Orleans by Sherri L. Smith

TL;DR speculative fiction about the downfall of New Orleans

(finished 3/24/15)

I kind of knew this going in, but Orleans is really dark and gritty. I almost stopped reading it fairly early on just because I felt like I couldn't handle it. I do think it was worth reading to the end, though.

Honestly, I don't really know how plausible the story is at all, since I'm not very good with science or viruses. I'm also fairly sure that New Orleans should have been completely underwater with the climate change that happened within the story, but I've only been to the city once and don't know much about it, so I'm going to trust the author on this. I also don't know how easily the US government would be like, "Yeah, nah, we done with you". 

I can't really say that the story necessarily stands out much? It's unique for me in regards to New Orleans and "blood wars", but I don't think any of the characters were necessarily groundbreaking. I'm still trying to figure out if Fen and Daniel really had any true character growth. Fen opens up and trusts him, though I don't know if that really counts. And he was just naive all across the board. 

I don't know if I can really comment on the worldbuilding. On the one hand, I feel like it does a good job of setting up a post-apocalyptic society, but at the same time, I'm not familiar with the city or how a virus so revolved around blood would change things. There weren't really any obvious failures other than just me wondering about sea level rise, though. 

There's not really much else I can think of to put in a review;; Like, the thing that stands out the most to me about Orleans is its grittiness. And I'm not usually one for dark and gritty books. It was a good read, but I don't think I was really within the demographic for it. 

TL;DR it's a pretty solid 3-star book. You probably won't want to read it if The Hunger Games was too violent / gritty. It's along a similar line.