Title: Mockingjay

Author: Suzanne Collins

Genre: Dystopian, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult

Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: August 2010
Hardcover: 390 Pages

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.

Stand alone or series: Book 3 in the Hunger Games series

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the Publisher

Why did I read this book: This final novel in the Hunger Games series is THE most buzzed about YA book of 2010 – of COURSE I was going to read it. I enjoyed The Hunger Games (though felt it was an American, toned-down version of Battle Royale) and was more impressed with the original direction of Catching Fire, so I was hoping for big things from Mockingjay…

Review:

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE HUNGER GAMES AND CATCHING FIRE. If you have not read the first two books in this trilogy and want to remain unspoiled, I highly suggest you look away. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.**

After the dramatic breakout from the Arena during the Quarter Quell, Katniss and a few other victor tributes were able to escape from the Capitol’s grasp, and have taken refuge in District 13. At the end of Catching Fire, Katniss, injured during the daring escape from the Arena, awakens to discover that District 12 is a smoldering ruin, that her friends, mentors and allies have been in on a larger rebellion scheme all along – and worst of all, she awakens to learn that Peeta has been captured by the Capitol, suffering a horrific fate Katniss cannot even begin to fathom. Taken to the subversive and very-much-alive District 13, Katniss gradually regains her strength and health and decides to make one of the most important decisions of her life. She agrees to become the Mockingjay; the face of the rebellion against the Capitol. But she soon discovers that being the Mockingjay is more treacherous than she could have imagined, as she’s used as a pawn in an incredibly dangerous, high-stakes power game between President Coin (of District 13) and President Snow. Though she believes in the rebellion and fighting back the capitol, Katniss begins to question Coin’s tactics – freedom, but at what cost?

Mockingjay is beyond doubt one of the most talked about, most highly anticipated YA releases of 2010 – and with that buzz comes incredibly high reader expectations. With high expectations comes, inevitably, some disappointment. For me, though? Mockingjay was everything I thought was missing from The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. It wasn’t a perfect book (especially given its tendency towards heavy-handed message-hammering), however, it was a meaningful and resonant one. I don’t think the Hunger Games trilogy could have ended any other way, heartbreaking and cruel though this book may be. I loved it.

First, I do want to take an aside to address something I’ve been seeing in reviews across the blogosphere – that is, the issue of reader expectation versus reality. I cannot grade this book according to what I expected or wished it could have been; I can only analyze what actually has been written. And, as it stands Mockingjay IS a hugely different book than its two predecessors – it is a paradigm shift of the Hunger Games trilogy. For some readers, this shift will be disappointing, but for me, it answered my single biggest problem with the series to date: that is, how The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, while enthralling and action-packed, felt sanitized of true violence, terror or tough decisions. There is “danger” in the arena in these earlier books, but there’s never any question that Katniss or Peeta will make it out of the Arena. Similarly, there was no moral quandary, no meaty ethical questioning that takes place in these two prior books – Katniss and Peeta are time and time again bailed out of actually killing friends or anyone in cold blood (imagine, for example how The Hunger Games would have turned out had Katniss been forced to make a decision to kill Rue or Peeta?). In Mockingjay, Ms. Collins discards this simplistic, lite version of violent dystopian horror and inflicts the most dramatic, traumatizing, heartbreaking stuff she could have possibly done to her characters.

People die (I’m talking MAJOR characters).

People are forced to make hard decisions (A preemptive strike? Inhumane weapons? To punish the Capitol’s children just as those of the Districts have been punished for seventy-five years?).

And I personally have to give kudos to Ms. Collins for this shattering of the picture pretty dystopia-lite facade. In books 1 & 2, Katniss has time to worry about which boy she likes. In Mockingjay? All that has to be pushed aside in order to survive a war in which both sides are equally bloodthirsty and driven to insane, destructive lengths to win. If you were looking for drawn out romantic resolution, Mockingjay will certainly not live up to that expectation. I will say that while I loved this shock of ruthless, cold reality – in which main characters are not protected by some magical author bubble that promises that they will be safe, beautiful and sane forever – I do think that the book will undoubtedly lose some fans that have come to expect the lighter incarnations of THG series (again, this is where reader expectation kicks in).

As for the characters, they go through the grinder in Mockingjay, and understandably, not a one of them comes out unscathed. Katniss, our heroine, is injured so often both physically and emotionally tested, that it’s no surprise that she breaks down in this final book. That doesn’t mean Katniss is weak or a shell of her former self – she is defiant and calculating as ever, but she also is forced to grow into a different person in Mockingjay. Finally, she sees the whole picture and understands her role as a pawn in a larger game – Katniss is a tool, a figurehead to be brandished and thrown away when she gets too dangerous, just as Peeta has been. As this shroud of cluelessness falls from Katniss’s eyes, she finally is able to take control of her life and make her own decisions, right or wrong. This transformation in Mockingjay is a dramatic and painful thing, but one I think Ms. Collins handles perfectly, solidifying Katniss’s place as one of my favorite heroines of current YA. Gale, too, blossoms into a different person, hungry for payback and destruction. But, besides Katniss’s arc, it is Peeta’s that is the most shocking and poignant of the bunch (at least, it is in my opinion). I won’t spoil what exactly happens to these characters, except to say that Peeta finally sees Katniss in a different way, forever altering their relationship. It’s an enormous shift, and one that is unexpected but welcome.

While I did love the gloves coming off, so to speak, and the sharp characterizations, I do think that Mockingjay stumbles in the writing department. Mockingjay is undeniably heavy-handed with it’s very clear Messages – the political metaphor (it’s not even a metaphor; the heinous evilness of war is hammered home into readers’ heads with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer), the reality television critique, how absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc. The writing, too, felt repetitive and needlessly explicit. For example, I loved Katniss’s haunting “Hanging Tree” song, but I hated that Ms. Collins felt the need to explain the song – in Katniss’s voice of course – stanza by stanza. Subtlety. Mockingjay could have used some.

