After the End by Amy Plum
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
She’s searching for answers to her past. They’re hunting her to save their future.
World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They’ve survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there.
At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.
When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie.
Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she’s trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.
Warnings: drugging without consent
I went into this book thinking it was a dystopia or futuristic (can you blame me? look at the cover!), at least, but it is more of an urban fantasy mixed with conspiracy. Juneau has been brought up in what is basically a cult for all her life – while the normal world has been plodding along, she and the kids in her village have been told WWIII happened in 1984, and outside is only a post-apocalyptic landscape. So, when she has to venture outside to find her family, she meets the modern world, and has the help of Miles, whose father is one of the people hunting her down. Their partnership develops from a reluctant road trip, bringing them closer as they get to know each other.
Juneau is a fine protagonist, in that she is decisive, smart, and adaptable, and the only chink in her armor is her belief in what she has been brought up to believe. She utilizes her skills to fly under the radar, as opposed to Miles who can barely pitch a camp tent, and is vastly unprepared to be on the run. They both are hiding things from one another, like him going along just to bring her to his father to impress him, while she hides her abilities and uses him. The magic is an interesting sort, and the ideology behind the life in her village seems sound. I just wasn’t entirely sure what was their long-term goal with that – was it protection, conservation or a place to enhance their abilites? Additionally, I felt the cultural and technological gap from 1984 to 2014 was huge, and Juneau adapting to it so quickly that she even uses 21st century lexicon in her narration was odd (the only modern terms she would have encountered would have been in books, and not part of her daily life so her knowing the words readily is weird). Miles’ and her’s romance is also another aspect that I felt was underdeveloped, especially from the writer of the utterly romantic Revenants series.
Overall, it is an interesting book, sure, but not entirely well thought out in terms of world-building.
Buy links
YA on my Mind 