The Gardener

The Gardener by S.A. Bodeen is a science fiction novel that is draws from the concept of how far scientists will go to prevent the human race from dying out. In the Gardener, scientists have been secretly experimenting on humans to make them able to photosynthesize, in order to irradicate hunger. Through a series of events that make him question what his mom was doing when she was still with his Dad, the protaganist, Mason, sneeks into where she works and meets a girl who is part of the experiment. He ends up helping her escape the building, and through spending time with the girl and trying to help her, learns more than he may have ever wanted to know about the company responsible for the experiment, Trodyn.

Although the conflict of the story at first glance may seem like Mason wants to stop the experiment, to me it’s really about the character relationship between Mason and Laila, the girl he helped escape. The growing bond that Mason and Laila form is really what drives the story forward, as all Mason really wants to do is help Laila, because without being near other people like her, she can’t survive. At the same time, Mason doesn’t want to take Laila back to be experimented on.

This relationship also affected my opinion of the book. If the book was just going for a good character relationship, then it would be pretty good in my opinion, however, the actual plot and science fiction aspect was severly lacking. The story built up to a huge overarching conflict at the end, of how one of the scientists was trying to sell the kids who didn’t need to be fed to the military, but seemed to be solved really quickly with no real tension. The book also brought up an important point, which was the moral issues of doing these things to children, but it never really delved that deep into it, and which I really would have liked to see more of. All in all, it was an okay book, but I think it had too many ideas shoved into 230 pages. In my opinion, it would have really benefitted the entire book if it had a few more hundred pages, so as to add more details and draw things out.