Caragh O'Brien

With so many YA dystopias coming out, it is always a treat to find one that offers something different from the rest. Precipitating factors never vary much: they tend to involve a nuclear and/or (increasingly) an environmental disaster. But in this case, the world after the disaster has some unique features.

The post-climate-change society posited near Unlake Superior has been divided between those inside an “Enclave” and the poor and powerless outside of it, like Gaia Stone and her show more family. Gaia, age 16, intends to be a midwife some day like her mother whom she now assists, but she is suddenly pushed into the role when her parents are arrested. Gaia doesn’t understand why, and the mysterious Enclave soldier she finds at her house afterward - Sergeant Grey - won't explain. She suspects it might have something to do with the practice of “advancing” babies, which means that a quota of babies delivered by each midwife must be taken from the mother by the midwife (but only if the babies are “perfect”) and “advanced” to the Enclave within ninety minutes of birth. That baby is then brought up by an Enclave family, and never seen again outside the walls.

Gaia has always believed in the values and rules promulgated by the Enclave, even though the emphasis on perfect offspring means that she is an outcast because of a disfiguring burn scar on her face. But after the arrest of her parents, she starts to question everything. She is determined to sneak into the Enclave and somehow get into the prison and rescue her parents. This plan is decidedly quixotic, not least because, even if she could get into the Enclave, not to mention the prison, her scarred face would make hiding impossible. But she gets some creative help from some unexpected quarters, and armed with bravery inspired by love for her parents, sets out to do the impossible, and fight for what she believes.

Evaluation: Gaia is a wonderful heroine – scarred on the outside but lovely on the inside, gutsy, resolute, and passionate. Sergeant (later Captain) Grey, beautiful on the outside but scarred on the inside, is the perfect foil for Gaia. The story is unique in letting us get to know both the worlds inside and outside of the power structure, and the problems of the elite provide a creative and interesting twist to the usual dystopian themes. show less

Now the leader of the village of Sylum, Gaia decides to leave the poisoned waters with whoever of her people wish to go. She hopes to lead her people back to the Enclave and find a home there. She knows that the ruling power in the Enclave is beginning to get desperate for a deeper gene pool and she hopes her people's genetic material will be a compelling enough bargaining chip to guarantee them water and a place to live.

However, upon arriving, she is immediately arrested and it becomes show more clear that the Protectorate is not interested in making reasonable concessions. Instead, he's hoping to steal Gaia's ovaries to found his newest pet project: The Baby Factory. In order to provide children to the wealthy elite, he's developing a paid surrogacy program. They have discovered that Gaia carries the anti-hemophilia gene as well as having O- blood which will make her children extremely valuable.

Meanwhile, Leon is meeting up with his local contacts and has plans to threaten the Protectorate with bombs in order to make sure that he keeps his promises. Gaia does not want to lead her people into a bloody war, but it's beginning to look like she won't be given a choice in the matter. Can she ensure a future for her people while keeping the ones she loves safe?

Whoo boy, this book truly makes no sense from beginning to end. At no point, in the entire book, does Gaia, the now seventeen year old leader of an entire civilization, have a plan. The book starts with them simply arriving at the Enclave. They worked hard to develop a plan to make in through the wilderness to this point, however, I guess they forgot to figure out what they would do once they arrived? Gaia seems to think she'll just walk up to the Protectorate and broker safe passage for her people. Which is, naturally, a really stupid and ludicrously unlikely idea.

It's really not clear why she would imagine this non-plan to work. Afterall, a bare year ago she was forced to flee into the wilderness because the Protectorate had unjustly imprisoned and killed her parents, imprisoned her, and tortured her boyfriend. Now she's showing up on his doorstep with a band of mutated burdens to his already struggling society and she expects to be welcomed or at least tolerated.

Even though she has no reason to trust the Protectorate, and lots of reasons not to, and even though he literally sends a band of soldiers to arrest her for treason, Gaia calmly walks into the walled city with all the survival instincts of a confused baby bird. She brings two guards (an already laughably meager amount of protection) but they are simply trapped outside the walls and she is taken to jail. Which is what they said they were going to do, afterall. But Gaia, for unknown reasons, chose to believe that when they said she was being arrest for treason that they merely just wanted to take her to the Protectorate so she could begin negotiating.

As she is being bodily carried to the torture cells, she calls out for people to help her. She tells the guards nonsensical things like, "You can't do this to me!" and "Stop! Don't touch me!" She also demands to be taken to the Protectorate, a request which is ignored, because obviously. And also obviously, who do you think ordered you to be arrested for treason in the first place?

