JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

River Stone by Rachel Hennessy

Pandora, of the River People, wants more than her village can provide. When disaster comes to her people, Pan has the opportunity to become their saviour and escape her inevitable pairing with life-long friend Matthew. She wants to make her own choices. Deep in her soul, she believes there is something more out there, beyond the boundaries, especially since she encountered the hunter of the Mountain People.

A story of confused love, difficult friendships and clumsy attempts at heroism, Pan’s fight for her village will bring her into contact with a whole new world, where the truth about the past will have terrifying reverberations for her people’s future survival.

River Stone is the first book in a new dystopian YA series from Australian author Rachel Hennessy. The story is about survival and bravery, but it’s also about family, legacy and expectation.

At first, I thought The River People were a cult. The village is small, ruled by a male elder, and teenagers are told who they are to be paired with. They don’t get to choose who to have children with, and who or what they want isn’t really taken into consideration.

It all seemed very cultish, and I guess it kind of is, but in a dystopian setting. Most of the world was wiped out after a mysterious virus started infecting people, and The River People are just doing their best to survive and continue procreating so that they don’t die off. In the blurb, it says “when disaster comes to her people”, and I half expected that to be a mass suicide like you see in cults, but I was just overthinking it. Pandora’s people are struck down with the mysterious virus and it’s up to Pandora and her friends to travel into the city and find the cure.

“Caro chews on a large piece of meat. He and Bayat have prepared a piece of the cougar on a long, whittled spear which they’ve placed over there pit, held up by two forked branches driven into the ground. They have turned it sporadically over the course of the afternoon and then carved slices off it.”

Young readers will be drawn to Pandora’s resilience, determination and strength. She’s worried for her parents, but she’s also worried for her village. She doesn’t want to let anyone down and she certainly doesn’t want to fail on this mission.

Pandora has to navigate this new world if she’s going to succeed. But she also has to navigate a love triangle, and the group of friends she’s traveling with. Tensions rise and friendships are damaged.

“At the very least, the training had ensured I could just keep up with Bayat and as we sped along the path to the caves, I realised my muscles were stronger than they’d ever been.”

As an adult, I picked up on a few things about the plot that I thought could’ve used some work. Firstly, there’s a lot of travel involved in this book, which is something most commonly seen in the second book of a series. Travel is very important in fantasy or dystopian fiction, but it can also be a little boring. I certainly felt like the travelling in River Stone could’ve been condensed, or sped up.

Secondly, I found it awfully convenient how easy it was for Pandora and her friends to gain the Mountain People’s trust. Things seemed quite….easy for the team. They’re trained in both information and combat, and they’re given pretty much everything they need to succeed in their mission. It seemed a little unrealistic.

But, I’m an adult. Whilst I certainly think teenagers are at risk of getting bored of the travelling, I don’t think Pandora’s quick connection with the Mountain People will deter young readers.

River Stone entertained and intrigued me enough to want to read the sequel. The premise is refreshingly unique, and whilst the plot is a little slow at times, and the pacing lagging, I think teen readers will be enthralled by the story. I recommend this for readers aged 11-15.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

River Stone
Rachel Hennessy
May 2019
Midnight Sun Publishing

Hive by AJ Betts

All I can tell you is what I remember, in the words that I have.

Hayley tends to her bees and follows the rules in the only world she has ever known.
Until she witnesses the impossible: a drip from the ceiling.

A drip? It doesn’t make sense.

Yet she hears it, catches it. Tastes it.

Curiosity is a hook.

What starts as a drip leads to a lie, a death, a boy, a beast, and too many awful questions.

Hive by AJ Betts is the first novel in a two-book dystopian series. The story takes place in a claustrophobic, confined setting — a small, strict community encased within walls.

Hayley is governed by the society she was born into. It’s all she’s known. Everyone has a purpose — a role — but Hayley starts to question hers when she discovers a drip from the ceiling.

It’s water. But that doesn’t make sense. What she’s discovered doesn’t align with what she’s been taught. That’s not where water is supposed to come from. Is it?

“With a thud, the buzzing stopped. It was Geoffrey who’d done it, his palm flat against the wall. He shouldn’t have killed the bee, but I didn’t care — there were plenty of others and, besides, it was further proof that I’d indeed come here chasing a rogue.”

Hive is a refreshing addition to dystopian fiction — a unique plot and premise, and a heavily character-driven story. The setting is eerie and creepy. The novel explores curiosity and intrigue, but also a young girl’s determination to be something other than what she’s been told she needs to be.

The book ends on a cliffhanger, unsurprisingly. I wonder if this story should’ve just been one book with two parts, rather than a two-book series. This is a pretty slim book with a slow plot, and if book two is the same then I think it would’ve served a better purpose to combine the stories.

I’m not that good at keeping up with sequels because there’s often quite a bit of time between books, so if it’s not a trilogy, and the two books are really small, why not combine?

