THE FIRSTBORN

Two teens make their way through a post-apocalyptic future world in Seitz’s YA series starter.

In this first installment in the House of Heaventree saga, 15-year-old Flare Flanagan and her 14-year-old brother, Cornelius, are misfits in a hypertechnological future world in which Great Storms once disrupted all satellite and electronic technology for over a year. Since then, society has been almost entirely subsumed by a gigantic company called the Global Operational Datalink, which has taken over most of the world through its communication monopoly: “It was a satellite that controlled all communications—wePhones, wePads, computers, internet, gaming,” explains the omniscient narrator. “It was supposed to be free, but nothing comes without a price.” Everybody now has an electronic chip implanted in their foreheads for instantaneous connection with the Datalink, governed by the “Herod clause,” which grants the Global Union ownership of all users’ firstborn children. Cornelius and Flare’s parents refuse to do this, thus making their children immediately identifiable outcasts, although they try to wear their hair over their foreheads to disguise their status. The pair also attend the House of Heaventree, a Christian preparatory school that aims to make its charges “physically fit, mentally fit, and most importantly, spiritually fit to handle any test of faith.” Seitz handles the work’s straightforward Christian allegory with enough skill and energy to head off any predictability. The interplay between the Flanagan children and their schoolmates at Heaventree is well rendered, and although the benefits of Cornelius’ encyclopedic recall of the Bible results in some rather on-the-nose quotations, Seitz manages to create a good balance between the Christian subtext and the bleak future setting. Religious readers are likely to find this work congenial and faith-affirming.

An earnest, if sometimes heavy-handed, Christian allegory about faith and the modern world.