Jill Williamson’s Captives (The Safe Lands)

published by Zondervan

What can I say? I loved it! The story is about villagers from Glenrock being taken captive to the beautiful, pleasure-driven Safe Lands, whose inhabitants are all infected with the thin plague. (Their motto is “Find Pleasure in Life.”) This plague has made it almost impossible for the Safe Lands nationals to have children so they conscript healthy outsiders, such as those taken from Glenrock, to come into their lands to reproduce for their city. Because the infected nationals all live under a death sentence with no hope of finding a cure, they live in pursuit of pleasure, considering that to be the highest goal in daily life. They consider “liberation” the highest honor to be obtained in a lifetime, when they pass from this life into their next stage of ten lifetimes. The citizens are assigned jobs on a rotating six-month basis and are assigned living spaces within the Highlands or Midlands of the Safe Lands. Each fertile female citizen must serve in the harem at least once, while each fertile male citizen must “donate” every month. The Safe Landers’ infected gene pool fails to provide viable offspring, so they rely on outsiders to provide them with healthy surrogates and donors. The ultimate insult to the outsiders is that the Safe Lands does not recognize parental rights. The children born in the harem are considered government “property” and must be surrendered immediately upon birth and taken to the nursery and children’s residences, where they will be cared for by trained government caregivers and educated by trained government teachers. (Sound eerily familiar? Mandatory schooling age in this country has become younger and younger over the years. The United Nations has been promoting the Rights of the Child, which encroaches on the rights of parents—depending on the interpretation of the language—putting the government in the place of determining how the child should be raised.)

That’s the background. Here’s the setup. The story takes place in 2088. The map at the front of the book reminds me of maps I’ve seen of Jerusalem. The Safe Lands’ citizens regularly use advanced technology that the outside villages do not have. The village of Glenrock is a peaceful community that might be compared to a Native American tribe that relies on hunting for sustenance. The people dress in skins and defer to the village elder and the council of elders. A strong foundation of family and reliance on Father God in heaven, sustain this community. The story focuses primarily on three brothers, great-grandsons of the village elder, Papa Eli. The oldest son, Levi, hunts, is engaged to be married, and receives admiration and approval from their father, Justin, whom the other two brothers see as a hard man. The middle son, Mason, is intelligent, chooses to be vegetarian, does not hunt, and does not receive approval from the old man, who has also arranged a marriage for Mason to a woman for whom the son does not care. Justin’s youngest son, Omar, is a confused and lonely teen who cannot seem to obtain his father’s approval for anything. This is the son who sells out his village, believing the Safe Lands enforcers’ promises of wealth and pleasure. He tells himself that once his people have experienced the Safe Lands, they will agree that he has done the right thing and that his father will finally approve of him.

The characters are very well developed. Williamson portrays each character authentically and leads the reader to develop compassion for most of the characters. I say “most” because this is the first book in a series and certain characters are truly not very likeable in their journey at this point. I am hoping for their redemption in future books. However, the not-very-likeable characters are very believable. Levi’s character is strong, traditionally masculine, strong in faith and tradition, yet lacking in a bit of discipline. Mason is intelligent and very interested in medicine but does not fit the traditionally masculine stereotype, showing his vulnerability and lack of confidence in himself to the reader from time to time. Omar is an insecure and immature teen boy who tries to fill his loneliness with what seems good to him, refusing to analyze situations to determine their inherit merits or flaws. Shaylinn is the lone female POV character in our ensemble. She, at fourteen, is younger than Omar and is taken to the harem along with the other young women of their village. Shaylinn is heavyset and insecure, believing herself to be unattractive. She is carried along by the actions of Mia, a fellow and slightly older teen villager also brought into the harem, until Shaylinn realizes that she needs to stand strong in her own convictions and not be influenced by her desire to belong or feel attractive.

