A Thousand Pieces of You (Firebird #1) by Claudia Gray

 

Synopsis:

4.5-5 out of 5 stars

*My thoughts as expressed by Mouse

Hear ye, hear ye! If you enjoy science fiction, specifically parallel/cross-dimensional travel, this is the book for you! This book, God, this book is incredible! This may have been the first multidimensional book I've read. No, wait...it wasn't. I read middle-grade series called Pendragon that covered cross-dimensional travel when I was in middle school. So I haven't read many of these sci-fi type books. But boy, did I love this one. The concept of the existence of multiple universes that are realms of infinite possibilities is very interesting to me. Sometimes I even wonder if that's a fact of our reality.

I loved our protagonist, Marguerite. She's strong-willed, intelligent, and genuine. Her POV is unlike any of the other protagonists I've read before. She doesn't complain very much, she takes responsibility for her actions, and is just an all around good person. There are times when she seems a little too sure of herself, but those are rare. All of the members of her immediate family are scientists, except her. Marguerite is the artistic one, she paints. Which I think is pretty cool, I couldn't paint or draw even if my life depended on it.

Enter Paul Markov: he's one of Marguerite's parents' research assistants. Or he was, until he killed Marguerite's father and took the Firebird. A device he helped Marguerite's parents invent that has the potential to change the reality of the world as they know it forever. The very first question I asked when I started this book was how? How does Marguerite know that Paul was indeed the one who killed her father. Sure, there was some evidence pointing in his direction, but even then it was very little evidence, I knew it wasn't him. And as it turns out, it wasn't. Paul is a quite, super-smart, handsome (when is a love interest never handsome? But that's a discussion for another day), a bit antisocial, and inscrutable. He graduated high school at fourteen, and immediately began his college career, so that may be the reason.

Then there's Theo. He's the other research assistant. Theo's the polar opposite of Paul. He's sociable, flirtatious, and open to new experiences. He's also very handsome and super-smart, like Paul. We find out that both Paul and Theo are in love with Marguerite, but they have different ways of showing it. What I enjoyed about this love triangle is that it wasn't really a love triangle. Marguerite chose Paul, but it wasn't like it was hard for her to decide or anything. There was no competition. Theo's love was left unrequited.

Thanks to this book, my obsession with Russia has grown sevenfold. I've always wanted to visit and possibly, live in Russia. Now I want to go even more than I thought possible. I love the settings of the different dimensions Marguerite travels to. London was technologically over-advanced, Russia was the technologically under-advanced dimension, still stuck in the Renaissance. Then there were other dimensions that were nearly identical to that of Marguerite's home-verse, with trivial differences like her choice of room décor. Other dimensions had major differences like living underwater, or inexistence of her sister, Josie.

I absolutely adored this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys cross-dimensional travel or more generally, sci-fi. Great read.