The Electric Kingdom by David Arnold (review)

Nico has lived most of her eighteen years on a farm with her parents, keeping (mostly) safe from the Flu-flies that have destroyed much of humanity. When her mother dies, however, and her father begins experience the same symptoms that ailed her, he sends Nico to find the Waters of Kairos, which Nico had always thought were her father’s fantastical storytelling inventions. Along the way she meets up with young Kit and his fellow travelers, all of whom have lost their parents to the flies. Meanwhile, interspersed chapters are told from the perspective of the Deliverer, who chronicles their many lives and their many attempts to change the tragic fate of the group of kids. Arnold brings all the classic elements of a dystopia here—a civilization-ending natural disaster, an inept governmental response, the collapse of social order, and a general descent into despair and violence—and twists them up with the mind-bending dramatics of time travel, making room for harrowing action scenes and deep existential ponderings. The setup of the three storylines—separate third-person narration for Nico’s and Kit’s stories and first person for the Deliverer—maximizes tension and points toward an eventual coalescence, but not before a fair amount of awfulness; the Deliverer’s story is particularly poignant, as the knowledge from their many lives brings the possibility of hope but carries the certainty of tragedy. Given current circumstances, this makes for a timely and chilling read.