Saturday, February 11, 2012

Apocalypse Gene by Suki Michelle & Carlyle Clark


Synopsis:
Global pandemic is raging. Olivya Wright-Ono's once loving home has been converted to a hospice for the dying.  Her ability to see auras forces her to witness, with agonizing detail, the vibrant colors of life consumed by malignancy.  The beautiful and troubled, Mikah, is an elite Empath in the ancient Kindred clan, led by the brooding, ever-morphing, monster named Prime. Mikah has learned a terrible truth . . . the plague is linked to Kindred origins.  When Olivya sees evidence of disease creeping into her mother's aura, she has no one to turn to but Mikah. Can he unearth the Kindred secrets and find a cure?  Can she trust this boy whose power allows him to  manipulate her very emotions? With her mother's life, and that of the world, in the balance, Olivya and Mikah embark on a quest to stop the Pandemic, only to discover it is far, far more than a mere disease . . .
Review:
I mentioned earlier today that I was excited about reading this book because there is a lot in media and in movies particularly about the idea of a pandemic occurring and essentially crippling our way of life. It's really hard to imagine what our lives would be like in the event of a pandemic hitting and how we would end up. Would we all be barricading ourselves inside our houses with gas masks, or would it get so bad that it would just become an everyday part of life. 

I think what makes this book interesting right off the bat you get a serious glimpse of how life would be and honestly I am seriously impressed with the amount of forethought put into building a world where geographically it might be the same world we live in today, but everything is so different. Olivya's first chapter of the book exemplifies the differences. What was once a family home for Olivya has now become essentially a hospice, where people come to die. I for one can not imagine being in a position like she is in, to wake up every morning and have to check on and be surrounded by people who have no hope, all of these people are going to die. To make matters worse she sees their auras and that makes it all the more harder for her, because she has to see a visual manifestation of the pain and despair these people are in. Now I don't know about you, but I did start to wonder if she ever had a life outside of this hospice that her home had turned into, and she does, she goes to a virtual school and really that is her only interaction with the outside world. 

Thankfully Mikah uses the V-School as a way to interact with others as well and that is how he ends up meeting Olivya. And if you were impressed with the world building for a world being affected by a pandemic, you have to be even more impressed that there is the creation of a world within a world, Mikah's world. Mikah is basically a part of a cult led by a demon, governed by their own set of standards and morals. In fact it really is not permitted for Mikah to even interact with Olivya. 

There is a lot going on within this book as a whole, and a lot of things I don't want to say in a review because I don't want to ruin the enjoyment for those of you who read this book. That being said the book is easy to follow, very well written, and super easy to like and want to pull for the characters. I have to say one of the things I appreciated the most was that both of the main characters are strong in their own rights, there is nothing more annoying for me when there is a weak main characters who is essentially carried throughout the entire book, so I really like this book because of that. 

I have to say that over all I really enjoyed reading this book. And I would also recommend it to a lot of different types of readers. I think it would work not only for YA and for urban fantasy lovers, but maybe also people who are curious about what a world riddled with sickness would look like. More than anything it's well written so I don't think it's going to have a hard time finding an audience. 


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