Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #206319 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Synopsis
Anna Covey is a 'surplus'. She should not have been born. In a society in which aging is no longer feared, and death is no longer an inevitability, children are an abomination. Like all surpluses, Anna is living in Grange Hall and learning how to make amends for the selfish act her parents committed in having her. She is quietly accepting of her fate until, one day, a new inmate arrives. Anna's life is thrown into chaos. But is she brave enough to believe this mysterious boy? This is a tense and utterly compelling story about a society behind a wall, and the way in which two young people take the chance of breaking free.

Customer Reviews

BREATH-TAKING!
I only bought this book because it looked pretty but I was glued to it and read it in a day. I am a very critical 11 year old but found nothing wrong with this! I am desperate to get the sequeal. I would never usually choose a book on looks alone but the blurb didn't support me in buying it because it's a bit vague so I took my chances and I'm soooooo glad I did. It is a very deep story about a girl called Anna in the future. Everyone can live forever with longevity drugs but not the surplus. Surplus are forbidden children and Anna is one of them. She gets to know the troublesome new surplus boy and an unlikely friendship forms. He claims to know her parents and so they set off on a quest to find them. I found it so addictive, I was upset when I finished it. I have re-read it many times and am thouroghly looking forward to THE RESISTENCE. Gemma Malley is a heck of a writer and should be congratulated on producing such an imaginative tale. GO GEMMA!

Loved it!
I admit that I was attracted by the cover first, then the title, then the 'résumé' at the back. I read this book in 2 days, and I loved it from the start. The story is very surprising, I never imagined the future could be like this... but its frighteningly possible, and that's what made me want to go on reading and know how it would end. It's quite dark, hard too, but there's a spark, a little ray of sunshine and hope that makes the story just perfect. Very good balance between the good and the bad. I'm sorry I finished it last night and I'll wait impatiently for the sequel!

A book all should read!!
A book I think every one should read and we learn a very good moral of the story- NEVER EVER LIVE FOREVER. It was a fantasic read with a lot of depth and I did enjoy it and it captured my attention for the full three hours it took for me to read it (I read very fast)which is getting harder and harder for books to do as my expectations of books rise further and further. Before all they had to have was an ok plot, now I want it deep, meaningful, well written, a great storyline with bits of romance, adventure blah blah. Althouugh i can't say that this book delivered this all to the ability of books I have been reading lately, it did enough to keep me interested and to inpire me to write this review.

*spoiler* Anne is indoctrinated thouroughly into believing she is a waste of space and she deserves to be a slave to make up for her being a waste of space -generally I would have liked her character better if she was more resilient but I accept that that would have been unrealistic seeing as she'd been taught this from 2 years of age to near her 15 birthday. She meets peter and they strike up a friendship -we didn't really see a friendship spark up I think, it goes from I really don't like him to I really don't like him but I listen to him sometimes to I really don't like him but were friends, not much freindly commnication but there you go and I thinks that made me a bit 'hmmm' to the change to romance-

The world is a harsh place your either a legal or a surpless- a waste of space, illegal. Guess which one Anna fits into. In the world of legals few people are under the age of 60 as everyone takes pills to make them live for ever but whops if every one lives forever we have overpopulation and more importantly represented in this book a lack of world recources. So no one has kids. Unless they stop taking the pill. If they do have kids with the pill then they're kid is an surpless and a slave. Whops. I wish really wish that the author had drawn the conclusion to this way of civilisation being wiped out or even on the process of being wiped out but instead she-- *spoilers have reached the end of there limit please read the book to see further information. Thank you*