The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer

How do you imagine the "City of the Future"? For me, it is a place where we've figured out how to stop harming ourselves, our environment, and each other. But knowing how far technology has come in such a short time and how it has dominated all our lives, it isn't hard to imagine a world like Satellite City, a super city of 25 million. The Satellite controls everything from news, traffic, to rotating the location of buildings. But the Satellite is going haywire and creating chaos.

In this future world, orphans, known as no-sponsors, are taken in by places like the Clarissa Frayne Institute for the Parentally Challenged. In order to keep its doors open, the Institute must make money by any means necessary including risking the lives of the no-sponsors, who don't normally live past age 15, due to all the food and drug testing they undergo. Cosmo Hill is a no-sponsor who doesn't want to die at Clarissa Frayne, so he is always on the lookout for an escape.

When a Satellite malfunction provides Cosmo with an opportunity, he takes it. But his escape is less than perfect and as Cosmo lays dying, he sees a mysterious blue creature land on his chest and begin to suck the life from him.

Before he blacks out, three teenagers appear with weapons pointed straight at him. Cosmo later awakens in their warehouse and learns that this group, who call themselves the Supernaturalists, can see these blue creatures and are trying to destroy the Parasites.

Can the Supernaturalists be able to defeat the Parasites and continue to evade capture from the government? Is anything really what it seems to be?

Why I picked up the book: I'm rereading it for my middle school book club. I read it once about five years ago.

Why I finished it: I kept wondering if this really what the city of the future will be like and hoping it won't. I also really wanted to know what these Parasites really were all about.

I'd give the book to: anyone, especially fans of adventure or futuristic/dystopian sci-fi.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my Goodreads reviews