Across the Universe

Title: Across the Universe

Author: Beth Revis

Publisher: Penguin Group (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 417

Synopsis: Amy is about to leave everything behind.  Her parents have signed on to help develop a colony on a far distant planet, a colony so far away that they will have to spend 300 years cryogenically frozen aboard their starship in order to survive the journey.  While they and the other "essential" personnel travel in blocks of ice, the ship is crewed by generation after generation as they hurtle through space.  But somewhere along the line, something has gone wrong.  The power structure of the waking crew has changed; now they're led by Eldest, the most senior member of the population, and his teenage successor, Elder, is being groomed to take his place.  But Elder feels that something is not quite right within the ship; Eldest is keeping secrets, and when Elder stumbles across one of the biggest, a room full of frozen people, he'll do whatever it takes to get answers, even if it means asking the girl in the block of ice.

My Rating: 4 Stars

 
My Opinion:This, put most simply, is a good book.  The opening scene was enough to leave me a bit shell-shocked, in the best possible way.  From there, the story launches into a disconcertingly dystopian society that continues to reveal hidden depths of distortion as the book progresses.  It's a quick read with an engaging plot and moderately intriguing characters, though they did seem a bit flat at times.  The story is driven not by character development or growth, but by the swiftly unraveling though delightfully tangled plot.  I did find that I was occasionally confused about the age of the characters.  There was no change in vocabulary between Eldest and his teenage protege, leaving Eldest with turns of phrase that seemed out of character, particularly in a society that's been artificially stratified by age.  Given the chance to continue in this series, however, I certainly will!

The Farm

Title: The Farm

Author: Emily McKay

Publisher: Berkley Books (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 420

Synopsis: Lily can still remember the Before.  Not so long ago, there were no raging, bloodthirsty creatures that used to be human, until a virus turned them into the Ticks.  Teens weren't kept on Farms to serve as blood donors, keeping the Ticks fed and pacified.  And Mel, her autistic twin sister, wasn't communicating only in cryptic phrases of nursery rhymes.  But that was all Before, and now, Lily can only think about how she can get herself and her sister off the Farm and across the desolate United States to the safety of Canada.  The night she plans to escape, however, she runs into Carter, a classmate from the Before who seems to have all the answers.  With so much at stake, can she really afford to trust him?  Or, perhaps more importantly, can she really afford not to?

My Rating: 3 Stars

 
My Opinion: I just don't know what to make of this one.  It seems to be good conceptually, but there were a few wrenches in the works that made it less than a favorite.  I love the idea of the Ticks, and the Farms are suitably grim and dystopian, but there are a couple fantastical twists thrown into the plot that I had a hard time swallowing in McKay's scientifically based world.  I liked the struggle Lily faced in trying to care for her sister in a whole new world, but I found most of the other characters one-dimensional and hard to believe.  There's a lot of dystopian lit for young adults hitting the market right now, particularly with the popularity of books like The Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies.  Some of it is good, and others not so much.  I would recommend many other books over this one.

The Ask and the Answer

Title: The Ask and the Answer

Author: Patrick Ness

Publisher: Candlewick (2010)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 519 pages

Synopsis:  New World was settled by space-faring refugees a generation ago, though when the settlers arrived, they had no idea that the planets unique environment would soon cause men and animals to uncontrollably broadcast their thoughts telepathically.  Women, though able to hear the Noise, are themselves silent.  It is against this backdrop that the story of Todd and Viola, begun in The Knife of Never Letting Go, continues.  Now they find themselves captives of the former Mayor of Prentisstown, the leader of the army they fled across New World to escape.  The Mayor has overthrown the town of Haven by intimidation alone and set himself up as the President of New Prentisstown.  Though some residents are hopeful that the bloodless coup will result in a better life for all of them, the President's new policies have the women of New Prentisstown nervous.  Separated, Todd and Viola will have to make their own decisions about where their loyalties lie.  Will they ever be reunited?  And if they do find each another, will the person they find be the one they lost?

