romenskii

I read this book when I was thirteen, about two years older than Candy, the plucky girl-genius protagonist. Palmer rocked the concept of an empowered wonder-girl years before Joss Whedon made them his trademark, and I was blown away by this book's intelligent, quirky, resourceful and funny main character, as well as with the uniqueness of the book's format - a ragingly hyperliterate, shorthand journal written in first person. Major, major suspension-of-disbelief is required to survive some of the plot twists as Candy - who discovers while riding out a nuclear/biological apocalypse in her scientist dad's bomb shelter that she's one of a new breed of humans called homo-post-hominem - navigates the depopulated roads of America in a souped-up conversion van with her devoted pet macaw at her side (yeah, you get the idea), looking for fellow superbreed survivors. Along the way there are enough deus-ex-machina moments to power a hundred Haunted Mansions. Still, it's a fun ride along the same lines as some of Heinlein's quirkier novels. Think Karate Kid-meets-Podkayne From Mars-meets-Road Warrior. Or something like that.

2022-10-16 15:37