Anyway, none of this matters because Leon has managed to take the Protectorate's daughter as a hostage and threatens to kill her unless they release Gaia. Which they do, because for some reason, the Protectorate cares about what happens to his daughter? Which is bizarre because he doesn't seem to care about what happens to anyone? And also, it's very obvious that Leon won't kill his sister. But whatever.

While Gaia was captured she is introduced to the women who are in the Baby Factory and gets all up on her high horse about how could any woman agree to give up their child. That's just completely wrong, apparently. Nevermind that surrogacy is a real and beautiful thing that people agree to do for all sorts of reasons. It's truly bizarre to watch Gaia, canonical baby stealer, get extremely self-righteous about the sanctity of motherhood. Especially, when she literally runs a society where women were compelled to have ten babies and if they refused were exiled from society. At least here women can choose to enter into motherhood and get some sort of recompense for the health risks they're taking.

She even goes on to lecture a former friend for agreeing to be a part of this breeding scheme, even though her friend's two children are being held as collateral. All these women are just trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and dim little Gaia is giving them morality lessons like she got bounced off the church bus on her head.

After returning to her people, Leon decides that he will just ignore her authority as Matriarch (as he has been doing constantly the whole book) and set out to enact his plan of bombing the one final vestige of civilization in hopes that their terrorism will force the local dictator to cave to their demands. Listen, it's not a great plan, but at least he has a plan, I guess?

Anyway, he disappears into the city through the ever convenient tunnels that lead all over the place and are never guarded. It's pretty wild that the Protectorate has done nothing to deal with those tunnels after both Gaia and his son used them to escape a year ago. Oh well. Gaia decides that the most responsible thing to do as a grown up leader of a whole community is to run away from her guards and risk her life trying to navigate the tunnels to find her boyfriend. Once again, she has no plan. Not even what she will say if she finds him. She's mad that he went off to do the terrorism thing without her, but also, she doesn't have a plan for changing his mind or stopping him.

She literally wanders the tunnels for a couple days and can't find him. She does find one of the girls from the Baby Factory who is just ... living in the tunnels for some reason? She ran away because she wants to keep her baby and some random person she met in the kitchens is helping her for some reason. Even though she has a bracelet that tells her keepers where she is at all times, she's managed to avoid notice and is planning to ... what? Poop out a baby in the tunnels and then raise a baby by herself in the tunnels? This girl is basically Gaia's soulmate but Gaia once again gets to be self-righteous about how this silly girl doesn't have a plan. Excuse me, Gaia? But how exactly did you end up in this tunnel yourself? Wasn't it by flailing around chaotically without a plan of any sort? Gaia has no ability to self-reflect.

So after doing nothing of value for about a day, Gaia just wanders back out of the tunnels and back out of the Enclave. It's apparently still really easy to get around in this military city state that's on high alert without being noticed. When she gets back to her people they quickly learn that Leon has been captured and the Protectorate wants her to come to a party. It's obviously a trap. And they all know it. But they still decide to go without any plan at all.

Once again, Gaia brings two guards with her as if they will be of any use against an entire city. Her guards are drugged at the party and she is taken to see Leon and told that the government wants her ovaries. If she submits herself to extremely experimental surgery they'll let Leon go and also maybe agree to give her people water. She refuses because she doesn't trust the Protectorate to keep his word. Which is very fair, but also ignores the fact that they can just take her ovaries any time they want because she's currently in custody.

Leon wakes up from a drug induced coma and tells her that a bomb he set is about to go off and they can use it as a cover to escape. Wow, that's convenient! So that's what they do. Again, it's incredibly easy to come and go in this walled city even when you are being actively sought by the military police.

Now that they're both back with their people, they feel pretty good. Except that the Protectorate immediately turns off their water supply. So, they decide it's time to start a war or whatever. They keep setting off bombs and decide to blow up the wall around the Enclave. Which, okay. That's a plan, I guess. Again, not a very good one, and it's not clear at all why Gaia is now okay with violence even though she's been against it from the beginning. I guess she figured out that the book is almost over so maybe something should happen.

So they blow up the wall. It's pretty great how easy it is to get the materials needed for huge bombs in this city. They were really just asking for this level of terrorism, honestly. But then Gaia has this bright idea that the immigrants from Sylum should just walk into the city without weapons. You know, peacefully, as a show of good faith so that maybe they won't be killed on sight. Once again, this is the opposite of a plan, and really really dumb. Like, astonishingly stupid. You just blew up a city, Gaia. It doesn't matter if you aren't holding a loaded gun, or whatever, you are not coming in peace!

