Atom Bomb Baby: A Dystopian Retro-Future Adventure

3.75 stars, rounded to 4 on sites that don't accept decimals.

"Welcome to Fen, where everything wants to eat you."

Atom Bomb Baby is everything you expect of a "retro-future dystopian". The themes of the book are edgy, sarcastic, and full of action-packed encounters with rebels, monsters, and robots! It feels a bit like a cyber-punk novel mixed with dystopian and a dash of sci-fi. If I had to compare it to other forms of media, I'd say that it reminded me of The Maze Runner by James Dashner and, as far as how the story was told (keeping the reader in the dark, etc), I thought about the movie A Quiet Place a few times, too.

Ashe is nothing less than a "spunky" main character and her attitude of disdain and reluctance towards her crumbling world is easily what drives this book forward. She encounters every obstacle with a roll of her eyes and an adolescent attitude of "whatever, not my problem", even though she's going to act anyway, against her better judgement. She is definitely an anti-hero. I didn't like her in the beginning of the book, and even towards the end she still annoyed me with her attitude towards others, but you learn so much about her that it's difficult to not at least sympathize with her plight. This book would not be the same story without her attitude, so I wouldn't want her to be any other way. It's also a bit refreshing to see a young woman in fiction allowed to be angry throughout most of the book instead of falsely positive for the sake of having a likeable female. And if anyone had reason to be angry, it was definitely her.

My reasoning for 3.75 stars, instead of 5, is hinged mostly on details of the story world. There are little to no descriptions about what the monsters are, so they are left almost entirely up to your imagination. I mentioned earlier that this book reminded me of The Maze Runner, and I actually found myself mentally plugging scenes in this book with clips from The Maze Runner movie, just because I didn't know what the monsters were or what the Kraal is. Upon finishing the book, there are a lot of open-endings and few conclusions, which left me baffled as to what the government's objective was, what controlled the robots, etc. etc. Which, if I recall correctly, was the same issue that I had with finishing The Maze Runner the first time, so perhaps this style is intentional and all will be revealed in the last book of this series?

Overall, I enjoyed the adrenaline rush of the storyline, the tender moments with Jade, and the subtle themes of how trauma can affect memories, especially when said trauma happens at a young age. I do wish I could've immersed myself more fully into the story world, but I'd read the sequel and additional work by this author!

Content disclaimers: Cursing: infrequent, mild language (though mentions of crude hand gestures). No romantic content. Gore: I'd say roughly PG-13 rating, depending on the reader's imagination. There aren't detailed descriptions, but some fight scenes are pretty intense.

Trigger Warnings: many themes of death and loss. Trauma-induced memory loss. Survival in an apocalyptic setting.