Review of Extraction by Stephanie Diaz

 Release Date: July 22, 2014

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Page Count: 416

Format: Hardcover

Genre: YA/Sci-Fi

Clementine has spent her whole life preparing for her sixteenth birthday, when she’ll be tested for Extraction in the hopes of being sent from the planet Kiel’s toxic Surface to the much safer Core, where people live without fear or starvation. When she proves promising enough to be “Extracted,” she must leave without Logan, the boy she loves. Torn apart from her only sense of family, Clem promises to come back and save him from brutal Surface life.
What she finds initially in the Core is a utopia compared to the Surface—it’s free of hard labor, gun-wielding officials, and the moon's lethal acid. But life is anything but safe, and Clementine learns that the planet's leaders are planning to exterminate Surface dwellers—and that means Logan, too. 
Trapped by the steel walls of the underground and the lies that keep her safe, Clementine must find a way to escape and rescue Logan and the rest of the planet. But the planet leaders don't want her running—they want her subdued.

*a finished copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review*

For months Extraction by Stephanie Diaz was one of the many books in my TBR pile until I was invited to participate in the Rebellion blog tour. I decided that I might as well finally read Extraction and so began to read it. While it wasn't a [perfect book I still enjoyed it and found it to be fairly good.

The world-building and settings in Extraction were interesting enough to keep me satisfied but I do wish that more of the world had been shown. For example maybe different areas inside the shield or one of the research facilities that were talked about. This was my first time reading a book where the moon was one of the major problems (in this case the acid from the moon) but the whole "aliens" from another planet coming to attack was nothing new. However, there were a lot of little things throughout the book that also made me intrigued such as the intelligent creature Clementine visits in the pool with Beechy. A look at the creature's people or civilization might serve to make a interesting background story. While there were slight things that effected Extraction in terms of the world-building it still managed to be fairly good and keep me interested in the book throughout the whole of it.

While the characters and plot were also pretty good this is where Extraction ran into a bit of trouble. The serums that were used throughout the book reminded me of Divergent and Clementine's relationship with Beechy was sort of like Tris and Tobias. As well as the main character being small/weak at first but then getting stronger and beating everyone. These issues for me weren't the end of the world but still caused me to take points off of Extraction.
The main character (Clemintine) is one of the few people that are picked each year to be extracted from the surface to the Core. The Extractions are freed from their poverty and get to live in the safety of the Core. Clemintine starts off like that but eventually notices the lies of the officials in the Core (once again kind of like Divergent). The characters were written pretty well by Stephanie and made me want to continue reading to see what would happen to them. Good but not spectacular although the disability of Logan was a unique touch. Altogether the plot and characters turned out to be good enough to enjoy and want to read about.

Extraction turned out to be along the lines of what I expected and I will definitely be reading the sequel. Extraction would be a good book for people who like sci-fi and books like Divergent.

4/5 - Fairly good book