Oh, this book had such a cool set up, but just couldn’t seem to live up to it! Set about 150 years in the future, The Dead Lands focuses on a society built among the ruins of St. Louis. This community, known as the Sanctuary, is all that remains of the United States after a super flu, and then nuclear war, wipes everyone out. Or so they’ve been led to believe. Then one day, a slightly-mutant girl (Gawea, as in Saca-) shows up at the Sanctuary, […]
So much wasted potential.
I know we’re experiencing a kind of glut in dystopian fiction these days, but I do honestly enjoy the genre when it’s done well (my go-to examples are still always going to be Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy or Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which I am teaching this fall and SUPER excited about). I look for other examples by authors I haven’t read, and The Dead Lands was one such text. I’ve never read anything by Benjamin Percy, but one of my Facebook friends […]