Monday, September 23, 2013

Engines of the Broken World by Jason Vanhee

Are you feeling like reading a book that will creep you out?  Who's evil, who's good, and is the world ending?  No one really knows...

Macmillan Children's Publishing Group and Net Galley allowed me to download this ebook for review (thank you).  It was published September 7th, so you can find a copy of it at your local bookstore now.

Mercy and her brother, Gospel, live in a broken world.  War has destroyed it, there is less population all the time, and now their mother has died.  It almost seems hopeless to Mercy, but she still has her brother, they still have food and they still have a couple of neighbors.  Then it gets even worse.

There are spirits that take over the dead bodies of humans and Mom becomes this angel (?) that tells Mercy she must kill the machine to stop the fog that is eating up the world.  Mercy has no idea what machine might still be around.  Everything is broken, doesn't work, and no one keeps them anymore.

This story is very creepy.  You know the machine the Angel is referring to is the Minister, a small preaching animal that changes shapes but is mechanical in nature.  Minister can fog the human's mind, so they don't recognize it as a machine.  But is the Angel telling the truth?  Or is what the Minister says the truth?  Both are urging the children to kill the other one.  What should Mercy do?

I have to say the ending reminded me of the story "The Lady or the Tiger".  When you get to the very end, the final word in the book is "Amen." and you have no idea how it really ended.  That's just as well, I like happy endings.  Now I'm free to think that's what happened.

Give it a try; you won't be bored.

Happy reading.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Looks like a great read, especially with Halloween right around the corner!

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