Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Hardcover, 368 Pages
2011, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
ISBN: 1442409053
Series: Book 1 of Chemical Garden
Synopsis
By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.
When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?
Review
Wither was quite an unexpected novel. I went in not knowing anything about the story and was astounded by it. I could not put this book down. I was hooked from the moment I started until I finished the last page at 5 in the morning.
I've never read a book that focused on polygamy until Wither. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the portrayal, but the happenings definitely sucked me in. Beyond the immediacy of the polygamy of this book, the series is set in a dystopian society where genetic engineering has gone wrong. After creating a perfect generation of people, the next generation cannot live past their twenties. Every young person contracts the incurable deadly virus, thus creating a society where people must procreate younger for the survival of the species. The situation is reminiscent of the times of old when 12-year-olds married because no one lived past thirty, but modernized and futuristic.
Rhine is an authentic feeling character in her indecisiveness. She often weighs the consequences of possibly actions ad nauseum, yet still acts irrationally when opportunities arise. A love story, or perhaps more accurately a flirtation, progresses throughout Wither, but it can't compare to the relationship Rhine shares with her two sister-wives. That relationship was the most deeply felt in the book.
Wither's polygamy focus brings a fresh twist to the dystopian genre that I thoroughly enjoyed. Lauren DeStafano has created a horrifically creepy society that will completely enthrall readers.
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