This book is plagued with so many problems, I hardly know where to begin. Ms. de la Cruz is an extremely prolific author, and a successful one, but sometimes I think that there is a problem with quantity over quality. 
 This book was such an utter mess. The plot is barely held together by the weakest of smear from a grade-school quality glue stick. The world building is slapdash, haphazard, nonsensical, inconsistent. The characters are devoid of personality and emotion. 
 There are pirates, small child-size ice men "smallmen," sylphs, drau, drakon (dragons), zombies (called "thrillers," after the Michael Jackson song *facepalm*), banshee-like "wailers," "mages," "warlocks." Pretty much the only things missing in this mishmash mess of a quasi-dystopian, pseudo-sci-fi, fucked-up fantasy are vampires, werewolves, and unicorns. 
 Contrary to popular beliefs, I don't enjoy giving out 1-star-ratings. I absolutely hate writing reviews for books to which I give a "1," because generally, it means there are so many problems that I hardly know where to start. It's hard for me to gather my thoughts and write a coherent review with everything that I find to be lacking. It's a strain on my nerves, it's stressful, and it pisses me off to have to revisit a book that I do not enjoy. I don't give a book a 1-star unless I feel it's truly deserved, and I feel that this book is worthy of my low rating (or unworthy, if you would). 
 Summary: The world is covered in ice after some random events (the Great Wars, the Black Flood, the Big Freeze). Las Vegas is now one of the last cities left standing. Food is scarce, water is a delicacy. There are creatures of magic that emerged after the ice came. There are child soldiers. Adults are as rare as unicorns because they're all dead. Anyone who lives to be 30 is considered ancient. 
 Natasha Kestal (Nat) is a 16-year old girl, working as a blackjack dealer. Ryan Wesson (Wes) is a "runner," a mercenary, a wizened old ex-Marine Sergeant at the ripe old age of---wait for it---16. He runs a sought-after mercenary team, composed of a pair of teenaged brothers (Zedric and Daran), Shakes, a "scruffy, goateed beanpole of a soldier," and an idiot kid of 13, Farouk. The KONY of the future. 
 Natalie randomly acquires a jewel which supposedly contains a map (HOW?!) to the fabled Blue. "Blue" is supposed to be a land where the water is not poisoned, where the sun still shines. She enlists Wes' aid, despite having no reason to trust him, and off they go, across the icy land and uh...sea. 
 Inconsistent world building: Absolutely terrible. It is vague, it is inconsistent, it simply makes no sense. I don't even know where to start, because this new icy dystopian world is so poorly built. The background is unbelievably vague. There are wars, there are flooding, there's freezing. No details whatsoever. Everything comes out of fucking nowhere. Las Vegas stands, most other cities have failed. Somehow, California and New York have been washed away, yet the team is able to visit Korea Town...in formerly Los Angeles, California. 
 There's a horrifying lack of resources. Citizens can't even afford water. Water is a luxury. People drink a mixture called "Nutri" instead. Think of it as Ensure, for the people. It's probably better than Soylent, but not by much. In the middle of all this shortage, in the middle of a fucking frozen wasteland, somehow people still manage to find the time to fucking gamble. In the middle of a starvation crisis, people still have the emergy and power and resource to breed organic cows and Wagyu to feed the privileged few. And it is a FEW, because the vast majority of the people are so fucking poor and deprived that they have to depend on the government for the very basic of food. Which is again, barely food. Think of it as a mixture of chemicals and nutrients, the very basics of what is necessary for the human body to survive. And we have fucking 5-star restaurants catering to the few. 
 In the past, salt was as expensive as gold. Apparently, it once again becomes a valuable commodity in the future, because in this book, salt (sea salt: fleur de sel) is as rare as diamonds. The fact that the human body requires salt to live? Please, minor details, right? A handful of salt is almost enough to buy a fucking ship. 
 "This is the real treasure." Nat placed a small velvet pouch on the table. She pulled the string and showed him what was inside: tiny crystals that sparkled in the light, bright as diamonds. 
