The Crossing

February 15, 2018

The Disease started by taking the elderly, who drifted off to sleep and never awoke. Panic set in as the age of victims decreased. Ten years later there is still no cure. The world is embroiled in an endless war, expending the lives of those who are young and Disease-free. Amid this chaos, 17-year-old twins Virginia and Tommy search for hope and try to avoid the draft. They journey to Florida to witness the Europa launch to Jupiter's moon. Searching for the runaways is their foster father, Jim Gannon, who means to make them shoulder their responsibilities. This downer of a novel by the author of The Returned takes place in a future where people are desperate to survive yet impotent in their struggle to do so. Mott ignores for the most part what could be a fascinating exploration into the plague that's killing everyone, and the main character is not that compelling despite having a rather unusual ability. VERDICT Only for fans of the author and of bleak dystopian fiction.--Karin Thogersen, Huntley Area P.L., IL

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018
As the world falls apart around them, orphaned twins Virginia and Tommy trek across the country to witness the launch of a rocket, hoping to find life while fleeing the draft for a war almost certain to bring death.After their parents died when they were 5, Tommy and Virginia refused to be separated. Virginia is blessed and cursed with the ability to remember everything she experiences, completely and forever--"I don't forget any of it. Not a single moment. I carry all of it inside of me"--and in a series of letters her father wrote to them before he died, he told them to take care of each other, a responsibility they take seriously. However, the world is in crisis. A mysterious disease is causing the elderly to fall into a sleep they never wake from, and a global war is decimating the young. When Tommy receives a draft notice, Virginia decides that before he goes to war, they'll travel to Florida to watch the launch of a spacecraft bound for Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, which may harbor life. Their father was obsessed with Europa, and now, convinced her brother will die, Virginia resolves to take the trip as their last family memory. Their foster father, a policeman, is equally determined to bring Tommy back for his military duty. Along the way, the twins will discover beauty, betrayal, danger, goodwill--and the positives and negatives of their devotion to each other. Mott (The Wonder of All Things, 2014, etc.) brings his lyrical writing and soulful insight to another end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it storyline, but this one lacks the graceful cohesion and poetic wonder he brought to his first two titles.Beautifully written and touching on some fascinating ideas, but the journey feels disjointed and languid.

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May 7, 2018
Mott (The Returned) spins a captivating, fast-paced dystopian tale about a world in chaos and twins fighting to stay alive. The world is plagued by two concurrent atrocities: the Disease, in its 10th year, is wiping out the elderly, and a world war has turned every country other than the United States into a war zone. Tommy and Virginia, orphaned twin siblings who escaped a brutal foster system at the age of five, are living as drifters in Oklahoma and believe they won’t live to see the end of the war. Virginia’s one goal is to see the shuttle launch to Jupiter’s moon Europa, carrying what may be humankind’s last chance for survival. When Tommy receives his draft notice, he tries to hide it from his sister. Virginia, who remembers everything in perfect clarity—including their parents, whom Tommy barely recalls—has been overly protective of him since birth; on their way to the shuttle launch, authorities catch up with Tommy for dodging the draft and he learns that Virginia has been keeping him from entering the army by forging documents. While Tommy leaves for the war, Virginia’s talent for memory makes her appealing to the government and she enters its service. Although Mott’s concept is interesting, unnecessary use of flashback makes the choppy scenes hard to follow. Fans of dystopian fiction will look past the rough plotting and enjoy Mott’s intriguing concept. Agent: Michelle Brower, Folio Literary.

March 15, 2018
Teenage twins Virginia and Tommy live in an alternate world in which the Disease has been killing the old in their sleep for the past decade, while the young are being sacrificed to fight in a world war. There is one last hope for humanity, a distant moon called Europa. Though interspersed with beautiful vignettes from the living and dying populace, the story is mostly told from Virginia's perspective, and her ability to remember everything she has ever read, heard, or experienced is both blessing and curse. It is this conflict, not the action and adventure of the twins' journey from Oklahoma to Cape Canaveral, that drives the story. As a result, The Crossing is a character-centered dystopian tale with a strong coming-of-age theme set in an atmospheric and unsettling world not too dissimilar from our own. Fans of other contemplativedystopian novels with strong female protagonists, such as Alden Bell's The Reapers Are the Angels (2010) and Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles (2012), should be eager to give this one a try.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)