And this book spends a majority of its time regarding the worst this world has to offer, and each time we buy these ideas Holland invents. Now imagine the most wealthy have lived for centuries while the 99% have had their life expectancy drop by decades. After all, those with more money tend to live longer because of better resources, significant safety, and more beneficial laws.

Similarly to Scythe, it touches on the fear of death, and looks at living like money by literally combining the two. And Everless is one of the most intricate and genius ideas for an alternate world in a long time.

What I’m saying is there are loads of genius concepts young-adult authors have invented, and a noticeable pattern is how the people living in these strange worlds have adapted and fought for power. Half Bad by Sally Green was a world of witches and wizards, except there were conditions as to how someone could get superpowers and the elite went up against the protagonist Nathan because of his father’s history. Scythe by Neal Shusterman was a book featured in a world of human immortality, except for the minuscule amount who had to be killed – gleaned – to prevent overpopulation catastrophe, and the leading scythes wanted to go against the strict rules and kill who they pleased and how much they wanted. That will be harder and harder as more people tell her something big is to happen which involves her. She has to avoid the eyes of those who would be familiar with her, and keep her distance from the highest powers. Now scraping by until they cannot anymore, Jules’ dad ends up one day having to pay off a debt with literally years of his own life, but Jules goes behind his back and gets accepted as a maid back into the Everless kingdom to get some more time to keep them ready. That is until prince (or whoever he is) Liam Gerling attempted to kill her and her friend, Roan Gerling, who’s also his brother. Coins made of this substance, which I suspect would have a chemical compound, are made up of hours, of days, months, years…and, well, Jules Ember and her father used to live in the kingdom of Everless and get by very well with her father’s blacksmith job. Sara Holland’s description best explains it so I’m going to steal it for this little section: “In the kingdom of Sempera, time is currency-extracted from blood, bound to iron, and consumed to add time to one’s own lifespan.” Yeah. They’re terrific ways of looking at alternative worlds with our same type of human behaviours within. Some of these books I read should be looked at in Sociology classes.

Everless book 3