Hatch: Overthrow

In Hatch: Overthrow, the second installment of the “Bloom Trilogy”, Kenneth Oppel continues his highly charged vision of a future dominated by alien plants, insects, and animals that transform the landscape of Earth in an apparent preparation for a full invasion. Teenagers Anaya, Petra, and Seth, having discovered that they are hybrids of water, land, and flying aliens, are kidnapped by a joint US-Canadian military operation and brought to a former underground nuclear bunker to join other hybrids to be cruelly experimented on in efforts to thwart the invasion. When Anaya is used in an attempt to pinpoint the invaders’ orbit, she is contacted telepathically by an alien who shows her images of the home planet’s inter-species war and convinces her that she is part of a resistance attempting to stop the invasion. The teens are rescued by Canadian intelligence who are convinced to allow the landing of a resistance ship. The book ends with what appears to be an alien attack, Trojan-horse style, setting the stage for the final book in the trilogy, Thrive.

As with the first book, Bloom: The Invasion, Hatch: Overthrow is a tightly narrated, fast-paced, yet character-driven drama set in a future that is both unimaginable and eerily familiar. The kids’ family backgrounds continue to be a touchstone, with Anaya and Petra longing to be reunited while Seth and his new hybrid friend Esta, both orphans, finding family with their own kind by striking out on their own instead of being rescued.

But it is the emerging tensions among the three “cryptogenic” hybrid species, once they learn that the flying creatures are supposed to have enslaved the other two, that provides the most compelling exploration of the human cycle of trust, rivalry, and suspicion. The “flyers” among the hybrid kids stake out some independence, flaunting their superior physiques and their new-found ability to telepathically kill. Anaya and Petra struggle with their yearning to be normal again while alternating with the strength they feel when leaping or swimming, and both develop mistrust of Esta in particular. The alien being who contacts Anaya affects her in profound ways, communicating a sense of warmth that convinces Anaya to trust “her” (a pronoun Anaya conjures to express the feelings shared with her).

The portrait of a planet amid a crisis it was unprepared for is jarring, even in our age of COVID-19. The successful herbicide developed in the first book is deployed in Spray Zones surrounding major population and logistics centres, but new forms of alien life rained down as eggs are constantly hatching into new and terrifying species that threaten both direct death and slow choking of the planet’s food supply. The portrait of downtown Vancouver, as seen from the teens’ new home on an island military base, is a compelling vision of human civilization in inexorable decline, but no more so than when Seth and his flyer friends use their remaining money to purchase supplies somewhere in Washington State and witness desperate citizens stocking up on essentials at the only big box store open for miles, a narrow Spray Zone oasis among killer plants. And the shadowy factional rivalries among North American military, medical, intelligence, and government authorities provides a sophisticated yet sometimes impotent counterpoint to the teens’ struggle to save their planet.
With its compelling vision of conflicted and brilliant youth tortured by a plausible threat to humanity, and its pan-North American backdrop of adult successes, failures, and misdeeds, Hatch: Overthrow is a book that is impossible to put down, cruelly teasing readers in a cliffhanger ending that suggests a dramatic and surprising final volume, set to be published in May 2021. We can’t wait.