(Image from Barnes & Noble)

"New York was more dead than alive, and those people who were still around didn't help anyone but themselves" (250).

(Note: While this review will not contain spoilers for The Dead & the Gone, it may inadvertently spoil surprises from the first book in the series, Life As We Knew It. As always, I highly recommend reading the first book first.)

After reading about a chapter of Susan Beth Pfeffer's dystopian novel, Life As We Knew It (my review), I knew I had to get my hands on the sequel. Since I hadn't finished the first book in the series, I didn't even read the plot summary for the second. I just put it on reserve at the library. After holding my breath through Life As We Knew It, waiting to see if Miranda and her family survives after an asteroid hits the moon, I couldn't wait to see what adventures she tackled next. So, I settled in to read about Miranda ... only to encounter someone else entirely! Be forewarned: As Gamila says in her review of The Dead & the Gone, it's not as much a sequel to Life As We Knew It as it is a companion book.

The story takes place in the same time period as the first book, except this time, we're in New York when the asteroid hits. Seventeen-year-old Alex Morales doesn't think much of it at first. He's more concerned about studying his way to a Georgetown scholarship. Then, the power goes out; his mom has to stay to help with multiple emergencies at the hospital where she works; and Uncle Jimmy shows up at 4:30 a.m. asking Alex and his sister to help clean out his bodega before looters cart off all his inventory. When reports of widespread disaster - tsunamis, flooding, earthquakes, etc. - reach his ears, Alex starts to worry. His mother still hasn't come home, his father's in Puerto Rico and his older brother is in Texas with his Marines unit. That leaves Alex to take care of his two younger sisters. Phone service is spotty, but surely his parents would have made it back home if they could. They can't really be gone, can they?

As the months drag on, Alex becomes increasingly worried. Not only have his parents not shown up, but the kids haven't received a letter, a phone call, anything. Food's running low, corpses are piling up, volcanic ash taints the air, and New York's becoming more dangerous by the minute. Despite his sister's devout faith, Alex is beginning to wonder if God and la madre even care. With flood waters rising, food disappearing, a flu epidemic raging, and no way out of the wasteland that is New York, Alex must fight for survival. He's determined to keep his sisters safe, even if it means starving himself, even if it means sending them away, even if it means killing himself to keep them alive. He'll do whatever it takes.

Like its predecessor, The Dead and the Gone starts out slowly and builds to a nail-biting, heart-pounding crescendo. The more perilous Alex's situation gets, the more riveting the story becomes. It didn't grab me quite as much as Life As We Knew It, maybe because it seemed redundant or maybe because The Morales' experience in a big city seemed less desperate than Miranda's plight in a small, isolated town. Still, it's an engrossing pageturner, as exciting as it is thought-provoking. Unlike the first book, this one explores themes of faith in the face of chaos; the influence of wealth and power in a catastrophic situation; and the difference between givers and takers in a world gone mad. Like its companion book, The Dead & the Gone also looks at how quickly life can change; how ungrateful we are for the abundance we enjoy every day; and how little provocation it takes for us to revert to animal instincts, erasing every gentle trait that makes us human.

Like I said before, if you think the world's bleak enough as it is, you might want to skip this series. If you're not the depressive sort, or if you happen to have an extra supply of Prozac on hand, give these books a whirl. This glass-half-full girl just can't get enough!

(Readalikes: Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer; The Gone series by Michael Grant)

Grade: B

If this were a movie, it would be rated: PG for mild language, mild sexual innuendo and scenes of death/destruction

To the FTC, with love: Another library fine find

I've been reading so much dark, post-apocalyptic literature that I decided to find something a little more cheery to read. Naturally, I chose a book about the Willie Handcart Company, because what could be more cheery than that? Ha ha. Maybe you have to be Mormon to understand the irony of this statement. Maybe you have to be Mormon to understand what I'm talking about.

(The painting is "Trail of Sacrifice-Valley of Hope" by the very talented Clark Kelley Price - it's from http://www.lds.org/; Historical details are from the pioneer section on the Church's website and Wikipedia.)

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Since I've already described what happened on the journey, I'm not going to go into the plot -it's basically the story of 400 people and what they encounter on the 1300 mile trek to Utah. There aren't any real subplots. The book simply follows the history, using diaries and letters to make the account historically accurate. Because of this, In the Company of Angels reads more like non-fiction than fiction. In fact, I think I would have enjoyed it much more if it hadn't been fictionalized at all. The experiences of those in the Willie Company, after all, need no dramatizing. They were exciting, harrowing, tragic and inspiring all on their own.

For me, Farland's historical fiction has too much history and too little fiction. Without any real subplots involving our narrators' personal lives, it's difficult to really get to know them. They're good "characters" - interesting to a point - but they never really come alive enough to be truly memorable. Baline and Captain Willie are, without a doubt, sympathetic and likable, but Eliza comes off as a snobby whiner. Her passages are so grating that I often wanted to skip them altogether. I think the real problem is that Farland's trying to cover too much territory. In attempting to tell the tale of the entire company, he doesn't expend enough energy on the individual, sacrificing that personal connection a reader needs to feel to really care about a character. My other beefs with the book include poor editing, so-so writing, and lack of focus.

Even though I didn't like Eliza Gadd as a character, I like the idea of using her as one of the narrators. As the only non-Mormon in the company (her husband was a devout member of the church, but she did not believe), her perspective is unique. She's openly critical of the church and its leaders, which lets Farland explore the frustration, doubt and fear that many pioneers had to have felt as they buried friends and family in shallow graves, as their limbs turned black from frostbite and as they boiled leather to keep starvation at bay. Farland doesn't shy away from or sentimentalize the pioneers' struggle - he lets the reader see the journey for what it was, mistakes, miracles, murmuring and all. It's obvious that he's done hours of research (even traveling along the Mormon Trail and pulling a handcart) on the pioneers and that he has a deep respect for them. I just think his book would have been much more effective if he'd eschewed the fiction and stuck with the facts. After all, never has the adage "Truth is stranger than fiction" been more apt than in the case of the Mormon pioneers. And that's a fact.

Just for the record, the book wasn't cheery in the least. Guess I'll go back to reading about the end of the world ...

(Readalikes: The Work and the Glory series by Gerald Lund)

Grade: C

If this were a movie, it would be rated: While the struggles of the pioneers can be "rated" no less than an R, this book is not overly graphic. I'm going to say PG for mild language, scenes of peril/death, and violence.

To the FTC, with love: I bought In the Company of Angels from Deseret Book.