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Mar 29, 2014waltzingechidna rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Grim, grim, grim. There is actually a lot to this--a lot of plot and a lot of character development packed into a world gone claustrophobically small due to a catastrophic and ongoing water shortage--and the story does redeem itself in the end. But there is an awful lot of grimness to slog through at the beginning, so much that it's hard to care about characters for whom there is so little hope, so little reason to hope. And while the protagonist's growth is certainly hard won and well earned, it's not written entirely convincingly. This is worth reading if you enjoy this sort of thing--it's above-average teen dystopian fiction--but if you're not already a fan of the genre, this book won't make a convert of you.