With the current dystopia trend not showing signs of letting up any time soon I often find myself browsing the bookshelves to find a gem in the genre.
Why do so many of these books feature mostly a white population as if people of color hardly exist in the future? We are often told how in the future everyone will be a hybrid eventually yet these stories never reflect that in their reality. The heroine is usually a teenaged white girl who seems to be talented in every aspect, stands out among her peers for her unique mindset, and always has the right solutions.
Orleans features a black female heroine who doesn't fit the stereotypical Mary Sue stereotype so many dystopian heroes fall under. She's smart and resourceful but we see her make mistakes and she's not tortured as different from her peers.
After a series of hurricanes and a severe outbreak of an illness called Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined and broken off from the rest of the United States.
Life in this new place called Orleans is very different from our society. Everyone is separated into tribes based on their blood type. Fen de la Guerre is an O-Positive trying to take care of the newborn baby of her fallen tribe leader after an ambush. She is determined to get the baby over the wall before her blood is tainted by the disease. She meets a scientist who snuck in from the Outer States determined to find a cure to Delta Fever.
This book contains no hint of forced, sappy romance like most of the books in the genre and Fen is smart without being the smartest and strong without being the strongest. What I mean is she feels like a real person not a superhero. Fen is really all about survival with nothing distracting her from her main objective.
Though I wasn't really a fan of how Fenn speaks at first. She speaks in vernacular which she calls "speaking tribe". Though it took some getting used to on page didn’t stop me from navigating through this tale.
The culture in Orleans is vibrant and quite different from any other story I've read recently. I would recommend this book to sci-fi fans looking for a break from the monotony of today’s most popular releases.
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