The Plague! The Plague! Someone Save Us!

The Comet's Curse by Dom Testa
3Q 3P; Audience: M/J

When the comet Bhaktul flits through Earth's atmosphere, it leaves universally fatal death-dealing particles behind. It won't be long until everyone is dead. Is there any chance that a cure will be found before that happens? Is there any chance the civilization can be saved? With the scientists and doctors dying, it looks unlikely. But Dr. Wallace Zimmer isn't willing to take no for an answer to either question. The virus doesn't affect people until they turn eighteen. If he can put together the right group of kids and get them away from Earth, perhaps they'll be able to find the way to defeat the virus and Earth's civilization. After an intensive search and training period, 251 of Earth's brightest teenagers are sent into space to colonize Eos, a new planet. It will take years for them to arrive and create a new life for themselves. But if they make it, they'll have beaten Bhaktul and Earth will, in some way, have survived.

The crew is carefully chosen for their intelligence, physical fitness, and emotional stability. They are carefully and rigorously trained for the formidable task ahead of them. The Galahad has everything they will need for a long space voyage, including farming facilities, living areas, and game and training rooms to keep them physically fit. And they have Roc, their walking (well, almost), talking, wisecracking supercomputer. Yes, they're young. But they're well prepared, brilliant, and ready for anything. Except, perhaps for the stowaway who is threatening to scuttle their mission before they've had a chance to truly begin it.

Musings:

I wanted to like this book, which is the first in the Galahad series. I was prepared to accept the improbability of a bunch of kids being the saviors of civilization. If it's done well, that premise can be exciting reading. But this is not done particularly well. The characters show some promise, but they are not yet fully developed. The story plays out predictably. The identity of the stowaway is not much of a surprise. But my major issue with the book is the lack of subtlety in the writing. For instance, Testa takes great pains to make sure his readers know that the crew is made up of teens of every ethnicity and culture. Here he introduces Gap, one of the five teens who make up the ship's governing council:

Gap thought of his early childhood in China, raised as an only child by his parents, both of whom were college professors. An early interest in gymnastics was fueled by his training with a former Olympic champion...[Then his parents relocated the family to America] And although his parents were concerned about the abrupt change in his life, Gap immediately accepted the challenge of meeting new people and forming new friendships. It seemed everyone warmed to him as soon as they met him...his school grades reflected his obvious intellect. He kept up his training with gymnastics, keeping an eye on that Olympic future.

Okay, we get it. Gap's Chinese, athletic, very intelligent, and very likeable. All of that could have been shown to us instead of told so bluntly. With Lita, the teen in charge of the infirmary, Testa first goes out of his way to tell us her ethnicity, but then he slips the same information in much more naturally. Which is more effective?

"Lita's black eyes and Latin American skin spoke of her upbringing in Mexico."
or, just a few pages later: "her eyes focused on a glass cube that sat atop a folder. The cube was filled with sand and small pebbles, one of the personal items from her home near the beach in Mexico."

Similarly, Testa works awfully hard to make us find Roc amusing:

I, on the other hand, will continue to be the same sophisticated, charming, and witty intellect that I've always been...I've got reserves of charm that I probably won't begin to tap for years. You're very lucky to know me. Don't you feel lucky?

and

...I obviously talk to the crew, I run the life-support systems on the ship, I answer questions, and I have a lovely singing voice. If you're a girl, and I'm a flesh-and-blood boy, you're all over me... You and I have the same information, so we'll both have to puzzle it out. The only difference is that I'm incredibly smart. Not that you aren't, but when you can recite the table of elements in twenty-six languages, get back to me.

I wish he'd just relax and let his characters be instead of having his author's voice be so intrusive.

I do think this series has the potential to be an intriguing read for younger teens who enjoy science fiction. I'm curious to see what Testa has in mind as the trip goes on and the kids first have to decide if they want to keep the same Council leaders and if not, what the fallout to that decision might be and then (and especially) when they land on Eos and have to create their own civilization. Will they try to maintain what they know from Earth, or will they try to build something completely different? What difficulties will they face? And what will they find in those rooms in the storage areas that are so mysteriously locked for the duration of the voyage? And of course, we already have a budding romance and a brooding leader who may spell trouble. What sort of fireworks will result from all that? Will they be the sort that inspire a satisfied "ahhh!" or the kind that makes one run for cover?

