The Young World

Debut author Chris Wietz's The Young World is the first book in the trilogy of the same name.

After a mysterious Sickness wipes out the rest of the population, the young survivors assemble into tightly run tribes.  Jefferson, the reluctant leader of the Washington Square tribe, and Donna, the girl he's secretly in love with, have carved out a precarious existence among the chaos. But when another tribe member discovers clue  that may hold the cure to the Sickness, five teens set out on a life-altering road trip to save humankind.

The tribe exchanges gunfire with enemy gangs, escapes cults and militias, braves the wilds of the subway and Central Park... and discovers truths they could never have imagined.

The Breakdown:
1. I love post-apocalyptic worlds, especially when the apocalypse was created by a mysterious disease. The Sickness kills children and adults, but teens appear immune to it.  A world run by teenagers certainly makes for one scary scenario.  The way that tribes are assembled reminds me a little of the different sects of people in Mullin's Ashfall series.

2. Weitz has duel narrators for the story in Jefferson and Donna, which makes for a very interesting combination.  Jackson is very cultured and more of an optimist. He chapters are more prose like, and he wonders about the deeper meaning of things.  He is not what I think of as your average teenager in his thoughts. Donna is more of a realistic, and calls things like she sees them in her chapters.

3. I liked the pop culture references strewn throughout the book, and like the idea that things like that continue on ever after the apocalypse.  A personally favorite was the reference that both Jefferson and Donna made to The Mixed-Up Files of  Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which was one of my favorite childhood books.

4. Weitz did a great job of making some pretty scary tribes in this world.  Their were the creepy cannibalistic librarians and the drug crazed teeny boppers.  I think for me that the scariest of all where the Uptowners, who tried to outwardly present a picture of culture and society structure, but were committing racial genocide and participating in the sex trade.

5. The ending left me with some many questions.  The next book cannot come soon enough.

To Read or Not to Read:
Read

Currently Reading:
Son of No One
by Sherrilyn Kenyon