It also drove me nuts that the whole focus of the town was on inventing things, and the kids weren't allowed to ask for help with theirs? Because teamwork never works, right? Because kids can't learn from parents and need to be made fools of publicly when they fail at something they are not wired for.Īnd there was no consistency when it came to the level of technology these people understood and had. I could even have possibly let all that slide if this were not post-apocalyptic, which imho should not be written like some sort of Great Big Fun Adventure. Oh, and his 5-yr-old sister tags along too.Īlso, if KIDS can make it through the Bomb's Breath by simply *holding their breath* while walking through it, why is it considered such a strong protective barrier for the town? But added to that are the completely unrealistic situations, like 12 yr old Hope traveling out of the town, through a blizzard, *with her mom's permission* and with a boy who only a few weeks before had had his stomach cut so deeply his intestines were nicked.

When a book does that, the author needs to make sure the science actually *could* work. Here's the issue: The book goes out of it's way to try and explain how and why all this stuff happened, how the Bomb's Breath formed and make it seem plausible. Maybe it's because I have a science background, but I could not get beyond the wonky science of this book. But my biggest problem ended up that I simply could not suspend disbelief. The idea of a MG post-apocalyptic (this is NOT a dystopian) was intriguing to me.

Hope and her friends, Aaren and Brock, might be the only ones who can escape through the Bomb’s Breath and make the dangerous trek over the snow-covered mountain to get help.įor once, inventing isn’t the answer, but the daring and risk-taking that usually gets Hope into trouble might just save them all.įirst, let me say that I do totally get the idea of 'suspension of disbelief.' I read mostly fantasy and sci-fi. The town must choose whether to hand over the medicine and die from disease in the coming months or to die fighting the bandits now. When bandits discover that White Rock has invented priceless antibiotics, they invade. The bombs destroyed almost everything that came before, so the skill that matters most in White Rock-sometimes it feels like the only thing that matters-is the ability to invent so that the world can regain some of what it’s lost.īut Hope is terrible at inventing and would much rather sneak off to cliff dive into the Bomb’s Breath-the deadly band of air that covers the crater the town lives in-than fail at yet another invention. What happens when you can’t do the one thing that matters most?ġ2-year-old Hope lives in White Rock, a town struggling to recover from the green bombs of World War III.

Sky jumpers by peggy eddleman