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Expected publication: July 1st 2014
Book summary:
Sixteen-year-old Jansin Nordqvist is on the verge of
graduating from the black ops factory known as the Academy. She's smart and
deadly, and knows three things with absolute certainty:1. When the world flooded and civilization
retreated deep underground, there was no one left on the surface.2. The only species to thrive there are the toads,
a primate/amphibian hybrid with a serious mean streak.3. There's no place on Earth where you can hide
from the hypercanes, continent-sized storms that have raged for decades. Jansin has been lied to. On all counts.
There is something in dystopian settings which seem so real and possible that lure me in. This is one of them. With huge climate-changes happening all over the planet it's really not hard to imagine that the weather will change drastically and that humans won't be able to live in the surface any longer. Well, this book offers you a solution - underground cities. I really hope you're not claustrophobic.
Jansin Nordqvist is a sixteen-year-old cadet living in one of the underground cities within the society highly controlled and divided. As in
Utopia everyone knows its place and what one should or should not do. This order is what was a result of people's moving from underground after the hypercanes destroyed any possibility of living on the surface. So now, the government has organized the society and Jansin knows her place. Traveling to surface is something rich members of society get a chance to so the scientist can observe things on the land. Once Jansin gets a chance to travel up she is happily obliges. Only what she's about to learn there is not what the government hoped.
Now we're moving onto a tricky territory as I really don't want to spoil things. You can assume that the government kept many secrets and that Jansin has got to reveal some of them. She discovers life among the rage of hypercanes and her life changes.
Like I said I hope you're not claustrophobic as I really don't know how would I survive under the ground without seeing stars and sky everyday. It's something that people there are used to and how the cities are created under there really blow me away. It's maybe hard to imagine but if you think of it the world builds in your imagination. When it comes to Jansin, she was a great character most of the time, strong, capable and most of all human. But at moments she was too perfect and way too lucky near the end of the story.
What fascinated me here the most was the writing style. Kat Ross really did a great research and all characters possessed the right and suitable voice. And there is also romance which was so sweet and loving to me. It's also action packed and it kept me turning the pages like a madman.
Rating: 4 stars.
Guest Post
Five Scariest Apocalyptic Scenarios
I wrote a post recently about various End Times themes, and
it was pretty tongue-in-cheek. There were zombies (how could there not be?) and
there was the Rapture (let's welcome the antichrist to the podium!). But most
were unlikely, if not outright silly. So instead of just repeating myself, I
thought I'd take a closer look at the worst-case scenario that's actually
staring us in the face at this very moment, and which inspired me to write Some Fine Day: climate change.
So here are five of the really scary things that could actually happen if we stay on our
current path:
Time to build an ark…
Just losing the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone would cause
the seas to rise by as much as fifteen feet. The bad news is that the collapse
has already begun, and "has passed the point of no return," researcher
Eric Rignot said at a recent NASA press conference. "The system is in a
chain reaction that is unstoppable," he added.
Oh yeah, scientists are also predicting an ice-free Arctic
summer by 2016, and Greenland—which has even more water than the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet, about twenty-three meters worth of rise—is also in trouble.
The grand total if everything melts? According to this
excellent
piece by Mother Jones, we're looking at two hundred feet of sea level rise.
Two. Hundred. Feet.
Got anything to eat?
Shifting weather patterns are bringing prolonged droughts to
some parts of the world and too much rain to others, introducing new crop pests
and generally wreaking havoc with the global food system. Add in a growing
population, expected to surpass nine billion by 2050, and we're looking at
famine and wildly spiking food prices in the near future. But all is not lost!
Moving away from the industrial mega-farm model to smaller, more sustainable
organic agricultural practices would go a long way toward feeding the world in
coming decades.
Forecast: Superstorms
Sandy and Haiyan may be just the beginning. In my book, I
imagine a planet stalked by hypercanes—which I didn't make up, by the way. They
were first theorized by Kerry Emanuel at MIT in 1994. While these
continent-sized storms might never result from climate change alone, there's
little doubt that we will seeing many more very strong storms in the future:
everything from hurricanes and typhoons to tornado-spawning supercells. Besides
the loss of life, the impact of extreme weather on the economy is pretty severe
too: the price-tag for Hurricane Sandy alone? $70 billion.
A sixth mass
extinction
Welcome to the Anthropocene era: that's what some scientists
are calling the period in which human activity is dramatically altering every
single one of earth's ecosystems. Unfortunately, most species are unable to
cope with the rapid changes. A study published at the end of May warned that
plant and animal species are now going extinct at least 1,000 times faster than
they did before we appeared. Amphibian populations, which are particularly
sensitive to toxins and habitat loss, could be cut in half within the next
twenty years.
Acid oceans
There's a lot going on here, but in a nutshell…The seas have
long acted as a giant sink, absorbing a lot of the excess carbon dioxide we're
putting into the atmosphere and slowing the effects of climate change. Now
they're reaching a tipping point, not only threatening all marine life but
creating a feedback loop that might actually accelerate planetary warming.
So…what are we supposed to do with all this bad news? That's
the giant question of our time and I don't pretend to have easy answers. But it
seems abundantly clear that the present course leads to a future about as close
as you can get to apocalyptic, not just for the other creatures living here but
for us.
Frankly, I feel overwhelmed by it all sometimes. I get
depressed. I rant and rave. I still drive a car, and it's not a hybrid because
I can't afford one. But I also ride a bike, and I compost, and I turn off
lights if no one's in the room, and I signed on with an electric company that
uses wind power, and when I vote, I don't vote for people who take money from
oil companies and then claim that the science behind climate change is
"murky" or "debatable" because that's a complete crock.
Personal actions make a difference. But I think we also owe
it to this generation and the next and the next to get out there and demand
sensible action from the people in charge (such as cutting out subsidies to
fossil fuels and investing in clean energy and energy efficiency), because
they're the
ones that can throw the brakes on this
runaway train.
As Bill McKibben (founder of
350.org)
puts it, “Very few people on earth ever get to say: 'I am doing, right now, the
most important thing I could possibly be doing.' If you'll join this fight,
that's what you'll get to say.”
About the author
I've always loved to read more than anything in the world,
especially so-called genre stories—mysteries, fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers,
horror. I like books that take you by the hand and lead you out of the mundane.
That ease back the curtain and show you the wondrous and dark and unexpected
lurking just around the next corner. I worked in journalism for a long time
before I returned to writing fiction. Guess which is more fun?
Author's
Until the next time,
