So when I was reading this book, I have a great dislike of both bees/wasps/hornets (things that fly and can sting me) and syringes. I had to cover the front of the book up while I was reading it.
Yeah...
An amazon summary, "Fiona doesn't remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered-her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right wrist-a black oval with five marks on either side-that she doesn't remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. And she's right. When the honeybee population collapsed, a worldwide pandemic occurred and the government tried to bio-engineer a cure. Only the solution was deadlier than the original problem-the vaccination turned people into ferocious, deadly beasts who were branded as a warning to un-vaccinated survivors. Key people needed to rebuild society are protected from disease and beasts inside a fortress-like wall. But Fiona has awakened branded, alone-and on the wrong side of the wall . . ." AMAZON LINK THAT REVEALS WAYYY TOO MUCH
...well that summary was disappointing as all get out.
Let me try.
So Fiona wakes up in her house in her bedroom where there's dust everywhere, everything is broken, and it looks as if the house hasn't been lived in for years.
Something is seriously wrong.
She manages to stumble around, get into the bathroom, but she remembers herself when she was 13. It now appears as if she's significantly older. (The best part for me was that she was believably disoriented, scared, confused, etc.) She hears someone on the stairs, peeks an eye out, closes & locks the bathroom door before trying to flee out the window. She manages to get out the window as her brother comes barreling in after her, grabs her hair but she slips free and lands on the balcony before getting to the trampoline below and bolting over a fence.
Her brother looks like a beast. Beast in the sense of his eyes are savage, he wanders on all fours, and doesn't seem capable of speaking.
The whole neighborhood looks broken and deserted but she runs into one house that her neighbors are at. They are all wielding guns, have dogs, and demand to see her tattooed hand; but luckily she covered the tattoo up with make-up. They give her some crackers and send her on her way.
The whole world is in chaos it seems.
As night begins, Fiona begins to fear for her life as every instinct is telling her to seek shelter. She runs into another person who directs her into the sewer. There she begins to find even more out about what the world has become.
This book comes off as complicated, but I found it a very pleasant (okay, chilling, thrilling, unnerving, with a few points of ACK! in the gross sense) read.
I found all the characters to be mostly thought out (one stands out as a 'Um, really?' kind of thing, but I think this is the first book in the series so there should be more on that character in the future).
The world was set up beautifully and everything unraveled well. I was caught up in the mystery of Fiona and how everything had come to be the way it was. I think just enough was revealed at a good pace and even as the book ended, it was still answering questions rather than bringing up more. There are still some big questions that I would like to see answered in a second book, but this was well done.
There was a lot of 'gross' elements to the story, but as the story progressed it was strangely desensitizing as the humans that came along were far more disgusting than what had become of the environment.
Good show.
Happy reading!
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