A review by tasharobinson
Wasteland by Susan Kim

3.0

Great premise, so-so execution. I loved the authors' graphic novels Brain Camp and City Of Spies, which also have great premises and plotting, and the storyline here is compelling, with characters in a tough, potentially complicated Dying Earth situation. But the writing is frustratingly blunt and simple, and so are the emotions that drive people. Everything feels rushed, with people veering from one emotional extreme to another and reversing their motivations — or instantly falling in love — within the space of a sentence or two. It's reminiscent of Michael Grant's Gone series if the entire thing was compressed down to one hurried volume. So much about the world is never explained or developed, and never makes sense. For instance, the book summary presents the "married at 15, pregnant at 17, dead at 19" concept as though it's a Logan's Run-like societal imperative, but it's just one of many arbitrary statements meant to provoke drama, and never fleshed out in the book. People assume they will be dead by 19, but there's no specific reason, apart from harsh conditions, and their society is barely sketched out, so it never seems plausible that such a community could sustain itself. A quick, exciting, but unsatisfying read that leaves a lot of big questions behind.