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: For such a lengthy book, this is an amazingly fast read.  Ness has a unique ability to write good people into bad situations and to let the reader watch humanity twist under pressure.  The prequel to this book, The Knife of Never Letting Go, was something I stumbled into quite by accident, but, just like this one, it had me staying up to all hours just to read a little more.  And a little more after that.  The characters range from sweet to horrifying, but all of them have a motivation and their actions make sense.  Watching these conflicting motivations clash in all out war is both intriguing and horrifying, and the parallels to both historical and current events are eerie.  It's one thing to write an allegory about past genocides or current revolutions, but to see the very same scenarios develop out of an entirely foreign series of events... it makes for serious food for thought.  Though this is a book geared toward young adults, I think that the lessons it holds are important for all ages.  Moreover, I think that its method of teaching is important.  Rather than laying out a clear cut path of right and wrong, Ness has characters on both sides of an ideological divide.  Who are the revolutionaries and who are the terrorists?  When is violence necessary?  Who is right?  What is the answer?  Ness doesn't have it, and neither do his characters, but in posing the question, he makes the first step for all of us.

Ship Breaker

Title: Ship Breaker

Author: Paolo Bacigalupi

Publisher: Little Brown and Company (2010)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Post Apocalyptic Fiction

Length: 323 pages

Synopsis:  In a not-too-distant future, life is grim for the poor.  Nailer is one of them.  He's a member of the "light crew" of ship breakers at Bright Sands Beach, scraping a meager living from tearing apart the oil tankers.  His mother died of sickness, and his father slipped into a haze of violence and drug abuse.  Soon, Nailer himself will be out of a job, too big to scramble into the narrowest crevices of the wrecked ships  for light scavenge, and too small to be of much use on the heavy crews that tear apart the ships' structure.  He's got nothing to look forward to except the occasional sight of clipper ships out on the sea.  They're beautiful craft, white and elegant as a seabird in flight, but Nailer knows he'll never have the chance to see one up close.  Or so he thinks, until a storm brings a him to a very different kind of shipwreck, one that offers him a chance to leave behind the life of a salvager forever. 

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:  
The popularity of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction in the young adult market makes it very difficult for books in this niche to make a statement.  Ship Breaker is a good book; the characters are flawed in ways that are entirely believable.  The best laid plans don't always work out.  Moreover, the environmental disaster that reduced Bacigalpi's world to its current state is completely realistic, as are the long term consequences.  But despite its strengths, the book doesn't quite come alive in ways the reader might hope.  It's certainly a worthwhile read, and very enjoyable, but it didn't resonate in ways that would keep me coming back for rereads, or dashing out to purchase the next book in the series (The Drowned Cities, 2012).  It is refreshing to see dystopian books, however, in which the characters do not immediately set out to overthrow the unjust ruling system.  Perhaps that's where the series will ultimately end up, but Bacigalupi respects his characters enough to let them work on resolving their own problems before they set out to fix the world's. 

Divergent

Title: Divergent

Author: Veronica Roth

Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books (2011)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Post-apocalyptic Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 487 pages

Synopsis:  Of all the five factions, Beatrice is sure that her parents' faction, Abnegation, is where she least belongs.  Soon, though, she will have to make a choice.  Does she dare do what so few Abnegation children have done, and leave her family behind forever?  When the tests meant to guide her choice leave her with more questions than answers and with tensions between factions growing every day, Beatrice doesn't know where to turn.  Is she brave enough to walk away from Abnegation?  Is she selfless enough to stay?  She has only  one chance and only one choice.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:
This felt to me like a slightly grittier version of The Hunger Games.  I say grittier because unlike so many novels that have teens battling it out in physical confrontation, these kids hurt.  They don't have the slick skills that let them easily excell and every inch must be earned.  I liked Tris and how her character grows and expands and feels and thinks throughout this story.  She doesn't have it all together; she's scared and selfish and cruel as often as she's kind and brave and caring, just like so many of us.  She isn't perfect, but she does what she has to.  Nonetheless, the last quarter or so of the story spirals quickly beyond the scope of the individual, setting Tris not only against herself and the immediate threats of faction life, but also the political upheaval and turmoil of her futuristic city.  It felt like the final confrontation came too fast to me and that it was relatively easily resolved, though of course there's plenty still to be told in the sequel, Insurgent.  It's always hard to set a single individual against an entire power structure, and though it may not be entirely effective here, neither is it quite the same as the obvious parallel, The Hunger Games.  This still feels more personal, and I'd like to see it stay that way in the next book.  Roth's characters are her strength, but with such sweeping plot possibilities, I fear she might sweep them right away.

