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The back of this book describes it as The Hunger Games meets A Handmaid's Tale. Those are some pretty big shoes to fill, and unfortunately Eve falls a few sizes short. I did enjoy it overall - I don't feel like it was a waste of my time and I wouldn't discourage anyone else from reading it - but it just didn't rock my world. The story is set about a dozen years after a plague wipes out most of the planet. The main character, Eve, lives in a walled, heavily guarded compound where she attends school with a bunch of other girls orphaned by the plague. The girls, who have never been allowed outside the compound, have been raised to believe all sorts of craziness, like that all men are evil and want to rape them (except the King, who is glorious and awesome). They also have been told that when their schooling is finished they will move to another building across the lake to learn a trade, and then they will live happily ever after in the King's City of Sand. Suffice it to say, Eve realizes that everything is not as it seems and runs off the night before her graduation. She bumbles around in the forest for a bit before joining up with some other runaways and orphans, all the while learning more and more about the world she really lives in. Then there's a lot a running and chasing, many lessons painfully learned, more chasing, more lessons, some tragic deaths, a magic kiss, the end. My biggest issues with this book are Eve and, well, pretty much everything Eve does. Given the way she was raised, I totally understand that she would be both clueless and helpless outside the compound walls (and also run screaming from men). What bugs me is that she doesn't change all that much over the course of the book. Yes, she gets over her man-terror (gotta have a love story, after all), but she remains reckless and sloppy and incapable and completely leotarded, putting everyone around her in danger again and again and again (and needing to be rescued again and again and again). I found this incredibly frustrating, as I prefer my heroines to be a bit more resourceful and on the ball. On the plus side, the author has created a very creepy and unnerving post-apocalyptic world. I also identified with that whole being raised to believe one thing and then getting thrust into the world and finding it to be something quite different. That sense of confusion and bewilderment felt very authentic to me, and it definitely helped me overlook some of Eve's foolish behavior. I just wish that she had found more confidence by the end of the book.

2022-11-14 17:03