Rebirth is a prequel to Eden, Keary Taylor’s hit dystopian-scifi novel.

As soon as I finished Eden, I knew there had to be more. The story just begs to be a series. (Personally, I’d love to see it become a graphic novel or comic series.) So, I was really excited when Keary announced that she had written a prequel story.

Random side note, as I write this review last week’s The Walking Dead episode, where they’re in the prison, is on and that’s right where Rebirth starts – in a prison. It was an unexpected, but fun, place to start the story. Perhaps the best thing about Rebirth is that it’s written from a different character’s point-of-view. This helps add depth to the overall story, similar to the way the multiple view-points bolster George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire (HBO’s Game of Thrones is based on this series).

One week ago I thought I knew exactly how I was going to spend the rest of my life: looking at the gray walls of a prison cell. Figuring out how to survive the apocalypse wasn’t something I’d planned for.

Yet here I was, getting a second chance at the end of the world. [More from Goodreads]

We get a first hand look at America right after the Fall and the Rise of the Fallen (That’d be a badass title, right? Free to use.) Sometimes we read, or watch on TV, how hard it can be for a prisoner to adjust to free life. Not that I’m sympathetic to criminals, but imagine what it’d be like after an apocalypse of this magnitude! Wrapping your head around a whole new set of dangers. Keary adds that sense of the unknown to Rebirth and it pulled me back into the setting real quick.

Despite coming into the story from the viewpoint of a criminal locked up in isolation, he actually has a fairly neutral moral compass as the story progresses. Curiously though, the character we get to know in Rebirth is one that I don’t remember from Eden. I’ll have to go back and skim through so I can get my bearings. But it’s a fun little story that helps to expand the world of Eden.

I don’t want to give too much away but the book starts in a bad place and ends in a familiar setting. If you’ve read Eden, you’ll like how the stories tie together. I blazed through this bad boy in one sitting. For being so short, it packs a lot of action. Enjoy!