Review: Abandoned World (Recycled World #0.5) by Julia Huni

Title: Abandoned World

Series: Recycled World #0.5

Author: Julia Huni

Genre: YA, sci-fi, dystopian

Publication date: September 2019

Published by: IPH Media

Source: Ebook freebie from author

Add it on Goodreads

Get it for FREE by signing up to the author's newsletter

Buy it: Amazon

Synopsis: When you have it all, you've got a lot to lose.

Zane Torres, seventeen-year-old VidTube star, has a perfect life: a wildly popular video channel, a super hot video-star girlfriend, and a black belt in awesome. His fans don’t know he lives with an alcoholic step-dad, a narcissistic step-brother, and Type I diabetes. Zane doesn't want them to know. ‘Pitiful’ doesn’t gain followers.

Exocorp has been evacuating the polluted planet for decades and there are only a few years to go. But company executives and the top levels of the government leave the planet early, abandoning Zane and thousands of others to die, suffocating in the bad air. How will Zane find a place with clean air, food, and the insulin he needs to stay alive?

My rating: ★★★☆☆

One thing I like about Julia Huni's books is that they all take place in the same universe (minus the series she co-wrote with another author). You guys know I am obsessed with the Space Janitor series, which is a cozy futuristic sci-fi series. I always wondered what had happened to Earth in that series because there were all these other planets inhabited. Well, it turns out that this series is all about that!

This series takes place several hundred years before Space Janitor (and Colonial Explorer Corp. And this is actually a more direct prequel to CEC than Space Janitor), and basically the earth is super polluted. So much so that they have to wear these special air filtering masks in order to go outside. But unlike the futuristic sci-fi feel of Space Janitor and CEC, this series is more apocalyptic/dystopian. And it also feels more YA than the two other series because the main character himself is a teenager. It's also a bit more serious, as opposed to the lighter, more fun adventures Triana finds herself in. I just love how even though all of the series take place in the same universe, they each have their own unique feel.

This novella in particular follows Zane after the government leaves the planet early and leaves a bunch of people stranded on Earth without clean air, food, and other essentials. One such essential being insulin for Zane. So we follow Zane as he leaves his abusive father and sets out to find a way to survive this harsh world he was abandoned in.

I enjoyed this! I've always been curious about the history of Earth in the Space Janitor world, and this novella definitely gives you insight into that. I'm looking forward to reading the two main books in this duology!

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If not, what do you think? Does it sound like something you might want to read? Leave me a link to your review or comment below! 😊