In Remembrance of Home

LOCAL AUTHOR

Carter Ryan lives on the moon in a community called Tranquility. As far as he knows, the earth has been conquered by Ixions, an alien race that came to earth long ago. The moon was terraformed to support life, and humanity has been living there ever since. While humanity enjoys a relatively peaceful existence, the Ixion threat still plagues them. The army on the moon controls rail guns that shoot down Ixion ships, and the human race lives in fear that one of those ships will land and spread Centaurian Fever, a disease that causes a gruesome and painful death within days.

Carter is a carrier of Centaurian Fever after an Ixion ship crashed on the moon and his mother, while pregnant with him, was exposed to the wreckage. Every day, he heads to the hospital to receive immunizing shots that protect him from the symptoms and protect the human race from contracting the illness.

When Carter comes of age, he joins the military. While he trains with the other cadets, he still receives his shots.

Life on the moon, while often peaceful and uneventful, is not without intrigue. Political subterfuge, military secrets, and the consequences of rewriting history threaten to crumble the very foundations of society. When Carter learns life isn’t what it seems, he takes steps to right the wrongs of generations before him without much success. The ending is a cliffhanger, with a promise of more of this world to come.

In Remembrance of Home has a straightforward, linear plot, and J.M. Deutsch doesn’t take time to dawdle with cultivating particularly deep character relationships. This is both a strength and a weakness of this book. On one hand, the book gets to the point. The reader wants to find out the truth about Tranquility, and the story wastes no time getting there. On the other hand, the friendship between Carter and Amare and the relationship between Carter and Erin are relatively weak. The blossoming romance between Carter and Erin comes out of the blue, and readers could get the impression that Erin is there, not as a gifted medical student, but just as the token love interest.

The themes of In Remembrance of Home are its true strength. This story impresses upon young people that it’s important to question everything, because a lie told too many times could make it the truth.

In Remembrance of Home is another post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult novel, so if you enjoy stories like Divergent, The Hunger Games, and The Giver, you will enjoy this story.