Monday, June 14, 2010

The darkest sky is filled with stars, the sun casts it's warmth on the coldest day. ~ Week 27


So during my break from this blog, I read two books that I have yet to write about: Life As We Knew It and The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Since I never wrote about those two, this post is going to serve as a review of the whole trilogy and focus on the last book and how Pfeffer decided to "wrap-up" her series.

The Last Survivor's Trilogy begins with the moon being hit by an asteroid. This throws the moon off it's orbit and basically screws up the gravitational pull between the moon and Earth. What ensues is a whole mess of natural disasters. The weather changes drastically, with snow in June and barely any summer. There are tsunamis, earthquakes, and horrible thunderstorms. Life As We Knew It was a diary of sorts, narrated by 16 year-old Miranda. She takes us through the first days and weeks of the disaster and how her family copes. The Dead and the Gone introduces us to Alex, a 16 year-old living in New York City with his family. Alex loses his parents in the disaster and is left to fend for himself and his two sisters. This World We Live In brings both characters together in rural Pennsylvania as they try to survive, almost a year after the disaster that has changed the world.

The good: Cool idea. There's tons of post-apocalyptic books. There's tons of ways that authors have chosen to imagine the demise of our civilization. I've read books where the culprit is disease, natural disasters, even zombie attacks. I initially picked up Life As We Knew It because Pfeffer's idea was different. It got me thinking about the plausibility of an asteroid hitting the moon (or Earth for that matter).

The bad: One thing that really irked me about this series. It was kinda cool concept. A unique apocalyptic scenario. But I feel like Pfeffer didn't really focus on what was going on in the world enough. Everything was centered around the main characters and their boring day to day existence without the comforts and stability of a "normal life." Pages and pages were expended on the banalities of search for food and keeping their home clean. However, after the initial event, Pfeffer didn't really talk too much about what was going on around the country. Also, our characters rarely ran into other people. It was like they were isolated on another planet. I found it plausible, but highly unlikely. I feel like a real end-of-the-world scenario would be grittier and much scarier.
The verdict: This book is definitely aimed towards a much younger age group than what I usually read for YA literature. If you're prepared for that... it's really an intriguing read. It gets you thinking. Or, if you're like me - planning your post-apocalyptic disaster plan.

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