Tag Archives: Dystopia

XVI by Julia Karr

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Synopsis:
Nina Oberon doesn’t want to turn 16, when she’ll be tattooed and expected to become sexually active, but a family tragedy puts her in touch with an underground movement to reform society at any cost.

Review:
XVI raises a lot of really fascinating issues with identity, coming of age, the exploitation of women, gender roles, and power. Unfortunately, the plotting really faltered near the end. I gave the sequel, Truth, a try but the plotting in that one was even less inspiring and I gave up.

Ascent by Amy Kinzer (The Party Series, Book 1)

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Synopsis:
Three teens are recruited for an elite leadership training program that will allow them to go back in time and change the moments they regret the most.

Review:
Wow, Ascent is a fantastic deal–only 99 cents for Kindle! You’d think that such a low price would indicate low quality, but that’s hardly the case. Amy Kinzer‘s writing can certainly compete with traditionally published authors of YA dystopian fiction. I hope she’s working on the next book, because I am a big fan!

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

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Synopsis:
When the eccentric creator of the virtual reality world that has become more real than the real world dies without an heir, the nerds of the world race to discover a hidden easter egg that will unlock his fortune.

Review:
So. Fun. Ready Player One was an absolute treat of a book–compulsively readable and fabulously geeky. The hero is Wade, known in the virtual world called OASIS as “Parzival,” a high school student who has dedicated his whole life to hunting for the hidden easter egg within OASIS that will unlock creator James Halliday’s fortune. He wants the fame, the glory, and the money, but he also wants to save OASIS from the “Sixers,” egg hunters controlled by an evil conglomerate that wants to monetize OASIS thereby destroying all that is good about it.

It gets even better. Halliday was an 80s freak, so in order to find the egg everyone has to become experts on all the pop culture from that misbegotten decade. We’re talking WarGames, Adventure, Zork!, D&D, and so much more. I loved all the references, both big (Pac Man) and obscure (The Plimsoulls) and how they were integrated into the world and into the plot. Yum!

Wade is basically living the dream–what if you could actually become a gazillionaire by playing video games all day long? What if you got to step inside and live the game itself? I don’t just mean that your life becomes a game. I mean, instead of typing in the text commands for Zork you’re actually doing them in a virtual reality that is more real than real. That’s what this book gives you, from the POV of a character who isn’t just a gamer.

Wade has all kinds of conflicts to deal with that distract him from the task at hand, and he has to decide which is more important, the real world or OASIS. He’s in love with a girl who insists he can’t love her because they’ve only ever met online. But it seems like the real thing, too, and he spends the book trying to get her to see it his way. All this, and Mechagodzilla, too!

Lest you think this is just a lark, the book also offers some pretty keen commentary on technology today. It’s not for nothing he name checks Cory Doctorow. I was also reminded of Scott Westerfeld’s Extras, another book that seems quite prescient to me.

Dark Parties by Sara Grant

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Synopsis:
In a dystopia under a sealed dome where inbreeding has left everyone looking very similar, one girl looks for the truth about the world outside.

Review:
Dark Parties has a decent enough concept, and is executed well enough, but Neva’s plight didn’t strike a chord with me. Perhaps it was the world-building which felt thin and undercooked.

I love dystopian YA, but am growing fearful that the genre has played out. It’s not enough to have an idea and be able to write. When done well, the results can be spectacular, and I’m pretty much done with giving allowances for an effort that’s good but not great. That said, this book is better than average, and not to be dismissed outright.

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

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Synopsis:
Aliens take over the world with nothing but benevolence and peace, but are the changes they bring ultimately good for the human race?

Review:
I listened to the audio version of Childhood’s End thanks to a sale on Audible. I was really hooked the whole time, despite Clarke’s detached style. I felt the story held up mostly well, some 60 years after publication. However, Clarke was unable to imagine how radically sexual and gender politics would change in that time, and so the personal relationships between the characters felt dated and hard to connect with. I felt he tied everything together well and I’ll be mulling on it for a while.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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Synopsis:
Now in the hands of rebel forces, Katniss Everdeen becomes the symbol for the battle against the Capitol, even as the human toll of her actions in the arena and out begins to break her sanity.

Review:
First reads of final books are always tough to evaluate, because desperation to have story questions answered (Team Gale/Team Peeta) make it hard to slow down and enjoy the ride. Mockingjay is much more action-y than the previous two books, and the pacing is fast fast fast.

Suzanne Collins’s storytelling is ambitious, both in the plotting and in her characterizations. She goes deep and wide in just about everything, and that’s what saves Katniss from becoming an insufferable figurehead. Though Katniss has achieved fame and adulation in the districts, her internal struggles (which are about much, much more than her love life) dominate the narrative and make her a highly sympathetic character. Collins makes her self-awareness utterly believable, and takes her through a startlingly complex emotional journey.

