Science fiction, mystery, paranormal activity, alternate realities, action/adventure.  A Dark Inheritance by Chris d’Lacey has a little bit of everything!

Author d’Lacey drops the reader right in to the story without a lot of set-up, which I’ve always found to be a thrilling way to start a book.  We, the reader, get to learn and discover along with the characters.  So when teenager Michael is surprised by his own sudden appearance of a ‘power’ which manifests itself while Michael is clearly upset/nervous/anxious about an animal, we are also surprised and curious as to what has happened.

As the story develops, we learn that Michael has the ability to alter reality.  As his ability comes upon him, Michael is visited by representatives of an organization that uses the acronym UNICORNE.  The mystery surrounding UNICORNE is heightened when Michael learns that his father, who disappeared years ago, was an agent for UNICORNE.

The threads that tie together in the book are remarkable and this is not light reading, but the reader who likes to be challenged and think a little while reading will be rewarded.  I like being surprised when reading a book, and there was at least one aspect, involving two young women in the book, that I did not see coming (their connection to one another).

As much as I enjoyed the unravelling of the story and the intricate plotting, there were some aspects of the book that did not ring true to me.  Michael is assigned, for lack of a better term, a handler.  Someone to watch over him and hopefully guide him a little bit, once he joins UNICORNE.  This person, Chantelle, is rather a fun character, appearing in different roles throughout, but as his closest associate, and someone of authority in UNICORNE, she makes some un-wise choices that seemed to be so only for plot convenience.

There is also a sense that UNICORNE is not exactly what they are trying to convince Michael it is.  I don’t know if this is intentional and something will be revealed in later books in the series, or if I am reading too much in to it.  But in either case, it doesn’t work if I want to root for and support our protagonist and I don’t believe in the organization he’s joining — unless, of course, that’s exactly what d’Lacey wants, but then he’s spent too much time elsewhere for this to be the major plot-point.

I really was entranced and surprised and liked a great deal of the book.  I’m very easily intrigued enough to look forward to the next book in the series.

Looking for a good book?  You will have to pay attention to the story and try to keep up with all that’s happening, but this YA sci-fi adventure is a lot of fun and promises some excitement in future series installments.

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A Dark Inheritance

author: Chris d’Lacey

series: Unicorne Files #1

publisher: Scholastic Press

ISBN: 0545608767

hardcover, 384 pages

**WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD**

Not too long ago I posted a video preview for this book.   The preview really captured my attention and I was eager to get in to this book.

Dystopian futures are all the rage in sci-fi/fantasy right now, it seems, and Kat Ross’s book plays with the same theme.  In our future, a large part of humanity lives underground to avoid the hypercanes (massive hurricanes that cover entire continents).  Our protagonist is sixteen year old Jansin Nordqvist.  (As someone of Swedish decent, can I say how much I love seeing such a fine Scandinavian name in fiction!)  Jansin is about to graduate from her military training – she is one of the best of the students and has a great career ahead of her.  But first, her parents have decided to take a little holiday top-side … as in above ground.  There they are attacked and Jansin is captured by some of the above-ground dwellers.

It has been part of her training and up-bringing to think of those who managed to survive above ground as being nothing more than savages; ruthless animals.  Jansin is nearly disposed of by the top-siders when they think she has nothing to offer their community, but she convinces them that she could be an asset by teaching them military training.  While living and learning in this mobile community she realizes that much of what she’d been taught about the surface isn’t true (except for the hypercanes).  She develops a soft spot for her doctor (a self-taught herbalist referred to as a physic).  Just as the community is about to set sail to run from a hypercane headed their way, Jansin’s underground family and military locate her and take her back home, and wipe out the community of people she lived with.

Though she puts on a good face, Jansin no longer believes in her underground world and she rails against it.  Learning of secret, illegal testing being done on top-siders she heads to their rescue and plans an escape — the only possible place to avoid everything she’s ever known … in the eye of a hypercane.

This book is classic YA at its best.  Classic YA, for those who are unfamiliar with the genre, consists of a protagonist, typically female, who is full of pathos and dread.  Everything is wrong; the world is against her; she has one true love that she can’t seem to achieve; she has to play rescuer; she rails against authority that is clearly wrong; there’s usually a death of someone she’s close to.  It is almost always told in first person.

We have almost everything here, except the death (not, at least, a death of someone intimately close to her).  Tops in her class, her battle against authority couldn’t be stronger here, particularly because she was a part of the authority system.  And when they look to make a positive example of her, she uses the moment to decry everything.  From that point on, she’s a fugitive (as opposed to the ‘lost’ person she’d been earlier).

There is romance, but it seems much purer … a romance of souls or emotions and not of physical comfort as many YA books have leaned toward.  Jansin is a strong character … both physically (thanks to her Academy training) and morally.  She is willing to keep an open mind as well as open eyes, even in the face of unexpected truths.  She could easily have been a character who denied the existence of those living above ground, claiming them to be nothing more than a small aberration of people.  But her character was refreshing … willing to ‘go with the flow’ and accept what she could see.

And despite her Academy training, she is willing to fight for what’s ‘right.’  That hasn’t changed … what has changed is her perception or realization of what is right.  If those who live above ground are ‘people’ with lives and loves like her own, then she knows it is wrong to treat them like animals for laboratory experiments.

It is also refreshing that the romantic figure for Jansin, while he needs her to be rescued, starts by being her rescuer.  It is not simply a role-reversal derivative.  They share in the role of being ‘saviors.’

There is plenty of action, set up by Jansin’s need to rescue and escape, and she does tend to leave a trail of bodies behind her … mostly those who’ve risked everything to help … but it’s clear that hers is a desire to take what she knows and start over … to escape the lies she grew up with, and to avoid living an existence of constantly trying to stay one step ahead of a fearsome mother nature.

The book is almost a complete (beginning, middle, end) book in and of itself, but there is a little tag at the very end that opens the door to the next book.  Anybody want to guess how I feel about that?

Looking for a good book?  Some Fine Day is a classic YA sci-fi genre book, full of strengths in character and story-telling, that will appeal to genre readers.

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Some Fine Day

author: Kat Ross

publisher: Strange Chemistry

ISBN: 1783450177

paperback, 384 pages