Exodus

By Julie Bertagna

The fifteenth anniversary edition of Exodus, a startling, thrilling novel set in a dystopian future ravaged by global warming

It is 2099 - and the world is gradually drowning, as mighty Arctic ice floes melt, the seas rise and land disappears forever beneath storm-tossed waves. For fifteen-year-old Mara, her family and community, huddled on the fast-disappearing island of Wing, the new century brings flight. Packed into tiny boats, a terrifying journey begins to a bizarre city that rises into the sky, built on the drowned remains of the ancient city of Glasgow. But even here there is no safety and, shut out of the city, Mara realizes they are asylum-seekers in a world torn between high-tech wizardry and the most primitive injustice. To save her people, Mara must not only find a way into the city, but also search for a new land and a new home . . .

This new edition celebrates the 15th Anniversary of Exodus featuring a new foreword from the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Sep 4, 2008
• ISBN: 9780330462099

Julie Bertagna

After an early career as a teacher and freelance feature writer for major Scottish newspapers, Julie Bertagna has quickly established a reputation as an author of powerful and original fiction for young people. EXODUS, her first novel for Macmillan, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award and won the Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award and the Angus Award. THE OPPOSITE OF CHOCOLATE was shortlisted for the Book Trust Teenage Prize 2004. Julie lives in Glasgow with her husband and daughter.

Reviews for Exodus

[mirandalg14 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars. I got bored in a few places, but overall it was pretty good.

[cheriereads · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm torn between 2 and 3 stars for this book. I did like it but there were some major flaws that hindered my enjoyment of the book.

The premise is an interesting one - what if the entire earth were flooded because the polar ice caps melted? The story is an interesting one and the plot moves along pretty nicely.

There were quite a few things I did not like, however. The dialogue was pretty horrible. Lots of gasping and whining and such. Some pretty cheesy exchanges. Also, within the plot there were a lot of unbelievable coincidences. The protagonist whines about how difficult things are and how she doesn't know how she will proceed. Then, voila! Something happens that makes everything ok. There are also a few references made to the fact that there are no women in charge and no women "dreamers." These references to women's rights really felt out of place. That facet of the story was never fleshed out so these mentions seem distracting rather than a real piece of the plot. They were unnecessary. If this was something that the author really wanted to explore she should have made it a larger part of the plot.

Overall, this book was ok. I liked it and really enjoyed parts of it but cannot rate it higher because of the issues stated above. I think most adults reading this would agree with me. However, tweens and young teens may rate this much higher.

[librarybrandy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In less than a hundred years, all the damage we've done to the Earth will catch up to us. All the trees we've chopped down will contribute to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, speeding the greenhouse effect and melting the polar ice caps. The planet is drowning.

This is the bleak reality of Mara's island community: the sea is rising, and the people on Wing are running out of high ground. Mara has been studying, though, digging through the Weave on her outdated computer, and has found evidence of a new world built high above the ocean. If her people are to survive, they need to move there. But even after the perilous journey is over, they still can't make it past the wall.

This novel was more engrossing than I was prepared to give it credit for--the plot moves slowly, but then you look up and realize it's been an hour and 70 pages have flown by. Some elements are telegraphed right from the beginning (at least for anyone who's ever read a book)--will Mara find a way in?--but even the predictable plot points are ... well, not surprising, but somehow unexpected? They don't feel as inevitable as you'd expect. Despite being in the "greatness thrust upon her" category, Mara is a strong leader with a good heart. I can say roughly the same for the novel.

[whitebalcony · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Captivating world building but lacking in credible plot

[katrinasreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Once upon a time there was a world...... a world full of miracles. From the whirl of the tiniest particles to its spinning orbit in the unthinkable vastness of space, this world danced with miraculous life. Ur, the first people called their beautiful world, and the sound of that early name would carry down all the years, until aeons of time and tongues ripened Ur into Earth.The people feasted upon their ripe world. Endlessly they harvested its lands and seas. They grew greedy, ravaging the planets bounty of miracles. Their waste and destruction spread like a plague until a day came when this plague struck at the very heart of the miraculous dance. And the people saw too late, their savage desolation of the world.As you can see above this novel starts off full of beautiful language and images, well crafted, but also a warning to us all. Exodus is a novel about Mara a young girl who lives on the island of Wing. As the polar ice caps have slowly melted the world has been taken over by the sea. Unsure whether they are the last island on earth the inhabitants of Wing battle for survival against the elements.Playing a computer game Mara meets an unexpected person amongst the ghosts on the internet and discovers that a New World exists, a city built above the sea, anchored to fend off the elements.Mara convinces the inhabitants of her island to set off in search of this new land, in search of a new life.This book started off really well for me, but then 10 pages in I nearly gave up when the computer game suddenly appeared. Luckily it lasted only a few pages and the novel was back on track, although it still took a good 50 pages for it to grab my interest again. I'm glad I continued as I loved some of the characters and the various communities that we meet in this novel.I thought that the book may be preachy, but the message was far more about fighting for change in the new world, rather than the faults of the past. If you enjoyed The Pretties, The Knife of Never Letting Go (and who couldn't, that was an amazing trilogy) and The Giver this is a novel you should definitely check out.

[flemmily · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mara is a young woman who resembles her grandmother not only in looks, but also in leadership potential. As the rising ocean threatens to wipe out her island community, she hatches a plan to bring everyone to the legendary city of New Mungo. But sanctuary remains a castle in the air. Her sense of responsibility grows to encompass a larger community of refugees and urchins, and she must find a way and a place where they can all live safely.Exodus is a lyrical novel. It unfolds slowly. Mara's world is one of half familiar mystery, and readers are left puzzling out landmarks that never quite come into focus. Tragedy stalks every page. Mara is a semi-engaging character. She is more able to place events within a larger context than other characters, but her grief never quite rings true. This is not a novel to be devoured, not a page turner. But it is engaging none the less. It addresses ethics and morality, but its conclusions are ultimately simplistic and under-satisfying.

[lenoreva · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s 2100 and Mara’s island home has been steadily shrinking for years with the melting of the polar ice caps and the rising of the oceans – very soon, there will be nothing left. Mara learns of a nearby sky city called New Mungo via her cyber adventures on the “weave” and convinces her fellow islanders to set sail for this beacon of hope. But when they arrive, they are faced with a huge barrier wall, a desperate refugee camp and a police force that brutally shoots at approaching boats. If New Mungo won’t take them in, where will they go?EXODUS is a very ambitious novel with 3 very distinct and stunningly realized settings: a drowning island in the North Atlantic, the high-tech sky city of New Mungo, and a shadow world beneath New Mungo where a few relics of the past, including a cathedral and a university, still exist.Mara is the kind of fearless and determined teen necessary for such a novel. She’s a leader wherever she goes, and even the subject of a mysterious prophecy known as “the stone telling” which tells of a girl who leads victims of the rising sea level to salvation.On the surface, it’s a great action story about surviving at any cost. Dig a little deeper and you are keenly aware of what those costs are. When you can’t save everyone, who do you choose to save? And then, how do you live with your choice? If you are the architects of New Mungo, you do it by banishing the past and living for the “power of now”. If you are a resident of the shadow world, you do it by burying the past, and fervently believing that an outside force will come someday to set things right. And if you are Mara…well, that’s something I’m sure the sequels ZENITH (out now) and AURORA (no set release date) will explore.

[seekingflight · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very readable story, that posits a world devastated by the floods and storms that follow the melting of the polar icecaps, and poses a number of disconcerting questions as we follow a young girl's coming of age and attempt to improve circumstances for herself and her society. If circumstances forced us to try to rebuild our society from the ground up, I wondered on reading this book, would we end up making the same mistakes all over again? To what extent are we as people culpable for the actions of our government? Bertagna sensitively and thought-provokingly demonstrates the way in which fear for our own continued well-being can blunt our ability to feel empathy and compassion for others, and the way in which growing up in a society that is relatively well-off can leave people preoccupied with their own concerns and prevent them from seeing the bigger picture. An enjoyable and thought-provoking read, and (it probably should be added) nowhere near as preachy as this review probably makes it sound!!

