The Final Orchard

When the apocalypse inevitably comes do you want to know about it? Would you like the chance to peer out of the window and see the world burning, perhaps you can make a run for the high ground? Another option is to live in pure ignorance underground, competing with your fellow residents for the perceived prize of ascending to the next level. Just do not tell the residents that this next level can cost you an arm and a leg, literally. Welcome to the various messed up worlds of C J Rivera’s The Final Orchard. 

Ro never planned to work for a multinational company that specialised in keeping its elderly customers alive as long as possible, but her knowledge and the death of her daughter led her to become an expert in organic enhancements. These organic parts need to be grown somewhere and deep below ground is an orchard made up of young men and woman, including Ever, an exceptional specimen who has yet to be picked to ascend, but why? 

Orchard is a dystopian novel with a capital D. It deals with a lot of heavy subjects and not much hope. The book opens on a bleak note, the tragic death of a child. This event acts as one of the catalysts for future events. Ro is now focused on technology that can recreate her child, no matter the cost to others. One part of this book is about how grief can warp someone. 

The other storyline is set deeper underground in the cult like world of Ever. These young people compete with one another to gain the favour of The Chairman in the hopes of being picked to ascend and fight in a war they know little about. This is another disturbing aspect of the book, young people being groomed and manipulated to be an army of unquestioning child soldiers. 

The dystopia continues in the horrific aspects of the book. The death of a small child is enough, but there is also the fates of the adolescents grown in The Final Orchard. The book is science fiction horror as we witness mutilations and scientific horrors that would make Doctor Moreau think twice. One final bleakness is revealed as the book progresses, the outside world is undergoing its final days. If you are into dystopia, you get as much as you could want. 

There is little humour in the book and the reader does not get much relief. There is plenty of action, especially in the latter parts of the book. I question whether Rivera earns through their writing the level of horror and terror in the book. It has a slight naive tone to the story because the farmed children are so inexperienced. It balances on the cusp of Young Adult fiction because so many of the cast are that age. Like The Hunger Games if you stop for a minute and consider how truly horrific the story is, you question why the book is aimed so young. With the death of a child at the start of the book, Rivera was trying to write core adult science fiction, but I still feel like it reads at a younger level.  

For all the books attempts at levity; the death of children, the murder of adolescents, the end of the world etc., it still feels like it is naive and too dismissive of the subject matter. If you are going to kill a kid in the first few pages, you better bring your A game and produce a book that respects the reader and the world in which it is set. Instead, Orchard is a book heavy in subject matter, but light in tone. For me, the sense of bleakness and misery in the book is not matched in the writing style. Fans of those dystopian teen novels of the 00s will enjoy this slight adultification of the genre, but Rivera needed to delve deeper to deserve writing about such soul sapping subject matter.