BLANK

Avery’s near-future dystopian novel mixes climate change SF with surreal children’s fiction à la Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in a provocative adventure tale.

One day, late in the 21st century, everything went blank. That is, no one could remember anything about the past, including about themselves. The resulting centuries of chaos led to the occupation of the world and oppression of its people by those with the most resources, as technology, for the most part, also reset during the blank. Seeds eventually became the most prominent currency for the common person, including the young children at the center of this book’s action: Amazon and Danube Rivers and their friends Alabama and Nebraska Bailiwick. The story begins in earnest when the Rivers sisters discover an interloper eating their seeds. Alice, who becomes a major character later in the book, reveals secrets about the world to the other children and to the reader. However, Avery leaves readers in the dark, just as the main characters are, about most details of the world. Indeed, those who desire clear explanations for every aspect of a novel’s plot should look elsewhere, as this book instead revels in obscurity. After becoming embroiled with Alice, the Rivers sisters and the Bailiwick brothers stumble into a rebellion against the occupiers, all while they attempt to assist Alice with her strange machinations. Avery’s prose is akin to that of Ray Bradbury and Lewis Carroll, by turns, with long soliloquies like those found in the former’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). Part V of the novel, “Alice’s Journey,” is where the Carroll-esque aspects of the novel come out in full force, as Alice wanders through the wilderness, following the storyline of a nursery rhyme and meeting an array of colorful characters who impart wisdom upon her. The novel’s latter half intriguingly veers away from the typical tropes of dystopian fiction to unveil a cautionary parable.

An artful and offbeat speculative work.