That criticism aside, I think Mockingjay was a fitting, beautifully tragic end to a poignant series. Mockingjay isn’t a book about some girl prancing about amidst a thin veneer of danger – this is a book about brutal, murderous war, and how a girl tries to survive, living with the decisions she has made and the blood on her hands. It is powerful, dark, soul-searching stuff, that though incongruous with the first two books, ultimately is all the more admirable because of its grit and pain. I absolutely recommend Mockingjay – but be aware that this is not a book for the weak of heart. Mockingjay is resonant, powerful, and emotionally exhausting – and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter One:

I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather. This is where the bed I shared with my sister, Prim, stood. Over there was the kitchen table. The bricks of the chimney, which collapsed in a charred heap, provide a point of reference for the rest of the house. How else could I orient myself in this sea of gray?

Almost nothing remains of District 12. A month ago, the Capitol’s firebombs obliterated the poor coal miners’ houses in the Seam, the shops in the town, even the Justice Building. The only area that escaped incineration was the Victor’s Village. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps so anyone forced to come here on Capitol business would have somewhere decent to stay. The odd reporter. A committee assessing the condition of the coal mines. A squad of Peacekeepers checking for returning refugees.

But no one is returning except me. And that’s only for a brief visit. The authorities in District 13 were against my coming back. They viewed it as a costly and pointless venture, given that at least a dozen invisible hovercraft are circling overhead for my protection and there’s no intelligence to be gained. I had to see it, though. So much so that I made it a condition of my cooperating with any of their plans.

Finally, Plutarch Heavensbee, the Head Gamemaker who had organized the rebels in the Capitol, threw up his hands. “Let her go. Better to waste a day than another month. Maybe a little tour of Twelve is just what she needs to convince her we’re on the same side.”

The same side. A pain stabs my left temple and I press my hand against it. Right on the spot where Johanna Mason hit me with the coil of wire. The memories swirl as I try to sort out what is true and what is false. What series of events led me to be standing in the ruins of my city? This is hard because the effects of the concussion she gave me haven’t completely subsided and my thoughts still have a tendency to jumble together. Also, the drugs they use to control my pain and mood sometimes make me see things. I guess. I’m still not entirely convinced that I was hallucinating the night the floor of my hospital room transformed into a carpet of writhing snakes.

I use a technique one of the doctors suggested. I start with the simplest things I know to be true and work toward the more complicated. The list begins to roll in my head. . . .

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is thought to be dead. Most likely he is dead. It is probably best if he is dead. . . .

You can read the full chapter online HERE. Also, you can check out author Suzanne Collins reading chapter one aloud below:

(Is anyone a little weirded out that Katniss has a southern accent in Ms. Collins’ reading? Just me? Nevermind.)

Additional Thoughts: Our current Mockingjay 13 District Blog Tour and Giveaway is still up and running – and is ending tonight at 11:59pm (PST).

If you haven’t yet entered for your chance to win a sweet Mockingjay-embossed iSkin, hurry up before it’s too late!

Rating: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: Dust by Joan Frances Turner

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the penultimate stop on the Official Mockingjay 13 District Blog Tour:

Despite this coal mining district’s status as one of the poorest in all of Panem, District 12 has no shortage of guts or glory. For the first time since Haymitch Abernathy’s win decades earlier in the 50th Games, for the first time since the inception of the annual Games District 12 has had not one, but TWO victors emerge from the Arena – Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark.

And, while other districts have shed light on everything from music to the romantic entanglements of The Hunger Games books, we District 12 Tributes bring you a look at the reason why these books are so resonan. We’re talking about the reason for the revolution, the symbol of defiance against the Capitol, the Mockingjay herself. We give you:

I am the mockingjay, The one that survived the Capitol’s plans. The symbol of the rebellion.

~ Catching Fire

A child of the Seam – one of the most dangerous and poorest areas in one of the country’s poorest districts – Katniss has had to fend for herself and for her loved ones from a young age. Following the death of her father in the coal mines and her mother’s subsequent breakdown, Katniss was forced to provide for her family, or starve. At twelve years old, Katniss started to put her name into the dreaded reaping lottery in exchange for tesserae:

Say you are poor and starving as we were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year s supply of grain and oil for one person. You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered four times. Once, because I had to, and three times for tesserae for grain and oil for myself, Prim, and my mother. In fact, every year I have needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping twenty times.

~ The Hunger Games

But even the meager tesserae was not enough to keep Katniss’s family fed and warm. To survive, Katniss learned to become an expert with her bow and arrow, sneaking out beyond the district’s fences to illegally hunt for food (and then to sell or trade some of that food for other goods on District 12’s black market).

For the 74th Hunger Games, when Katniss’s younger sister’s, Prim Everdeen’s, name was called at the Reaping as the female tribute from District 12, a horrified Katniss volunteered to take her younger sister’s place in the Games. Alongside the male tribute, Peeta Mellark, Katniss defied the Capitol by surviving the Arena not once, but twice – managing to stir up a rebellion in her wake.

So, why do we love Katniss so much?

1. Because she’s brave and stubbornly loyal – when her sister is called, Katniss steps in to take her place without a thought in her mind except to protect her family. Throughout the first book, her loyalty to her best friend Gale and her memory of her family is a driving force in the Arena.

2. Because she’s badass – the only Tribute to receive a score of 11 out of a possible 12 using her skills with a bow and arrow, Katniss is has mad skills hunting and trapping. Her survival in the Arena – in the Quarter Quell and the first Games – is testament to that ability to survive, and her determination to fight.

3. Because she is cunning and utterly capable – Badassness only gets one so far, and in order to survive the Games and the Capitol’s machinations, Katniss has not only had to be skilled; she’s also had to be smart, even ruthlessly so, to keep herself and those she cares about alive. Whether that means putting on a girly facade, hiding quietly in the background, or even killing, Katniss does what needs to be done.

