Review of Alive by Scott Sigler

Advance Review of Scott Sigler's Alive

Release Date: July 14th, 2015

Synopsis as found on Amazon.com:

For fans of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Red Rising comes a gripping sci-fi adventure in which a group of teenagers wake up in a mysterious corridor with no knowledge of who they are or how they got trapped. Their only hope lies with an indomitable young woman who must lead them not only to answers but to survival.  
“I open my eyes to darkness. Total darkness. I hear my own breathing, but nothing else. I lift my head . . . it thumps against something solid and unmoving. There is a board right in front of my face. No, not a board . . . a lid.”
 
A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief—she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people . . . and no answers.

She knows only one thing about herself—her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin—yet she finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them, or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her. Now, if they’re to have any chance, she must get them to trust one another.

Whatever the truth is, she is determined to find it and confront it. If she has to lead, she will make sure they survive. Maybe there’s a way out, a rational explanation, and a fighting chance against the dangers to come. Or maybe a reality they cannot comprehend lies just beyond the next turn.

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Ahhhhh... Finally a book that I really am truly happy with this year. I have read quite a few that I loved so far in 2015, but more often than not I have read books that have disappointed me. Now, the pattern has been for the past few years that I read the first book in the series and love it, but the sequels are no where near as good as the first... so we will have to wait and see if Sigler can match the success of this book with the next.

A girl wakes up in the dark, unable to move or see anything. She doesn't remember her name, where she came from, or anything about herself, except that she is 12 and today is her birthday. As she is screaming for her mother and father, she thrashes around trying to get herself loose from the binds holding her arms and legs down. She fights to get herself free, even as something slithers up to her neck and bites her. This first chapter really is foreshadowing for the rest of the book, because she ends up being a fighter all the way until the end.

When she finally frees herself, she sees that she is in a room with 11 other coffins. She finds a tag on the one that she just busted herself from that says M. Savage. The name resonates somewhere inside of herself and she knows that it is her name. When she hears someone wake screaming from inside of a coffin near her own, she makes it her mission to get this person out. She finds some kind of tool against the wall and with strength she didn't know she had, pries open the box to find a girl inside. The girl is incredibly beautiful and everything she has always wished she would grow up to look like.

They both notice symbols on each other's heads, but the symbols are never really explained in this book. They also realize through talking that they both are 12 and today is their birthday. The only problem is, neither looks 12 years old. The both are wearing clothes that are too tight and do not fit. Each believes the other looks closer to 16 or 17 years old. After their talk and introductions (the name on the new girls coffin being T. Spingate), together they look into the other coffins. While some of them hold shriveled up dead children, there are 3 boys and 1 more girl that are still alive.

These 6 children all believe that they are 12 years old and that they are waking on their birthday. They will begin referring to themselves as the Birthday Children. Together they will set out to discover why they were locked in coffins and where all of the adults are.

I loved this book so much and don't want to spoil anything for you, as the reader. I will say this much... I had multiple clear ideas as to what and why the story was going a certain way, as well as how I expected the story to end... I was wrong. It is not about what I thought at all. That plot twist is what made me truly entranced. I hope you will find it as exciting as I did.