Ori Scott is a young junkie running from his mother’s prophecy that he’d one day save the world from the killer plants. Her preaching made him a laughingstock and now he hides in his drugs. But he can’t hide the change in his veins. They are turning green, and the prophecy is dragging him into a dark struggle between invisible forces. Set up on bogus drug charges, Ori is taken to a secret facility where he becomes a test subject in experiments to discover an antidote to the alien plant’s sting.
Jack Doll is a cop with a vendetta against the plants that killed his best friend. All he has in the world now is his old friend’s lover, Rive. Together they form an unbreakable bond—or so he thought. Jack has never liked Rive’s friend, Ori, but he believes in Ori’s innocence and doesn’t understand Rive’s strange indifference to Ori’s conviction. Struggling with his suspicions, Jack can’t help digging into a mystery that draws him closer to Ori than ever before—and closer to somebody who has secrets to hide.
Alone and scared, Ori is grateful for Jack Doll’s friendship, and his longtime crush soon blossoms into love. But Ori has no plans to accept his fate. He wants to escape, and he doesn’t care if he takes the cure with him.
Reviewer: NeRdyWYRM
Simultaneously Repelling and Enthralling
So in this dystopian clusterfuck there was a whole lot of "What the hell?!" moments. It's really kind of hard to describe this title in any specificity without giving too much away. There were aspects of this world that were, quite frankly, appalling. I was repelled by some of what occurred here because I guess I didn't expect it. There I go with those damned expectations again!
However, the oddities and the quirks and the contradictions sucked me right in. I could see something pure in amongst the evils right from the start. The characters and the dialogues were literallydiamonds in the rough and man, how they shone.
Ori ... Ori was a hard pill to swallow while being a character you wanted to reach into the book and hug. I mean. He was a survivor and a victim, innocent yet promiscuous, prickly but loving. Ori was a walking contradiction and honestly, not all that likable a lot of the time.
Jack was something else altogether. He's what you might call a 'company man'. Dear old straitlaced Jack was definitely drinking the Kool-Aid™ even though it wasn't necessarily an intentional head-in-the-sand situation. Ori embodied chaos. Jack embodied order.
So, boy oh boy, the angst whenever those two opposites attracted was singularly fascinating. The love-hate, push-pull was a little exhausting. That sounds like a complaint, but really it's just an observation. I always find extreme emotional opposites and characters' minds and hearts warring to be tiring.
I really wanted to reach in and smack them all a few times. Okay, so it was more than a few! That said, I was completely engaged even when my head was spinning.
I loved the turns of phrase and the odd speech and dialogue that was so perfectly idiosyncratic to the setting and the characters. Jack's inner dialogue was beautifully articulate despite his character's penchant for the straight and narrow. He had a lawman's mind but a poet's soul.
"Love is like a green wood," Jack murmured. "Liquid summer yellow. Love is a wild thing. A spray of blossoms blue. Love is you."
That was Ori's song, though Jack had made it up on the day they'd found Rive in The Orchards ...
The world building was pretty spectacular. I really got a feel for how things were. I did not like how things were, but I did believe in the possibility of it. Unfortunately, a society corrupted to the core is no longer as inconceivable a thing for me as it might once have been [shrugs].
There are twists and turns and weird, killer plants. There's a Sodom and Gomorrah meets Wild West kind of society with murderous, abusive thugs abounding. There are good people and bad people and really bad people. My favorite people, like Ori and Jack and Rive and Dobbin, go through some really fucked up shit in the past, present, and likely the future.
A single word does not exist that will describe this book. It just doesn't. All I can say is: if you like dystopian reads with a lot of dark situations interspersed with truly compelling moments of blinding clarity and impossible, beautiful, poetic descriptions to balance it all out, then this is the book for you.
More reviews by NeRdyWYRM can be found on Goodreads here.
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An ARC copy of this title was provided for an honest review.
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