Wasteland

✍ Scribed by Kim, Susan; Klavan, Laurence

• Book ID: 107791147
• Publisher: HarperTeen
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 252 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780062118516

✦ Synopsis

Welcome to the wasteland

At fifteen,
the citizens of Prin marry.

At seventeen,
they reproduce.

And at nineteen,
they die.

Esther thinks there's more to life than toiling at the assignments—Harvesting, Gleaning, Excavating—day after day under the relentless sun, just hoping to make it to the next day.

She doesn't care that her best friend, a variant, is considered "the enemy." She doesn't care that Levi, who controls the Source, is the real enemy and might send his Taser boys after her if she makes one wrong move.

Then Caleb shows up. Could there be another way to fight for survival?

From School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up-In the bleak, desolate town of Prin, you get partnered at 14, are considered an elder at 17, and die at 19. Resources are scarce, and disease, especially from rainwater, is rampant. Esther, 15, doesn't fit in, and doesn't care; she hasn't partnered and consistently avoids doing the menial jobs that everyone is assigned, such as digging or searching for gasoline in abandoned cars. Her older sister, Sarah, provides for them by earning the meager food rations that her childhood friend (and now powerful leader) Levi gives people for completing their jobs. Meanwhile, the variants, tattoo and scar-covered, hermaphroditic misfits who live outside of town, are staging increasingly violent assaults against the townspeople. When newcomer Caleb, 16, appears and is able to thwart one of the attacks, the inhabitants of Prin believe he may be the key to stopping the violence. But Caleb himself is not sure, and has his own agenda. There is no subtlety here; the authors make clues about what is to come next all too obvious, and the omniscient point of view leaves nothing to the imagination. Repeated violence, death, and a single (if clinical) sex scene limit this selection to older teens, while the lack of foreshadowing and suspense will not satisfy those same readers. The ending leaves some questions, which may be explored in the next two books of the trilogy.-Kelly Jo Lasher, Middle Township High School, Cape May Court House, NJα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Review

Kim and Klavan’s world building enticingly trickles through the brutal, fast-paced, multilayered plot, which is fueled by a sweet romance...and plenty of mysteries. Wasteland raises plenty of captivating questions and doesn’t shortchange readers on satisfying answers. (Booklist)