It is a June unlike any other before, with temperatures soaring to asphyxiating heights. All across the world, freak weather patterns—and the life-shattering catastrophes they entail—have become the norm. The twenty-first century has entered a new phase.
But Gabrielle Fox’s main concern ......more
It is a June unlike any other before, with temperatures soaring to asphyxiating heights. All across the world, freak weather patterns—and the life-shattering catastrophes they entail—have become the norm. The twenty-first century has entered a new phase.
But Gabrielle Fox’s main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her life after a devastating car accident that has left her disconnected from the world, a prisoner of her own guilt and grief. Determined to make a fresh start, and shake off memories of her wrecked past, she leaves London for a temporary posting as an art therapist at Oxsmith Adolescent Secure Psychiatric Hospital, home to one hundred of the most dangerous children in the country. Among them: the teenage killer Bethany Krall.
Despite two years of therapy, Bethany is in no way rehabilitated and remains militantly nonchalant about the bloody, brutal death she inflicted on her mother. Raised in evangelistic hellfire, the teenager is violent, caustic, unruly, and cruelly intuitive. She is also insistent that her electroshock treatments enable her to foresee natural disasters—a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion.
But as Gabrielle delves further into Bethany’s psyche, she begins to note alarming parallels between her patient’s paranoid disaster fantasies and actual incidents of geological and meteorological upheaval—coincidences her professionalism tells her to ignore but that her heart cannot. When a brilliant physicist enters the equation, the disruptive tension mounts—and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator or a harbinger of global disaster on a scale never seen before? Where does science end and faith begin? And what can love mean in “interesting times”?
With gothic intensity, Liz Jensen conjures the increasingly unnerving relationship between the traumatized therapist and her fascinating, deeply calculating patient. As Bethany’s warnings continue to prove accurate beyond fluke and she begins to offer scientifically precise hints of a final, world-altering cataclysm, Gabrielle is confronted with a series of devastating choices in a world in which belief has become as precious - and as murderous—as life itself.(less)
i don't know what my problem is.
for anyone else, this would probably be a four- or five-star book, and looking through my friends list, it seems to indeed be the case. and i am thrilled, because i love liz jensen and she gets very little play in this country - most of her books are out o......more
i don't know what my problem is.
for anyone else, this would probably be a four- or five-star book, and looking through my friends list, it seems to indeed be the case. and i am thrilled, because i love liz jensen and she gets very little play in this country - most of her books are out of print, and the last two didn't even come out in paperback here, so i am holding onto these two sad hardcover copies in the hopes that
will happen upon them and buy them.
there is so much good in this book, but it was just missing something. "what was it missing, karen?? where is
book?? YOU THINK YOU CAN DO BETTER??"
no, i most certainly cannot.
i am no writer, but i am a pretty decent reader. and liz jensen is a fine writer, who usually has this indefinable spark to her writing. a low-level thrum in the underwriting. she is dangerous and funny and unexpected. and there is some of that here, but a lot of this reads like a well-constructed thriller, the kind that they make into a "redefining the genre" movie like
or
.it is very good, but it didn't make me dance.
but i don't want to diminish this - she manages some pretty tricky things in this novel. when i was reading/reviewing
, i made a point of mentioning that the global-warming stuff was very nearly off-putting, but he didn't push the button hard enough to make me completely queasy. now liz jensen, she throws her whole body on that button and gyrates around, but for some reason, it didn't bother me. it was like watching my body on an operating table: i was thinking "this
be bothering me, but it isn't."
she has a skill, this one.
and the ending is simply perfect. i will in no way spoil it by saying that there was an easy way out, and a "satisfying" way out, and a "reasonable" way out. and liz jensen took the most complicated choice, the one that was probably the most difficult to write, and wrote it very well. my hat is off to her. she leaves the reader feeling uneasy, which is the best thing she could have done.
i do recommend this book, because it is very good, but in the spectrum of "liz jensen books i have loved," this one is just lower than most.
