Title: No One Dies in the Garden of Syn

Author: Michael Seidelman

Rating: 3/5

Synopsis:

Synthia (Syn) Wade is a teenage girl who struggles with cystic fibrosis, an incurable life-threatening disease. One day she is pushed into a pond by an unseen figure and wakes up in a new world – a mysterious garden where illness and death don’t exist. Welcomed by the garden’s residents and now free of her symptoms, Syn decides to stay. But, before long, she realizes that this apparent utopia holds many dangers and dark secrets. Surrounding the garden is a fog that Syn is warned never to enter. She encounters bizarre creatures that defy reason. And always lurking in the shadows is a masked woman – a woman who may have a connection to the disappearance of Syn’s parents many years ago. A woman whom no one will speak of, but whom everyone fears. While No One Dies in the Garden of Syn, Syn will soon discover that some fates are worse than death.

Review:

The concept of No One Dies in the Garden of Syn is utterly intriguing, but the extensive descriptions in this novel make the writing slow to read.  I had a hard time getting through this novel, but I am confident that if the narrative style were changed and many descriptions were deleted this novel would be successful.

The concept of living without illness is always something that is on our minds as humans.  Illness is one thing that can change the way that people live, and by creating a place without illness, Michael Seidelman played with fate and concepts that have always been set realities in our lives.

Syn is a teenage girl with cystic fibrosis who wakes up in a new world one day where she is no longer sick.  Being free from her illness, Syn chooses to stay in the new world, but it soon becomes a place full of danger and secrets.  Seidelman plays with life, death, and security in this novel and shows us that many things are too good to be true.  No one can be completely free of illness, or anything that ails them, and if they do somehow wind up in a position that allows them to be free of their woes, there will be consequences.

Seidelman created an intriguing story through his writing, but it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.  Apart from the writing being slow, Syn’s character didn’t develop very well and some of the plot events didn’t make sense.  However, I appreciate the imagination put into this novel and how it relates to our troubles of today, but also dips in fantasy to turn an interesting twist on everyday events.  Seidelman’s ideas are original and ideas that I haven’t seen before in a novel, and that originality is admirable.

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