Empty

by Suzanne Weyn

Overview

A dystopic look at what happens to one American town when all the fossil fuels run out...

It's the near future - the very near future - and the fossil fuels are running out. No gas. No oil. Which means no driving. No heat. Supermarkets are empty. Malls have shut down. Life has just become more local than we ever knew it could be.Nobody expected the end to come this fast. And in the small town of Spring Valley, decisions that once seemed easy are quickly becoming matters of life and death. There is hope - there has to be hope - just there are also sacrifices that need to be made, and a whole society that needs to be rethought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545172783
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2010
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	8.54(w) x 11.28(h) x 0.73(d)
Lexile:	790L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Suzanne Weyn has written many books for young adults, including Dr. Frankenstein's Daughters, Distant Waves, Reincarnation, Empty, and The Bar Code Tattoo. She lives in New York, and you can find her online at www.suzanneweynbooks.com.

Editorial Reviews

Weyn's near-future novel avoids many of the traditional dystopian trappings in favor of looking at a handful of teens just as the world runs out of usable oil--"It was right in front of everybody's faces, but they pretended it wasn't happening." Goth outcast Gwen, living with her petty criminal brother after being abandoned by their parents, has a crush on her neighbor, Tom. Tom, in turn, wants to date vain cheerleader Niki. They all find their traditional teenage concerns overshadowed (if not obviated) by the growing oil crisis, which has led to insanely high gas prices, shortages of everyday products such as ballpoint pens, and a looming war with Venezuela. As the situation escalates, the lack of oil leads to food and power shortages, creating a snowballing series of crises. Weyn (Distant Waves) nicely handles the teen romance and the attempts to deal with the crisis, but clumsy exposition and infodumps often drag down the first half of the book. Readers who persevere will find the ending somewhat rushed and tainted by deus ex machina. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Distant Waves

"Weyn weaves fantast together with factual threads of the Spiritualist movement, Nikola Tesla's inventions and the celebrity-studded passenger list of the doomed ocean liner to produce a tale that is half history-textbook and half science-fiction-thriller." —Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Reincarnation

"Imaginative, passionate... a great love story." —Booklist

From the Publisher

Gr 7–10—Everyone knows that we will eventually run out of oil. Weyn takes readers 10 years into the future to the small New York town of Sage Valley to show just how that might feel. Gwen, Tom, Carlos, Niki, Brock, Hector, and Luke have the same problems as many typical teens. Outsiders Gwen and Luke have never known their father and now their mother has gone missing. Rich cheerleader Niki is trying to choose between two guys. In their world, though, gas is 40 dollars a gallon and rising. America has invaded Venezuela, the last country on Earth thought to have oil reserves. Food and medicine are scarce, the economy is a shambles, electricity can't be counted on, and now Hurricanes Oscar and Pearl have combined to form a superhurricane that is headed up the East Coast. Weyn's future has a grimly plausible feeling to it that will draw in readers. She does resort to a deus ex machina to save the day, and the characters and situations aren't fully fleshed out. Still, this should be of interest to those who appreciated Saci Lloyd's Carbon Diaries 2015 (2009) and Carbon Diaries 2017 (2010, both Holiday House) and any teens who wonder just what the world that they will inherit might look like.—Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Library, Wisconsin Rapids, WI

School Library Journal

A likely scenario driving this eco-disaster doesn't quite compensate for a heavy agenda and a wonderfully convenient plot twist. "Ten years from now," five young Hudson Valley residents led by Gwen, a parentally abandoned teen hiding behind a punk persona, struggle to conduct normal social lives as dwindling petroleum resources shoot the price of gas toward triple figures, even basic commodities become locally hard to get, the United States invades Venezuela and, to cap it off, a superhurricane blasts up the eastern seaboard leaving massive destruction in its wake. How lucky it is for her friends and devastated community that during the storm Gwen takes shelter in an abandoned mine and discovers a secret, uninhabited, self-sufficient model home complete with large greenhouse garden and alternative-energy power generator! Along with this happy chance, news items and info-dumps that often read like student reports coexist uneasily in Weyn's narrative of teen breakups and make-ups, dealing with domestic and self-confidence issues and finding ways to cope with change. This effort, though worthy, is unlikely to be taken seriously by its intended audience. (Science fiction. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews