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Back to topNovember 2019
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The world as we know it has been drastically altered in Kassandra Montag’s After the Flood. The world has been covered due to rising floodwaters which leaves a vast ocean and small mountaintop colonies in the world. This story follows mother Myra and her seven-year-old daughter Pearl as they survive on a boat on their own. But then news from a stranger arrives that Myra’s other daughter, Row, may still be alive somewhere near the Arctic Circle. Myra decides that they are going to find her, which pushes her to trust other people for the first time in years.
Myra is the main voice for this story, and she is a strong and desperate character. At times she is very selfish and closed-off from other people including her daughter, which at this point in her life she has a right to be as she has had her past tragedies shape this future. But while keeping this in mind, some of her train of thought can get repetitive, but it does grow as she does throughout the book though it was not as much as expected.
Kassandra Montag weaves together a dark and bleak dystopian story. This book is for those who can look past some of the bleak parts. If you enjoy books set in a dystopian future, give it a shot.
Kassandra Montag is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and freelance medical journalist. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Midwestern Gothic, Nebraska Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Mystery Weekly Magazine, among others. She holds an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Creighton University, and makes her home in Omaha, Nebraska.
Recommended for fans of dystopian, apocalyptic, strong female characters in their novels who enjoyed Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, America Pacifica by Anna North, or The Fireman by Joe Hill.
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The Twenty-Ninth Day, Alex Messenger’s memoir, follows him and his friends as they traverse across the Canadian wilderness. While they are on this trip, their trip changes to that of a survival mission as Alex Messenger is attacked by a grizzly bear and now must survive in the middle of nowhere.
This book reads like an adventure story, which it is while still maintaining that it is a memoir. While some parts may read a little slow in the beginning it only serves for the next part of the story, the story of survival. What are teenagers who are on their own, armed first aid kits, and in the middle of nowhere supposed to do, but survive. And while this story of survival is the main focus of the book, there is another part that prevalent throughout the book as well, Alex Messenger’s love of the wild places of the world despite what has happened to him.
This book is for those who wish to seek out the wild nature that is written about in books, but are still cautious as to the dangers it can hold.
Alex Messenger is a Duluth, Minnesota, author and photographer who, at seventeen, was mauled by a grizzly bear. In the decade afterward, he worked as a wilderness guide and volunteer search-and-rescue operator. His love of adventure, nature, and cultures has taken him all over the globe, but the north woods and canoe country have always been among his favorite subjects. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Men’s Journal, National Parks magazine, Outside Online, and Backpacker magazine.Recommended read for fans of Alone on the Ice by David Roberts, Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King, or Thirst by Heather Anderson.
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Amanda Joy makes her stunning debut in A River of Royal Blood in which we follow Eva, a princess born with magick of marrow and blood, a type of magick which hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years as the last person who wielded that type of magick was eight generations ago, Queen Raina who has her own bloody history. At the start of the story she is resigned to her fate which includes a battle to the death with her own sister to see who will become the next queen as only the strongest and most ruthless with survive. But when an assassin makes an attempt on her life before the battle can begin, she realizes more people want her dead than just her sister.
Eva throughout the beginning of the story is a character who is resigned to her fate being that no one is able to teach her how to use her magick, and with the battle with her sister looming, it feels that she is going to lose this one. Eva is a strong character, and while there are a lot of things happening to her over the course of this book, some of the emotional and character development that she has are glossed over, hopefully in the next book they are explored more fully.
This book is the wonderful start of a new series and a brilliant debut by Amanda Joy with a plot that moves at a breakneck speed, and is suited for fans of Kristin Cashore’s Graceling and the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas.
