Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Montag's thrilling debut takes place in a future climate-change-altered world overrun by water, forcing what's left of humanity to live on the seas or in mountain colonies. Myra and her seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, have survived by fishing, trading, and avoiding opportunist raiders like the Lily Black pirates, who are known to abduct women and children. Myra has spent years tracking her older daughter, Row, who was taken by her father just before their home in Nebraska was destroyed. After searching without a lead, Myra manages to stop a member of the Lily Black from abducting Pearl, and before she kills him, he tells her that he saw Row in a northern colony. Myra is determined to find a way to get to Row, but everything is turned upside down when Pearl convinces her to rescue a stranded man, Daniel, who turns out to be a cartographer. As she grows to trust Daniel, Myra is determined to convince him to help them find Row, despite the many dangers they'll have to face. Anchored by a complicated, compelling heroine, this gripping, speculative, high-seas adventure is impossible to put down. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

A woman braves a waterlogged world to find her daughter in this dystopian adventure novel. More than a century in the future, when the coasts and the cities along them have been completely flooded and countries have been "cut to half their size" by the ocean, raider ships prowl the seas creating new colonies by separating families, seizing property, and brutally murdering anyone who resists. Myra and her younger daughter Pearl, however, are just trying to get by: They live on a boat and barter their fishing hauls at trading posts for valuable supplies. "I don't join groups and I don't care about resistance," Myra tells a friend. She learns that her older daughter, Row, who was taken by Myra's husband seven years prior when Nebraska finally flooded, might still be alive—but to reach her, she must make a treacherous voyage north to a raider colony known as the Valley near what used to be Greenland, an iceberg-dotted journey impossible in her too-small boat. But when Myra and Pearl join a ship called the Sedna, led by a charismatic but troubled man named Abran w hose goal is to found a new settlement untouched by the violence of raiders, Myra suddenly faces a new set of problems she's unaccustomed to handling. How can she justify changing the Sedna's course for her own ends as the bonds she forms with the crew deepen? How can she fulfill her responsibilities to both her missing daughter and the daughter she still has? And can she manage to lay down her fundamental distrust in a world where everyone has his or her own objective? Debut novelist Montag manages to marry page-turning drama and emotional depth, vividly imagining a world where society rebuilds itself from scratch and history repeats, where bubonic plague flares up again and rope and sailcloth and antibiotics are all coveted goods, and where everyone is moving on in some way from insurmountable loss. "I keep thinking it feels like climbing a staircase while looking down," one woman tells Myra about losing her children. "You won't forget where you've been, but you've got to k eep rising. It all gets further away, but it's all still there". A fortifying affirmation of human endurance in the face of our dire climate prognosis. Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

DEBUT In this gripping first novel, desperate times call for desperate measures; primal instincts kick in and superhuman abilities spring forth when one's family is in danger. Over the course of 100 years, the ice caps have melted, the coasts have moved so far inland to have vanished, and finally all that remains are islands that were once mountaintops. There is no rule of law in a global crisis such as this—pirates will kill and plunder and, worse yet, kidnap young girls. Back when their Nebraska home was going underwater, Myra was shocked when her husband did the unthinkable: he fled with their daughter, Row. Myra ends up on a small boat, and over time she and younger daughter Pearl learn to survive by catching fish and bartering for goods at outposts along the waters. After many years of believing that Row is still alive and in great danger, Myra and Pearl join another band of survivors, deviously steering them toward Row's suspected location. Will Myra have the courage and the opportunity to recover her lost daughter? VERDICT An adventure rife with great peril and high emotional stakes, this postapocalyptic novel reads like a fast-paced screenplay: intense, visceral, and relentless. [See Prepub Alert, 3/17/19.]—Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Montag's first novel, an intriguing and innovative woman-centered swashbuckling quest narrative, centers on the social impact of climate change a little over a century from now. At the heart of the story is a mother's effort to protect her eight-year-old daughter and rescue her 12-year-old daughter from possible internment aboard a "breeding ship," where "raider" crews force captive women to become pregnant. Myra inhabits a water-inundated world in which people live on boats or in mountaintop community enclaves. After Myra's husband, Jacob, kidnaps her elder daughter, Rowena (called Row), she and her younger daughter, Pearl, live on a boat called Bird; they survive alone by trading fish until Myra saves the life of a navigator named Daniel. When Bird sinks, the three join a larger community aboard Sedna, where Myra, obsessed with rescuing Row, stops at nothing to convince the charismatic captain to perilously sail north to where she believes Row is located. Readers who enjoy postapocalyptic fiction and strong female heroes will appreciate Myra, a super-survivalist who combines Wonder Woman's physical prowess and the unsinkable Molly Brown's resilience. The endless series of crises facing Myra becomes wearying after a while, and those hoping for an optimistic conclusion will be disappointed. Nonetheless, this is a promising debut that will generally please fans of climate apocalypse stories. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Assoc. (Sept.)

Copyright 2019 Publishers Weekly.