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Jane Higgins
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The Bridge Kindle Edition

by Jane Higgins (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.5 out of 5 stars 19
See all formats and editions

The City is divided. The bridges gated. In Southside, the hostiles live in squalor and desperation, waiting for a chance to overrun the residents of Cityside.
 
Nik is still in high school but is destined for a great career with the Internal Security and Intelligence Services, the brains behind the war. But when ISIS comes recruiting, everyone is shocked when he isn't chosen. There must be an explanation, but no one will talk about it. Then the school is bombed and the hostiles take the bridges. Buildings are burning, kids are dead, and the hostiles have kidnapped Sol. Now ISIS is hunting for Nik.
 
But Nik is on the run, with Sol's sister Fyffe and ISIS hot on their trail. They cross the bridge in search of Sol, and Nik finds answers to questions he had never dared to ask.
 
The Bridge is a gritty adventure set in a future world where fear of outsiders pervades everything. A heart-stopping novel about friendship, identity, and courage from an exciting new voice in young-adult fiction.

Previous page
  1. Reading age
    12 - 15 years
  2. Print length
    354 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Grade level
    7 - 9
  5. Publisher
    Tundra Books
  6. Publication date
    October 9, 2012
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  11. ISBN-13
    978-1770494374
  12. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR The Bridge:

"This grim first novel, set on a not-so-distant future Earth ... packs a significant emotional wallop.... Higgins works hard to expose the religious and racial bigotry lurking behind so many military conflicts, and she is adept at showing that, frequently, neither side is without blame." -- Publishers Weekly

"War propels a boy from the privileged side of town across the bridge to the enemy, where he learns the real causes of the war and about his own history.... A suspenseful and entertaining debut." -- Kirkus Reviews

"...the gritty, painfully tense passages describing the ways in which war affects children - teens in particular - are compelling and deftly written." -- The Horn Book

"Readers will easily see themselves in Nik, a young man unsure of his place and uncertain of who is in the right. The popularity of dystopias will ensure that this story has appeal, and it will also make readers think." -- School Library Journal

About the Author

Jane Higgins was born in New Zealand. She has degrees in mathematics and anthropology and has worked on many human rights campaigns. She is a senior research fellow at Lincoln University and her specialty is youth studies. Jane lives in Christchurch. The Bridge is her first novel.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B007UH4EOE
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tundra Books (October 9, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 9, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3368 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 354 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.5 out of 5 stars 19

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Jane Higgins

Jane Higgins

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Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5 out of 5
19 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Nicola Mansfield
4.0 out of 5 stars Good Post-Apocalyptic YA
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2013
Reason for Reading: I love post-apocalyptic novels and this sounded good and also like it would be a stand-alone as I'm tired of trilogies.

I really enjoyed this book. I'll start by saying it's not the greatest ever of this genre but something unique in what is coming out for YA these days. This is not dystopian but pure post apocalyptic. This world is far into the future after it's collapse and we don't really know what happened other than war of some sort. The author is from New Zealand and we get the feeling that this is an island country, possibly NZ itself or Australia or even an alternate or unknown world. Our Earthly history is not aligned with the current situation. So here we are then. Two sides fighting against each other. The main characters are young teens trained to be fighters by their side, on their side of the river, but something goes wrong and when Nik and Fyf find themselves on the enemy's side things are not as they have been lead to believe. The war is almost a character itself here and is more developed than any of the other characters aside from Nik. Nik is the hero and we watch the turmoil in his mind as he sees everything he's been taught wiped out and replaced with falsehoods that are now his realities. How he comes to terms with this as well as with his identity is part of the plot. Being an abandoned orphan to the son of a very important living man is not something one can adjust to overnight. Nik is a real character with a moral high road, who weighs his actions against their ethics and makes the right choices, not the easy ones. Many sides of war are shown from both sides, from one extreme to another, how easy it is for the radicals to make moves while the moderates can be stonewalled into silence just as easily.

