Description
A world where self-expression is banned. A world where survival is everything. A girl who will be heard. Seventeen-year-old Teddy lives in the walled-in city Metropolis. Radical laws condemn all forms of self-expression and creativity, and the lives of the people are carefully constructed and controlled by the City Council: We watch because We care.
When Teddy finds out the truth behind one of the City's biggest lies, she slips out into the darkness of the City after curfew. She is captured by a stranger and held prisoner in an old bomb shelter that lies beneath the City. Here, Teddy discovers that there is a world beneath Metropolis, a world where a growing web of clans are fighting to keep their humanity alive, and waiting for a leader to unite them and lead them back up into the light.
Review
Teddy Veodrum is in the upper echelon of society in this futuristic world. Her Dad works directly for the Mayor (and is never at home), and her glamourous Mum works for the Metropolis magazine, the source of all information for residents as the only remaining legal media in the city.
Teddy is facing her three ceremonies - she is given a job, she is life partnered to be a wife and she is to be a womb keeper.
Free thought and self-expression are banned in Metropolis. No music, fiction or art is allowed, and the motto of the Metropolis City Council is ‘We watch because we care’. Life has been this way for 70 years, and Teddy is ignorant of many things as a result. But all of this is about to change...
Teddy comes to learn that infected people are not actually being reprogrammed and released to a different part of town. Instead, there is a whole other society living Underground and trying to survive.
Teddy is in trouble and has to make a snap decision to go to the Underground herself. But Underground is a dangerous place, with clans fighting each other for survival.
Regardless of Teddy’s courage and the friendships that she has formed, there are many in her new clan that see her as an outsider and are plotting her demise. Can Teddy manage to survive, and maybe even lead them to a better future?
With themes of government control, allies, trust and standing up to make the world a better place, this action-packed novel will best suit readers aged 14 and above.
Reviewed by Rob
