Having read and enjoyed The Girl with All the Gifts, I was keen to read this. In many ways, it's a standard dystopian novel: main character becomes awHaving read and enjoyed The Girl with All the Gifts, I was keen to read this. In many ways, it's a standard dystopian novel: main character becomes aware of the limitations/ inconsistencies/ injustices of their post-(insert apocalypse) world and begins a journey to improve the world, or at least their part of it. I think this is a good start for someone who thinks they don't like dystopian fiction because, although set in a dystopian world, this is a story of the growing, learning and reflecting we all do - no matter where we live. Worth a read and I will follow up and read the rest of the trilogy....more
Like every other Neal Shustermann I've read, it starts with a hard-to-believe premise and moves from there. In this case, the premise is believable - Like every other Neal Shustermann I've read, it starts with a hard-to-believe premise and moves from there. In this case, the premise is believable - that California will run out of water -but the way it happens less so. Would some official in Colorado really just shut the sluice gates? Maybe. But what happens next is plausible - the social breakdown is swift and neither the naive or the doomsday preppers fare well. More powerful than Unwound et al because it's way more scarily plausible....more
I enjoyed this quirky story more than Shusterman's Unwound trilogy: I could accept the premise of this one more easily. In a world where there is no wI enjoyed this quirky story more than Shusterman's Unwound trilogy: I could accept the premise of this one more easily. In a world where there is no war, no poverty, no hunger, no disease and even old-age can be reversed, how do you control the population? The answer in this world is the creation of the Honourable Scythes: individuals beyond and above law whose only task is to remove people from the population without favour or bias. The Scythes are bound by their commandments, set out by their founders and literally have power over life and death.
Citra and Rowan are taken on as apprentice Scythes by the revered Scythe Faraday, who tells them that their reluctance for the job is what makes them entirely suitable candidates. As their apprenticeship goes on they discover that not everyone in the Scythedom sticks as closely to the founding principles as Faraday and that power eventually corrupts even the most honourable institution.
Citra and Rowan are great characters and the relationship between them believable. The picture of a world without death is interesting and I especially liked the controlling entity, The Thunderhead - the ultimate evolution of The Cloud.
It can be read purely as an mystery/adventure but has a strong theme around the role of power: who has it, who holds it and why, and who is corrupted by it....more
This is it. This is the book that will be the best book I'll read all year.
It is amazing. Good storytelling, characters so real and complex they seemThis is it. This is the book that will be the best book I'll read all year.
It is amazing. Good storytelling, characters so real and complex they seem to breathe in the seat beside you as you read and a message so plausible and profound that it is frightening.
This is the story of Sarat Chestnut, six years old when the Second American Civil War breaks out. Until then, her family eked an existence in the remnants of a climate-altered Louisiana. After her father is killed, she and her family end up in one of the many camps for displaced persons. It is here that her transformation begins.
This novel is one that every climate-change naysayer should read. The ways in which climate change have altered the landscape of America is plausible enough but it is the way in which the politics and the nature of society has changed that is the truly chilling part. That such pressures and difficulties should expose deeper cracks within America is not hard to believe.
The novel also paints a realistic picture of the ways in which desperate times can turn the most ordinary of us into something deadly. Or despicable. Sarat's transformation is the core of the novel but it is populated with a huge cast of characters, many of whom have done whatever they could to survive. It's a world full of moral grey because for each choice made, however awful or otherwise, you can understand the motivation for it whether it be to collaborate, to give up or to fight. It makes the nightmares of places like Palestine and Iraq so much easier to understand when the same things are seen happening within the United States and it's scary because there is no answer.
This novel, I think, takes a rightful place along side Margaret Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale' as a warning for our times and does so stylishly and engagingly. If you read nothing else this year, read this.
Well, what can I say? I like a vampire read as well as the next girl - and probably more than most. I'm continuing my exploration of the school's e-boWell, what can I say? I like a vampire read as well as the next girl - and probably more than most. I'm continuing my exploration of the school's e-book platform, which at least gives me a justification for borrowing this book. Not that I really need one because it turned out to be a pretty good example of its genre.
What I particularly liked about it was the way Kagawa effortlessly created a believable dystopian world. Humans live in a walled city, controlled by vampires. Registered humans receive food rations and the necessaries of life in exchange for their blood. Unregistered humans survive as best they can. The world outside the city is unsafe, the home of dangerous creatures, Rabids, who mindlessly crave human food. This book does eventually reveal how this perilous world came into existence and since it's a fairly major plot point, I'll leave it at that.
