Exodus by Julie Bertagna

From the Publisher

In a drowned world, can refuge be found?

Less than a hundred years from now, the world as we know it has disappeared beneath the sea. Only fifteen-year-old Mara has the vision and the will to lead her people in search of a new beginning in this harsh, unfamiliar world.

Booklist Science Fiction/Fantasy Top 10 for Youth

“This sweeping, futuristic fantasy envisions a ravaged Earth, submerged almost entirely in water after a century of global warming . . . wholly imagined, extraordinarily vivid worlds.” —Booklist, starred review

“Ecologically conscious teens will embrace this girl who is destined to save humanity.” —School Library Journal

“Intellectually rigorous and bursting with humanity, this is a book to be read again and again.” —Sunday Herald (UK)

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up- In this epic tale of global warming and environmental disaster set at the dawn of the next century, 15-year-old Mara has lived with the realization that the world is drowning. Growing up on Wing, she has watched her North Atlantic island become smaller each year, and people have long ago abandoned technology in their struggles to subsist. After a particularly bad ocean surge, another part of the village is lost. This spurs Mara to convince the villagers that they will have a chance at a new life in the Sky Cities, which she has located on the now-defunct version of the Internet. After a grueling journey, the refugees find themselves locked out of the city by a giant wall. As sickness and disease claim some of her people, Mara decides to find a way into the city to save them. Through the netherworld (under the city), the teen has encounters with the ratbashers (urchins) and the Treenesters. The Treenesters think that Mara is The Face in the Stone that will save them. Ecologically conscious teens will embrace this girl who is destined to save humanity.-June H. Keuhn, Corning East High School, NY

Kirkus Reviews

Fifteen-year-old Mara loves her island home but time is short. The year is 2100 and waters are rising, leaving little land on which to shelter from the worsening storms. Mara convinces her people to leave home and search for cities above the rising waters. But after terrible losses, the refugees arrive at the New World city of New Mungo (which towers above the mostly submerged Glasgow) to find a dreadful situation. Refugees barely survive, starving and diseased, forbidden from entering the city except when they are press-ganged into forced labor. With the help of matriarchal tree-dwelling primitives outside the city and an attractive young man inside, Mara hopes to rescue her friends and find new hope for humanity. The overt ideology of Mara's tale, about as subtle as a brick, would be enriched greatly if these characters were at all developed. In a book that rests so heavily upon ideology, the science is exaggerated. The real-life climate-change worst-case scenario would lead to sufficiently shocking science fiction, so why sink Europe beneath the ocean? Inspirational but flawed. (Science fiction. 11-13)

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