“Cross the grid. Survive the storms. Let your destiny burn.
When mankind’s attempts to control nature backfire, Texas descends into a wasteland. Storms rage and ravenous beasts roam the Outer Grid. The only safe havens rest inside the tech-obsessed domed cities. But when her parents are murdered inside the Plex City dome, seventeen-year-old Juniper Conway wants revenge.
Ties to her extended family threaten to pull her back as she runs from city to city. The Plex is endangering its citizens by legalizing a deadly nano drug, and Juniper’s family needs her help to deliver the counteragent. Saving the city who orphaned her goes against everything she stands for. The only way out is to brave the wasteland.
Juniper joins a shipping crew fearless enough to transport food across the Outer Grid. But when a string of bad luck turns lethal, she fears something, or someone, is dragging her back to the Plex. As her world sinks into chaos, Juniper must decide if revenge is worth the lives of the crew she has come to love.”
Series: Book #1 in a series.
Spiritual Content- Matthew 21:29 at the beginning/dedication; This book has nods to a Jonah allegory with Juniper being told to go to a city she doesn’t want to go to; Juniper prays to God (a few times) and says “Thank God” (twice); Juniper believes a reoccurring dream is a sign from God and wondering if doing something is God’s will; Juniper recalls a song her aunt would sing about “the One who will save her when her life is fainting away”; Juniper wonders if everything that’s going wrong is God’s doing; Juniper thinks that God knows that she wants to yell obscenities and throw things reach when she received news about the death of someone; Juniper thinks that her prays are being answered with a joke; *Spoilers* With the dream, Juniper’s aunt believes that she’s supposed to save the city that killed her parents, which Juniper does not want to do; Towards the end, Juniper realizes that the chaos storm is an act of God and is Him telling her to go; At the very end, she speaks into the darkness that she’s go *End of Spoiler*; A side-character says “Thank God” after a concerning event; Another character says that the city/government have been playing God; Mentions of prayers & praying (Who the prayers are toward is not mentioned at first but as the book continues it’s implied to be God); A mention of some men being goliaths;
*Note: “Heavens” is exclaimed once; Some characters roll stones that have letters on them to find out who is causing the problems of the group (a superstition; One person view it as ridiculous and want no part of it, but most take part in it including Juniper who wonders if the results is God’s will); Juniper starts to believe that she is bad luck; Mentions of superstitions, bed omens, & some believing in a superstition about a cosmic force being upset (Juniper is told not to tick “the big force” off and she’ll be fine); Mentions of luck & bad luck; A mention of a savior complex.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘blasted’, a ‘crap’, a ‘crummy’, a cut-off ‘holy—', a ‘jacked up’, a ‘screwed up’, a ‘suckers’, an unfinished ‘what the…’, a ‘wimp’, two unfinished ‘what in the—‘s, two ‘wuss’s, four forms of ‘ticked off’, seven forms of ‘idiot’, nine forms of ‘shut up’, thirteen forms of ‘dumb’, and twenty-two forms of ‘stupid’; A couple other words are used as replacements for curse words (puke in “ain’t worth puke” for example); Mentions of curses (said, not written); Someone is called a “lily-livered piece of buzzard bait”; Eye rolling & Sarcasm; Thinking she’s dead, Close-calls, Being swallowed by one creature and almost eaten by another, Fighting, Being hit, Injuries, Pain, Blood/Bleeding, Passing out, & Throwing up (up to semi-detailed); Seeing a passing & Finding dead bodies (including ones that were tortured and have been there for a while, border-line semi-detailed // detailed); Seeing a death, others stabbed, robbed, bullied, hit/pushed, knocked-out, bleeding, & threatened (up to semi-detailed); Seeing someone be told about a loved one’s death, her grief, & others’ grief for friends (barely-above-not-detailed); Seeing and fighting wild mutant creatures that can be ugly, deadly, and dangerous (semi-detailed); Seeing others attacked by creatures (including someone dragged into the water by a wild beast & trying to save the person—the possibilities of both of them drowning and/or being eaten by the creature are present; semi-detailed in the creatures, the danger, & the panic); Hearing someone stabbed & an order for the man to be shot and killed (up to semi-detailed); Nightmares (barely-above-not-detailed); In a hallucination, Juniper recalls