Tag Archives: Dystopia

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.

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The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

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Synopsis:
The events leading up to the “waterless flood,” a global catechism wiping out almost all of mankind, as told from the point of view of two survivors, a sex worker and a healer, both of whom were members of a radical vegetarian cult.

Review:
The Year of the Flood is Margaret Atwood’s companion to Oryx and Crake, presenting the events that led to Jimmy the Snowman’s reign over the gentle, sinless Crakers in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Atwood resolutely refuses to call either book “science fiction,” in a disingenuous bit of verbal sleighthand that I find snobbish to the core–and this despite Atwood’s status as one of my favorite authors of all time.

I’ve never liked her so-called “speculative fiction,” and The Year of the Flood tried my patience with its rampant coincidences. I’m really meant to believe that the only survivors of a cataclysm consist of:

  • a stripper with a heart of gold
  • her best friend, located in another city
  • a man both of them slept with (who also randomly ended up roommates with a third girl they both grew up with)
  • one of the women who raised them in the cult
  • that woman’s seriously abusive ex-boyfriend–who comes and kidnaps the stripper and the best friend
  • two other boys who grew up in the cult

And nobody else! It angered me to no end, these coincidences in a book whose theology seems to deny the existence of any ordering principle in the universe. I don’t believe in coincidence in stories, or in fate or destiny or any of those things. In a fictional world, you can’t escape the presence of the author’s hand, so if you’re going to deal in coincidences you have to make something of it, not just shrug it off and expect me to swallow it.

As science fiction, The Year of the Flood doesn’t offer much that’s new or innovative. The religion she invents for the God’s Gardeners doesn’t seem particularly well thought out. The hymns she writes for them lack theological depth, with barbless satire that doesn’t point to any discernible real world equivalent.

The best parts of the book concern Ren and Amanda’s friendship, but of course that’s what I’ve always loved about Atwood. Her ability to limn the contours of female relationships has always been her genius, and it shines just as brightly here. But it wasn’t enough to save this book for me.

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Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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I’m giving away 3 copies of Hunger Games–check out this post for rules & to enter!

Synopsis:
After winning the Hunger Games, underdog Katniss Everdeen finds herself caught up in political intrigue as rebellion foments in other districts, and when the president himself makes a game-changing move, Katniss must choose between love and freedom.

Review:
I was totally and completely sucked in and swept away by Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins’s sequel to last year’s it novel Hunger Games. The series is starting to remind me a bit of Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, both in terms of the themes it addresses (the sicknesses of the media age), and the sheer addictive power of the action-packed narrative.

I don’t like to read reviews before I’ve read a book, but I ended up reading the review in Entertainment Weekly. I couldn’t disagree more, and feel like the reviewer did the series a real disservice by comparing it with Twilight–as if that book is the standard by which all YA books should be judged. Just because the reviewer is writing for a mass audience doesn’t mean she has to pander and pretend like YA is this monolithic entity of similar books. YA has genres, too. Twilight is a romance (and a badly written one at that), and the Hunger Games books are action-fantasy. Different genres, different audiences, different reviewing criteria. Very lazy work on the reviewer’s part.

Anyway, I was thrilled with the plot twists that Collins came up with for this middle book. Some of them I should’ve seen coming, but when I’m caught up in a book I tend not to try to predict what’s happening next. I love to lose myself like that in a story–it’s what I’m always hoping for when I pick up a book.

The Waste Lands by Stephen King (The Dark Tower)

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Synopsis:
On his quest to the Dark Tower, Roland the gunslinger and his companions move through a ghastly post-nuclear landscape in search of a train that is certainly alive and not certainly safe.

Review:
Whenever I start reading The Waste Lands, my heart aches waiting for Roland and Jake to be reunited. In my opinion, Jake is one of King’s best characters. Of course, he’s twinned with Jack Sawyer from The Talisman, and I think that I can’t help but bring those associations with me to the read. (Speaking of, this retread through The Dark Tower is totally making me itch to re-read The Talisman and possibly even Black House, though the latter was dark in a way that I don’t think I could handle now that I’m a mom.)

I tend to glaze over during the Lud sequences, I think because I know that they don’t matter to the mythology in the same way that Shardik and Blaine do. I do love the element of chaos brought by the Tick-Tock Man. It’s here that King’s theology begins to come together, with the notion of ka (destiny) butting heads against the equally potent random. King is thoroughly uncomfortable with putting his protagonists in the hands of either pure fate or pure chance, and it’s the working out of this tension that gives the series its intellectual depth. Theologically I can’t agree with him, but his notions do make for great storytelling.

Blaine terrifies me. That is the truth.

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The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist (Translated by Marlaine Delargy)

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Synopsis:
Rendered dispensable because she has not borne a child by the age of 50, Dorrit faces a future of human experiments and organ donations in an otherwise idyllic unit until she is called on to make her final donation.

Review:
Though not quite as poetically haunting as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, The Unit is a gripping account of a utilitarian world where humans constitute the ultimate resource.

Basically, any man or woman who has not had children by a certain age gets locked up in paradise, where they are the subjects of various experiments, and donate their organs one by one until they have to give one that they can no longer live without. Dorrit largely accepts her fate, though she experiences an understandable anger and grief at times. She falls in love with a man in the unit, experiencing romance for the first time in her life. It’s heartbreaking to know that her story is bound to end in tragedy.

