pwbalto's review against another edition
3.0
Gr 6-12 -- When is an apocalypse not an apocalypse? When it’s a lie told to an isolated community living off the land. Juneau has grown up off the grid in a hunter-gatherer colony at the base of Denali Mountain in Alaska, convinced that she and her clan are the last civilized survivors of World War Three. But as she is out hunting one day, she sees a helicopter, and, returning to camp as quickly as she can, finds her entire clan, including her mentor, the powerful Whit, missing.
Juneau’s clan is notable not only for their survivalist lifestyle, but for their mystical connection with a natural force called the Yara which allows them to perceive events at a distance, the past, and even the future. Juneau is particularly gifted in her ability to access the Yara, and her efforts to locate and rescue her clan are complicated by two separate factions who are pursuing her.
Told in short chapters that alternate between Juneau’s point of view and that of the skeptical Miles, son of a pharmaceutical executive who will stop at nothing to acquire Juneau, After the End is a fast-paced adventure novel with some magic and romance - and one humdinger of a cliffhanger ending.
I mean, it's fine. It's fine - if you accept that Mt McKinley is SO remote that a community could live there for 30 years and never see an airplane pass overhead. It's fine, if you are cool with someone seeing "a mountain range" "in the distance" and then running for about an hour and getting to the mountain.
And for PETE'S SAKE, it's FINE, as long as you are ok with her first look at Anchorage: she travels by dogsled three days from McKinley towards the ocean, and comes out "on a ridge," from whence she can not only see the ocean, but also this thriving city, including people coming and going from businesses and their cars.
I'm trying to picture this, a vantage point from which you can see an entire medium-sized city. If it were a small town, ok. If it were a town at the base of a cliff, like Boulder? But still! Even Boulder's not going to creep up on you like that. You can see all of Omaha from the ridge above the stockyards, but you wouldn't be able to see PEOPLE moving around. I went on Google Earth just to see if there was some unpopulated peak or ridge outside of Anchorage and aaaaggghhh you are saying I put too much thought into this stuff but COME ONNNNN! Does none of it matter? Can you just write whatever and as long as the characters are good-looking and the story's entertaining it's ok?
Fuck it. It's Saturday night, I am up to date on my deadlines, I am shutting the laptop so I can watch Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters with my son.
Adapted from my review for Booklist online
Juneau’s clan is notable not only for their survivalist lifestyle, but for their mystical connection with a natural force called the Yara which allows them to perceive events at a distance, the past, and even the future. Juneau is particularly gifted in her ability to access the Yara, and her efforts to locate and rescue her clan are complicated by two separate factions who are pursuing her.
Told in short chapters that alternate between Juneau’s point of view and that of the skeptical Miles, son of a pharmaceutical executive who will stop at nothing to acquire Juneau, After the End is a fast-paced adventure novel with some magic and romance - and one humdinger of a cliffhanger ending.
I mean, it's fine. It's fine - if you accept that Mt McKinley is SO remote that a community could live there for 30 years and never see an airplane pass overhead. It's fine, if you are cool with someone seeing "a mountain range" "in the distance" and then running for about an hour and getting to the mountain.
And for PETE'S SAKE, it's FINE, as long as you are ok with her first look at Anchorage: she travels by dogsled three days from McKinley towards the ocean, and comes out "on a ridge," from whence she can not only see the ocean, but also this thriving city, including people coming and going from businesses and their cars.
I'm trying to picture this, a vantage point from which you can see an entire medium-sized city. If it were a small town, ok. If it were a town at the base of a cliff, like Boulder? But still! Even Boulder's not going to creep up on you like that. You can see all of Omaha from the ridge above the stockyards, but you wouldn't be able to see PEOPLE moving around. I went on Google Earth just to see if there was some unpopulated peak or ridge outside of Anchorage and aaaaggghhh you are saying I put too much thought into this stuff but COME ONNNNN! Does none of it matter? Can you just write whatever and as long as the characters are good-looking and the story's entertaining it's ok?
