Wednesday, August 19, 2020

The Rising by Heather Graham and Jon Land

(hb; 2016)

From the inside flap

“Twenty-four hours. That’s all it takes for the lives of two young people to be changed forever.

“Alex Chin has the world on a plate. A football hero and homecoming king with plenty of scholarship offers, he has a future that looks bright. His tutor, Samantha Dixon, is preparing to graduate high school at the top of her class. She plans to turn her NASA internship into a career. When a football accident lands Alex in the hospital, his world is turned upside down. His doctor is murdered. Then, his parents. Death seems to follow him wherever he goes, and now it’s after him.

“Alex flees. He tells Samantha not to follow, but she became involved the moment she walked through his door and found Mr. and Mrs. Chin as they lay dying in their home. She cannot abandon the young man she loves. The two race desperately to stay ahead of Alex’s attackers long enough to figure out why they are hunting him in the first place. The answer lies with a secret buried deep in his past, a secret his parents died to protect. Alex always knew he was adopted, but he never knew the real reason his birth parents abandoned him. He never knew where he came from. Until now.”


Review

Rising is a fun, chatty, good-for-mature-YA-readers book (it has a couple of instances of mild profanity). Those who live in (or have an affinity for) the East Bay/San Francisco area of California might be especially thrilled with this novel because it’s set there. Bishop Ranch business park in San Ramon, San Francisco and Alcatraz island are featured as key places in the storyline, adding to Rising’s allure.

Storywise, it’s a drawn-out, generic science fiction-lite read, a dumbed-down X-Files episode for those who are looking for something light and fast to read on the airplane or beach while that person next to you doesn’t shut up─in short, it’s something you don’t have to invest yourself too much into even as distractions abound around you. (The X-Files is mentioned in Rising as well.) This is not necessarily a criticism, it’s just how the book struck me.

The ending renders Rising a setup work, a book with a calm-moment finish that demands a sequel to answer its numerous unresolved questions. I didn’t care enough about the novel to check if there was a sequel, but there it is for those who might.

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