If your goal is to have just enough medicine and food for all you will never have peace. People will always want more than "just enough". If your goal is to quash the other side down enough that they will accept their lot and just be happy with what you've given them and leave you alone, you will not have peace. People will always rise against oppression and want total freedom. An intriguing read! The ending is left as being rather open. A sequel could arise easily from this. However, the ending also suits to letting the reader imagine what would happen next and I hope the author leaves the story as is. Trilogies are becoming so blase in YA fiction these days.
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Cloggie Downunder
5.0 out of 5 stars an amazing debut
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2015
The Bridge is the first novel by New Zealand author, Jane Higgins. It is the winner of the Text Prize for YA and Children’s Writing in 2010. Since he was orphaned at the age of five, Nik Stais has lived, learned and excelled at Tornmoor Academy, hoping to be chosen by the Internal Security and Intelligence Service to use his talents in the fight that Cityside wages against the hostiles on Southside. Now seventeen, he and his friends are surprised and indignant when ISIS omits him from their intake. Soon after, Tornmoor is bombed, Nik’s best friend, Lou dies in the attack, and Lou’s eight-year-old brother, Sol is kidnapped by hostiles.

Nik is determined to cross to the Southside, determined to find Sol, and that means going over the bridge. Sol’s sister Fyffe insists on going with him. As they infiltrate the enemy, they learn that not everything they have been taught about these people, the hostiles, the Breken, is true. They find themselves in the middle of a dispute between factions, and Nik discovers some shocking truths about his own past.

Higgins has created a believable dystopia where propaganda, misinformation and indoctrination of youth maintain the status quo. She feeds the information about her world to the reader in manageable doses, not too fast to cause overload, not too slowly to incite boredom. Her characters are multi-faceted and appealing (or repugnant as required by the story), and Higgins is not afraid to kill some of them off if needed. Her plot is original, has quite a few twists, and, without the dissatisfaction of a cliff-hanger ending, allows enough scope for the story to continue. This prize-winning novel is an amazing debut and readers will be pleased to know there is a sequel, Havoc.
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Ameya
2.0 out of 5 stars Does not provide a new social commentary
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2013
There is a war going on. When a war is happening, I think the reader should understand who the factions are and what they stand for. The first problem I had with this story was that the factions were not at all clear to me. There was the use of acronyms for one of the Southern groups, which lost me completely - what does CFM stand for? Then there were the Citysiders and the Remnants. Too many sides not clearly explained. Their purpose and values were not understood. I could not form any liking or value-judgement on any of the sides, or understand why there were 3, or even why there was a war. All 3 sides tried to annihilate one another - kill one another, bomb their shelters - and everyone is poor and/or starving. Who holds the higher moral ground? The book did not make this clear to me.

The world-building left a lot of gaps for me.

The second problem I had was the ethnic or other way of telling the sides apart. If we have a dark-skinned protagonist who speaks Brekken, Nik, who somehow blends in the enemy side due to this, then how come Fyffe is just let go by the Brekken-speakers when she is blond and blue-eyed? And she picks up Brekken within minutes or days? One can't suspend belief.

There was the immediate change of love interest without so much as a backward glance. The chemistry with both was made inexplicable when the new love interest emerged.

The voice: I admit I am not a fan of an adult trying to use current teen jargon, especially when it sounds jarringly wrong. The explanations and prose were full of non-sentences trying to get us inside a teenager's head. I think it would have been better to tell the story straight. I couldn't connect with Nik due to the voice, and that was the biggest problem for me. Text Publishing must like a voice like that to have given it their ultimate prize, but I am not a subscriber of this type of writing.

Nik's family relationships on which the story based were not understood and hence it foundered.

The ending? It left me dangling. It was obvious to me what Nik would do so there was no twist. Nothing to compel me to read the sequel, which I don't think is warranted.
I finished the book, which is why I gave it 2 stars.
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