Fuck it. It's Saturday night, I am up to date on my deadlines, I am shutting the laptop so I can watch Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters with my son.
Adapted from my review for Booklist online
baronessekat's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars.
Her clan is all that Juneau has every known. Raised in the Alaskan wilderness, the clan has remained safe after World War III destroyed the rest of the world 30 years prior. Safe that is until one day, Juneau returns from a hunting trip to find her entire clan gone, signs of invasion everywhere.
Juneau then seeks out to find her people... only to discover that her entire life has been a lie and she now needs to discover who she is, what she is and re-evaluate all she has known.
++++
I found this book to be a compelling story of a young woman trying to find out about herself and her world. It has gripped me enough to want to find out how it ends.
Her clan is all that Juneau has every known. Raised in the Alaskan wilderness, the clan has remained safe after World War III destroyed the rest of the world 30 years prior. Safe that is until one day, Juneau returns from a hunting trip to find her entire clan gone, signs of invasion everywhere.
Juneau then seeks out to find her people... only to discover that her entire life has been a lie and she now needs to discover who she is, what she is and re-evaluate all she has known.
++++
I found this book to be a compelling story of a young woman trying to find out about herself and her world. It has gripped me enough to want to find out how it ends.
claireylou's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this and was very pleasantly surprised after reading other books by Amy Plum.
thistlechaser's review against another edition
2.0
I'm so angry at this book. The first 10% of it was so good that I thought it would be one of the best books I read all year. It started with a girl named Juneau. World War III destroyed the world, and Juneau and her small village were living off in the wilds of Alaska. Knowing the dangers of radiation, bandits, and all the other end of the world badness, they kept hidden and kept to themselves as much as they could.
All the children were named after Alaskan cities. All the animals were named after famous writers, artists, etc. I was really loving this world the author had built.
*spoilers below*
Then came the truth. There had been no WWIII. The world hadn't ended -- it was chugging along just fine, same as it is right now. So why did the adults lie to the children and keep them away from the rest of the world?
That could have been such an interesting story. Juneau's tribe got kidnapped (all of them, all at once, while she was out hunting), which led to her discovery that the world hadn't ended, there was no third world war, etc. Juneau met up with a boy named Miles, and the rest of the 90% of the book was a mix of awful YA teenage romance (it felt "like lightning" when they touched each other), and horrible, horrible "magic".
See, Juneau and the other children of the tribe were so connected with Mother Earth that they could do magic. Read the fire/water/wind/whatever to know where to hunt, to see the future, to find a lost person. They could transform how they looked in seconds (because animals could do it -- snowshoe hares turning white/brown furred depending on the season). Juneau could break (or fix) any electronic device (phones, cars) just by tapping into Nature.
How was all that magic explained? Because she ~believed~ so strongly in the power of Mother Earth and Nature. It wasn't even just the kids though, Juneau met up with normal adults who could see the future and other such crap.
I spent most of the book wanting to beat my head against the wall. Just ~believe~ and you can tell the future by throwing bones! Just ~believe~ and you can read in a fire where someone is!
In the last pages of the book, there was finally a more "logical" reason for the magic: By using a mixture of "herbs and minerals" found in Alaska, not only could you introduce magical powers into humans, you stopped them from aging, kept them from ever getting sick again, and made one of their eyes contain a "golden starburst".
What happened to her tribe? How was this mix of "herbs and minerals" found? We'll never know. After the End does one of the things I hate most: It ended on a cliffhanger. Not just a "we didn't wrap everything up in this book" type thing, but basically just stopped mid-paragraph. Miles was shot and was bleeding out, Juneau sitting there not knowing if he'd live or die. BAM, the end. Look, author, if you want to write a trilogy, fine! Yay! Good for you! But I paid $10 for this book, and I expect a complete story in it.
Mumble.
