(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

Although I generally don’t really like multiple first person POVs, I did them tolerable to read in this book. It was interesting to see the four different characters and how they had to deal with the death of a person so close to all of them.

I found each of the POV characters to be really interesting and although they each seemed shallow and somewhat vapid from the outside, when I was inside their heads, I felt like I was able to get to know the characters better as the book went on.

It was interesting to learn the secrets the different characters were keeping and I had a lot of sympathy for Val… even though I didn’t think she was a very nice person to Haddie. Reggie was probably the person I found the most interesting… although her apparent obsession with Jackson kind of made her seem less intelligent than she probably was.

I also found Livia to be an interesting character… vastly different to how she came across in her first appearance. I did feel some sympathy for Haddie… but although her father did come across as overbearing, I did think that she was making some bad choices.

I couldn’t really understand why Jackson had managed to draw so many people to him, since he didn’t come across as very charming/nice from what was revealed about him during the course of the book.

While it was interesting to see the police officers questioning, I did think they weren’t exactly professional. While that could have been due to seeing them through the eyes of the other characters, it would have been good to see more of their personalities.

There were a lot of elements of tension in this book and I did find it really easy to read, if quite complicated due to everything that was going on. I did kind of like Marcus at first… but I went off him by the end of the book.

I did think that the book ended quite abruptly and I was left with more questions than answers by the end. I would like to read a sequel to this.

Alice in No-Man’s-Land

by James Knapp

Publisher: Curtis Brown Unlimited

Release Date: June 10th 2015

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Thriller, Fantasy, Apocalyptic

Synopsis:

When her escape pod falls to earth, crashing in Ypsilanti Bloc, privileged seventeen-year-old Alice Walshe is dashed from the wonderland of wealth and prosperity into a ruined, walled city overrun with militias, gangs, and even cannibals. On top of this horror, her younger brother’s escape pod is missing.

Alice isn’t naïve – she’s always known blocs like Ypsilanti exist, left behind after a foodborne illness ravished the country decades earlier and left pockets of severe urban decay in its wake. Men like her father – a major player at Cerulean Holdings – renew the devastated blocs and bring stability back into the areas. But, Ypsilanti is even worse than the tales she’s heard, and rumor has it the bloc is faced with the threat of extermination by Cerulean, not renewal.

Trapped within Ypsilanti’s borders and left for dead, Alice teams up with a pair of teen scavengers who tracked the wreck of her pod. Despite their rough exterior and vulgar speech, they’re her only option for navigating the hostile and violent environment of Ypsilanti, finding her brother, and getting out of No-Man’s-Land alive..

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My Review

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

I was quite taken by this story. Although I did have some moments of confusion while I was reading the book to begin with, I very quickly found it easy to care about Alice as a character. While I would have liked some more detail about the training she’d had (it was mentioned only briefly), I found her easy to empathise with and it was interesting to see how she had to deal with a world so vastly different to the one she was used to.

I liked being able to see Alice interacting with her brother, though I didn’t get much of an idea of her relationship with her father. It was good to see how she was dealing with her father’s girlfriend, though… and it was good to see that Greta was actually a nice person and did try to help Alice and Cody out, even at the cost of herself.

It was interesting to see bits and pieces of the society at the beginning of each chapter and to get some idea of how people viewed the squatters. While the other society was clearly a vicious one, I did think that they were clearly just trying to survive… and even though there were aspects that were vicious, I could relate to the survival instinct. At the same time, it was easy to see why Alice would find many aspects of their culture difficult to deal with.

I really liked Basilio as a character, though I found his apparent romantic interest in Alice very difficult to believe in. I preferred Maya’s interactions with Alice and I felt that the friendship between them evolved in a real, natural way.

There was a lot of violence in this book, but I felt that it did fit in with the society. I thought it was good to see that, although Alice was intelligent, she did need help to survive… and she didn’t know everything about the other society.

There were a lot of good moments of tension in this book and I found it really easy to read. I think I would be interested in reading a sequel to this book… and checking out more books by this author in the future.

About The Author

James Knapp was born in New Hampshire in 1970, and has lived in the New England area since that time. He developed a love of reading and writing early on, participating in young author competitions as early as grade school, but the later discovery of works by Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov turned that love to an obsession.

He wrote continuously through high school, college and beyond, eventually breaking into the field with the publication of the Revivors trilogy (State of Decay, The Silent Army, and Element Zero). State of Decay was a Philip K. Dick award nominee, and won the 2010 Compton Crook Award. Ember, The Burn Zone, and Fallout were all written under the name James K. Decker.

He now lives in MA with his wife Kim. 

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