Naturally, they are all instantly arrested. Then tortured. Then sentenced to execution. Because. What else did you think was going to happen you rabbit-brained nitwit? Also, they cut Gaia open and steal her ovaries which honestly they should have done immediately. What was stopping them?

Gaia wakes up from her surgery and is told that Leon is about to be executed. So she hops out of bed as limber as anything and runs to the gallows to break out her patented method of screaming, "Stop this! It's wrong!" Once again, no plan anywhere at anytime. However, some of the people gathered to witness the execution hear her powerful arguments of, "This isn't fair!" and "Why are you all so mean?" and realize that it's time to have a rebellion already.

So they do. Gaia doesn't participate as she's too busy staring at Leon who is dying from being shot. I haven't had much time in this review to cover the romance part of this book, but it's still tepid and bloodless. Leon and Gaia are in love. You know that because you are told that over and over again. They don't really seem to get along much otherwise. They disagree constantly and are perpetually sniping at one another. Also, Leon is super pissy that Gaia made him wait a whole year before agreeing to marry him. Afterall, if they don't get married before she's eighteen, what's the point?

Peter and Will are still around too and Peter is extremely butthurt the whole time. He's always complaining about how Gaia ruined his life and then didn't even want to marry him. He also complains that he's being kept around as a "backup" in case Leon dies or something which is gross. But also, Gaia is weirdly into the whole thing. She likes that Peter is obsessed with her and gets jealous when she sees him flirting with a different girl. Personally, it just seems like she's a teenager and not ready to make life-long commitments to one guy she's known for about 1.5 years. But hey, what do I know.

As Leon lays, possibly dying, the first thing he says is how now Gaia's going to end up with Peter. Which... GROSS. And also, that's what you want your last words to be, bro? Some petty shit about how Gaia doesn't love you exclusively enough? WTH? Alas, Leon doesn't die because Gaia convinces the evil doctor who stole her ovaries to rig up a blood transfusion. She's only supposed to let the transfusion run for five minutes but she forgets because she's Gaia and has the memory of a distractible goldfish. So she nearly dies too. I mean, she just had major surgery, afterall.

Anyhow, turns out that while the rebellion was happening elsewhere to other people, Peter died. Lots of other people died too, but now Peter is out of the picture so that wraps up any jealousy Leon had. So they agree to get married. But also Gaia's ovaries are gone so they can't have children together. Which, was never something Gaia seemed to want all that much but now she's very upset about it. She doesn't want to adopt. And she doesn't want to have a baby that's only related to her husband, either. She's really got some toxic ideas about parenthood and what makes a true mother. Which is bizarre because she's currently raising her baby sister.

And I guess the Enclave is being rebuilt now. All that's happening in the background. Gaia's a senator. A seventeen year old senator. Great. And the whole Enclave is just really happy that there are equal rights for everyone now. And I guess there's enough water. Once again, it's never discussed how there are enough resources for everyone. No one talks about farming or produce or anything. It seems like that would be an issue of concern? Oh well, I guess not. All done. Nothing to see here. Stop asking questions. Gaia's getting married, kids! Hurrah! show less

Having escaped the Enclave with her newborn baby sister, Gaia is wandering in the wilderness with only the barest hope of finding another settlement. After running out of formula and watching the baby begin to sicken and die, Gaia meets an outrider who agrees to take her back to his village. This bizarre dystopia is run entirely by women and is cursed by some fluke of the local environment. Once people remain in the village for a few days, they sicken and upon recovery can never again leave show more the village without dying. Also, something in the environment causes aberrant birthrates resulting in men being born ten times more frequently than women. Gaia's sister is immediately taken from her and she is censured by the ruling class for putting the baby in danger. In order to join the society, she must relinquish control of Maya. However, once they realize that Gaia is a midwife they are more than happy to welcome her, as they are in desperate need of this type of expertise.

So, essentially, this society is run by women and the men have no rights, despite being in the vast majority. The men aren't allowed to touch the women until the woman chooses one to marry. Any touching by a man is considered attempted rape and brutally punished. Shortly after arriving, Gaia realizes that Leon has followed her and has been locked up in the local jail for being unwilling to submit to local laws. Gaia wants to work to free him but she clashes with the Matriarch after she induces an abortion in one of the women. Gaia will have to make moral concessions if she wants to become a part of this society and ever hope to help Leon or see her sister again.