Like the rest of the world, I love these books and will enjoy sharing them with the girls when they are older. The series is all over Amazon’s bestseller lists. I checked out the list for Bestsellers in YA Science Fiction and the books in the series occupy slots 1-6, 9, and 10. One of those vampire books is in slot number 8, but slot number 7 is taken by a book called Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare, who wrote City of Bones, a book I liked but not well enough to keep going in the series. I think I’ll put this one on my library request list.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Synopsis:
A professional “carer” recalls her idyllic school days, which mask a horror that she and her friends “know but don’t know.”

Review:
Never Let Me Go is one of my favorite all-time books, and this is the third time I’ve read it. Big life upheavals, like having a baby, always send me back to books I know I’ll enjoy, as a way to comfort myself through a major life transition. If you’ve read it, you’ll know that it’s a strange one to read while holding a brand new baby–and I hope that’s enough to tantalize anyone who hasn’t had a chance to read it.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

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Synopsis:
Incarceron is a living prison from which no one can escape, but when the warden’s daughter makes a shocking discovery, she works to break Incarceron’s protections with the aid of a boy who believes he was born on the outside.

Review:
I attempted to listen to the audio book of Incarceron, but the late stages of pregnancy has made it impossible for me to concentrate on anything more complicated than nursery rhymes. But the concept really grabbed me, so I snagged a copy through Interlibrary Loan–and devoured it in just a few short hours (thanks to some free babysitting by visiting Grandma). I literally read the last 10 pages standing up while setting the table for lunch–that’s how badly I wanted to know the ending.

I have complained in the past about lack of originality in speculative fiction for young adults. I am too easily wearied by the stock characters and unoriginal plot elements. Incarceron stands up there with the best in the genre, like the Atherton series for middle grade and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies sequence.

The core concept is that Incarceron was designed to be a utopia, and that’s how it was portrayed to the world. It would be a place where criminals would be reformed by a perfect society. From page 1 we know that it didn’t work out that way, but Claudia, the warden’s daughter, and her tutor believe the myth to be true. On the inside, Finn lives the reality. Incarceron is dangerous, not only because its social structure is based around warring clans who think nothing of murdering to achieve their goals, but also because Incarceron itself has a consciousness, one that isn’t benevolent.

There were two big plot twists that I foresaw, but that didn’t take away from my pleasure in reading the book, because there was so much going on that kept me really interested. I’m eagerly looking forward to the release of Sapphique, the next in the series, because I can’t figure out where Catherine Fisher plans to take us–but I know it will be good!

Under the Dome by Stephen King

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Synopsis:
An impenetrable dome smashes down over a small Maine town, completely isolating them from the world.

Review:
I devoured Under the Dome, thoroughly enjoying King’s blend of deft characterizations, manic plotting, and outrageously broad social satire. Imagine the world coming to an end–but only over a few square miles, while the rest of America watches helpless to intervene.

In true King fashion, he takes an external horror device and uses it to expose the evil within. I’d call him a Calvinist, except it seems that the only kind of Christian King approves of is the one who has decided God doesn’t exist. Here, we get Lester Coggins, a vaguely charismatic preacher prone to apocalypticism and hypocrisy–always going down on his knees even when negotiating his stake in a drug deal–contrasted with Piper Libby, a minister whose growing agnosticism serves to make her more heroic by the minute. He’s toned down his vitriol against “Christians” in his last few books, but methinks that’s only because his recent works have been relatively intimate affairs with few characters. In addition to Coggins, he gives us Big Jim Rennie, a larger-than-life villain in the form of an obese Selectmen, one of Coggins’s flock who uses some Christian vocabulary but otherwise bears no resemblance to an actual believer. I don’t even have a problem with nominal Christians being satirized, but it seems to me that King’s analysis is stuck in the Falwell 80s. The Cogginses of today are more likely to be preaching wealth and prosperity without ever mentioning Jesus at all. I wasn’t buying that Big Jim Rennie needed Jesus to achieve his political goals. King would have me believe that Rennie actually thought Jesus was on his side and I’m not buying that either. King didn’t make it work because he doesn’t believe that there could be real Christians in the first place.

My other critique of the novel comes in its lack of a compelling protagonist. Big Jim Rennie looms so large over the pages of the book, and his heroic counterpart, Dale Barbara, a retired military man now slinging hash at Sweetbriar Rose’s, doesn’t match him in intensity. The others on Barbie’s team all have their moments, but none pop the way that the baddies do. Big Jim’s goals are very clear; the rest have only survival on their mind, but because they can’t escape they’re all trapped in a reactionary mode. I didn’t really latch on to any of them emotionally, so I ended up that same reactionary place.