“I checked the commons again, this time looking for other absences. On the stairs that skirted up around the commons stood members of the council, but fewer than there should have been. The judge wasn’t among them. Nor was her son.”

A.J Betts’ writing is detailed, descriptive but also really evocative. She has a real talent with words, and crafting effortless prose that just flows.

The novel does have dark elements, exploring a woman’s role to conceive children so that the society can keep growing. Hive reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale in many ways.

The protagonist, Hayley, is inquisitive and wide-eyed. She’s innocent, but she’s also smart. She knows it’s not safe to express her curiosities to other people in the community. They won’t believe her. They’ll think she’s ‘mad’ and mentally unstable. So, she spends her time solo — searching and trying to confirm her suspicions about where she’s been living her whole life.

“We all wanted marriage. We all wanted to be the right age at the right time, wearing flowers in our hair and red balm on our lips. We all wanted to take our turn with the gold ring and the white dress that had been worn by every girl since the first days, handed down from generation to generation.”

With poetic writing and an intriguing plot, Hive will appeal to all readers. It asks many questions about what it means to alive.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Hive
A.J Betts
July 2018
Pan Macmillan Australia

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Tell me that and we’ll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that’s how you want your story to go and we’ll write it straight across the sand.

Rebel of the Sands is the first novel in a YA/fantasy trilogy about Amani, who lives in the unforgiving, dead-end town of Dustwalk. She meets a mysterious stranger, and together, they leave Dustwalk to escape and to find something better. With Amani’s extremely accurate shooting skills and the stranger’s mysterious past, this book is like the YA, dystopian version of Aladdin.

Amani is a great main character, and she provides a breath of fresh air within this genre. Rebel of the Sands is set in the desert, with harsh heat and windy days and dry, long summers. Amani’s parents are both dead and her distant relatives are planning on marrying her off. She is desperate, impulsive, ruthless, and at times, naïve. But she’s a fantastic YA lead character because she takes control of the scene and she has backbone.

The first in a trilogy packed with shooting contests, train robberies, festivals under the stars, powerful Djinni magic and an electrifying love story.

Rebel of the Sands is set in the desert plains of some strange world, and it’s fantastic. The reader can really feel the dry, desolate desert through Alwyn’s descriptive prose, and the character interactions are believable and realistic and they intrigue the reader and make them want to finish the book and pick up the next in the series. Amani is witty and brave, but also young and impulsive, which is appropriate for her age and for what she’s going through in the book. She’s travelling to a distant city to find her Aunt, but she’s now caught up in the rebellion. There is a new Prince who is building an army to forge ‘A New Desert’ and soon, Amani becomes engulfed in this war and thrust into battles and fights with both soldiers and supernatural beings. She is forced to work together with her new allies but also trust her instincts.

Rebel of the Sands is paced well, but perhaps could move a little faster. It does a wonderful job of setting up the sequel, which I imagine will be more imbedded in how the rebellion is going to work to overthrow the current government. I imagine Amani’s enemies from when she lived in Dustwalk will also re-appear in the next novel. I look forward to reading the sequel when it comes out! Hopefully the cover for the sequel is just as stunning as the Rebel of the Sands cover.

My Score: 8/10

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road focuses on a father’s relationship with his son as they journey through a post-apocalyptic America. The novel possesses common themes and binary oppositions of speculative fiction: familiar vs. unfamiliar, insider vs. outsider, isolation, and the discovery of the unknown. These are essential in speculative fiction and dystopian novels; McCarthy’s uncanny, surreal location is a vital part of the story and propels it forward.

McCarthy omits a lot of information about the past, and in the flashbacks he instead focuses on the relationship between the father and his deceased wife. This left me wondering what happened to America prior to the events in the novel. Ultimately, McCarthy uses the dialogue between the man and his son to reveal back story; however, he reveals very little of it. The man’s flashbacks are only about his wife because in that situation, that is all he thinks about.

The dialogue effectively illustrates the relationship dynamic between the boy and his father. The boy is growing up in a post-apocalyptic world and their bleak, disruptive surroundings make me wonder why they want to continue living. The lack of punctuation and the disjointed conversation are a stylistic technique that’s not often seen in speculative fiction. This emphasises that not only has the man’s country collapsed, but civilisation has as well. Memories and dreams are revealed sporadically throughout the novel and are often cut short. Backstory is usually a major part of speculative fiction; however, McCarthy has omitted a lot of information and instead focused on the collapse of language and the breakdown of speech between the father and his son.

McCarthy’s manipulation of language is an innovative way of drawing parallels to the characters’ surroundings. The fragmented, expositional sentences compare to the fractured lives of the man and his son, and these sentences align with the characters’ fragmented process of sensory perception. These references can also be made through the objects that the man and the boy have to throw away, including the boy’s flute, which represents a contemporary medium for language. When the boy and his father discard this flute, a parallel is drawn to the loss of language that now inhabits the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road.

My Score: 8/10