Author: Melissa Welliver
Genre: dystopia
Similar books: Escaping Eleven by Jerri Chisholm
Keystone by Katie Delhanty
Rating:
Summary (provided by publisher):Decades after the discovery that a small percentage of the population has stopped ageing, the Avalonia Zone is in crisis. From overpopulation to food shortages, the ‘Undying’ have been blamed for the state’s problems, banished to the fringes of society, and punished for every minor infraction.
When sixteen-year-old Sadie takes the fall for an attack by a rebel group, The Alchemists, she suddenly finds herself wrenched away from her quiet life and from her ailing father.
Armed with little help and even less knowledge, Sadie is thrust into a cold and cryptic ‘correctional facility’ – The Tower. Here she’ll have to rethink everything she’s been told about the Undying population in an attempt to save the life she knows, protect a group of unlikely friends, and give voice to the voiceless in a society on the brink of catastrophic upheaval.
My opinion: I approve, in general, of experimenting with dystopian fiction. Welliver has taken some familiar plot elements and combined them in an intriguing way. We don't get a lot of books that explore the potential downsides, culturally, to extended lifespans. We have the familiar: a character raised in relative privilege, adjacent to power, desperate to help her father and unwilling to recognize the negative aspects of her society. The world is, as we would expect, devastated by war and climate change. Some of the explanations for isolation and subjugation are hard to accept but this is the first in a series, so there is room for those ideas to be further developed. The characters, though, are a bit inconsistent and underdeveloped. There plot is a bit tiresome with some unnecessary complications and belaboring of motivations and certain plot points.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
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