(less)
I got a copy of this through Amazon Vine, and the only reason why I finished this book is so that I could write a review about the entire thing. I did skim pages in the second half of the book, though, because I don't think I would have made it through otherwise. The subject of natural disaster and ......more
I got a copy of this through Amazon Vine, and the only reason why I finished this book is so that I could write a review about the entire thing. I did skim pages in the second half of the book, though, because I don't think I would have made it through otherwise. The subject of natural disaster and climate change is of course very real (just turn on the television these days to see coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan), and could have made for a great eco thriller. However, Ms. Jensen somehow managed to take this subject and write a book that is incredibly boring, and that just left me absolutely cold.
So, what is wrong with this book? Well, here goes:
1.) The style of writing is very cold and distant --- it reads like a very, very dry textbook most of the time. There are passages that aren't quite that bad, but they are few and far between.
2.) Considering that this book has been advertised as a "an apocalyptical thriller that will give you nightmares" it is surprisingly dull. Nothing much happens in the first half, and then a lot of what happens in the second half is just uninteresting. It felt to me that the author really didn't know what kind of book she wanted to write --- a thriller? a religious drama? a study of the human psyche? --- but she failed on all counts. "The Rapture" mostly reads like the screenplay for a really bad disaster movie. Well, maybe not even that because in a disaster movie much more would happen ...!
3.) Gabrielle. She's the lead character --- an art therapist who sits in a wheelchair because of an accident she had not too long before --- and the story is narrated by her. A large part of the book is centered on her insecurities and self-pity, and on her psychological debates with herself. She is constantly stating that she doesn't feel like a real woman anymore because she is in a wheelchair. So don't read this book unless you are prepared to spend *a lot* of time reading about the inner workings of a bitter, jealous, cynical and insecure woman. Gabrielle is mostly just concerned about herself, so I find it hard to believe anyone would let her work as a therapist --- she needs one herself!
4.) The romance. Such as it is. Gabrielle meets a man called Frazer Melville. There is zero chemistry between them, and I personally have no idea why he is attracted to her. I also found it somewhat irritating that she would constantly call him by his full name --- Frazer Melville did this, Frazer Melville said that (even after they slept together) --- or by his profession, "The Physicist" (as in "I wanted to call the physicist to tell him ..."). Very strange. Their romance just did not ring true for me. It felt forced and, basically, cringe-worthy most of the time. Also, once she meets Frazer, Gabrielle becomes completely obsessed with sex. So be prepared to read a lot about that obsession.
To sum it up, "The Rapture" is a badly-written, fairly predictable, and completely pointless book. The story develops *very* slowly, the style of writing requires a lot of patience on the reader's side, and the constant religious and/or psychological babble grated on my nerves. I didn't care about the characters at all, and I certainly didn't care about whether or not any of them survived in the end. In the hands of a better writer this might have been a much better book, but as it is it was a waste of time.(less)
While
isn't one of the greatest books I've ever read, it was an excellent read that gave me characters to care about and ideas to think about. While the story wraps up in a shocking manner, the story itself contains enough ambiguity to leave some things up to the reader's experience and......more
While
isn't one of the greatest books I've ever read, it was an excellent read that gave me characters to care about and ideas to think about. While the story wraps up in a shocking manner, the story itself contains enough ambiguity to leave some things up to the reader's experience and interpretation. Because I prefer ambiguity to certitude in literature, this aspect appealed to me very much. I loved how the relationship between Gabrielle, an emotionally and physically paralyzed therapist, and Bethany, her criminally insane patient, develops.
It was interesting that I got this book as I was reading
. In my review of that book, I questioned whether it was science fiction because the author never explores the hows and whys of David Selig's telepathic ability. In contrast, Jensen does explore the hows and whys of Bethany Krall's precognition. For a mainstream book, it contains a lot of science. It explores psychology, geology, ecology and physics. It is definitely science fiction. In comparison,
is not science fiction at all.
