Katie reviews Reek by Alastair Chisholm
This book follows Sparrow as she navigates the world after the Reek has arrived. The Reek is a climate catastrophe that has resulted in people needing to buy air and carry oxygen tanks as the oxygen in the atmosphere is toxic and deadly to breath. Axel Brodie is a tech billionaire who is the only person who has managed to find a way to make clean air and his company Zephyr industries sells clean air to everyone on the planet. Many students who are not top performing have been forced to drop out of school as the schools only provide free clean air to those with higher grades due to the cost. Unfortunately, Sparrow is one of these students that has had to drop out of school so she can work to pay for the oxygen that her and her family use. Sparrow works to deliver parcels and letters for Zephyr Deliveries using skates which lift her from the ground and make her hover, allowing her to travel through traffic by holding onto the back of vehicles. Everything changes when Sparrow's inventor friend discovers a different way to survive the Reek and someone will try at all costs to stop this new method from working.
Reek is a fun fast paced dystopian thriller, with cool new technologies, highlights climate change and makes a climate disaster a reality. This book is Illustrated by George Caltsoudas who makes the book feel even more futuristic. This book is aimed at a reading age of 8 and an interest age of 9+. Reek is also published by Barrington Stoke. Barrington Stoke specialise in dyslexic and reluctant readers books so there books are specially designed for ease of reading. This means there are less words on the pages, the colour of the pages are off white and the books are edited in a way where comprehension is a focus, as is shorted chapters so the book is less intimidating. Reek is the first book by Alastair Chisholm to be part of the Barrington Stoke editions. Other books by Chrisholm include The Dragon storm series and Orion Lost.
To purchase this book please click here.