Enclave by Ann Aguirre

Enclave by Ann Aguirre

First off, if you’ve read her other series (The Sirantha Jax Series) this book is quiet different but still has the same amazing dialogue and writing style.

Short Background: The story is about a young teenager named Deuce who is pushing to be a huntress in the underground world she lives in. She has to prove her worth and fighting capabilities to her enclave while being paired with a unwelcome male hunter who was taken in years ago but was never truly accepted. An unlikely pair with different philosophies struggle to keep the enclave save against what are essentially zombies, but certain disaster strikes and Deuce forced to face a series of events that challenge her assumptions, show her new worlds and may make or break her alliance with her battle partner Fade. This is not a love story, it is a post-apocalyptic novel with intriguing questions running throughout the book.

The novel provides a glimpse at the truth behind human nature and what might occur if an apocalypse occurred and the young ruled. The writing is typical of Ann Aguirre’s style, smooth and action packed. One drawback is that, being a young adult novel, there are times where action scenes are slightly sugar coated in comparison to her Sirantha Jax series. Where scenes have the potential to be gruesome in detail, the author settles for hints that let the readers mind fill in the blanks. Despite this, the dialogue between characters is strong and Deuce’s lack of understanding words is a cunning way to provide definitions for, perhaps, words the reader may not know at times as well.

The plot line is interesting and fast paced after the first three chapters or so. It begins a bit slow with explanations but gets more action packed as it goes along and has some really interesting moments where the book becomes hard to put down. Toward the end certain scenes appear too quickly, where months are described in pages, but this is feature that is characteristic of Ann Aguirre’s writing and is done in a way that the reader can get a good understanding of how those months occurred.

All in all, this is a good quick read and has interesting turns that make you wonder how you as a person would act in this type of world.