Nuclear War or Just Plain Madness?

The Compound by S. A. Bodeen
3Q 3P; Audience: J

Imagine that you've just been told that a nuclear airhead strike has just been launched at the United States. Where would you go? What would you do? Fortunately, Eli doesn't have to wonder. His father has been preparing for this moment for years. He's built an underground compound for the family and stocked it with enough food and clothing to last fifteen years, long enough for the nuclear fallout to dissipate enough for safety. When the warning comes, the family is able to get to the shelter in time. All of the family except for their grandmother and Eli's twin, Eddy, that is.

Eli has known for years that Eddy is the good twin. He was the one that everyone liked and wanted to be around. Eli was the one the other kids accepted because he was Eddy's brother. Eli is the selfish one. He knows it's really his fault that Eddy and his grandmother didn't make it into the shelter, and he'll never forgive himself for that. Eli's pretty much decided that he won't love anyone anymore. He hasn't let anyone touch him in ages. He barely talks to his sisters (one older, one younger) and avoids his parents. He's angry and he hates everything about where he is and how they live.

The compound is stocked with everything a family could need: clothing in various sizes, plenty of books and music to keep them occupied, even computers and lessons so that they can continue with their schooling. It has plenty of food, too. Until it goes bad, that is. The animals die, too, due to poisoned feed. What looked like a fifteen-year food supply isn't going to last even half that long. That's why Eli won't go through that yellow door. He doesn't see how his mother and sisters can bear it. Because what's on the other side of that door -- the Supplements -- no. It doesn't even bear thinking of. It's too gruesome and sick to even contemplate.

Living in the shelter is hard on all of them. His little sister goes around talking in an English accent all the time, and his older sister doesn't talk much at all. His parents obviously get physically close, since his mother has been pregnant pretty much continuously in the six years or so they've been in the compound. But they don't seem to like each other much. His mother's okay. If Eli can bear to be around anyone, it would probably be her. But his father is getting stranger all the time. Sometimes he rushes around in a frenzy of energy, and other times he'll stay in bed for days. He controls everything they do. They're all just a little afraid of him. As it turns out, they should be.

It's not until Eli accidentally stumbles on a computer meant for Eddy that the horror of his situation starts to become clear. Because unlike all the other computers in the compound, this one connects to the Internet. How can there be an Internet? Wasn't the world destroyed? Apparently not. And when Eli actually gets on the Internet himself and sees what he sees...well, then he begins to question everything that's happened in the past six years.

Could it possibly be that his father was lying to them all the time? And if that's true, what possible reason could he have for keeping them locked up in this compound? Is reason the wrong word to use in connection with his father? What do you do when you are locked in an underground compound with an insane man who is the only person who knows the key to getting out of it?

Though not a perfect story, this is still a book that will hold readers' interest and have them holding their breaths waiting to find out just how twisted a mind can get and whether it's possible to outwit a crazy man.

Life as you really, really don't want to know it

the dead & the gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
5Q 3P J/S

You've got to love Bolivian hats. When they belong to Susan Beth Pfeffer, they hold the key to treasures. See, I'm one of the lucky few who have gotten their hands on an ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) of Susan Beth Pfeffer's next book, the dead & the gone, which will be available in June 2008, all because my email address (and a bunch of other people's) were tucked into that Bolivian hat. It wasn't pulled on the first round. It wasn't pulled on the second round (I pouted!). But it was pulled in the third round. Yay! Once it arrived, I had to wait until the moon was no longer full to start reading it. (If you've already read the companion novel, Life As We Knew It, you'll understand why.) Then I started to read the book. I have two prime reading times in my day: at lunch and just before bed. I soon realized this was not a book to read at either of those times. So I carved out some reading time this past Sunday morning and read the rest of the book straight through. When I finished, I could only say, "Whew!"

I'll say straight out that this is not an easy read. As tough as LAWKI was to read, at least Miranda has her mother with her. She's not in charge of keeping her family together, and she's got someone older to turn to for comfort (or to blame, as she sometimes does). In d&g, Alex has none of that, and because of that, this is an even more chilling read. (Yes, I use that word advisedly.)

