Three-hundred years into the future...and the world has changed. Among a chosen few, life expectancy is now hundreds of years; these are the forever children, and science has found a way to keep them in a nearly endless childhood. Secure in their giant hives, they have left the outsiders, who must live natural lives, to fend for themselves.
This is the story of Kianno and Seelin, two children who find themselves trading places in this strange new world, one leading the life of a forever child and the other growing up in the anarchy of the outside world. Their lives come together again in surprising and unexpected ways, as they both become involved in a fierce struggle between the two worlds.
Three-hundred years into the future...and the world has changed. Among a chosen few, life expectancy is now hundreds of years; these are the forever children, and science has found a way to keep them in a nearly endless childhood. Secure in their giant hives, they have left the outsiders, who must live natural lives, to fend for themselves.
This is the story of Kianno and Seelin, two children who find themselves trading places in this strange new world, one leading the life of a forever child and the other growing up in the anarchy of the outside world. Their lives come together again in surprising and unexpected ways, as they both become involved in a fierce struggle between the two worlds.
  It called mysteriously from beyond his dreams, a sound of unaccountable familiarity which drew Kianno into the coolness of that soft summer evening. A sound from deep within him, from before his time yet concealed inside his memory like a hidden package placed there by generations of ancestors: the sound of running water. It sliced and tripped rhythmically through the night and into the partially dismantled back room of this ancient wooden structure his parents had claimed for a full thirty days now.
  Kianno sat up on the bug eaten and unraveling carpet, pulled off his blanket, and looked through the open beams to the sky above and the oak trees overhanging the old house. Listening keenly, intent on finding the source of this mystery, he relaxed now, satisfied of no intrusion, no sudden violence setting upon them, yet uncertain of the dangers from this new visitor to their home. He stood up and steadied the grogginess of the night with a balancing step forward, then set off through the house toward the oak shrouded yard where the soft interruption continued unabated. Stepping carefully so as not to wake his parents sleeping in the front room, the boy threaded a path through the abandoned home cluttered with dismembered pieces of itself- rotting planks, chunks of misplaced concrete, bricks fallen from broken mantles which had long since let fall forgotten photographs of wedding days and the repressed smirks of posed relatives.
  When he stepped into the yard he was suddenly aware of small voices surrounding the persistent but undeniable murmur of flowing water, and as he moved closer over the hard packed dirt he could see the silhouettes of his parents raised up against a starry horizon of silent oaks. He held back in the shadows so as to secret himself into their muted whispers.
  “Well, whatever the reason, we can’t stay now,” his father was saying. “You know that, don’t you?”
  His mother did not respond but only continued gazing at the water flowing freely from a rocky slope which rose at the far end of the yard. The water ran between the rocks and explored a channel which formed the bottom of the slope. At length, she replied.
  “A few more days, then. No one can see.” She nodded to the great trees overhead. “We’re hidden. You said so yourself when we first arrived.”
  “Hidden?” His father scoffed, sliding circles in the dirt with his shoes. “This can’t stay hidden. Not for a few days, not for a day even.”
  “It’s a gift,” his mother protested. “A sign that’s meant for us.”
  “Maybe a sign, but a sign to leave at once. This will draw them to us, and with Kianno still...” he trailed off, deep in thought, then began again. “We’ll go back to Lexington. It may be safe now, at least until we can figure out where to go next. But we leave tonight. They’ll be here in the morning. They’ll follow it here.”
  “Then I’ll wake him.” His mother turned toward the house to rouse her small son, but instead found him standing before her in the clearing of hard dirt and yellowed weeds. Filtered moonlight played over his delicate face and his steady, persevering brown eyes.
  “No!” he blurted, much too loud and knowing full well. “No we don’t have to go!”
  “Quiet.” His father rushed his side. “You’ll do what we tell you, what will protect you, and us all.”
  “No,” the boy insisted once more, but quieter this time. “This is where we’re staying.” He turned to his mother. “You said so. You said this was the place.”Â
   His mother remained silent, but took his hand and led him to the side of the streaming water, running fast and clear. For several minutes all three stood over it, entranced by its abundance, wondering silently at the forces which had brought it into their own private world. Like a poisoned apple shining before them, its frightening allure convinced them all, including the boy. It was a gift too glorious and magnificent to safely accept.
  So they left, stole away to the sound of coyotes howling madness into the hills of old Los Gatos, and made their way under cover of darkness along trails leading toward Lexington. And as they ascended the tangled, broken roads, the coyotes raised their voices even higher, and the lions sniffed only a passing interest at the ragged troupe, too absorbed in chasing the restlessness of the night to bother a small boy and his family.                                                        Â
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  Farther down the slopes, in the Valley of Santa Clara, past the monolithic Hives of Los Gatos, Campbell, and Cambria, the Great Hive of San Jose slept peacefully through the night, unseen moonlight reflecting from its soliglas panels. It was an imposing sight for the outsiders who scavenged the hills above and would never see the world inside: a single structure twenty miles long and ten miles wide, rising fifteen hundred feet into the summer evening. Enormous soliglas panels covered the entire city, brazed onto t-steel girders locked together in endless rows, panels which served perfectly their primary purpose of reflecting each world from the vision of the other, leaving the goings-on inside the gigantic edifice to stories and imaginings. Earlier in the day, seven hundred thousand residents of this Great Hive coursed through its one hundred and fifty levels, but now, at the late hour of ten o’clock, all families were sound asleep, the entire city closed and slumbering peacefully en masse beneath a starry sky that few of them would ever see in their long lifetimes.