The second installment of this series is frankly worse than the first. Our dim protagonist once again finds herself in a oppressive society and despite the fact that she comes from one, she is completely incapable of understanding why this society is so, "unfair." She is constantly complaining that "things aren't fair." Even though the laws of the place are explained to her, she just ignores them and then is "shocked" and "amazed" when her actions have consequences. Seriously, the number of times the protagonist is described as "amazed" in this novel is remarkable. There is absolutely no justification for it because the plot is very predictable and there are no surprises.

This matriarchal post apocalyptic society makes no sense either. Their solution to inequality in birthrates is to just have as many children as possible. Every woman is encouraged to have ten babies. This is a really dumb idea as they have no doctors or medical care and one can only assume that many women would die in childbirth. And anyway, you'll still very quickly run into the problem of everyone being related to one another. Once again, the author is toying with this notion of incest and I don't understand why. Once again, the problem of feeding all these people is not addressed. At no point do we find out how this village sustains itself. Agriculture is not mentioned. And they are apparently just pumping out babies constantly. They also have a huge prison, which is like.... UH.... how are you feeding all these people you have imprisoned? In a society like this, one would expect everyone to just be sentenced to exile. You already have too many men, why are you keeping trouble makers around?

Also, Leon just followed her and found her right away no problem. Apparently, he was tortured by his family because they still wanted information about Gaia's parent's stupid code and he wouldn't tell them. And then, at some point, they let him go or he escaped and just magically found his way to this village. Okay, that's certainly convenient. And man is he butthurt about the women being in charge. This asshole has absolutely no leg to stand because he was literally a Nazi in the last dystopia as well as the son of the dictator. But now he's all self-righteous and is unbelievably cruel to Gaia when they finally both get out of prison. He simultaneously is mad at her for giving into the local dictator and pissed that she didn't use her influence to get him out of prison earlier. Like... those two things are mutually exclusive, you jerk.

Also, this whole town has a massively rapey, predatory vibe for a city run by women. Men aren't allowed to touch women. Which, when it was originally explained, I was like... GOOD. I mean, no one should touch anyone without consent. That goes double for underage girls. But Gaia is more mad about this law than the ones stripping men of all rights. Of course, all the men Gaia meets ignore this law and touch her constantly. And even though she can have them thrown in jail for it, they don't even ask her if it's okay. Plus, she's almost immediately in a fucked up love triangle with a set of brothers, 19 and 22 respectively. Ahem. GAIA IS 16. The author seems to think this is not a problem. In fact, the only injustice is that the 19 year old gets in trouble for kissing Gaia without consent. He's brought up on charges for attempted rape, and sentenced to 12 hours in the stocks and a week in prison. Which... is pretty harsh, but honestly not that bad for a dystopian society. Once again, why not just exile him? Then Gaia makes the bizarre remark that this type of punishment would only be appropriate for ACTUAL RAPE. Yes, our protagonist thinks rapists should only get a week in prison.

And never mind the fact that every month there's a soccer game and the man who wins gets to force a woman to live in a house with him for a month. This is apparently the only right men have in this society. I'm sorry, this is just really really gross and if women were actually in charge it would never happen.

Of course, Gaia immediately wins the entire civilization over to rationality with her extremely well crafted arguments of, "You can't do this; it's wrong." After the Matriarch dies in childbirth Gaia just decides to hold a new election and let the men vote too. And all the men vote for her. Yep. They elect the sixteen year old girl they just met to rule their society. No wonder this civilization is slowly collapsing like a flan in a cupboard.

And thank God, because Gaia is going to make some big changes. Like letting men touch women whenever they want. And also, making it so that you can only be taken as prize to the Winner's Cabin after you're fifteen. So glad you came along, Gaia. What a feminist.

The themes, morals, and world building of this novel are very muddled and troubling. Nothing makes sense. Not the miasma that's addicting people so they can't leave and also simultaneously making female fetuses spontaneously turn into males but still having them grow uteruses. But also, you can overcome it by just smoking some weed? The love rectangle is super uncomfortable and does not end in a good place. Leon and Gaia continue to have nothing in common and Leon does nothing but abuse and gaslight her. She's literally barely awakened after spending ten hours in the stocks before he tries to make her feel bad. He complains mightily about how hard it was for him to stand by and watch her suffer in the stocks. Like, shut up dude. No one was stopping you from hopping in the stocks too. Maybe just focus on the fact that not everything is about you? At the end of the book he gets really possessive and is furious that she won't MARRY HIM right away.

