Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
Rootless
Unavailable
Rootless
Unavailable
Rootless
Audiobook8 hours

Rootless

Written by Chris Howard

Narrated by Nick Podehl

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

17-year-old Banyan is a tree builder. Using salvaged scrap metal, he creates forests for rich patrons who seek a reprieve from the desolate landscape. Although Banyan's never seen a real tree--they were destroyed more than a century ago--his missing father used to tell him stories about the Old World.

Everything changes when Banyan meets a mysterious woman with a strange tattoo--a map to the last living trees on earth, and he sets off across a wasteland from which few return. Those who make it past the pirates and poachers can't escape the locusts . . . the locusts that now feed on human flesh.

But Banyan isn't the only one looking for the trees, and he's running out of time. Unsure of whom to trust, he's forced to make an alliance with Alpha, an alluring, dangerous pirate with an agenda of her own. As they race towards a promised land that might only be a myth, Banyan makes shocking discoveries about his family, his past, and how far people will go to bring back the trees.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 1, 2012
ISBN9780545530453
Unavailable
Rootless

Related to Rootless

Related audiobooks

Children's For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Rootless

Rating: 4.041666644444444 out of 5 stars
4/5

36 ratings8 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 Stars

    As happens from time to time, I've read a book that is wonderful, but that does not work perfectly for the kind of reader that I am. Rootless by Chris Howard is a true dystopian/post-apocalyptic novel set in a nightmare landscape. The writing is beautiful and the characters are unique. I definitely like Rootless and I'm very impressed by Howard's debut, but I'm too easily confused by science for it to be the perfect book for me.

    First off, I want to praise Chris Howard's writing to the skies. The writing is beautiful, perfectly matched to Banyan and to the world itself. Howard manages to establish that Banyan speaks in dialect with the use of words like "reckon," but keeps it to a minimum. Thus, he clearly gets across the sound of the characters without making Rootless any less readable. Dialect done wrong is a miserable reading experience, and I think Howard takes a marvelous approach.

    Howard builds from a pretty standard dystopian formula with the evil corporation GenTech, but the world itself is like nothing I've ever read before. The world has gone to seed in just about every way possible. Trees and animal life (except for humans and locusts) have died out. The only remaining food source is a genetically modified corn that the locusts cannot eat, which means the locusts have to settle for the only remaining dietary option: people. Man-eating bugs are pretty much my worst nightmare. There are also pirates, and a whole lot of other unscrupulous, cutthroat folks. In Rootless, characters really do suffer, and it's not all about the romance; people die in nasty ways, just as they should in a good post-apocalyptic.

    Banyan works as a tree builder. What's a tree builder?, you might ask. Well, since the trees are gone, the landscape's a tad empty. Rich folks will pay to have trees built on their landscape. Banyan, as his father taught him, crafts trees out of metal. This is a very strange concept, but one that puts such a stark mental image of this world into my head. His cast of characters is just as memorably strange as the trees built out of metal.

    As I mentioned previously, the world in Rootless is one in which countless things have gone wrong. Genetic modification of foodstuffs lead to stronger locusts, which lead to no trees. A lack of trees presents its own problems. The moon also came closer to the earth, which messed with the ocean. All of the non-human animals are gone. Everything that's left is controlled by a corporation, the only institution capable of making food without cannibalism. All of this was just way too much for me to process, and I spent a lot of time confused, trying to figure out why something happened and what repercussions it would have on society.

    From interviews I've seen, I'm sure Howard has done his research and put tons of thought into everything, but he lost me. Actually, I had a similar problem with The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, which is beloved of many people who understand science much better than I do. To tell you the hard truth, I was at best a mid-B range student in high school science. I know just enough to get things really wrong and muddled. Readers with more science background or less inclined to puzzle over things endlessly will likely not have this issue. Also, since Rootless is told from a first person perspective, the world building will likely become more clear as Banyan learns more.