In the mode of authors like Kristen Cashore and Sarah Maas, the protagonist is a strong-minded, clever girl in unusual circumstances, although in Allison's case she has no special powers or skills beyond a good helping of common sense and well-developed survival skills. She's survived on The Fringe for most of her teenage years, her hatred for vampires keeping her unregistered. All that changes one night when she meets an unusual vampire and later still has to choose between death and becoming vampire herself.
Book 1 sets up the major characters, the antagonist, the motivation and a quest. This book is a good young adult adventure and dystopia with a paranormal twist. Three stars is perhaps uncharitable - think of it as 3.75.
Wowsy wow! Short but very punchy. It's more a novella but it throws you right into the deep end and lets you swim.
The narrator is a girl one week awayWowsy wow! Short but very punchy. It's more a novella but it throws you right into the deep end and lets you swim.
The narrator is a girl one week away from her eighteenth birthday which is an occasion of note because she will 'age out' of her life in a privatised orphanage. However Orphancorp might have begun, it is now a corrupt and abusive system. Orphans are bought by Orphancorp who, in exchange for rearing them to maturity, have the right to their labour until they are 18. Oliver Twist has nothing on this system. Education is not compulsary. Girls must take on extra duties to earn some form of birth control. The Aunties and Uncles who have the care of the children seem to have more than their share of control freaks, abusers, drunks and fools. Human rights seem not to exist within the walls of an Orphancorp home.
Taken to a new facility just a week out from her birthday, the story shows us her last seven days: settling in to yet another home and trying to keep out of trouble long enough to be allowed to leave rather than being assigned straight to Prisoncorp.
The interesting thing about this story is that despite the brutal and industrial nature of their upbringing there are still moments of tenderness and humanity, sometimes from unexpected sources. It's not always a comfortable read but it is a compelling one.
I'm glad to have purchased it for the school library. It will be a good level 2 text for less keen readers partly because of its length but also for its meatiness and the compelling and engaging story. Some sex scenes and violence. ...more
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, having read some of The Morganville Vampire series. It's actually a really good read. The world in which I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, having read some of The Morganville Vampire series. It's actually a really good read. The world in which the Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed and now has a stranglehold on all information is well realised: vile Ink-lickers, heretical Burners, automata, Wales and England at war, Obscurists in their Iron Tower and library blanks in every home. The idea that the ownership of an original book is illegal and to be caught smuggling a real book is a capital offence is a fascinating one and opens up all kinds of interesting questions about knowledge and the control of it.
Jess Brighwell is well named being both quick and clever. He's the son of a family that has made its fortune in the illegal book trade, so dad is very keen that Jess make the grade in the rigorous examinations to join the staff at the Great Library. Jess is keen to make the grade to escape the family business and pursue his desire for academia. Once at the Great Library, he must negotiate a cut-throat environment for the few available places and work out who is a friend and who is not.
Of course, he also discovers that the library and its masters are not as altruistic as he naively believed and is soon embroiled a situation where he must challenge the world as he knows it. Standard fantasy/dystopian plot but oh, so good. I will be reading the rest as they become available.
