Freefall

by Joshua David Bellin

When the 1% and the 99% clash, the fate of the human race hangs on the actions of two teens from very different backgrounds in this thrilling adventure that School Library Journal calls "a strong choice for YA sci-fi shelves."

In the Upperworld, the privileged 1% are getting ready to abandon a devastated planet Earth. And Cam can't wait to leave. After sleeping through a 1,000-year journey, he and his friends will have a pristine new planet to colonize. And no more worries about the Lowerworld and its 99% of rejects.

Then Cam sees a banned video feed of protesters in the Lowerworld who also want a chance at a new life. And he sees a girl with golden eyes who seems to be gazing directly at him. A girl he has to find. Sofie.

When Cam finds Sofie, she opens his eyes to the unfairness of their world, and Cam joins her cause for Lowerworld rights. He also falls hard for Sofie. But Sofie has her own battles to fight, and when it's time to board the spaceships, Cam is alone.

Waking up 1,000 years in the future, Cam discovers that they are far off-course, trapped on an unknown and hostile planet. Who has sabotaged their ship? And does it have anything to do with Sofie, and the choices-and the enemies-he made in the past?

• ISBN13: 9781481491655
• Publish Date: 26 September 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

I so badly wanted to fall in love with this one. I have enjoyed the author's other series, Survival Colony 9 and Scavengers of Souls. And I didn't dislike this one. But it had some ups and downs for me. Let's start with the good!

The good:

• The premise was pretty fabulous. I definitely needed to know how it was going to turn out. I mean, come on- dude is in cryosleep for a thousand years!?! It's the the Gagarin premise on The 100, on crack. And I am here for it.


• Everything on the new planet was pretty intriguing. I wanted to know all the things! Because this is not the happy Earthlike planet they'd hoped for, and also, can you even imagine? It's kind of a fun mind trip!


• A lot of the issues seemed quite timely. I'll get into this more, but there's a big focus on racial and socioeconomic issues. About people being forced to live in horrible conditions based on their ethnicity, their skin color, their social and economic status. They're also being told they must stay on a dying planet. It's awful, of course. And yes, the point is that this is a horrible thing to do to people. So that aspect was good. 

The not so good:

• I felt that the aforementioned racial and socioeconomic issues issues needed to be handled a bit more sensitively.  I get that it was a cautionary tale, but I didn't feel like there was enough growth and remorse for some of the harshness toward the beginning. There are some things said by Cam, his friends, and their whole society at large that really rubbed me the wrong way. And again, I do understand that this is supposed to be seen from the perspective of "oh hey wait this is wrong and horrible", and for some characters, it accomplishes that. But I never felt like they fully understood the weight of some of the words and phrases that were used. 


• Sometimes, it was info dumpy. While I liked the concept of the worldbuilding, a lot of times the delivery of the information felt tedious. Especially in the "thousand years earlier" chapters, I felt kind of bored with some of the more long-winded explanations. And then when my eyes would glaze over, I'd have to reread or I'd be confused. 


• I didn't feel the romance.  It was pretty insta-lovey, and while I get why the love interest was special, I didn't really feel the chemistry. I really liked Sofie as a character (much more than Cam, honestly) but his whole approach to their relationship bugged me. Did he really love her, or just admire her? I don't know, but the insta-love wasn't my fave. 

Bottom Line: Pretty cool from a sci-fi perspective, but lacking some of the elements that might have made it stand out.

*Copy provided for review