The Blending Time

Gr 9 Up—It is the year 2054, and the world has been decimated by environmental changes, plagues, and war. Opportunities for decent jobs and living conditions are limited, particularly for those with little schooling or influential connections. When Jaym, D'Shay, and Reya each turn 17, the mandatory age at which all children of the NorthAm Sector receive their work assignments, the choices are the military, Canal work, street patrol, or blender. Knowing the short life-expectancy statistics of workers in the first three choices, each "s'teener" opts for the unknown fourth choice. Together they travel to Africa along with thousands of other blenders whose mission is to intermarry and live with the African people and help to repopulate the continent after a solar pulse left the population unable to produce viable children. All is not well on this continent, and the three find themselves in a fight for their lives against powers both large and small who want the blender project to fail. Myriad postapocalyptic novels are on the market this year, and at first glance, this seems to be just another one of many. However, Kinch's novel is a frighteningly clear vision of a very possible future where government is in the hands of the few and powerful, and everyone else can expect little from life but deprivation and violence. Graphic scenes of warfare and rape help to build the unrelenting pace of the novel. Readers who enjoyed Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008) and Joëlle Anthony's Restoring Harmony (Putnam, 2010) may also appreciate this debut novel.—Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK