All Things Now Living by Rondi Bauer Olson is a young adult science fiction novel. Amy is a sixteen-year-old girl whose father shoves her into the dome-locked world of New Lithisle with coding to stop the dome from collapsing. She doesn’t realize this is his purpose since she was raised by her mother and community to believe all those in the dome are soulless animal people doomed to die in God’s judgment on them. The people inside this isolated world were genetically modified to fight a pandemic, but the genetic experiments didn’t stop. Amy must unlearn her prejudices and the truth about the dome, its people, and even herself before she and everyone in the dome die.
This is a fast-paced action novel that keeps the reader fully engaged from beginning to end. I saw one review complain about the love interest developing too quickly, but I think that it is paced as quickly as a lot of books I have read. I am pleased that this book isn’t centered on the love interest, but does use it to propel the change in Amy’s worldview. The story resolves in the end, but there is much about the greater world and the future for Amy that can be explored in a fascinating sequel.
My main complaint is the withholding of information both to the reader and between the characters. This does create tension, but I feel like this is entirely unnecessary. Explaining more and creating stronger curiosity could accomplish the same thing. There is so much about this world I would like to know. If the book replaced the strange dreams with more information about the world and all that was going on, it would improve the book considerably. This is a picky point, but one that I would like to see in the sequel.
So, I do recommend this book to fans of soft science fiction as an enjoyable read. It is a near future almost dystopian, almost cyber-punk story that will keep you interested and entertained.
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