Though the focus too often shifts from Maryam’s quest to differentiating good white people from bad, ultimately this...
Volume 2 of any post-apocalyptic series is the epic journey from frying pan to fire, and Maryam’s harrowing adventure delivers.
It was only sensible to flee the Holy City, where the white rulers were draining the blood of Maryam’s people to save their own lives. Now Ruth, Joseph and Lazarus must fight to survive as they sail though a potentially depopulated Pacific. They’re a mismatched set: “two brown Blessed Sisters, two white Apostles,” plague-stricken Joseph, believer Ruth, skeptical Maryam and Lazarus, whom Maryam had witnessed attempting rape in the first book (The Crossing, 2013). They’ll need to work together to survive the surprises that await outside the Holy City’s long isolation. In a land once known as Australia, they encounter violence, apathy, cruelty and foulmouthed racism oozing filth across every conversation. After the mystical colonialist violence of the Holy City, the dangers of the Confederated Territory for Christian Territorials (where unsubtle, occasionally explicit comparisons to present-day troubles abound) cast an unforgiving lens on the modern world. The new villainies Maryam encounters make more sense than her origin story—a modern indigenous population too-easily tricked by white missionaries—and make for a more thought-provoking dystopia.
Though the focus too often shifts from Maryam’s quest to differentiating good white people from bad, ultimately this dystopia will please fans of the genre and leave them awaiting Maryam’s trilogy-ending heroics . (Post-apocalyptic romance. 13-16)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-863-8
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Pyr/Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale.
A reissue of the 2016 novel published as Consider.
Alexandra Lucas and her boyfriend, Dominick, are about to start their senior year of high school when 500 vertexes—each one a doorway-shaped “hole into the fabric of the universe”—appear across the world, accompanied by holographic messages communicating news of Earth’s impending doom. The only escape is a one-way trip through the portals to a parallel future Earth. As people leave through the vertexes and the extinction event draws nearer, the world becomes increasingly unfamiliar. A lot has changed in the past several years, including expectations of mental health depictions in young adult literature; Alex’s struggle with anxiety and reliance on Ativan, which she calls her “little white savior” while initially discounting therapy as an intervention, make for a trite after-school special–level treatment of a complex situation; a short stint of effective therapy does finally occur but is so limited in duration that it contributes to the oversimplification of the topic. Alex also has unresolved issues with her Gulf War veteran father (who possibly grapples with PTSD). The slow pace of the plot as it depicts a crumbling society, along with stilted writing and insubstantial secondary characterization, limits the appeal of such a small-scale, personal story. Characters are minimally described and largely racially ambiguous; Alex has golden skin and curly brown hair.
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72826-839-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fun, roof-jumping adventure that could benefit from subtler Occupy ideology.
In a near-future dystopia, a rich boy and a wrong-side-of-the-tracks girl find love while fighting the corrupt system.
Hunter is bored with luxury. He's not just a Citizen (a coveted status in an energy-strapped London where most either scrabble for coveted permanent IDs or rebel as illegal Outsiders), he's also one of the wealthy 2 percent. While his friends entertain themselves in virtual-reality boxing matches, Hunter braves roof jumping in the favelas, the city's multiethnic slums. He has no desire to risk his life of privilege, but he crosses paths with the Kossaks, the brutal police force, as they casually murder a fleeing Outsider. Now Hunter's running with Uma, the Outsider girl who's hiding the linchpin of the whole rebellion. Hunter and Uma are defending the key to the Dreamline, the semi-magical underground Internet. The Dreamline is used globally by those illegally rebuilding Outside society into a model of green energy, peace and love, and the Kossaks want it gone. As the pair flee through the multilingual alleys, rebels educate Hunter with unsubtle polemic about "ordinary people...united under a common cause": anarchy, togetherness and energy independence. Political choices—and all choices in this world are political—spring more from mythic overtones or contemporary-world parallels than from consistent worldbuilding.
Fun, roof-jumping adventure that could benefit from subtler Occupy ideology. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2414-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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