In case the title is not a give-away, The Eleventh Plague, by Jeff Hirsch, is another dystopian, world-gone-bad novel, and this one had me feeling as though I were sitting under a table, in my blanket fort as a 5 year old, playing "big bad world". You know the game, when you hide yourself away, pretending there is a bad world out there, kept away simply by staying on the magic blanket. Sometimes, you would venture out, daring the baddies out there to get you, knowing you could retreat to your safe place, and knowing they wren't real anyway.
As in the familiar childhood game, all things in The Eleventh Plague end in a glorious "Kumbaya" moment, so sickly sweet it made me want to gag. Ok, so there is violence, death, and loss along the way, but that didn't manage to keep away the saccharin taste that lingered just beneath the surface. The many moments of tension seemed shallow, since I knew all was going to be well in the end, and I was going to be safe on my blanket. It was enough to make me not want to play the game.
Maybe you'll have better luck.
~Karina
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