It Takes Death to Reach a Star
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
THE WORLD YOU KNOW IS DEAD.
WE DID THIS TO OURSELVES.
The epidemic struck at the end of the Third World War. In just five years, the Earth was annihilated. Only one city survived—Etyom—a frozen hell-hole in northern Siberia, still engulfed in conflict.
The year is 2251.
Mila Solokoff is a Robust who trades information in a world where knowing too much can get you killed. Caught in a deal-gone-bad, she's forced to take a high-risk job for a clandestine organization hell-bent on revolution.
Demitri Stasevich is a Gracile with a dark secret—a sickness that, if discovered, will surely get him Ax'd. His only relief is an illegal narcotic produced by the Robusts, and his only means of obtaining it is a journey to the arctic hell far below New Etyom.
Thrust together in the midst of a sinister plot that threatens all life above and below the cloud line, Mila and Demitri must master their demons and make a choice—one that will either salvage what's left of the human race, or doom it to extinction ...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The first collaboration between Jones and Worthington (the Action of Purpose trilogy) is a reasonably standard postapocalyptic dystopian work. Thanks to a one-two apocalyptic punch of war and disease, most of the world is uninhabitable; only one remote area of Siberia remains a place where humans can live. Dystopia fans looking for the usual tropes a highly unequal future society, protagonists from each half thrown together, machinations by the dictator in charge, etc. will get all that, explained in straight-up exposition dumps by the two narrators (Demitri, a member of the genetically modified elite Graciles, and Mila, a scavenger and member of the tough but poor Robusts) and in ponderous conversations between characters telling each other what they both know. There are a few interesting twists involving Vedmak, a second personality inside Demitri who might represent a failure of the bioengineering and culling that the Graciles practice, but the limitations and sheer grunginess of the setting keep the story solidly predictable. Readers looking for innovation in worldbuilding or characters will be disappointed.
