The Unquiet

by Mikaela Everett

Overview

For most of her life, Lirael has been training to kill—and replace—a duplicate version of herself on a parallel Earth. She is the perfect sleeper-soldier. But she's beginning to suspect she is not a good person. Fans of eerily futuristic and beautifully crafted stories such as Never Let Me Go, Orphan Black, and Fringe will find themselves haunted by this unsettling debut.

The two Earths are identical in almost every way. Two copies of every city, every building, even every person. But the people from the second Earth know something their duplicates do not—two versions of the same thing cannot exist. They—and their whole planet—are slowly disappearing. Lira has been trained mercilessly since childhood to learn everything she can about her duplicate, to be a ruthless sleeper-assassin who kills that other Lirael and steps seamlessly into her life.

An intricate, literary stand-alone from an astonishing new voice, The Unquiet takes us deep inside the psyche of a strong teenage heroine struggling with what she has been raised to be and who she really is.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062381293
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/22/2015
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
File size:	950 KB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Mikaela Everett has lived all over the world, from Africa to Australia, and now lives in Alberta, Canada. She graduated from university in 2011, with a degree in biological sciences. This is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

06/15/2015
Two identical Earths have orbited each other “for as long as anyone can remember,” but Earth II and its people are beginning to disappear. Lirael, kidnapped from the second Earth as a child, has been ruthlessly trained as an assassin with one purpose: kill and replace her alternate self, paving the way for others to move from the dying Earth to the one that remains. Lirael quickly learns not to trust anyone, especially not the vicious Madame who runs the shadowy cottages where they train. After a brutal graduation ceremony, Lirael is finally ready to take her double’s place, but it isn’t easy to act like the innocent girl she could have been. Worse, she discovers that the other children from the cottages have a plan that might put all of them in jeopardy. First-time author Everett gives this story a dreamlike quality even amid the frequent violence. The chronology is surprisingly wide, but Everett never loses sight of Lirael as a character, and that continuity is key to the book’s success in its exploration of identity and self. Ages 14–up. Agent: Alison Fargis, Stonesong. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Epic, desolate, rich, and breathtaking... The Unquiet is unforgettable, and Lirael is a haunting heroine. This one is a must-read.

Ann Aguirre

A slow-burn type of novel…[Lira’s] lack of any inclination towards heroism…makes her a fascinating character, especially among the valiant Katniss lookalikes found in so many dystopias.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

07/01/2015
Gr 9 Up—There have always been two Earths with identical versions of every city, place, and person. However, people from the second Earth are beginning to disappear. Out of fear and paranoia, the two Earths agree to shut themselves off from each other, ostensibly to regroup and find a mutual solution. But the second Earth has already taken steps to ensure its survival. During this self-imposed Silence, it begins replacing versions of people from Earth One with sleeper-assassins meant to take the place of their doubles and await the coming war. Fourteen-year-old Lira is one of them. She has trained since she was six to become the Lira of Earth One and live with her grandparents and younger sister, carrying out clandestine missions and assignments until the time comes for her to strike. She is cold, ruthless, and determined to be the perfect soldier. This debut novel's pacing is uneven. Too much time is spent setting up characters and motivations without significant forward movement in the plot. The denouement feels like an extended epilogue. An intriguing premise and the well-developed protagonists are this novel's strengths, though Lira doesn't take an active part in the events around her. She seems content to constantly wait, and the pacing suffers for it. Also, the many repetitive scenes add nothing new to drive the story forward. This title will find its audience, but the lack of balanced structure and action makes it less gripping than most sci-fi works. VERDICT A work with much potential that ultimately fails to live up to it.—Erik Knapp, Davis Library, Plano, TX

School Library Journal

2015-05-18
At age 6, Lira was plucked from an orphanage and sent to a duplicate of Earth, with one crucial difference: unlike her current planet, that Earth is not disappearing, along with all the life it contains. Each person on each Earth has a counterpart on the other, an alternate. Facing extinction, Lira's world sends children to the other Earth, where they're hidden and trained to kill and replace their alternates and then, in sleeper cells, assist the stealth invasion. Secreted in rural France, first in underground bunkers then in cottages in the care of a brutal overseer, Lira's cohort must take pills daily to tolerate extraterrestrial conditions. Trained in combat, taught to mistrust one another, the survivors, like Lira, become "sleepers," stepping undetected into the family lives of their dead alternates. Despite growing affection for her new grandparents and sister, Lira drugs them to sleep when she carries out her handler's orders at night. The premise goes largely undeveloped, and key events go undescribed. Living with her new family, Lira never wonders about her original one as she follows orders with glum detachment. Her vague, elegiac musings lack focus. Simple vocabulary and syntax notwithstanding, generic settings, confusing chronology, and inconsistent plot and characterization make this anything but an easy read. Awkward images ("the first whimper of sunrise")—pathetic fallacies especially ("a group of fireflies sidles past")—don't help. Unsatisfying and not recommended. (Science fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews