The Compound

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Fifteen-year-old Eli has spent the last six years with his family in a massive underground shelter his father built, knowing that nuclear war has destroyed the world he knows, including his grandmother and twin brother who couldn’t reach the compound in time. With nine years to go before the air outside will be safe to breathe, Eli is starting to have doubts about his father's motives, explanations, and sanity.

When Eli’s family gets word that a nuclear bomb has been launched, they have, at most, about 40 minutes to find shelter. Fortunately, Eli's billionaire father saw this coming: he's constructed, and stocked, an underground compound that can support them for the next fifteen years while they wait for the radiation to clear. Eli is pushed into the shelter with his mom and sisters, but as Dad seals the hatch, he notices two people still missing: his grandmother and his twin brother, Eddy. It's too dangerous to go back out for them. And Eli knows it was his fault that they got left behind.

Now six years have passed. The food stores have been contaminated—or sabotaged. Dad’s acting a little weird, and his smooth answers about the sporadic internet access seem too rehearsed to be the truth. There's only one way out—and the person who knows it is the one who won't let them leave.

It's an engrossing, page-turning story, moving quickly through a number of betrayals and deceits. At times it moves too quickly: the shift from "we have nothing but time" to utter urgency is jarring; Eli is not by nature a suspicious teen and his embrace of doubt is very sudden. The writing varies in quality from mediocre to painful, but the plot is compelling enough to carry the reader through regardless. I'd pass this along to teens interested in post-apocalyptic survival, but not without also recommending Z For Zachariah or other titles.
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Eli and his family have lived in the underground Compound for six years. The world they knew is gone, and they've been accustomes to their new life. Accustomed,but no happy. For Eli, no amount of luxury can stifle the dull routine of living in the same place, with only his two sisters, only his father and mother, doing the same thing day after day after day. As problems with their carefully planned existence threaten to destroy their sanctuary--and their sanity--Eli can't help but wonder if he'd rather take his chances outside. Eli's father built the Compound to keep them safe. But are they safe--or sorry? ( )

Definitely a strange read. I'm glad I finished it, but it was a strange one.

So we're introduced to Eli, who is stuck in a Compound that his father built for his family's safety in case of a nuclear attack. Said attack has happened, and Eli, his parents and his two sisters are all hiding out in this Compound. Missing are his grandmother and twin brother, Eddy, whom are assumed dead since they're out in the radiation of the real world.

That's the basic setting, and on paper it looked good. Reading it was very odd. These people are literally billionaires. They have everything. And not just in the real world, the Compound is like the size of a school or hospital something. It reminded me of Hogwarts with its endless rooms all dedicated to one purpose. There are numerous rooms like a gym, library, media room, music room, dining room with seating for 16 where Eli fondly recalls banquets in the Compound, each of the kids has their own room, there's space for cows and chickens, a huge kitchen, the best electronics, artificial light that changes from day into night, including a specialized thing in Eli's room where he gets to look at the constellations on his ceiling. There are DVD's Eli claims that after six years he still hasn't gone through half of, there are books and CD's from authors and bands Eli admits his father has never heard of, read, or listened to and yet he's stockpiled them all of his own doing. Literally they have everything, including each other and the support of a family, and this kid Eli is still bitching.

At this point, the alternative to this luxury is to be melted out in the real world he believes has been decimated by nuclear warfare. I was so annoyed with this kid, I kept thinking of other apocalyptic books I've read with the family struggling for food and warmth, and here's this kid annoyed he has no one to play basketball with (did I mention they have a basketball court?), riding around the Compound in a cart, running on the treadmill while listening to his MP3, and fiddling on his laptop. The best there is, of course.

Then weird stuff starts happening that makes no sense. Supposedly Eli's father built this Compound for this scenario exactly. He's thought of everything. Yet instead of using his genius to create a food that never goes to waste, he attempts to clone children.

Yes. Clone.

And we're shown that not only is Eli's mother pregnant, there are three young children being kept away for future use. The line in the book is as follows "a husband who breeds new kids to feed to his old ones". So, the father's clearly insane. It's a bit odd that there has been no argument from anyone (especially the mother whose carrying these children) as to why they intend to resort to cannibalism instead of spending their time growing more vegetables or figuring out a way to create a pseudo-protein in their lab. After all, they have the time, space and equipment to do anything as we are told numerous times.

The cloning comes up later when Eli's father takes him to his expansive lab and tells him he wants to use his eldest daughter to carry the cloned humans. This is followed by a conversation between Eli and this sister (who happens to be adopted) where she's wearing only a cloth robe and for a frightening few pages I was sure I would be reading incest. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

There is a random inconsistency with Eli's father (I think his name was Rex) that annoyed me. Eli is given a CD and that tag un-sticks making him realize that it's a copy, not a brand new one. And on the burned disc is his handwritten name, and a date after they entered the Compound, which leads Eli to believe the disc was made while they were stuck and he starts to wonder what else his father is keeping secret. Anyway, Rex is labelled as an efficient neat freak, he lists everything, he has records of all their inventory, food, clothing, everything. And yet later on in the novel when things are coming to a head, Eli notes that his father "never liked to leave a paper trail." o_0

Eli finally meets the kids and gets attached to them, stumbles upon an internet connection and finds himself IM-ing with his supposedly dead twin, who tells him there was no nuclear attack, the world is perfectly fine and that Eli and his family are all thought to have died in an RV accident. Even Eli's Gran and family pets thought dead are still alive and kicking, all of this has been a crazy plan of the father who decided he had so much money and ran out of things that he wanted to buy, so he created this Compound to keep his family in so they could always be together. Or for 15 years at least, then he claims he planned on having them come out and selling this Compound to the general public, never mind the fact that there might only be 10 people in the world who could afford such an extravagant luxurious place just as a backup/maybe/just in case.

So Eli gathers up his mother and siblings and they all escape, their father has triggered the Compound to explode for some reason so the family barely make it out in time. Father is assumed dead, or perhaps to one of the islands that the family frequent where he claimed to have another compound.

It's definitely an odd story, but it was a quick read and once it became clear that they weren't going to start inbreeding and eating their own children, it wasn't too bad. Wouldn't read it again, though. ( )

Eating babies? How long were they "okay" with this? And then it was just some big joke/experiment? Not for me. ( )