"It is impossible to catch your breath once you start this book--there is truly non-stop adventure on nearly every page. It is exhilarating, exhausting and impossible to put down." --Jackie

 

17-year-old Banyan is a tree builder. Using salvaged scrap metal, he creates forests for rich patrons who seek a reprieve from the desolate landscape. Although Banyan's never seen a real tree--they were destroyed more than a century ago--his missing father used to tell him stories about the Old World.

Everything changes when Banyan meets a mysterious woman with a strange tattoo--a map to the last living trees on earth, and he sets off across a wasteland from which few return. Those who make it past the pirates and poachers can't escape the locusts . . . the locusts that now feed on human flesh.

But Banyan isn't the only one looking for the trees, and he's running out of time. Unsure of whom to trust, he's forced to make an alliance with Alpha, an alluring, dangerous pirate with an agenda of her own. As they race towards a promised land that might only be a myth, Banyan makes shocking discoveries about his family, his past, and how far people will go to bring back the trees.

 

 

 

Jackie says:

"This book is a wild ride in a hostile and barren hell that the world has become that seems all too probable.  There are no longer trees, or any nature.  Everything that grows  (including every kind of life but human) is now gone other than genetically engineered corn and mutated locusts who have no choice now but to eat humans.  There is very little water, and GenTech, the company who controls the corn, keeps prices insanely high.  And now someone is "disappearing" people at a greater and greater rate. 

17 year old Banyan makes it on his own these days because his father was taken a year ago.  He is continuing in the family trade--building trees out of scraps of metal.  He gets hired for a job that quickly spirals out of control when strange clues to what may be the last of the 'real' trees show up tattooed onto his client's wife and step-daughter.  Add that to a mysterious picture of his father, alive and chained to a real tree, showing up and Banyan cannot help but to start looking for his father.  Along the way he meets with criminals and warriors--some hell-bent on killing him (or worse), some become unexpected allies.

It is impossible to catch your breath once you start this book--there is truly non-stop adventure on nearly every page.  It is exhilarating, exhausting and impossible to put down.  It's the first in a series that should capture a lot of attention and fans--it could be the next Hunger Games.  This is truly a cross-over book for teens and adults, though violent enough that I would say at the very least 14 and up."