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Origin Jessica Khoury Books

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Origin Jessica Khoury Books

Origin is a mysterious story about a girl in the jungle who is made immortal by the scientists at Little Cam, a base deep in the Amazon jungle.

After I read Jessica’s other book, I’ll call her Jessica because it’s easier to spell, but much respect to her for writing Kalahari, which I LOVED. I bought it at a book sale in middle school and was so absorbed in the story that I nearly got kicked out of Physics class for not doing my work. But Origin was nothing like Kalahari, which I know is a more recent book. I didn’t notice any difference in the writing, like the author hasn’t improved at all (but to be fair, the writing is perfectly fine for the genre she writes, nothing noteworthy though).

Here’s my verdict, don’t read this book. Yet. Go and read Kalahari first, and if you LOVE Kalahari and are interested in Origin, then come back.

Here’s the detailed review, MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

So Origin has an interesting premise. Our main character, and narrator, is the immortal and “perfect” Pia. She’s everything you could imagine, beautiful, smart, clever and curious, almost abnoxiously so. I couldn’t decide if I liked her, or if I was just jealous because I can’t even pass Geometry. Ugh. Moving on.

Perfect Pia grows up among some of the brightest minds from around the world, all of whom have set up a base in the most remote place on the planet. The Amazon Jungle. Now, this is one of the only parts I truly enjoyed without complaint in the entire book. Lush descriptions of the hauntingly beautiful and equally dangerous jungle.

But the tasteful imagery and descriptions all shatter when Pia’s 17th birthday arrives (and it just so happens that a storm blows in) a tree falls over and the electric fence sourrounding Little Cam (the jungle Denice base) collapses on one side. The alarm malfunctions and doesn’t go off, and then creates a hole perfectly sized for a teenage girl in a dress to sneak out of.

WHERE ARE HER PARENTS??

Oh, her mother is having an affair with the head scientist, and her father is slowly descending into insanity, locked away in his lab and shunned by the rest of the secntists, for a reason we don’t yet know.

So the story begins to decline when Pia crashes into an unexpected jungle boy (god only knows what he was doing so close to a dangerous facility late at night in a storm)

Either way, then smash into one another, Eio is his name, and besides Pia’s father, he might be the only good character in the entire book.

Let’s just say this, they fall madly in love right away, but the author tries to draw it out so it won’t seem like insta-love. Ha! Love that term, insta-love, like some powdered drink you can buy at the grocery store that will make anyone fall head over heels for you!

Anyway, for a time, a meaty portion of the book, consists only of Pia repeatedly sneaking out to see Eio and coming back with a new cover story. She also gets help from a friendly new addition to the research facility, cigarette-woman, let’s just call her that. She teaches Pia about the outside world, by which Pia is completely ignorant and the act of her learning anything other than science is strictly forbidden.

Up until this point, things are pretty innocent, the story just seems like a basic trope love story, with a touch of sci-fi. Then things get sinister, and they get sinister fast.

Here’s where the entire plot goes right off a cliff. The author tried to hide everything from the reader up until this point, and STILL wants to stretch the mystery out a bit. I was not kept guessing. I was kept wondering without enough information to even MAKE an educated guess on the direction of the plot. Everything was a surprise, which was fun until it wasn’t.

The whole thing is very complicated, but the change of mood and tone in the story is stark. We go from intriguing scientific research, pretty descriptions of the jungle and adorable love stories to a murdered kitten, a bunch of man-eating ants, AK-47’s, and a poor kiddnapped child, Eio’s little sister, who is about to be murder for the sake of immortality.

From then on, I couldn’t turn pages fast enough. Not because I was so invested, but just because the change felt like a slap in the face. I was not expecting things to get so violent.

Eventually things settle down, Pia allies with the native tribes and burns down Little Cam and the field where MUCH NEEDED immortality flowers grow. All the while though, Eio is gone, presumably dead because he got injured in the flight and told Pia to go on without him.VERY dramatic. Ugh, and she was almost happy to leave him! I just wish he would’ve been there to see her acomplishmemts, and not solve all of her problems for her. Instead, he has to lay dying in the jungle while Pia kicks the researchers out of the Amazon jungle completely.

The end is strange, the scientists flee, Pia drinks out of a poison flower (which is the only thing that can kill her.) and... dies? Not really, but it takes her immortality away forever. Her and Eio live happily ever after in the village. Wanna know the best part? The story ends right before Pia and Eio have their first kiss.

