Shaunta Grimes

Viral Nation takes place in a world where most of the population has been obliterated by an unnamed virus. America now exists under a sort of benevolent totalitarianism. Crime is dealt with swiftly and harshly, so there is very little of it, at least not anywhere people seem to care about. The justice system is a lot like the one in [b:The Minority Report|65018|Minority Report|Philip K. Dick|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170626052s/65018.jpg|63086], except that instead of using a team of show more psychics to predict when crimes will occur, "Time Mariners" retrieve information from the future via a temporal gateway, and (theoretically) crimes are dealt with before they happen.

At the heart of the story is Clover Donovan, an autistic sixteen year-old girl who is cared for by her brother while their father works away from home (their mother died of the virus when Clover was an infant.) Clover is the best thing about the book, at least for the first half or so. I felt she was portrayed well by the author--realistic and likeable, even if she isn't always nice (although this is usually because she has trouble recognizing social cues and often misspeaks.) That's until her condition is revealed to be a gimmick which is never explained, and which comes off as a patronizing attempt to make autistic people feel special. We're eventually told that only autistics can travel through the time portal. At first I thought this meant that only they could cope with it mentally, but it turns out that only they can literally pass through it at all. Anyone else is held back, even somehow being pushed through and out of the submarine craft they travel in. So, only autistic people and objects can pass through? ...okay.

I thought the story was great in the beginning, but as I neared the end I came to like it less and less. It became obvious that there was no way the story was going to be completed by the end of the book. That revolution mentioned in the summary? It doesn't even get started until the last few chapters. Yes, I know it says "first in a new series" clearly on the front cover, but there is no kind of closure at all. Novels are not a serial medium. If you want to do that, write comics. I feel like I've gotten nothing out of reading this. Will I be rewarded in the second installment, or will I have to wait for the third? show less

It was a plague. It was the plague that wiped out most of the world's population. The United States is now fifty, small, walled cities, under the protection of the U.S. government and Waverly-Stead Company. Waverly-Stead saved everyone. Ned Waverly found a portal to two years in the future and from there brought back the cure. John Stead created it. Together they gave it to everyone and the world began again. It's a simple thing to stop by a corporate facility and get your daily booster show more shot; everyone even has ports implanted in the back of their necks so they don't need to suffer the pain of a needle.

Clover Donovan wants nothing more than to go to Waverly-Stead Academy. She's got the grades, she just has to make it through the interview. When the Academy meets her and her service dog, and realizes she's autistic, suddenly they don't want her anymore. But that's okay, because something bigger is waiting for Clover. She gets recruited by the Company to be one of those who travels through the portal to retrieve news and information. She'll get more money, more rations, and maybe she and her brother West can live a more comfortable life.

But things are not as simple as they seem. On a trip to the future, someone she's just met in the present gives Clover something to read. It's a zine and it tells her more than she ever knew about the Company and what they're really doing. Then the future brings bad, bad news for West and he, Clover, and their friends flee the walled town of Reno looking for the truth.

I adored this book. I read far later into the night than I should have while reading it. Clover, West, and their friends kept me interested, as did the plot and various subplots running through the story.

Regarding Autism and Autistic characters: I don't personally know anyone on the spectrum so I can't say for sure if the writing about Autism was accurate, but it was respectful and felt very real to me.

(ARC provided by publisher) show less

My Opinion: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion.

Clover is a high functioning autistic 16 year old girl living in a very difficult world. After a virus wipes out most of the world's population, the remaining citizens live in walled cities and make do with little food and really, little everything. Her brother, West, takes care of her and is her world since their father is buried in his work ever since their mother died of the virus show more right before the cure became available. Clover has always dreamed of going to the Waverly-Stead Academy but is forced to turn down her acceptance when they won't let her keep her service dog, who is her closest friend and companion and who keeps her from losing it when the outside world becomes too much for her to handle. She is then recruited to join the Time Mariners, a team of operatives who work for the Company, the agency who engineered and distributed the vaccine to the deadly virus and who now control all of the provisions including food, jobs, etc., and who now also control all of the rules the people must live with. The Time Marines time travel to gather news about the future, including crimes that will be committed. Whenever someone is found to have committed a crime in the future, they are killed in the present to prevent the crime from happening at all. When Clover's brother, West, is one of the people sentenced to death for a murder that he supposedly will commit in the future, Clover and he go on the run, along with a "band of fellow misfits and outsiders" to find out what is really going on with the Company. (I don't know if my description does it justice, but trust me, as you read the story, this all makes sense!)

First off, I absolutely loved Clover! It's pretty rare that a person with developmental disabilities is featured as a main character in a book, but she is very much the driving force behind the hunt for the truth. Even though she would prefer to be by herself, with just her dog and brother for company, she goes way outside of her comfort zone in terms of working with people she doesn't really know or trust, and fighting against authority, neither of which come easy or naturally to her. I also admired that the author never used Clover's autism as a way to manipulate the story line or as a way to garner sympathy for her - she was never depicted in any way but as a very strong 16 year old girl who happened to be autistic, and although I've read some reviews that have said it was difficult to like Clover because of her off putting personality, I didn't find this to be true at all. If you want to talk about personal growth, I can tell you that Clover grew immensely from the beginning of the book to the end, and I look forward to reading the rest of the series because I'm excited to see her continue this growth.

