The Last Girl: The Dominion Trilogy, Book 1

Zoey, the heroine of this gory near-future dystopian thriller from Hart (The River Is Dark), and a few other girls are held in a fortress run by the National Obstetric Alliance somewhere in what used to be the United States. Their instructor, Miss Gwen, tells them that humanity outside the walls has been devastated by a plague that coincided with a decline in the female birth rate to less than one in 100 million. Supposedly, the remaining girls are being protected until they can be reunited with their parents at age 21. Zoey is too outraged by the institution’s general creepiness to trust her sadistic “caregivers.” After a harrowing, bloody escape, she finds herself in a postapocalyptic wilderness that was largely depopulated by brutal government attacks, but she also comes across a few good-hearted survivors. Despite monotonous violence, this is a somewhat above-average action-adventure yarn. (Mar.)