having a drug in her system as a child & trying to jump out a window of a tall building (thinking that she could fly, this is later referred to her near-death experience); Juniper recalls being chased as a child, seeing her parents’ murdered bodies, & being buried alive (between her parents’ bodies, border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Juniper imagines a friend dying, being crushed, and being tortured (including blood and later thinking about it again, border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Juniper wants to see the main city burn for murdering her parents; While she knows her aunt and uncle will worry about her, Juniper refuses to go to the main city & runs away (telling herself that she can contact them later; Juniper thinks once about how she doesn’t like taking orders from her aunt and uncle); Juniper’s aunt would have her hack into devices; Many mentions of deaths/murders (including Juniper’s parents’), bodies, torture, drugs, smuggling drugs and drug dealers, drug users and addicts, being hyped up on drugs, & people being killed by drugs (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of the possibility of dying & being shot; Mentions of bombs/bombings, weapons, attacks, rebels/thugs, violence, fights, & arrests; Mentions of thieves, stealing, & stolen items; Mentions of criminals & population control (the government purges those who question their control); Mentions of someone being marooned in the Grid (a wild area) if they are believed to be the cause of trouble (a superstition); Mentions of fires & people possibly being burned alive; Mentions of fighting, beatings, injuries, screams, blood/bleeding, & pain (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of bullies; Mentions of lies, lying, & liars; Mentions of hatred (including Juniper’s hatred for the main city); Mentions of parties & partiers (including Juniper’s friend who frequently goes to parties until the crack of dawn); Mentions of cigarettes & smoking; Mentions of tattoos (many side characters have tattoos, both good guys and bad guys); Mentions of vomit/throwing up; Mentions of hunting & hunters; A few mentions of assassins & them killing people (barely-above-not-detailed); A few mentions of murderous rebels who want to slaughter all things cyber (including those who have had technology alterations); A few mentions of an earthquake that caused people to be flung around in their cars or buried alive by it; A few mentions of nightmares (barely-above-not-detailed); A couple mentions of people experimenting on kids; A couple mentions of starting a war & gunfire in a war; A couple mentions of break-ins; A couple mentions of a bar; A couple mentions of jealousy; A couple mentions of eavesdropping; A couple mentions of manure; A mention of a plague that killed thousands; A mention of someone wanting to kill someone for causing another’s death; A mention of a poisonous plant; A mention of the lottery;
*Note: Juniper has bathophobia (the fear of depths) & we see it on page a few times; The ancestors of Juniper’s world were trying to fix the dying climate of the world and ended up “pulling the collapse [of the world’s weather]”closer & the chemicals altered the weather outside the domes to be unhabitable and deadly; People can alter their bodies with technology & are called “synths” (Juniper feels like a freak because she has no technology upgrades like most people due to her family not trusting the “tech giants”; Those who have a lower status have less alteration options available to them; The police outside of the grid are bodies decked in wires and mental & Juniper thinks that “they’re nothing more than robotic war machines. No one can be that synthetic and still human”; We see some who are more machine than human on page (semi-detailed); In a flashback, Juniper feels worthless like synths who were bullying her call her; *Spoiler* Seeing someone who was bioengineered to be a human weapon and can stop time (semi-detailed) *End of Spoiler*; Mentions of someone who was altered to be a weapon); Seeing mutated creatures, the dangers of them, being attacked and harmed by them, & being swallowed by them (semi-detailed); Mentions of mutated creatures outside the domes & most people avoiding them due to the dangers; A few mentions of anxiety (Juniper having anxiety at different points); A couple mentions of someone being entitled; A mention of someone saying that if he gets ahold of someone, they’re going to “wish their mama birthed them on the left side of never”; A mention of butting into a conversation; A mention of someone being vegan since they were five and found out what went into sausage links.