 Sea salt. Real salt, not the synthetic kind--which was at once too salty and not salty enough--but the real thing, from before the floods, when the world was still whole. 
 I should start stockpiling salt. Or not, since I probably have enough in my pantry right now to buy all of California and probably some parts of Canada. Actually, most of Canada. 
 Practically everyone are children. Teenagers. With the world-weary air of ones decades older. Wes' crew, consisting of the various teenagers, have the air of either battle-worn soldiers from WWII and talk like they're in the Italian Mafia of the 1920s. They call Wes "boss." 
 We are extremely short of resources, yet we have the power and the fuel to have drag races in the streets of Las Vegas. And they travel across the frozen wasteland on a Hummer. Where the fuck are those gas stations, right? OH, THEY DON'T EXIST. Hmm...Hummers of the future must run on fucking air. 
 A few kids in a truck manage to beat down 4 heavily armored tanks. 
 For some fucking reason, magical creatures just emerge right the fuck out of nowhere after the ice come. Magical children with light-colored eyes are born. They have the power to make illusions, to mind control. 
 Zilch. Zero. No explanation whatsoever. In the middle of our adventure, random ass magical creatures appear out of nowhere to interrupt things. We get zombie attacks. We get polar bear attacks. We get wailers. We get dragons. The use of magical beings is just ludicrous. They're a plot device to make things more interesting. The magical aspects of this story never feel like they belong in the book. 
 Despite the fact that all the kids are somehow workers or soldiers or homeless or mercenaries, Nat has attended school. She's learned about Chernobyl. I don't know how they manage to be in school, or where they find the time, because the world is run by children. 
 Wes is uneducated. He can't read. But in the next paragraph, he reads the name of an author right off a book Nat is reading. And he's able to identify a label written in French for some reason. 
 And speaking of reading, the written English language hardly exists anymore, there is only "Textlish". 
 The latest RBEs, or "Reading-Based Entertainment," were all composed in textlish, but Nat couldn't quite get excited by a story called XLNT <3 LULZ. 
 People actually SPEAK textlish. 
 The slavers' language sounded brutal to her ear, a corruption, all consonants and no vowels. Then she realized they were actually speaking textlish, a language that was only designed to be written, not spoken 
 And rest assured, you will be happy to know there is a thriving industry of pop music, even in the dystopian future when everyone is poor and hungry as fuck. Gooooooo Britney! 
 Inconsistent plot, inconsistent characters, inconsistent romance: I usually go into details, with very specific supporting examples, but I'm just all worn out by now. I don't have the energy for a detailed analysis of their inconsistencies. Here is a rough version. Nat is stupid as fuck. She meets Wes for the first time in a situation when they both believe the other is tricking them. Then she decides to entrust her life to a bunch of mercenaries to travel across the country to some mythical land despite not knowing them at all, despite their initially distrustful encounter. 
 Nat's reaction to Wes is so dumb. The second time she meets him, she didn't know "whether she wanted to slap him or kiss him." That just makes no fucking sense to me whatsoever, given the context. Natalie's powers are so completely out of nowhere, so completely random, I don't even know what to make of them. She can move objects. She can make a gust of wind blow. She can push people back. Like everything else in the book, there is just no explanation given for any power of hers. 
 For a hardened ex-Marine, Wes is really, really soft. His thoughts run along the line of "I shouldn't trust her. But she's so pretty. I need to get the map from her. But she's so lovely! I need to get my team fed and safe. But Nat's hair is so soft!" Literally. He cannot stop thinking about how pretty pretty pretty Nat is. 
 Despite the fact that the fabled "Anaximander's Map," and the land of the Blue is the driving point of the book and our characters' mission, it plays a surprisingly tiny role in the book overall. Besides a few mention of "WE WANT TO GO TO THE BLUE," the map is not explained at all, and HOW it came to be in Natalie's hands is just so completely random that I cannot believe it. Nat literally has it handed to her. 
 I'm just so tired of this book, and I don't want to continue writing this review. Screw this book. I wish I could have my 2 hours back.