Tomorrow Land

Tomorrow Land follows the lives of Peyton Anderson, a girl who has been trained to survive the impossible. A true "razor girl" Peyton is definitely the type of character that you wouldn't want to mess with. She's strong, she's tough, and she knows how to make things go her way if need be. Chris Parker is the other main character here. A sweet, kind boy who is trying to figure out his feelings for Peyton. The two of them set off on a wild ride, chaperoning a group of kids in an attempt to find safety from the walking dead.

That? That's the book in a nutshell. No kidding! The cover really does do the book justice, since the book centers around Peyton, her knife infused hands, and kicking some walking dead behind. I did like that Mancusi was very factual when she created the disease that ended the world. Since I'm already a fan of her writing style, I enjoyed seeing more of that in this book as well. However what really put me off more than anything were the copious amount of pop culture references. In all honesty, I like Mancusi's other series much better.

The pacing was a bit off. There is an unnatural clumping of events which makes the first third of the book slow, the middle amazing, and the end slow again.. For a group of kids wandering across a zombie infested wasteland, nothing much seems to happen. There are a few fight scenes, but again they are rather spaced out. On top of that the romance was aggravating for me. There is a lot of angst, random arguments, and even the times when they are being sweet to one another don't seem real at all. If it had simply been left out, I really think it wouldn't have mattered. Chris is sweet, but he's just not Peyton's kind of guy.

At the end of the day, Tomorrow Land was what I expected but didn't really deliver everything I hoped for. I love Mari Mancusi's writing as a general rule, I think that this particular book was just a miss for me. If you enjoy books that deal with a zombie infested apocalypse, this is one you might want to give a shot. Otherwise I'd highly recommend you check out Mancusi's other series as well!

Not gonna lie, I one hundred percent expected this to be completely awful. Well, okay, maybe not 100 percent...perhaps just 95. Either way, my expectations were way low. Why read it? You should have figured out by now that I will read pretty much anything, so long as it's dystopian/post-apocalyptic. Why did I think it would be bad? All I knew is that Mancusi previously wrote about vampires (during the glut of vampire fiction) and that this was a story she updated because of the glut of dystopian stuff now. Also, her covers are lame. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Tomorrow Land and found it a pleasant, if unoriginal, read.

In Tomorrow Land, we follow our heroine Peyton as she emerges from her family's fallout shelter, in which she and her mom have been locked for four years. Peyton's crazy 'the end times are coming' father locked them in there after the outbreak of a 'super flu' that turned some of its victims into Others (think zombies only they are actually alive). Once she comes out, Peyton plans to go find her father. First person she meets, though, is a cute boy. She also meets an Other. This sounds really familiar...maybe I've read this before? Not only that, but there's also a couple of chapters pretty much straight from Rot & Ruin: Gladiator style fights against zombies.

So yeah, all of that is pretty well-mined territory. Still, there are some things that set the story apart from all of the other teen zombie apocalypse books. For one thing, Mancusi also incorporates the technological to our detriment futuristic society, where everyone spends most of their free time in virtual reality. Also, in one of the strangest bits of world building I have seen so far, fear of AIDs and other sexually transmitted diseases has led to legislation regarding sex. Basically, everyone over 18 has to get a license to be allowed to have sex, so that they have been tested and, if they only have sex with licensed people, everyone should be safe from disease. Younger people, with parental approval, can also get what is popularly known as the LTF (License to Flirt...Mancusi didn't specify what that last letter stood for, but surely it's flirt, right?). I really cannot see this working, but it was good for many laughs.

So far as the zombies go, I feel like I should warn the zombie enthusiasts now: they're really not the focus of the book. There are zombies sprinkled throughout the text, but there aren't many actual fight scenes. The zombies are more a background consideration, like I want to go do this thing, but I won't because a zombie might eat me. If you want a non-stop zombie-fest, Tomorrow Land is not your book.

What Tomorrow Land really cares about is the romance between Peyton and Chris. The story alternates chapter between their relationship before the apocalypse and their relationship after Peyton emerges from the fallout shelter. Being able to see the past in flashbacks was nice, since it did explain some of why they were so sappily into one another at the beginning. Also, it made it clear that she really did like him before he filled out with muscles, because I totally thought she only liked him at the beginning because he was hot now.

As you can see from the first sentence, Peyton does not think much of Chris at first. She's popular and he is a geek, but that doesn't stop him from asking her out constantly. He just wants her so much; she's his goddess. Their relationship did seem to develop a bit too quickly and seriously for my tastes, but I did think the change of heart was pretty cute. I doubt however that Peyton would have dated him so confidently and publicly at school, especially since her friends made fun of him.

Peyton's mostly the popular girl through and through. However, she does have a core of hardcoreness. This is aided by the fact that her crazy dad gave her some tech, basically making her into Wolverine minus the healing powers. She also has night vision and some other cool features. I'm not really convinced these elements were completely necessary, but they were alright.

Mancusi does take a stab at making this an issues book by giving Chris/Chase a pill addiction. This could have been interesting, but...it really fell flat with me. I think that was due to how out of place it felt in an otherwise fairly cheery apocalypse book. Besides, the pill addiction really did not seem to fit with Chase's character at all.

Tomorrow Land mines dystopian and zombie tropes to create yet another fun, somewhat forgettable read.