Gaia’s back at the walls of the Enclave, and this time she means business.
Teen midwife and revolutionary Gaia has led her people from the false security of Sylum to the gates of the Enclave, determined to build a new city (and strangely confident that the baddies inside the Enclave walls will give her people water, despite her past history with them). But wait! The rich, powerful Enclave doesn’t want to share their (seemingly infinite) resources with anyone else, and so Gaia and love interest Leon, disowned son of the Proctectorat, decide to take the Enclave down. The faint feminism of the previous volumes here takes a conservative twist, with Gaia’s self-worth startlingly tied into her ability to reproduce; the emphasis on birth family as opposed to adoptive family as “real” may also distress some readers. Meanwhile, the plot hurtles forward with coincidence and convenience at the fore, and characters happily hang about at Peg’s Tavern even in the wake of a bloody revolution. At least the love triangle is resolved, and the ending promises a happy future for all.
Less polished and more potentially troubling for close readers, but those who have read the first two will want to see Gaia succeed against the odds once again. (Dystopian romance. 12-16)