    Oh, one last thing, Howard is a HUGE Star Wars fan. It's all over his inspiration board on Pinterest, for example. His love of Star Wars really shines through. There are some very cleverly done references, which I, having been raised from a young age to be obsessed with the original trilogy (the only one that exists in my brain), loved. Watch out for those, Star Wars fans!

    I highly recommend Rootless to readers who enjoy harder science fiction with a focus on world building and storytelling. Fans of Paolo Bacigalupi and Star Wars should especially take note.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I won a copy of Rootless through the Goodreads Giveaways program. Rootless is a fast paced post-apocalyptic novel. The world has been stripped of most all of its food sources except for the ones engineered by the GenTech corporation. GenTech produces corn and lots of it for inflated prices. Corn seems to be the only thing locusts will not devour. Banyan, the books main character is a tree builder. He learned the trade from his father who has since disappeared from his life. Since real trees no longer exist Banyan builds them from scrap metal and LED lights. The effect is pretty but these metal sculptures offer none of the natural benefits of actual trees. I enjoyed this story immensely. There was plenty of plot twists and action to keep my interest. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy science fiction or post apocalyptic fiction. Impressive first novel from Chris Howard. Looking forward to the next volume in the series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    4.5/5 stars!Okay, so, can I just say how much I love the amount of futuristic semi-apocalyptic westerns that are coming out of YA right now? However, here's one that hasn't been done before, at least not without using space opera as an additional sub-genre - a techno-western. Yep. That's right. And you know what? I totally got sucked in. Put on your seatbelt, folks. Not only do we have a techno-western, but it's a current social commentary-based one. Love it when authors can pull that off without sounding preachy, and Howard does it here fantastically. This is one 2012 debut you don't want to miss.Where to start? The world. The world was so well-built, and believable, yet at the same time, it's very sparsely written. It's rich and detailed but written in a very compact way, not sprawling or overly flowery, and it all just works. It's not under-furnished with information, nor is it totally over the top like it could have been. It's just there. And it works. The only area I was a bit fuzzy on was the time (we're given a benchmark - a century after the Darkness, when the last of paper/wood/etc kinda disappeared from the planet), but in terms of how far that is from now, we're not given an answer. But since this book looks to be the first in what's at least a duology, I feel like I can allow this when it usually drive me mad. The rest of the world is so complete that the sense of time just isn't a factor bothering me this time, which is always an awesome thing.I think another reason why the time thing isn't bothering me - this book is equally plot-driven and character-driven. Which is insanely hard to do, because it's so easy to fall into the trap of a plot-driven story (far moreso, I'd say, than a character-driven story), where the characters and their transformational journeys (and the arcs that come with them) get utterly neglected all in order to advance the story. Howard surprised me with his ability to keep it balanced, with all of the main cast changing in some fashion by the end of this first book. Of course, as the protagonist, we see Banyan change the most, but all of the characters, including the antagonists (and the seemingly faceless menace that is GenTech, who actually gets a face - or more than one, but I won't spoil you guys any further) do change to some degree. While I was excited to keep the pages flipping, I also found myself caring very deeply for these characters and this world that seemed so fragile yet like Banyan and his metal trees, very strong. All of the characters, even antagonists, are surprisingly sympathetic. We also get a lot of racial/ethnic/cultural diversity, which was so amazingly nice to see (it feels like we don't have a lot of that in YA right now aside from the contemporary, but even there, it's still a bit on the thin side). We get Zee and her mother, Banyan, the Rasta Soljahs, and so forth. It was a nice little rainbow of diversity all around, and I love how all of these cultures clashed in this slowly-dying world. We get the rich and the poor (but mostly the very poor), the evil Big Pharma/Con-Agra business, pirates and poachers and slavers, and everyone who falls in between in a huge spectrum. There is no (moral) black and white in this world, as we learn by the end of the book, though it is very tempting to throw the antagonist and the protagonists on either side of the black/white set of scales. There's a lot of murky gray, and that's where I feel like Howard gives us one of the biggest messages of the book in terms of Banyan's solo character development/journey arc - about