Rootless

Starred review from October 22, 2012
In an impressive debut, first in a planned series, Howard introduces a devastated future devoid of trees, where omnivorous locusts plague the landscape, a ruined climate makes survival difficult, and genetically engineered corn is the only viable crop. Banyan, a teenage artist searching for his missing father, builds trees out of scrap for those aching for a touch of the past. When Banyan stumbles across a map to the rumored last trees on Earth, he and an unlikely group of allies are sucked into a perilous adventure, braving cannibals, poachers, pirates, slavers, and the omnipresent and insidious GenTech corporation. There’s a brilliant madness to this deadly postapocalyptic world, filled with complex characters, shifting loyalties, and layers of mystery. While convoluted and messy, it’s also a nonstop adventure, with wild concepts and an almost hypnotic quality to Banyan’s terse, weather-beaten narration. Lines like “I knew it was a day of endings, one way or another” and “One good thing about a world made of stone and steel, that world can’t burn for long” bring this unforgettable setting to life. Ages 14–up. Agent: Laura Rennert, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

December 1, 2012
Grades 9-12 After a cataclysmic world event dwindled the world's natural resources to almost nil, man-made trees have become merely art installations for the very rich. Banyan is one of the best tree builders around, though one would hardly know it from the way he is starved for food and work. But his latest project, constructing a tree based on a tattoo on a rich man's wife, takes a turn when the woman's daughter shows him a picture of a man tied to a real, living tree. More shocking than the tree is the manit's Banyan's missing father. Banyan sets out on a journey fraught with dangers including pirates, flesh-eating locusts, and perhaps the biggest of big corporate baddies: GenTech, a company that manages the masses by controlling the limited food supply of corn. In his ambitious debut, Howard constructs a crumbling, brutal, ignorant, mystical, and barren world, and he gets his environmental message across clearly as he sets up the next book of Banyan's continuing adventures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2012
In a blasted, post-apocalyptic future, only three life-forms remain: humans, omnivorous locusts and the bioengineered corn that has become the sole source of food and fuel to civilization's remnants. Banyan, 17, makes his living as his dead father did, by fabricating trees from scrap metal. A wealthy landowner commissions him to build a forest, providing as a template a beautiful, yellow-leaved tree tattooed over the torso of his wife. Stranger still, the woman's daughter shows him a recent photograph of a man--his father!--chained to a living tree. In short order, Banyan and a motley crew--his client's son and a charismatic pirate girl, joined at various points by the wife, her daughter and the landowner's Rasta bodyguard--are racing the landowner to the trees. They just have to get past GenTech's massive cornfields and the locusts that live in them. Howard has a gift for the phantasmagoric image: the killing Surge that is this future's ocean, the bark Banyan finds growing on a homeless man, the swarm of locusts descending for the kill and more. But he takes huge narrative leaps and skimps on worldbuilding, neglecting to explore this GenTech-controlled economy or where oxygen now comes from. It's a refreshingly male-oriented world, though, despite the abrupt attraction between Banyan and the pirate that feels chucked in to provide the now-requisite romantic element. Readers willing to go with the flow can look forward to the sequel. (Science fiction. 14-18)

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January 1, 2013

Gr 7-10-In a worst-case-scenario future, climate change has taken a harsh toll. The waters are rising violently, the land that is left is a dusty wasteland, and the only thing still growing is the all-powerful GenTech Corporation's bioengineered corn (aka "superfood"). Banyan, 17, is an artist, like his missing father, creating whole forests out of scrap metal, plastic, and electronic components for the wealthy. Chance meetings with some unusual people send him on a quest to find Zion, which might contain not only the last remaining trees on Earth, but possibly his father as well. What he eventually discovers is unexpected, to say the least. Themes of loss, redemption, and sacrifice are explored, along with some big questions about science and family and love. Banyan is a strong character with believable motivation and behavior. There's a lot of violence and misery, but also a surprisingly sweet romance between him and the almost suicidally daring pirate Alpha. Supporting characters are well done. Fans of the Mad Max movies, The Hunger Games, and other blood-pounding, life-or-death adventures will find much to like here, and will look forward to further installments.-Mara Alpert, Los Angeles Public Library

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
In a bleak world without trees, seventeen-year-old Banyan makes fake trees out of scrap metal for wealthy patrons. When he stumbles upon proof that there might be actual living trees in the world, Banyan sets out into the dangerous wasteland with a motley crew to find them. Tight narration prevents this action-packed book's complex plot from being confusing.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)