*COURTESY OF NETGALLEY*
Virgin Jackson is the senior ranger in Birrimun Park – the
world’s last natural landscape, overshadowed by a sprawling coastal megacity.
She maintains public safety and order in the park, but her bosses have brought
out a hotshot cowboy to help her catch some drug runners who are affecting
tourism. She senses the company is holding something back from her, and she’s
not keen on working with an outsider like Nate Sixkiller.
When an imaginary animal from her troubled teenage years
reappears, Virgin takes it to mean one of the two things: a breakdown (hers!)
or a warning. When the dead bodies start piling up around her and Nate, she
decides on the latter.
Something terrible is about to happen in the park and Virgin
and her new partner are standing in its path…
I ask you, with a blurb like that, how do you not feel excited
to just start reading the book? In this day and age when girls in their late
teenage years with a traumatic past are pushed into exotic dystopian lands to
fight for the oppressed, this blurb was something else.
Some chapters on, I could feel this excitement oozing out
through me, and the very act of picking up my tablet made me sigh.
Not that it was that bad. Just plain exhausting.
Virgin is a twenty nine year old ranger. My first reaction
was “YES. NOT ANOTHER TEENAGER.”
Were there any benefits? Um, no.
The idea of a common world mythology (for more info, read
the book) introduced was so very refreshing, so new, that when nothing
transpired out of it, I almost cried.
The narration was … average. I’m not plenty familiar with
the Australian slang, but I thought Papa Brise’s was … interesting (for lack of
a better word). You could picture him as this underworld don with ego problems.
Most other characters were developed in the average fashion.
The dystopian world De Pierres has created is realistic, I
guess, but that didn’t make me happy. Technically the world building is good
with her descriptions of the Mystere and the park, but again – not happy.
And then.
Question: Which among the following is Virgin’s possible
love interest?
a)
Nate
b)
Heart
c)
Hamish
d)
Totes
Me: *gags* Did so many guys have to show an interest in her?
Even the apparently-not-as-random-as-I-thought-hit man?
And usually when stories end abruptly, you start hyperventilating
and putting a knife to the writer’s throat in your dreams to surrender the next
book RIGHT NOW.
I’ll pass on this one, though.
Warning: This is the opinion of yours truly. I scrolled
through other Goodreads reviews glorifying this book. Reader’s discretion
advised.
VERDICT: 2 stars
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