Silo and the Rebel Raiders by V. Peyton (review)

This zippy oddball fantasy zooms in on Silo, who is one of few citizens of a small island who can read, and who has rare power as a seer. Silo’s ten but wise beyond his years, and he’s ambitious enough to venture away from his cozy but severely limited home and head off to the Capital to become a government-approved seer. Alas, that job is not what it’s cracked up to be, and Silo quickly learns that the government is not exactly trustworthy, especially in this flooded, post-apocalyptic world where no one can even truly remember what the world was like before. In spite of the global devastation, citizen oppression, and sinister government, this book is often uproariously funny, in no small part because Silo is so darn clever and his worldview is snarky and sharp. There are dramatic ship battles, amusing misinterpretations of old cultural elements (goatball, for example, is surely not what used to be played in London hundreds of years ago), and a running theme that one can find family in all sorts of places. You can’t ask for much more in a book, especially one whose amusing cover will sell the book unaided.