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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