Interview: Jessica Khoury + Kalahari

Today I'm pleased to welcome author Jessica Khoury to the blog to answer a few questions about Kalahari, the latest release in her Corpus Files series. Books like this where the characters are forced into a survival situation always fascinate me, particularly because I'm a solid 93% sure I wouldn't be alive for long under the same circumstances, so I like to live vicariously through those who fare better than I would. I hope you all enjoy the interview!

I’m not sure I’d be great in any type of survival situation (understatement), but I think a desert environment would be particularly brutal. What type of environment do you think would present the most challenges for you personally? 

I'd probably struggle most in the Arctic. I love snow, but I am such a baby about the cold! Plus, being from the South, I'd have no idea how to deal with it. I'd pretty much be useless. And dead. Very dead.

*Jenny nods along knowingly* Ditto.

If you were part of Sarah’s group stranded in the Kalahari, aside from a virus-carrying silver lion, what type of predator would you most fear having to face? 

Gotta go with Indiana Jones on this one and say–snakes! Even though most of the snakes were hibernating while I was in Botswana doing research for the book, I was still on the lookout for them 24/7. Some of the world's deadliest snakes live in the Kalahari! And you don't even see them until it's too late! Yikes!

What’s one thing about survival training writing Kalahari taught you that you didn’t know before it? 

There is so much! But maybe the most important thing is Don't panic. When you panic, you make stupid decisions, and stupid decisions get you killed. Taking a few moments to breathe and settle your thoughts and emotions before moving forward can be the difference between life and death.

If Sarah could reach out and pluck one character from any piece of YA fiction to be a part of her group, who might she think would best increase their chances of survival? 

What a great question! Probably Bennet from Tamara Ireland Stone's Time Between Us, because he could just teleport everyone to safety! Teleportation would be immensely handy–maybe Corpus should work on that more, instead of manufacturing deadly viruses that could wipe out humanity. Silly Corpus.

If instead of a full synopsis you could only print three words on the back of the book to entice readers to pick it up, what three words would you choose? 

"Safari from hell." Haha!

Thanks so much for stopping by Jessica!

• • • • • • • • • • • 

KALAHARI

Deep in the Kalahari Desert, a Corpus lab protects a dangerous secret…

But what happens when that secret takes on a life of its own?

When an educational safari goes wrong, five teens find themselves stranded in the Kalahari Desert without a guide. It’s up to Sarah, the daughter of zoologists, to keep them alive and lead them to safety, calling on survival know-how from years of growing up in remote and exotic locales. Battling dehydration, starvation and the pangs of first love, she does her best to hold it together, even as their circumstances grow increasingly desperate.

But soon a terrifying encounter makes Sarah question everything she’s ever known about the natural world. A silver lion, as though made of mercury, makes a vicious, unprovoked attack on the group. After a narrow escape, they uncover the chilling truth behind the lion’s silver sheen: a highly contagious and deadly virus that threatens to ravage the entire area—and eliminate life as they know it.

In this breathtaking new novel by the acclaimed author of Origin and Vitro, Sarah and the others must not only outrun the virus, but its creators, who will stop at nothing to wipe every trace of it.

Amazon • B&N • Goodreads

• • • • • • • • • • • 

JESSICA KHOURY

Jessica Khoury wrote her first book at age 4, a fan fic sequel to Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur, which she scribbled on notebook paper, stapled together, and placed on the bookshelf of her preschool classroom. Since that day, she's dreamed of being an author.

When not writing, Jess enjoys spending time with family, playing video games, and traveling the world in search of stories and inspiration.

Jess currently lives in Greenville, South Carolina. She is the author of Origin, Vitro, and forthcoming Kalahari.

Website • Facebook • Twitter

Review: Nil

NIL
Lynne Matson
Young Adult/Adventure/Survival
384 pages
Henry Holt
Available March 4th
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
On the mysterious island of Nil, the rules are set. You have one year. Exactly 365 days--to escape, or you die.

Seventeen-year-old Charley doesn’t know the rules. She doesn’t even know where she is. The last thing she remembers is blacking out, and when she wakes up, she’s lying naked in an empty rock field.

Lost and alone, Charley finds no sign of other people until she meets Thad, the gorgeous leader of a clan of teenage refugees. Soon Charley learns that leaving the island is harder than she thought . . . and so is falling in love. With Thad’s time running out, Charley realizes that to save their future, Charley must first save him. And on an island rife with dangers, their greatest threat is time.

