PULSE POINT

A repressive, domed society has evolved due to climate change in this dystopian offering.

Kaia and Lev are kept apart by Lev’s cruel mother, or birth elder, as parents are called in the City, where Citizens must earn their daily joule consumption and are monitored by an implanted device called a pulse point. Though Kaia’s life has long been bleak, events finally coalesce that prompt her desperate escape to the Mountain outside the dome. There she encounters Prims—those labeled primitive—whom she has been told are a threat to the City. Alternating in first-person narration between Kaia and Lev, who is sent to find her, a variety of dystopian tropes are reworked in sometimes interesting ways. The novel effectively juxtaposes the bigoted, genetically obsessed City with the more community-minded Prims but at times is awkward in its idealization of their simple earthiness. Kaia’s gradual lessening prejudice and increasing understanding of her family history leads her and others to a momentous decision that sets things up for a sequel. Characters are cued as White; City dwellers are described as having pale, silvery skin due to the filtered light of the dome; the Prims have weathered, ruddy skin as a result of sun exposure.

An engaging but somewhat derivative imagining of a terrifying future.