Opinions of a Wolf

Summary:
Seventeen-year-old Alex Morales works hard with his eyes on a good college.  He even works in a local pizza joint to pay for his own private Catholic school uniforms to help his Mami and Papi.  Papi is in Puerto Rico for his mother’s funeral and Mami is working late when an asteroid strikes the moon and everything changes.  New York City is struck by flooding and loss of infrastructure.  Alex is left alone to care for his two younger sisters, Julie and Briana, and slowly he begins to think that maybe things will always be this bad. Maybe Mami and Papi will never come back, the moon will never look right again, and there will never be a world where he can go to college and not be left caring for his little sisters.

Review:
I inhaled the first book in this series, in spite of the scientific flaws (which I addressed in my review of the first book).  Miranda’s journal ends so abruptly that I was eager to get to the next book right away.  I was surprised, then, when the second book starts back before the moon is struck with an entirely different family in a different area of the country.  This book shows Pfeffer’s abilities as a writer by showing the same apocalyptic event seen in the first book from the perspective of an entirely different family.

Miranda’s family is suburban-rural, agnostic/atheist humanist, blended (divorced parents with one remarried), and white.  Alex’s family is urban (NYC), Latino, and devotedly Catholic.  Both families are given room to have strengths and flaws, most of which have nothing to do with where they live, their ethnicities, or their religions (or lack of one).  I honestly was startled to see Alex and his and his sisters’ strong faith treated with such respect in this book after Miranda’s lack of faith was treated with equal respect in the first.  It’s easy, particularly in a book written as a journal, to mistake a character’s beliefs for an author’s, and Miranda, a teenage girl, has very strong beliefs.  This book reminded me that those beliefs were just Miranda’s, just as Alex’s beliefs are just his, and it shows how well Pfeffer is able to write characters.

Some readers may find it odd and frustrating to go back in time to relive the apocalypse over again with different characters.  I personally enjoyed it, because the world falling apart is one of the best parts of post-apocalyptic fiction for me.  I also liked having the opportunity to see differences in how the apocalypse plays out based both on the location (suburban/rural versus urban) and the characters’ personalities and reactions.  However, that said, I can see how this set-up of two vastly different sets of characters in books one and two could be off-putting to certain readers.  Some religious readers may be turned off by the first book and Miranda’s staunch atheism.  Those who read the first book and enjoy it for precisely that reason may similarly be turned off by the second book’s heavy Catholicism and faith.  The diversity is a good thing but it also makes it hard to pinpoint an audience for the series.  Those who are open to and accepting of other belief systems would ultimately be the best match but that’s a demographic that can sometimes be difficult to find or market to.  However, if a reader is particularly looking for a diverse set of viewpoints of the apocalypse that is more than just characters’ appearances, this series will be a great match for them.

It should also be mentioned that this book is not a journal.  It is told in third person, from Alex’s viewpoint, although the dates are still mentioned.  It makes sense to do it this way, since Alex definitely does not come across as a character with the time or the inclination to keep a journal.  It would have been interesting to view the apocalypse from the viewpoint of a boy who did keep a journal, however.

The plot makes sense and brings in enough danger without being overly ridiculous.  It would have been nice to have maybe started the book just a bit earlier in the week to see more of Alex’s day-to-day life before the disaster.  Instead, we learn about it through flashbacks, which makes it a bit harder to get to know him than it was to get to know Miranda.

Overall, this is a surprising and enjoyable second book in this post-apocalyptic series that lets readers relive the apocalypse from the first book over again with a different set of characters.  This approach lends diversity to the series, as well as bringing in a greater variety of scenarios for those who enjoy the apocalypse process.  Recommended to those looking for a diverse presentation of beliefs and how those impact how characters deal with an apocalypse.

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4 out of 5 stars

Length: 341 pages – average but on the longer side

Source: Library

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Previous Books in Series:
Life As We Knew It, review