Book Review :: Inside Out by Maria V Snyder

Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder
Series: Insiders #1
Published by Mira Ink
on January 1st 2011
Genres: Dystopian, Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 315
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Keep Your Head Down.Don't Get Noticed.Or Else.

I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I've got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops.

So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution...

Last updated on 22 February 2022

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I bought Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder and its sequel at the end of last year, in one of my book hauls, though I don’t think they arrived until about 3 days before we left England. It was a close call. However, I’ve only just gotten around to reading them, and while they weren’t really what I expected (though I don’t know what I expected, to be honest), I did enjoy them both.

What is Inside Out by Maria V Snyder about?

Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder, tells the story of Trella, a scrub who lives in the lower levels of Inside. Her job (ten hours on, ten hours off) is to follow her cleaning robot/thing around the pipes and air shafts of Inside, ensuring that they are clean and functioning for the Uppers. She has one friend, Cogon, but mostly sticks to herself, keeping out of the way of the thousands of people down in the lower levels, and avoiding the Population Control Police (or Pop Cops). One day, Cog introduces Trella to the latest Prophet, who tells her that he needs her help to retrieve information about the Inside and the Outside. He also tells her that her parents were Uppers.

“For the first time, I was the center of attention. Everyone watched me as if I were a bomb. Would I explode and cause a disaster or would I pop and cause a miracle?”

As you can imagine, Trella helps the Prophet, and finds herself tangled in lies and deceit, mysteries and murder, secrets and shocking realisations. She accidentally starts a rebellion and suddenly everyone is looking to her for answers and for the leadership she never knew she had. I won’t say much more, because it’s a little hard to review without giving anything away. But basically, things happen, people are hurt, people fall in almost forbidden love, secrets are revealed (and more are brought to light) and while it sort of ends in an okay way, it was quite good that I had the second one to start reading straight after I finished this one.

Trella was sort of an annoying character, but I liked her more in this book than I did in the second (review will be posted tomorrow), and while there were some cool characters, I wouldn’t have really minded if any of them were suddenly killed off. It was a nice short book (only 300 ish pages), and it was a fast-paced, easy read. If you like the dystopian genre, give this a go!

Read my thoughts on the second in this series: Outside In.

Have you read Inside Out by Maria V Snyder? What did you think?