APRIL 2014 - AudioFile
Narrator Dan Bittner puts the listener right into the middle of the action with his reading of this dystopian adventure. For six years, Cal and his brother, James, have been part of The Glorious Path, a militant religious regime that took over the West after civil war broke out in the United States. But now all Cal can think about is returning home to New York. Bittner’s somber tone matches the dark themes of the story—war, violence, and the choices that must be made to find a path. His intense delivery works well to portray Cal’s emotional stress and feverish activity in fighting both for and against the Path. E.N. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
10/14/2013
Hirsch returns to the post-apocalyptic well of his first two books, The Eleventh Plague and Magisterium, in this bleak and somewhat familiar novel. The archetype at play is a military-religious one: a man named Nathan Hill has founded his own church and taken over several southern and western states. The former U.S. has been mired in a civil war ever since, and Callum Roe and his brother, James, were two early converts to the cause, captured when they were kids and forced into service. After bonding with a stray dog, Cal kills a superior officer to save the dog's life and becomes a fugitive. His journey out of occupied Utah and attempts to subvert the cause he once fought for intermix with his meeting an attractive girl named Nat and joining the U.S. forces. The novel hits its stride during well-choreographed action sequences and in occasional scenes featuring Hill, a demagogue who rarely comes across as the evil force he embodies, showing empathy when talking to Callum even as he perpetrates horrific acts of war and terror. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sara Crowe: Harvey Klinger. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Praise for THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE:
"A gripping survival drama." --USA TODAY
"Sure to be a hit among fans of dystopias." --BOOKLIST
"An impressive story with strong characters." --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
APRIL 2014 - AudioFile
Narrator Dan Bittner puts the listener right into the middle of the action with his reading of this dystopian adventure. For six years, Cal and his brother, James, have been part of The Glorious Path, a militant religious regime that took over the West after civil war broke out in the United States. But now all Cal can think about is returning home to New York. Bittner’s somber tone matches the dark themes of the story—war, violence, and the choices that must be made to find a path. His intense delivery works well to portray Cal’s emotional stress and feverish activity in fighting both for and against the Path. E.N. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2013-09-01
Fifteen-year-old Callum Roe is caught up in the second American Civil War. It's 2026, and the United States is once again fragmented. Federal forces are at war with the Army of the Glorious Path, which includes most of the former Confederacy plus additional states, including the southwest, Alaska and Washington. The Path--a militant and religiously fundamentalist organization--in which women are robed and veiled "companions" ministering to the men--is dedicated to being "a light in the darkness and the rod that falls upon the backs of the defiant." Cal, captured by the Path six years previously, is set to move up from novice to citizen when Capt. Monroe reneges on a deal, and Cal instead becomes Pvt. Callum Roe in the army. When he kills a man to protect a dog, he becomes a runner, off the Path, intending to journey across the war-torn country from Arizona to his former home in New York. Cal's first-person point of view offers the immediacy of his personal experience in this action-packed drama, but unfortunately, it isn't up to offering the fuller social and political history of the war that many readers would find interesting. An intriguing vision of a possible future rooted in current politics and wrapped in an exciting tale of war. (maps) (Fiction. 12-18)