Sexual Content- Touches, Embraces, Nearness, Butterflies, Noticing, & Smelling (up to semi-detailed); Blushes; A man grabs Juniper and says he wants her in his bed & her future will depend on her “performance” (he is later mentioned again as the man “who tried to force [Juniper] into his bed” and later again as the man who offered for Juniper to take her to his bed; He says that Juniper is his type and licks her cheek); Juniper later sees a young woman with him and is concerned for her; When it looks like Juniper will have to share a bedroom with a guy, she asks if there’s a second room (he teases her about it, but there is); A guy teased Juniper about if she finds him handsome; When a guy looks at her, Juniper wishes she was wearing something more feminine; Mentions of cute guys, crushes, & types; A few mentions of blushes & winks; A few mentions of a guy’s girlfriend; A mention of a date; A bit of attraction & the emotions;
*Note: When Juniper finds out a girl has nineteen siblings, the topic of birth overages comes up (in the cities, births are limited for each family, but outside of the cities in the farm areas, there’s no birth limit, particularly because they need more hands on the farms); Juniper feels embarrassed to give a guy her clothing size for work; A couple mentions of ripped guys & their muscles; A mention of a synth having feminine curves; A mention of a creature’s breeding ground.
-Juniper Conway, age 17
1st person P.O.V. of Juniper
Set in 2224 (Sci-fi)
320 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
{ Add 1-2 stars for Older girls who enjoy sci-fi books. }
That was…interesting.
Hmm.
I don’t know where to begin with these thoughts. They feel scattered all over the place, but I’ll try my best.
This was interesting. If the book stayed the same as the first half of the book, I would say confusing. Because I was very confused on what was happening. It’s a pet peeve of mine to be left out on the main character’s backstory and that was very apparent in this book.
With Juniper, I didn’t really like her at first because of the chip on her shoulder the size of Texas. But as the book continued she either got better or I got used to her, and she wasn’t bothering me as much anymore. I didn’t care for the love interest either, which didn’t help. I’ll admit that I found Juniper and the ending of this book to be very typical for a sci-fi/fantasy book with how it went and what was revealed. I’m sure some readers will enjoy it, but it wasn’t my thing.
For the large part of the beginning, I was pretty confused on what exactly was going on because we are very much thrown into this world and not a lot is explained. It worked at times, and then it also made me frustrated at times because somethings are just randomly happened or appear and I felt like I had to scramble to pick up on what was being said or happening. This was particularly the case with her family background which was not told to the readers until around 75% into the book. I always go back through a book after I finish it to either grab my highlights of content notes (e-books) and/or re-confirm things before I share my review, so I did that for this book as well. The parts that confused me greatly at the beginning made much more sense after finishing the book, but when I was reading them for the first time again and again? I didn’t understand what was happening at all.
There really wasn’t much faith content besides some mentions of praying and God here and there throughout the book. I would definitely consider this to be more Clean Sci-fi than Christian Sci-fi, at least at this point in the series, but you could see some nods to a Jonah-inspired allegory if you paid attention.
I will say that I wasn’t a fan of a creepy man wanting to take Juniper to his bed. The book could have been squeakier on the sexual content side without him. Not sure why he was added in for those comments? It could have been okay for a bit younger (say 14/15, depending on the girl) if those parts had been left out. That said, this book did have more weird mutant creatures and the dangers of them that while wasn’t gory, was a bit much for me at times and caused my stomach to turn. Nearly eating people, the ick and grossness that they are, and being trapped/swallowed by them, etc. It just was gross at times. Add in finding a couple tortured bodies and I was struggling with those scenes. Those who are major fans of sci-fi books may not even be bothered by those parts, but I’m not a major fan and apparently have a weaker stomach for those scenes.
It’s so strange to read a fantasy/dystopian book set in Texas. but I ended up liking that element. I don’t think I’ll be continuing on with the series, but this book was a different kind of read for myself. Some may really enjoy it, but it will depend on the girl.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
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