Review: After The End by Amy Plum

Synopsis

She’s searching for answers to her past. They’re hunting her to save their future.

World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They've survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there.

At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.

When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie.

Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she's trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So this book was unlike any book I've ever read.

Now I don't want to bore people with my thoughts, but that's the whole purpose of reviewing. This book was surprisingly spiritual and philosophical, I know it's a science fiction and a lot of the stuff that happened is "impossible".

I think most people believe or would like to believe that they are part of a higher or divine power, that there is something or someone out there looking out for us. That we aren't just beings alone randomly placed on this earth by chance. After the End by Amy Plum is that kind of book, it's really just about how powerful believing can be and how debilitating it can be if our entire belief system was taken away. What if everything you believed in was a lie, or what if you had reason to question it. What if your entire existence depends on whether or not you believe.

Fuck. This is sounding like a church sermon, don't let my review mislead you. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, perhaps I can start my review.

I don't know what I believe anymore. What's right and what's wrong. For me, there are no more rules. I will do anything I need to rescue my clan, no matter who it hurts.

Let's face it people, we live in a greedy world, everyone wants a piece of the pie or at least a finger in it. Juneau, lives at one with the earth, she and her clan live apart from the rest of the world. The world the elders and her mentor, Whit have told her about is harsh. She returns from a hunt to find her village abandoned, not a person in sight, and she decides to search for her clan. It's in her search that her entire world literally comes crashing down around her. The people she's trusted her entire life are not what they seem and she doesn't know who she can trust.

I don't know this place where friends are the bad guys and even this boy sitting next to me can't be trusted. The rules are different. I have faced bears, wolves, snakes, and ice storms. And for the first time in my life, I'm truly scared, I admit.

So while searching for her clan, she meets Miles, a boy she's supposed to meet. Okay, that makes absolutely no sense so here goes, I'm not a pro at this science fiction stuff. She learns via an oracle that Miles will help her in her search and in rescuing her clan, almost like a prophecy but live.

So like any good book, there are hurdles along the way which are quickly overcome(this book was sorely lacking in suspense because of this). And a little bit of romance, definitely no insta-love here people. I think many might disagree but seeing as this is a YA novel, I think maybe some of the subject matter was a little heavy, that is if you read between the lines. I can't imagine a 16 year old me taking much away from this book, thing is there's so much more to this book than adventure and science fiction, or whatever you'd like to call it.

Now on the subject of that bloody cliffy at the end, I can't actually believe that the author would leave us hanging like that! I mean OMG!!! The rationale part of my brain knows how that I probably have absolutely nothing to worry about! But tell that to the irrational part of my brain!

BUY LINKS:

AMAZON

KOBO

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