Author: S.A. Bodeen
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Pages: 232
Rating: 3.5 stars
From the book jacket: (I whited out parts of it because they're spoilery; highlight to read)
This greenhouse...grows humans.
Mason isn't supposed to know about the Greenhouse. He isn't supposed to meet the beautiful girl who is part of the experiment, and who doesn't need food or water to survive.
Now, Mason is on the run with the girl. And the Gardener, who is the mysterious mastermind of an institution that grows humans, wants them both, dead or alive.
Having read the description on the inside jacket of The Gardener, I was expecting certain things to be revealed early in the plot and have the rest of the story about what happened afterwards. Instead, it felt like the big mystery in the story was for Mason and the girl to find out all the things that the reader finds out just from reading the book jacket. This story was incredibly predictable, I thought; I figured out the ending well before I got there. That said, I still enjoyed the book.
The only connection Mason has ever had to is father is a DVD of the man, shoulders-down, reading The Runaway Bunny. So when a comatose girl at the hospital where his mother works suddenly wakes up when she hears the story on the DVD and begs to leave, Mason - who has a bit of a hero complex - rescues her.
The girl only remembers bits and pieces of who she is and what has happened to her, but Mason can tell that she's anything but normal. The circular scars covering her legs only add to the mystery of the girl's past. Add in that there's a tattoo on her arm that matches the one on Mason's father on the DVD and the fact that the least official police force Mason has ever encountered is chasing the girl he rescued. There's mystery and adventure brewing, and Mason may not like what he discovers.
This novel takes a real, present-day scientific crisis and gives it an impossible solution with just enough scientific backing that it just might happen. Add in two teenagers who are trying to figure out the truth behind the science and the mystery of the girl's past, and you've got The Gardener. Science fiction + global warming + eco-cyborgs = a pretty intense mix of stuff. The science-fiction part of the novel was really well done; the solution the Greenhouse proposes is totally ridiculous, but based in just enough truth to make it plausible, which is how I think science fiction should be. Mason and the girl were great characters, too, so they were fun to read about. I think the romance between the two was a little bit excessive and unbelievable, but besides that, I liked them.
All in all, The Gardener was not the best book I've ever read, but it wasn't bad, and I'm glad I read it. If you're looking for a quick, fun science-fiction story, consider this one.