Holmqvist’s elegant plot doesn’t try to do too much, sticking largely with emotions and ideas. Still, there was enough of an engine here to keep me turning the pages. I definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction.

Posted in Swedish Literature | Tagged , , , | 2 Replies

The Dark Planet (Atherton, Book 3) by Patrick Carman

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Synopsis:
Edgar must leave Atherton, the only home he’s ever known, to finish his creator Dr. Harding’s work on the poisoned Dark Planet.

Review:
The Dark Planet, a stirring conclusion to the Atherton trilogy of science fiction adventures for middle grade readers, finds Edgar heading off his home planet towards the Dark Planet, where children like him are worked as slaves tilling a despoiled earth. It’s his own journey into Mordor–except the plot of the Atherton trilogy owes more to “Lost” than Tolkien.

The world of Atherton was created by a mad scientist, and is populated by wondrous creatures and machines powered by fire and light. Dr. Max Harding, the creator of Atherton, was but a boy when he dreamed up the refuge from the increasingly toxic Dark Planet, and wrought as many mistakes as he did miracles. Nevertheless, he’s left a map of sorts for Edgar, hoping that his only son will find his way to finishing Dr. Harding’s grand master plan.

Treasure map stories can be frustrating, when predestination overpowers causality. Patrick Carman strikes a marvelous balance, with a story that depends as much on Edgar & Co.’s ingenuity as it does on Dr. Harding’s plan.

I had a great time with this whole trilogy and think they will stand the test of time as classics. While the books are not as weighty as Lois Lowry’s The Giver or as edgy as Neal Shusterman’s Unwind, they have just enough complexity to intrigue younger YA readers. The books raise good questions about ecological resonsibility, and the nature of heroism. I also think that they would inspire budding writers and artists, because Carman’s imagination is so potent and compelling. And I think that they’d make fantastic movies, so here’s hoping!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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Synopsis:
Katniss Everdeen takes her sister’s place in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death between teenagers, televised for the whole world.

Review:
I asked my YA librarian friend if The Hunger Games was any good, and her report was that it wasn’t the best book she’d ever read but she couldn’t keep it on the shelves and the kids in her school were passing it around like crazy. Being a fan of YA literature and of Rollerball-type stories, I had to check it out.

I devoured The Hunger Games, even staying up late to finish it–trust me, when you have a toddler, this is not a wise choice. But I couldn’t help myself, because I had to know how Collins would resolve Katniss’s story. It’s pretty obvious she’ll win, because this is only the first book in a series, so this book could’ve been quite tedious. Collins manages to build suspense into the “how” keeping me riveted–yes, Katniss will live, but there’s a lot more to survival than just making it out alive.

Collins does everything right here, reminding me of no less than Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, one of my favorites in this genre. The Hunger Games is its equal. I’m so thrilled to be a part of the litblogging world because otherwise I may not have even heard of this book, let alone find a new favorite.

House of Stairs by William Sleator

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Synopsis:
Five orphan teens find themselves trapped in a room filled with nothing but stairs, which quickly turns into an experiment that may have no end.

Review:
House of Stairs is a book I read about a zillion times when I was a kid. The scenario enthralled me–a seemingly endless room with stairs as far as the eye can see, and a machine dispensing pellets of food as long as the kids performed a bizarrely elaborate dance. Things get darker when the machine changes its requirements, forcing the kids to tap into their inner torturers and terrorists.

Because House of Stairs is YA, it doesn’t delve the depths of horror achieved by Jose Saramago’s Blindness, for example, but it does get pretty dark. I’m surprised I wasn’t scarred for life reading about the ways that people can be evil to one another in this book and in The Chocolate War, but as a teen (and now) I was a very trusting person who is always surprised when people treat me badly. The 5-point Calvinist I am should know better, but I always give people the benefit of the doubt. I would’ve been eaten alive in the House of Stairs!

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Unwind by Neal Shusterman

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Synopsis:
A boy marked for termination and organ harvesting escapes into a world where he has no legal right to live.

Review:
I heard about Unwind from the Queens Library, in an email newsletter talking up good new young adult books. I’m so glad that I did, because it’s a dystopian thrill ride in the same vein as Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy, only with the same intellectual depth and emotional heart that you find in Lois Lowry’s The Giver.

Here’s the deal with unwinding. Anyone under the age of 18 can be unwound by their legal guardian. It’s like a retroactive abortion, only every last piece of the unwind is harvested for reuse by another person. Organs, limbs, brain cells, even eyelashes–they all get doled out to the needy. Connor’s parents send him for unwinding because they have too many kids, but he’s lucky–and smart–enough to get away. He ends up on the run with Risa, a ward of the state whose unwinding comes when the home runs out of beds, and Lev, a “tithe” whose parents are unwinding him as a sacrifice to God.

I was so impressed with the way that Neal Shusterman engaged with big issues in Unwind. He didn’t shy away from tackling the abortion and bioethics debates head on in all their complexity. He didn’t dumb anything down, and he didn’t moralize or proselytize. The result is a book that offers a lot of food for thought in what also happens to be a page-turning thriller.