Review: Level 2 (The Memory Chronicles #1) by Lenore Appelhans

Since her untimely death the day before her eighteenth birthday, Felicia Ward has been trapped in Level 2, a stark white afterlife located between our world and the next. Along with her fellow drones, Felicia passes the endless hours reliving memories of her time on Earth and mourning what she’s lost-family, friends, and Neil, the boy she loved.

Then a girl in a neighboring chamber is found dead, and nobody but Felicia recalls that she existed in the first place. When Julian-a dangerously charming guy Felicia knew in life-comes to offer Felicia a way out, Felicia learns the truth: If she joins the rebellion to overthrow the Morati, the angel guardians of Level 2, she can be with Neil again.

Suspended between Heaven and Earth, Felicia finds herself at the center of an age-old struggle between good and evil. As memories from her life come back to haunt her, and as the Morati hunt her down, Felicia will discover it’s not just her own redemption at stake… but the salvation of all mankind.

Level 2 has an interesting premise, and unlike some books I’ve been reading lately, it actually delivers on it.  I will admit that there are some bizarre parts of the book, but they aren’t that frequent and they don’t take away from the book rather than helping it.  It’s also well-paced; despite the fact that a good amount of the book could be considered flashbacks, it doesn’t drag at any point

The book’s idea of how the afterlife goes is an interesting one, mostly because it does deviate from the traditional ideas in more ways than one.  It does have its flaws, considering it takes from Greek mythology as far as the rivers in the underworld, but it’s pretty much implied that heaven exists, but other than a small pool of water they encounter when running away from the hives, it isn’t really explained where they are or why they exist alongside the Christian idea of the afterlife.  The original idea was that people would find out what their purpose in life was and face things from their life that will help them move on to heaven (or hell, it’s assumed) and that is a rather comforting idea for the afterlife.

One more detail I would’ve liked to see would’ve been more detail for the night she was attacked and started having her nightmares.  It’s supposed to be a big part of the book (a big reason she’s so important to the Morati for their mission) and supposedly her soul left her body, but it’s never showed that anything happened other than the thugs jumping her.  While it would admittedly be a bit gruesome, it would’ve helped as some background for the story and how things work.

Also the ending works, but it’s one of those bizarre parts.  It’s… really, really bizarre, in my opinion.  But even though this is part of a series, it does nicely to wrap up the events of the book, rather than leaving in the middle of the action with a gimmicky non-ending that’s supposed to make you want to read the next book.  I’m still interested to see why this is going to be a series, though.