Author: Christina Kilbourne
Publisher: Dundurn Press

Trapped in a life she didn’t choose, Rook struggles to find meaning in her appointed role as an apprentice Keeper of ArHK. Even though her mam soothes her with legends of the Outside and her da assures her there are many interesting facts to discover in the Archives, Rook sees only endless years of tracking useless information. Then one day Rook discovers historic footage of the Chosen Ones arriving in ArHK, and she begins to realize her mam’s legends are more than bedtime stories. That’s when Rook begins her perilous and heartbreaking search for the limitless sky.

Gage is also trapped. Living on the frontier line with his family, his is a life of endless moving and constant danger. As he works with the other Scouts, Gage searches for the Ship of Knowledge to help his society regain the wonders of the long distant past, when machines transported people across the land, illnesses could be cured and human structures rose high into the sky.

Will Rook and Gage escape the traps and perils that await them in order to save each other’s worlds? If they don’t, it could very well be the end of humanity.

This novel meets all the usual expectations of the dystopian genre. Two children find themselves on completely opposite sides of the future, hundreds of years after an environmental crisis has ravaged the earth: one in a comfortable bunker-like world, protected from the “outside,” and the other on the apocalyptic frontier living in the aftermath of global warming. For each, the other world is just a story. Rook is told legends about the “outside” while Gage seeks the location of the mythical “ship of knowledge.” But as both learn more about the past of their own world, they become more and more obsessed with finding the truth about the other, placing everything in their own world at risk.

The reader quickly gains empathy for each child, one suffering from boredom and protection and the absence of choice (Rook), the other exposed to the unknown as he explores what is left of the “outside” after the storms (Gage). Kilbourne establishes Rook as the main character by using first person point of view and cleverly separates Gage’s storyline by using third person instead. Both characters develop their bravery and self-confidence as they challenge traditional knowledge, and both are also able to rely on family and close friends for support rather than taking on their worlds on their own.

There is an underlying theme of the impact of global warming that forms the background of the story without stealing center stage from the immediate stakes of the characters. There is a clever contrast between the advanced science of ArHK and the return to primitive times for those who survived on the “outside.” While one world propels the reader into a technologically advanced future, the other sends the reader back to a time of basic survival. A simple desktop, contemporary to us, bridges the two worlds when Rook and Gage are connected through a forgotten network. Ironically, the more advanced society (Rook’s in ArHK) is also the most closed and protected, imposing an ignorance on its inhabitants for their own protection, which sets it up for an inevitable decline, while the wild and untamed world of the “outside” can only get better, especially to the extent that it promotes freedom of thought and the sharing of information.

The book nicely shows how regardless of advances in science and knowledge, we can and must always be open to learning from one another, and we only hurt ourselves when we withhold trust and knowledge. The ending leaves much for interpretation and seems to leave Gage’s storyline hanging, but it leaves the reader with several rich questions (rather than with tidy, simplistic answers) about the importance of transparency in a truly democratic society.

- James Steeves