Opinions of a Wolf

Summary:
Miranda’s journal starts out like any other teenage girl’s diary.  Worries about school, her after-curricular activities, and wondering how her family will work out with her dad having a brand-new baby with his new wife.  But when a meteor strikes the moon things start to change.  Slowly at first but with ever-increasing speed.  Tsunamis wipe out the coasts. Volcanoes erupt. And soon Miranda finds herself, her mother, and her two brothers struggling to survive in a world that increasingly bares no resemblance to the one she once knew.

Review:
I’m a sucker for journal entry books, even though I know rationally that no diary ever has as much content and exposition as is contained in these fictional works.  In addition to the journal format, I liked the premise for the dystopian world Miranda finds herself in.  It’s very different from a lot of the other ones out there, since it’s 100% gradual natural disaster.  This book lives up to the expectations set by its summary, offering a fun journal entry take on a natural disaster that turns into a dystopia.

Miranda, who lives in semi-suburban Pennsylvania, starts out the journal as a very average teenage girl, adapting to her parents’ divorce and father’s subsequent re-marriage, her older brother being away for his first year of college, and hoping to convince her mother to let her take up ice skating again.  The book clearly yet subtly shows her development from this young, carefree teenager through angst and denial and selfishness in the face of the disaster to finally being a young woman willing to make sacrifices for her family.  Miranda is written quite three-dimensionally.  She neither handles the disaster perfectly nor acts too young for her age.  While she sometimes is mature and sees the bigger picture at other times she simply wants her own room and doesn’t understand why she can’t have that.  Pfeffer eloquently shows how the changes force Miranda to grow up quickly, and this is neither demonized nor elevated on a pedestal.  Miranda’s character development is the best part of the book, whether the reader likes her the best at the beginning, middle or end, it’s still fascinating to read and watch.

Miranda also doesn’t have the perfect family or the perfect parents, which is nice to see a piece of young adult literature.  Her parents try, but they make a lot of mistakes.  Miranda’s mother becomes so pessimistic about everything that she starts to hone in on the idea of only one of them surviving, being therefore tougher on Miranda and her older brother than on the youngest one.  Miranda’s father chooses to leave with his new wife to go find her parents, a decision that is perhaps understandable but still feels like total abandonment to Miranda.  Since Miranda is the middle child, she also has a lot of conflict between being not the youngest and so sheltered from as much as possible and also not the oldest so not treated as a semi-equal by her mother like her oldest brother is.  This imperfect family will be relatable to many readers.

Miranda’s mother is staunchly atheist/agnostic/humanist and liberal, and this seeps into Miranda’s journal.  For those looking for a non-religious take on disaster to give to a non-religious reader or a religious reader looking for another perspective on how to handle disasters, this is a wonderful addition to the YA dystopian set. However, if a reader has the potential to be offended by a disaster without any reliance on god or liberal leanings spelled out in the text, they may want to look elsewhere.

I know much more about medical science than Earth science or astronomy, but I will say that when I was reading this book, the science of it seemed a bit ridiculous.  An asteroid knocks the moon out of orbit (maybe) so the tides rise (that makes sense) and magma gets pulled out of the Earth causing volcanoes and volcanic ash leading to temperature drops Earth-wide (whaaaat).  So I looked it up, and according to astronomers, an asteroid is too small to hit the moon out of orbit.  If it was large enough to, it would destroy the moon in the process.  Even if for some reason scientists were wrong and the moon could be knocked out of orbit, even in that scenario, the only thing that would happen would be the tides would be higher.  (source 1, source 2)  I know dystopian lit is entirely what if scenarios, but I do generally prefer them to be based a bit more strongly in science.  I would recommend that reading this book thus be accompanied by some non-fiction reading on astronomy and volcanology.  At the very least, it’s good to know that you can safely tell young readers that this most likely would not happen precisely this way, and this book is a great opening dialogue on disasters and disaster preparedness.

Overall, this is a fun take on the dystopian YA genre, featuring the journal of the protagonist and dystopia caused primarily by nature rather than humans.  Potential readers should be aware that the science of this disaster is a bit shaky.  The story featuring an agnostic humanist post-divorce family makes it a welcome diversifying addition to this area of YA lit.

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4 out of 5 stars

Length: 337 pages – average but on the longer side

Source: PaperBackSwap

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