MY THOUGHTS
Nil is a beautiful blend of elements, seamlessly weaving together adventure, romance and a little science fiction to keep the wheels in our minds constantly turning as we attempt to solve the many riddles the island has to offer. Ms. Matson keeps us on our toes throughout, the number of days Thad has left before his year runs out a pressure on our chests that grows more intense by the chapter, his impending doom making us twitch nervously with every flip of the page because we know it's bringing us one step closer to his end. As we struggle with the possibility of losing Thad when he hits day 365, we also take on an almost hyper-vigilance when we're with Charley, frantically trying to use her eyes to find the answers Nil seems intent on keeping from all of us, adrenaline pumping as we're constantly on the lookout for any clues that will see all Nil's inhabitants home safe and sound.

We spend our time evenly split between the perspectives of both Charley and Thad, the combination of island newcomer with island veteran a fascinating mix that allows us to approach the mysteries of Nil from a number of different angles rather than just one. As a result, we're able to see the island for the contrast it is: exquisite and cruel, safe and treacherous, and life and death; its secrets holding us transfixed as we wonder how everything for Charley, Thad and the rest of the young survivors will play out. This is a story where every page taunts us, daring us to flip ahead and learn the things we most want to know before we're meant to know them, and as the body count rises and the romance between Charley and Thad deepens, the harder that taunt becomes to resist.

Charley is an easily likable young woman, someone who takes her arrival on Nil in stride even when its dark side is fully revealed, jumping into the day to day life with both feet as she attempts to find her place amidst those who have been there far longer. She's a team player from the beginning, as is nearly everyone on the island, the sense of camaraderie between all of them both joyful and painful to see given the death sentence they all live with each and every day. Where Charley is all shiny newness, able to find some beauty in the island, Thad is more gritty realism, his time on Nil having taken its toll and robbed him of some of his hope. He's not overly negative by any means, but for him Nil is a sentient being–a prodigy in a game of survival being played unrelentingly, and one who has the decks stacked in her favor. Charley and Thad prove to fit together perfectly though, both opening the other's eyes to a way of seeing that increases their chances of making it home, partners in the truest sense of the word who we're rooting for with every fiber of our being.

The romance is prominent enough to make sure our hearts are in danger of breaking should things for either Charley or Thad not work out as we're desperately hoping they will, but the adventure and mystery aspect is the primary focus and the piece of this story that keeps us up late even though we know we'll pay for it the morning. The fact that the island of Nil remains as much a mystery at the end as it did at the beginning is both disappointing and not, our curiosity of course demanding answers for the how's and why's of everything we've seen, but in the back of our minds we know that any attempt at an actual explanation for Nil would have dulled this book's shine. Part of the appeal of the story is in the questions we're left with, ones that let us fill in the blanks as we see fit so that we become active participants rather than mere observers, and we can't help but find some satisfaction in the imagining.

Rating: 4/5 

Find Lynne:

Website • Facebook • Twitter • Goodreads • Amazon 

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Review: The Raft

THE RAFT

S.A. Bodeen
Contemporary Young Adult
231 pages
Feiwel & Friends
Available August 21st
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Robie is an experienced traveler. She’s taken the flight from Honolulu to the Midway Atoll, a group of Pacific islands where her parents live, many times. When she has to get to Midway in a hurry after a visit with her aunt in Hawaii, she gets on the next cargo flight at the last minute. She knows the pilot, but on this flight, there’s a new co-pilot named Max. All systems are go until a storm hits during the flight. The only passenger, Robie doesn’t panic until the engine suddenly cuts out and Max shouts at her to put on a life jacket. They are over miles of Pacific Ocean. She sees Max struggle with a raft.

And then . . . she’s in the water. Fighting for her life. Max pulls her onto the raft, and that’s when the real terror begins. They have no water. Their only food is a bag of Skittles. There are sharks. There is an island. But there’s no sign of help on the way.

MY THOUGHTS

The Raft is a lightning-quick read, one of those stories that thrusts us into a character’s world for a few short moments before releasing us, and while a deep involvement with characters or story remains elusive, our attention is held throughout nonetheless. Extremely short chapters help give the story a more desperate feel, a quick two and three pages holding us riveted before we reach a stopping point, our fingers twitching with anticipation to see what lies beyond the next sheet of paper. Even when there are lulls in Robie’s day–times when she’s doing nothing but floating in a wide expanse of water in a tiny raft–there’s an addictive tension, the possibility of something big happening just around the bend teasing us as we will Robie to hold on a little bit longer.

One of the more interesting aspects of this story is Robie’s lack of survival skills. Many times with survival stories, the protagonist, upon finding themselves in a precarious situation, magically knows how to hunt or forage for non-poisonous edible foliage, thereby ensuring their survival. Robie is as clueless as most of us would be, a short guide saved from the wreckage of her plane giving her common sense tips such as “don’t drink saltwater” all she has to guide her as she faces miles of endless ocean. She does have solid avian knowledge from time spent with her parents and other researchers, but otherwise she’s completely vulnerable, setting our nerves all the more on edge as we can so easily see ourselves struggling just as she does.

