Wither, the first book in the Chemical Garden Trilogy, is a young adult novel set in a dark dystopian future– and the future, it turns out, is incredibly bleak and rapidly ending. Seventy years before the time in which the novel is set, “science perfected the art of children,” (p. 8) creating embryos without cancer, allergies, or other various ailments. At first thought, this sounds like paradise. Unfortunately, as protagonist Rhine explains, what humankind didn’t realize was that the children and grandchildren of those embryos were doomed to be “born healthy and strong, perhaps healthier than our parents, but our life span stops at twenty-five for males and twenty for females. For fifty years the world has been in a panic as it’s children die” (p. 9).
Naturally, since human life has become so shortened, people find themselves on an accelerated path to procreation, with the intent to have as many children as possible in the hope of both continuing the family bloodline and finding an antidote to the lethal virus that is killing off humankind one by one. To accomplish this goal, polygamy is the norm, and Rhine (age 16) begins the story a captive, kidnapped to be a bride to Linden Ashby, along with Cecily, who’s 13, and Jenna , who’s 19. They join Rose, already Linden’s wife but dying rapidly from what is termed “the virus”. Rhine is set on escaping from the very beginning, but the terrors between the walls of her gilded cage juxtapose roughly with her growing fondness for her sister wives, the husband she reluctantly begins to care for, and the servant (called “attendants” in this world) with whom she falls illicitly in love.
Wither is not a joyful story, although it does have positive moments for the characters. It is not a fairy tale, either. Rhine has endured grief. She mourns her parents, assassinated in an attack on the lab in which they work. She longs for the twin brother she was stolen from. She grieves her freedom, and wonders about what life could be like in a world where one could live beyond 20 years. Instead, the book is a beautiful, tragic, dark picture of fallible and frightened people making the best choices out of the few years they have available to them, and transcending the status quo of the day (Get married. Have babies. Die). The novel is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and P.D. James’ Children of Men, and the effect is a story with an addictive, can’t-put-down quality.