And that’s it. Besides a bizzare epilogue narrated by an unknown speaker.

So yeah. Three stars. And my reasoning is simply this; i was not kept guessing in this story at all. I had no info to even MAKE a guess about the plot. I like a story where I’m not kept guessing, but where I THINK I know what’s going on already, and THEN I get blindsided with twists and turns. This book was okay, but I say read Kalahari instead.


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Origin Jessica Khoury Books Reviews

Just wow.... a very interesting plot with characters I fell for and fought for over and over again.

I went into this book not really knowing a lot about the plot. I got to see Jessica Khoury at the 2012 Teen Book Festival in Austin, TX and heard about the book then for the first time. I listened to her talk about the book on more than one panal that day and I was interested but ending up not buying the book that weekend. On a personal recommendation from a friend to picked it up finally and I'm so glad that I did.

Jessica Khoury has such a beautiful way of telling a story and I found myself highlighting PARAGRAPHS at a time! I love how she writes, and I love how she tells a mystery. She only allows the reader to learn a little bit at a time but as your learn part of Pia's story, you learn about who she is and why she does things that she does.

Vague spoilers below... read with caution.
The plot to this story was so different and interesting and I found myself rooting for Pia to break the rules and to follow Eio into the jungle through the whole book. I found myself weary of what was happening in Little Cam and though I didn't know all the details, I found it hard to trust Pia's mother and all her so-called 'Uncles'. The story kept me guessing the whole time, while enticing me with answering some of my questions little by little.

Once I finally found out the truth about everything later in the book, I was glad that I didn't feel completely betrayed and I was glad that my suspicions had been right! That made me feel good and makes me want to recommend this book to EVERYONE I know!
This book was so well written, so well paced, that I totally forgot I was reading a YA novel.

What adjective could I use to review it, and still do the book justice? There isn't just one.

Beautiful. Allegorical. Straight forward. Multi-layered. Dystopian. Relevant. Poetic at times. Harsh at other times. Descriptive. Story driven. Philosophical. Down to earth. Faithful to the best, and worst, of our human nature. Thoroughly and utterly satisfying.

All at the same time.

The main protagonist might be teenaged in years, but the story as an allegory is universal for all ages.

Pia, genetically engineered to be perfectly immortal, has lived her seventeen years in a small scientific compound hidden in the middle of the jungle. Surrounded by the team of scientists who created her, she's been conditioned to devalue all emotional thought, and rely on pure scientific reason.

She knows virtually nothing of the outside world--its philosophies, literature, religions, music-- and has been exclusively trained in the sciences. Having been told her whole life that she is the "perfect one", which in itself sets her apart, she lives alone in her uniqueness. She's never known the company of other people her own age, and carries the weight of being the only one in her world who'll live forever.

Her goal Pass the tests so she can learn the secrets behind her creation, and become a part of the scientific team that will create other immortals like her.

All is going according to plan until, one day, an impulse to discover the jungle outside her perimeter drives her to sneak out. It only takes a few steps into the unknown for an outside influence to enter her world A boy her own age, who comes from the jungle.

Her seemingly perfect world begins to unravel as polar opposites clash. Her social conditioning of intellectual reason versus biological attraction. The safe sterility of her compound versus the wild call of the jungle. Her seemingly straightforward goal soon takes a sinister turn as secrets are revealed. How was Pia really created? Is she a real person? Or a numbered specimen? Where does the greater good lie? And at what cost?

Ms Khoury is adept at interweaving those opposites in a way that kept me reading, page after page, and never once dropping out of the story due to bad sentence structure, untrue dialogue, or overly wrought description.

I could nit pick, and say the love story between Pia and the Native boy, Eio, escalates too quickly.

Yet, when the story was all said and done, my first thought was, "Wow, that was a good read."

WARNING If the idea of a genetically engineered immortal attracts you as a story's protagonist, but you're looking for a Marvel Comics approach to story telling with short sentences and lots of bang-bang-'em-up scenes where other equally enhanced people fight it out right from the beginning, then this might not be the book you're looking for. Wait until you're ready to read a story that sets the stage, and then unfolds with well turned sentences that will delight a reader of literary fiction.
Origin is a mysterious story about a girl in the jungle who is made immortal by the scientists at Little Cam, a base deep in the jungle.

