I
love sci-fi apocalypse stories. Not the post-apocalypse, dystopia ones, but the
ones that take place as the world’s falling apart. Like, for example, Stephen
King’s THE STAND. Or Rick Yancey’s THE 5TH WAVE, a YA novel about an alien
invasion where most of the human population dies. When the sequel to THE 5TH
WAVE was released, I rushed to the bookstore to buy it.
Not
that this post is about THE 5TH WAVE or its sequel; it’s about the book I
discovered because of it. As the girl behind the counter was scanning THE
INFINITE SEA, we started talking about apocalypse stories. Her recent favorite,
she said, was H2O by Virginia Bergin. She made the premise sound intriguing, so
I promptly took out my phone and added the book to my ever-growing Amazon wish
list. The cover further got my attention:
Months
later, my husband bought H2O for me for my birthday…along with several other
books. I started with the other books. Big mistake. Because I ended up loving
H2O the most and here’s why:
THE
PREMISE
Seven
years before the novel begins, an asteroid was headed toward Earth all Armageddon style. Some people got
together and shot the asteroid out of the sky…sort of. What they didn’t count
on, or didn’t think to even consider, was that the asteroid was already caught
in Earth’s gravitational pull and the remnants after the explosion continued to
fall toward Earth. Theoretically, those pieces of asteroid shouldn’t have been
a problem, but they contained a bunch of extremophile bacteria that, when
combined with the water in Earth’s atmosphere, turned deadly for humans.
Basically, killer rain. Which in turn got into the water table, poisoning every
bit of fresh water on the planet. Most of the human population died in the first
rainfall or by drinking tap water shortly thereafter. Ruby, the novel’s
narrator, survived.
THE
HUMOR
Most
apocalyptic stories are dark. Very dark. And that’s not to say H2O isn’t. But I
love Ruby’s humor. First off, she’s British. Second, she brutally honest about
her own flaws. And third, well, there’s this part about a Carpenters song
(playing on a car stereo while Ruby and her stepdad are trapped inside watching
people outside die all around them) that had me laughing out loud on my lunch
break. (Luckily, the lab was empty.)
THE
SCIENCE
Bergin
nails the science. I’m always (consciously and otherwise) on the lookout for errors
in science in such books and I couldn’t find any here. Bergin’s very specific
about the properties of the extremophile. She also details what water’s
contaminated, what’s not, and what that means for Ruby and the story’s other
characters. Further, the whole time I read, I kept wondering about the future.
Was there a way to beat this bug? (Ruby quickly discovers boiling the thing
doesn’t kill it.) And if so, would that be something a character would figure
out?
THE
END
Don’t
worry. I’m not going to ruin the end for you. But I loved it…and that’s saying
a lot because I’m pretty picky when it comes to endings. For starters, I hate
epilogues. (See Harry Potter for a
great example of why epilogues suck…because who didn’t know all that stuff anyway?)
For another thing, I don’t want sappy endings where everything’s all perfect.
Life’s not perfect. But the ending of H2O is.
While
I don’t know the name of the girl who mentioned H2O to me that day at the bookstore,
I’m happy to pass on her recommendation. If you like dark YA sci-fi with some
humor, you should check out Virginia Bergin’s H2O. You’re welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment