April 1, 2014
A gutsy teen living on an arid, depleted Earth two centuries in the future faces danger and shocking revelations when she covertly joins a subversive group. Sixteen-year-old Tess lived in Eden, a seemingly idyllic, domed city where access to information and water is regulated by the governing Trust. After a rogue robot killed her scientist mother, Tess fled with a terrible secret to the desperate, arid Badlands, where she's recruited by Kudzu, explained to her as a "nonviolent collective working to undermine the Trust and free the Badlands." Learning Kudzu plans to destroy Aevum, the Trust's latest advanced robot, Tess reluctantly returns to Eden, where she finds the luxurious life morally unconscionable and secretly trains with Kudzu. Living with her uncle, who's involved with Aevum, Tess is strangely attracted to his sympathetic assistant, Hunter. During a Kudzu raid on the Trust's lab, Tess discovers that Aevum will be used to eradicate all inhabitants of the Badlands--and that Hunter's not what he seems to be. Tess' first-person, present-tense voice lends chilling immediacy to her no-nonsense story of mixed loyalty, disturbing secrets, and ethical dilemmas associated with diminishing natural resources and scientific experimentation. Bold futurist adventure with unusual romance, riveting action and ominous ecological red flags. (Science fiction. 12-16)
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April 1, 2014
Gr 7 Up-In a decaying world, Eden stands alone in its prosperity. Ruled by the seemingly benevolent Trust, those lucky enough to be born within the city's white walls are ensured a life of ease. Tess Rockwood turns her back on this paradise when her mother is killed by an artilect, a powerful being with artificial intelligence. She flees to the hellish Badlands, where life is cheap and water expensive. But when Tess learns that her uncle is working on a new artilect named Aevum, she agrees to return to Eden and join the Kudzu rebel group in their efforts to stop Aevum and the Trust. Tess's mission is complicated by her family ties and her growing feelings for her uncle's assistant, Hunter. These complications also make Tess uniquely suited to stop the Trust's genocidal plans. Clark builds a world with a good balance of the familiar and the fantastic. The technology feels like a natural extrapolation from today's trends, while still evoking a sense of wonder. There are a number of social issues weaved into the narrative-such as sustainability and income inequality-though Clark avoids easy answers. The personal stakes run parallel to the global, with the central romance deftly tied to the fate of Eden and the Badlands. While many of the secondary characters fall into stock types, Tess and Hunter are well drawn and complex, each harboring secrets that result in some surprising plot twists. Readers who eagerly followed the rebellions against Panem's Capitol and Divergent's Erudites will root for Tess and her Kudzu allies.-Tony Hirt, Hennepin County Library, MN
Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 15, 2014
Grades 7-10 Though she grew up in water-rich, privileged Eden, nowa year after the suspicious death of her famous scientist motherTessendra Rockwood lives in a flea-filled hole-in-the-wall in the deadly, arid Badlands, where the water supply has been usurped by the wealthy government of Eden to supply the lush, walled city. Tess has toughened considerably since her days in Eden, and she thinks she has left it behind for good, until a city girl tracks her down and recruits her to join a rebel group called Kudzu to stop a power-hungry corporation in Eden from producing dangerous artificial intelligence technology, the same tech responsible for her mother's death. Stirred by her loss, Tess agrees to return to the city she has run away from and help Kudzu prevent disaster. Comparisons to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games (2008) and Veronica Roth's Divergent (2011) are inevitable, but Clark successfully shakes them off thanks to Tessendra's tenacious likability and the detailed world, a chilling future of cruel economic disparity in an atmosphere of total environmental ruin.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2014
After her scientist mother's death, Tess fled Eden--where water is fresh and pure--to live in the arid Badlands. Joining a rebel group, she must return to Eden and destroy technology her mother created that would annihilate the Badlands' population. The plot moves quickly but at the expense of characterization, and stiff dialogue leaves the romance (with Tess's uncle's assistant) lacking.
(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)