After the End (After the End #1)
by Amy Plum
Publication: 6th May 2014
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pages: 336
Genre: Paranormal
Age Appropriate: Young Adult
She’s searching for answers to her past. They’re hunting her to save their future.
World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They've survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there.
At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.
When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie.
Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she's trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.
World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They've survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there.
At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.
When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie.
Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she's trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.
My Thoughts.
I loved this book, it was filled with action, magic, betrayal and romance.After The End is hard to put into any one genre, I know from the cover and the title that most people think that it's a dystopian (and I did too before reading it myself) but that can't be further from the truth.
It certainly has it's paranormal aspects but it's also a contemporary as well.
Following Juneau (I have no idea how to pronounce this name so in my head it's Juno) who lives with her Father and a clan of people in Alaska close to Mount Denali, safe from the rest of the world after World War 3 and it's destruction, they live a quiet life led by their clan leader Whit, the children are taught from an early age about connecting to the Yara (a magic dependent on nature and connection to the Earth) to be able to conjure and read things, Juneau is training to one day be the Sage (clan leader) and so is depended on for all sorts of tasks, which is how she finds herself off hunting one day and on her return discovers that the whole clan has been kidnapped, so she sets off to find and rescue them.
Stepping over the boundary of their land which they've been forbidden to do in case of nuclear fallout from the war, Juneau soon discovers that what she and all the rest of the clan were told and were led to believe was one big lie, there was never any war and the rest of the world has been going along as per normal all that time, ever since Whit moved them all to their home in Alaska in 1984, realising that her whole life has been a lie, she commandeers Miles a boy whose name she got from an Oracle to transport her to where she needs to go, not knowing that he is the son of the head of a large pharmaceutical company and he's planning on delivering her to his Dad who is one of a group of two people who are after her for the knowledge she has about some drug that her clan used and they will stop at nothing to get it.
After a while Miles starts to have second thoughts about taking her to his Dad, although at first he believes she's crazy he soon starts to believe her story, and it's not long before they develop feelings for one another.
But with two different groups after her, and the betrayal of a clan member will she ever be able to get to the rest of her clan to rescue them, or will Juneau find herself captured before then, unable to save anyone?
The concept that Amy has created is so well done, it will keep you on your toes and after the ending you'll find yourself desperate to get your hands on a copy of the second book.
A fantastic story with well written characters and even better world building, a great start to this new series.
I give this 4/5 stars.
Amy Plum is the author of DIE FOR ME, a YA series set in Paris. The first three books—DIE FOR ME, UNTIL I DIE, and IF I SHOULD DIE—are international bestsellers, and have been translated into eleven different languages. The fourth book is an eNovella, entitled DIE FOR HER. The first book of Amy’s new series, AFTER THE END, releases in May 2014.
After being raised in Birmingham, Alabama, in a rather restrictive environment, AMY PLUM escaped to Chicago to an even more restrictive environment at a university that expelled people for dancing. (And where she was called to the dean’s office for “wearing too much black”.) After all of that restrictiveness, she was forced to run far far away, specifically to Paris, France, where she only wore black and danced all she wanted.
After five years in Paris, she ventured to London, where she got an M.A. in Medieval Art History, specializing in Early Sienese Painting (1260-1348) mainly because it promised almost no hope of finding a paying job afterward.
Amy managed to find work in the world of art and antiques in New York. But after almost a decade of high-pressure lifestyle in the Big Apple, she swapped her American city for a French village of 1300 inhabitants.
After signing with HarperCollins for the DIE FOR ME series, Amy left her job as an English professor at Tours University to write full-time. She now lives in Paris with her two children.
She is a huge fan of Edward Gorey and Maira Kalman (and collects both of their books and art), as well as David Sedaris, Amadeo Modigliani, and Ira Glass.
