Jennifer's Reviews > Open Minds

The setting in Open Minds is a future world (late 21st century) where almost everyone is a “reader.” Chemicals in the environment triggered a massive genetic evolution spawning generations of mind readers. During puberty, children begin to both involuntarily send out their thoughts and read the thoughts of others in range, which means most conversations take place mentally.

Some children never go through the change and are designated as zeros. Sixteen year old Kira Moore is a zero….or so she thinks. Strange things begin to happen and Kira finds out that she is not a zero, nor a reader, but instead a jacker – one who can enter another’s mind and control it. Much to Kira’s surprise, there are jackers all around, but they choose to live incognito lest they get picked up by the military and placed in jacker camps.

***Minor spoilers ahead***

I initially had a hard time rating this book. There were parts I liked and parts that I didn’t and overall I felt that it was just okay, but I had a hard time figuring out why I felt that way. I think my biggest issue with the book was the character and story transitions and evolutions. They did not happen naturally at all, and therefore I didn’t relate to the characters or the larger story. For example, Simon (who has really never interacted with Kira at all) kisses Kira, and the next day he is her boyfriend. Huh? What happened to conversation and getting to know one another? A clan of jackers tries to recruit Kira and after threatening her they try to kill her best friend. What? Starting with threats and attempted murder doesn’t seem to be the best way to convince someone to join a group. Kira finds out she is a jacker and within a week she is the most powerful super jacker ever. Again, huh? We never see Kira struggling to figure out how to use her new mindjacking ability and all of the sudden we are told that she can do it better than anyone else.

I also found Simon to be completely creepy and stalker-like and did not find him to be a likable or sympathetic character at all.

***Slightly bigger spoiler***

One of my biggest issues was the science (or lack thereof). I read a lot of fantasy and speculative fiction and I’m fine with suspension of disbelief, but I don’t like contradictions within the world that it presented. Kira lives in a future version of our world, therefore genetics should work largely the same. She hypothesizes (and her dad thinks she is right) that she a super strong jacker because she has the jacker gene from both her mom’s side (grandma) and her dad’s side. She states that it must reside on the X chromosome. Well, what she is saying makes no sense and I’ll tell you why. Kira is basically saying that she has 2 jacker genes, one each on her X chromosome – I’ll call them Xj. So Kira is Xj-Xj and is a jacker. Her dad therefore must be Xj-Y and is also a jacker. That works fine and at this point we don’t know if the jacker gene is dominant or recessive. The problem is her mother’s side. In order for Kira to have two Xj genes, her mother must be Xj-X. Her mother is NOT a jacker, so that means that the Xj gene is recessive. What makes no sense is that grandma was a jacker. So grandma must have been Xj-Xj, making her the same as Kira and every other female jacker which blows the “Kira is special” theory out of the water. Unless you assume that the jacker gene is dominant, then grandma could have been Xj-X, but the problem is then with Kira’s mother who would also have to be Xj-X and not a jacker. This just annoys me to no end because it clearly wasn’t thought through. I suppose there could be something around gene expression, and another gene that triggers the expression of the jacker gene which grandma had and mom didn’t, but that wasn’t mentioned. If a book is going to give a simplistic explanation for a genetic mutation, I’d like it to at least match up with 10th grade biology.

***end spoilers***

As I mentioned, overall this book was just okay. I probably won’t be reading any more in the trilogy as there was nothing in the story that was compelling enough for me to want to continue.