#BlogTour ‘ Giften’ by Leyla Suzan

About the book…

A BLIGHTED LAND
Ever since The Darkening, survival has been a struggle. The people of the Field toil on parched earth, trying to forge a life amid dwindling resources.

A GIFT
As one of the Giften, Ruthie is a saviour to her isolated community: her hands hold the rare ability to raise food from dead soil. But she is also its greatest danger.

A SINISTER REGIME
In the City lurks a dark army, intent on hunting Giften to harness their power, destroying all who stand in their way. With the threat growing ever stronger, Ruthie and her friends must leave behind all they have ever known and embark on a quest that will pitch them towards the City, and unknowable danger. One way or another, a battle is coming.

Huge thanks to the wonderful Poppy Luckett at Pushkin Press for inviting me on the blogtour for debut dystopian young adult debut, ‘Giften’ by Leyla Suzan

This stunning story is available in e-book and paperback formats, wherever good books are sold!

It is an intelligent post-apocalyptic story, with a central core of  strong ecological ethics without risking being preachy. The author talks to her audience as people, there is a lack of patronising , or over explanation, which often , in this reader’s opinion, detracts from the narrative in Y.A reads.

Whilst acknowledging that I am not the target audience, Y.A books are fascinating to me as a mother of teens, and a pure lover of good story telling-possibly because books like this just didn’t exist when I was a teen. In this world, post an event known as The Darkening, communities live isolated and afraid of those who live in The City, those who turn up on a whim and demand an ‘Offering’.

These are MAGs, Men And Guns, who take by force and intimidation, as well as by stealth. For the city is pre-occupied with the Giften, the randomly abled young who are of both sexes, and can raise , from dead ground, crops to sustain the living. Keeping these as closely guarded secrets results in the death of all in the community-the one which this novel focusses on is called The Filed, many years have gone into building, and sustaining it, and propagating the crops, whilst telling tales of the times before.

The Field Day celebrations, where the community comes together in The Shed, a meeting place and gathering spot, to celebrate and give thanks for making it through another year, similar to a harvest.

The family of first person narrator, Ruthie, have been devastated by the loss of Dan, Ruthie’s father. He and best friend Owen went out on a supply run for Owen to return alone. Owen, literally and metaphorically, takes the place of Dan, stating that he escaped from MAGs whilst Dan was captured. He moves in with Gemma,Ruthie’s mother, and Ruthie, bringing his son Seb and before long, she is pregnant and has a son with Owen, named Ant.

Unhappy as she is at the supplanting of her father, worse is to come as Ruthie falls violently ill, to the point of death. Dragging herself out in the middle of horrendous heat, onto the burnt and parched ground, a transformation occurs, Ruthie becomes a Giften. The community come together to be told that they have one in the midst, but not who it is, and so move forward with stealth to keep Ruthie safe and their community from the watchful eyes of MAGs.

But with high prices offered for passing on who is a Giften, the risk is too high to ignore. The enclosed, safe world of the Field needs to be left behind, and.like the hobbits in JRR Tolkien’s works, Ruthie, Seb, Dev (another teen boy) and Stace, Ruthie’s best friend set out for world beyond their own, in an attempt to meet eth rebel group , The Circle, or to take Ruthie to meet those who live in the Sanctuary.

Being brave is not easy, their entire lives have been lived in such a small place, and under such stringent conditions, but when news of experiments in The City, on Giften, in the attempt to pass this quality onto ‘norms’, a stand must be made.

It is an epic quest, driven by the voice of Ruthie, which is beautifully interspersed with the oral tradition of these people who pass down the tales and life stories of each other. In so doing, they are keeping an ancient tradition alive, and also laying down future warnings about caring for a world which was plundered to the point of near destruction. Nature fought back in the form of droughts, earthquakes and floods, so it is a brilliant metaphor for change to allude to the transformation from child to adult, that they are the ones who not only activate change, but also to pull growth from the earth. Their lack of greed, and lack of influence by a society which values all the wrong virtues, gives certain teens abilities to bring forth life. They symbolise the future, whereas, the industrial sounding City, seeks to exploit, for their own needs, the gift that these teens have.

Overall, the motif of Giften is that greed will always lead to failure, and that humans have the chance to learn to change, and need to recognise this before time runs out to reverse the damage done in the name of progress.

It is a also an interesting meditation on what story telling means, and how, through division, it is relatively easy for fear and exploitation to prosper.

About the author…

Leyla Suzan is an editor who has worked in publishing for many years, editing some of our most beloved authors. Now a freelancer, while she’s not writing or editing books, she can be found in her studio making woodcut prints. Giften is her debut novel.

Twitter @PoppyBookPR @PushkinPress