⇒ Download Free Captives The Safe Lands Book 1 eBook Jill Williamson

Captives The Safe Lands Book 1 eBook Jill Williamson

Download As PDF : Captives The Safe Lands Book 1 eBook Jill Williamson

Captives The Safe Lands Book 1 eBook Jill Williamson

I had a hard time in the beginning of this book. The premise behind it was crazy and scary and didn't make sense to me, but I guess that is the point of a dystopian world, it doesn't make sense. There are lots of characters in this one, Mason being my favorite. This is a story about the village of Glenrock and the tribes who live there, way way in the future. There is a place called the Safe Lands, and in this "safe" place, people have a virus and are unable to reproduce. Their brilliant idea? Bring people, kids specifically, in from Glenrock, to be donors and surrogates. The whole Safe Lands is very much in the future and some of the things they have are crazy. Roller paint, vapors, SimTags, etc. The lifestyle of most of the Safe Landers is crazy. Drinking, partying, getting high with their vapor sticks; I don't know it seemed a bit much to me but maybe it's because the world is so different from the Hunger Games and Divergent and the Maze Runner. I did get more into it as the story progressed and I loved all the Princess Bride references sprinkled throughout. The ending was very abrupt! I realize there is a second book and is part of a trilogy but the ending was just weird and it was just done all of a sudden. It did intrigue me enough to read and see what happens next though!


Tags : Amazon.com: Captives (The Safe Lands Book 1) eBook: Jill Williamson: Kindle Store,ebook,Jill Williamson,Captives (The Safe Lands Book 1),Blink,Dystopian,Science Fiction - General,Brothers,Brothers;Fiction.,Captivity,Children: Young Adult (Gr. 10-12),Communicable diseases,Dystopian,Fantasy & magical realism (Children's Teenage),Fiancaees,Fiction,JUVENILE,Juvenile Fiction,Juvenile Grades 10-12 Ages 15+,Plague,Plague;Fiction.,Religious - Christian - Science Fiction,Science Fiction - General,Science fiction,Science fiction.,United States,YOUNG ADULT FICTION,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Dystopian,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Religious Christian Fantasy,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Religious Christian Science Fiction,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Science Fiction General,Young Adult FictionScience Fiction - General,dystopian; futuristic; betrayal; post-apocolyptic,Religious - Christian - Science Fiction,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Dystopian,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Religious Christian Fantasy,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Religious Christian Science Fiction,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Science Fiction General,Young Adult FictionScience Fiction - General,Brothers,Fiction,Plague,YOUNG ADULT FICTION,Children: Young Adult (Gr. 10-12),Fantasy & magical realism (Children's Teenage)

Captives The Safe Lands Book 1 eBook Jill Williamson Reviews

A Christian dystopian novel? Is that an oxymoron? While it might be an oxymoron, the book is for real, and really good.

Captives, the first in Jill Williamson's Safe Lands series, is set in the near future (year 2088). The population has been decimated by a water-borne pandemic and the remnants of society have clustered together near safe water sources. The Safe Lands is a bell-shaped walled city that serves to keep its population in and dissenters out. The only problem (well, not the only problem) is that the Safe Land population can no longer reproduce. They have succumbed to a blood-borne version of the pandemic virus and they are all dying. The only chance they have at survival is to find non-infected individuals who can produce healthy babies. And they don't have to look far, because there's groups of them living right outside their formidable walls.

It's the same, but it's different

I've read a lot of dystopian novels. There's something compelling about watching governmental choices go badly wrong, and that's what you get when you read dystopian fiction. Better to read it than live it. It's fun to speculate at a distance.

The problem with dystopias is that they have a tendency to repeat themes/situations. After a while, you feel like if you've read one, you've read them all. Especially now that The Hunger Games is so popular, Suzanne Collin's books have become the litmus against which all dystopias are measured.

I can tell you, Captives bears little resemblance to The Hunger Games. The only thing that's similar is the Safe Lands is a lot like the Capital. The same air of permissability and worship of leisure.

Having it's basis on a pandemic/virus is a similar premise to the movie Thirteen Monkeys, and the books Wither (Chemical Garden series), and Bumped/Thumped (click links for my reviews).

Where this series diverges is in writing. Captives has a large cast of characters, instead of one main character through which the story is filtered (Wither, Hunger Games, Divergent). So there's a lot more going on in Captives than your normal dystopian teen novel, which is reflected in the page count 415 pages! Although, that's 415 pages you won't want to put down.

