Sip
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3.4 • 11 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A lyrical, apocalyptic debut novel about addiction, friendship, and the struggle for survival at the height of an epidemic.
The sickness started with a single child and quickly spread: you could get high by drinking your own shadow. Artificial lights were destroyed so addicts could sip shadow at night in the pure moonlight. Gangs of shadow addicts chased down children on playgrounds, rounded up old ladies from retirement homes. Cities were destroyed and governments fell. And if your shadow was sipped entirely, you became one of them, had to drink the shadows of others or go mad.
One hundred and fifty years later, what’s left of the world is divided between the highly regimented life of those inside dome cities who are protected from natural light (and natural shadows), and those forced to the dangerous, hardscrabble life in the wilds outside. In rural Texas, Mira, her shadow-addicted-friend Murk, and an ex-domer named Bale search for a possible mythological cure to the shadow sickness—but they must find it, it is said, before the return of Halley’s Comet, which is only days away.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carr's jumbled and unsatisfying first novel depicts a dystopian future in which much of the dwindling U.S. population is addicted to consuming the shadows cast by natural light. Mira, a young woman with poorly defined supernatural powers, spends much of her time caring for her shadow-addicted mother. Years before, those seeking to escape the addicts and the hardscrabble life outside gathered in artificially lit domes, but recently, for nebulous reasons, the "domers" have been establishing outposts. Bale, a soldier banished from one of these outposts, joins Mira and her addicted friend Murk as they cross the desolate landscape in hopes of hunting down a particular shadow thief before the impending return of Halley's Comet, which will cast particularly potent shadows. The parameters of the addiction and its variations are frustratingly opaque, and the passages addressing the addiction's history and the way it shaped the world just raise further questions. Numerous side characters and events add complexity without clarity. Interesting ideas form the core of the novel, but their development leaves much to be desired.
