Great Reads for Great Readers

 

Violet Black, by Eileen Merriman.                   Young Adults.

 

            Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand:  the time is the foreseeable future, and a huge new Measles pandemic has swept the region, infecting children and teenagers with deadly accuracy.  Scientific modelling so far has revealed a shocking 95% fatality rate, leaving myriads of families grieving for those they have lost, and the 5% who survive find it a long, hard road back to recovery – until ….. until some of the few survivors realise that they are equipped with a frightening new knowledge:  they can read the thoughts of those who are speaking to them.  They know what those people are thinking – whether they want to know or not!

            Violet Black is such a survivor:  seventeen years old and thankful to be alive, she is nevertheless frightened of her new ability, especially when she learns that all is not above board with the people who are managing her recovery.  In her search for others who share her ‘gift’ she meets teenager Ethan Wright in hospital and, aside from the fact that they find each other irresistible, it becomes obvious that certain ‘authorities’ are very interested in their new-found talents and want to exploit them for their own mysterious purposes.

            This is the first book of an action-packed trilogy that Young Adult author Eileen Merriman has written, and international terrorism is the theme:  it eventually becomes clear – after hair-raising kidnappings and misunderstandings – that the shadowy ‘Foundation’ who, after snatching them from hospital has published false death notices for them, all supposedly suffering relapses of the dreaded M-fever – are the Good Guys:  they want to harness this new talent to monitor people’s thoughts by sending (with intensive training) the Thought recruits to infiltrate various worrisome Far-Right and Ultra-National Groups and Cults, thereby learning in advance of plans for violence and murder.

            All fine in theory, until the first mission:  Violet is sent to Germany – not with Ethan as she’d hoped, but with ex-soldier Phoenix:  they are to get as close as they can to a couple who have a handicapped child – a couple who are planning terrible violence.  Sure enough, everything turns pear-shaped, Violet is seriously wounded by someone not calculated for at all, and tragedy overtakes her in her efforts to stay alive.

            Ms Merriman has done herself and her readers proud here – I already have Book Two ‘Black Wolf’ lined up next. An extra treat, quite apart from the clever plotting and suspenseful action, is her view of Auckland in the not-so-distant future:  everyone gets around in Zubers – and they appear to be free.  That’s my kind of transport!  FOUR STARS.