After I read Jessica’s other book, I’ll call her Jessica because it’s easier to spell, but much respect to her for writing Kalahari, which I LOVED. I bought it at a book sale in middle school and was so absorbed in the story that I nearly got kicked out of Physics class for not doing my work. But Origin was nothing like Kalahari, which I know is a more recent book. I didn’t notice any difference in the writing, like the author hasn’t improved at all (but to be fair, the writing is perfectly fine for the genre she writes, nothing noteworthy though).

Here’s my verdict, don’t read this book. Yet. Go and read Kalahari first, and if you LOVE Kalahari and are interested in Origin, then come back.

Here’s the detailed review, MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

So Origin has an interesting premise. Our main character, and narrator, is the immortal and “perfect” Pia. She’s everything you could imagine, beautiful, smart, clever and curious, almost abnoxiously so. I couldn’t decide if I liked her, or if I was just jealous because I can’t even pass Geometry. Ugh. Moving on.

Perfect Pia grows up among some of the brightest minds from around the world, all of whom have set up a base in the most remote place on the planet. The Jungle. Now, this is one of the only parts I truly enjoyed without complaint in the entire book. Lush descriptions of the hauntingly beautiful and equally dangerous jungle.

But the tasteful imagery and descriptions all shatter when Pia’s 17th birthday arrives (and it just so happens that a storm blows in) a tree falls over and the electric fence sourrounding Little Cam (the jungle Denice base) collapses on one side. The alarm malfunctions and doesn’t go off, and then creates a hole perfectly sized for a teenage girl in a dress to sneak out of.

WHERE ARE HER PARENTS??

Oh, her mother is having an affair with the head scientist, and her father is slowly descending into insanity, locked away in his lab and shunned by the rest of the secntists, for a reason we don’t yet know.

So the story begins to decline when Pia crashes into an unexpected jungle boy (god only knows what he was doing so close to a dangerous facility late at night in a storm)

Either way, then smash into one another, Eio is his name, and besides Pia’s father, he might be the only good character in the entire book.

Let’s just say this, they fall madly in love right away, but the author tries to draw it out so it won’t seem like insta-love. Ha! Love that term, insta-love, like some powdered drink you can buy at the grocery store that will make anyone fall head over heels for you!

Anyway, for a time, a meaty portion of the book, consists only of Pia repeatedly sneaking out to see Eio and coming back with a new cover story. She also gets help from a friendly new addition to the research facility, cigarette-woman, let’s just call her that. She teaches Pia about the outside world, by which Pia is completely ignorant and the act of her learning anything other than science is strictly forbidden.

Up until this point, things are pretty innocent, the story just seems like a basic trope love story, with a touch of sci-fi. Then things get sinister, and they get sinister fast.

Here’s where the entire plot goes right off a cliff. The author tried to hide everything from the reader up until this point, and STILL wants to stretch the mystery out a bit. I was not kept guessing. I was kept wondering without enough information to even MAKE an educated guess on the direction of the plot. Everything was a surprise, which was fun until it wasn’t.

The whole thing is very complicated, but the change of mood and tone in the story is stark. We go from intriguing scientific research, pretty descriptions of the jungle and adorable love stories to a murdered kitten, a bunch of man-eating ants, AK-47’s, and a poor kiddnapped child, Eio’s little sister, who is about to be murder for the sake of immortality.

From then on, I couldn’t turn pages fast enough. Not because I was so invested, but just because the change felt like a slap in the face. I was not expecting things to get so violent.

Eventually things settle down, Pia allies with the native tribes and burns down Little Cam and the field where MUCH NEEDED immortality flowers grow. All the while though, Eio is gone, presumably dead because he got injured in the flight and told Pia to go on without him.VERY dramatic. Ugh, and she was almost happy to leave him! I just wish he would’ve been there to see her acomplishmemts, and not solve all of her problems for her. Instead, he has to lay dying in the jungle while Pia kicks the researchers out of the jungle completely.

The end is strange, the scientists flee, Pia drinks out of a poison flower (which is the only thing that can kill her.) and... dies? Not really, but it takes her immortality away forever. Her and Eio live happily ever after in the village. Wanna know the best part? The story ends right before Pia and Eio have their first kiss.

And that’s it. Besides a bizzare epilogue narrated by an unknown speaker.

So yeah. Three stars. And my reasoning is simply this; i was not kept guessing in this story at all. I had no info to even MAKE a guess about the plot. I like a story where I’m not kept guessing, but where I THINK I know what’s going on already, and THEN I get blindsided with twists and turns. This book was okay, but I say read Kalahari instead.