“If the road to knowledge was paved with dead children she’d still walk it”
I read this book in two days. I stayed up at night, survived work all bleary eyed and then went home to read more.
This book is tense, y’all.
It opens with Melanie a smart girl, a girl dreaming about Greek mythology. She likes Pandora. She likes the name and the box and the hope that is unleashed with the evil.
“And then like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what’s inside is good or bad. Because it’s both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find that out.”
Then there’s a bang on the door and suddenly we see, she’s in a cell. She’s transported from that cell, strapped in a chair, and taken to “class”. All the other kids are just like Melanie, strapped to a chair parked in rows to learn.
Why are they there? We don’t really know. All we know is that Melanie is at once a normal kid, but also special. Her favorite teacher is Miss Justineau, she adores her. But then the chemical showers happen, the weekly feeding of grub. And some of the kids go missing, they just…stop coming to class.
And one day…they come for Melanie.
“She’s as big as four-fifths of five-eighths of fuck all, but she takes no bullshit from anyone.”
Look you don’t want to know any more than that. I went in blind, just having heard people rave about it and OMG does it deserve it. The plot is tense and the characters very believable. It’s not the highest of prose, but the world is hideous and scary and I love it. I recommend it for vacations though, because you will want to stay up all night to finish it.
