Sever
by Lauren DeStefano The Chemical Garden Trilogy, book three
With the clock ticking until the virus takes its toll, Rhine is desperate for answers. After enduring Vaughn’s worst, Rhine finds an unlikely ally in his brother, an eccentric inventor named Reed. She takes refuge in his dilapidated house, though the people she left behind refuse to stay in the past. While Gabriel haunts Rhine’s memories, Cecily is determined to be at Rhine’s side, even if Linden’s feelings are still caught between them.
Meanwhile, Rowan’s growing involvement in an underground resistance compels Rhine to reach him before he does something that cannot be undone. But what she discovers along the way has alarming implications for her future—and about the past her parents never had the chance to explain. (description from Amazon.com)
Okay, it's going to be a little tough to review this book without spoilers since it is the final book in the trilogy (check out my reviews for book one, Wither, and book two, Fever). This whole series has left me somewhat of an emotional wreck. DeStefano's books are INTENSE. The way that book two left off gave me shivers and I knew as soon as we got Sever into work I HAD to finish the series, reading responsibilities be damned! I even ended up cheating a little bit by flipping to the last page (WHICH I NEVER DO!) to verify that Rhine doesn't end up dying. I just couldn't take the emotional uncertainty anymore...I had to know that she made it! I don't want to give anything else away, but I will say there were huge highs and lows in this book and that overall this has been one of the few dystopian series lately that I have gotten heavily emotionally invested in. The whole premise felt really realistically possible and I think that I will remember these books for a long time.
What if you knew exactly when you would die? In the not-too-distant future, genetic engineering has turned every newborn into a ticking time bomb — males only live to age 25 and females only live to age 20.
In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out. When 16-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by “the Gatherers” to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Rhine has only one purpose after she has been married to her new husband, Linden: to escape and find her twin brother.
But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden’s eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant to whom she is dangerously attracted, Rhine is desperate to learn the truth and protect those closest to her. But, as her sister wife Cecily keeps insisting, her role may be much bigger than that.
In the first two books of the Chemical Garden trilogy, Wither and Fever, Rhine struggles to escape the mansion and then to navigate the brutal world outside. Now in Sever, the third and final book, Rhine uncovers some shattering truths about the past that her parents never had the chance to tell her and the alarming implications regarding her own genes. She may be the one who can save the human race. (from USA today books)
Not only do I *need* to know how this trilogy will finally end, but they came up with another gorgeous "broken doll" cover, though here Rhine looks significantly less "broken." Symbolism anyone? Kudos on the cover designs!
New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have been abandoned.
The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral
Statutes.
There are no more police—instead, there are soldiers. There are no more
fines for bad behavior—instead, there are arrests, trials, and maybe worse.
People who get arrested usually don't come back.
Seventeen-year-old Ember Miller is old enough to remember that things
weren’t always this way. Living with her rebellious single mother, it’s hard for
her to forget that people weren’t always arrested for reading the wrong books or
staying out after dark. It’s hard to forget that life in the United States used
to be different.
Ember has perfected the art of keeping a low profile. She knows how to get
the things she needs, like food stamps and hand-me-down clothes, and how to pass
the random home inspections by the military. Her life is as close to peaceful as
circumstances allow.
That is, until her mother is arrested for noncompliance with Article 5 of
the Moral Statutes. And one of the arresting officers is none other than Chase
Jennings…the only boy Ember has ever loved. (description from Amazon.com)
I really liked this one a lot. I thought the whole moral code thing was a fascinating study on human culture and how we like to take things to extremes. I also thought the love story was a lot more believable because they'd known each other for YEARS before the events in the book. I look forward to a sequel.
Full disclosure:Audio book received to review for AudioFile *2012 Debut Author Challenge title*
Fever
by Lauren DeStefano The Chemical Garden Trilogy, book two
Rhine and Gabriel have escaped the mansion, but they’re still in danger.
Outside, they find a world even more disquieting than the one they left behind.
Determined to get to Manhattan and find Rhine’s twin brother, Rowan, the
two press forward, amid threats of being captured again…or worse.
The road they are on is long and perilous—and in a world where young
women only live to age twenty and men die at age twenty-five, time is precious.
In this sequel to Lauren DeStefano’s harrowing Wither, Rhine must decide
if freedom is worth the price—now that she has more to lose than
ever. (description from Amazon.com)
I actually enjoyed this sequel better than the original Wither, mostly because it got Rhine out of the mansion and into the real world, where she had a chance to take charge. DeStefano's world is beautiful and crumbling... a devestating and destructive place. I loved the setting more than the story I think, but I will definitely be reading book three. I have to find out how it ends!
Full disclosure: Audio book received to review for AudioFile
Epitaph Road
by David Patneaude
2097 is a transformed world. Thirty years earlier, a mysterious plague
wiped out 97 percent of the male population, devastating every world system from
governments to sports teams, and causing both universal and unimaginable grief.
In the face of such massive despair, women were forced to take over control of
the planet--and in doing so they eliminated all of Earth's most pressing issues.
Poverty, crime, warfare, hunger . . . all gone.
But there's a price to
pay for this new "utopia," which fourteen-year-old Kellen is all too familiar
with. Every day, he deals with life as part of a tiny minority that is
purposefully kept subservient and small in numbers. His career choices and
relationship options are severely limited and controlled. He also lives under
the threat of scattered recurrences of the plague, which seem to pop up wherever
small pockets of men begin to regroup and grow in numbers.
And then one
day, his mother's boss, an iconic political figure, shows up at his home. Kellen
overhears something he shouldn't--another outbreak seems to be headed for
Afterlight, the rural community where his father and a small group of men live
separately from the female-dominated society. Along with a few other suspicious
events, like the mysterious disappearances of Kellen's progressive teacher and
his Aunt Paige, Kellen is starting to wonder whether the plague recurrences are
even accidental. No matter what the truth is, Kellen cares only about one
thing--he has to save his father. (description from Amazon.com)
I thought this was interesting. There were some obvious questions that weren't really answered, but overall the story was really entertaining and thought-provoking. I can't imagine a world where there are so few men that they could be so rigorously controlled...
