Wilders (Project Earth)

Wilders by Brenda Cooper is a gripping view of our world in a few hundred years, when humans have retreated to large mega-cities while robots and a few humans have been tasked with re-wilding the planet to ensure humanity’s continued survival. The novel follows Coryn as her parents die and her older sister, Lou, leaves the city to become one of the Wilders. Not content with her options as she comes of age, Coryn decides to leave the city herself to search out her sister and experience the wonders Lou has written home about.

While the plot is highly entertaining and makes you want to keep reading, I found the writing itself to be overly simplistic and the descriptions felt like someone who had done their research but not experienced things themselves, which makes for an odd and stilted feeling coming from a close third-person perspective. I also felt like I didn’t quite understand Coryn or the other characters in the novel and what was driving them, or even the cities’ motivations. There were gaps there that left me feeling separated from the story at critical moments, which caused the momentum to lag.

However, if you can read past these flaws, the story is quite original and will keep you reading long into the night.