Sunday, January 26, 2014

ARC Review: After The End by Amy Plum


Juneau is a seventeen year old girl from a small community in Alaska.  For decades her village has lived without electricity, has traveled by dogsled, hunted for food...etc.  They have not had any contact with the outside world since a nuclear bomb destroyed civilization in 1984 during WWIII.  They are aware that there are other survivors out there because they occasionally hear aircraft fly overhead  They have been taught to treat these individuals as a threat and to seek shelter immediately.

One day while she is out hunting, all of the members of her village disappear.  She heard the aircraft and knows they were taken against their will.  She is left alone and scared, but she still has her powers.  She can connect with various elements to gain information about her clan.  The more she learns the more she realizes her elders have been feeding her lies her entire life...but why?  There are real cities out there and now someone has imprisoned her friends and family.  She makes it her mission to find them.

Miles is the spoiled son of a wealthy pharmaceutical executive.  He has been suspended from school and is trying to earn back his father's trust in the hopes of attending Yale this fall.  When he discovers his father is looking for a teenage girl who would be an extremely valuable asset to his corporation, Miles decides this could be his ticket back into his father's good graces.  All he has to do is find the girl and turn her over to his father.

The book starts out telling the story of Juneau's clan.  I was a bit leery at that point because of all of the unusual names.  Once she is on her own and sets out on her mission, I absolutely loved the story.  The story is told with dual narrators, Miles and Juneau.  Miles thinks she is completely crazy, but they both realize they need each other.

As Miles comes to understand Juneau's upbringing and abilities, he realizes she has been telling the truth all along.  They start to develop a friendship and feelings between the two are inevitable.

Overall, this is a very entertaining story.  I enjoyed the characters and was hooked from the beginning.  The relationship was very believable and there was a lot of action to keep the pages turning.  While I can't say that I understand Juneau's powers, they definitely helped propel the story along.  Her abilities are a bit far fetched, but without them this story would have come to a halt a few chapter in.

The ending was a bit of a shock and Amy left us with a HUGE cliffhanger.  This is going to be a duology, but the name of the next book and a release date has yet to be announced.  Since After The End is not going to be released until May 6, 2014....I am pretty sure I have a LONG wait ahead of me.  If you were a fan of Amy's Revenants series, I would definitely check out After The End.

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