Icons

In 2071, everything on Earth will change. On one fateful day, the lives of billions of people will end, suddenly, without warning and without explanation.  Certain cities will be spared, but they will be ruled by the terrifying fear that their fate will be the same as the “Silent Cities”: an instantaneous electrical pulse that will wipe out every living, mechanical, and fabricated object in its periphery.  The pulse comes from an Icon, embedded in the center of each “surviving” city by The Lords, an unseen race of alien life that is colonizing Earth and using what remains of the human race for slave labor and a sympathizing few to control the rest.

In the countryside outside what used to be Los Angeles, 17 year old Dol has lived a simple life – in hiding from the Sympathizers – and keeping a terrible secret.  She was a baby in one of the Silent Cities on The Day – and she survived when everyone else died but she doesn’t know why.  The day after her 17th birthday, Sympa soldiers come for her.  The only caregivers she’s ever known are gunned down in front of her and Dol and her best friend, Ro, are taken captive.  They end up at the highly secured Embassy off the coast of LA where they meet Tima and Lucas, two other 17 year olds living at the Embassy.  It doesn’t take long for the four teens to realize that they have too much in common for their meeting to be a coincidence and within days of coming together, Dol, Ro, Tima, and Lucas are being drawn in to a dangerous plot to use the powers they didn’t know they had to destroy the Icon that controls Los Angeles and challenge The Lords control.

Best selling coauthor of  The Beautiful Creatures series, Margaret Stohl, begins a new science fiction series with Icons.  There is a lot going on in the 432 pages of this first book in the series, presumably because Stohl wants to set up as many possible plot lines, mysteries, and future opportunities as possible.  At times it all felt a little rushed, disjointed, and thrown together, but I am choosing to believe that that is intentional: since Dol knows nothing about her past or her potential to save the world, she’s forced to piece together any clues she can get as quickly as she can in order to survive, and so Stohl is conveying that sense of confusion and befuddled, high-stakes anxiety through to the reader to help us empathize with Dol and the rest of the teens.

• Posted by Cori