You may consider the following to be spoilers, so be warned:
I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic literature, along with time travel, it's one of my favorite sub-genres of science fiction. This book kind of fits into the genre, but it's pre-apocalyptic instead of post-apocalyptic. Jensen doesn't pull any punches. Once the events that lead to the end are set in motion, there is no miracle salvation. The ending of this story is one of the gutsiest I've seen and it left me gasping. About halfway through the book, I found I had to force myself put it down to get things done. I had to know what was coming next and how it was going to happen. There are so many questions left unanswered because they cannot be answered.(less)
I'll admit, I have a tendancy to get a little too engrossed in a good book. A powerful story with characters I connect with can actually have a physical impact on me - my stomach churns, my heart races, my palms sweat.
That said, after turning the final page of The Rapture by Liz Jensen,......more
I'll admit, I have a tendancy to get a little too engrossed in a good book. A powerful story with characters I connect with can actually have a physical impact on me - my stomach churns, my heart races, my palms sweat.
That said, after turning the final page of The Rapture by Liz Jensen, I felt like I had just run a marathon. The book is full of emotion, tension, suspense and well-researched information -- all of the ingredients of a great novel.
The Rapture introduces Gabrielle Fox, a beautiful but deeply damaged clinical psychologist. Paralyzed from the waist down, Gabrielle has come to Oxsmith, a hospital for criminally insane youth in Hadporth, England, to start anew personally and professionally. She leaves behind a tragic and traumatic history in London that has left her broken physically and emotionally.
Gabrielle becomes fixated on one of her art therapy patients, 16-year-old Bethany Krall, the daughter of a fanatical Faith Wave pastor who brutally murdered her mother two years earlier. Bethany is having apocalyptic visions of natural disasters worldwide, drawing highly detailed and accurate pictures of events that have yet to happen, from a megahurricane in Brazil to a major earthquake in Istanbul.
Gabrielle spends the rest of the book trying to decipher Bethany's disturbing prophecies, to determine whether the girl is a psychotic or a gifted and to figure out how much she's willing to invest in the visions - and the millions of lives at stake if they're true. The therapist's personal drama is backdropped by scenes of global political upheaval, disease, climate change and social chaos that further whip the book's atmosphere into a frenzy that builds toward a truly unforgettable ending.
I thought Jensen's writing was breathtaking. She uses language that is rich in both imagery and vocabulary -- I think I would have loved the book no matter what its topic, just because of the way the author writes. Her characters are deeply flawed and very human -- although sometimes frustratingly so. Gabrielle is at times infuriating in her self-doubt and paranoia, but her troubled psyche is key to the plot.
The story is sometimes painful to read, and Jensen doesn't pull her punches. This is apocalyptic fiction, folks. Don't expect a sunshine-and-rainbows ending. The events contained within are disturbing and realistically plausible, and have very well given me something else to sit up at night worrying about. Jensen's end-of-days horror is not a recycled asteroid-hits-Earth scenario, but a well-researched threat that I'll look forward to reading more about in the future.
Jensen does infuse the end of The Rapture with a shred of bittersweet hope for the future, uncertain and difficult as it may be for her characters, and the world.(less)
a chapter into Liz Jensen’s latest novel and my mind was reeling and I was wondering what on earth I had gotten myself in for. Unfortunately, the momentum fizzles out about half way and it turns into an amalgam of every disaster/Armageddon movie you’ve ever seen, albeit with more sophisticated langu......more
a chapter into Liz Jensen’s latest novel and my mind was reeling and I was wondering what on earth I had gotten myself in for. Unfortunately, the momentum fizzles out about half way and it turns into an amalgam of every disaster/Armageddon movie you’ve ever seen, albeit with more sophisticated language.
