Blog Tour and Book Review: The Stranded by Sarah Daniels

Welcome to the Arcadia.

Once a luxurious cruise ship, it became a refugee camp after being driven from Europe by an apocalyptic war. Now it floats near the coastline of the Federated States – a leftover piece of a fractured USA.

For forty years, residents of the Arcadia have been prohibited from making landfall. It is a world of extreme haves and have nots, gangs and make-shift shelters.

Esther is a loyal citizen, working flat-out to have the rare chance to live a normal life as a medic on dry land. Nik is a rebel, planning something big to liberate the Arcadia once and for all.

When events throw them both together, their lives, and the lives of everyone on the ship, will change forever . . .

This is a dystopian YA novel told over several points of view – we have Esther who desperately wants to become a medic and earn her way off of the Arcadia. Nik, who is also desperate to leave but wants a rebellion to get everyone off, not just a select few and Hadley the captain who’s job it is to keep everyone on board and the ship functioning.

Character wise Nik felt a little better developed than Esther who at times felt a bit two dimensional and slower to develop but not so much that I didn’t want to read her chapters.

The Arcadia itself is prevented from making landfall as there are fears that passengers may be carrying a dormant virus that wiped out large numbers forty years ago – so those who fled to presumed safety on the Arcadia are now trapped there.

Over the forty years the Arcadia has been at sea the society on board has developed it’s own hierarchy – those with money and resource live on the top decks and those with less live progressively lower down, it was a very physical representation society that hammered hoe the differences of the haves and have nots.

This was an interesting idea for a dystopian story and gave the author a good reason to have the story confined to a relatively small space.

It did feel like it lost a little bit of momentum in the middle – the start was strong and I thought the introduction to the characters and where they stood in society was good but then something happened and I’m not sure what but it felt a little slow before it all picked back up again later in the book.

I think it would have been interesting to have a bit more about the virus, it felt a little underused but maybe that is to come in the second book.

It’s hard to say too much about the plot without It will be interesting to see where this is going…

With thanks to The Write Reads for inviting me on the tour and Penguin for sending me a copy.

The Stranded is available now.