While Robie is someone whose shoes we can seamlessly slide into, we never really get to know her as a person before we shut the back cover on our brief stint as her invisible companions. This is simply a story of her ordeal, and we never get the opportunity to dive deeper or claw our way through the layers that would make her a standout character in our minds. Her treatment of Max during their time in the raft is often frustrating, as she succeeds in catching food and collecting rainwater to drink yet never wakes him from his near-constant unconscious state to share her spoils. She appears callous and selfish, more interested in her own survival than in making sure they are both taken care of, and though we are provided an explanation for her seeming indifference by the end, her behavior while reading is a bit off-putting.

Overall, The Raft is fast-paced and easily read in a single sitting, our time with Robie not overly emotional or soul-scarring, allowing us to easily move on to the next story without much reflection on what we’ve read, but it is certainly successful in entertaining us for a short 230 pages.

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: Ashfall

ASHFALL (Ashfall #1)
Mike Mullin
Young Adult
466 pages
Tanglewood Press
Available Now
Received from author for review

THE STORY
For a few frantic moments Alex doesn't know what's happening. The roof of his house has collapsed due to a fire that's sprung up seemingly out of nowhere and, left home alone by himself for the weekend, he stumbles to his neighbors' and gets help while trying to figure out how it all started. Then the ash begins to fall and the world goes dark.

Through snippets deciphered from his neighbors' radio Alex learns the supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park has erupted, catapulting his world into chaos. Determined to reach his family 140 miles away, Alex straps on a pair of cross country skis and begins a life-altering journey.

He soon learns that surviving is not merely finding food to eat, water to drink, and shelter from the never-ending ash, but also consists of avoiding other desperate survivors who are far more interested in keeping themselves alive than in helping someone else, and it becomes apparent quickly that the suffocating ash is the least threatening of the challenges he faces.

MY THOUGHTS
A truly extraordinary tale of survival, Ashfall shows us just how quickly panic and fear can sink their razor-sharp claws into previously rational and civil-minded people, shredding human decency with the ease of precision blade and leaving behind nothing but the tattered, unrecognizable remains of morality. The darkness resulting from the power outages and the shadows cast by the unrelenting fall of ash act as skeleton keys that unlock the blacker side of human nature, the threat of impending death causing selfishness to spread like an unstoppable disease as simple kindness becomes a ghost of a long distant past. Alex's experience forces us to examine some extremely heavy questions, our minds immediately probing the depths of everything we think we know about who we are to ask whether–were we in this situation–we would rather die as human beings or survive as monstrous shells of the people we used to be. For every act of generosity there are innumerable injustices and horrors inflicted in the struggle to merely exist, and we read Alex’s story breathing a sigh of relief when he stumbles upon the former and quietly seethe with anger when he encounters the latter.

Alex is an outstanding protagonist and narrator, his progression from typical teenage boy to determined survivor and fighter one that has us on the edge of our seats as we wish him all the courage and strength we can muster. Despite the seriousness of the situation he finds himself in, he often has an errant thought or two that causes us to laugh aloud, lifting the weight from our chests ever-so-slightly and rejuvenating us just when we need it most so we can continue with him on his search for his family. His transformation from boy to man despite having only aged several weeks over the course of the story is impeccably depicted, his quick thinking and will to survive causing us to fall a little more in love with him each page, just as his setbacks and his struggles punch us in the gut and knock the wind from our lungs as we suffer with him.

In addition to a truly outstanding narrator, Mr. Mullen also horrifies and fascinates us simultaneously with his world of ash and ice, making every element feel so very real we often find ourselves holding our breath as though we might catch a lungful of sulfur-smelling particulates should we suck in any air, and we repeatedly glance up from our reading just to make sure the safety of our environment is still intact. Part of the reason this tale sweeps our feet from under us is the inclusion of so many little details about Alex’s day to day survival, with basic human necessities such as going to the bathroom not glossed over or swept aside as obvious occurrences, and we truly begin to realize just how much we rely on our modern conveniences when we see the thought and effort put into simply staying alive and functioning without them.

Ashfall is an epic tale of a 100+ mile journey in unfathomable conditions with a little romance and humor mixed in to counteract the darkness as we all put one foot in front of the other to put one more mile under our belts. Mr. Mullin never fails to continually remind us however that at no point is Alex’s safety a guarantee, and we can only endure what happens to good people when the need to survive eclipses everything else without actually being able to change it. We are left with still fairly bleak conditions though hope for the future makes its presence known, and I for one cannot wait for the next installment so I can see how Alex handles whatever is thrown his way next.

Rating: 4.5/5