Description:In post-apocalyptic America, Selah Chavez is crouched in long grass on a shore littered with the rusted metal remnants of a once-great city. It is the day before her eighteenth Born Remembrance, and she is hunting, though many people refuse to eat animal flesh, tainted by radiation during the Time of Sorrows. What Selah’s really after are Landers, mysterious people from a land across the big water who survive the delirium-inducing passage in small boats that occasionally crash against the shoreline. She knows she should leave the capture to the men, but Landers bring a good price from the Company and are especially prized if they keep the markings they arrive with.
Everything falls to pieces when the Lander Selah catches is stolen by her brothers–and Selah wakes up the next morning to find the Lander’s distinctive mark has suddenly appeared on her own flesh. Once the hunter, Selah is now one of the hunted, and she knows only one person who can help her–Bohdi Locke, the Lander her brothers hope to sell.
My Thoughts: When I saw that Revell had a dystopian coming out, I was really excited. I love speculative fiction and thought that the premise sounded interesting. While I am still glad that Revell has branched out into this speculative genre, I am rather disappointed with Thunder.
Selah is a girl who demands to be treated like an adult. However, she doesn't act like one. What might have been a great character development just made her unlikeable when she never even tried to behave as an adult and take responsibility for her childish behavior. I'll give her that her mother hardly prepared her for adulthood. I would say that her mother downright made Selah a spoiled and out of touch person. It is the only way one can explain that Selah describes her brother as looking at her with hate and then saying that he loves her... because he's her brother.
I can see where plans for future books would give a better character arc to Brodhi, however he is a jerk who cares for no one but himself. He very nearly leaves a kid to drown, would have left another to die if not for Selah, and only stays with Selah because he "needs her for information". Which he never gets. But by the time he figures out that she is useless in that regard, he learns he is destined to protect her and suddenly starts caring about what happens to her.
A lot of the secondary characters seemed unnecessary and likely could have been combined to make a far more coherent story line. As it was, they all had different agendas, some of which I am not sure I even figured out because they kept making veiled references to their "plans". One guy is certainly never going to be able to clue anyone in on his plans now.
Some scenes felt like they were only there to make the book longer, not because we needed to read them. One stands out where she is surrounded by boars, which she is afraid of because she heard a story of pigs eating a farmer (did I mention the graphic way in which many people die?). She escapes by jumping in a stream and then the boars do not appear again.
I give Calhoun props for trying her hand at dystopian. I looked at her goodreads profile and noticed that her other books were mystery and romance. Hopefully she is able to do better in the next book of the series.
I received this book from Revell Publishers in exchange for an honest review.
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