Ooo! The twists in this novel! You think you have it figured out and then — WHAT was that? The ending leaves the reader feeling both vindicated and wanting more, the perfect cliffhanger for a series starter.
Into the City is a Young Adult novel, not my usual cup of tea, but I do enjoy the occasional dystopian read — and this is indeed a dark and crumbling world Cook portrays. The novel is set in the near future, in a world ravaged by an illness which attacked only its adults and left its juvenile and adolescent population intact. Intact but not unscathed. Children and teenagers left to their own devices and survival created a society in which there coexist the extremes of cruelty, embodied by the militant Lyths and drug-addled Crazies, and kindness, a small but growing community of Arkers.
Our protagonist, a young girl named Lexi and her friends, Aster, Nate, Ruby, Eden, and Marcus are inexorably pulled into this world of dangerous extremes, lured by the promise of a utopian society and their need for community. Into the city they must go. And it is there that they discover not only the origins of their fate and a new promise of their future, but also themselves. There, in the city, they must confront their past trauma, test their values, and — above all — survive.
Cook’s storytelling is on point, unravelling the tale at a quick and lively pace, matching the urgency of the characters’ lives. Likewise, Cook’s prose is well-crafted for a young adult audience, being straightforward and succinct, allowing for both the reader’s organic imaginings and providing ample description of the landscape of this dystopian world. On occasion there is the use of an overworked metaphor or simile, but this is a minor complaint given the audience it targets. These phrases have yet to jade the Young Adult reader, and indeed provide familiarity and structure to the tropes they are just learning to recognize.
A word on Cook’s characters. These too are well-developed, even as they are drawn from tropes of this genre: they are young, but mature in their self-awareness (no doubt as a result of their life experiences) and their inner reflections are both adult and childlike. The benefit for the reader is that these characters will appeal to both the teenager on the brink of Young Adult and the Older Adult, remembering their teenaged past. Their concerns are recognizable, and cross cut generational divides; we all understand the need to survive and to live with our traumas.
Into The City is a typical and atypical novel of its genre. It satisfies the genre-reader, with their expectations of the dystopian novel, but Into the City does also offer twists and revelations which will draw in the reader to end. There are surprises. What appears simple is not so, as readers will discover.
To purchase this novel on Amazon, click here. At present, this 287 page novel sells for $10.70 for the paperback and roughly $5 for the Kindle ebook. I bought my copy on Kindle for $0.99 during a sale.
Dr JoAnn LoSavio 