. So I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief regarding people’s ability to learn other languages. It was “lost”? No. That just didn’t work for me as a reader. Maybe had people never spoken anything but the common language when they intermingled–if that had been against the law–then I would have bought into the language thing easier. But I just never could believe that it wasn’t acknowledged as being a magical thing because naturally that didn’t work.
That disconnect for me was what made the book less than it could have been.
CdnMrs: Another thing that stuck out in this book was the constant references to Brooklyn, a side character’s, promiscuity. This character is defined by her ability to flirt, her sensuality and her promiscuity. There is ultimately more to this character, but until that’s revealed, in the last third of the book, she is pretty much just Charlie’s slutty friend. I think it is imperative for YA authors to trend carefully around issues of sexuality. It’s too easy to demonize a character for being confident and/or exploratory in their sexuality and unfortunately because of the focus on Brooklyn’s promiscuity throughout the majority of the book, that’s what, in my opinion, has been done to this character.
Seleste: I agree on the whole slutty-friend-until-she’s-just-not thing with Brooklyn. Plus, the drugs at the club really bugged me. Alcohol, I was fine with because the girls–or at least Brooklyn (surprise)–went in search of that. But the drugged stamps felt like such a contrived plot device that it really stood out. Had it served some other purpose besides getting Charlie upstairs to meet Xander, I would have liked it better, but that seemed the only point.
CdnMrs: The Pledge wasn’t an awful read, it was just…meh. Thanks to the information to action imbalance it was, unfortunately, forgettable. The Pledge had potential and I really wanted to like it, but it got hung up on the details and left me bored.
Seleste: Again, I agree, it wasn’t awful, but I really felt like it could have been so much more than it was. It wasn’t a story I could lose myself in, and for me that’s really necessary for dystopian. If the world isn’t believable, the story isn’t as meaningful as it should be. Sadly, The Pledge just fell flat for me in that regard and ended up just being an okay read.