The story follows an art therapist, Gabrielle, who is assigned to work with a teenaged girl who has brutally murdered her mother and who believes she can predict the end of the world. In the beginning of the book, Gabrielle is cynical, smart and incredibly frustrated and angry by the way her life has turned out after the loss of her boyfriend in a tragic car crash. Throughout the story more and more details are revealed about the crash and Gabrielle’s own part in it, but instead of getting stronger and more adaptive as the story goes on, the character actually becomes incredibly reliant on others, ending up needy and pathetic and not nearly as sassy as she is in the beginning,
What I did like about the story (aside from the hundreds of rarely used words Jensen stacks in) was the science. The psycho-babble surrounding Bethany and the other inmates of the hospital, the description of Gabrielle’s own injuries and convalescence, and the descriptions of the hazards of global warning are all well detailed and accurate. This is a well researched book.
Is a pity then that when the protagonist starts to fall apart, the entire storyline unravels as well. All the development of the characters in the first part of the book is quickly demolished as Gabrielle becomes unhinged and obsessive and Bethany stops being crazy and just appears as a normal, snarky teenager. The dialogue gets hard to follow and the jumble of time and space stops being clever and simply starts to be distracting and hard to follow. Its as if Jensen didn’t have a plan for the book and was quite unhappy with where it ended up, but unable to turn it around once it got there.
There is of course, a number of apocalypse clichés, including a predictable and unnecessary one right at the end of the book. It’s too neat a wrap up for the story – Gabrielle is mean and tough and then she has a minor breakdown and then suddenly all her pieces just fall in to place just as (predictably) the world is ending.
The Rapture is worth reading just to watch Jensen weave magic with the English language. She is truly a master of the art form and you are guaranteed to add to your vocabulary by the end of the book. But don’t expect a surprise twist in the ending – you can predict what happens next after the first three chapters and the story wearily delivers it up.(less)
this is yet another installment of what is becoming a fairly lengthy list of books/authors that i have never heard of that karen has recommended to me.as i've said on goodreads before, she has great literary taste and we obviously like the same kind of books/writng as every single one has been great......more
this is yet another installment of what is becoming a fairly lengthy list of books/authors that i have never heard of that karen has recommended to me.as i've said on goodreads before, she has great literary taste and we obviously like the same kind of books/writng as every single one has been great.and this book is no exception.it has everything you could possibly want from a book...beautiful writing,memorable characters and a gripping plot that makes you not want to put the book down.and it's fairly scary too.liz jensen is a great writer who deserves to be more well known and i'm looking forward to reading other books by her.(less)
I had a hard time piecing together a review for Liz Jensen’s The Rapture, an apocalyptic eco-thriller. Though I found the book hard to put down, I also found aspects of it irritating. The story centers around a therapist, Gabrielle, assigned to treat a young murderess, Bethany, and things begin to g......more
I had a hard time piecing together a review for Liz Jensen’s The Rapture, an apocalyptic eco-thriller. Though I found the book hard to put down, I also found aspects of it irritating. The story centers around a therapist, Gabrielle, assigned to treat a young murderess, Bethany, and things begin to get interesting after the patient begins to have alarmingly detailed visions of natural disasters--all of which come true.
The story begins as a creepy religious thriller set in a psychiatric facility, so much so that the back of the book bills it as The Left Behind series meets Girl, Interrupted, but to represent this book as anything other then an eco-thriller or even a political suspense novel would be misleading. There are (improbable) scientific explanations for nearly everything. It also took longer then usual for this book to hook me. Jensen does give us detailed accounts of almost everything—down to the smallest details of a throw away scene or action. The result is a lot of stalled action. My other bone of contention lies with the portrayal of Christians themselves. Jensen colors them as irrational fanatics to the point where they become as threatening as a looming tsunami. The inclusion of one sane Christian in the face of so many religious radicals would have been appreciated.
