Platform Dwellers
by Katarina Boudreaux
Published by Owl Hollow Press on May 8, 2018
Setting: Gulf of Mexico
Genres: YA Dystopia
Pages: 270
Format: ebook, Kindle, Paperback
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Get Your Copy at: Amazon, Nook
Joe is a typical Platform teenager, living on the remnants of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Though Land has been silent since technology was destroyed during the Moralist Revolution, she wants a career in communications and is obsessed with creating long-distance underwater connections.
When her best friend, Drayton, discovers lights moving on Land at the same time Joe picks up SOS signals, they realize the Platform’s Planning Commission seems to be ultimately responsible for the Bone Virus that precipitated the Revolution. Joe and Drayton enlist the help of Flox, a debunked scientist, to take them to investigate the remnants of human Land society—before the PC can stop them.
Platform Dwellers by Katarina Boudreaux sees four kids trying to make a difference in their world while trying to act like adults.
Can Joe, Drayton, Chanox, and Lisette make a change that their world desperately needs?
The Kids
Josephine, aka Joe, is our point-of-view character and doesn’t want to leave the Platforms. The reason for that is because she knows she has created a device that will be revolutionary to all the platforms in a way to talk with each other and how the PC needs to implement it. Unfortunately, Joe has intercepted an SOS from Land, and her best friend Drayton has involved her in a way that makes her dangerous in the eyes of the PC. I have to say that Joe had me a bit confused about whether she was a girl or a guy until we discover that her name is Josephine, and I love how Joe cares for her family and friends.
Drayton is Joe’s best guy friend who sees Joe in a romantic way, especially more so once they get on Land. On the Platforms, Drayton is the guy who helps Joe out whenever he can and tries to make her life bearable there. Until he sees the lights coming from Land, then that is when things shift for him and some of their friends. Chanox discovers more about the Bones virus than the PC wants people to know, or at least confirms what Lisette’s older sister discovered.
These four people, plus Lisette’s older sister and an exiled scientist named Flox, get away from the Platforms and to Land. I have to say that these four kids have a lot on their shoulders to carry when they are only sixteen years old. However, I do feel bad for a character named Harriet.
The Story
So these four kids live on Platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and they went to school until they were graduating. After graduating, they needed to perfect their projects for the PCs to decide if they would stay in their field, get put elsewhere, or get the opportunity to teach the young minds. I have to say that there is a lot of pressure on kids to get projects going and finished as a prototype to see how it will work in the long term. Instead of doing that and making it to their graduation ceremony, they all had to flee or be sent off somewhere else, never to return.
On Land, they don’t fare much better. Ms. Boudreaux has a vivid imagination to dream up this world. I don’t know if it’s safer for them to be on Land, meaning taking their chances on the mainland, or going off to a different Platform and hoping that nothing terrible will happen to them.
Either way, a lot of stuff went down, and here’s to hoping book two will clear many more things up.
Four Stars
I am giving Platform Dwellers by Katarina Boudreaux four stars and a recommendation to anyone who likes to read a young adult book with a dystopian flair. At least give it a chance, especially as there will be a second book. I was hoping for some more closure on some of the characters, but here’s to hoping that book two will answer some more of my questions that were left hanging at the end of this book.
Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Platform Dwellers by Katarina Boudreaux.
Until the next time,
Happy Reading!
About Katarina Boudreaux
Katarina Boudreaux is a New Orleans writer, musician, composer, tango dancer, and teacher-a shaper of word, sound and mind. She is the founder of K. and the Ra-Ra Racket, a New Orleans traditional band, and Orquesta Fleur, a tango orchestra based in New Orleans. She manages Dance Quarter, a dance school for all ages which provides lessons in partner dancing from Bachata to Waltz. Her play Awake at 4:30 was a finalist in the 2016 Tennessee Williams Festival. Her novel Still Tides was a semi-finalist in the 2016 Faulkner-Wisdom competition. Her first novel Platform: Dwellers is forthcoming from Owl Hollow Press. Future publications include works with Snow Leopard Publishing and Thurston Howl Publications. Anatomy Lessons is available from Flutter Press.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2023 Goodreads RC
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