4. Because, underneath it all, she has grown from completely clueless, to empowered and in control – in The Hunger Games and to a certain extent in Catching Fire, Katniss was completely clueless of her own worth and effect on people. (See revolution.) But by Mockingjay, she comes full circle – acting for herself, and taking control of a life that has been out of her hands for so long.

Over the course of the two books, Katniss has gone from a girl struggling to keep food on her family’s table to a Hunger Games tribute, victor, celebrity, and leader.

Regardless of where your loyalties lie concerning the romance, at least we can all agree on one thing: Katniss Everdeen is one awesome heroine. In a sea of bland, damsels in distress, existing simply to serve as arm candy for sparkly vampires, the calculating, defiant Katniss, bow and arrow in hand, stands triumphant.

“The question is, what are you going to do?”

It turns out the question that’s been eating away at me has only ever had one possible answer. But it took Peeta’s ploy for me to recognize it.

What am I going to do?

I take a deep breath. My arms raise slightly — as if recalling the black-and-white wings Cinna gave me — the come to rest at my sides.

“I’m going to be the Mockingjay.”

~Mockingjay

About Mockingjay:

The next and final stop on the Official Mockingjay 13 District Blog Tour is at Beth Fish Reads on Monday, August 30th. Make sure to stop by for the chance to enter another awesome giveaway!

Also make sure to check out the official Hunger Games Facebook Page for more HG goodies, and for a list of the other stops on the blog tour to date. You can read our reviews of The Hunger Games HERE and Catching Fire HERE (a review of Mockingjay will be up shortly) – and for those diehard fans looking for what else to read now that the trilogy has come to a close, you can check out our post on Tor.com listing 10 helpful post-Mockingjay recommendations.

Finally, before the giveaway, we’d like to give a gentle reminder to every exuberant Hunger Games fan. Mockingjay officially hit stores on August 24th, and has begun receiving rave reviews. However, in all the excitement we’d like to remind everyone to please be respectful of your fellow readers – please remember to spoiler tag or refrain from spoilers altogether.

Giveaway Details:

For our stop on the tour, we have twenty-five Mockingjay iSkins up for grabs! (Please note, these are just the skins – not the actual iPod/iTouch/iPhones) The contest is open to addresses in the United States only, and will run until September 1 at 11:59 pm (PST). To enter, leave a comment here telling us why YOU think Katniss is an amazing heroine. Only ONE entry per person, please! Multiple comments from the same I.P. address will be automatically disqualified. Good luck!

In order to avoid another site meltdown, we ask that all new entries complete the form below. The same rules apply, and earlier entries will be fed into the same spreadsheet to select a winner. Good luck!

Title: WE

Author: John Dickinson

Genre: Science Fiction, “Young Adult”

Publisher: David Fickling Books (UK)
Publication Date: January 2010
Paperback: 288 pages

Paul Munro must leave Earth. He is sent to a station at the edge of the solar system, that is manned by just four people. There he must find out why certain signals are not reaching Earth.

Before he begins his journey, they remove his World Ear – a tiny communications device that integrates the internet with the brain. And when he reaches his destination, body wasted by low gravity, exiled for life and cut off from all the other humans with whom he shared his thoughts, his companions ask: “Did you consent?”

He cannot answer.

How did I get this book: Bought (via Waterstones UK and downloaded to my B&N Nook. Gotta love the international appeal of the ebook!)

Why did I read this book: I’ll be honest – the first thing to catch my eye with this book was the cover. And then, when I read the synopsis, I was hooked. SO hooked, in fact, that I had to buy the book immediately from the UK (as it isn’t available in the US).

Review:

In a not-so-distant future, mankind has changed. The majority of the human population is interlinked by the World Ear, an implant that allows its user to instantaneously connect with anyone else who is implanted, communicating in a mixture of images, sounds, and even transmitted sensations like touch, scent, or taste. The World Ear has allowed humanity to supersede the individual; it has allowed humanity to be connected in one massive consciousness, with information received and dispersed at the speed of thought.

There is no need for speech.

There is no need for strong emotion.

The World Ear has taken humanity to its next evolutionary stage.

WE is the story of Paul Munro, one man selected by the collective consciousness of the World Ear as a telemetry specialist on an important outpost at the furthest reach of the solar system, dedicated to analyze the gas planet, its moon, and search for any sign of intelligent life. But because of the unique problems posed by the planet and moon, none of the station’s inhabitants can be connected to the World Ear. Our first introduction to Paul is immediately after he awakens from the procedure that has disconnected him from the network – and his abject terror at being utterly alone, mute and almost completely incapable of communication. After his eight year journey (in stasis) to the outpost at the edge of the solar system, Paul gradually adjusts to new life with the three other humans that will likely be his only companions for the rest of his life – May (exuberant doctor), Lewis (imposing commander), and Vandamme (partner to the lost telemetrist and a self-contained astro-geologist) – learning to speak, emote, and interact. As Paul becomes more articulate and self-conscious, he suspects that there is something amiss in his mission to uncover the source of the interference with transmissions to Earth. With his suspicions mounting, Paul is determined to discover the truth at any cost.

This is the first book I have read by John Dickinson, and what a fabulous introduction it turned out to be. WE is one hell of a novel. This is cerebral science fiction at its best, posing ambitious questions and demanding its characters and readers to confront what it truly means to be human. It is one of those books that gets better the longer one thinks about it; processing, digesting, and interpreting the data in every possible way (much like Paul’s “hunter” program). Ever since discovering Stephen Baxter last year, I have been on the lookout for hard science fiction titles that manage to blend human character appeal with the cold, cruelty of space – and WE manages to do just that.

