Amber
Kizer
$16.99,
Hardcover
Delacorte,
2013
978-0385739733
Genre:
Dystopian, Realistic
Age:
12+
Description:
Nadia’s father taught her and her younger brother, Rabbit, how to
adapt and to survive anything. However, adapting and surviving his
death has been hard on all members of her family. When her uncle
shows up and demands to speak to Nadia alone and gives her some
vaccines and a sealed box with certain instructions to only open it
at a certain time she doesn’t know what to think. He informs them
that an epidemic is going to attack the whole United States (and
possibly the world) and that he was partially responsible for its
creation. The vaccines he gives her are enough to hopefully save her,
Rabbit, and their mother from death. Her mother refuses to take the
shot (thinking her husband’s brother has always been a little
crazy) so Nadia, erring on the side of caution, inoculates herself
and Rabbit and spends time trying to convince her mother to take the
medicine. On Day 56 of the pandemic now known as BluStar, Nadia’s
mother dies leaving her responsible for Rabbit’s safety. Her
uncle’s special box of instructions have instructed her to travel
from their home in Seattle to their grandfather’s survivalist
compound (located in an abandoned mine) in West Virginia. As they set
out they have to face some of the worst death and destruction in an
unsafe new world. Along the way they manage to salvage enough
supplies and rescue a injured and nearly dying dog and meet up with a
street kid from LA named Zack. Unfortunately, they also face a number
of survivors who are not who or what they seem. It will all be worth
it if they make it to their grandfather’s compound. But what
happens if no one if there to meet them?
Opinion:
This is a dystopian that is realistic among all angles. Give this to
readers who like “it could happen to us” dystopias and books that
are utterly real and bleak but the characters maintain hope and the
will to survive. Asides from a sequencing error on the back of the
ARC (the blurb says that Nadia and Rabbit run into Zack and the dog
in LA—which made me go, “Why the heck are they going through LA
to get to WV?”) the book is really, really good. Unlike other
dystopian novels where the government has taken over, teens are
pitted against one another, zombies are a result of an epidemic,
etc., this is a realistic story. BluStar is a virus that kills—it
doesn’t reanimate anyone (in fact Nadia has to tell Rabbit numerous
times that zombies aren’t real—even though she is a little
worried about it herself). The people that they face are the lowest
of the low—they are killing because they can and because they enjoy
it. The good people they meet are truly good—people you would want
to meet in such situations. They don’t set out from Seattle to West
Virginia with a truck full of supplies and make it there without
struggles (in fact, realistically, they lose their stockpiles a
number of times). It is a somewhat slow moving book but slow in a
good way. The characters are realistic and emotionally investing. I
highly recommend this story.
Thanks
to the people at Delacorte for the ARC for the YA Galley Group!
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