Now for the world building and plot: The post-apocalyptic/dystopian world in which the characters live is described in such a way that you feel yourself becoming immersed in it as you read, which is always what you hope for when reading a fictional account of a world that has gone to hell in a hand basket. You feel the desperation of the people and the hopelessness. I would give this book an A+ for world building! The plot is well written, evenly paced, and very exciting to read. I was drawn into the book immediately and stayed in it well after I'd finished reading it. Because of the characters and the plot line, and the excellent writing, this book sticks with you and makes you continue to think about it even after you've put it down for the last time. All of these things combined made it an exciting read for me and the reason that I would recommend it to lovers of YA dystopian/post-apoc fiction.

I give this book a very enthusiastic 5 stars and look forward to continuing the series :D

P.S.: I love the cover and give bonus points for that!! show less

Viral Nation by Shaunta Grimes is a post-apocalyptic YA novel about an autistic girl and her brother (and her service dog). I have mentioned in the past that I tend not to read blurbs between deciding to read a book (in this case because it was mentioned on the Diversity in YA blog) and actually reading it. In this case, that meant what I was expecting was a post-apocalyptic story with an autistic girl. What I got was also dystopian and had time travel, which threw me a little at first show more (because obviously I didn't look closely enough at the cover when I started reading either).

After a virus claimed nearly the entire global population, the world changed. The United States splintered into fifty walled cities where the surviving citizens clustered to start over. The Company, which ended the plague by bringing a life-saving vaccine back from the future, controls everything. They ration the scant food and supplies through a lottery system, mandate daily doses of virus suppressant, and even monitor future timelines to stop crimes before they can be committed.

Brilliant but autistic, sixteen-year-old Clover Donovan has always dreamed of studying at the Waverly-Stead Academy. Her brother and caretaker, West, has done everything in his power to make her dream a reality. But Clover’s refusal to part with her beloved service dog denies her entry into the school. Instead, she is drafted into the Time Mariners, a team of Company operatives who travel through time to gather news about the future.

When one of Clover’s missions reveals that West’s life is in danger, the Donovans are shattered. To change West’s fate, they’ll have to take on the mysterious Company. But as its secrets are revealed, they realize that the Company’s rule may not be as benevolent as it seems. In saving her brother, Clover will face a more powerful force than she ever imagined… and will team up with a band of fellow misfits and outsiders to incite a revolution that will change their destinies forever.

Despite the shift between my expectations and what I got, I loved this book. At first I thought the time travel aspect was rather strange — and honestly I still do, but not in a bad way — but it contributed to a complex and full world. One of my pet peeves with a lot of dystopian YA is poorly thought-through (or lazy) world-building, but Viral Nation certainly doesn't contain that flaw. Although the world is revealed slowly as the characters learn more about it, so I admit I was a little sceptical at first. (Side note: I think the blurb is slightly wrong because I remember the text mentioning 48 cities, not 50, which makes more sense since who knows what happened to distant Alaska and Hawaii after civilisation collapsed?) But as the conspiracy is revealed, it becomes increasingly interesting, especially since by the end we still don't know everything, partly thanks to the time travel aspect, but mostly because the author hasn't revealed it yet.

That aside, Viral Nation hooked me in from the very beginning. From the prologue, in which we glimpse the pandemic that wreaked havoc across the US (little word from the rest of the world, but less obnoxiously than most), to the teenage protagonists in chapter one, I was sucked in. Clover is completely a sympathetic character and I found myself cheering her on almost immediately, and cringing when social situations went badly for her. I also grew rather fond of her dog, despite being more of a cat person. ;-)

West, Clover's older brother, is also a point of view character. Again, I was a little sceptical at first when his point of view popped up before Clover's, but I'm pleased to report he was not there to steal Clover's limelight. He was an important character in his own right, but not at the expense of Clover's character, which made me happy. I picked up Viral Nation because I was keen to read about a non-typical protagonist — an autistic one in this case — coping in a post-apocalyptic world. I'm glad I did and I was pleased that there wasn't anything poorly done (as far as I could determine, but I am by no means an expert on autism). It added an extra dimension to the book (although for a YA book of this nature it already had rather a lot of dimensions to be getting on with) and although Clover's autism ended up being integral to the plot, I didn't find that was done objectionably. Also, it was nice to see an autistic girl for a change.

The only disappointment with Viral Nation is that it's the first in the series. It's not that I don't want to keep reading about Clover and friends — I do — it's that I can't keep reading now and I want to know what happens. The second book doesn't come out until next Northern summer. Sigh. On the one hand, if it was a standalone, I'd already know how everything turned out but there's no way Grimes could have fit as much worldbuilding depth into a single volume (y'know, unless it was a very loooong single volume).

I highly recommend Viral Nation to fans of YA post-apocalyptic dystopias. Adult fans will also enjoy it, as I did, although like me they may find themselves sceptical of it at first. Fans of intelligent characters who do not make incredibly stupid decisions to further a weak plot, should also find something to like here. Readers looking for a minority main character, especially an autistic one, will hopefully be very pleased with Viral Nation. Possibly also dog lovers.

5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. show less