Review: Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Fever by Lauren DeStefano (February 2012, Harper Voyager, ISBN: 0007457790)

Review: Fever is the second part of a trilogy and this review will contain spoilers for the first book, Wither.

Fever, the second part in The Chemical Garden trilogy, carries straight on from Wither and finds Rhine and Gabriel on the run from their luxurious prison in which Rhine was a reluctant bride and Gabriel her servant. They are aiming to get from Florida back to Rhine's home in Manhattan where she hopes her twin Rowan will be waiting for her.

Things go wrong almost immediately when the pair are captured in a scarlet district in an old fun fair and are forced to entertain paying customers and have opiates forced on them. Rhine's conviction that her ex-father-in-law Vaughn, who is experimenting to find the cure to the virus which is killing women at 20 and men at 25, will find her turns out to be true and another escape takes place.

Travelling northwards up the coast, Rhine and Gabriel and a young child they rescue meet more people who want something from them until finally they reach New York. But things have changed since Rhine was stolen...and her nemesis, Vaughn, is not far behind.

I have to say I found Fever a bit of a seedy read, gripping but seedy. The ratio of bad people to good is about 4:1 and Rhine's experiences range from performing in a brothel (with Gabriel) to being sexually molested by an elderly man and a horrendous and tense later section where she is experimented on. This is strong stuff, and I'm intrigued to see how it all works out in the next book: will there be a cure or will we leave Rhine with her life about to end? The romance element is quite unusual; Gabriel is not portrayed as a unrealistic hero, rather he is a normal person. He suffers from addiction, and often Rhine is the strong one and he does not feature in the last quarter of the book. Again I want to see what happens to them. Whereas Wither was set mainly in a mansion, Fever reveals the real world that Rhine has lived in and that Gabriel has never known before.

Fever is a beautifully written, page-turning read but one that may leave you wanting a hot shower. Unfortunately the final part, Sever, is not out until February 2013.

Review: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Wither by Lauren DeStefano (February 2012, Harper Voyager, ISBN: 0007386982)

Review: Wither is the first part in The Chemical Garden trilogy, the sequel Fever is also available. At an unspecified time in the future, technology has allowed for perfect children to be born. These "first generations" are living to a ripe old age however subsequent generations are reduced to a lifespan of 20 years for females, 25 for males at which time a virus kills them. In addition, all that remains of the habitable world is North America with the other continents reduced to nothing, uninhabitable fragments.

Young women are at risk from the 'Gatherers' who steal them off the street and sell them as brides into polygamous marriages to make babies. This is what happens to sixteen-year-old Rhine, who lived in New York City with her twin brother Rowan, before being sold to a wealthy Floridian architect Linden (21) along with two sister brides, Jenna (18) and Cecily (13). The brides live in a large house in luxury but it is still a prison and Rhine vows to escape and return to her brother. As well as her sister-wives she begins to become friends with one of the servants, Gabriel, however she has to be careful as Linden's father the heartless Vaughn knows everything that goes on and will go to inhuman lengths to keep Linden happy.

Wither is an imaginative debut novel which suffers a little from repetition and slow pacing. Rhine has to play the long game, getting her husband to trust her enough for her to leave the mansion, albeit escorted, however she spends the best part of a year in the mansion, 25% of her remaining life-span. Rhine begins to tolerate Linden as he is a pawn like her in his father's machinations, but unlike Rhine he is weak and I wanted Rhine to tell him the truth and get him to change things. Love interest Gabriel is kept off-stage for much of the time. Nonetheless, with its well-developed characters, it held my interest and there were some unexpected twists in the plot.

I enjoyed Wither but I'm hopeful that Fever will have more thrills, more romance, more about the outside world and more about the virus and the possibility of an antidote.

Publishing Deals from Bologna

Publishers Lunch today has a selection of the many deals struck at the Bologna Book Fair:

Gabrielle Zevin's first three books in the BIRTHRIGHT SERIES, set in a dystopian future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband while water and paper are carefully rationed, the series relates the ascension and ultimate downfall of a 16-year-old girl, the heir apparent to an important and dangerous New York City crime family, to Farrar, Straus Children's.

Twenty-five-year old debut author Lauren DeStefano's THE LAST CHEMICAL GARDEN, the first in a trilogy in a dystopian world, the result of a failed effort to create a perfect race, which has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years, following a sixteen-year-old girl sold as a polygamous bride -- yet her husband is hopelessly in love with her and opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought possible, to Simon & Schuster Children's, in a pre-empt, for publication beginning in April 2011. Rights to the trilogy to Harper UK, at auction, in a six-figure deal.


Lila Fine's VIXEN, the first novel in The Flappers series, to Delacorte, in a three-book deal.

Robin Wasserman's THE BOOK OF BLOOD AND SHADOW, about a girl who, upon discovering her best friend murdered and her boyfriend the apparent killer, is caught up in a dangerous world of competing secret societies, all searching for the Luminus Dei, an ancient device that will supposedly allow direct communication with God, to Knopf Children's, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2011.

Ilsa Bick's ASHES, which begins when an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky, killing the vast majority of the world population and zapping every electronic device. Everyone still alive has changed considerably -- some for the better (those who acquired a superhuman sense) while others for the worse (those who acquired a taste for human flesh), to Egmont.

Jeff Hirsch's debut, THE LONG WALK HOME, a post-apocalyptic story, set after "The Collapse," when America was destroyed by a war with China and a pandemic flu, about what happens when a boy who has spent his whole life only surviving finds a place where he can truly live, to Scholastic, at auction, in a two-book deal.