Reminiscent of Baxter’s Titan and of M.T. Anderson’s dystopian SF masterpiece, Feed, WE examines the meaning of humanity, the definition of intelligent life, and the value of the individual in relation to the whole. It is in these quiet questions, asked both explicitly by the characters, and implicitly of the readers, that WE shines. Is emancipation from “the We” (as the characters aboard the station call Earth and the World Ear) a good thing? At what level of connection does the individual begin to become irrelevant? The We is utilitarianism in the extreme, with a new overall consciousness comprised of ALL its interlinked consciousnesses – akin to a giant brain, with each human acting as a neuron, firing signals and interacting with others to produce the desired result. Instead of painting a dystopian future where consumerism runs amok (as in Anderson’s Feed), WE’s future is more quietly menacing – our cult of personality and fixation on the individual falls to the greater good, which sounds fine, doesn’t it? Except in such a society, there is no individual autonomy – just as protagonist Paul is asked by Lewis, “Did you consent?” he is unable to answer.

On a less-nebulous/more-concrete level, the reason why WE is able to provoke such intriguing questions is because the science, the setting, and the characters are impeccably written. From the technical aspects to the science (the space elevator, the limitations of the World Ear, the physiological changes to those in deep space, the temperature and atmosphere readings) Mr. Dickinson appears to have done his homework, working within the parameters of our current understanding of physics and our own solar system (see additional thoughts below for more on that). The images of a distant gas giant and its icy moon are richly – if coldly – detailed, providing a harsh, unforgiving, and evocative backdrop for the novel. On the character level, WE is told through Paul’s observations – effective, since Paul’s communication skills are underdeveloped to say the least, especially in his exchanges with his fellow crew members. In such an unrelenting, isolated environment, these character are a microcosm of humanity – Van, who turns to religion; May and Lewis, who cling to a different hope for the future; Paul, obstinate and determined to uncover the truth. As these characters say in the book, they are the last four humans in existence, differentiated from their siblings on Earth because of their disconnection from the We, their ability to feel acute emotion, and even physically with their low-gravity distorted bodies. It’s a scary and effective picture, with these fragile creatures struggling for life in the most inhospitable of locations. These characters are flawed, genuine creatures that make questionable decisions – and that is part of the beauty of WE. Ultimately, regardless of whether or not Paul and the crew made the right choices, they are able to make a choice, and that is the important thing.

From a plotting perspective, I am loathe to say too much for fear of spoilers – suffice to say that WE is a psychological thriller, with a mystery and a powerful revelation. Though this is more of a quieter, slowly simmering plot, heavy on dialogue and internal reflection and lighter on action, WE may not appeal to everyone (this is no military science fiction novel, so if you are looking for nonstop battle scenes, look elsewhere). That isn’t to say the plotting is poor or the book cumbersome – because it’s not. I devoured WE in a single sitting.

What else can I say? I loved this book. On a final note concerning the genre – WE is a young adult novel as much as, say, The Handmaiden’s Tale or 1984 or The Martian Chronicles (all books that are frequently shelved in the YA section, as well as the mainstream SF or Literature sections). Which is to say, WE doesn’t really fit into the typical, current mold of romance-featuring, adventure filled coming-of-age sort of novel that one might normally associate with YA F/SF (in fact, author John Dickinson has blogged about the mis-categorization of this book). That isn’t to say that WE shouldn’t be read by young adults – rather, it is a book that can transcend age barriers. Yes, neither the protagonist nor any other character in this book is a young adult, but need that be a defining quality for the genre?

How about I put it like this: WE is a mainstream Science Fiction novel that I encourage anyone – of any age – to read. Rife with imposing, challenging questions, WE resonates as one of the best new science fiction titles I have had the pleasure of reading this year.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

He had asked to be alone when he woke. After all, he had reasoned, from now on he would always be alone.

They had told him there would be no pain from the operation. He had looked up the techniques they would use, checked the possible complications and had understood why they had said that. Nevertheless, something in him was surprised to discover that they had been right. There was none. There was only emptiness.

He blinked, automatically holding his eyelids closed for just that fraction of a second that would summon his displays. But no voice spoke in his head. No images appeared, no lists, nothing.

There were no weather reports, news pictures, financial statements, alerts concerning the state of his house or vehicle or the transmission systems that he was supposed to maintain. There were no demands from his supervisors. And there were no personal messages. Like everyone else he always went to those first. But there were none – no loving images, no jokes or pictures, no one wishing him luck or promising to remember him. There was nothing more from Her. There never would be.

You can read a full extract online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Though he never specifically mentions the name of the planet and moon, this all takes place on Neptune (a gaseous planet, furthest in our solar system) and its moon, Triton (I’m pointing this out because I’ve seen a few reviews call the planet Jupiter, probably because of the reference to a Great Dark Spot – which also happens to appear on Neptune) Since I am kind of an amateur astronomy dork (emphasis on amateur), here are a few cool things about Neptune, and its largest moon.

Like Uranus (though smaller) Neptune is a gaseous planet, composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, but as the most distant planet in our solar system and the coldest, it also has an abundance of ice – water, ammonia, and methane. Neptune has thirteen moons, the largest of which is Triton (the moon on which WE’s space station is built). Now the COOL thing about Triton is that it is one of the few moons in our solar system (and the only large moon) that has a retrograde orbit – that is, it orbits Neptune in the opposite direction of the planet’s rotation. And, like our moon, Triton has a synchronous rotation with Neptune – one side faces Neptune at all times. The other cool thing about Triton is that because it has a weirdo tilt, both of its poles take turns facing the Sun – which in turn means, Triton is geologically active (i.e. the moon has volcanic activity and active nitrogen geysers, caused by heating from the Sun). Triton also is one of the coldest objects in our solar system, with surface temperature readings of -235°C (-391°F). (Intriguingly, Neptune itself is frigidly cold, but at its liquid mantle core reaches 5000 Kelvin) The observations we have of Neptune and Triton are from Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to fly by the planet and its moon in 1989.

You can read more about Neptune and its moons on NASA’s Solar System Exploration page HERE.

Rating: 9 – Damn Near Perfection, and one of my favorite novels of 2010 so far.

