Dragon Quill

Connor, Risa, and Lev are running for their lives.

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child “unwound,” whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

Ah, it’s nice to be getting back to my roots with a nice, solid Let’s Hate.

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Part One
Triplicate

What is it with the books I read doing parts as well as chapters?

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New character! Her name is Risa and she’s getting ready for a piano recital.

She knows she could play the sonata in her sleep—in fact, she often does. So many nights she would wake up to feel her fingers playing on the bed sheets. She would hear the music in her head, and it would still play for a few moments after she awoke, but then it would dissolve into the night, leaving nothing but her fingers drumming against the covers.

She has to know the sonata. It has to come to her as easily as breathing.

Huh. That was some good writing – it starts off telling us about how prepared she is, then jumps tracks at the last second into utter desperation.

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There are at least two hundred people in the country club’s grand ballroom. Lev got to pick the band, he got to choose the food—he even got to select the color of the linens: red and white—for the Cincinnati Reds—and his name, Levi Jedediah Calder, is stamped in gold on the silk napkins for people to take home as a remembrance.

This party is all for him. It’s all about him. And he’s determined to have the best time of his life.

So how will this turn out to be horrible?

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Last time, we’ve just finished meeting our three POV characters.
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Connor should have kept the Juvey-cop’s gun, but he wasn’t thinking. He was so freaked out at having tranq’d a cop with his own weapon, he just dropped it and ran—just as he dropped his backpack on the interstate so he could carry Lev.

Dear god is the plotting shit in this.
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We’re already at part 2! Of course, there’s eight parts total, so we’re not very far along.

Storked

And we’re going to find out about that!
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Well, it’s time for Risa to show what she brings to the table.

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Connor wishes they could have stayed in the woods, but there are only so many acorns and berries he can eat.

Oh for Christ’s sake.
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Back to Risa, who is just seething about the baby. Rightly so.
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And now, Lev attempts to explain why he’s been standing around being boring instead of trying to get them caught.

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Back to Connor-sue.

There are campus security guards and teachers on patrol. Anyone seen walking away from school would draw the attention of everyone watching.

I really hate that this kind of thing is turning into the default setting for schools.
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Before we begin the next disaster of a chapter, I’d just like to mention something I noticed.

I thought this was running through the kids’ chapters in order, but actually so far, there’s been five with Connor, four with Risa, and three with Lev, and this new one will bring him up to four as well. I guess that doesn’t really tell us anything we hadn’t already figured out, though – this is Connor’s story, with Risa there for girlfriending and Lev there to be the weirdo antagonist.

Anyway, when last we left things Risa and Connor had just realized Lev was gone.

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Another unnamed character chapter.

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Time for the chapter that goes on forever. Naturally it’s a Connor chapter.

The street is full of yellow and brown leaves, but enough diehards still cling to the branches to make a shady canopy.

Okay, so it’s so cold that grass turns yellow, but not so cold leaves change color properly.

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