Series Review- The Thousandth Floor

Confession:

I loved this series!  You can read my reviews for book one here and book two here. Can I also just say how stunning those covers look all together!

The Setting:

This was such a fun series with great characters and a great futuristic setting that I just loved.  The plot and characters read like a contemporary but the setting is what keeps you coming back for more.  Each book is filled with something interesting and futuristic and still totally believable that it could happen.  

Here are some of my favorite  gadgets and tech that made the series so much fun. 

• Floating Bubble Drinks.  There was a party scene in which there were bubbles floating around filled with alcohol, the characters took a straw and popped it in and took a drink before it floated off.  Cool!
• Mirrors that showed different holographic outfits on you.  No more having to change to try on clothes. 
• A bridge that builds itself.  This one sounded a little flimsy and I’m not sure I would walk across it but it was still really cool. 
• Mood Candles, when you burn them they alter your mood. 
• The Towers themselves were just like little cities and had many things including farms in them. 
• Holographic movies, almost a reality now, but these sounded way cooler than what we currently have.  Plus cameras that follow you around and record in 3d

There was a whole lot more, but those were the ones that stuck with me.

The Characters:

The characters were well written and some of them I would even like as a friend.  The story is mostly told through six of them, with one or two chapters from other characters mingled in.  I’ve put an asterisk next to the main narrators.

• *Avery- the perfect girl, literally.  Her parents had her genetically created. I ended up liking Avery, but she spends most of the books a little bit on the whiney side, and poor pitiable me, no one understands me etc.  But she does get it together in the end. 

• Atlas – Avery’s adoptive brother.  I really wanted to hear more from his perspective, especially after that one chapter in the last book.  I liked him for the most part. 

• *Leda – I really disliked Leda in the first book and I really wanted her to be the one to fall off the tower.  She does get better as the books go along and I ended up really liking her. 
• *Watt – was by far my favorite character in the series.  He was a geek hacker, who built an illegal quantum computer (AI) that he installed in his head.  So he walked around with Nadia as his conscience basically.  I also really like Nadia, she is an AI I would want helping me out.
• *Rylin – was the other character I really liked.  She was the only sane one for the most part and unfortunately had lots of things just happen to her because she is in the wrong place at the wrong time.  
• Cord – Another guy who I would have loved to hear from in a few chapters.  I think there is a novella that has his perspective, but I haven’t been able to find it in english.  I think Cord’s heart was always in the right place and he tried to be a good friend to everyone, but he really struggled with how to do that.
• *Calliope- Shows up in the second book.  I sort of have mixed feelings about her.  She is the daughter of a grifter and she had an important role in book two, but she wasn’t necessary in book three.  Although she probably had the most growth of any of the characters.  
• *Eris – probably my favorite girl character, she was just so lively and a good friend to everyone.  She struggles a lot with stuff, but she was getting it together. 

There are lots of other characters that come in and out of the story, but these were the ones that stuck the most in my mind and had the most to do with the story.

The Plot:

As I said before the plot is very much a contemporary wrapped up in a futuristic setting.  It could easily have taken place at an upscale private school in the present day, but I think the setting of the Towers is what made the books better and more interesting.  

Each book starts with something tragic happening, but you don’t necessarily know to who or what the exact circumstances are behind the tragedy.  For the whole book you are trying to figure out what happened and to who.  There was a murder in the second book and the killer is not revealed until the end of the third book and it was a little bit shocking, not who I was expecting although in retrospect in made total sense.

There is a lot of romance and just about every romantic trope you can think of; forbidden love, a love triangle, enemies to lovers, a cinderella story.  I am probably forgetting one, but those are the main ones.  I’m not going to tell who ends up with who, that was part of the fun, but all of the couples have mostly happy endings.  

All of the books are fast paced, well written and hard to put down.  If you like contemporaries but are not a big fan of science fiction you should give this one a try.  It is well done and the science and tech does not overwhelm the story.