Osiris by EJ Swift (Osiris Project: Book 1)

Nobody leaves Osiris. Osiris is a lost city.

She has lost the world and the world has lost her…

Rising high above the frigid waters, the ocean city of Osiris has been cut off from the land since the Great Storm fifty years ago. Most believe that Osiris is the last city on Earth, while others cling to the idea that life still survives somewhere beyond the merciless seas. But for all its inhabitants, Citizens and refugees alike, Osiris is the entire world–and it is a world divided.

Adelaide is the black-sheep granddaughter of the city’s Architect. A jaded socialite and family miscreant, she wants little to do with her powerful relatives–until her troubled twin brother disappears mysteriously. Convinced that he is still alive, she will stop at nothing to find him, even if it means uncovering long-buried secrets.

Vikram, a third-generation storm refugee quarantined with thousands of others in the city’s impoverished western sector, sees his own people dying of cold and starvation while the elite of Osiris ignore their plight. Determined to change things, he hopes to use Adelaide to bring about much-needed reforms–but who is using whom?

As another brutal winter brings Osiris closer to riot and revolution, two very different people, each with their own agendas, will attempt to bridge the gap dividing the city, only to find a future far more complicated than either of them ever imagined.

Poised and heart-rending  Osiris by E.L. Swift tells the story of betrayal, the dark side of belonging to a powerful family and is at heart, the story of a girl who just wants to be with her brother again, and a boy fighting for a freedom he rightly deserves.

Osiris is a dystopia and a political tale. It describes the post-apocalyptic world in the eyes of Adelaide Rechnov, the only daughter of the founding family, the glamour and mostly hollow lifestyle of the rich and the privileged. On the other side, it tells of Vikram Bai; a westerner, a boy with a dream and that is equal freedom for all.

Though the story is an insanely claustrophobic world with brilliant word-building in the hands of a great writer, I feel that the novel is a lot of nothing happening until the very last pages. Although Vikram and Adelaide are real people with real world problems - the rich trivial, while the poor’s is life threatening – the characters themselves are not alive. It’s hard to relate to them or get behind their motives and really feel along with them. Because of the two dimensional aspects of the characters, it’s rather hard to understand what’s going on in the background and I found myself skipping large parts in a hurry to get to the finish. That said, I want to know what happened to one of the titular characters, so sign me up for the sequel.

8/10 An insanely claustrophobic world with brilliant word-building.