375 pages
"To fear is human...
In the wake of a devastating biological disaster, the United States east of the Mississippi River has been abandoned. Now called the Feral Zone, a reference to the virus that turned millions of people into bloodthirsty savages, the entire area is off-limits. The punishment for violating the border is death.
Lane McEvoy can't imagine why anyone would risk it. She's grown up in the shadow of the great wall separating east from west, and she's curious about what's on the other side--but she's not that curious. Life in the West is safe, comfortable...just how she likes it.
But Lane gets the shock of her life when she learns that someone close to her has crossed into the Feral Zone. And that she has little choice but to follow. Lane travels east, completely unprepared for what she finds in the ruins of civilization...and afraid to learn whether her humanity will prove her greatest strength or a fatal weakness." -Dust Jacket
I finally bought this one after it'd been on my Amazon wish list for quite awhile. I figured it'd make a good beach read for our summer trip to Oregon. I honestly wasn't expecting that much from it, but felt like dystopia would be the way to go on vacation. I was pleasantly surprised.
This book followed most of the other dystopian novels in terms of love triangle. There's one girl and two guys--the bad boy (Rafe) who's handsome, sarcastic/arrogant (almost as good as Jace's in The Mortal Instruments) yet damaged and the good guy (Everson) who's handsome, strong yet damaged. If there was one thing that bugged me about this book it would be who Lane seems to have fallen for by the end. I felt like they didn't spend enough time together to form any sort of real feelings for or connection to each other. Of course this will be a trilogy or more, so we've got other books to sort through that and the way the book ended it will be interesting to see if/how that can be resolved.
What I liked about this book was the complexity of what the virus does. Once Lane crosses the wall, she finds that there are varying stages of infection. You are infected through being bitten mostly. In the first stage you get a high fever. Then you start to change into a form of whatever animal virus you have. There were over 50 strains and so people can mutate into tigers, lions, monkeys, etc. or even combinations of more than one. The transition to feral can take years and so Lane meets "Manimals" as they're called, who are still quite human living with other humans. The catch is that these people can turn feral at any moment and become dangerous, even killing those they love. It was fun to imagine what the Manimals looked like. One of them proves to be incredibly dangerous to Lane and plays a pivotal role in the end of the book--which left the story on a huge cliffhanger.
{Spoiler Alert} The other thing I liked about this story was how Lane's dad had prepared her for what's beyond the wall through the stories he had told her. It creates a scenario where she seems tough enough to be able to handle what's thrown at her and it was fun to see her figure out how those stories translated to real life. She has no idea that her dad is a Fetch, but once she is blackmailed into finding him, what he's taught her and told her through those stories proves invaluable to her. It also creates a strong connection between her and Rafe because Rafe has also been told stories by Lane's dad. There's a really vulnerable moment for Rafe related to that that I thought was great. Chicago was a crazy, dangerous, entertaining place to read about with a decent twist that led to the whole heartbreaking mess at the end. I hope I don't have to wait too long for the next book.
This author was good enough that sometime I'll check out her other books.