The only reason I was pulled into this book at all was the inspired narrative voice of Gabrielle Fox. Gabrielle is a scientist recovering from a personal tragedy that unsurprisingly gave her a huge crisis of faith. Recently paralyzed her new view of the world forces her to question and mistrust everything around her. Her compelling and skewed view of events saves the novel and perhaps the world.(less)
It was really difficult to rate this book because I did like most bits of the first 80% of this book and then it really went downhill for me.
The story is told by an art therapist who was involved in a car accident that left her wheelchair bound. She manages to get a job (before she is re......more
It was really difficult to rate this book because I did like most bits of the first 80% of this book and then it really went downhill for me.
The story is told by an art therapist who was involved in a car accident that left her wheelchair bound. She manages to get a job (before she is ready) at a psychiatric hospital for troubled teenagers and meets Bethany Krall a sixteen year old who killed her own mother.
Bethany claims to be able to predict natural disasters and after some time Gabrielle (the art therapist) is forced to take her claims seriously.
I liked the character formations and the interaction between them - even though both main protagonists (Bethany and Gabrielle) were very annoying at times their actions / feelings were justified by their past and the fast approaching future.
I don't want to give away the ending of the book but I did feel it became bogged down in religious scripture and was not what I would call satisfying.
Other things irritated me like Fraser being constantly referred to as either 'Frazer Melville' or 'the physicist' - yes we know who his is, no need for full name CONTINUALLY!
I didn't really get a proper feel for Bethany at all I'm afraid.
I did manage to finish the book and it was okay but it felt like a bit of a waste of a good idea.(less)
Purely on its appeal as an eco-thriller, this book would merit four stars - it's decently paced, grippingly conceived, bleak but engaging, with enough scientifically sound research to back up the plot: Set in an undefined but plausibly grim near future, a cynical, wheelchair-bound art therapist is c......more
Purely on its appeal as an eco-thriller, this book would merit four stars - it's decently paced, grippingly conceived, bleak but engaging, with enough scientifically sound research to back up the plot: Set in an undefined but plausibly grim near future, a cynical, wheelchair-bound art therapist is confronted with a teenage homicidal patient who seems to be predicting impending climate-change-related disasters with terrifying, absolute accuracy. The questions addressed in response by various conveniently principled experts are highly topical: Is humanity, as a whole, worth even attempting to save?; Does it matter, on the massive geological-historical scale on which Homo Sapiens is nothing more than a short blip; Where does religious end-of-days mythology feature into it; and Wouldn't we be doing the planet a favour if we just accepted we're horribly harmful parasites and fucked the fuck off?
You know, current issues stuff.
In any work of fiction I read, I look for good characters, a good story, and good writing, roughly in that order. The story in this was captivating, the writing indifferent but not actively eyeroll-inducing. It was, all in all, decently entertaining. I wanted to know where it was going. I wanted to finish it asap, but for mixed reasons - yes, because I was quite gripped by the story and wanted to know how it would end, but also because I couldn't fucking wait to get this mess over with, to be quite frank. What knocked several stars off for me was the characters. If this had been written by a man, I'd be raking him across the coals for his awful sexist treatment of the female characters. Seeing as this was written by a woman, I'd like to, well, rake her across the coals for her awful sexist treatment of the female characters.
There are four notable female characters in this book:
-Gabrielle, the first person narrator, rendered a T9 paraplegic (ie. fully paralysed from the waist down) after a tragic car accident, who doesn't want your pity, doesn't want to be called disabled, or differently abled, or handicapped, or anything, and just wants to get back to her pre-accident life of dispensing art therapy to psychotic patients despite her self-admitted inability to process her own post-accident issues, and everyone's misgivings about her returning to her job so soon despite her evidently not being ready for it. Fair enough. I was determined to like this chick. She's broken, she's highly intelligent, she's super-cynical. She's a mess but a mess you want to root for.
