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The Shade of the Moon’ | October 2, 2013

by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, August 2013)

In this fourth installment of Pfeffer’s Life As We Knew It series, it’s three years later and the story this time is not told by Miranda but rather her younger brother Jon. Like Miranda, Jon offers his unique perspective of what life is like in this post-disaster dystopian novel. In the previous two novels told from Miranda’s POV, the reader follows a teenage Miranda, who is on the verge of adulthood as she and her family learn how to adapt to this new life. Through Jon’s POV in this installment, the reader gets to learn more about how the world is coping with the changes.

Jon’s character is interesting. He is a boy who has had his childhood basically stolen from him, and has grown from a boy into early adulthood in this dystopian environment. Jon has had to struggle in a world where food is scarce, the air quality is poor, and caste systems rule everyday life. In the previous two novels, Jon is the character that the others make sacrifices for, all in the name of his survival. His development in the other novels sometimes made Jon a hard character to like in this one. Jon often seems selfish and unwilling to stand out—it is only when faced with huge obstacles and the deaths of those closest to him that he sees he can’t take the easy way and go with the norm.

This novel was hard to get through, not only because of its harshness, but because as the reader I was looking for a resolution. But the author doesn’t wrap everything up with a perfect solution to all the problems, and because of that, it is a better book. The fact that the reader does not know what happens to the characters gives the glimmer of hope in a novel that is packed with violence and no easy solutions. This is a society riddled with prejudice, broken into the haves and havenots. I think what stands out most about this dystopian over others is how Jon has been on both sides, so the reader gets a more in-depth look at all the things that make this society troubling. Since this novel examines the problems facing only one enclave and grub town, it really makes the reader wonder how other groups are handling this new life.

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