A notable and thoughtful addition to the crowded shelf of post-apocalyptic YA novels.
In Behr’s debut YA fantasy novel set thousands of years into a post-apocalyptic future, a princess comes of age in a divided society.
After an ice age killed billions and destroyed most of the world, humanity lived on in specially created colonies populated by either “Evolutionaries”—genetically modified people with extraordinary powers that helped them survive the hardships of the long winter—or “the Hg-1,” the surviving original humans, “with no known abilities.” Long ago, a conflict resulted in the Hg-1 leaving the colonies and the Evolutionaries entering a new era of peace and prosperity in Amera (the former United States). Seventeen-year-old Violet is a Legacy Princess of Neyr, one of Amera’s nine realms, and she has two secrets: Her powers aren’t fully developed, and she’s heard a male voice in her head for as long as she can remember. On the day of her Criterion, “the test that all citizens of the Realms of Amera have to take to prove their worth,” something goes terribly wrong, resulting in carnage and causing her to run away in fear and self-blame. She stumbles into a buried facility that’s controlled by a friendly, if sometimes-snarky, artificial intelligence and finds out important information that she knows that she must share with her family back home. She soon learns that many things that she thought she knew are actually lies. Then old enemies return to the colonies, and peace talks descend into chaos. This first volume in the Evolutionaries series skillfully balances intriguing worldbuilding, whose details are slowly revealed, with well-paced action sequences. It also ably handles Violet’s character development along the way while also offering a diverse, lovable supporting cast whose members become the protagonist’s close friends and allies. The novel effectively addresses themes of cooperation and isolationism as well as autonomy, consent, and moving on with one’s life after learning of long-held secrets. Frustratingly, however, the future society is strangely old-fashioned and heteronormative—the one truly jarring aspect of an otherwise strong debut.
A notable and thoughtful addition to the crowded shelf of post-apocalyptic YA novels.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73338-930-3
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Behr Ink
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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