I really loved this book…it was dystopia at its finest. This book was filled with amazing scary thought provoking images. A tvalter ( a movie theatre ), an unlake that used to be Lake Superior, wearing a hat all of the time…with a wide brim…due to intense sun.  An area called the Wasteland that people talk about but have no clue as to whether it exists or not. Classes separated not only by a wall but also by the color of clothing you are allowed to wear and even what you are given to eat.

Gaia is returning from her first solo delivery as a new midwife. She has just delivered a beautiful baby to a first time mother and then removed the baby from this mother to turn over to a guard so the baby can fulfill a quota and be raised by adoptive parents inside the wall. She is beckoned by a neighbor and given a parcel to keep secret and she is told that her parents are gone…to the Enclave where the Protectionist will question them for unknown reasons…and then either release them or imprison them or execute them.  As Gaia is being questioned in her home by a guard…she begins to feel the injustices and the crumbling of her world. She finds a way to get into the Enclave with one thought in her mind…freeing her parents.

Many unbelievable things happen to Gaia as the society that she lives just beyond begins to unravel. The Enclave needs more babies, there is a problem with intermarrying and hemophilia and infertility within the Enclave…and Gaia gets deeper and deeper into the injustices that she has lived with.

One important thing…Gaia is beautiful and scarred. She has a huge burn on one side of her face. This enabled her to stay with her parents because only perfect babies fill the quota. Both of her brothers were perfect babies and are unknown to her and living within the Enclave.

This was an amazing far-fetched and yet totally believable heart pounding novel. I could not read it fast enough. Gaia changed from obedient and unquestioning to a Joan Of Arc.

Water monitoring, a food made of mushrooms or some sort of fungus called mycoprotein. The haves and the have not’s…a wall that divides the haves and have not’s. This amazing author came up with the most fascinating things that could happen in a dystopian world. There is a part when Gaia has her first ever taste of an orange…they are like diamonds in this world…again…it was beautifully sad scene.

This is a must read for all lovers of this genre.