Every now and then I'll review something that my family and I disagree on. It won't happen often, but this one compelled me to write.
This is an intense read, to say the least. While I loved it, and loved the way it yanked my emotions around with every page, I'd hesitate to classify it as MG. It is more YA, possibly even adult. My oldest teen did not like it, and my younger one quit after only a few chapters.
The story explores the personal costs of religious extremism, in a world with magic. It has deep overtones of The Scarlet Letter - children living the consequences for a parent's sin and guilt (in this case, her mother's witchcraft) , and attempting to build a life through repentance.
It ends with blatant shades of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. It's not exactly dystopian, as there's a larger World where things may be better, but the reader never gets off the island to see it. The story develops themes of messianism, rule by theocracy and totalitarian dictatorship and the use of fear as a political tool.
Before reading I would ask, has your intended reader explored these themes in his or her reading? They may have. Many students read The Lottery in 8th grade, and they study WWII, the Holocaust and totalitarianism, so hopefully they are not new themes to teens, at all.
Voracious readers of science fiction may also be familiar with all of these themes - and then some. I could date myself by listing the Tor and Del Rey titles I read as a teen that dealt with these themes, but with starships and extra terrestrial colonies.
But many younger readers will need guidance to be able to understand how and why the story unfolds, as it does, as they read.
As an adult, I thought it was a great, dark read.
