Title: Origin
Author: Jessica Khoury
Publisher: Razorbill
Pages: 394 pg
Website: http://origin-book.com
***
Pia has grown up in a
secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised
by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new
immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia
discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile
home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.
Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.
Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.
"The jungle hides a girl who cannot die."
I love Origin!
The story takes a special place in my heart merely because the setting: in a deep forest of Amazon. Just by imagining the setting is already enough to make my heart flutters with excitement :-D
But thankfully, it's also accompanied by a good, interesting plot.
For seventeen years Pia had been locked out in Little Cam, a big laboratory located in the Amazon jungle. The scientists have created Pia as perfect as a human could be: stunningly beautiful, intelligent, flawless memory, strengthened hearing, vision and all. Nothing can hurt or pierce her skin. And more importantly: Pia's immortal. She cannot die. And this is the actual goal of the Little Cam's project: to create a race of immortals.
Pia, being the first successful trial of immortal, is given a lot of knowledge as a scientist. Mention her a name of plant and she could tell you everything about it: its biological name, its family, kingdom, species, and all that. But she's isolated from the real world. She doesn't know any names of cities, places, how to get out of Little Cam, where it's located, or what's outside the Little Cam. Now already seventeen, she's of course has a lot of curiosities.
The plot thickens upon the arrival of Dr Harriett Field and Pia finding a hole in her room that could connects her to the outside. Guess what did she find on the first time she's there? Of course, a jungle boy. Eio, a boy from the Aio'ans that live in the Amazon. After that first time, just like any other teenagers her age, Pia tries to find a way to sneak out into the jungle everytime she can. This also involved some help from Dr Harriett (seriously, I love this quirky Dr Harriett!). From those 'outings', Pia discovers a lot of secrets. Secrets of Eio, of the Aio'ans, of the Little Cam projects, which somehow are connected together.
Soon Pia has an internal battle between herself: to believe the scientist in Little Cam, stay there and keep going on making the race of immortals, or to break out into the real world?
“No one should live forever," I whisper. "Isn't that how it goes? There must be a balance. No birth without death. No life without tears. What is taken from the world must be given back. No one should live forever, but should give his blood to the river when the time comes so that tomorrow another may live. And so it goes."