I think this book is YA but is comfortably a crossover easy read with some interesting thematic elements....more
So, where to start on this compulsive can’t-put-me-downer? It’s dystopian, it’s science fiction, it’s a war story, it’s a love story, it’s a bildungsrSo, where to start on this compulsive can’t-put-me-downer? It’s dystopian, it’s science fiction, it’s a war story, it’s a love story, it’s a bildungsroman, it’s a bit of all sorts of things, with echoes of other fictional worlds, but the sum is greater than all the parts. The hero of my new favourite dystopia is Darrow, a hell-diver in the mines beneath Mars. He and his people live their whole lives below ground and believe their sacrifice will one day make Mars habitable for humanity. The long hours, the shortages and brutal laws are leavened for Darrow by his family and his beloved wife, Eo. One of the things I enjoyed about this novel is the way we are plunged into a fully-realised world which reveals itself to us. I’ve heard some people say they were put off by jargon and not understanding the society but to me, part of the pleasure was realising what a different world the story is set in without frequent didactic passages. And what a place it is! It’s not giving too much away to say that society is stratified by colour, each with its own function and each with a degree of genetic and social manipulation to make sure they fit their purpose. Darrow’s Reds are the bottom of the heap while Golds rule the world; in fact, they rule the solar system. Tragedy strikes Darrow after an illicit excursion to an above-ground domed garden, set aside for higher colours, results in Eo’s death. Rescued from his own fate by the militant group Sons of Ares, Darrow’s double life begins. When shown the truth of his world – that Mars is already habitable – he agrees to infiltrate Gold society and bring it down from within. Once launched into this plan, he begins to discover that every colour pays a price and that not all Golds deserve to die. He experiences doubt and uncertainty. However, having been accepted into the elite Gold Academy his first and only task is to survive the experience. Quite aside from the physical struggles and battles, he also has to survive jealousies, power struggles and politics both on and off the field. However much I enjoyed this book, it is not a book to hand to just any student. Life at the Gold Academy makes up a large portion of this book and it does make The Hunger Games look like a kindergarten outing in comparison; even Lord of the Flies begins to look tame. Murder, rape and cannibalism all make appearances, although the last two are off-page. I’m not completely convinced this is YA fiction at all. Although he seems much older, Darrow is about seventeen when the story begins. Most of the protagonists are in their teens but this alone does not make a novel Young Adult. The vocabulary is rich enough, the ideas complex enough, and it is certainly violent enough, to be considered an adult novel with a Young Adult crossover. It’s a good addition to the library but will sit firmly in Senior Fiction.
While this book is not without flaws, I will certainly read the rest of the trilogy. (This review was offered for publication at Connected, the magazine of the School Librarians of New Zealand Aotearoa.)...more
When I won this book in a Facebook competition from The Realm, I wasn't sure I wanted to read it. A book about girls sold into brothels and a slum worWhen I won this book in a Facebook competition from The Realm, I wasn't sure I wanted to read it. A book about girls sold into brothels and a slum world ruled by unscrupulous drug lords in some almost real Asian city didn't immediately reach out to me. In fact, I put it aside and read the other book I won first.
How wrong could I be? This book gripped me from the very first page. It begins with a harum-scarum chase through the streets of a slum city. Not only is it exciting in its own right, it cleverly sets the scene and introduces us to people and situations that become important in the rest of the story. Jin, the narrator, is immediately engaging. Her three rules of survival: trust no-one, run fast, always carry your knife pique interest immediately through the questions it raises: what kind of world is she living in and why is she there?
The narration is split between Jin, Dai and Mei Yee. Mei Yee has been sold into a brothel by her drunken father. Jin, her younger sister, has followed her to the Walled City vowing to find her and rescue her. Masquerading as a boy, she is living on the streets on the strength of her considerable wits. Dai is a young man, also living in the Walled City, with a lot of secrets of his own.
The three stories intersect and result in a coming of age for all three of them, in different ways. I highly recommend this YA book, for both young adults and adults alike....more
This book manages to simultaneously be like bits of other books, while remaining unique. If you're looking a for a book with a strong heroine faced wiThis book manages to simultaneously be like bits of other books, while remaining unique. If you're looking a for a book with a strong heroine faced with a seemingly impossible-yet-earthshatteringly-important task, then this book is that. If you're looking for a dystopian setting, then you have that too. If you're looking for something speculative, with a great big 'what if?', then you've got it. If you're looking for action and adventure aplenty - then tick the boxes again. A tantalizing hint of romance - tick. A book with important questions in addition to the action - big tick.
Yael is the heroine of the story. Taken to the Nazi death camps during World War II as a six year old, she is used as a subject in a medical experiment.While this saves her life in the short term, it has massive consequences long term, altering her in ways the Nazi doctors never anticipated. After her escape, she eventually ends up a member of the Resistance.
Many dystopian settings feature repressive governments and deal with the effects of this on the lives of the citizens. The origins of these systems is not often specified but in this case, it has a clear historical basis. Much of the action occurs in 1956, ten years after the Axis powers have won World War II. This added to my enjoyment of this novel as there was a whole historical depth of knowledge of the Nazi regime to draw on as a reader.
The immediate action of novel centres around the annual Axis Tour: twenty of the finest Aryan and Japanese teenage males compete in a gruelling motorcycle race from Germania to Tokyo. A huge propaganda exercise, this race is followed closely by all the state-controlled media and the Victors are celebrities for life. The race previous to this story was won by a girl, Adele Wolfe, who had raced using her brother's identity. She caught the eye of the Fuehrer, who left his bodyguards to dance with her at the Victory Ball. This backstory is the basis of the plot: Yael is to impersonate Adele Wolfe in this year's race, win and assassinate Hitler at the Victory Ball. His death is to act as a signal to the various Resistance groups around the world to simultaneously revolt. This plot line is exciting: rivalry between competitors, dirty tricks, politics and exciting race strategies make this good reading. Will she win? Will the other competitors manage to bring her down? How will she manage the assassination? Will she get caught out?
