UNDERTOW, a chilling Young Adult Fantasy, starts in the humid summer
of Coney Island. A curfew is in place, as creatures
emerge nightly from the sea and go scavenging. Lyric finds it hard
enough surviving migraines without her family's living in
an unsellable house near an off-limits beach in the heat.
Thirty thousand nonhumans marched out of the sea and set up
camp on the beach. Lyric and her pals have to attend
school, but today is the day when the first Alpha
immigrants are to attend as well. There's another issue for
her family - everyone her mother knew has been hunted down
and removed by shadowy forces. The family tries to live
incognito, though as her dad's a six-foot-six police
officer, that's not always easy. And now there's media
attention as protestors crowd the school. Would you want to
go to class with riots outside and an armed SWAT team cop in
your room?
I was surprised by how quickly the atmosphere felt real and
convincing. Reading the book, I was hoping it wasn't going
to turn out to be either a horror or a too-sweet account of
how we are all really the same. I believe that Michael
Buckley has managed to avoid these traps. Some of the Alpha
are Sirena, like mermaids, while others are less human-attractive Ceta and Nix
varieties, with different coloured
skin and appendages. Not only that, but they don't want to
be forced to go to school. There is a sort-of romance, but it didn't really work for
me.
Naturally, the protestors range from senators and governors
to mob thugs. Amid plans to put an electrified fence around
the shore (I wondered if the Alpha wouldn't just swim to
some other shore) or integrate their children to schools,
there are individual tales of humanity and suffering. But
the local kids have always had problems. It's always been
too hot, with not enough money for air-con. Race tensions
and comparative wealth issues added to the seedy shore
activities. I felt concerned that Bex, Lyric's best friend,
constantly wants both girls to dress sexy although her
mother's boyfriend is a loser.
Michael Buckley's story is
not a pretty one and the tensions only increase. After
reading UNDERTOW, among other concerns, you'll be thinking
of all the trash that lies in the ocean. This is
recommended for mature young adults or adults who want a
different, exciting and at times disturbing fantasy.
Sixteen-year-old Lyric Walker’s life is forever changed when
she witnesses the arrival of 30,000 Alpha, a five-nation
race of ocean-dwelling warriors, on her beach in Coney
Island. The world’s initial wonder and awe over the Alpha
quickly turns ugly and paranoid and violent, and Lyric’s
small town transforms into a military zone with humans on
one side and Alpha on the other. When Lyric is recruited to
help the crown prince, a boy named Fathom, assimilate, she
begins to fall for him. But their love is a dangerous one,
and there are forces on both sides working to keep them
apart. Only, what if the Alpha are not actually the enemy?
What if they are in fact humanity’s only hope of survival?
Because the real enemy is coming. And it’s more terrifying
than anything the world has ever seen.
Action,
suspense, and romance whirlpool dangerously in this
cinematic saga, a blend of District 9 and The
Outsiders.
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