Review: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

genre: sci-fi/futuristic
age: YA
rating: 7/8 tentacles

Scientists have finally cured disease, significantly extending the life expectancy of an entire generation. As everyone happily grows into healthy old age, they are horrified to discover that the genetic manipulation that made their cure possible manifests itself as illness and genetic anomaly in their children, all of whom unfailingly develop a fatal virus at a specific age: girls dying at twenty and boys at twenty-five. This significantly truncated life expectancy creates a whole world of problems. Children orphaned by young parents crowd the streets. Some freeze, some starve, and desperation to avoid this fate drives others to become guinea pigs in the search for a new cure. Life is particularly dangerous for girls, who are captured in hoards and sold as prostitutes or as prospective wives for wealthy young men. Protagonist Rhine Ellery is kidnapped, forced into marriage, and imprisoned in a luxurious mansion where she is given everything she could possibly want—except her freedom.

When I began reading Wither, I was immediately struck by the skillfulness of Lauren DeStefano’s prose. Her descriptions are sharp, poetic, and illuminating:

After so much time spent riding in the darkness of the truck, we have all fused together. We are one nameless thing sharing this strange hell.

I can almost see straight through her words, or rather feel myself pulled through them as one is pulled through sleep into a dream (or a nightmare), and I emerge into a dark world of secrecy and stifling imprisonment. This degree of clarity allows me to forget that I’m reading and imagine instead that I stand in an extravagantly decorated room of Vaughn’s mansion, watching Rhine, Jenna, Cecily, Linden, and Gabriel live their lives around me. These characters are well-developed and multi-dimensional. They are flawed like real people and more likable because of it. Also like real people, they change and grow and reveal new layers as we get closer to them. Cecily is a prime example of this.

Behind the girls’ captivity lurks a sinister mystery: Vaughn endlessly experimenting in the dank basement and always smelling faintly of embalming fluids; Rhine’s hazy memory of her arrival at the mansion: a small cold room, Vaughn’s looming face, needles; half uncovered secrets; jarring incongruities. All this sparked my curiosity and drew me almost hypnotically deeper and deeper into the story.

As a protagonist (and person), I not only like Rhine, but admire her. Although she feels powerless and afraid, she remains strong and in control of herself. She possesses a kind of gracefulness in the way she accepts the calamity of her situation and smoothly refocuses on plans of escape. We are told at one point that she is only sixteen, but she seems much more mature than any sixteen year old I’ve ever known—perhaps more mature than I am at twenty-three. The tragedy of her parents’ deaths and the harsh, survivalist life she led with her brother Rowan has aged her and brought her poise and demeanor beyond her years.

I do wish that DeStefano had developed Rowan’s character a little further. From Rhine’s longing for him, we glean that he is stubborn and protective, that he cares about her. But I don’t really feel as if I know him as a person and if I did, I would empathize with Rhine’s worry and need to return to him much more forcefully. Her escape would feel more pressing. I enjoyed reading this story because I could sink so deeply into it and although observing the characters and wondering about a cure for the virus and what Vaughn was playing at was enough to make me keep reading, I think there could have been more tension—more hook.

Placing more emphasis on Rhine’s escape plan might have added this. She wants to escape and often worries about her brother, but her efforts to actually get away are very passive. We are told in summary that she has scoured her floor of the mansion for possible escape routes without success but apart from this, her plan is mainly to do nothing, although she does endeavor to earn the trust of her husband so that she might eventually take advantage of it. If her escape were more urgent, the growing feelings she has for her sister wives and even her husband will make the story all the more deliciously complicated. This, though, is my only complaint and it’s a very small one.
Wither is the first installment in The Chemical Garden Trilogy. The sequel, Fever, will be released in February 2012. I’ll be pre-ordering it. Excerpt available here.