spill zone book 2 the broken vow scott westerfeld

Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit.

This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. The richly satisfying conclusion won’t keep readers from demanding a third volume.Ĭartoonist Kuper ( Kafkaesque, 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.Īs a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans.

Addie and Lexa are white, Jae is Korean, and there is diversity in secondary characters. Puvilland’s ( Spill Zone, 2017, etc.) colorful, jagged, totally alien art is the perfect partner for this trippy tale. Groundwork laid in the first volume pays off in nearly nonstop action here. Bestseller Westerfeld’s ( Nexus, 2018, etc.) second installment is the quintessential page-turner. Vespertine’s eventual revelations about the nature of the Spill harden Addie’s resolve to get out…but also make the situation so much more complex. Of course, the American government has their eyes on the situation too. However, Lexa’s possessed rag doll, Vespertine, has other ideas for the family, and the North Koreans-who had a similar incident-have sent their Spill survivor, a youth named Don Jae, to investigate conditions in Poughkeepsie.

Addie has made ends meet by selling photographs of the bizarre conditions inside the Zone, and she possesses growing paranormal abilities thanks to a very close encounter with “the dust.” Now that she’s sold an artifact from the Zone for $1 million, she can leave.

When the Spill occurred three years ago, Addie and Lexa’s parents became two of the thousands of floating corpses in the wasteland that was Poughkeepsie, New York. Addie has finally made her big score: Does that mean she and her little sister can escape the Spill Zone?

Spill zone book 2 the broken vow scott westerfeld