Worlds We Make by Megan Crewe

This novel is the final book in the Fallen World trilogy, a series of novels set in Canada, about a plague devastated world and one girl's struggle to save it.

Kaelyn, Leo, Gav, Tobias, Justin and Anika have left Toronto and are on their way to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Kaelyn has a cooler containing vials of vaccine serum plus her father's notes on how to sequence the vaccine. She had hoped to find help in Toronto, but the city was in chaos, controlled by a man named Michael and his gang known as the Wardens. When the Wardens learned of Kaelyn's vaccine, they became determined to steal it. Now the six of them are running for their lives, hoping to reach Atlanta without another run-in with the Wardens.

The black SUV the fled Toronto in, becomes disabled with a flat tire, forcing them to stop at a home. During their stop, Gav wakens and becomes very ill, turning so violent they have to lock him in a room in the house they've taken shelter in. He dies overnight and the next morning Tobias' illness begins to manifest itself.

Meanwhile, Leo attempts to contact the CDC via radio, but only manages to receive a transmission from the Wardens who are listening in and warn them that they will take the vaccine. Nevertheless, Kae and her friends forge onward. When they run low on fuel, they stop at a home and Kae orders Leo to take all the gasoline stored in the owner's shed, even though she understands how this person will feel when he returns to find he's been robbed. Kae knows Leo wonders what kind of person she's becoming - someone who must push her conscience down to do the things required in a world where each must look out for themselves. When they attempt to contact the CDC again, they reach Dr. Sheryl Guzman. However, when they explain to her what they have and what they are trying to do, Guzman is skeptical. Kae proves to Guzman who she is and that it was her father, microbiologist Dr. Gordon Weber, who made the first vaccine. Guzman tells Kae that she must make it to Atlanta on her own but that when she gets into the city to contact her and she will help her make her way to the CDC. She also hints that things are not stable where the CDC is situated.

As it turns out the Wardens are hot on the group's trail. When Kae and the group go out to search for Tobias who has left the group, they discover the Wardens searching a house where they have parked the SUV. Barely managing to escape and leaving Tobias to his fate, they find themselves being hunted by Michael and the Wardens in helicopters. In what becomes a game of cat and mouse with Michael, Kae's group finds themselves in a race against time to make it to Atlanta. Complicating matters is that fact that both groups have indicated to Kae that their will be restrictions on who gets the vaccine once it's developed. Kae decides that she can have a say in they type of world that will exist once the plague has been brought under control. Can she devise a plane that ensures that regardless of whether Michael or the CDC makes the vaccine, no one will be denied treatment.

Worlds We Make is a fitting conclusion to Crewe's trilogy, but it is predictable and bland. The linear storyline throws no surprises and even the deaths of two of the characters are to be expected. Crewe wraps up her story in a tidy manner, ending on a positive note. There's nothing special here, except that readers of the previous two novels will simply want to know how it all ends.

There are no especially brilliant characters and even the villain, Michael, isn't a particularly bad person. Perhaps the deaths of too many characters in this trilogy ultimately worked against the storyline.

Book Details:
Worlds We Make by Megan Crewe
New York: Hyperion   2014
280 pp.