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October 15, 2008
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 | The Promise by Jennifer Macaire | Reviewed by Katherine Maria Scott |  | Publisher: Double Dragon Books
http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/
ISBN: B00017IWNO
Genre: Children/Young Adult
Subgenre: Young Adult, science fiction, adventure
Release date: January 2003
Format: eBook
Pages:
Price: $5.99
The | The Promise by Jennifer Macaire is a riveting short novel that speaks volumes about the fragility of human life. The setting is the near future, not unlike the world of today. A simple meteor enters the atmosphere of the Earth and lands near the Gulf of Mexico. Ten years later, a fisherman catches and is bitten by an odd-looking eel with a shell. He promptly transports it to the nearest laboratory, where he jokes about having the fished named after him, Jake Brown. Instead a virus that starts in America spreads around the world comes to be known as Jakebrown virus, after patient 0.
Initially countries accuse one another of biological warfare as it soon becomes evident that the fatality rate among adults is one hundred percent. Children under fifteen are the only known survivors. One of these children, Ryan, at the age of fourteen, decides to begin a journal to document the survival of the few children who survived the virus. By the time his parents die from the virus when he is twelve, they have succeed in training both him and his brother, Alan, how to survive and care for their baby sister, Julia.
After recovering from the disease, Ryan sets out to fulfill a promise he made to his father. He and his siblings pack up and head for Paris to the centers that were set up for children orphaned due to the plague. Along the way there and to his final destination, he and his group look for any surviving children, particularly those who cannot care for themselves or have become subjected to abuse since the fall of the adult population.
Jennifer Macaire has crafted an excellent novel. Although this is a young adult novel, I would also recommend this book to older adults who enjoy inspirational pieces. Macaire's story is chilling in its realism as the reader imagines such a catastrophe actually occurring in modern days. Even more disturbing is the way Macaire portrays how il- equipped modern children can be in areas of basic survival techniques, though I daresay that Ryan was better prepared than many adults. Most important, The Promise portrays realistically that despite devastation, as long as there is a glimmer of hope, there will always be survivors. This is a book to be enjoyed by readers who enjoy adventure fiction or science fiction/future world plots. | | |
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