Welcome to my first stop on the blog tour for The Stranded and The Exiled by Sarah Daniels where I will be sharing my review for the first title in this brilliant dystopian duology.
Published last year, this is a book which – I have to be honest – passed me by as I had yet to discover just how good Young Adult reads are now and which I am delighted to have been introduced to. Tense, satisfyingly complex and highly credible, the book tells the story of some of the key players onboard the Arcadia – a former cruise ship that never reached its destination due to the outbreak of a biological war and which over the course of forty years has changed from a floating pleasure palace into a city where the passengers and crew have morphed into a new society with all that entails.
It is a cold, late autumn evening when we meet medical student Esther who is studying hard for exams in the Lookout – a cheap café with a great view of both the sea and the nearby coast. Finishing up for the night, Esther goes to leave but is startled by a sudden leaflet drop – something that is illegal under the strict laws of the ship. As those around her scramble to escape, another girl falls and Esther overrides her conscience to leave her to the mercy of the Coalies – the brutal onboard law-enforcers. Behind the drop are Nik and May who rapidly flee the chaotic scene only to be pursued by Coalies, resulting in Nik being shot.
After Esther – who is blissfully unaware of her sister’s involvement in the drop – argues with May about her strange behaviour, she decides to visit boyfriend Alex but on her way is grabbed by a bunch of men who throw a hood over her head and drag her away to provide the urgent medical attention that Nik needs. At the same time, Hadley – the tyrannical leader of the Coalies responsible for enforcing law on the ship’s community – starts to investigate the leaflet drop and vows to bring those responsible to justice, brutally showing his deputy just how he intends to enforce it. Having completed tending to Nik, Esther is returned to the ship’s market, where she meets Alex who cannot help but notice that she has been injured by those who took her and takes her back to his to clean up.
Trying her best to focus on passing the exams that she hopes will be her route to leaving the ship, Esther is soon dragged into the secret underground world that Nik and May inhabit – a world of gangs and rebels determined to overthrow Hadley and the Coalies to allow those on board to finally leave the confines of the ship. Putting her trust in Nik and older sister May, Esther quickly starts to learn the truth as to what has been going on, not just onboard the Arcadia but on the other ships full of the Stranded and within the mainland Federated States, and starts to help them. Can the rebels overthrow Hadley to bring about a new start for all onboard and what will he have in store for them if they can’t?
The story is told through the narratives of several of the main characters and in particular Esther. Hardworking, studious and loyal to the Federated States when we meet her, her run-in with the shady gangs controlling the Arcadia’s underworld when she is taken to attend to Nik not only put her in immediate and very grave danger but are the trigger for her discovering that the older sister to whom she looks up is not who she thought she was. As Esther becomes more and more involved in the cause for which Nik and May are prepared to sacrifice everything, she is forced to question the destiny she has always believed to be her own and has to start to consider in whom she can place her trust.
In the cruel and inhumane Hadley, author Sarah Daniels has given the rebels a nemesis with no redeeming features. Twisted and bitter following a romantic relationship that did not pan out the way he wanted it to, he takes enormous pleasure in acts of enormous cruelty and imposing more and more severe laws upon the residents of the ship. With the Coalies under his firm control and a wealth of technology at his disposal, ultimately he is a coward who relishes the power he has and who believes that by asserting his authority over the weakest of those for whom he is responsible will gain his own freedom to return to the mainland.
At times very bleak, this is a story that almost creeps up on the reader as you try to work out just whose side everyone is on and the little details from earlier chapters flare up into major parts of the plot further on. I absolutely loved it and would highly recommend it for its target audience.
My enormous thanks go to publisher Penguin and to the WriteReads for my gifted copy of this title and its sequel. The Stranded and The Exiled are both on sale now.
Don’t forget to check out the other brilliant bloggers on the tour and I look forward to welcoming you back for my review of The Exiled on August 2nd.
Mrs Sydney's Famous World's Smallest Library 