Review: Taken by Erin Bowman and The Trope of Mystical Pregnancy in Literature

Gray Weathersby has grown up expecting to disappear at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. They call it the Heist--and it happens to every boy in Claysoot. His only chance at escape is to climb the wall that surrounds Claysoot. A climb no one has ever survived... --Goodreads

First Impression: I read this book right after reading Wasteland so my expectations for Taken were high, but then again, most books would be better than Wasteland. The cover is a beautiful combination of colors and that's truly what drew me to it. As we now know, the boys of Taken are, well, taken at eighteen, so I thought it was clever that the "k" in the titles was floating upward. I too often deem the value of a book by it's cover, don't judge me, I know you've done it, too.

Oh, did I mention that this is a YA dystopia novel? Totes my cup of tea.

The Good: Most of it was good, I'm happy to report. The premise of the book is very, very similar to Wasteland. After their late teens the boys are taken, just like the the late teenagers of Wasteland died. In Taken, before the young men are abducted, they have to reproduce with the women of the city. They have this system, that I found absurd in a cool kind of way, where they cycle through the young women, trying to get as many pregnant as possible. With every partner they have the opportunity to mate with them for life (until age eighteen) but for many young people knowing that their mate is going to leave in a few years made them hesitant to form any sort of emotional attachment. That was Gray's issue with the system. It was all about reproduction.

I love the idea of a society surrounded by walls. The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau or Delirium by Lauren Oliver are two books that I loved that had an encaged society. In both books we know that the wall is there for protection against beings or humans that wished to do the society harm. However, the walls weren't always a good thing, they were hiding a part of the world that was either too dangerous or was empowered enough to fight the people in their. They were prisoners, but they didn't know it. Likewise in Taken. 


As much as I enjoyed this book, one of "The Bad" was just too overwhelming. Allow me and Anita Sarkeesia to explain why this was so disturbing.

The Bad: The feminist in me had a problem with something.  As citizens of Claysoot, the women bodies were being used to make babies, they were a vessel with one purpose, something I found seriously messed up. Women are being reduced to their core function; they were baby-making machines and very little else. Anita Sarkeesia from the YouTube channel Feminist Frequency addresses, what she calls, the Mystical Pregnancy, where women are reduced to their biological functions (though the pregnancies in this book are not mystical, it's still relevant information):

So, yes, this qualifies as a negative. Unfortunately, this means that the young women had no choice but to get pregnant, it was their role in life. It took a lot of focus to try to get over this trope of the mystical pregnancy. 

Final Verdict: It's up to you to decide if you're comfortable supporting this book. Honestly, I was, because it was a catching story with an awesome dystopian world that kept my attention. It's just important to keep in mind what is going on with the societies in YA fiction that forces impregnation of young women.