I chose to write my essay on a book called The Fallout by S.A. Bodeen.  It is a 328 page science fiction novel.  This is the 28th book that I read this year and the third science fiction book.

I chose this book because it is the sequel to another book I read by this author called The Compound.  The Compound was about a family that lived underground for six years because their father lied to them and told them there was a nuclear war.  He did it all as an experiment to see how far they would go to survive.  The kids and mother escape the compound at the end.  

 

The Fallout is about how the kids Eli, Eddy his twin brother, Lexi their sister, and their mother try to get back into a normal life. Eddy was left behind with his grandmother and never went to the compound like his siblings did for six years.   They all want to get back to a normal life.  But they can’t because everyone is after them trying to understand more about their evil father and the experiment and how he planned to rule the world.  

 

Eli and Eddy were going to inherit their father’s company called YK, but their mother wanted them to wait until they were older.  Eli and his brother Eddy think their father may still be alive and may still be trying to do experiments and control the world.  They don’t trust employees in the company and aren’t sure who if anyone they can really trust at all.  I liked the way the author kept you in suspense throughout the whole book.  One minute you believe that Eli and his family are safe and can get back to a normal life, and the next minute you find out the Eli and his family are being followed and think that the father may still be alive. The more that Eli finds out about his dad’s company, the more anxiety he gets and the more suspenseful the story gets.   

 

I would say the theme of this book is about trying to lead a normal life after something so terrible as his father did happens. They couldn’t go out of the house without the media following them or even to a store without people calling them monsters because their father cloned humans for the family to eat as meat while in the compound.

 

 There is a passage that got me thinking about how the experiment affected both of the twins lives differently but how neither could get to live a normal life.  Eli stated “All  I did was worry about things: my sisters, my mother,the little ones.  I’d even told Eddy about some of my stranger, more paranoid worries, like the doomsday prepper people following us.  And Phil.  Eddy was probably tired of my saying bad things about Phil and our dad.  When it came down to it, I was  like an old lady with my constant worrying; being ultra-cautious about everything.  Someone like that is no fun to be with.  Not only that, I didn’t even have the confidence to choose my own clothes, instead I copied whatever he had.  With a house full of children, Eddy was already reminded every day of how his life had changed .  It wasn’t fair for me to expect him to sit around waiting for me to catch up to him.  Be his equal again.  Be normal.”

I liked the way the book ended with the brothers and sister being  drugged  by an employee and brought to an island where their father was still alive and planning to do yet another experiment on them.  They got away and set the entire island up in flames, but I wish the author said the father finally met his doom .  It left you wondering if he could possibly have survived to try to get to the family again.  In the end the family seemed to be able to start getting to live a more normal life, but it would have ended better to know for sure the father was gone forever.  I would recommend this book to middle school age and older and rate it a 7 out of 10.  It was suspenseful, but some of the science fiction things like the gene gun weren’t too realistic.