Review: A wonderful post-apocalyptic fantasy!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 17, 2011
Yes! After having my interest piqued withSpace Junque, a Romantic Science Fiction Fantasy (Apocalypto 1)andSpiderwork, a Science Fiction Fantasy (Apocalypto 2), this book finally delivers on the promises those two novellas make. I was almost immediately sucked into this book, and where I found the two prequel novellas enjoyable but lacking a bit of depth, this book was just right. Rigel made me care about what happened to Mallory and Edmund, and I found myself biting my nails and rushing through to the end to find out what would happen to them. Up until the very end I was worried about how it would all play out. The questions raised in this book aren't new, but Rigel handled them in a way that was interesting.This book was both frustrating and wonderful. Frustrating in that certain topics central to the story are somewhat uncomfortable to think about, such as fertility as a commodity to be bought and sold. Mallory is a chalice, a fertile female who will essentially be "rented" to different countries to produce heirs. She doesn't really have a choice in the matter - if a girl turns out to be fertile, she is sent to the Red City to be prepared for the life of a chalice just as Mallory was. It was wonderful though because the world felt so real and was peopled with such interesting characters. I can't remember the last time I was so absorbed in something I was reading because I just didn't know what would happen next; this book constantly had me wondering what twist or turn was around the corner.One small thing - at the beginning, I kept confusing Celia and Claire because their names look so similar and both are associated with Allel, so I had to go back and re-read sections to make sense of what was going on.