Author: Tony Bertauski
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!
The blurb really did its job here because it drew me in and for once in a rare while, I wasn't disappointed, although this novel is obviously intended as the beginning of a series (actually I later discovered it isn't even in the first volume of an ongoing series, but you didn't have to have read the first to get the most out of this one), and I don't do series unless they are really, really compelling. This one was a worthy read as far as it went, but I felt no compulsion afterwards to read more about this setting or these characters.
The story begins with half-a-dozen teenage girls waking up in some sort of dormitory, and not a single one of them can remember who she is. Their heads are shaved and they discover labeled clothing under their beds, which is how they arrive at their names, but they don't know if these names are really theirs anymore than they know if the clothes are really their own clothes. Everything is very basic and spartan, with a limited amount of food, and winter is evidently on its way, so even though they appear to be on a ranch or a farm, rationing seems like a good idea.
'
The girl who is evidently named Cyn takes charge, and the obvious plan is to walk out of here back to civilization, which can't be that far away, right? One problem with that: each of the girls has some sort of device embedded in her neck, right below her skull, which pains them increasingly as they try to cross boundaries, and which eventually knocks them out cold.
Om the wall under Cyn's bed, she discovers a host of scratch marks by which someone has evidently been keeping track of how many days go by. There are a lot of days. The farm seems to have been surrounded not only by a fence, but by wilderness, of a kind which is creepy to say the least, Also, there is a dead adult. Her decaying corpse lies on the path to a shack in the trees, to which there seems to be no ingress.
One of the girls is not a part of the group in the dorm. She wakes up in the house, to which none of the other girls can go. Her head isn't shaved, but she has no more idea who she is than they did. At first she befriends the other girls but soon retreats to the house where she barricades herself in. This is how the status quo stands when a strange mature guy turns up out of the wilderness, accompanied by a young man who is as dangerous as he is vacant. At first the guy seems friendly, confused, in need of help, but slowly he begins to assert his maturity. What the heck is going on here?
I found this novel engrossing, intriguing and entertaining. I should warn you that it reads a bit slowly at times and you want to yell at the girls to get a grip and get organized, and get moving, but aside from that, it was a decent read - and that's all I ask for! It seems a bit obvious after a while what's going on, but it takes some time to get there and be sure of where we are. The question is, is what seems obvious really the truth, or is it just another delusion? The novel is well written overall, and the descriptions of winter chilled me. I am not a fan of the cold! There were some instances of typos or poor grammar, but nothing egregious or outrageous. I recommend this novel as a worthy read.
