Mirror X by Karri Thompson

 

Published: June 30th, 2014

Publisher: Entangled Teen

Pages: 3018

Ecopy: From Publisher

Summary: Goodreads

 

 

Cassie Dannacher wakes up in a hospital over 1,000 years into the future after her space capsule is retrieved from space. She soon learns that 600 years prior to her arrival, the earth was struck by a plague, killing over half of the world’s population. Naïve and desperate, Cassie, who longs for home and is having trouble adjusting to the new, dictatorial 31st century government, is comforted by Michael Bennett, the 20-year old lead geneticist at the hospital where she was revived.

But why is Cassie in genetics’ hospital in the first place, and why do several of the people around her seem so familiar, including Travel Carson, the hot and edgy boy she is fated to meet? Soon she discovers there is a sinister answer to all of her questions – and that they want something from Cassie that only she can give.

Mirror X gives an interesting look at a society 1000 years into the future.  Contrary to what it says above, Cassie is placed in a cryogenic chamber - not a space capsule - after an almost fatal car accident.  Basically Cassie is lied to from the beginning of this story to the end of it, and her biggest problem is finding people that she can trust to tell her the truth.

While I did enjoy the story as a whole, I had problems with certain aspects.  When Cassie starts to use very 20th Century vocabulary that no-one understands (cool) that makes sense - then a chapter further on, one of the 'natives' uses the phrase 'don't freak out', then another says 'it's really cool'.  A chapter or two farther on another character has to ask if he is using the word 'cool' correctly.  I realise that this is a relatively small thing, but it really bugged me.

1000 years is a very long time, and with all of the advancements that this society had made, it seemed just a little unrealistic that they hadn't solved their major problem - sorry can't be any more specific or I'd give away the whole plot.  I know it's really just an arbitrary number but I kept thinking that the premise would have made more sense if the plague had been only 200 years before her arrival. If we could invent a cryogenic chamber in 2019 that would last 1000 years, surely society could have solved 'the big issue' given another 600 years to work on it.. It's really just knit picking, but again, with all the other advancements made, the timing seemed off.   Otherwise I loved the society that Ms. Thompson had envisioned, and I wish I could jaunt to Australia in just a few hours the way Cassie does.

The characters grew on me as the story progressed, although I was never entirely sure about Michael. He seemed too good to be true to me.  I was much more enamoured of Magnum and all his geekiness. Give that guy a computer and the world was at his fingertips.  I also loved the nod to James Dean - it made me smile.  It looks as though Mirror X is the first book in a trilogy and I suspect I will pick up the next one - I'd like to see how things work out for Cassie and Michael.