Book Review: Fireseed One by Catherine Stine

Today I'm super excited to review my latest read, Catherine Stine's Fireseed One. This book was so in-depth and fantastic, I felt the need to feature the book description. I remember reading it when I first read Catherine's blurb and recall being instantly hooked.

Book Description:
Fireseed One is a futuristic thriller that can be enjoyed by teens and adults. The year is 2089. Temperate climate has replaced Arctic ice, and much of what is now the United States is a lethal Hotzone, cut off by an insurmountable border from its northern, luckier neighbors, Ocean and Land Dominion. It is rumored that roving Hotzone nomads will kill for a water pellet or a slice of insect loaf, and that the ZWC, a dangerous Hotzone activist group, has infiltrated the border to the northern Dominions.

Up in Ocean Dominion, all eighteen year-old Varik Teitur wants is to party on Snowangel Island with his friend Audun and flirt with college girls he dreams of joining next year in his quest to become a doctor. Instead, he inherits a vast sea farm, following the death of his father, famous marine biologist Professor Teitur. Five weeks later, ZWC member Marisa Baron breaks into the farm’s secret seed vault and a fellow activist poisons the farm’s agar crops, the world’s food source. In order to save the last agar seedlings Varik is forced to journey to the Hotzone in search of Fireseed, a plant his father supposedly developed with magical hybridization properties.

Varik takes Marisa along. Aside from being a terrorist, she’s the daughter of Melvyn Baron, the biggest real estate mogul in Land Dominion, and the professor’s old rival. Oddly, she knows lots about Fireseed, and what Hotzone land Professor Teitur bought to test the crop, before becoming embittered and trashing the project. No one except Varik knows whether Fireseed once existed off the drawing board. Might the refugees in Vegas-by-the-Sea have answers, or the bizarre Fireseed cult in the Chihuahua desert? Varik, the reluctant hero, must risk burning in the Hotzone, as his mother did, to save the ailing agar, and the world.

My thoughts:

Fireseed One is a riveting futuristic fantasy tale that is classic YA with more than enough to sustain the die-hard adult sci-fi fans. I found the world Stine created reminiscent of best-selling, middle-grade Dark Life series by Kat Falls. However, in FireseedOne, Stine takes the global warming fantasy tale to a whole new level. In the beginning, we meet a reluctant hero, Varik, a young man who's forced to run his family farm after the passing of his father. Straight away, Varik is thrust into unfamiliar territory as he discovers his farm vaults were robbed. Those vaults secured most of the world's food supply in a form of seeds. Harvesting, protecting and engineering these seeds had been his dead father's life's work including his radical creation, Fireseed One.

Besides creating an amazing fantasy world, Stine did a wonderful job at creating such a likable hero who throughout the novel showed incredible depth and courage. Marisa, Varik's counterpart, was equally intriguing. I'll admit I didn't like her at first, but it just goes to show you how when great plotting happens, characters evolve, which make for enjoyable reading experience. The journey Varik and Marisa take along with Audun, Varik's childhood friend, is filled with suspense and bizarre sci-fi imagery that after awhile becomes addicting.  If you're looking for something sci-fi/dark fantasy with elements of dystopian YA genre, then Fireseed One is just the book for you.

Find out more information about Fireseed One and Catherine Stine by visiting her Idea City Blog. Like or follow her on Facebook or Twitter too!

What about you?  Have you read Fireseed One?  

Mina B.