A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: THE TREE OF REBELS BY CHANTELLE ATKINS

Chantelle Atkins is an accomplished and prolific novelist whose most recent creation, The Tree of Rebels, marks her finest work to date. Auspiciously deviating from her previous contemporary stories devoted to the trials of deeply misunderstood and alienated youth, usually involving abusive and often violent confrontations with older kids or twisted parents, Rebels is a dystopian adventure of the future filled with historical perspective and cynical observations about our currently troubled society, and what these unfortunate events portend for a rapidly approaching and equally troubled time. Ms. Atkins has portrayed her imaginative future novel as fiction for young adults, but the only immature aspect of this highly perceptive book is the heroine who personally tells her own dysfunctional story, Lissie Turner.

Lissie is an immediately likable and charismatic character, just turning fourteen years old – the determined age of adulthood in this dystopic future world – with whom readers will quickly identify and encourage in her singular sense of rebellion. She lives within a province defined by mysterious proclamations made by those retaining power after a war almost forbidden to mention in these supposedly more peaceful times. All is considered well and proper by the complacent inhabitants, and none but Lissie’s dying grandmother, and later her best friend Ned, will even for a moment consider the misapprehensions and downright fabrications believed in by this sheep-like population. But Lissie does consider them, question them, and ultimately devotes her forceful intelligence to uncovering the truth. That’s when all hell breaks loose.

Chantelle Atkins does a masterful job of setting the scene for one girl’s necessary societal breakout, utilizing the book’s early chapters to share her perplexity and non-understanding for the incomprehensible passivity she sees around her. When a stray dog – a most forbidden presence in this purified existence – first leads the girl astray, inducing her to stray beyond her province’s strictly maintained isolation, and causing her to discover an equally forbidden, naturally thriving apple tree, symbol of an entirely separate society outside the one authoritatively prescribed, Lissie finds herself an outcast with a desperate sense of mission. The implications of her rebellion are what Ms. Atkins so graphically reveals in this entertaining, polished, and highly profound book. Lissie Turner is a character for the ages.