Review of Drought by Pam Bachorz

Title: Drought Author: Pam Bachorz Pages: 392 (ARC version) Publication Date: Jan. 11, 2011 For: 13+; violence

Back Cover

Ruby Prosser dreams of escaping the Congregation and the early-nineteenth century lifestyle that’s been practiced since the community was first enslaved.

She plots to escape the vicious Darwin West, his cruel Overseers, and the daily struggle to gather the life-prolonging Water that keeps the Congregants alive and gives Darwin his wealth and power. But if Ruby leaves, the Congregation will die without the secret ingredient that makes the Water special: her blood. So she stays. 

But when Ruby meets Ford, the new Overseer who seems barely older than herself, her desire for freedom is too strong. He’s sympathetic, irresistible, forbidden—and her only access to the modern world. Escape with Ford would be so simple, but can Ruby risk the terrible price, dooming the only world she’s ever known?. 

First Lines

"I wish it would rain."

In a Sentence

 Drought takes place in a wonderfully crafted dystopian world with an intriguing main character, though the love element and minor characters could have been better developed. 

My Thoughts

Every so often, a book like Drought comes along that makes me wish that my rating system had a half-star option. I debated back and forth for awhile on whether to give this book a 3 or a 4. If I had that half-star option, it would get a 3.5, but since I don't, I decided to settle on a 3, though, in my opinion, Drought is easily a high 3. 

I went into Drought with a bit of hesitation because I wasn't much of a fan of Pam Bachorz's first novel, Candor (my review HERE). However, I found Drought to be a definite improvement, which shows that you can sometimes be rewarded for giving authors another shot. 

I'll say right off the bat that I really enjoyed the plot and world building. I think that Bachorz did a wonderful job in communicating the idea of a harsh, cult-like environment to the reader.  At its core, Drought explores the questions and hardships that young people face while they are coming of age and beginning the process of creating themselves as entities that are separate from their families and friends. 

Drought also examines the benefits and detriments of adhering to a belief system simply because it is how you were taught to believe--an aspect of the book that I personally connected with. The main character, Ruby, struggles with deciding whether to remain a devout member of her faith, as her mother raised her, or to branch out and make her own decisions regarding morality, based on her own thoughts and experiences. While I've read a few reviews that criticized Ruby for being naive and weak-willed for struggling with this choice, I personally liked the character of Ruby because I could empathize with her struggle. When I was 18 and moved away to college, I had a similar religious crisis that resulted in a huge fallout between myself and my parents. While we were eventually able to respect each other's differing beliefs, it was a long, difficult struggle. Basically what I'm trying to say is this: it would have been easy for Ruby to continue to blindly follow the faith that she had believed in for so long, yet she made an effort to determine whether or not that faith truly adhered with her own feelings and beliefs. Therefore, throughout the course of Drought, I came to respect and admire Ruby as a strong character who persevered through difficulty instead of just existing through it. 

There are two reasons why I decided to give Drought a three instead of a four: (1) because I thought some of the minor characters were flat and (2) the romantic element between Ruby and Ford seemed more of an infatuation than love. While I could have handled the problem with the minor characters, the love element played a rather large part in the story, so I wish it would have been better developed. 

Other than that, I enjoyed Drought. Because of the way the book ended and because a lot of questions went unanswered, I'm assuming that there's a sequel in the works. If I'm correct, then I'm interested enough to pick up the sequel when it comes out! 

Favorite Lines

"They don't seem to be listening, do they?" he asks.

"Who?" I whisper. 

"Otto. And God."

"Sometimes I wonder about that too," I confess" (page 158, ARC).

"These men don't believe it, I know. And if I let myself think, if I set aside what I've been told, I'm not sure I do either" (page 170, ARC).

Links

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Read the first two chapters of Drought. 

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Rating