Reading Next: Plain Kate by Erin Bow

Title: Inside Out

Author: Maria V. Snyder

Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian, Science Fiction

Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publication Date: April 2010
Paperback: 384 pages

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in a planned series

Keep Your Head Down.

Don’t Get Noticed.

Or Else.

I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I’ve got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution.

How did I get this book: Bought (e-version)

Why did I read this book: I’ve read Maria Snyder’s Study books and enjoyed them (Ms. Snyder was one of the first authors we interviewed on The Book Smugglers, waaaay back in the day), so when I learned that she had tried her hand at dystopian YA, of COURSE I had to give it a go.

Review:

Trella is a Scrub – one of the thousands upon thousands of packed-in worker drones that spends the majority of her day – of her life – working in Inside’s great Lower underbelly, scrubbing pipes and airducts to make life comfortable for the Uppers. Trella hates her life and her fellow Scrubs – she hates their stink, their proximity and their teasing. To the rest of the Scrubs, Trella is known as the “Queen of the Pipes,” but that’s no compliment. So, when her only friend Cog drags her to meet the latest Prophet, named “the Broken Man” for his broken and useless legs, Trella grudgingly agrees. The Broken Man claims to know the truth of Gateway – the mythical portal through which Scrubs pass to get Outside after they die – and even more shockingly, he claims to have PROOF of its existence. Trella’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she decides to take the Broken Man up on his challenge and searches the prohibited Upper Levels for his supposed “proof” (in the form of data files on disks). When she does discover the discs, she unwittingly trips an alarm and sets all of Inside on edge. The Population Control Police (“Pop Cops” for short) come tearing after the mysterious Broken Man, and immediately suspect Cog and Trella for their involvement. Under threat of being fed to the Chomper and recycled, Trella decides to hide the Broken Man and get to the bottom of the mystery. For if it means so much to the Pop Cops, the Prophet really must know something about Gateway.

The unwitting leader of a (sort of) revolution, Trella and her world in Inside Out makes for an entertaining, fast-paced read (if a little light in terms of thematics, worldbuilding, or grittiness). There are some aspects of this book that I loved, and felt were accomplished beautifully – the realities of being a scrub and living with thousands of people in a small, enclosed space; the smells of being packed in with so many; the idea of pipes and shoots that need to be cleaned; the hours it takes to wait for food. The basic idea of Inside Out – in which our intrepid heroine looks for A Way Out – is a familiar one, done many times before in recent memory. As such, it’s a little hard for Ms. Snyder to really gain any originality or perspective in this novel – it reads a lot like a kiddie version mashup of Ark by Stephen Baxter, Alex Proyas’ masterful Dark City, and Jeanne DuPrau’s Books of Ember. The good news? I love all of these things. The bad news? Inside Out doesn’t quite pull off anything even nearly as memorable or spectacular as the aforementioned books and film.

As with Ms. Snyder’s Study novels, the writing in Inside Out moves quickly and assuredly – but by the same token, it’s also somewhat simplistic and sanitized. Though Trella’s world is supposed to be gritty and dark and there’s the fear of the Pop Cops and Torture and Being Recycled, these dangers have no urgency. Similar to Yelena in her role as a food taster, even though there’s this background presence of malevolence and danger, it never feels threatening because the characters are so darn nice (and the villains so predictably inept).

It’s like…dystopian scifi for the dieting reader. If Dark City is a hearty, double-cut filet mignon with potatoes and red wine, then Inside Out is a handful of salad with a spritz of (lite!) balsamic dressing. Good…but not exactly satisfying.

Take for example the Pop Cops – I can understand how over years power falls into the wrong hands or stories become corrupted (think City of Ember), but the nefarious Pop Cops seemed a bit too one-note-villainous for my tastes. If the EEEEVIL Captain suspected Trella of so much mischief-making and sheltering the Broken Man, why wouldn’t she either have someone shadow Trella or else detain her immediately? (As opposed to letting her run amok, falling asleep left and right, missing work shifts, etc) And for all that the EEEEVIL Pop Cops are, well, evil, the culmination and ending of Inside Out feels a little too kumbaya.

In terms of descriptions and world-building, Ms. Snyder has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into mapping out the Inside and how such a world would work – as such, her descriptors are strong, and I love the concept of Scrubs and uppers, Trella’s grueling work schedule and the conditions of life for those both in the Upper and Lower levels. In practice, however, the execution of these elements were less compelling. I love the idea of the divide between the Uppers and Lowers, but the ease with which Trella manages to traverse the dividing levels makes it a bit hard to buy that NO ONE has ever done this before (I had the same issue in the study books with Ixia and Sitan being SO different and isolated, when geographically they are basically right next door). I guess the best way to describe my frustration with the plot was how every turning point seemed to develop as a matter of convenience. Trella can’t break into the technologically protected safe in Pop Cop headquarters? Technowizards appear out of nowhere offering Trella their services and unwavering loyalty. They happen to have magical machines that can break security measures without a trace. Even more infuriating was when anytime someone would try to explain the mechanics of these miracle devices, Trella would say “I don’t understand a word your saying” or something to that end, and conveniently leave it at that. I know Inside Out is not hard sci-fi, but passages like this are incredibly infuriating and read as technical shortcuts or cop-outs.

And then, there are the characters themselves. Trella, our heroine and narrator, is likable enough – she’s your classic loner, but with an inflective, sympathetic voice. Trella’s narration is honest and forthright, and readers get a great feel for who she is and can’t help but sympathize with her. But…where the other characters are concerned, no one else is as well fleshed-out as Trella. Each other character has a defining trait – Broken Man is zealous, Cog steadworthy and true, etc – but lack any true depth. And, frankly, the romance element of the novel is pathetic and has all the sexual charge of a tea light. Some of the scenes between Trella and her interest (I’ll keep from saying his name to avoid spoilers even though it’s painfully obvious from the get-go) are cringe-worthily bad. I can only imagine that this is because as a Harlequin Teen title, a romance is a prerequisite and so was sort of half-heartedly integrated into the novel. But, that’s just me – I felt similarly about Yelena and her romantic interest in the Study books, so perhaps it’s just a matter of personal taste.

