SKY P.J., A Girl Called Ari, Science Fiction (Indie:2020)
Link :Amazon, Price at time of Review: £6.99
Starla lives a privileged life as the mayor’s daughter in the city, an enormous walled community protected from the wasteland and pestilence outside – and from which, once exiled, you may never return. A botched kidnapping attempt leaves her lost in the desert, where she is reluctantly rescued by Ari, a tough young woman who has been surviving alone since childhood. They agree that Ari will guide Starla back to the city if Starla guarantees Ari will be allowed entry. But the journey is long, hard, fraught with danger, and neither can predict how it will change them.
The world building is a real strength of this book. This is a post-apocalyptic dystopia with plenty of detail to make it feel like a living, breathing reality without overloading it with unnecessary explanation that would distract from the plot. This gives our two young protagonists plenty of space to bond, to make believable and compelling mistakes as they struggle to survive, and their personal struggle is a real pleasure to read.
Regrettably, this book is riddled with grammatical and rhetorical flaws, particularly spliced commas, mis-attributed pronouns, and awkward word repetitions. If this were literary fiction it might prove fatal, but there is a great deal of YA fiction (Meyers, Collins) that overcomes clumsy prose through strength of story – A Girl Called Ari does exactly this, and coming in at just under 100 pages on my laptop (about 300 in large print paperback) it moves along with zest and energy. The story surprises you as it twists and turns, with plenty of peril to overcome and moments when you think all must be lost. This is a cracking young adult adventure and a delightful way to spend an afternoon in the sunshine.
