June 1, 2018
Gr 9 Up-In the year 2020, a solar storm causes worldwide electrical outages and the collapse of society. Seventeen-year-old Jim and his family flee Anchorage for the surrounding Alaskan wilderness where they must learn to endure the elements and hostile other survivors. Hunt is from the UK, and the repeated use of words like petrol, mate, and other British vocabulary keep the book from being believable as an American-set story. Also at issue is the author's unfamiliarity with Alaska and wilderness survival. While many details are right, more of them are jarringly wrong. Most worrying is the use of pejorative terms for a wide range of marginalized groups. Some of these are spoken by villains, but others come from the mouths of sympathetic characters. Anchorage and Alaska have a hugely diverse population-particularly with Alaska Native people-yet this story is overwhelmingly white. Only one character is referred to as part "Indian" (a term not used by the Alaska Native community) and a few beliefs and practices are ascribed to either the "Eskimo" or "Indian" community at large. The plotting is inconsistent, the dialogue stilted, and the writing weak. VERDICT An ambitious apocalyptic action YA novel misses the mark with inaccurate settings, poor writing, and offensive treatment of indigenous peoples.-Elizabeth Nicolai, Anchorage Public Library, AK
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