Both LAWKI and d&g take place after an asteroid hits the moon, knocking it out of orbit and much closer to the Earth. The result: high tides, tsunamis, earthquakes, erupting volcanoes. Huge chunks of continents are washed away. Communications are disrupted, electricity is spotty at best, and food is scarce and getting scarcer. The sky is so full of ash that the sun's rays can't get through, so the temperatures keep falling and falling.

How do you stay alive in such a situation? Alex is only seventeen years old. His sisters, Brianna and Julie, are only fifteen and twelve. Their father is in Puerto Rico for a funeral, their mother was called in to work at the hospital, and their brother Carlos is with the Marines. At first he thinks he only has to hold things together for a couple of days. But that's before they learn that Puerto Rico was hit hard by the high tides. That's before days go by without hearing from Mami. That's before Carlos calls to tell them that the Marines are being deployed to help with the recovery effort. Soon Alex has to admit to himself that he's in charge, and likely to be so for a long time.

Alex is a scholarship student at St. Vincent dePaul Academy. He's the vice president of his class, president of the debate squad, and he has his eye on the editorship of the school newspaper. In other words, he doesn't shy away from responsibility. But being in charge of his two sisters and running the household is more than he bargained for. Bri isn't so bad. As long as she has her rosary beads and a Bible, she's happy. But Julie is a different story entirely. She's a whiny baby who drives Alex nuts. She fights with him about everything. Most of the time he wants to throttle her. But somehow, these three are going to have to work things out, because they're going to need each other. They don't have anyone else to count on.

At first, their situation doesn't seem so dire. New York City has powerful people who make sure that as many services as possible stay intact. Even the schools stay open. That's a mercy, since they also provide lunch for their students. That's one meal that Alex doesn't have to worry about. But how long can that relative safety last? Not nearly long enough. Brianna gets sick. The food shortages get worse. How do you stay warm when the temperature never gets above ten or twenty degrees? How do you keep your sisters safe when even people become commodities for trade?

What really got to me about this book was how callous Alex, his friends, and Julie have to become. One person's death is another's salvation. As the sense of impending doom got stronger and stronger, it was sometimes hard to keep reading. But what gave me hope was seeing how Alex shoulders his responsibilities and becomes a man. (It speaks volumes about Alex that people he thinks hardly know him reach out to him to offer the kind of help and support that truly means the difference between life and death.) And like Miranda in LAWKI, Julie also grows when the occasion demands it of her. As hard as they may be to deal with, her stubbornness and feistiness prove to be invaluable qualities. This is not a girl who is going to give up.

Faith plays such an important role in this book that it's practically another character. The Catholic church (in particular) is a source of strength, sustenance, and support. It's very fitting that Susan Beth Pfeffer is autographing these books with the words "Never lose faith." When all else fails, having faith in something or Someone may be the one thing that makes the difference between living and becoming one of the dead and the gone.

This is not a comfortable book to read. It's not for those who like cozy reads where everything turns out okay in the end. It's a book for those who want to see people rise up to meet challenges. It's a book for those who know that hard times can bring out the worst in people, but have faith that it can also bring out the best in them. When you finish this book and come up for air (and it will feel just like that), you will not leave this book thoughtlessly behind you. You will live with it, and it will live with you, for days and weeks and months. Like Life as We Knew It before it, the dead & the gone is a life-changing, perspective-altering book.

If you have not already found it, check out Susan Beth Pfeffer's blog. She may write about grim topics (see also The Year Without Michael, but she has a wonderful sense of humor. She has posted both a preview of a truly harrowing chapter of this book and a peek into the mind of an author as she plans her next (this) book.

Here's what I had to say about Life as We Knew It and my booktalk on it.

Edited on 5/2/08 to add a link to my dead & the gone booktalk.

Here There Be Pirates (Red Sea booktalk)

Red Sea by Diane Tullson
4Q 3P J/S (Grades 7-10-ish)

It thrills me to stand on the deck of the ship, look out at the ocean, and see no land in any direction. But there’s a big difference between being on the deck of a huge cruise ship captained by an experienced crew and being out in the middle of the ocean in a small sailboat with nobody but yourself to pilot the ship.

