Reviews

I really liked Kern's earlier novel "Depart! Depart!" but this YA novel--the first in a projected trilogy--was a little too pedantic for my liking. Younger readers might not recognize all of the education being dispensed to them as they follow the story of a young woman from "the Dust"--the barren, impoverished lands of the south of the US--as she travels to an elite university in "the Lush," where she finds that her professors have nefarious plans for saving the planet by killing most of its inhabitants. With a few rather cardboard characters, the book moves from teaching the reader about water conservation to nanotechnology to bioengineering to fungi recycling. All of the teaching is done through conversations or discoveries between the characters, and since they're at college, it might not seem too much, but after a while it begins to grate. Things that happen at the beginning of the novel inevitably return later--a wall-climbing class readies the protagonist for a later climb up a building-and after a while it becomes easy to predict what will happen next. This is a novel designed to instruct, and it does so, but at the cost of it having more fully-fleshed out characters and a less predictable, more original, series of connections overall.

lbatch's review

Go to review page

Eh this was kind of coming off heavy handed & heavy and I wasn't in the mood for it

undervmountain's review

Go to review page

adventurous inspiring slow-paced

4.0

This story was kinda all over the place, but I loved it for that. Starting off in a futuristic world, we meet Rylla in a dusty town in Texas, all but abandoned by the rich elite. From there we travel to a high tech school, a Camelot themed commune, following Rylla as she battles feelings of isolation and her drug addiction.

This is mostly YA, the drug addiction just pushes it up a bit. Rylla has a more juvenile voice, and I think adult readers would be put off by this. I found her quite endearing though, and I left the story wishing I could read the sequel soon.

slimikin's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

johanna_b's review against another edition

Go to review page

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book!

I tried so hard with this one. I had been anticipating it for months so I'm not lying when I say I was literally jumping up and down for joy when I saw I'd received an arc. I love the genre of survival at the end of the world which I discovered earlier this year with Dustborn by Erin Bowman and so after reading the synopsis, and maybe being influenced just a little by the stunning cover, I was so excited to read this book.

The start was promising, and it wasn't until she arrived at Wingates that it started to lose me. First off, there was such a big push for usage of correct pronouns that I tired of on every page there being some comment pushing this idea. I was willing to keep going though. Then we had the trip to Camelot. Oh boy, what a disaster. The trip culminates with a sex scene with the man who Rylla is convinced is her true love. Then, a couple chapters later, she's turned to heavy drug use to forget about her problems. At that point I had to stop as, though I was interested in continuing with the story, I just couldn't get past the mature content.

Another disappointing read that I personally wouldn't recommend but I think that there are a lot of people out there who would still enjoy this book as I know other people wouldn't have a problem reading about the content mentioned above. Happy Reading :)

More...