Salvation Day by Kalli Wallace

Happy Book Birthday to Kalli Wallace whose latest, Salvation Day, hits shelves today!

Zahra and her people just want to be left alone. Which is why their leader formed a plan, and the goal is a place all their own. That place is House of Wisdom. Abandoned years ago after an outbreak blamed on biowarfare—an act Zahra’s own father was supposedly responsible for—House of Wisdom has been completely off limits ever since. But Zahra and her group have all been immunized against the virus that claimed the inhabitants of the ship and they see no reason why it can’t be theirs.

Jas has finally returned to space and has big plans for life-changing research. But those plans are significantly sidetracked when he and his fellow students are kidnapped by Zahra and her team. And now Jas is returning to the ship that claimed his mother's and father’s lives. The ship that he barely escaped himself. And as it turns out, the things everyone thinks they know about the fate of House of Wisdom are all very, very wrong.

Whoa! Kali Wallace's first adult release is exactly what I needed! A perfect blending of all of my favorite things—a mysterious illness, an abandoned ship, a bonkers cult leader, government secrets, and more! Oh, and I loved every page!

The book alternates between Zahra and Jas's points of view. Zahra is part of a group that wants no part of the current governing body (the Councils) and while her leader very clearly comes across to the reader as a classic cult leader in every way, Wallace also makes it pretty clear why Zahra and her family joined him in the first place. Mistrust of the government comes natural when your father has to take the blame for a massively horrible crime.

It's through Zahra that we learn about Jas initially. Jas is the only surviving member of House of Wisdom. Which makes him essential to the group's plans and also ratchets up the tension of the book big time. His last moments on the ship were with his mother, who promised to follow him as she loaded him into an experimental ship to escape into the nothingness of space. And he never saw her again. Not only that, but he's never revealed to anyone what he witnessed while he was on board in those final hours.

Cue the  duh duh duuuuuh sound! There are brief missives from the caption and other little communications along the way that hint at what happened on board, all of which draws the reader further into the mystery.

Of course the biggest draw for me with this book was the combination of science fiction and horror elements. I crave the blending of these two genres and it doesn't always work out as well as I'd like. Salvation Day, though, works! And I'm all the happier for it!