Representation: Asian main character
Trigger warnings: Infertility themes, helicopter crash, near death experience

8/10, now that I look back this was an interesting sci-fi novel but seeing that there are flaws here and there that could've been improved I wouldn't pick this up again but maybe the other books this author has written could be better than this so where do I even begin. It starts off with a small backstory with an emergency call being underway about a bleeding nose that won't stop and soon lots of people succumb to it then it cuts to the main characters Lowrie and Shen living in the middle of London with an aging community picking up artefacts from times gone by and all the buildings are collapsing when a helicopter crashes into Big Ben and destroys it and no one knows why yet. The main characters look on the dying remnants of the Internet to see how humanity died and no it wasn't a meteor, climate change or zombies, rather it was a pandemic which caused everyone to be infertile and the human population slowly died off from there but I don't know where the virus came from. Anyways it looks like almost all hope is lost for humanity until Lowrie and Shen searched for news articles on the Internet and it turns out that humans began to build robots called "Baby-Grows" and at first they weren't considered human but then they were and I found that confusing but I could understand since biological flesh and blood humans were out of the picture so humanity tried to find a new way to survive, eventually these new types of humans outnumbered the biological humans and it became a part of society. This segues into another plot twist where Lowrie and Shen were apparently the last biological humans ever since they were born from frozen embryos and the rest of the humans were Baby-Grows. Some of the latter were suffering from a computer bug but I don't know why they have this, maybe it was a human who disliked them, I don't know but in the end Lowrie and Shen found the chip in a secret vault to fix them wrapping up the book on a high note. ( )

3.5 Stars

Well I finished a few days ago and I still don't know if I enjoyed this book but I thought I would just start writing a review anyway.

Another reviewer called it a "soft apocalypse" and that is exactly right. It just follows the slow demise of humanity through infertility. I liked the concept immensely. I enjoyed the exploration of what it means to be human and as a result I thoroughly enjoyed the ending. Oh. Sitting here writing this has been quite enlightening and clarified my feelings for me. I did enjoy it. However, I will need to be careful how I recommend it to students as usually when you say post-apocalyptic survival it conjures up images of life or death situations and degrees of hectic that are entirely absent from this book. Quite a thought provoking read. ( )

This was fantastic. Lauren James is a sci fi queen, and knows exactly how to throw a curve-ball halfway through a novel and make it work brilliantly. I also loved just how diverse this was (casual diversity in genre specific fiction is what I Live for). ( )

Overall I enjoyed this and I thought the concept was super interesting but for some reason, the story never really grabbed me and I was never really into it. ( )

Like this better than her other books in that I finished it. She does waffle on in places and I think the editors need to really crack down on this if she is aiming for a teenage market, as James will lose them if she gets too preachy. That being said, the story itself is quite good.

Plot: Lowrie ( who thinks she is gay) and Shen are the youngest people left on Earth after a virus wiped out mankind's ability to procreate 300 years ago. They were created from the last IVF embryos.
They live with much older people who are their "parents" in a small community of about 200 people living in the decaying remains of London in 2109. Their world is run by AI "bots" who do all the work that people used to do, and its an idyllic life where they go cave diving in London's underground rail system that has flooded due to global warming and are tutored by the older generation in all manner of things including first aid and survival.

The action starts when a helicopter crashes and a very old Life saving Bot called Mitch saves them from the fiery debris. Mitch who communicates with lights, starts hanging around Lowrie to protect her. The two then discover that the crash was caused by a terrible virus that is making all the older generation have seizures and then fall into a coma.

The long and the short of it is there is a hidden secret and the 2 humans must travel to Wales to try and break into a hidden vault on Mount Snowden that contains everything that was put inside when the virus first came - think seed bank, medicine, parts for computers, etc etc.

Throughout the book, Lowrie starts to feel funny about Shen and then realises she is falling in love with him and isn't gay at all. Surprise, surprise!

A few unexpected twists and turns in the plot that I DID see coming and some that I didn't. I think the students will love it though. ( )