Book Review

I'm a reading machine! At first, this next book was requested by a TAB member...oh maybe a year ago.  I finally took the time to read it, and I was not disappointed!

Relic: The Books of Eva by Heather Terrell

 

Eamon is about ready for "The Trial," the test to find a relic from the 21st century in the icy wasteland that now covers Earth after major floods destroyed everything else.  Only, when Eamon is practicing his climbing, he falls to his death...was it accidental? or intentional?

Eva needs to take Eamon's place in the trials, and after mere weeks of training by the Boundary dweller, Lukas, she feels ready to compete.  What she finds encased in the ice is not quite what she thought.

In a world where "MasterCard" and "Apple" are gods the current citizens believe the past dwellers worshipped, Eva and her friend must find the truth in the past, present, and future.

When you begin reading this story, you don't think of it as a science fiction book.  You assume it's in a new world of the author's making.  However, Terrell finds ways to incorporate the past Earth into this new frozen one.  There are some slower parts to this story, but in the end, you need these parts to understand the whole--to understand why Eva's people feel the way they do about life on Earth before New North.  Terrell takes her time to explain, in detail, what the leaders of New North have taught their people and why.  She takes time to develop a land and characters that create a possible future Earth.  And in the end, she rewards you with a full circle explanation that leaves you breathless.

We all wonder what has happened in the past when we only have artifacts to guess, religion to lead, and governments who want the answers to be their own making.  What do we REALLY know about Pompeii, Atlantis, Ancient Greece? What we've gleaned from artifacts in the ground? In Relic, we read a new story, but with us as the "Ancients."