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Everwild by Neal Shusterman (view source)

Revision as of 15:19, 17 January 2010

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The first book built up to and ended in the inevitable stand-off between Mary and Nick but it wasn't completely final, and several subplots remained unanswered. ''Everwild'' takes up shortly after the previous climax and it's clear from the get-go that a bigger confrontation is unavoidable. Both begin venture to the margins of Everlost - ''Everwild'' - to raise armies of Afterlights, while Allie continues the search for her family and learns a great deal more about skinjacking.
And I loved it!The overlying narrative is pacy and tense, but the tension is punctuated by some wonderful slapstick humour, superb satire and umpteen clever pop-culture references.
The overlying narrative is pacy and tense, but the tension is punctuated by some wonderful slapstick humour, superb satire and umpteen clever pop-culture references. Mary Hightower is a truly wonderful creation: beautiful, serene and outwardly kindly, but underneath it all she's the most delicious of sociopaths - utterly corrupted by power and with a core of true evil. I love to hate Mary! On the other hand, Nick suffers for his altruism. In Everlost, Afterlights tend to forget much of who they were when they were alive and they gradually take on the characteristics of what they do remember. Nick died while eating a candy bar and arrived in Everlost with a chocolate smear on his mouth. And Nick is gradually being taken over by that smear. The longer he lingers to save Afterlights from Mary and an eternity of peonage, the less likely it is that he will ever find the light himself.
It's probably better to have read the first book before picking up ''Everwild'' - although the worldbuilding continues on, the exposition is kept to a minimum as there's just so much going on. In some ways, it rather reminds me of some adult apocalyptic fiction - there are many threads on an inevitable collision course, similar to, say, Stephen King's ''The Stand''. It all makes for utterly compulsive reading - and there's a reveal for Allie about skinjacking that absolutely made me jump out of my skin.
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