Firstlife
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Step one...you die.
ONE CHOICE. TWO REALMS. NO SECOND CHANCE.
Tenley "Ten" Lockwood is an average seventeen–year–old girl…who has spent the past thirteen months locked inside the Prynne Asylum. The reason? Not her obsession with numbers, but her refusal to let her parents choose where she'll live – after she dies. There is an eternal truth most of the world has come to accept: Firstlife is merely a dress rehearsal, and real life begins after death.
In the Everlife, two realms are in power: Troika and Myriad, long–time enemies and deadly rivals. Both will do anything to recruit Ten, including sending their top Laborers to lure her to their side. Soon, Ten finds herself on the run, caught in a wild tug–of–war between the two realms that will do anything to win the right to her soul. Who can she trust? And what if the realm she's drawn to isn't where the boy she's falling for lives? She just has to stay alive long enough to make a decision…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Showalter (the White Rabbit Chronicles) addresses religious extremism, conformity, and war in this first book in her dystopian Everlife series. Seventeen-year-old Ten, short for Tenley, lives in a world where two Everlife (afterlife) realms, Troika and Myriad, fight to win over souls, using torture and bombs to force citizens' conversion. Ten has been locked in an asylum for refusing to choose sides. She is a particularly special soul, and both Troika and Myriad send their best and most attractive young men to persuade her that conversion to their realm is paramount, often using romance as a seduction tool. Troikan parallels to Christianity are apparent through the use of numerical symbolism, a divine trinity, and an emphasis on one's Everlife over one's Firstlife. Showalter's rapid plot shifts and action sequences can be disorienting, and Ten's struggle to protect her future and her individuality within the grip of an oppressive society fall in line with genre conventions. Yet the story's use of religion as a framework is fresh and layered, giving the novel an epic sweep. Ages 12 up.