The last thing in the world Libby wanted to do was leave her boyfriend and her best friend behind to sail around the world with her mother and stepfather. Unfortunately, she wasn’t give a choice. Now she's stuck for months on a sailboat with the two people in the world she most wants to get away from. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it were just Libby and her mom. But no way is she okay with sailing around the world with Duncan. And so she does what teenagers are really good at. She makes her parents pay. She’s as uncooperative as she can possibly be. She insinuates that Duncan can’t keep his hands to himself. She goes ashore alone, knowing it makes her mother crazy. She does whatever she can to make them sorry that they ever brought her along. But it’s not just being on this trip that’s making her miserable. At every port, she emails her boyfriend, Ty. At every port, she eagerly waits for word from him. It never comes.

After three weeks in Djibouti waiting for the right weather to begin their Red Sea passage, Emma, the leader of their traveling group, decides to leave early the next morning. For safety’s sake, the flotilla must stay together. There are pirates in the Red Sea, men who will take anything and everything a ship has, men who won’t hesitate to shoot anyone who gets in their way. Everyone must be ready to leave on Emma’s signal. But Libby isn’t ready to leave. Not when there’s one more chance to check her email, one more chance to make her parents pay. She sneaks ashore early in the morning. By the time she gets back, the rest of the group has gone. There’s no choice now but to sail alone and hope for the best. Her parents are grim, but Libby doesn’t care. That’ll teach them.

It’s dangerous for a sailboat to be in the middle of the ocean completely out of sight of land. Pirates aside, your tiny boat can’t get out of a freighter’s way fast enough to avoid being crushed. Someone always has to be on watch, especially when, like tonight, a bad storm adds to the danger. Duncan wants Libby on watch with her mother. Libby can take being with her mother just so long, though, so she abandons watch and her mother and goes to bed. She’s woken by a loud noise and a change in the boat’s motion. Something is wrong. She tears up the stairs, Duncan just behind her. They reach the deck just in time to see her mother fire a flare directly at what is unmistakably a pirate’s boat. A gunman in the boat aims a gun their way. Tiny bursts of flame erupt from the barrel. The mainsail rips, a cockpit cushion explodes, a thermos disintegrates. Libby can barely think with the panic and the noise, but one thought does go through her mind: “Oh, good. They’re going to miss her.” They don’t. Her mother spins, her arms splayed. A gob of red goo shoots from her leg and she crashes to the ground. Duncan runs towards her. A bullet catches him in the shoulder, and then the top of his head flies off. When Libby opens her eyes again, he’s gone, thrown overboard by the force of the impact.

The pirates take everything they can: almost every bit of food, every scrap of electronics, including their GPS equipment, their batteries, and the go-bag that contains their emergency supplies. What they can’t take, they break. When they finally go, they leave behind a ship with a fouled propeller that can’t use its engines, no way to contact anyone for help, no medical supplies, a badly wounded woman, and one fourteen-year-old girl. For Libby, being alone in the middle of the ocean isn’t at all thrilling. It’s terrifying.

Life As We Knew It (booktalk)

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
4Q 4P J/S

What made this book even creepier for me is that scientists right now are trying to figure out how to deal with an asteroid that may hit the Earth in 2038. I suspect that after you read this book, you’ll never be able to look at a full moon again without shivering just a little bit.

Miranda’s journal begins like any typical teenage girl’s. She writes about her grades, friends, fights with her mother, her new step-sibling-to-be, and her crush on a local Olympic-caliber skater. And she writes about the fuss all her teachers are making about the asteroid that’s supposed to hit the moon. They’re all excited because it’s supposed to be big enough to see with the naked eye, but not so big that anyone is particularly worried. They should have been. The asteroid is not only bigger than expected, it hits with much more force with expected. It knocks the moon out of orbit, much closer to Earth.

Is that really significant? You bet it is. It’s catastrophic. The first noticeable effect of the collision is the tsunamis that hit both coasts, causing massive flooding. Tidal waves twenty feet and higher hit as far inland as New York City. The Statue of Liberty is washed out to sea. Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, the barrier islands off the Carolinas, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Alaska…all gone. Similar devastation is happening all over the world. Nobody knows how bad it’s going to get, but Miranda's mother suspects it's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, if it gets better. The family and an elderly neighbor head to the stores and fill cart after cart with canned and boxed foods, cat food, kitty litter, toilet paper, and anything and everything they think they could possibly use. They have no way of knowing how long the situation will last or how bad it will get, so everything has to be rationed, including their water and heating oil.