Theme/Theology

Captives is loosely based on the book of Daniel, with the Safe Lands representing Babylon and their dying inhabitants (unsaved). Levi and his crew are from the village of Glenrock. They are disease free believers.

The theological question the book ponders is especially relevant to today Can a believer hold on to his beliefs in the face of cultural permissiveness? Because the book has many characters, this question is approached from several angles.

Rating PG-13 for subject matter

Artificial insemination- it's not described, but it is alluded to, along with specimen collection. Safe Land society also features drinking, drugging, and partnering (think life in the US during the 70′s but with better technology).

Social Issues

We have a character that wants so badly to fit in that he places his own needs before those of his friends and family.

We have a character that struggles between wanting to help the Safe Lands society and the wisdom behind doing so.

We have a character who needs to be a leader, but must get past his own anger to become mature enough to do the job.

We have a character who thinks she is ugly and must find her own inner beauty.
So, finally decided to read Captives since I'm studying Daniel for school. I was expecting it to take longer than that to read...

What'd I think? I liked it! Just plain and simple, I liked it. For now the Blood of Kings trilogy is still my favorite, though.

For a few technical things

1. The first thing I noticed was, woaaaah this is some world. Arranged marriages? Huh. That said, it was interesting and yet...not at the same time. I have no idea how that works, but I guess just parts of it interested me and parts did not. The first few chapters were my slowest reading of the book.

2. The next thing I noticed/decided was that Omar is annoying. Ughhh. He betrayed them all! And then kept making really foolish choices! His POV annoyed me the most of the four. However, I'm not begrudging his existence, because we did need some balance here, right? We needed some contrast.

3. Four POVs was a little hard to keep up with. I did manage to keep them straight, but it was a little disappointing to come to the end of a really good chapter with one POV character and then...have to wait multiple chapters before we could get back to their part of the story. Again, not bad enough to seriously bug me, but just a thought.

4. That said, I felt each POV was necessary. We needed Mason because he's got the insider info, here. (By the way, Mason's was my favorite, though Levi was a close second.) Levi because he's got the unique perspective of the one who inherited the status of leader of the village. And now he's got to save them. It's his responsibility. We needed Omar for contrast, as mentioned above, and Shaylinn because...well...we need a girl and because she's one of the ones affected in the, um, focus way.

5. I was reading along, and...bam! Suddenly it ended! I was surprised at how the story ended. I mean, yeah, there's another book, but...it didn't feel like quite the right place to end somehow. Just that last chapter felt like it could've been omitted or changed. It felt almost stuck on so there'd be a cliffhanger. The second to last chapter was nice, though. ;)

Okay, now for the typical things. First of all, plot! Well, this is a long book. The pace didn't drag, exactly, but it didn't fly like certain other books--*glances meaningfully at recently-completed Insurgent*--in fact, I'd say it was just right for this story. Good job, Mrs. Williamson! I'd say things definitely picked up as we were moving along in the book.

Characters were good. And there were definitely a lot of them. Kudos to the author that I could actually remember who they all were. That's amazing and I really can't imagine being able to do that so well in my own writing.

Overall? Nice book! Interesting to see a modern take on Daniel. Recommended to older teens due to content dealing with things like drugs, reproduction, etc. (Handled well, but better for those already, ah, familiar with such things.)
I had a hard time in the beginning of this book. The premise behind it was crazy and scary and didn't make sense to me, but I guess that is the point of a dystopian world, it doesn't make sense. There are lots of characters in this one, Mason being my favorite. This is a story about the village of Glenrock and the tribes who live there, way way in the future. There is a place called the Safe Lands, and in this "safe" place, people have a virus and are unable to reproduce. Their brilliant idea? Bring people, kids specifically, in from Glenrock, to be donors and surrogates. The whole Safe Lands is very much in the future and some of the things they have are crazy. Roller paint, vapors, SimTags, etc. The lifestyle of most of the Safe Landers is crazy. Drinking, partying, getting high with their vapor sticks; I don't know it seemed a bit much to me but maybe it's because the world is so different from the Hunger Games and Divergent and the Maze Runner. I did get more into it as the story progressed and I loved all the Princess Bride references sprinkled throughout. The ending was very abrupt! I realize there is a second book and is part of a trilogy but the ending was just weird and it was just done all of a sudden. It did intrigue me enough to read and see what happens next though!