I’m 25 and I probably read it back when I was like 10 or 11, I think I borrowed it off a random elementary school teachers book shelf. Every few years I try googling it, and I think I’ve made a post on Reddit before too and no one could help me, but if one of you lovely people recognize it please FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TELL ME. It ended on such a good cliff hangar.
So it’s a fantasy/sci-fi book. From what I remember we have basically killed off our planet, and one scientists fix was to essentially make a giant floating island in space that orbits the planet like satellite for people to live on. The earth is always under It though so you can only see the planet if you look over the edge. The island has three tiers:
The top and central tier is the upper class, they live posh lives and have horses (there were only like half a dozen animal species total on the island)
The second tier is the working class, I remember them having lots of orchards… and maybe squirrels that live there? Most were illiterate (the people not the squirrels… although probably the squirrels too unless there’s a twist I did not see coming)
The final tier was basically a desert, people would throw all their waste down to this tier and there were these giant grubs that will eat whatever will fit in their mouths… including people
I don’t remember much about the plot. I know it was focused on a young boy from the second tier. His father had disappeared when he was a baby, and left him his journal(or maybe her found it later). Regardless he got it “translated” by one of the upper class who totally just lied to him about what it said. His father had scaled down to the lower tier, but the upper class dude lied and said that the journal also said that the boy should follow him and join. I remeber on the climb down the boy lost one of his fingers. Once he makes it down, the grubs almost kill him, his father finds and rescues him, then they have a reunion. The last thing I remember is that the scientist had plans far beyond what he told anyone, and the book ended with all three tiers slowly collapsing into one flat plane.
Memories of this book have been popping up every couple months for over a decade now. If anyone can help me find it I would be forever grateful!
Or maybe this book never existed and I’ve just been chasing after a particularly vivid fever dream.
If you made it to the end of my Ted talk I thank you. Happy late new years folks!!
by Casey_H3