Title: Terra Electrica: The Guardians of the North
Author: Antonia Maxwell
Genre: Dystopian, Science & Nature, Environment
Publication Date: July 4, 2024
Publisher: Neem Tree Press
Comment: I received a physical copy form The Write Reads and Neem Tree Books. However all opinions are my own and in no way influenced by anyone’s weird glowing eyes.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204929195-terra-electrica
Amazon: https://a.co/d/0ekqkIpP (USA) https://amzn.eu/d/0dUDASJ3 (UK) https://a.co/d/0euPP4sr (Canada)
Synopsis:
The last ice cap has melted, and the world is on the brink of collapse. A deadly force—Terra Electrica—has been unleashed. It feeds on electricity. It is infecting civilization.
In this chaotic, rapidly changing reality, 12-year-old Mani has lost her family and community to the Terra Electrica. Armed only with some ancestral wisdom and a powerful, ancient wooden mask she was never meant to inherit so soon, she suddenly finds herself responsible for the fate of the world.
Can Mani piece everything together and harness her newfound powers in time to save humanity?
Review:
A gorgeous and exciting start to what I’m sure will be an intense adventure series.
We start by being introduced to Mani who is waiting in a cave for her father to come back. She’s been waiting for almost a month and only has enough food to last a few days more. She is so hungry that is considering disobeying his last command to stay in the cave.
Armed with only a small knife and a mask her mother gave her, Mani has to decide whether to stay here and starve or risk going outside and catching the sickness that has decimated the planet.
Part post-apocalypse survival story and part a spiritual coming of age story we follow Mani as she begins to accept herself and her circumstances.
Mani is a wonderful character. She’s young and naïve and hasn’t accepted the despondency and cynicism of the world around her. She wasn’t around when the ice caps were full and the world was on the brink of disaster and so she hasn’t got that jaded feel about her. She simply accepts what is and what people say and her innocence is as sweet as it is sad.
Reading the apocalypse from a child’s point of view gives a very different feel to most dystopian novels. In adult books more would be made of the sickness and the desperation of man to succeed. In an adult novel we would have spent time with raiders and looters and rabid packs of humans and been involved in petty power struggles. But Mani wants food and wants her father and those two overarching needs occupy both her thoughts and the main thread of the novel- everything else is window dressing to her and that keeps the story moving steadily.
I am interested to see where things go now that Mani and her friend have supposedly made it to safety, especially considering how they got there.
As a mid-grade novel I’d say this is suitable for anyone of 8 years and over. If you have a child who likes Anthony Horowitz, R. L. Stine, Goosebumps, “The Last Kids on Earth”, or even the gentle horror of Jennifer Killick’s “Dread Wood” I would definitely recommend this book.
About the Author:
Antonia Maxwell is a writer and editor based in North Essex and Cambridge, UK. With a degree in Modern Languages and a long-standing career as a book editor, she has a lifelong curiosity for language and words, and a growing fascination in the power of story – the way it shapes our lives and frames our experience.
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