CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

Sixteen-year-old Merit lives in the Protectorate with her medic father, Eben. The walled area consists of six Regions surrounding the Great Lakes, which now contain much of the devastated world’s fresh water. The governing Galt Corporation, or the Hive, regulates the water and, therefore, the people. Any individual the Hive deems unsuitable is subject to severance, which is a bullet train ride to the land outside the Protectorate known as the Outlier. This includes Merit’s mother, Serafina, who’s been gone a year. When the teen’s Region, Illiana, experiences a longer-than-usual water outage, she and Eben share their stash of bottled water with others. But it’s soon clear that the outage is part of the Hive’s deadly plan for an entire District in Illiana. The Hive wants to use Eben’s skills elsewhere, but that would mean leaving Merit behind for severance or worse. So Eben helps Merit flee with the hopes that they will reunite later. The Hive’s security force, the goliaths, manage to track her as she hides in the wilderness. Merit fortunately encounters a man who can teach her how to be a hunter—how to shoot and kill the goliaths trying to murder her. But taking them out won’t satiate Merit’s thirst for revenge. For that, she heads to Chicago to find “the man who turned off the water,” along with the individual who gave the order.

Zienty’s worldbuilding begets a riveting, albeit frightening, future realm. The peril, for one, is unquestionable, as the tale begins in the midst of a four-year drought. Similarly, the totalitarian Hive is a formidable force, with an unsavory Illiana official named Tanner the most discernible representative. The Hive aims for control in myriad ways, like mandatory hormone adjustments to ensure most citizens’ androgyny as well as outlawing books. The author avoids congesting the narrative with details by hinting at causal events. For example, it’s “Year 80,” with little indication as to which catastrophes prompted the implementation of Year Zero or how they may have affected other countries. Plot progression slows considerably in the latter half, as Merit’s goal of retribution remains the driving force. Nevertheless, the story moves at a steady beat, as she faces goliaths and ultimately makes a number of allies. This tale is certainly not lighthearted fare; Merit is unmistakably distraught over her decision to employ lethal means while more than one likable character meets a sad, violent end. Zienty beautifies the story with sublime writing, including Merit’s time in the wilderness: “Gnarled faces jut from the rock wall, brows caught in perpetual furrow, mouth drawn in eternal frowns, like a cluster of giant men frozen in a spell cast by some sorceress of stone, a sister to the Gorgon Medusa.” Despite a thoroughly gratifying conclusion, there are quite a few things left unresolved or unexplained—perfect fodder for a potential sequel.

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