Bloom

Bloom by Kenneth Oppel

Book of the Week: 29 November 2020

 

Illustration by M.S. Corley

‘Seth gazed out the window. Below, the Vancouver airport looked normal enough, until he noticed the sinkholes in the runways. A jet jutted out of a huge crater, its left wing snapped against the tarmac. Over neighbourhoods, Seth saw streets turned into canyons by the tall black grass. Roadblocks were everywhere, pit-plant holes in the parks and golf courses. Charred sinkholes in the asphalt and sidewalks. Hardly anyone outside. Even from up here, he could see pollen glittering in the air.’

World-wide havoc is being wreaked by disturbingly destructive alien plants that destroy crops, block out the light and threaten human life. On Salt Spring Island, three teenagers: Anya, who is allergic to ‘everything’, Petra, who has a rare allergy to water, and Seth, who is a foster child with mysterious scars that he tries to keep hidden, are the only people who are not only unaffected, but whose health seems to improve. Can they play a role in defeating this threat to life on the planet?

This is a wonderfully detailed creation of a catastrophe, aspects of which might sound familiar to us in the present pandemic. There are  action-packed sequences of horrific battles with these monster plants and gruesome descriptions of those who fall foul of them. The botanical details are well-researched too. Every time I checked some unlikely-sounding fact, it turned out to be true. This is the first in a trilogy, with ‘Hatch’ due in the autumn and ‘Thrive’ in summer 2021.

If you would like to read more books featuring scary plants, try ‘Boy in the Tower’ by Polly Ho-Yen or the classic ‘Day of the Triffids’ by John Wyndham.

Kenneth Oppel has written has written a variety of books. The following are all in the Library: ‘The Boundless’, ‘Every Hidden Thing’, ‘Half Brother’, ‘This Dark Endeavour’, ‘Such Wicked Intent’ and my personal favourite, ‘The Nest’.

If you enjoy books about alien threats to life on Earth, try books by Mark Walden, Pittacus Lore, Rick Yancey and Virginia Bergin. Here is a list I made for Year 8 about alien invasions.