May 23, 2022
Monroe Howes’s frenetic if flawed debut imagines a dystopia in which people “awoken” from cryogenic sleep face a brutal extermination campaign. Outlaw “Resurrectionists” bring 23-year-old Alabine Rivers back to life 101 years after she died from cancer and had her body frozen in 2020. Reanimation has been declared illegal and the “awoken” are killed on sight in the reformed United America, where traditional gender norms reign and cultural and religious differences are repressed. The Resurrectionists, stationed at a camp in the largely deserted Chicago, explain to Alabine that she’s the poster child for awoken rights because of her boyfriend Max Green’s impassioned activism in support of reanimation before his death. Then the Resurrectionists’ leaders are arrested, spurring a failed rescue attempt during which government agents capture Alabine. Resisting the secretary of science’s demand that she betray her comrades, she escapes and becomes the leader of a Resurrectionist cell that’s determined to disrupt the president’s plans to blow up a massive cryogenic storage facility in Atlanta. However, when Alabine finds out Max’s body is being stored in New York, she decides it’s more important to travel there to reanimate him, setting up a showdown between Alabine and her supporters over their strategy. Monroe Howes’s inventive worldbuilding holds interest, but a few too many close calls and fortuitous escapes stretch believability, and the meaty ideas get lost in the jumbled plot. This doesn’t live up to its intriguing premise. Agent: Meredith Miller, UTA.
December 1, 2022
Twenty-three-year-old Alabine Rivers died in 2020 from cancer. She was then cryogenically frozen and wakes a century later to a completely changed world. Technology is used only by those in power, and people like her, the Awoken, are illegal and can be killed on sight. Alabine joins the militia group who woke her--the Resurrectionists--who are fighting for the rights of the Awoken. Unfortunately, while the plot is captivating, Howes's debut suffers from too many characters with too little depth. Relationships seem one-dimensional, as the characters spend too much time fleeing from different locations to have meaningful interactions. Additionally, there is much info dumping and telling over showing, which results in an occasionally dull listen, as there is little to keep the plot moving along. The audio is solidly performed by narrator Sarah Naughton. Naughton ably distinguishes character voices, but even with her help, listeners may struggle to keep track of the many characters. VERDICT This audiobook is a disappointment to sci-fi fans but may interest some patrons hoping to dip their toes into a new genre.--Danielle Arpin
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