Imagine it. A day when cancer can no longer claim us. There is a cure for everything. People live longer and they are completely healthy. Then this golden generation has their own children who are perfectly healthy. There is just one problem: the girls die at age twenty and the boys die at age twenty-five. There is absolutely no explanation for it.

I love dystopia because it explores situations in which the human race have tried to make their lot better and it has failed in some way. No matter how near- or far-fetched some dystopia novels are, they encourage us to think, not just about the world within the book, but also about our own world and what may or may not become of it.

Back to Wither. It follows Rhine Ellery, whose situation is unclear right at the start, but as the haze begins to clear, the reader learns more about her current situation and about her past. She is sixteen years old, so she has only four more years left to live, while her twin brother, Rowan, has nine. The world has been destroyed except for North America and most places are destitute. Orphans run the streets and the very few first generations who have surpassed the ages of twenty and twenty-five are holed up looking for a cure to whatever it is that kills the younger generations. However, there are some more affluent places where richer people live in grand houses and spare no expenses and for the most part, act like their lives are not ticking time bombs. But these people or people they know are up to something dark. All over the poorer cities, girls are kidnapped and then sold to men as wives. The men have multiple wives, one of the reasons being because they outlive them.

Rhine is snatched from her twin brother and the destitute world that she calls home and taken to a beautiful, affluent home to be one of three wives to a man who is his father’s puppet. She quickly discerns how fake her surroundings are and how everything is built upon lies. She analyzes her sister wives to try to find out what qualities brought each of them to this place. Rhine believes her eyes saved her but she cannot figure out if that is a good or a bad thing. Her one goal is to escape and get back to her brother but she is surprised to care for her sister wives and to even care a bit for their shared husband.

I found Wither to be a very thought-provoking novel. I wondered how different my life would be if I lived in Rhine’s world. Obviously, everything would be over at twenty, but where would I begin? In an affluent city, scrambling to be a bride? In a poor city, orphaned, yet hoping to keep to my routine or would I want to have a chance at being a bride then, as well? There would not be any things to be attached to, really, since all life would be fleeting. Would I even want to be close to anyone, knowing that it would all be over so soon? I cannot answer a lot of those questions.

I admired Rhine’s resolve to bide her time and do whatever she could to get away from her captors and to be free again. I also admired her relationships with the other two girls. Though she did not want it, a natural sort of camaraderie just developed between them. She also found that she could not completely hate Linden, their husband. It made Rhine more human and it gave the entire story more depth. I really liked Wither as a debut author novel and I look forward to the rest of The Chemical Garden trilogy.

 Lauren DeStefano has a B.A. in English from Albertus Magnus College. Wither is the first in The Chemical Garden trilogy and her debut novel.

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