Savage Drift by Emmy Laybourne
My rating: 3/5 cats
this is pretty much a three-star cat series across the board. it’s perfectly enjoyable escapist fun perfect for summertime adults, reluctant reader teens, or YA aftermath novel completists. the writing and characters can be a little doofy at times, and there’s some overexplication and repetition that gets irritating, but it has a refreshing racial diversity, an emphasis on family, including circumstantial rather than blood-family, and it doesn’t shy away from teen sexuality/pregnancy, rape or substance abuse.
this third volume is probably the most intense, in terms of situation, but also the doofiest.
this time, the narration is split between dean and josie.
quick recap of events: megatsunami triggers chemical spill causing blood type-specific symptoms in people ranging from blisters to uncontrollable rage. teens and younger children survive in a superstore; half of the group leaves store to head to airport/evacuation point. one girl—the nurturing josie—sacrifices herself to her type-o rage to save others from a maniac and then runs off while the rest of the group, including her boyfriend niko, continue to the safety of the airport, send help back to the group still in the store, and they evacuate to canada. josie is presumed lost until niko sees a picture of her in a newspaper that shows her locked up in a detention center in missouri, being beaten by a guard.
so, josie is in this camp, where she again finds herself surrounded by a group of younger children, but this time out she’s decided she’s not going to risk losing everyone she cares about again, so she has decided to shut herself off emotionally, and squash all her maternal impulses. the camp is full of gangs of type o’s, which basically means a teenage girl, and many very young children, have been locked up with people who have the highest propensity towards violence, including sexual violence. to get to their designated quarters josie, and all these other young children, must pass through the men’s wing, where only some of the doors lock. and even without the uncontrollable violence type o’s manifest upon exposure to the chemicals remaining in the air, a lot of these men are just plain violent assholes cooped up against their wills with no outlets or diversions who are all too ready to see a young girl as a target. which makes for a tension-riddled situation, but it also stretches credulity. the men are dangerous, the guards sadistic, and josie’s basically a shell—living without feeling.
meanwhile, dean is at a much nicer refugee camp in vancouver, despite the fact that he is also type o. because canada is nicer in general.
I heard a joke here, Q: “How do you get 100 Canadians out of a pool?” A: “Would everyone please exit the swimming pool?”
he’s busy dealing with astrid’s pregnancy and his presumed future nominal fatherhood by wallowing in jealousy and insecurity and having little tantrum-bickers with jake, the biological father. which is doofy, and why 16-year-olds shouldn’t have kids. so while jake and dean try to score points off each other for astrid’s affection by being overprotective and treating her like a helpless child, and jake overcomes his pill addiction by turning to alcohol instead, things are getting tense in love triangle land. and then they learn that many of the other pregnant women at the camp have suddenly disappeared, being taken out drugged by soldiers.
when niko shows them the paper proving josie is alive and in trouble, the four of them decide to leave the relative safety of canada and head to missouri to rescue josie and eventually make their way to niko’s uncle’s farm in pennsylvania. it’s a dangerous enough journey to make without a pregnant teenage girl, with rumors of chemical drifts still affecting the area and causing folks to become symptomatic, as well as the type o’s still on the loose with guns and blind rage, and the soldiers looking to contain the affected population. but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
so, yeah, it’s wildly unrealistic, and all the astrid/dean/jake stuff gets old real fast, but there are some great action sequences, and some comic relief in young max’s stories of his family, which he doesn’t realize are mostly about prostitution, recounted to an aghast audience. adorable!
and a post-apocalyptic denny’s, still maintaining that friendly façade.
Welcome to Denny’s!
We have no vegetables or fruits
except canned!
No decaf ): No sodas! But we got milk!
And we’ll do our best to make it a great day!“They sure do like exclamation marks,” Astrid said wryly.
it’s a solid ending to a decent series, and while it’s not the smartest or most sophisticated series on the YA market, it’s fast and enjoyable and i’m glad i went back to finish it.
read my book reviews on goodreads