growing up. When you grow up (or are forced to), there's a lot more gray than everyone tells you about. And making choices suddenly gets harder in that gray haze because rarely are answers that easy or quick.But some of my favorite bits of this book all have one thing in common - Howard's fantastic use of sensory imagery and language. The Banyan-built trees, the real trees, the tattoo on Hina, the shanty towns around futuristic Vegas (called Vega all these years later) - all of that felt real. The sound of the man-eating locusts was pretty terrifying and yeah, I actually did jump a bit whenever they were in action. The waterfalls of the Soljah camps at Niagara Falls. Banyan's wagon and all the things within it. All of it made for some pretty unforgettable images. There's a lot of cyberpunk and biopunk at work in this book, so you still retain that techno-western feeling (think "Cowboy Bebop" without the bounty hunting or space ships, but with a kid and his dad doing various jobs much like Spike and the Bebop crew in order to keep their bellies full) without sacrificing too much else to these other sub-genres.And the last: the social commentary bit of the book. Howard doesn't get preachy, but the warning is pretty dire (and considering where we are in our current culture where we actually had to call out Walmart and Monsanto on putting GMO'd fruits and veggies in their markets, we could use that warning) - under the tyrant foot of not just governments, but companies, do we have severe poverty and all the ugliness that comes with it. There is no government in this book but that of GenTech - you live and die by their will. It's pretty sinister, and it's definitely a wake up call - especially when it's revealed that GenTech hasn't just dabbled in splicing for making corn. I won't say another word on that because it'd be a huge spoiler, but for the older readers, two words: soylent green. If we were to have a future without a government and instead a tyrant company, well, I sure as hell would not want to live in it. So I guess Howard's message is more like "uh, guys, we should probably start watching these Big Pharma/Con-Agra-types when they're messing with our food supply". Or something to that effect. And we're not bludgeoned over the head with it. Final verdict? If you're into cyberpunk, dystopia, biopunk or just plain ol' sci-fi, this is the book for you. And if you're just dipping your toes into the sub-genre pools, this is a great starter book. Just read it, okay? "Rootless" is out now through Scholastic in North America, and its place on my best of 2012 list is well-deserved. Be sure to check it out when you get the chance!(posted to goodreads, shelfari, librarything, and birthofanewwitch.wordpress.com)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Just when I thought we had run out of post apocalyptic themes in young adult literature comes a refreshing and thought provoking debut by Chris Howard. Rootless offers us the same screwed up world where all vegetation is gone. No trees, no crops, no food except the strange hybrid corn that Gentech produces. There are bands of Gentech employees who go around gathering up people who are never seen again. Most of the people out there are starving, fall prey to pirates or Gentech,or become food for the locusts. Banyan and his father are tree sculptors. They create trees out of spare metal that litters the countryside making their way alone until one day Banyan's dad is taken and Banyan begins a quest to find Zion, the trees and his father. There are good guys and bad guys along the way and one scary journey through a frightening world to get to there. Fantastic plot, great characters and the making of one heck of a successful series. I am betting this one will do as well as Maze Runner.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is a wild ride in a hostile and barren hell that the world has become that seems all too probable. There are no longer trees, or any nature. Everything that grows (including every kind of life but human) is now gone other than genetically engineered corn and mutated locusts who have no choice now but to eat humans. There is very little water, and GenTech, the company who controls the corn, keeps prices insanely high. And now someone is "disappearing" people at a greater and greater rate. 17 year old Banyan makes it on his own these days because his father was taken a year ago. He is continuing in the family trade--building trees out of scraps of metal. He gets hired for a job that quickly spirals out of control when strange clues to what may be the last of the "real" trees show up tattooed onto his client's wife and step-daughter. Add that to a mysterious picture of his father, alive and chained to a real tree, showing up and Banyan cannot help but to start looking for his father. Along the way he meets with criminals and warriors--some hell-bent on killing him (or worse), some become unexpected allies.It is impossible to catch your breath once you start this book--there is truly non-stop adventure on nearly every page. It is exhilarating, exhausting and impossible to put down. It's the first in a series that should capture a lot of attention and fans--it could be the next Hunger Games. This is truly a cross-over book for teens and adults, though violent enough that I would say at the very least 14 and up.