This dystopian read is an immersion book.  By that, I mean that you need to invest a little time, especially at the beginning, to get an understanding of the characters and their environment before you can become invested in where the story is taking you.  Once you accomplish that, the rest of the read is an adventure of tangents into the main as well as subplots.  This new series did a very good job of showing the reader exactly where they were going but at times bogged me down with a little too much repetitive dialogue that detracted from the quick pace. However it was not enough that I wanted to stop reading.

While the author offered some closure at the end (which I always appreciate) there are some dangling threads that I look forward to catching up with in the next book.

On a side note – I enjoy when I know, as a reader, that I will not be strung along in a forever series.  The Pentalogy label makes me more comfortable and more willing to continue reading, knowing there will be an end.

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SUMMARY

A thousand years in the future, the last of humanity live inside the walls of the totalitarian Kingdom of Cutta. The rich live in Anais, the capital city of Cutta, sheltered from the famine and disease which ravage the rest of the Kingdom. Yet riches and power only go so far, and even Anaitians can be executed. It is only by the will of the King that Nate Anteros, son of the King’s favourite, is spared from the gallows after openly dissenting. But when he’s released from prison, Nate disappears.

A stark contrast, Catherine Taenia has spent her entire life comfortable and content. The daughter of the King’s Hangman and in love with Thom, Nate’s younger brother, her life has always been easy, ordered and comfortable. That is, where it doesn’t concern Nate. His actions sullied not only his future, but theirs. And unlike Thom, Catherine has never forgiven him.

Two years pass without a word, and then one night Nate returns. But things with Nate are never simple, and when one wrong move turns their lives upside down, the only thing left to do is run where the King’s guards cannot find them – the Outlands. Those wild, untamed lands which stretch around the great walls of the Kingdom, filled with mutants and rabids.