The Dawn of Skye (Someday Children)

I got this ebook for free from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I did not have to review it but it was so amazing!
Thebook opens with a fog entering the people in their homes. When all hosts are occupied, the fog with this mysterious disease moves on to another town.
The story of our main characters begins at the bedside of their dying mother. When you finally die, it's like something straight out of a Japanese horror movie, I'll spare the details, you'll just have to read the book. With nothing else left to do, the boy packs a rucksack and grabs his sister, running away from the disease that has killed all the adults in the village.
They run into the woods, unprotected and alone. The author definitely knows how to pull you in before you show more even get to chapter 1! I'm ready for this adventure!
Five years later, the twin siblings Ecco and Skye travel into unknown wooded and mountainous territory, never staying anywhere long, avoiding others and looking for food and safety. Coming across many hardships, their journey is a means of survival without the reliance of adults.
As the story progresses we discover that they are not alone. Along with the beastly creatures of the woods there are other clans of survivors: Dagwoods clan, The Others, and The Outcasts.
We also learn that the world with adults that is long gone was not the world we know today, a horrifying society of sacrifices and blind traditions. "Freeborns" mistreated the "Slaveborns" the same as their animals. Dead if there was no longer a use for them. The characters that have survived the disease are from both sides of society, changing the order of how things used to be living and working together. I have to agree with some other reviews that this has a Lord of the Flies kind of feel. Everybody has a secret, one by one they start to unravel. A story of innocence, triumph, courage, abuse, love, survival, strength, family, adjustment, tradition, greed, betrayal, war, revenge, death, regret, surprise and secrets. It made me have an intense rollercoaster ride of emotions - curiosity, sadness, remorse, happiness, anger, fear, sympathy, panic, worry and at some points as physically paralyzed as the characters. It actually made me cry, laugh, and gasp. The author really knows how to put you in the moment. My heart is still beating irrationally fast. NOW I AM SO HAPPY I AM JUMPING FOR JOY IN MY LIVING ROOM! If this book dosent stop making my emotions go haywire or my heart stop pounding, I'm going to have a heart attack!
An absolutely thrilling, mysterious, action packed adventure that had me hooked from the first to last. Nature has a way of restoring peace. Humans can become evil, selfish, greedy, lying killers to manipulate society by fear to blindly follow for selfish gain. A lust for power and order, but sometimes Nature has a way of restoring peace and harmony.
I also believe that it has almost happened in history. Most Native Americans were peaceful, never wasting anything and only taking what was needed to survive. Now we are so reliant on evil, killing and deception that we greedily take and take all of the worlds natural resources destroying anyone or anything that gets in our way. I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE SEQUEL! show less

Meh. I've read worse but somehow it never quite grabbed me. The basic premise is sort of Lord of the Flies in a typical basic fantasy setting - no magic. But the character dynamics weren't quite there, and a few inconsistencies in the world building continued to trip you out of the necessary suspension of disbelief.

A plague of some unspecified fog has culled anyone with evil in their soul - anyone who's ever hated, or acted upon it dies from a terrible wasting cough. Which basically means the land (unspecified countryside area, not that big) was reduced to scattered groups of children. It's immediately obvious the author hasn't had that close an interaction with children, as few if any of them are that innocent, and quite a few adults show more should have survived, but at least we're spared any pseudo-religious waffling . A few years on and most of the children have banded into clans away from their former villages. They have various amounts of technology and skills for wilderness survival. Skye and her brother Ecco have fled as just the pair of them. Ecco is increasingly paranoid about being followed by unspecified enemies. Skye just goes along with him, as anything is better than being left to fend for herself. Soon however the paranoia leads to evil and Skye finds herself having to fit into a clan with two lead boys, both older and stronger and attractive.

It's just all a bit inconsistent and unexplained. There's no justification for the fog of destruction, and no explanation, but considerable variation in which acts are deemed 'evil' enough for it to strike; too many creatures (and people) just turn up to aid the protagonist for no reason at all. I suspect they're supposed to be some form of spiritual guardian, but they seem too physical and then don't actually do or say anything. Technology, skills and useful items are equally variable. Skye goes to great length to learn archery, and then never uses it again, it' snot a transferable skill to spear throwing! Sometimes they have iron knives and cookware and sometime not, ditto lighting fires etc. These are all things that pastoral villages would have not forgotten and lost in a few years. Lastly there's a massive flood caused by a beaver dam breaking. Which is just wrong. They generally don't get that big, and are specifically designed over evolutionary timescales of learning not to fail in floods - indeed they mitigate downstream flood waters. It's just annoying when authors attribute explanations to material causes that easily researched properly.