Despite these sizable issues I had with the novel, I ended up finishing and liking Inside Out. It’s certainly worth checking out for those who aren’t into the heavy stuff and want a more fluffy, light on the facts and grit style SF dystopia. Definitely recommended for younger readers who aren’t perhaps as well-versed with the tropes in this book (or haven’t yet discovered Jeanne DuPrau).

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

A VIBRATION RIPPLED through my body. I awoke in semi-darkness, unsure of my location. Reaching out with my hands, I felt smooth sides arching up and in. My fingers touched overhead. Pipe.

A distant roar caused unease, but with sleep fogging my mind, I couldn’t quite grasp its significance. The pipe’s vibrations increased as the thunder grew louder. Water. Coming toward me. Fast.

I scrambled in the narrow space. My bare feet slipped on the sleek surface of the pipe as I advanced toward a faint square of bluelight emanating from the open hatch. It seemed an impossible distance to reach.

Cogon’s voice in full lecture mode echoed in my mind as the water rushed closer. “Someday, Trella. You’ll screw up and there will be bits of you raining out of the showers.”

I reached the hatch and dove headfirst through the opening, convinced the water rushed at my heels. Landing on the hard floor, I shot to my feet and slammed the door shut. When I finished sealing the hatch, the whole pipe shuddered, then the vibrations calmed as the water returned to its normal flow . The metal cooled under my fingers, and I leaned my sweaty forehead against it, catching my breath.

That was close. Soft bluelight glowed all around the water-filtering machinery. Hour eighteen: I knew by the rush of water. The upper workers adhered to a strict schedule.

I checked my tool belt to make sure nothing was broken and my flashlight still worked. Then I climbed from the ductwork and made my way to level two by taking a shortcut through an air conduit. Traveling through the pipes and air shafts, I avoided seeing my fellow scrubs. But my peace and quiet ended too soon as I opened the vent, swung down and landed in the middle of a crowded corridor, scattering scrubs.

Someone knocked into me. “Watch it!”

“Come to mingle with the lowly scrubs, your highness?” A mocking bow.

Used to curses and hostile glares, I shrugged. The mass of people in the tight corridor jostled and pushed me along. Life in the lower two levels teamed with scrubs at all hours of the week. They moved from work to their barracks and back to work. We were called scrubs because rust and dust were the twin evils of Inside and must be kept at bay; however, scrubs also maintained the network of mechanical systems which kept both uppers and lowers alive.

The scrubs shoved. They frowned. They complained. I hated every one of them. Except Cog. No one hated Cog. He listened. Empathized with tales of misery. Made people smile. A rare occurrence—as rare as a person like Cogon.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: So, you say you’ve read Inside Out and feel like you’re ready for the Major Leagues? (Or at least the minors?)

Give these a try:

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
The World Inside by Robert Silverberg
Dark City (film)
Ark by Stephen Baxter
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Rating: 6 – Good, Recommend With Reservations, although I was waffling between a 5 and 6, ultimately Inside Out is readable and likable enough to save it from “Meh” land.

Reading Next: The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice by Stephen Deas

Title: How I Live Now

Author: Meg Rosoff

Genre: YA/ Dystopian

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (US)/ Puffin (UK)
Publication Date:April 2006 / June 2010 (UK – re edition)
Paperback: 194 pages

“Every war has turning points and every person too.”

Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.

As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone.

How did I get this book: Bought.

Why did I read this book: It has been on our radar for a long, long time.

Review:

I had been waiting to read How I Live Now for a long time now, especially after reading reviews by some of my favourites bloggers (and by a few newspapers too, but who cares about those? I trust my favourite bloggers so much more. Angie even NAMED her adorable child after a character in this book) and finally the time came with YAAM.

It’s not hard to pinpoint what makes How I Live Now such a compelling read: its evocative, atmospheric narrative with its lack of both punctuation and dialogue speech marks and the non-stop-I-can’t-breathe-must-keep-reading pacing more than anything else are what kept me turning the pages voraciously. How I Live Now is not flawless but it is SO beautiful it hurts.

Daisy is our protagonist and narrator. A 15 year old New Yorker who has been sent by her father to live with her late mother’s relatives in England. Daisy recounts her life in England with her weirdly magical cousins, from the idyllic first days gallivanting in the countryside, without adult supervision after her aunt goes on a trip to Oslo, to falling in love with her cousin Edmond. The narrative progresses with the ensuing chaos after England is invaded, the War starts and the cousins are evacuated and separated; the high point is Daisy’s relentless strive for survival alongside her youngest cousin Piper and her attempts to reunite with Edmond.

Once How I Live Now starts, I found it difficult to put it down. Part of this reaction comes from its nonstop narrative. I think the best way to describe is: it reads as though Daisy took a deep breath one day and decided to tell me, the reader, how she lived in those days in England and didn’t stop until she was done. The result is a rapport between the reader and Daisy that is hard to break because the narrative is inviting and intimate.

I also find that is almost impossible to separate plot and character when it comes to this book. I think that both plot and narrative ARE essentially Daisy. And Daisy is, and consequently the narrative as well, self-absorbed and unreliable but also: funny, resilient, compassionate, and spirited. She is a doer and a survivor and among cousins that are almost mythical creatures (they have weird abilities like being able to talk to animals and communicate silently), she is also almost the most REAL one too. She is a force, a propelling force.

I think this quote summarises everything that Daisy is:

“I don’t get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say.

Of course in order to survive, Piper and I needed to have a plan, and I was the one who was going to have to make it because Piper’s job was to be a Mystical Creature and mine was to get things done here on earth which was just how the cards were dealt and there was no point thinking of it any other way. Our major plan, which we didn’t even have to discuss, was to get back together with Edmond and Isaac and Osbert by hook or by crook. So far, I was pretty hazy in the details.”

