Blog Tour: The Farm: Escape is Only the Beginning

Title:  The Farm: Escape Is Only the Beginning

Author: Emily McKay

Publisher: Berkley Trade

Publish Date:  04 December 2012

Pages: 420

ISBN:  978-0-425-25780-7

Source:  ARC from publisher

Genre:  YA, dystopian, vampires

Series:  The Farm

Other books in series:  The Lair (November 2013)

Rating: Really liked

Life was different in the Before: before vampires began devouring humans in a swarm across America; before the surviving young people were rounded up and quarantined. These days, we know what those quarantines are—holding pens where human blood is turned into more food for the undead monsters, known as Ticks. Surrounded by electrical fences, most kids try to survive the Farms by turning on each other…

And when trust is a thing of the past, escape is nearly impossible.

Lily and her twin sister Mel have a plan. Though Mel can barely communicate, her autism helps her notice things no one else notices—like the portion of electrical fence that gets turned off every night. Getting across won’t be easy, but as Lily gathers what they need to escape, a familiar face appears out of nowhere, offering to help…

Carter was a schoolmate of Lily’s in the Before. Managing to evade capture until now, he has valuable knowledge of the outside world. But like everyone on the Farm, Carter has his own agenda, and he knows that behind the Ticks is an even more dangerous threat to the human race...

What would happen if vampire-like creatures took over the nation?  What would be the government’s response?  Lily and her autistic twin sister, Mel were sent away to a “farm,” a place where the children were taken.  At the farm, they donate blood for the Ticks.  They have been there for six months.  It was supposed to protect them against the infestation of Ticks that were sweeping the nation since the Ticks liked younger blood better.  The Ticks were created during experiments that went wrong while studying epigenetics and the monsters were created literally overnight.   The Ticks are “vampire-like” in only the sense that they drink blood.   These aren’t your sparkly or nice vampires.  They prefer to drink their blood by ripping your heart out of your chest and drink from it.  They are more animalistic than human and it is best to avoid them.

Lily wasn't your average Green, she had a goal in mind.  She wanted to get her and Mel out of the Farm before their 18^th birthday.  That was when you were released, only nobody knows what happens after that.  Since Lily’s and Mel’s birthday is coming up soon, she has to make plans for their escape.  The escape is a risky thing because if they were caught, they would face certain death.  It would be easy to track them since every “green” on the farm has a chip implanted that can tell their whereabouts.  If they weren’t caught and managed to get out of the Farm, they could get ambushed by the Ticks and die.  Lily didn’t know what the world was like now and planned the best she could for it.

Lily was getting ready to go ahead with her escape plan when she saw a new Green on the farm.  It was someone she knew if the Before, Carter.  She was suspicious of him at first.  Lily didn’t trust anyone on the farm – Greens, Collabs or the Dean.  Why does Carter suddenly show up in the Farm?  Will Lily and Mel be able to escape?  What is happening to the nation?

Most days Lily is the steady drumbeat.  The rhthym of my heart.  The repeating melody of the music in my head.  But not today.

Today she is a cacophony of dissonant notes.  Just wrong.  A jumbled mess.  Can’t listen.

She’s out of rhythm.  Trying to rush.  Tempo’s all wrong.  There no music in her today, only words.  Talk, talk, talk, talk.

That’s Lily.  Never has a though she doesn’t say aloud.  Make her feel like the smart one.  The normal one.

As if I count less because I don’t jabber.  Because I listen to the music instead of talking over it.

I know I’m a burden.  How twitchy it makes her, being the rhythm.  Being the steady one.  Twitchy and nervous.  A rat-a-tat-tat.

This book had it all – vampires, fighting, romance, road trips…but not too much of one element. I recommend this book to anyone who likes dystopian or vampire books.  I thought vampires had been played out and there couldn’t be anything new in that genre, this book proved me wrong.  The action in the book is what drew me into the story.  The book was hard to get into in the beginning, but that changed after the first couple of chapters.  The chapters are mainly from Lily’s POV.  Carter’s chapters added an interesting mix in the book, although I’m not quite sure why his chapters were in the 3^rd person and the others were in the 1^st person.  There are some from Mel’s POV.  Those were interesting because she related things in terms of music or sounds.  “It sounds like math” was one of the things she said.  She was very perceptive and wasn’t given enough credit.

I wasn’t too fond of Lily at times and the way she acted that Mel was her “burden” because they were sisters.   I felt that she was sometimes whiny and played the martyr when it came to Mel.  She didn’t take her seriously.   With all her planning, she still made careless decisions and went into things without thinking of the repercussions first.  Yes, she felt that she had to protect Mel, but she put her in danger as much as she protected her.  Carter gave me mixed signals – there were times that I wasn’t sure if he was as good a person as he was made out to be.

I thought McKay did a really good job with the characters.  I will be interested to see if there are more POVs in The Lair.  With some of the characters, my opinions of them kept flipping around.  I never knew what was going to happen to people.  The Farm did a good job of bringing the character’s emotions to life and making you feel what they feel (like an abductura).   This will be series that I will be following.

Q&A with Emily McKay

Explain how THE FARM system of Collabs and Greens works:

Emily McKay: The Collabs are human collaborators who work for the Dean (the adult who runs the Farm). They’ve been issued uniforms and tranquilizer rifles. They have tremendous power on the Farms, because they run things. Plus they have immunity from having their blood drawn and tested.  Basically, they’re the ultimate sellouts. They’ve trade their own safety for their humanity.

There are also Breeders, girls who’ve gotten pregnant on purpose, since the Ticks don’t find pregnancy hormones palatable.

The third “class” of teens on the Farms are Greens, basically anyone who isn’t a Breeder or a Collab. Greens given bi-weekly blood “donations.” They are the bottom of the food chain, figuratively and literally.

Penguin Group has generously donated a copy of a copy of THE FARM along with a Vampire Apocalypse Survival Kit to give away on my blog.

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Don't forget to check out Literary Escapism 

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