The two brothers who groom Gaia to become their child bride creep me right out too. And they are presented as really nice guys that we are supposed to sympathize with. After the one gets brought up on rape charges when he assaults Gaia in a darkened barn, everyone blames Gaia including herself. She's horrified that she "led him on" and made him risk his freedom. Nevermind that he's three years older than her and a native of this society and completely familiar with their laws. He was actively trying to trap her into marrying him before she could pick his brother or her Nazi boyfriend. It was gross, but the book definitely wants us to blame the canonically clueless sixteen year old.

There are lots of bad things about this book, but the worst are the messages it threatens to instill in young minds. Like that men have a right to touch a girl's body. That a girl is responsible for the way men touch her. That men have the right to demand commitment from you. That if you don't give it to them, they are justified in being cruel to you. That marriage is a perfectly logical contract for a teenager to enter into. This book should come with a warning label.

Seriously, give this book a miss unless you enjoy hate-reading bad books like I do. show less

Gaia is a young midwife who has just recently completed her apprenticeship with her mother and is delivering her first baby. She lives in a post-apocalyptic community that resides outside the walls of the Enclave, an exclusive city state where select residents dwell in privilege. In order to ensure genetic diversity, the Enclave has decreed that each midwife must bring the first three babies delivered each month within the walls of the Enclave for adoption. All her life, Gaia has been show more trained that this is the proper order of things, but now that she has to physically take a baby just born from its mother, she begins to have questions.

These questions only intensify when she returns home to find that both her parents have been seized by the Enclave soldiers for suspicion in some sort of conspiracy involving the babies her mother delivers. Gaia is lightly threatened and questioned by a captain of the guard - a young man named Leon who is as intriguing as he is dangerous. After a few weeks, Gaia decides she must risk everything to infiltrate the Enclave and rescue her parents. But what dangers await beyond the walls?

This is a really bland and unoriginal novel with flat characters and predictable plotting. The main character, Gaia, is a dim creature who does not seem to realize she's living in the gritty landscape of a post-apocalyptic near future. Despite the fact that she's grown up struggling to survive without modern conveniences, stealing babies from her fellow indigents to feed the requirements of a totalitarian walled city that she is forbidden to enter, she thinks everything is sunshine and rainbows. When she infiltrates the walled city in disguise to rescue her parents from a military prison, she tries to stop a public execution by yelling, "Stop! This is wrong!!"

Later, she tells her SS wannabe boyfriend, "You're mean." Like ??? Girl, do you know what book you're in? She goes on to be shocked and clutch her pearls when the evil dictator is evil and imprisons her. She basically turns Leon around on the whole dictator thing by essentially saying, "What gives you the right?" And "Have you tried not oppressing people?"

Furthermore, Leon and Gaia never at any point should have succeeded with their befuddlingly inept plans. Gaia escapes from military prison simply by convincing one guard to let her leave her containment cell. Apparently, there were no other checkpoints between the door of her cell and the outside of the prison. She then hides out with a baker while apparently the whole city is looking for her. But literally, we never see so much as a search party. Later, she sneaks back into prison super easily and breaks her mother out of jail. She takes her mother to I guess the prison laundry where she delivers a baby without being discovered, even though they are being actively sought. The craziest example of this is when she is literally being confronted by the evil dictator himself in his private rooms. She and Leon simply... run out the door? I guess he tries to grab them, but he misses and again there are no other guards or people between them and the secret tunnels that lead all over the city.

They continue to wander the city, breaking into other government buildings and running into no other humans. Literally, the dictatorship nursery where all the babies are kept (remember 3 per midwife per month) has exactly one attendant whom they easily subdue.

The plot of the book is also strange. It seems the Enclave is in trouble because they are all inbred and are now being decimated by genetic disease. I guess no one bothered keeping track of where these stolen babies are coming from, so brothers are marrying their sisters and it's a huge, gross mess. But Gaia's mother has apparently been keeping track of the parentage of all the babies she's been delivering. It's not clear why this is useful as the Enclave can just run genetic tests to see if potential couples are allowed to get married. But they do want this secret record that Gaia's mother has because babies she delivered have been discovered to have a genetic defense against some of the medical disorders rampant in the Enclave.

It's not clear why, but Gaia and her parents don't want to help the Enclave. Gaia seems horrified that people aren't allowed to marry whomever they want. But it's also like... uh ... you can't marry blood relatives. That's not oppression, that's just basic tenants for survival. Overall, this books is weird about the incest issue and it's not clear where the characters (or the author) stand on it. show less