While it is possible to read this novel as a straight out action story centring on the race and the assassination plot, the strength of the book in the other levels and layers it possesses. Interspersed with the race are scenes from Yael's past: her life in the camp, the people who have since shaped her life and become a surrogate family to her. As well as fleshing out the terrors of the Nazi regime, these scenes bring us more understanding of Yael as a character. Indeed, it is her three-dimensionality that is the biggest strength of the book. She is a person who has lost everything. She was ripped from her family, abused in medical experiments, suffered great physical and emotional pain and was then cast out into the world to survive on her own. Even her physical appearance was taken from her. So how does someone build themselves again in a harsh world? What stops you from becoming a monster? What motivates you? Yael's inner conflict about whether or not she is a monster is compelling. She knows the importance of her mission and how many lives it will save if it works, yet she questions the taking of a single life in order to complete it. She wrestles with the idea of identity - what makes you what you are? How much control over that do you have?
Yael/Adele's interactions with the other competitors was another strength. When Adele's brother, Felix, forces his way into the race to protect his sister, his presence is a complication for Yael's mission. The easy thing to do to preserve her mission would be to kill him off in an 'accident' but she is loathe to do so, given her empathy with his desire to help his sister and attempt to save his family. She learns there is more to people than bald facts. She has memorised all there is to know about her fellow competitors, especially Luka Lowe. Luka, a fellow German, is the biggest obstacle to Adele's second race victory but she soon discovers there more in their relationship than the files have told her and that sometimes even the 'facts' don't tell the truth.
Another area of strength in this books was the unpredictability in plot and character. There are twists and turns at the end that are satisfying. I see that this is the first book in a duology. While the story could comfortably end here, there is enough to flesh out another book too and I will look forward to reading it.
This book is much more than the sum of its parts and is well worth a read.
I won this book in a Facebook promotion from Hachette. Thank you - it was a great read. ...more
This book had a hard act to follow, since I read it right on the heels of Station Eleven. Although not as beautifully written or as elegant in style aThis book had a hard act to follow, since I read it right on the heels of Station Eleven. Although not as beautifully written or as elegant in style as that book, this book was similarly thought-provoking. I don't doubt that someone will make it into a very popular action movie. This book contains grisly murders, torture scenes, sex scenes, plenty of explosions and is undoubtedly a world where human life is cheap. Phoenix is a city on the verge of total collapse, having lost much of its water supply. The city is also full of refugees from Texas, which is now almost completely waterless.
It is, at times, blunt and brutal - just like the world it is describing. When California, Nevada and Arizona are all competing for the dwindling water of the Colorado River in order to keep their cities and population alive, no sin is too great to achieve the end of an assured water supply. The urban landscape left behind when whole cities have their water supply arbitrarily cut off is chilling and hellish and utterly believable. The United States is on the verge of breakdown, at least from the mid-West to California. Drug cartels control Mexico and the water companies decide who lives and dies everywhere else.
It is a book with a complicated moral landscape shown to us through the various characters we follow. The major stories belong to Angel, Maria and Lucy. Maria is a resourceful and strong teenager whose life used to be normal: school, prom and boyfriends. When the water in her suburb was turned off, her family were forced to leave their home. Her mother died on the road and her father in a construction accident in Phoenix. Now, she one of thousands of Texas refugees trying to scheme together enough money to pay the rent to a violent slum landlord and to still have enough money left to buy water. Lucy is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who came to Phoenix to cover the refugee crisis and never left. Angel is one of the semi-mythical water knives working for the Nevada Water Authority; someone whose job is to make sure the Authority gets what it needs - by whatever means is required. Angel at one point notes that everyone will break, with the right incentive and it's his job to find out what that thing is. Or as he says later, "I cut what needs cutting." Their lives intersect when Angel is sent to Phoenix to find out why the Authority's chief agent has gone quiet.
This is a book that could be read as a straight out action/conspiracy thriller, although I think it is much more than that. Not always pleasant reading, it is certainly a scarily realistic dystopia and a wake-up call to the dangers of global warning. But I can't help but feel that the deeper issue it explores, and the one that keeps resonating with me, is just what any of us is capable of if it comes down to a question of survival.
