Published synopsis:
When the aliens landed seventy-two years ago, the first thing they did was turn off the power.Then they ran for the hills.
The aliens themselves killed very few people, but riots, looting, disease, natural disasters and the sheer brutality of a harsh life that no one had lived for generations have reduced the population of Earth to a few tiny handfuls, scattered among the abandoned ruins of a lost civilization. Now word has come to Amarylla’s father, the chief civil engineer of the Federal Republic of New York, that an unknown man in the far northern plains may hold the key to turning the lights back on.
But when Amarylla sets out with her father to find this mysterious man, she is a just young girl whose life has been filled with operas and riding lessons and needlework, a young girl schooled only in the history of fashion, classical philosophers, and the proper navigation of knives and forks at a state diner. A young girl totally unprepared for the raw edges of life beyond the walls, totally unprepared for the closeness of a young guard named Marlowe, totally unprepared for danger.
Can she become what she needs to be? Can she learn what she needs to know? Can she grow up in time, or will this alien dystopia kill her?
Review:
Amarylla has a good idea that her time as a little girl has come to an end when she sends most of the things that her mother packed for her back home. She doesn’t have any idea what’s ahead as she journeys with her father to find the man who may be able to turn the electricity back on, but she knows it won’t include fancy dresses and operas. She also doesn’t know that along the way, she’ll see firsthand the cruelty and destruction the aliens are capable of when threatened, or that she’ll learn to defend herself as well as any of her father’s guards, or that sometimes, love can develop even under the harshest conditions.Lightning of Her Own was a wonderful surprise. I never would have thought that a novel about a cross country trip in a post-alien invasion world would keep me riveted, but it did.The depth of emotion shown by each of the characters as they faced trial after trial of both their fortitude and their physical needs was exceptionally well written. The growth of Amarylla, in particular, was portrayed in in such a way that you are torn between being frightened of who she will become and proud of whom she may come to be.
Levi Montgomery has created a world that takes away some of the things that most of us, especially in the United States, consider basic life essentials - electricity, automobiles, and the freedom to travel unhampered and safely from state to state. To think that society could fall apart so easily and quickly when these are lost is frightening. Yet, also, believable. Lightning of Her Own takes the reader on a dangerous journey; one that will leave you thankful that our world is still intact. I thank the author for sharing a review copy with me and I’m excited to read part two of the trilogy. I give this book five stars.
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