I must apologise for the lack of any reviews since the beginning of August, in fact a distinct lack of any posts. However, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been reading. I have and reviews of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Stephen Puleston’s Devil’s Kitchen are in the pipeline. But first I’m going to review the sci-fi dystopian first book in Norma Hinkens’s’ The Undergrounders Series.

Immurement (The Undergrounders #1)

by Norma Hinkens

The Sweepers are coming. They hunt the young. Earth’s end is her beginning.

Sixteen-year-old Derry and her brother live in perpetual fear of capture. They survive underground on a scorched earth overrun by gangs, clones, and mysterious hoverships. When her brother goes missing, Derry’s only hope of finding him is to strike a deal with a group of cutthroat subversives. Desperate to save her brother, she leads a daring raid to uncover the secrets behind the Sweepers’ hoverships, but she soon finds out the world she knows is a lie.

Keeping her brother alive may require trusting her enemy and opening her heart to something she never thought possible. 

Immurement is the first book in The Undergrounders Series, a sci-fi dystopian thriller trilogy with a gritty complex heroine and twists you won’t see coming!

REVIEW:

The first requirement of a good book is the ability to keep me turning the pages, and in that Immurement succeeded. It also painted a scary Dystopian world that added to my desire to read Book Two and discover what happen to Derry and the other Undergrounders.

I liked Derry with her insecurities and frustrations, and her courage and spontaneity. She is not a ‘perfect’ heroine who makes reasoned and clever decisions. She makes mistakes like any sixteen-year-old, especially one struggling to save those she loves and herself in the face of terrible danger and untruths.

Who does one trust in that situation? Derry understandably is dependent on what she knows or has been told, so her journey is one of multiple discoveries. She doesn’t become the ‘perfect’ heroine by the end, but she has learnt to demonstrate the qualities that will be needed in the struggles ahead.

She finds support from a cast of secondary characters, all with their own distinctive characteristics and abilities. In some cases, she is forced to trust dubious personalities despite her gut feelings. There are stereotypes, like the subversives, but then the novel is told in 1^st person POV. These are the stereotypes ingrained by others’ prejudices and beliefs. So they evolve as her knowledge broadens, and secrets are revealed.

I enjoyed the outdoor setting, not least as I am about to discover more about the great outdoors in Idaho and the Sawtooth Mountains. The contrast works with the survivalist lifestyle underground and the high-tech nightmare world of the Sweepers – the latter a world that feels too possible.

Don’t expect a tidying up of loose ends. This is Book 1 and it very much sets up Book Two. However, I admit that I like books in a series to leave more settled by the end.