Beautifully written and unbelievably believable. This is my book of the year to date and I'd be surprised if anything could better it. Just read it.Beautifully written and unbelievably believable. This is my book of the year to date and I'd be surprised if anything could better it. Just read it....more
A good teenage dystopia with a believable setting. It's not hard to imagine the United States being in a state of war with itself; The Republic vs TheA good teenage dystopia with a believable setting. It's not hard to imagine the United States being in a state of war with itself; The Republic vs The Colonies. June Iparis is a born into the elite classes of The Republic and is a prodigy, having scored the perfect score in The Trial, a test all citizens must take at the age of ten which sets their future course in life. She is being groomed for high command in the military. Day was born in the slums and failed his Trial but has escaped from that fate to become the Republic's most wanted criminal for his guerilla attacks on government targets.
When June's brother is killed during a raid by Day to retrieve plague cures from a hospital, Day is blamed for his death. June is unleashed by the powers that be to find Day and bring him to trial. Fuelled by a desire for revenge, she manages to find him. So begins a journey for discovery for both of them.
I can't believe it hasn't been made into a film already, since the episodic nature of the action has a very filmic quality to it. Along with spy intrigues and government conspiracies, it seems to have more going for it as a movie than Divergent did. It has attractive and likeable main characters and a smidgeon of romance thrown in. I can already envisage the kinds of sets and costumes required to bring this to the big screen. I did find the split narrative, giving Day and June a chapter each, to be a little irritating but it did give multiple perspectives to the events and let the reader join dots before the characters did.
A good read and I'll read the rest of the trilogy to find out how it all ends....more
The idea of a book exploring the dangers of a world dominated by social media and information gathering seemed a good one. There are some clever and aThe idea of a book exploring the dangers of a world dominated by social media and information gathering seemed a good one. There are some clever and amusing satirical passages but I found it difficult to feel engaged by the main character Mae. Her behaviour was inconsistent and she was, if not one dimensional, certainly not three dimensional. Her lack of real involvement with other people and her inability to understand anything beyond her own perspective was perhaps intended as a kind of warning for the perils of the social media age where commenting, clicking, zinging, smiling are substitutes for actual engagement. In Mae's world it isn't so much about actually doing anything but in being seen to be doing it and where having likes is some substitute for really having a relationship. Her boss takes her to task when he discovers that she went kayaking but did not post anywhere about it, did not join any groups or post any photos of what she saw, thereby denying the rest of humanity a chance to share and learn from her experience. Because so much of what she does is either at a desk or in her own head, the pace of the novel is slow. It often seems that some menace is building or that something will happen, yet precious little ever does so the book drags in places although the action cascades in the last fifth of the book.
While there were a number of good ideas explores at least partially in the book, and some pertinent warnings about the role of technology in society, I was not wowed by it. I suppose it was not by accident that the most real people in the novel were the people outside The Circle: her parents, Mercer (her former boyfriend) and the couple on the boat in the bay. Strangely enough, narrowing the perspective to Mae's own was both a strength and a weakness: showing us the new face of humanity if technology goes to these extremes but making for a less likeable (and therefore less engaging) protagonist. Although he weaves a tale around the perils of social media monopolies, extreme meta-data gathering, privacy issues and the capacity for corruption, I'm not sure he is saying anything really new....more
The world of this story is chilling. It begins engagingly with a group of girls slithering their way through the cracks and crevices of a mountain in The world of this story is chilling. It begins engagingly with a group of girls slithering their way through the cracks and crevices of a mountain in search of a mysterious Harvest. What is the Harvest? Are they willing workers or indentured? Why young girls? Questions aplenty and a very engaging narrator, the team leader, Jena.
As the answers to these questions are slowly revealed, through a picture of daily life for the girls of the line and the isolated village they live in, things get more and more sinister. It put me in mind of reading some of the chilling tales in Margo Lanagan's "Black Juice" short stories. It is a dark picture of a society warped by need and desperation until the macabre is considered normal and nothing is too cruel or inhumane to preserve the common good, as perceived by the governing body of the village - the Mothers.
Jena one day sees something she cannot explain and her questioning nature leads her to conflict with the Mothers. On one level, a simple tale of an imaginary world, On the other, a more complex tale of power, leadership and the needs of the individual versus the needs of the group, of a society's stagnation and chance of renewal....more
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