Bloom: 12/01/20

Bloom by Kenneth Oppel and Sophie Amos (narrator) is the start of the Overthrow series. It's a horror / disaster novel set on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. After an extraordinary rain three varieties of black plants spring up overnight across the island. Soon it's become apparent it's a worldwide floral invasion of man eating plants.

Anaya, Petra, and Seth are three teens living on Salt Spring Island. They are the only three who seem to be immune to the plants. The pollen and acid these plants produce in abundance doesn't affect them. The Canadian government takes notice and decides to recruit them to help find a way to fight the plants.

The set up of how the three teens are unique reminds me of a combination of two YA books I've enjoyed: The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong (2011) and Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything. by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland (2020).

The plants themselves, though, remind me more of horror from the 1950s-1960s. Specifically I'm thinking of Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (1951) and the "Man-Eater of Surrey Green" episode of the Avengers (Series 4, Episode 11).

There's on detail that bugs me, and that's the inclusion of male teens who are immune to the plants. Essentially these teens are test tube babies with human DNA and alien DNA. The human DNA comes from their mothers, yet there's Seth and other male teens, we learn late in the book. With no explanation given to how this is possible, I will head canon all of them as being trans.

The second book is Hatch (2020). The audiobook version released today and I will be listening soon.

Four stars

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