  In family unit GGG-2354, tucked innocently away on level 87, in a small bedroom three slots over from the unit room, slept a young boy. Like Kianno, he was about ten years old, and, also like Kianno, his sleep was disturbed tonight by visions of threatening water. Dreams of ocean waves rising ominously before him and crashing down, swirling him in their froth and confusion, tossed Seelin through the night until one crashed with such ferocity that it shook the boy from his sleep and threw him running through the halls to his mother’s room.
  “I’m scared,” he uttered quietly, somewhat ashamed of his fear. “Mother wake up. I’m scared.”
  “What is it?” His mother was instantly awake from her own shallow sleep. “What’s the matter Seelin?”
  “The ocean, tomorrow...I’m afraid. The waves are so big.”
  “But I’ll be with you, and all your classmates. And the viewing platform is perfectly safe. Do you remember the visuals?”
  “Yes...” He sat on the bed and kicked his legs a little, feeling immediately relieved.
  “And do you remember how the viewing platform is high above the waves, so they can’t touch you, they can’t even come close?”
  “But what if a really big one hits the platform, what then?” Seelin persisted, more to justify his intrusion than for reassurance.
  “The platform is made of the same material as this unit, the same material as this entire Great Hive. Just because you can see the ocean doesn’t mean you won’t be entirely enclosed and safe from it. I promise.”
  “What about the snatchers? Will they get us if something happens?”
  “Nothing can happen, Seelin. You’ve heard stories, that’s all. The outsiders can’t touch us, they can’t even see us, even when we’ll be watching from the platform.”
  “But what if we see them?” he asked curiously. “What will they do if we see them?”
  “I told you, even if we see them they won’t know it, because they won’t be able to see us.” She paused, then added “This is a very special occasion, Seelin. I told you before you don’t have to go, but you’ll probably never get another chance. You may see the sky, if we’re lucky.” She remembered when she had visited only twenty years earlier. A mist had pressed down upon the water, hiding the sky. Another chance now, with a little luck.
  She reached out tenderly to smooth the damp hair across the child’s brow. “Go to sleep now, dearest,” she urged him. “It’s late, and tomorrow will soon be here. You’ll see for yourself then.”
  With her words, Seelin obediently left her bedside, walked slowly through the halls past his father’s room, and retook his own sleep much quicker than his mother, who still held the quizzical face of her only son in her mind’s eye (Yes he was her son; to herself she would never deny it). Seelin had grown almost to her own height now, with just a hint of seriousness shading his even features. Soon it would be time to begin the regulators, she thought; already the family had begun to question the timing. For a fleeting moment she glimpsed an imagination of her son grown beyond the threshold, but she did not allow herself more than a moment’s vision; such ideas could be dangerous and painful. So she turned her thoughts to the excitement of the coming day, thoughts tinged with a certain unrevealed fear of her own. The snatchers were there, it was true, ready to take advantage of any slip up, even creating their own, she had heard. But what could go wrong? A mechanical failure? They had sealed the tunnels with another layer of t-steel; even the primest of synthars would take more than an hour to cut through, plenty of time to return via another spotter. And yet there was always risk, she knew that, and to see the true sky she was prepared to take this very small chance of leaving the hive behind and flying the transpotters south to the ocean side.
It proved much easier confining the citizens than the prisoners, and so the great division began.
- 'ForeverChild', Mark Lavine
From the opening paragraph, this book drew me right in and kept me hooked right up to the end.
ForeverChild explores a nightmarish future, which sees the rich living in secluded, secure 'hives', while the poor are left to fend for themselves in the wilderness. It is a world where the rich have unlocked the recipe for immortality, by preventing natural growth, and remaining children forever.
The book follows a classic prince-and-pauper outline with a rich soon-to-be forever child, Seelin, trading places with Kianno, a poor boy who gets separated from his parents in the wilderness.
We then jump into the future, where both children are grown, yet Kianno, now residing in a luxury hive is trapped in the body of a child, still. When he sets out on a quest to discover what has come of his lowborn parents, the line between worlds becomes blurred.
ForeverChild, Lavine's fourth novel, is a phenomenal exploration of a future that doesn't feel that far removed from our current existence. The entitlement of the rich class in the book is but a mirror of our existing society. The bizarre, cruel medical experiments that the rich subject themselves to in the name of immortality hold up a stark mirror to our own twisted modern relationship with medicine. A mirror that is necessary, even as it's not always easy to look into.
One of the aspects I most enjoyed about the book is the psychological depth Lavine delves into.
While the high class has found a way to prolong life and youth, in particular, happiness has still eluded them. The forever children of the story are malformed, suffering from stunted emotional and psychological development. To be a grown man with a man's necessities and capacities, trapped in the immature body of a child seems a terribly cruel fate to me, and Lavine brilliantly highlights that. The profound discomfort the hive denizens exist in is evident from their most mundane interactions.
'We must alert the authorities immediately', Sofia said. 'There's no time to waste.'
'The authorities will do nothing,' Jaslo scoffed. 'I have my own authorities, I have my own...'
Even those who claim to live inside civilization are secluded and alienated from real safety, subsisting instead on general, widespread mistrust.
When you live long enough, no one seems safe anymore...
But to me, the greatest highlight of the book was Zhrana, Kianno's companion/resistance fighter. Her character blossoms throughout the book, much of that growth being powered by her love. And although Zhrana, in mind, is a woman grown, her love has its roots in the tender, fierce loyalty of childhood friendship - to me, that's a priceless detail.
Bottom line, should you read this book? Yes. No other words necessary. It really is good.