The story world is fascinating. It has echoes of the Capitol from The Hunger Games in that the Safe Lands citizens are very much focused on pleasure to the point of self-mutilation in the name of beauty and individual expression. Our own developing legacy as a western nation is forecasted into a future in which the government controls the upbringing of children, and romantic love is something passé whereas casual flings are strongly preferred and condoned. Families no longer exist. Since natural reproduction is no longer possible for everyday citizens, laboratories have taken over the process of conception, and since children are brought up in government communes, parents are no longer necessary. Children no longer have natural siblings. The surrogate, donor, and child may each apply for a revealing, to be held after the child becomes fourteen years of age, at which time each of the parties may learn the identities of the other parties and arrange a meeting. Drug use is rampant among the Safe Landers. They “vape” (use vaporizers to inhale) their various “stims” (stimulants), including alcohol (which can also be drunk). All of the vaped substances are legal but traditionally ingested substances are not. The Finley and Flynn Show dominates the ColorCast (television), dictating fashion styles and keeping the citizens up to date on the Safe Lands’ pregnancies. Other shows feature various spectacles, such as lacing implants for the back, while stores cater to customers’ requests for such things as SimArt, digital devices that are implanted in the body and flash various designs on the skin; body-slimming wraps; and horn implants. As in all good stories about dictatorial societies, a rebel group is active in the Safe Lands, bypassing governmental monitoring and control through subversive methods.

Williamson is a master at crafting fiction. The story is entertaining, gripping, fascinating, and believable. I’m upset that I have to wait for the sequel! I will caution parents of younger readers who may read this book. A step-by-step description for using a Safe Lands vaporizer is given, which could easily be understood in terms of using any inhalant in our world. Many Western teens may have come across such topics before, but as always, parents should be aware of such inclusion in the books their kids read.

Check out http://thesafelands.com/ for a visual tour of the Safe Lands. The promotional website is really well done and a fantastic supplement to the book!

The main character, Spencer Garmond, speaks in first person POV, past tense and is the only point-of-view in the book. He’s a tall 15-year-old basketball player with red hair and freckles, who despite being raised by his strict grandmother, always manages to find himself in trouble. Spencer attends Pilot Point Christian School, or PPCS, where his neighborhood nemesis, Nick the preacher’s kid, also attends.

When his fistfights continue despite Grandma Alice’s warnings, he is given the choice either to go to military school or to join the Mission League, which has a front of being a Bible study group that goes on a mission trip each summer. Spencer joins the Mission League only because he hates the idea of going to military school more.

As he gets to know the “churchers” and spends time in Moscow, he finds a good friend in Gabe Stopplecamp, the good-hearted son of the PPCS Mission League teaching agents who also supervise the kids on the mission trip. Other kids challenge Spencer’s view of the world and the way he relates to others, and he gradually finds himself with answers that lead to more and more questions as his own identity starts to fall into place. As much as he hates to admit it, these “churchers” turn out to be not so bad.

Though his rivalry with Nick Muren irritates him to no end, he finds bigger and more evil challenges in Moscow and is forced to look more closely at his own lack of faith and the confidence his missionary friends all seem to have in their own.

I really enjoyed this book and all of its characters and am looking forward to the rest of the books in the series. Spencer and the other characters all have a lot of potential, and I can see how he might develop, and I want to be along for the ride! Williamson has proven herself time and again to create compelling characters and interesting plot lines. She interweaves Russian language and culture into this story, which makes for great armchair tourism as a bonus. I’m looking forward to visiting any other countries these characters may travel to in the sequels.

My one major complaint about the book is that it really, really needed to be proofread. I am a huge fan of Marcher Lord Press and love all of the stories I have read of theirs, but this book did not live up to professional publication standards. Besides a few misplaced words, the major issue was the appearance of random italics. Italics in fiction is generally used for direct thoughts, which are generally recognized by a switch in POV (third-person to first-person), unless the main narrative is already in first-person, and a switch in verb tense (past tense to present tense), unless the main narrative is already in present tense. (In the case of a book that is narrated in first-person present tense, no italics would be necessary.) Unfortunately, The New Recruit has italics for both direct thoughts and regular narrative. Sometimes the main narrative switches into italics for no reason at all. It was very distracting.

If the typesetting had been ensured to be correct, most of the annoyance factor would have been avoided because the little proofreading errors otherwise weren’t that frequent. But a general proofreading would have published a book worthy of Ms. Williamson’s storytelling. I hope that in future printings, the proof copies will be corrected and that future books in the series will be proofread before initial publication. I know that a small press doesn’t have the funds to keep a stable of paid editors, but volunteer proofreaders should be able to offer their services so that MLP will only put out books that meet a high publishing standard.

The story does make references to poor behavior like drug usage, fistfights, and rape, so I would recommend that parents read the book first for those kids that are not familiar with these concepts. All in all, I highly recommend this book for teens and up. It is a great read with interesting characters and a fun plot and the promise of an ongoing adventure. Go, Jill, go!