Rebel Bound

This is book one of the series set some eleven years after a nuclear disaster and focuses on two sisters, Caelin and her younger sister Mardy, as they try to survive on the surface, especially now both their parents are dead. Most of the population moved underground, but they are still on the surface. Mardy is only twelve, so Caelin insists that she stays in a shelter underground during the day and goes to classes, while she works as a scav (scavenger), trying to scavenge enough to allow them to stay in the shelter for another day. But Caelin is sick with radiation poisoning, from her time on the surface, having to travel further to try and find anything that would pay for spaces in the shelter. She gets stuck in the bathroom when two men come in arguing. One pulls a knife and Caelin has to figure a way to stop what’s happening before one of them gets killed and she gets discovered. She causes a small flood and the men leave, but not before one has been stabbed in the leg.

The man, Torres, follows her back to her sister and Mardy starts talking to him and trying to fix up his leg, no matter how much Caelin tries to stop her from interacting with him. She doesn’t trust anyone other than her sister, but is now desperate for a good scavenge the next day. Torres knows this and says he needs her help to get a stash of his, to which she reluctantly agrees, only because she needs to get medicine or she might not last another week and Mardy would be all alone. She should have trusted her gut, because he has his pal help to grab everything off her and then stab her in the side and punch her almost unconscious. Other scavs see her on the ground and start to make their way to take whatever she is wearing for themselves. She has to get up and away, and more importantly, get back to her sister, like she promises every time she leaves her in the shelter!

She makes it most of the way back, but she is too late and she can’t get in. A stranger picks her up and carries her somewhere. When she awakens, she realises it is the person she had been watching and thought had been following her. His name is Jate and he lives in the DuPont gang’s shelter, run by a man called Lucio. He is the leader of a group that call themselves Impartialists, who make a place for one and all to live and work together. Some of them go out on raids to get supplies from the Coalition Forces, the leftovers from the World Coalition that ran things before the bombs fell. She has been asleep for a few days and has a bad case of radiation poisoning and a broken forearm, as well as a big lump on her head! A young woman called Gemma has been treating her, helped by a man called Hudson. Of Jate, there is no sign for a few days, as he is constantly out on missions or patrolling. When she finally sees him, she wants to get back outside, missing the open spaces and the freedom. But she needs to fully recover before she can really do anything!

When she is, she wants her and her sister to be safe and it seems they have landed on their feet. When Caelin pushes to go out on a mission, Jate tries to persuade her not to even come back and to go back to her life as a scav and staying in the Lincoln shelter. He says she will be safer there, but she doesn’t understand why, not yet at least! Another mission leaves her with a sudden decision to make, but without her sister, it isn’t an easy one. Her sister seems to relate to Lucio and almost worships every word he says. He is allowing thirteen year old Mardy to be trained to fight and be ready to go on missions, against Caelin’s wishes. When a huge attack is planned on the Undercity, mardy has a key role and Caelin will only find out too late what the actual price of loyalty to Lucio really is! Her sister is being used as a pawn and Lucio believes there are spies in his camp and his retribution on those he deems disloyal will be swift and extreme. Caelin needs to figure out who to trust to try and save Mardy and even the innocent people of the Undercity.

A cracking start to a dystopian post-apocalyptic story, with a strong and young female main character, who has had to grow up and take on a lot of responsibility at a very young age. She has only known a few years of normal life and can’t even really remember what it was like before the bombs fell. First they lost their mother, and then some five years ago, their father and at thirteen Caelin had to take on the scavenger role her father had done, to help and protect Mardy and give her a chance to go to school and hopefully gain entry to the Undercity. Her own life as a scav is not something she wants for her sister and she does everything she can to stop her sister from ever going topside. Their pledge of loyalty to Lucio and his group could well be a death sentence, instead of the good life they were promised. A great twist on this type of story and a storyline of those who are struggling daily to stay alive, a large gang who are thought to be violent and this utopia of the Undercity, all of which may not be quite what they seem. A really enjoyable read and I can’t wait to read the next book, Rebel Betrayed! I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout and would recommend it to all who love this genre or even good adventures. This is the first book I have ever read by this author and I can’t wait to read more. I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.