A more minor annoying thing: The cover looked really great. I'd love an end of the world story with dogs! But the dogs were barely in the story at all. Two chapters of them, then we never heard of them again. Plus they were seriously unrealistic -- more like robots or just an extension of Juneau than living things.
I'm so annoyed that I read the whole book. As it wasn't an end of the world story, it was just following these two bland teenagers as they fell in love and took a road trip trying to find her tribe. The father was a one-dimensional bad guy, the magic was god awful, and the love subplot was just plain stupid. The only reason I kept reading was to find out if the magic was explained in some logical way, but by the time it finally was, I had long since stopped caring.
All the children were named after Alaskan cities. All the animals were named after famous writers, artists, etc. I was really loving this world the author had built.
*spoilers below*
Then came the truth. There had been no WWIII. The world hadn't ended -- it was chugging along just fine, same as it is right now. So why did the adults lie to the children and keep them away from the rest of the world?
That could have been such an interesting story. Juneau's tribe got kidnapped (all of them, all at once, while she was out hunting), which led to her discovery that the world hadn't ended, there was no third world war, etc. Juneau met up with a boy named Miles, and the rest of the 90% of the book was a mix of awful YA teenage romance (it felt "like lightning" when they touched each other), and horrible, horrible "magic".
See, Juneau and the other children of the tribe were so connected with Mother Earth that they could do magic. Read the fire/water/wind/whatever to know where to hunt, to see the future, to find a lost person. They could transform how they looked in seconds (because animals could do it -- snowshoe hares turning white/brown furred depending on the season). Juneau could break (or fix) any electronic device (phones, cars) just by tapping into Nature.
How was all that magic explained? Because she ~believed~ so strongly in the power of Mother Earth and Nature. It wasn't even just the kids though, Juneau met up with normal adults who could see the future and other such crap.
I spent most of the book wanting to beat my head against the wall. Just ~believe~ and you can tell the future by throwing bones! Just ~believe~ and you can read in a fire where someone is!
In the last pages of the book, there was finally a more "logical" reason for the magic: By using a mixture of "herbs and minerals" found in Alaska, not only could you introduce magical powers into humans, you stopped them from aging, kept them from ever getting sick again, and made one of their eyes contain a "golden starburst".
What happened to her tribe? How was this mix of "herbs and minerals" found? We'll never know. After the End does one of the things I hate most: It ended on a cliffhanger. Not just a "we didn't wrap everything up in this book" type thing, but basically just stopped mid-paragraph. Miles was shot and was bleeding out, Juneau sitting there not knowing if he'd live or die. BAM, the end. Look, author, if you want to write a trilogy, fine! Yay! Good for you! But I paid $10 for this book, and I expect a complete story in it.
Mumble.
A more minor annoying thing: The cover looked really great. I'd love an end of the world story with dogs! But the dogs were barely in the story at all. Two chapters of them, then we never heard of them again. Plus they were seriously unrealistic -- more like robots or just an extension of Juneau than living things.
I'm so annoyed that I read the whole book. As it wasn't an end of the world story, it was just following these two bland teenagers as they fell in love and took a road trip trying to find her tribe. The father was a one-dimensional bad guy, the magic was god awful, and the love subplot was just plain stupid. The only reason I kept reading was to find out if the magic was explained in some logical way, but by the time it finally was, I had long since stopped caring.
limabean74's review against another edition
3.0
***Bangs head on desk*** I really liked this book until the end then I wanted to punch someone in the face. I just don’t understand, this book was great and then WTF!!! OK so I wont say what happened but it was really frustrating and I must hope upon hope that this is going to be a series or I might actually punch someone.
The story starts after the 3rd World War in a town in Alaska with a group of people that have started a new life separated from a world that was totally devastated. It left only a few people who will do anything to survive but when the outside world breaks in and all the villagers go missing it’s up to Juneau to find them using the only thing she know. Yara which is a form of natural magic that can connect her with her people and nature but when she steps out into a world she thought was lost it becomes apparent that she was lied to because the world outside of there small village is just fine.
That’s sounds AWESOME right? It was and I honestly loved Juneau. The story was told in her and Miles POV. Miles is the kid she meets and she learns is suppose to take her to find her people. I LOVED Miles and I can’t tell you how many times I laughed out loud. Some of the things he said is in a realistic way because if this happened to you, you would say the same things. The chemistry they had together made this a wonderful read and the banter back and forth was so funny….then we got to the end and I was in a RAGE.
I don’t even know how to explain it. It just ended… it. just. ended. Now no place on the cover does it say book 1 so I can assume that this is a stand alone, however I pray to the gods that this is not a stand alone. As much as I liked the story, the progression of the story was only in the beginning and then the end (In my opinion). The middle was just a lot of driving and connecting to Yara and then to end the way it did after all that driving and Yaraing. I was like WHAT!!!!
Ok so let me just say this. I will recommend this book because I really liked it, and I want you to also feel what I felt at the end. Not because I am a mean person but because it took me 2 weeks to write this review and this book is still fresh in my head and my emotion from it is still the same. That is saying something, so well done Amy Plum, well done. You wrote an amazing book that has stuck with me and will stick with for a very long time but I still pray there will be a book number 2 because I seriously need to know WHAT HAPPENED!!! It could not have just ENDED THAT WAY!!!!
EDIT: Since I already typed this I didn’t want to change anything so I added this edit
I just saw on goodread that this is book 1, my prayers to the gods have been answered and now I don’t have to punch anyone ;)
- See more at: http://www.becausereading.com/review-end-amy-plum/#sthash.q7srWf3P.dpuf
The story starts after the 3rd World War in a town in Alaska with a group of people that have started a new life separated from a world that was totally devastated. It left only a few people who will do anything to survive but when the outside world breaks in and all the villagers go missing it’s up to Juneau to find them using the only thing she know. Yara which is a form of natural magic that can connect her with her people and nature but when she steps out into a world she thought was lost it becomes apparent that she was lied to because the world outside of there small village is just fine.
That’s sounds AWESOME right? It was and I honestly loved Juneau. The story was told in her and Miles POV. Miles is the kid she meets and she learns is suppose to take her to find her people. I LOVED Miles and I can’t tell you how many times I laughed out loud. Some of the things he said is in a realistic way because if this happened to you, you would say the same things. The chemistry they had together made this a wonderful read and the banter back and forth was so funny….then we got to the end and I was in a RAGE.
I don’t even know how to explain it. It just ended… it. just. ended. Now no place on the cover does it say book 1 so I can assume that this is a stand alone, however I pray to the gods that this is not a stand alone. As much as I liked the story, the progression of the story was only in the beginning and then the end (In my opinion). The middle was just a lot of driving and connecting to Yara and then to end the way it did after all that driving and Yaraing. I was like WHAT!!!!
Ok so let me just say this. I will recommend this book because I really liked it, and I want you to also feel what I felt at the end. Not because I am a mean person but because it took me 2 weeks to write this review and this book is still fresh in my head and my emotion from it is still the same. That is saying something, so well done Amy Plum, well done. You wrote an amazing book that has stuck with me and will stick with for a very long time but I still pray there will be a book number 2 because I seriously need to know WHAT HAPPENED!!! It could not have just ENDED THAT WAY!!!!
EDIT: Since I already typed this I didn’t want to change anything so I added this edit
I just saw on goodread that this is book 1, my prayers to the gods have been answered and now I don’t have to punch anyone ;)
- See more at: http://www.becausereading.com/review-end-amy-plum/#sthash.q7srWf3P.dpuf
jennhillmeow's review against another edition
3.0
There is a whole lot going on in this book. Very curious to see what happens in the second one.
yuniesan's review against another edition
5.0
The only thing I didn't like was the cliffhanger ending........ I need to know what happens.....
jmeyers888's review against another edition
5.0
I adored everything about this book!!!! I was hooked from page one till the end.