Unraveling Eleven
Unraveling Eleven
Then I'm distracted from my thoughts and my worries and my sorrow by a noise from the other side of the door we broke through ten minutes earlier. I glance at Wren, but he's still consumed with the scratch marks – he didn't hear.
So I move past him, out of the metal box, past the body bags and brooms, right to the door itself. But as I stand there listening to silence, it occurs to me that the goose bumps covering my arms have more to do with the death chamber than the noise. Same with my fluttering heart. Probably I heard nothing more than my mind reeling.
Just to be sure, I pull the gun from my jeans. One can never be too careful in Compound Eleven, and I almost laugh at the thought. Because all along I assumed my fellow civilians presented the biggest threat of a most violent death. That or the guards. It turns out it's the well-dressed Premes in charge.
There's no need to wait for Wren, or even for my flashlight. There is no need to fear opening the door. I reach a hand through the darkness and twist the knob.
Half a second later, there's a blast. Before my brain can process that it comes from a gun, white hot pain engulfs my arm. A scream escapes my lips, but it's cut off at once by the sound of another gunshot.
Unraveling Eleven, the sequel to Escaping Eleven, picks up just as the first book ends. Eve and Wren have successfully escaped from Compound Eleven, the underground habitat where they have lived their entire lives. Eve’s hunch that the surface of the Earth is not unbearably hot and uninhabitable, as they had always been taught, proves true, and Wren and Eve embark on what they assume to be a new life of freedom on the surface. The reality of their situation quickly catches up with them. They are completely unprepared for survival; they don’t know how to prepare food, find water, or even make shelter. After one disastrous night, they realize they are too unprepared to survive, and they reluctantly return to Compound Eleven. However, they now know that the elites of Compound Eleven must know the truth, that the surface of the earth is not inhospitable, and that they are deliberately keeping this truth from the population. No longer is Eve’s goal simply to escape from the compound she has hated her whole life; her new goal is to liberate the entire population. Eve and Wren continue to uncover the secrets and lies of Compound Eleven learning of the true brutality that is used to control the population and maintain the status quo.
Unraveling Eleven is part of a trend of dystopian teen fiction, and fans of that genre will enjoy this series. While the flawed characters and violence feel derivative of many other novels in this genre, the beginning of Unraveling Eleven was unexpected. The reader was set up to believe that this novel would be set outside Compound Eleven, and it was refreshing and realistic that Eve and Wren found themselves so quickly unequipped to survive and forced to return to the compound.
Unraveling Eleven is fast-paced and suspenseful. Eve’s subversive activities are constantly on the verge of being discovered, and she must rely on her wits and skills as a fighter to survive. Eve is a flawed hero. She is often selfish and tends to be rash, often jumping to conclusions before she has all the facts and frequently resorting to violence to deal with setbacks. The world the characters inhabit is harsh and violent, and the trilogy has a dark, dystopic tone. Unraveling Eleven is full of action that will keep readers moving along. It is also very violent, and Eve experiences extreme violence and perpetuates violence herself. The level of violence in this novel and Escaping Eleven will not appeal to all readers.
Tara Stieglitz is a librarian at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.