Year of the Orphan
A Novel
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3.9 • 11 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The Road meets Mad Max in this stunning debut with a gutsy, badass young female protagonist—for fans of Station 11, The Passage, and Riddley Walker.
In a post-apocalyptic future where survivors scavenge in the harsh Australian Outback for spoils from a buried civilization, a girl races across the desert, holding her treasures close, pursued by the Reckoner.
Riding her sand ship, living rough in the blasted landscape whose taint she carries in her blood, she scouts the broken infrastructure and trades her scraps at the only known settlement, a ramshackle fortress of greed, corruption, and disease known as the System. It is an outpost whose sole purpose is survival—refuge from the hulking, eyeless things they call Ghosts and other creatures that hunt beyond the fortress walls.
Sold as a child, then raised hard in the System, the Orphan has a mission. She carries secrets about the destruction that brought the world to its knees. And she's about to discover that the past still holds power over the present. Given an impossible choice, will the Orphan save the only home she knows or see it returned to dust? Both paths lead to blood, but whose will be spilled?
With propulsive pacing, a rich, broken language all its own, and a protagonist whose grit and charisma are matched by a relentless drive to know, The Year of the Orphan is a thriller of the future you won’t want to put down.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young woman known only as the Orphan scavenges a postapocalyptic Australian desert for useful relics from an earlier time in Findlay's challenging, thrilling debut. Years before, the Orphan's family was killed by a roving band and she was sold into slavery in the System, a shanty settlement built around one of the few meager sources of water. When her intelligence is noticed by her owner, the Old Man, he begins to tutor her with stories about life before some vague disaster. Several years later, her former overseer, power-hungry Karra, has taken control of the System's loose governing body, much to the frustration of the Orphan's friend and ally, Block. The Orphan's latest trip on her wind-powered sand ship brings her proof of the Old Man's stories, and she feels compelled to explore. Pursued by the threatening figure known as the Reckoner, the Orphan strikes out on a dangerous journey that will bring back enough knowledge to upend the System. The novel's slow buildup, frequent flashbacks, and idiosyncratic language ("All them scaretales they talked at the System said he et them he kilt") will deter some readers. Those who persevere will be rewarded by a satisfying exploration of desperation and imagined future myths.
