A Crack in the Sky

Gr 6—10—In this first installment of a planned series, 13-year-old Eli lives in a postapocalyptic domed city run by InfiniCorp. The world has been suffering from global warming, but the corporation insists there is no reason to worry. It uses the power of the CloudNet to distract its citizens from signs that all is not as it should be. Because Eli is one of the few who can resist the CloudNet's power, he is accused of being a "Fogger" (those who are accused of anti-InfiniCorp sentiments) and is sent to a reeducation facility where he is imprisoned and forced to work assembling T-shirts. He meets Tabitha, who is the only other slave who can fight the power of the CloudNet. Together they plot to escape. Taut pacing and interesting characters are offset by flawed world building. A map does add visual clarification to settings that aren't fully fleshed out in the text (though, oddly, the location of the re-education facility is not indicated). Eli's microchip-implanted pet mongoose functions as a deus ex machina, another symptom of sloppy world building. While this is a decent example of dystopian literature, it is not likely to win over those who aren't already enthusiastic readers of the genre.—Kristin Anderson, Columbus Metropolitan Library System, OH