Does she do it? You will have to read to find out. But know this, the second part of the book is starkly different from the first part and it is heartbreaking and heart-warming and the final lines of the novel are incredible.

There is also an aura of mystery surrounding the story because Daisy is a certain type of unreliable narrator – one who is self-absorbed and won’t look further than its own nose, at least to begin with. And this presents a twofold result.

On one hand I felt utterly frustrated by this. And this is a very personal reaction to the story itself and how Daisy reacts to what is happening around her. A war is looming in the horizon, their country is invaded, the only adult they can count on is gone and yet Daisy doesn’t seem to be asking a lot of questions. Because of that, I couldn’t tell you WHO invaded England, WHEN or WHY. The story also has a certain “old days” feeling – the kids are homeschooled, they live off the farm but it is in fact some point in the near future. There are mentions of emails and mobiles and so I found it hard to believe that these kids would be so naïve and so insulated as to not ask simple questions, especially at their age. Daisy starts a sexual relationship with Edmond and although I have zero problems with the fact that they are cousins, and I actually loved their connection and love story, I do have a problem with how she never thought of contraception (I kept waiting for her to get pregnant).

So this is on the one hand. On the other hand, the fact that the narrative is so destitute of certain realistic details it allows for the story to be stripped down to its bare essentials, to what is crucial: the people and how they survive in times of war. Because of that, the pesky details don’t really matter because all you need to know is how Daisy lived then and how she lives now. And what she has to do to get from one point to another. And THAT my friends is a story worth reading.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

My name is Elizabeth but no one’s ever called me that. My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like is plain, not much there to notice. Even my life so far has been plain. More Daisy than Elizabeth from the word go.

But the summer I went to England to stay with my cousins everything changed. Part of that was because of the war, which supposedly changed lots of things, but I can’t remember much about life before the war anyway so it doesn’t count in my book, which this is.

Mostly everything changed because of Edmond.

And so here’s what happened.

****

I’m coming off this plane, and I’ll tell you why that is later, and landing at London airport and I’m looking around for a middle-aged kind of woman who I’ve seen in pictures who’s my Aunt Penn. The photographs are out of date, but she looked like the type who would wear a big necklace and flat shoes, and maybe some kind of narrow dress in black or gray. But I’m just guessing since the pictures only ever showed her face.

Anyway, I’m looking and looking and everyone’s leaving and there’s no signal on my phone and I’m thinking Oh Great, I’m going to be abandoned at the airport so that’s two countries they don’t want me in, when I notice everyone’s gone except this kid who comes up to me and says You must be Daisy. And when I look relieved he does too and says I’m Edmond.

Hello Edmond, I said, nice to meet you, and I look at him hard to try to get a feel for what my new life with my cousins might be like.
Now let me tell you what he looks like before I forget because it’s not exactly what you’d expect from your average fourteen-year-old what with the CIGARETTE and hair that looked like he cut it himself with a hatchet in the dead of night, but aside from that he’s exactly like some kind of mutt, you know the ones you see at the dog shelter who are kind of hopeful and sweet and put their nose straight into your hand when they meet you with a certain kind of dignity and you know from that second that you’re going to take him home? Well that’s him.
Only he took me home.

I’ll take your bag, he said, and even though he’s about half a mile shorter than me and has arms about as thick as a dog leg, he grabs my bag, and I grab it back and say Where’s your mom, is she in the car?

And he smiles and takes a drag on his cigarette, which even though I know smoking kills and all that, I think is a little bit cool, but maybe all the kids in England smoke cigarettes? I don’t say anything in case it’s a well known fact that the smoking age in England is something like twelve and by making a big thing about it I’ll end up looking like an idiot when I’ve barely been here five minutes. Anyway, he says Mum couldn’t come to the airport cause she’s working and it’s not worth anyone’s life to interrupt her while she’s working, and everyone else seemed to be somewhere else, so I drove here myself.
I looked at him funny then.

You drove here yourself? You DROVE HERE yourself? Yeah well and I’M the Duchess of Panama’s Private Secretary.

Verdict: Even though I was slightly frustrated with the not-knowing, I fully appreciated the book for what it is: an engrossing, beautiful story of survival and love.

Rating: Ana: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: The Thief Taker’s Apprentice by Stephen Deas

Title: The Other Side of the Island

Author: Allegra Goodman

Genre: Dystopia, Post-Apocalypse, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult

Publisher: RazorBill
Publication Date: September 2008
Hardcover: 272 Pages

From New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman comes a post apocalyptic novel about love, loss, and the power of human choice.

Honor and her parents have been reassigned to live on Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea. Life is peaceful there—the color of the sky is regulated by Earth Mother, a corporation that controls New Weather, and it almost never rains. Everyone fits into their rightful and predictable place. . . .

Except Honor. She doesn’t fit in, but then she meets Helix, a boy with a big heart and a keen sense for the world around them. Slowly, Honor and Helix begin to uncover a terrible truth about life on the Island: Sooner or later, those who are unpredictable disappear . . . and they don’t ever come back.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did I get this book: Bought

Why did I read this book: I’ve had this book on my TBR for a while. I’m always on the lookout for a new post-apocalyptic/dystopian novel, especially of the environmental persuasion. The Other Side of the Island definitely fits the bill!

Review:

In the years after the world has been ravaged by global warming, pollution and war, peace has emerged in the form of Earth Mother. With her message of Peace, Love and Joy, Earth Mother has brought blessed Stability to a flooded, weather-beaten world. With color-overlayed skies, her ‘ceiled’ and controlled islands remain safe from savage, fierce weather wrought by climate change. While Earth Mother’s world is Safe and Secure, it also has a number of very strict rules to ensure that it stays that way. Each family is allotted a single child, and must pick that child’s name from a preselected list with a birth-year first letter. Each child must pass rigorous examination in order to attend school. Curfew is enforced every night, credits are assigned books are regulated, and everything is ordered. Predictable. Safe.