Right? Nope. It became all too quickly evident that this snarky-but-capable, pessimistic-but-relatable-to survivor was anything but. Gabrielle is narcissistic, self-involved, whiny and self-pitying way beyond the point of the tolerable; the degree to which this is excusable by her recent traumatic life-changing experience is quickly eradicated by her blatant incompetence and downright stupidity when dealing with her end-of-day climate prophet Bethany, a sixteen-year-old, matricidal patient of a mental institution. All of Gabrielle's dialogue in dealing with Bethany is pathetic, the worst kind of clueless therapist babble you could conceive of. She doesn't seem interested in the least in who her patient is, where her psychoses stem from, never mind the absolute accuracy with which she predicts natural disasters. All of Gabrielle's interactions with Bethany are the blandest of "How does this make you feel?" and "I wonder if this is reminding you of anything in your past?" stereotype questions. Apart from her ineffectual interactions with her patient (in which she constantly overreacts, antagonises, transfers, and otherwise is easily and obviouslly manipulated by a fucking 16-year-old), Gabrielle has no personal life because, as she constantly and self-pityingly reminds us, she has no feeling left beneath her waist, so she is only HALF A WOMAN, and any wheelchair dwellers who have any hope or aspirations for their lives are idiots, and no man will ever look at her again, so clearly her life is worthless! ...Except then she meets a man, less an 1/4 into the book, who is obviously into her, and then within no time at all they are fucking like rabbits and her life's purpose is clearly restored, hooray!!! She then turns into a completely brainless, sex-obsessed, needy, whiny, clingy, hysterical idiot whose only concern seems to be whether she can sufficiently orgasm without a functioning lower half (spoiler: she can. WHEW!) ...Except then within a very short period she suspects her man of having sex with someone else and everything in her life (the impending global disaster she knows about via her patient, the resulting worldwide crisis, the issue of humanity's survival, and her own) becomes completely irrelevant to her because clearly the only question of any importance whatsoever is whether her dude is fucking some other chick (in a completely obvious and annoying misunderstanding, he isn't, for the record). This is a first person narrator, so all of the plot, which involves an obviously impending global natural disaster, is filtered through this woman's perspective, and she can't be arsed to give a fuck because oh noes, her boyfriend might, on the flimsiest evidence, be fucking someone else and that is all that matters. Never mind the quite interestingly structured, detailed, scientifically backed-up environmental crisis plot - let's focus on the artificial daily-soap-like drama of this woman's self-manufactured jealousy because bitches be crazy, right? Spare me.
-The second notable main character is Bethany, the psychotic teenage doomsday oracle, who is made up of a string of clichés (she's a religiously raised psych ward resident, so naturally she must be spouting scripture, rejoicing in human suffering, gleeful, malicious, suspected of satanic influences) and bafflingly antagonising characterisation from the main character, who seems to have no professional boundaries whatsoever in dealing with her, stupidly refuses to listen to what she's saying at all times, slut-shames her for no discernible reason (at one point describing her Goth make-up as "darkly whorish" -wtf??) and otherwise slots in place a filter of such stereotyped bias that it becomes completely impossible for the reader to get any real idea of who Bethany actually might be, aside from a convenient plot device. Bitches be crazy, right? SPARE ME.
-The third female character, a side character at best, is Bethany's previous therapist, who eventually came round to believing in Bethany's predictions and ended up being dismissed for unprofessional behaviour. She spends all her on-page time stalking Gabrielle to warn her of Bethany, looking unkempt, wailing and spouting doomsday prophecies and being generally... well, bitches be crazy, right?? FUCKING SPARE ME.
-The distant fourth (and last) female character is a physically perfect Icelandic blonde, fit scientist goddess with absolutely no character profile of her own, who exists solely to manufacture unnecessary jealousy for Gabrielle, who on a complete non-event of supposed evidence believes her to be fucking Gabrielle's boyfriend, which she isn't. That is all. That is the only reason this character exists. She's someone to be jealous of for the main character because... you guessed it. Bitches Be Crazy. COME ON, BOOK. SPARE ME.