How bad does it get? Communication networks break down. It's next to impossible to make or receive phone calls. Mail is disrupted. Electricity is available only an hour or two a day. Soon, it's on for only minutes a day, and then not at all. With no electricity, no mail, no phone, no television, and no internet, there's no way to get any news at all. They are completely isolated. And the environmental devastation continues. After the tidal waves come the earthquakes. Then volcanoes begin to erupt, even ones that were dormant or far underground. So much ash is thrown into the air that the sun is completely blocked. The first hard frost comes in August. By September, it's not unusual for the temperature during the day to reach a high of 23 degrees. By October, it's below zero. There’s no heat and very little food. To make a bad situation worse, people are getting sick, and there are few doctors and even less medicine.

In her journal, Miranda wonders how they can possibly survive. The situation is desperate. If only one person in her family can survive, who should it be? It’s time to choose. She longs for life as she knew it, but she has to deal with life as it is, for as long as she possibly can. How long will that be?

Here There Be Pirates: Red Sea by Diane Tullson (booktalk)

RED SEA by Diane Tullson
4Q 3P M/J

It thrills me to stand on the deck of the ship, look out at the ocean, and see no land in any direction. But there’s a big difference between being on the deck of a huge cruise ship captained by an experienced crew and being out in the middle of the ocean in a small sailboat with nobody but yourself to pilot the ship.

The last thing in the world Libby wanted to do was leave her boyfriend and her best friend behind to sail around the world with her mother and stepfather. Unfortunately, she wasn’t give a choice, so here she is, stuck for months on a sailboat with the two people in the world she most wants to get away from. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it were just Libby and her mom. But no way is she okay with sailing around the world with Duncan. And so she does what teenagers are really good at. She makes her parents pay. She’s as uncooperative as she can possibly be. She insinuates that Duncan can’t keep his hands to himself. She goes ashore alone, knowing it makes her mother crazy. She does whatever she can to make them sorry that they ever brought her along. But it’s not just being on this trip that’s making her miserable. At every port, she emails her boyfriend, Ty. At every port, she eagerly waits for word from him. It never comes.

After three weeks in Djibouti waiting for the right weather to begin their Red Sea passage, Emma, the leader of their traveling group, decides to leave early the next morning. For safety’s sake, the flotilla must stay together. There are pirates in the Red Sea, men who will take anything and everything a ship has, men who won’t hesitate to shoot anyone who gets in their way. Everyone must be ready to leave on Emma’s signal. But Libby isn’t ready to leave. Not when there’s one more chance to check her email, one more chance to make her parents pay. She sneaks ashore early in the morning. By the time she gets back, the rest of the group has gone. There’s no choice now but to sail alone and hope for the best. Her parents are grim, but Libby doesn’t care. That’ll teach them.

It’s dangerous for a sailboat to be in the middle of the ocean completely out of sight of land. Pirates aside, your tiny boat can’t get out of a freighter’s way fast enough to avoid being crushed. Someone always has to be on watch. Tonight, Duncan wants Libby on watch with her mother. Libby can take being with her mother just so long. She abandons watch and her mother and goes to bed. She’s woken by a loud noise and a change in the boat’s motion. Something is wrong. She tears up the stairs, Duncan just behind her. They reach the deck just in time to see her mother fire a flare directly at what is unmistakably a pirate’s boat. A gunman in the boat aims a gun their way. Tiny bursts of flame erupt from the barrel. The mainsail rips, a cockpit cushion explodes, a thermos disintegrates. Libby can barely think with the panic and the noise, but one thought does go through her mind: “Oh, good. They’re going to miss her.” They don’t. Her mother spins, her arms splayed. A gob of red goo shoots from her leg and she crashes to the ground. Duncan runs towards her. A bullet catches him in the shoulder, and then the top of his head flies off. When Libby opens her eyes again, he’s gone, thrown overboard by the force of the impact.

The pirates take everything they can: almost every bit of food, every scrap of electronics, including their GPS equipment, their batteries, and the go-bag that contains their emergency supplies. What they can’t take, they break. When they finally go, they leave behind a ship with a fouled propellor that can’t use its engines, no way to contact anyone for help, no medical supplies, a badly wounded woman, and one fourteen-year-old girl. For Libby, being alone in the middle of the ocean isn’t at all thrilling. It’s terrifying.