Transcendence of Environment
Written: Feb 04 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A fun, harrowing journey for youth.
Cons: Shortness.
The Bottom Line: A good tale about a boy rising to the day and then saving it in the face of absolute impossibility.
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| slaughterboard's Full Review: W.R. Philbrick - The Last Book in the Universe |
Along the lines of 'Riddly Walker' by Russel Hoban, The Last Book is an adventurous journey set in an unknown future where civilization as we know it is remembered only as fairy tales. Rodman Philbrick, author of the popular and award winning Freak the Mighty, has produced another excellent young readers' novel.
The Great Shake brought down all the buildings, covered the world with rubble and acid rain. People survive but quickly divide into those who have technology and those who grub in the filth.
"The proovs" reside in Eden. Genetically improved before birth, each is perfect and beautiful, living in a clean, vibrant region separated from the Urbs by an electrical charge.
The Urbs contain everyone else, "the Normals," those who are born without enhancements and who generally starve or fight through their short lives. No wonder the Normals are addicted to the virtual games and worlds found in black-market mind probes.
But Spaz is different. He misses out on things because of his epilepsy; the mind probes would destroy his brain, he was kicked out of his foster parents' house and ordered away from his adopted sister out of fear. Spaz tries to be a normal Normal, doing what the resident gang-boss demands until he hears his adopted sister is dying and requests his presence. With the help of an old man named Ryter, Spaz crosses through the several districts of misery and poverty that lie between his dwelling and his sister, meeting a helpful Proov and nearly loosing his life several times until he almost upsets the whole system of the world and shows everyone, improved or not, that all humans are equal regardless of genetics.
Spaz finds his reason to write the last book in the universe and it contains the feelings of love, companionship and honesty in a world where everything is wrong and cruel. Recalling scenes from Jeff Noon's Vert and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, this novel competes competently by adding the strong sense of mission and the resulting transcendence of environment.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
slaughterboard
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Member: julie madsen
Location: Portland, OR
Reviews written: 31
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
My life's purpose resembles less the foggy graveyard of 50s slash-and-stab horror films.
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