Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews

Some Fine Day

Some Fine Day

Kate Ross
For ages 13 and up
Performed/read by: Mary Robinette Kowal
Brilliance, 2015   ISBN: 978-1501228360

Decades ago scientists began to realize that Earth’s climate was changing, and they warned people of the need to find alternative fuels. We could no longer go on using fossil fuels with impunity, and we had to stop polluting Earth’s atmosphere. A few token changes were made, but what was done was not enough and the Earth began to warm up. The ice at the poles began to melt, sea levels rose, and the Earth’s oceans warmed up so much that they became the perfect place for hurricanes to form. These hurricanes were not like the storms of the past. They were bigger and stronger, and instead of dying away, they continued to grow.

   Life on the Earth’s surface was no longer possible because the “canes” destroyed everything, so the powers that be began moving people to a world that they had started building underground. Only a fraction of the world’s population could be saved and the people chosen for that honor were those who had influence, and those who had skills that would help the new underground settlements to survive. Most of the people who remained on the surface died.

   Now there are five settlements, prefectures, under what was once the United States. Jansin was born in Raven Rock Prefecture where her father is a high ranking general, and her mother is a skilled scientist. Her parents were little children when they left the surface for a new life underground, and they have watched Raven Rock grow and flourish.

   For the last eight years Jansin has been attending a military academy and soon she will be graduating. As a special gift for his daughter, Jansin’s father arranges for his family, and Jansin’s boyfriend, to go on a trip to the surface. They are going to have a tropical vacation on Archipelago Six.

   The surface is even more wonderful than Jansin imagined it would be. She sees the sun for the first time, swims in the ocean, and has a glorious time until surface people attack the holiday camp in the middle of the night. Jansin fights back but she is wounded and passes out. When she wakes up she is on a ship, a prisoner of the people who attacked the camp. Jansin’s captors thought that she is a nurse and when they find out that she does not have the skills they need, they decide to throw her overboard. They cannot afford to give precious supplies to a useless person, an enemy. Jansin offers to fight anyone of their choosing, hoping that she can prove that she has something to offer that they might find useful.

   When they reach their destination, a small island that is hurricane free for now, Jansin has to fight and the person she has to defeat is huge and strong. By some miracle little Jansin, who is still weak from her injury and lack of decent food, manages to beat her opponent and she is allowed to stay with the clan.

   Jansin starts training the clan members so that they can defend themselves if they are attacked. She is given the task of being the apprentice to Will, the clan “physic,” who is very knowledgeable about medical matters, even though he has had no proper training. Jansin and Will grow very close, and Jansin honestly starts to love her new life. She knows that she will never want to return to life underground.

   When soldiers from Raven Rock come to retrieve her, Jansin is not given a choice. She is taken back home, the people in the clan are killed, and everyone expects Jansin to go back to being who she was, but she cannot. She begins to appreciate that the establishment in Raven Rock is rotten to the core, and she wants out.

   Jansin goes back to the Academy to finish her education, but she is not there because she cares about being a soldier. Hopefully she can get an assignment on the surface and then disappear.  Then Jansin starts thinking about one of the hurricanes, Tisiphone. Tisiphone is stationary and Jansin wonders if, just maybe, there might be land in the eye of the huge storm. Rumors say that such a place exists, but no one knows for sure if there is any truth to them.

   Jansin starts trying to find out everything she can about Tisiphone. What she never expects is that she is also going to find out about a project that is truly diabolical in nature, a project that the leadership in Raven Rock will do anything to protect and keep secret.

   In this memorable audio book listeners Daywill meet a young woman who discovers that everything she thought she knew about her world is based on lies. She begins to realize that there are things that are more important than having a comfortable life, and that human beings, who should have learned from their past, have not changed. They are still cruel, manipulative, and dangerous.