YA Apocalyptic and Dystopian Fiction discussion

Just a heads up that the dystopian romantic/thriller 'Forager' is currently available on Smashwords.com for .99c

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...



Forager has been getting awesome reviews on Amazon, please pop over and check them out.

http://www.amazon.com/Forager-A-Dysto...

Forager's blurb

Eighteen-year-old Ethan Jones lives in Newhome, a town built upon the decaying ruins of post-apocalyptic Melbourne, ruins haunted by the ferocious Skel, a nomadic tribe of degenerate savages.

The Skel are ramping up their attacks on Newhome's foraging teams and infesting Melbourne's ruins in ever greater numbers. Is this part of a larger plan that could spell the town's doom?

Meanwhile, the last thing Ethan expects when he and his companions rescue a two-car convoy from the Skel is a Japanese teenage girl with an outlandish dress-sense, who after they take her back to Newhome, goes to great lengths to ingratiate herself into his life. But is it in gratitude for saving her life or is she seeking something more?

And what a quandry she places him in, for he knows the rules, that no man is permitted to be alone with an unmarried woman. But how can he drive such a gentle soul away when she touchs his heart so deeply, even though she clearly carries the pain of a broken heart.

At the same time, Newhome's police force, the Custodians, are suspicious of Ethan's foraging team's successes and are pulling out the stops to find out which member of his team has the illegal mutant ability that gives them an edge over the other teams. Should these peacekeepers discover Ethan is the mutant they seek, they will haul him away and dissect him like a frog.

A review of Forager from Amazon, By
Keanan Brand.


Forager is a never-boring science fiction novel set in post-apocalyptic Australia. Forager teams, accompanied by armed Custodians, venture into the destroyed urban landscape and bring recyclable materials back to the walled city of Newhome.

Ethan Jones is the lead character, a young man with a secret: he has a mutation that allows him to use echolocation to find things.

Problem is, people with mutations are rounded up and taken away — but where? And why?

Not only is Ethan hiding a secret from everyone else, but even from himself, and that raises all sorts of questions and problems. As he unravels his own mystery, he puts together clues about the people around him, leading up to what could truly be an explosive revelation.

Author Peter Stone writes an intriguing, fast-paced story. One could say the story is so focused and lean, it doesn’t have room or time to explore the questions that arose as I read. I hope he addresses these questions in the next two books.

Nothing beats a ticking clock — or a bomb timer — to create instant tension in a scene. Even though it’s effective, it’s a tired device, but Stone uses it well.

He adds romance to the tale, too. It’s low-key — not over-the-top, soap-operatic emotionalism — but real and vital the story. This may seem a weird thing to say about the way he wrote the love element, but I appreciate it. Don’t ask me to explain. Don’t know if I could.

There’s another thing I appreciate: the sense of reality. People feel pain, experience consequences, run out of ammo, etcetera. Although I had a lot of questions about the story world, I believed it.

I’m an editor, and that my job bleeds over into my leisure reading. If a book rouses the grumpy editor in my head, it’s set aside and likely never finished. Despite tripping over some minor proofing and grammatical errors early in the book (errors which I've been assured have been corrected), I finished the bulk of Forager in one day, because the writing and storytelling are strong enough to pull me into Ethan’s world.

I enjoyed this book immensely, and look forward to reading the rest of the story.