In conclusion, this book is a schizophrenic mess. One half of it is a gripping, gloomy, well-plotted eco thriller that I wish could have been given the full scope it deserved. The other half is an offensive, shallow, soapy chick-lit drama that I wish I could have quit.(less)
Reason for Reading: Apocalyptic fiction is one of my favourite sub-genres.
Summary: It is the not too distant future and the world has entered a new phase, one where global warming has happened and temperatures, weather and climates are no longer what they used to be. Gabrielle Fox is a ......more
Reason for Reading: Apocalyptic fiction is one of my favourite sub-genres.
Summary: It is the not too distant future and the world has entered a new phase, one where global warming has happened and temperatures, weather and climates are no longer what they used to be. Gabrielle Fox is a wheelchair bound art therapist who has started a new job at a Psychiatric Hospital, home to Britain's most dangerous children and she has been assigned the most dangerous of all, Bethany Krall, who brutally stabbed her mother to death with a screwdriver when she was 12. Bethany also predicts the future, not just any future but future natural disasters (storms, earthquakes, etc.) and as Gabrielle realizes each one comes true she begins to believe her patient and feels guilt for not warning the thousands of people who die. A strange bond develops between therapist and patient with the position of authority often switching.
Comments: I'll start by saying I neither believe in the evangelical concept of the Rapture nor that global warming has anything to do with human produced carbon dioxide. These are the two main controversies presented in this book. I will also say that ultimately, I did enjoy the plot; the story of the Gabrielle and Bethany, the predictions and the ultimate race for survival as the apocalypse approaches.
Within this world there are two extremist groups; one The Planetarians who know humans are but a blip in the age the Earth and our time is over as dominant species and nature is taking its natural course as it has over millions of years in the past and a new organism will take our place as dominant species. On the opposite end there is The Fifth Wave, a mass convergence and conversion to Christianity who believe The Rapture is at hand. They strive to bring their friends and loved ones to the Lord so they to may rise above the clouds in the rapture. These people happily await the coming of the rapture. Neither of these extremist groups take a major part in the story until well into the book but near the beginning, being a Catholic, I wondered "well, what about Catholics? The author must know we don't believe in the rapture?" My answer came by page 75 when the main character states during a discussion of disparaging religion is general:
" I was taught by nuns," I tell him. " They couldn't see how tribalistic they were. Or how pagan. As for the traditions, it seems to me that the Catholic Church enjoys just making things up as it goes along. You could almost admire its creativity."
Right, anti-Catholic view expressed, noted and understood. Catholics are not ever referred to again in the book. I was not impressed with the overall anti-religion attitude carried on throughout the whole book. Though I don't share the same convictions as the Christians portrayed here it was insulting the way they were shown as smiling, happy, ignorant people joyfully walking to their probable deaths. No respect was shown when conversation turned towards this group. The reveal that comes out about the leader is cliched and unoriginal. While on the otherhand the leader of the Planetarians is treated with respect, while professional people scoff at his ideology, he is, afterall, a man of science.
I was also underwhelmed by a love affair that happened and felt completely out of place within the story and otherwise out of character for the strong roll Gabrielle was playing elsewhere. There were pages and pages of this romantic misunderstanding drivel that I just wanted to shout "Get over it already!".
Otherwise, the book is well-written, it reads fast. The momentum is there slowly picking up and ending with a crash. Bethany was an outstanding character, the one who really shines through and kept me reading. Even with the religious problems I had, I realized the slant very early on, and accepted it as part of the story. It is fiction after all. I liked the book but didn't love it. I think other reviewers will say they have felt emotional over the book; it didn't affect me emotionally at all. I couldn't see myself as plausibly being in this world Jensen created. However, I do think this book will appeal to many people. The topic of climate change is one many readers will want to explore in this visionary apocalypse of our planet's downfall from human doings.(less)