The single most annoying thing is that the children have arbitrarily decided to re-name a few of the creatures around them. Cats, bears, various insects etc all get cute names, but dogs remain dogs, as do deer. There's a complete absence of horses or any beast of burden which is extremely unlikely.

It's, in general, not badly written but there's nothing compelling to make me want to read the sequel, let alone re-read this. show less

A Lord of the Flies novel in a world where all the adults have died. This book has moments of wonderful story telling but it just doesn’t deliver as a whole. There’s also no climax to the story with the story ending abruptly with an announcement of a sequel. Some of the characters (who are all children) just don’t seem to react as I would expect in a devasted world where children need to fend for themselves. With respect to the style of writing, I think some of the replacement words such as swimmers for fish, or buzzers for flies, distracted from the story. While I appreciate that in a world without adults many words would be lost, what child would have forgotten the name for fish or flies? Sadly, for me, there’s no strong pull show more after reading this book to even find out what happens to the characters in the sequel. show less

At first I found this book to be overly descriptive - and this interrupted the flow of the story for me. As I continued reading, however, things improved and reading became more immersive. I would not re-read it but overall it was not a bad experience - aside from some plot inconsistencies and at times the characters were frustrating. I read it quickly enough that if I had a spare chunk of time I would read the sequel - if I wanted something to let my brain escape

The adults all died of a mysterious disease and only children are remaining in the world. Most of them have formed small families or groups in order to survive. Ecco and Skye are on the run, driven by Ecco and his desire to get away from those that are chasing them. After a confrontation with other children where some were killer, Ecco dies of the same disease that killed the adults early. Skye is taken into a group of children and they all struggle to survive.
I enjoyed this novel, although it took a little time to get into. The characters are interesting and multi-dimensional, and the plot keeps you guessing. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series.

A terrible fog passes through the village bringing a disease with it that kills all adults. The children are left to fend for themselves, to survive on their own. Twins Ecco and Skye live off the forrest for five years before a turn of events sees Skye without her brother and her world is once again falling apart. In the forrest there are different groups/clans of children. Some are friendly, some are enemies, but who can Skye trust? When she wakes up in with a group of strangers, she has no idea that two of them will make a big influence on her life and steal her heart.

The book was hard for me to get into. I admit I initially found it a bit boring, and confusing. There are different clans/groups of children and it was very easy to get show more lost and confused about what group had done what, and who was who. I found myself having to go back and re-read pages, so that I could try and work out what was happening. Luckily the author has a reference at the start so you can go back and identify which character belonged to a group. I used this reference a number of times. At one point in the story Skye and Ecco have a big fight with another group to which I was thinking were boys from another group which turned out not to be the case and I was thinking the book was all sorts of strange. Once I re-read and used the reference and realised what actually did happen (which was nothing like I first thought had happened) I was able to keep reading and began to really enjoy the story. By the time I was about 50% of the way in, I had an understanding for the characters and was really looking forward to reading it each day. It isn't usually the type of book I would read, but I am glad I stuck to reading it and it turned into a really interesting and at times, edge of your seat story.

I received a copy of this book as an early review copy from LibraryThing, in exchange for an honest review. ( ) show less

A terrible fog passes through the village bringing a disease with it that kills all adults. The children are left to fend for themselves, to survive on their own. Twins Ecco and Skye live off the forrest for five years before a turn of events sees Skye without her brother and her world is once again falling apart. In the forrest there are different groups/clans of children. Some are friendly, some are enemies, but who can Skye trust? When she wakes up in with a group of strangers, she has no idea that two of them will make a big influence on her life and steal her heart.

The book was hard for me to get into. I admit I initially found it a bit boring, and confusing. There are different clans/groups of children and it was very easy to get show more lost and confused about what group had done what, and who was who. I found myself having to go back and re-read pages, so that I could try and work out what was happening. Luckily the author has a reference at the start so you can go back and identify which character belonged to a group. I used this reference a number of times. At one point in the story Skye and Ecco have a big fight with another group to which I was thinking were boys from another group which turned out not to be the case and I was thinking the book was all sorts of strange. Once I re-read and used the reference and realised what actually did happen (which was nothing like I first thought had happened) I was able to keep reading and began to really enjoy the story. By the time I was about 50% of the way in, I had an understanding for the characters and was really looking forward to reading it each day. It isn't usually the type of book I would read, but I am glad I stuck to reading it and it turned into a really interesting and at times, edge of your seat story.

I received a copy of this book as an early review copy from LibraryThing, in exchange for an honest review. ( ) show less