Meet Keira, or is her name Madeline or even Kendra?

This woman of many guises has many decisions to make as she meets someone who forces her to take a good look at the world and herself.

Now she must decide whether or not to turn her specialist skills to aid the common good, but does the common man even deserve her help?

The divide between rich and poor has always been wide, ever since the war, and although everyone looks out for number one in this cut throat environment they are still better off than any other nation, or are they?

As Keira lifts the slimy rocks of her world to see what's under them she discovers things are far more crooked than she suspected and as her family are dragged under she decides that whatever happens she must not lose what is left of her family or who she is.

Although this story follows several characters the one I stuck with most was Keira. She is the first we are introduced to but soon we are introduced to other characters and slowly get to know them.
In fact the first few chapters cover over the same points from several perspectives and, whereas I personally don't like to go back over things, I can see why this was; so that we could better get to grips with these new characters.

This book is very character driven, all the people in it come across as very real and extremely compelling and carry the story very well (from other works I've read of Wallace's she always manages to create very real characters)

Although I would love to explore this land more as I haven't formed a very strong picture of the surroundings; other than the rich are rich and have gardens and posh cutlery and the poor are poor.

I will be reading the next one as I can't wait to see where this story goes and to find out what it was that sparked the war that sent everything spiralling into chaos.

All in all a very readable and intriguing read with a twist that I just did not see coming. Would recommend to anyone over the age of 16.

The Billions Rising Foundation believes that a hand up is better than a hand-out and has collecting the most inspiring stories we can find for our blog and radio show.

Now many of them are in a book called "Billions Rising: Empowering Self-Reliance"