The Pledge

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Tentative publication Date: November 15, 2011

Version: Simon and Schuster galley grab e-book

Series: The Pledge

This is the story of Charlaina Hart aka Charlie, her sister Angelina and their friends Aron and Brooklyn aka Brook.  They all live in the Capitol of Ludania where there has been a war brewing.  The Resistance has been trying to overthrow Queen Sabara.  Ludania has to have a queen who is of royal blood line.  They have tried to not have a queen before and it ended disastrously and having Ludania being cut off from other countries.  The Queen, however, has other ideas.  She is looking for an heir to the throne so she can step down.   She only has a male child and male grandchildren.  They obviously cannot be queen, so there must be someone else.

Ludania is separated into class systems.  Each separate class has their own language and you are only taught to understand the language that is in your class and Englaise.  If you meet someone in a class above yours, you are supposed to lower your eyes.  You most certainly are not supposed to understand a language that is above your class.  That is the problem with Charlie.  Even though she is in the vendor class, she understands all languages.  Even ones she has not heard before, which is the case when she met Max, Claude and Zafir first in her parents restaurant and secondly in the club Prey.  They speak a language that is unique.  This interests her and she doesn’t understand which language it is that they speak.  She has heard all the class languages and knows that it is none of them. 

Max is intrigued by Charlie and she doesn’t understand this either as Brook is the one who normally gets all the attention.  She is conflicted about this because a part of her knows she shouldn’t like Max, be near him or trust him and the other part cannot stop thinking about him.  When Brook and Charlie go to Prey for the second time, she meets Xander.  She isn’t sure of whom he is either.  One thing she is sure of, both Xander and Max are interested in who she is and this is the story of figuring out why.

This book was one I couldn’t put down.  When Max and Xander entered the story, I wanted to know too what their interest in Charlie was.  I was happy to find out from Derting that there will be more books to follow up with this one as this story gripped me and wouldn’t let me go until I had finished it.

In the violent country of Ludania, the classes are strictly divided by the language they speak. The smallest transgression, like looking a member of a higher class in the eye while they are speaking their native tongue, results in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina has always been able to understand the languages of all classes, and she's spent her life trying to hide her secret. The only place she can really be free is the drug-fueled underground clubs where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. It's there that she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy named Max who speaks a language she's never heard before . . . and her secret is almost exposed.

Charlie is intensely attracted to Max, even though she can't be sure where his real loyalties lie. As the emergency drills give way to real crisis and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country's only chance for freedom from the terrible power of a deadly regime.

▪ The nicknames – Charlie, Brook, Max, Xander,…  I just like nicknames.

▪ How Charlie helps people.  Especially when it is not expected of her.

▪ The length that Charlie's parents will go to in order to protect her Angelina.

▪ The need that Charlie feels to protect her sister, Angelina.

▪ Aron.  He is just a classy guy.  I like that he carries both Brook’s and Charlie’s bags to school every day.   I don’t get a sense if this is expected of him or not, but Brook and Charlie act like it is nothing to hand their bag over to him while they walk to school.  Also, how protective he is of those two.

▪ Queen Sabara and how she is evil and uncaring. 

▪ The class system.  You will never be able to progress to a class that you were not born in.  You are stuck in that class forever.  Looking up when someone of a high class is speaking their language is punishable by death. 

▪ The fact that Charlie is the last to know everything.  Everyone she loves is keeping secrets from her.

▪ How excited (?) people of the Capitol were when there were hangings.