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When I read the premise of this book and read about the map on the woman's body, I immediately thought of the movie, "Waterworld". The story is well written and carries you along at a steady pace. The characters are well defined. The author has done a great job of giving you one perspective of a character only to throw something in the main character's path that makes you look at the character again and re-think your feelings. I have read several books over the last year that are of the dystopian type that shows to what extent people will go to control society when things go wrong. Banyan was hired by a man named Frost to build trees on his property. The trees are made from scrap metal and lights. It is the closest thing they have to a vision of real trees. When Banyan meets the young girl who lives in the house with her mother, Frost and his son he learns from an item she has that his father may not be dead after all. His journey to find his father leads him to learn that all that he has been told is not necessarily what is true. When they mentioned the trash island he is taken to I immediately thought of the research some of our students did last year for our environmental unit. The researched "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch". I wondered if this was the inspiration for the trash island. This was a really great book. The use of the words "damn" and "hell" were the only two curse words in the book. I would suggest this book be read by 8th grade and above as it talks about the boys feelings toward a girl. There is nothing lewd in the book. It is just him mentioning his feelings of desire. unfortunately I hear this daily as I walk behind kids at school. That doesn't mean I want to hear it or condone it. It is however a fact of life that kids this age have raging hormones that we as adults try to keep a lid on. That is the only reason I would recommend it for the upper middle school or high school student. This is an author I had not heard of before and one I will definitely look forward to reading in the future, especially since this was just the first book in the series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Enjoyed this book even with its plot holes. As Banyan the protagonist and 1st person narrator was likable, had a very good moral compass considering the world he lived in, it was easy to like the story he told about his life building artificial trees in a world where no more natural trees exist due to GenTec's, an evil corporation, genetic engineering of pest resistant crops which resulted in super bugs that ate everything else on the planet. Banyan soon sets out on a quest to find his missing father who left him, while also trying to find a semi-mythical place where trees still grow.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Review:In a world without trees, one makes beauty however one can. Banyan is a tree builder. His creations made from scrap metal are purchased by the elite to mimic forests of old. When Banyan meets the mysterious Zee while working on his current project he finds out something that will change his life forever. Rootless, how do I wrap my head around you. I went into this book expecting one story yet what transpired was something completely different. Was it good still? Yes, Oh God yes. I love being surprised by a story and this one kept me on my toes that is for sure. A world without trees is unfathomable. Yet, somehow the Author paints the landscape with such detail that it almost makes you believe such a world exists. The world of Rootless actually reminded me of Earth in the movie Wall-E, maybe less trash but still that landscape. If a world devoid of any plants isn't awful enough nothing except genetically modified corn grows on the planet. Can you imagine having to eat corn for every meal? I can't, but due to locusts swarms killing off everything else corn is all that is left. Speaking of the locusts, I forgot to mention these are man eating locusts. They will eat you if they catch you. Nasty right??As for the characters, I loved Banyan. He has a gift for seeing beauty in stuff most of us wouldn't. He also is very practical and wise almost beyond his years. I really can't wait to see how his character evolves in the next book. I also liked Crow the watcher of Zee who really plays the anti-hero so well. It was fun trying to decide if he was good or bad. Ultimately, I decided he is a good guy just trying to survive playing with the hand he was dealt. In the end Rootless is a debut that will stick out in my mind for being fresh and inventive. The world isn't necessarily unique but the execution is and that is what makes Rootless worthy of reading. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of this book and give it a try. I will be rating Rootless by Chris Howard ★★★★.*I received a copying Rootless to review via Netgalley. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated in any way for providing them.