Book Review – Ration by Cody T Luff

Hello wonderful book people! Firstly I’d like to start by apologising for this review being posted late, I had said it would be up by the end of August, I intended to post this review while on my holiday in Gran Canaria but the internet was so shocking I couldn’t post!

Many thanks to Cody T Luff and Apex Publications for providing me with a copy of Ration in return for my review. Please check out Cody’s Guest Post on Dark reads last month!

About The Book

Set in the far future, Ration is an unflinching take on the ways society can both thrive and go wrong as pressure to survive builds.

All the girls who live in the Apartments are forced to weigh their own hunger against the lives of the others living in the building. When Cynthia is wrongly accused of ordering an “A” ration, she punished by the other girls. Eventually, she is forced to leave the Apartments along with Ms. Glennoc, one of the former managers who has tormented and abused her for years. Together, they encounter a world of even more scarcity, but one filled with politics and intrigue. Cynthia struggles to return to the Apartments and help the girls who are still there.

Forced to reconcile her role in the destruction of these girls with the greater needs of society to find any sustainable source of calories, Ms. Tuttle makes one bad decision after another while she grapples with a mother who is growing more and more impatient with her mistakes. Ration is a dark and forceful book, written in a surprisingly nuanced and accessible way. It combines the darkness and despair of The Road and The Handmaid’s Tale, but has notes of charm like Lauren Oliver’s Replica

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Apex Book Company (14 Aug. 2019)
• ISBN-10: 1937009807
• ISBN-13: 978-1937009809

Get your copy here

Dark Reads Review

Ok, I am a huge fan of Dystopian fiction, so when Cody approached me to read and review his book I was instantly intrigued.

Ration has no frills, it is a gritty and brutal tale of survival and not for the faint hearted. Expect torture, violence and cannibalism from this one!

The story starts off in ‘The Apartments’ men, animals and plants have died out and the girls and woman are left struggling against starvation.

The girls can request 3 types of food ration A B and C, C rations being barely nutritious and A’s being the most, however ordering an A ration means another girl will be murdered and ‘processed’.

We then follow two of the girls, friends Imeld and Cynthia as they are separated and thrust into very different but equally horrifying scenarios.

Will they ever find their way back to each other?!

Luff’s imagery was excellent throughout, although the story is set far into an unfamiliar future, the harsh and unforgiving backdrop was palpable.

One thing that I noted early on in the book is that there was no narrative about what had happened leading up to where we started the story, why had the men and animals died out? This was by no means a vital element to the plot, we knew what had happened and that the story was now about the women and girls survival, but for me I would have liked a little backstory.

I spent a good portion of the book trying to understand how this new world worked and found Luff’s explanation of what was happening a little vague. Having said that I was invested in the story and was very intrigued to read what would happen next.

I really liked the characterisation in this one, no one was inherently good or bad just people doing bad and good things (mostly bad) trying to survive in a very bleak society, it really highlights the lengths that people will go to to survive.

I would highly recommend Ration for if you are Dystopian/Sci-fi fan, I’m excited to read more from Cody in the future!

About The Author

Cody’s stories have appeared in Pilgrimage, Cirque, KYSO Flash, Menda City Review, Swamp Biscuits & Tea, and others. He is fiction winner of the 2016 Montana Book Festival Regional Emerging Writers Contest and served as editor of the short fiction anthology Soul’s Road.

Cody completed an intensive MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. He teaches at Portland Community College and works as a story editor. Cody grew up listening to stories in his grandfather’s barbershop as he shined shoes, stories told to him at bedsides and on front porches, deep in his father’s favorite woods, and in the cabs of pickup trucks on lonely dirt roads.

Cody’s work explores those things both small and wondrous that move the soul, whether they be deeply real or strikingly surreal.

You can fins out more about Cody on his Website and follow him on Twitter