Bookshelf Adventures

Where things are wild, wild things will roam… but now, everywhere is wild.

In a war-scarred world where horrible Creatures (“Creats”) roam wild, the future of humanity rests upon the shoulders of Lash and Ander, two brothers who failed to fulfill their prophecy once before.

Liv cut her teeth on war, famine, death, and despair. When her brother vanishes, she and her adoptive father, Carian, abandon their homestead in search of a Priestess rumored to find lost things.

With their fates inexplicably tied, the four must claw their way through the horrors of a fractured American South… but none are prepared for the theater of terror that awaits them, nor how badly they will need each other to survive.

Oh my god. This book is so real and visceral. From the beginning, the author throws you into the untamed world expecting you to survive.

All the Creatures of myth and legend are real. And they definitely want to kill you. The author does an amazing job of bringing all those horrible things that go bump in the night and giving them new claws. The Creats are deadly and so very dangerous.

But they aren’t to only ones. As Liv, Carian, Ander, and Lash trek across the American Southeast, they not only have to be wary of Creats, but also humans who have decided to embrace the killer new world order.

The characters themselves are very well-rounded and three dimensional. The way the author brings all the different character perspectives through their individual point of views was insightful. Their reactions to all of life’s struggles in this post-apocalyptic world are very realistic. There was obviously a good amount of research done to depict ways of responding to trauma of all kinds.

This brings to thought the situations themselves that our merry band find themselves in. It’s not only the world that has changed, the Creats aren’t the only monsters. The novel explores what happens to human nature once civilisation crashes. It describes the fall of humanity and the embracing of more animalistic and selfish desires and behaviours. Some trigger warnings are definitely in effect.

I enjoyed the elements of magic, mysticism, and prophecy in the novel, though I wish the prophecy elements were expanded upon a touch. I really loved the conversations between the main characters as they debate magic and prophecy; especially with everyone trying to convince Liv that such things do exist.

Overall, I loved the gritty reality of this post-apocalyptic world. I can’t wait for the continuation of the story.