Solis / Paola Mendoza & Abby Sher / Book Review

SOLIS

Tensions are rising on a planet where water is growing scarce. The New American Republic government has turned against immigrant populations, both legal and illegal, as a drain on dwindling resources. The undocumented and the non-citizens have been rounded up and forced into labor camps to pay their dues.

For seventeen-year-old Rania, a Lebanese teen from the Midwest, this means hard labor in the aqualinium mine. The scientific community hopes to harness this rare earth mineral to revitalize the world's water supply, but in its raw state, aqualinium is toxic. Rania is lucky to have survived as long as she has, breathing in the fumes every day and spending her nights crammed in a holding cage. She doesn't have much to hope for.

But not everyone agrees with the harsh rule of the New American Republic. And not everyone wants this government to harness the potential of aqualinium--or keep hold of the only aqualinium mine known across the globe. Forces are at play much larger than Rania. And in the labor camp itself, revolution is brewing.

THOUGHTS

This book just didn't quite strike the right balance between social critique and dystopian elements for me. I appreciated the authorial intent here, but some of the over-the-top elements made it feel... less real, I think, than it should have.

PROS

Really Distinct POVs	It can be very difficult to pull off distinct voices when you've got a multi-POV book, but this book absolutely nails it. Each of these character voices is unique. I could have flipped to any random chapter and known after only a sentence or two who was speaking, even without the chapter heading to let me know. And that is very impressive--and very engaging!
Hope in Despair	This book is very dark in a lot of ways, and therefore, I appreciated so much the little glimpses of hope sprinkled in. These kids growing up in detainment cages at a labor camp are living bleak and cruel lives, but they nonetheless strive to learn, create community, and maintain hope for a future the adults (and the teens) around them have given up on. And I loved that. This sprinkling of hope made the horrors of this book both more stark and more, I suppose, bearable. This was a necessary light in the dark.
Precedent	A good dystopian book will always draw from contemporary political concerns, and this book certainly does. Especially in an election year, immigration is on everybody's mind, and there's just nothing like being at the mercy of a government who could decide to take your legal residence away on a whim. Visa rules shift and change all the time, and so this book, while certainly dystopian, also feels very... precedented. The brutality here is really just pulling from political rhetoric and the annals of history--a domestic history that does, in fact, involve containment camps for "threatening" populations already.

CONS

This book has been advertised as a companion novel to Paola Mendoza & Abby Sher's earlier book Sanctuary, but it really isn't. Don't get me wrong. I do believe someone could pick up this book without having read the first book and comprehend it well enough. But with repeat characters and continuing storylines, being labeled a "companion" is really quite misleading. Readers won't get as much out of this book if they read it like a standalone. It is, really, a sequel.	Not a Companion
The world is out of water, and there's some miracle mineral that just might solve the problem. That's what the labor camps are for. But... this makes no sense. Not the world running out of water part. Not the miracle mineral part. Not the labor camps for "illegal" immigrants part. But the part where nobody actually knows how to use the mineral to make potable water. Like, every experiment with it ends excruciatingly. So, then, what has made them think this mineral will make safe water? Why are they experimenting with it? Why do they think they can control the weather with some random rock, when they have no proof that this rock can do that? I guess I just don't understand expending resources (even if the major resource here is slave labor) for something that doesn't make logical sense until it actually works. It feels like weird alchemy for most of the book. Why would you experiment to find out if aqualinium can make clean rain? Why would you even think a rock might be able to do this?	Aqualinium?
The best dystopian novels contain clear critiques of current social and political concerns, and they let the readers wrestles with those implications. They do not just outright state the message they intend to supply. Yet here, the message comes through very, very on-the-page. It feels like these authors didn't trust their message to be clear enough, because they had characters outright state the moral of the story a few times. And that just feels not right. Trust readers (even and especially young readers) to work through the implications and come out with a sharper understanding of the world on the other side. Hand-holding really isn't appreciated, especially in YA.	Too On-the-Nose

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
7/10

Fans of Paola Mendoza & Abby Sher's Sanctuary will love stepping back into this world to find out what happens next. Those who found the experimentation of Jessica Khoury's Origin particularly unsettling will appreciate reckoning with experimenting on a new, vulnerable community.

Details Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books Date: October 8, 2024 Series: N/A [Companion to Sanctuary] Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.