After seeing all the series of books written by the author, I was worried this was going to be a piece of a larger puzzle. I was glad to see that this is a standalone novel, albeit it occurs in the same world featured in his other books. Nevertheless, there were plenty of clues that this is one story from an entire world Howey has created.

The story takes place sometime in the future, mostly in eastern Colorado. However, the landscape is so drastically altered that it reads more like a fantasy, e.g. the Dune series by Frank Herbert. I think the author wrote a fantasy/sci-fi story and added some distorted, but familiar, place names to make it read like a postapocalyptic story. The world is so altered that it would take thousands of years, and that isn’t postapocalyptic–that’s the inevitable fate of all civilizations.

The central characters are children who take matters into their own hands to find their destinies. Overall it reads like a story for teenagers because the prose slows down and accelerates with the action; short, punchy sentences when something’s happening, and more refined writing for less dramatic scenes. Keeping that in mind, the writing is okay if uninspired. The erratic writing style is intentional because the story is told through multiple perspectives; however, the author keeps slipping up and reading everyone’s mind in several scenes. Another annoying habit the narrator had was referring to parents as “her father” and such, then using their name in unexpected situations. This dichotomy led to several passages I had to reread several times, and finally interpret it to what I thought the author meant.

It isn’t nice to confuse your readers.

The plot is well crafted, telling two stories through several perspectives (mostly children and young adults), eventually merging them in a climactic ending. The reason for the main conflict is never explained or even mentioned, so I was left feeling like this was a clever story written around a neat idea with no consideration of plausibility or realism. I’ve read enough science fiction to suspend disbelief for a few hundred pages.

As modern science fiction goes, this is a good story–but it shows signs of being rushed and not carefully edited. The premise is great but it was removed from the oven before it was finished.