[fyrefly98 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Summary: In 2100, the Earth's ice caps have melted, the oceans have risen, and month-long fierce storms are the norm. The inhabitants of the tiny village island of Wing have moved further and further uphill as the seas rise, but there's no longer anywhere else to go. Fifteen-year Mara believes she has evidence of great sky cities built somewhere in the south, and even though the villagers are skeptical, they have no other choice - they head for the one they believe to be closest. However, once they get there, they find that the high-tech city has equally high security, and it isn't accepting new refugees. Now, it seems as though it will be up to Mara to find a way to get inside the city, and somehow save her people... and maybe the whole of humanity.Review: I can't quite decide if this book is horrifically frightening, or upliftingly hopeful. Both, probably. Bertagna's vision of the future is terrifyingly plausible - indeed, she points out, it's already started, and we are standing on the precipice of that future. At the same time, Bertagna doesn't slip into hopelessness, or start lecturing us about how badly we're screwing up the planet - she just presents her vision of the future as she sees it, and I wound up spending a lot of the book asking myself "Is this inevitable? What will we do if this happens? What can we do to keep this from happening?" I think this book should be required reading in every freshman lit class in the world for exactly that reason - because it makes you think, and turns global warming from something that only Al Gore worries about into something much more immediate and personal. I don't mean to give the impression that this is exclusively a "message" book - far from it. The story itself is very absorbing, and well-told, with sympathetic characters, lots of interesting twists and turns, and plenty of action. Like Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy, on the surface level it reads as an exciting action story, with all of the social commentary tucked down in the cracks - not so much that you have to go hunting for it, but just enough that it's enjoyable on a variety of levels. I wasn't blown out of the water (heh, sorry) by the writing - I tend not to like books written in the present tense without a clear reason for it, and while I can usually tune it out, there were times when it was intrusively noticeable - but for the most part, it was innocuous. Anyways, this isn't a book you should read for the writing, it's a book you should read for the story - and for the message. 4 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: If you liked Uglies, you'll find this one in much the same vein. For everyone else, I'd still recommend giving this one a shot: it's a highly entertaining and compulsively readable story on an interesting - and important - topic.

[kevinyezbick · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In the year 2100 the Earth's polar ice caps have melted. The steadily rising ocean waters first envelop the cities of Tokyo and New York, setting off international panic as the inundation shows no sign of receding. Global warming has conjured storm after storm, hurricanes continually battering what remains of inhabited lands. On the island of Wing, fifteen year old Mara has spent much of her life indoors behind shuttered windows with her family, wondering how long her shelter can withstand the gale force winds. The sun is a rarity, and much of her days are spent in darkness with the wind whipping outside.As the waters continue to rise, Mara urges the other islanders to set sail for the "New World" which she has seen in a holographic, advanced version of the Internet known as the Weave. This New World is a city that rises into the sky, far above the deluge. Out on the violent open sea, Mara is separated from her family and many of the other islanders. When she arrives at the city in the sky she is part of a fleet of refugee ships that are blocked from entering by huge walls, and hunted by armed police. Racked with guilt for leading her fellow islanders into a bobbing horde of pestilence and death, Mara decides she must find a way in, to save herself and her fellow sojourners...While the apocalyptic storyline would seem to be rather gripping, and the dystopian setting engaging, the character of Mara ultimately turned my thumb downward for Exodus. Steadily unsure of herself, Mara is in a continuous state of doubt. While this may be a normal character trait for some - the way that Bertagna portrays it grows wearisome - and whiny. The length of the book, at 325 pages, is stretched even further by passages that are seemingly scooped up from one chapter and dropped into the next. It is one thing to illuminate a character's interior conversation, but it is another to have the character repeat the same interior conversation every ten pages. Like the "New World," Exodus is built on a towering foundation for a fantasy, but it is ultimately too airy to relate to its "hero."

[mrshillreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Global warming causes the ice caps to melt and the world is being slowly flooded. Mara's island is losing ground to the water and she convinces people to go with her to find a Sky City. Great story of the struggle to survive in a changing world. Lots of things to think about!

[deliriumslibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book in one sitting, entranced. Having visited Glasgow subsequently, I was moved to read it again. It's such a rich book about seeing the world -- can't wait for the sequel...