Regina Shen: Resilience
Lance Erlick
Young Adult, Sci-Fi>Dystopia
Paperback, 240 pages
Published May 15th 2015 by Finlee Augare Books
Abrupt climate change melted ice caps and flooded coasts. Regina Shen is an outcast condemned to live on the seaward side of barrier walls. A hurricane threatens to destroy Regina’s world, tearing her from sister, mom, and home.
The World Federation’s notorious Department of Antiquities polices barrier walls and suppresses knowledge from the past. Regina thrives on salvage from sunken cities, including illegal print books from before the Federation. With photographic memory, she defies Antiquities by reading books not available in the Federation. Antiquities claims Regina has unique DNA that could single-handedly stop human extinction. It's too bad she doesn't trust them enough to barter fairly, let alone with her life.
As the storm worsens, Antiquities and their allies doggedly pursue Regina. Does she have the resilience to survive the storm and avoid capture while hunting for family?
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DISCLAIMER: I received this book in exchange of a review, in honor of this tour. May contains spoilers, but hopefully not. All opinions are my own, and not by any means influenced by other.
This book follows young Regina Shen, a Hispanic-Chinese, a Marginal girl in a very futuristic Richmond . . . California or Virginia? She lives in the swamps and whenever there is a huge storm that causes a flood, if the Marginals are not fully prepared (properly), they are swept out to sea. Yikes! Don't get stuck on the lower parts of the swamps when a storm comes.
Mo-Mere (Ms. Seville) is Regina's teacher, and was originally from the other side of the Wall. Regina looks up to Mo-Mere like another mother; she believes this is because Mo-Mere might be her donor mother, but that is not the case. Mo-Mere knows that Regina has potential to survive living on the other side of the Wall.
This book definitely got me hooked in Sci-Fi/Dystopia. I say it often, it really does take a good book to get me to like a specific genre. This boo definitely did that for me. If is a good thing I was able to jump right into the next book in the series, I do not think I would have been able to cope without knowing what comes next.
Lance Erlick likes to explore intriguing worlds with mostly strong female characters you can relate to, as they are thrust into extraordinary situations. He writes character-driven, action-packed, science fiction thrillers full of twists and turns.
He is the author of the Rebel series. In those stories, Annabelle Scott is forced to become a warrior to enforce laws she believes are wrong. This year Lance released the Regina Shen series. This series takes place after abrupt climate change leads to the Great Collapse and a new society under the World Federation. As an outcast, Regina must fight to stay free and help her family. Lance is also the author of short stories and novelettes.
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WHAT INSPIRED ME TO WRITE by Lance Erlick
When I was eleven, I got the bug to write when I read stories I enjoyed and said, “I could do that.” Then I sat down and discovered it was harder than it looked. After trying to write in the style of other authors, which improved my writing skills, I realized that it’s not technique but rather a spark from the heart that makes good stories.
I’ve always had characters and stories floating around in my head, usually when I’m not sitting down to write. They stir up from events of the day, news or from things I’ve read or seen. Often they come from imagining “what if” situations involving people in unusual situations. Then my imagination takes off trying to figure out how a particular character might handle it.
The Rebel series grew out of 2 ideas. First was all the anger and my-way-or-highway politics in which there’s no middle ground. I wondered what would happen if that rage boiled over and extremists on both sides got their way, dividing the country after a second civil war. So I set about to brainstorm what this world might look like.
Second was reading about fertility research. It involves taking skin cells from one person, coaxing them into a stem-cell state, and using the resulting cells to fertilize an egg. While the research is intended to help infertile men, it raises the possibility of two women having a biological child, and a society with only women.
I wondered what interesting characters would inhabit this world and decided the characters with the most at stake would be young. Annabelle Scott was born.
The Regina Shen series started with a resilient young woman with little to live for struggling to survive a hurricane and human adversaries. Challenged at every step and filled with normal doubts, she rises up to each hurdle and never gives up. This evolved into exploring what had caused her circumstances to be so dire. At that time, I was reading about abrupt climate change. I imagined Antarctica with no glaciers and walled-off coastal areas around every continent where the outcasts of society were thrown.
I wanted to explore a world where abrupt climate change had already happened. After worldwide disasters, what arose was a World Federation ruling with a restrictive caste system. Regina Shen was born an outcast into the swamps on the seaward side of barrier walls, a hopeless survivor the Federation didn’t want—until they did. Making her life even more impossible than the storm that blows in are ambitious Federation agents who discover the importance of her DNA to avoid the extinction of humans. She has to fight for her life and avoid capture by agents who won’t treat her well.
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Thank you for the review and for posting.
ReplyDeleteLance
My pleasure :)
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