Unwholly

Title: Unwholly

Author: Neal Shusterman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster (2012)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Science Fiction

Length: 402 pages

Synopsis:  The second book in the Unwind trilogy, Unwholly continues the journey of Connor, Risa, and Lev, teens who went AWOL after being threatened with unwinding, a retroactive abortion that means all of their organs and tissues remain alive...as replacement parts for others.  As Connor struggles to keep his camp of AWOL unwinds safe despite the constant threat of discovery, Risa must come to terms with the injuries she sustained during her escape, and Lev's found himself the unintentional object of both violence and adoration.  More and more, however, the unwinds are beginning to realize that they are cogs in a much larger machine.  To have a hope of bringing it to a halt, they'll first have to discover who is running it.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: 

This is a phenomenal series.  Start with the first book, Unwind, but be sure to have this sequel on hand.  It deserves every bit as much attention as The Hunger Games, though its controversial subject matter means it probably won't be hitting the big screen any time soon.  The world Shusterman's created seems eerily possible.  He paints a picture of a United States so bitterly divided that compromise becomes a matter of mutual discord rather than cooperation.  Given the recent behavior of the U.S. Congress, this seems less and less like fiction.  Interspersed with the narrative are clips from public service announcements and web searches, some of which were created for the book, but some of which are real!  I won't spend much time discussing the plot and structure of the novel itself; it's hard enough to avoid spoiling the first book in a series, but trying to discuss the second without giving anything away is nearly impossible.  I will say that despite the possible development of a Hunger Games-esque love triangle, Shusterman acknowledges that his characters are deeply complex and each has a multitude of motivations.  A possible exception is Starkey, an escaped unwind with ambitions of his own who seems a bit single-minded.  From religion to politics, commercialism to news media, and education to family dynamics, the scope of the culture Shusterman presents is broad and largely fair minded.  There is no black and white in this book.  Everything is an uncomfortable shade of grey, but it takes the idealism of youth to determine just where the line between right and wrong lies.  This is a spectacular book for story alone, but for readers willing to consider it a little more deeply will find plenty of food for thought.

Feed

Title: Feed

Author: M. T. Anderson

Publisher: Candlewick Press (February 2004)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Science Fiction

Length: 308 pages

Synopsis:  For Titus and his friends, it was just another day on the moon, a spring break vacation that wasn’t turning out to be as thrilling as they’d hoped.  The only bright spot is Violet, the strange, beautiful girl that Titus can’t believe he’s had the good fortune to meet.  When he convinces her to come along to a club that night, their lives are turned upside down by the touch of a hacker.  Like everyone in this future America, the teens have been implanted with a chip that allows a constant feed of entertainment, commercials, and information directly to their brains.  The brief disconnection from that feed caused by the hacker gives Titus and his friends a glimpse into what a world without the feed might look like, but when their connection is restored, no one gives that world a second thought.  No one, that is, except Violet.  As she and Titus grow closer, he learns that Violet’s discovered a way to subvert the system.  What neither realizes is that in a future where even thoughts are commercial, everything comes with a price.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: 

This book is deeply disturbing.  With nods to classic dystopian tales like Brave New World and Farenheit 451, it presents a future America from the perspective of a future American.  The language is difficult to read at first; instead of relying on the reserved observations of an outside narrator, Anderson sends readers right along with his main character, Titus, and all the linguistic foibles of the internet-overloaded generation he represents.  It’s not just a matter of language, though.  There’s a simplistic way of thinking among these over-stimulated, information-saturated characters that doesn’t seem like too far a stretch considering our current age of Tweets and sound bytes.  There are hints of the decay and disintegration of society, from hordes of cockroaches to ubiquitous skin lesions, but even with infinite access to information literally at the speed of thought, no one seems to be thinking.  The feed thinks for these people, always ready with an ad for every scenario until words are no longer necessary and feelings are all but obsolete.  There are no subtleties to this book, no room for nuance of language as the narrative stylistically mimicks the feed.  Anderson doesn’t pull his punches, either.  This is a dystopian world without the scope of The Hunger Games, but with ramifications every bit as disturbing and, in my opinion, a good deal more likely.  Yes, this book is deeply disturbing, but only if you can unplug long enough to think about it.