Except, when ten-year old Honor and her parents move to Island 365, relocated from their home in the wilder, uncharted Northern Islands, they don’t fit in. Honor’s name, with its silent “H” stands out to her classmates, as does her general deficiency in knowing Earth Mother’s official prayers, creeds and history. Honor’s parents break curfew amongst other rules – singing to their daughter, and even having an unheard of second child.

Honor, desperate to fit in and be liked by her fellow classmates, is ever-conscious of how awkward she and her family are – how they do not fit in the predictable, desirable mold as decreed by Earth Mother. Dismayed and frightened by her parents’ behavior, Honor decides to take matters into her own hands before she becomes a complete pariah at school…but then the unimaginable happens. Her parents are Taken, leaving her an Orphan. No one knows what happens to people that are Taken, but Honor and her friend and fellow Orphan Helix are determined to find out.

I’m getting into these environmental catastrophe/apocalyptic dystopias, and Allegra Goodman’s The Other Side of the Island certainly fits the bill. An effective story about control, misinformation, and – as with many dystopias – the best intentions gone awry, this novel is certainly readable, if familiar. The future world, Earth Mother’s paradise, is a highly regulated, efficient machine. Sky color is regulated by projectors, and humans are controlled and steered away from unpredictable behavior – the implication of course being that human unpredictability leads to pollution, conflict and the demise of the planet. The question, then, posed by The Other Side of the Island is how far must humanity, must the planet itself be controlled? And at what cost? The extent of Earth Mother’s control is chilling stuff – chunks cut from books, names preselected and approved, citizens drugged and regulated to the point where art, different methods of counting, and songs are outlawed.

Although the novel makes a gallant effort at a range of motifs – familial love and duty, for example – many aspects came across as implausible and heavy-handed. Borrowing heavily from other novels (substitute Earth Mother for Big Brother), The Other Side of the Island doesn’t really come close to the moral complexity or subtlety of its numerous predecessors, such as Lois Lowry’s The Giver or George Orwell’s 1984. The convenience of memory-drugging citizens is a bit too simplistic for my tastes, and certain key details (Helix discovering lost pages of The Wizard of Oz or The Bridge to Terabithia, or Honor bizarrely learning to count in base two only to later use that as a secret code) are just a little too fortuitous for my liking. From a logistical standpoint, I found myself unable to suspend disbelief with just how solidly Earth Mother’s grip was on society (drugs can only get you so far), and certain details – tree climbing octopi? beacon colored/projected sky? – were left distractingly unexplained and, well, implausible. In addition, the novel does show a tendency towards Class Lesson Info Dumping (on a level almost as notorious as Teri Hall’s The Line), which is a HUGE pet peeve. And, from a thematic standpoint, the conflict and the dividing line between the “good guys” and “bad guys” is similarly blatant. Ultimately, the central thematic conflict boils down to a question of SAFETY versus LIBERTY (see the Notable Quotes excerpt below), which translates to a simple message (i.e. Totalitarianism BAD! Freedom GOOD!). Complexity? Not so much a huge priority in The Other Side of the Island.

That said, the greatest strength of the novel lies in Honor’s characterization and narrative. As with most young children, Honor’s first priority when she and her family move to Island 365 is to fit in – even if it is at the expense of others. Her desires to make friends, to be Predictable and Good (note the caps) are the impetus behind the first half of the novel, and when it all goes to ground after Honor inadvertently draws attention to her family’s…unconventionalism, Honor’s journey of realization and her resolve to discover the truth is a gripping thing. I loved the reversal here, because so often it is the parents that are the slaves to the system, too old or too afraid to break from the shackles of their dystopian societies. In The Other Side of the Island, however, Honor is the one that is too scared to rebel, and it is her parents that fearlessly rise up. It’s an interesting way to turn a trope on its head, though I’m not certain ultimately how effective it is (as I’m a fan of the immutable, brave young hero).

The bottom line: The Other Side of the Island is a solid read. It’s nothing particularly new or memorable, but with an interesting reversal of character and a fittingly chilling totalitarian society, this is a book certainly worth at least checking out for the dystopian fan. Younger readers or those not so deeply-versed in the dystopian canon will most likely enjoy this book more fully.

Notable Quotes/Parts: No official excerpt is available online, but here’s a snippet from the book (that I think highlights the style of the novel pretty well):

“The Flood destroyed the ancient world,” Honor recited to the class. “Where there were continents, only islands are left. Where there were archipelagos, only mountainous islands remain. After the Flood, and the wars that followed, Earth Mother organized the Great Evacuation to the remaining islands in the Tranquil Sea. Then the Earth Mother rose up and spoke. ‘What is freedom? What is choice? Words and only words. We need Safety. We need shelter from the elements. Without shelter all other words are meaningless.’ Earth Mother pledged to Enclose the Polar Seas. She pledged to establish New Weather in the North and reclaim the islands there, one by one. Finally, she pledged to make a new world in the islands of the Tranquil Sea, islands she numbered and named the Colonies.“

Additional Thoughts: Author Allegra Goodman does have an interesting piece at her website about the backstory for The Other Side of the Island – which you can read HERE.

Rating: 6 – Good, Recommend with Reservations

Reading Next: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Title: Salt

Author: Maurice Gee

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Young Adult

Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Publication Date: October 2009
Hardcover: 272 Pages

In a dangerous world, Deep Salt strikes terror into the heart of everyone. Hari lives in Blood Burrow, deep in the ruined city of Belong, where he survives by courage and savagery. He is scarred from fighting, he is dangerous and cruel, but he has a secret gift: he can speak with animals. When his father, Tarl, is taken as a slave and sent to the mine known as Deep Salt, from where no worker ever returns, Hari vows to save him. Pearl is from the ruling families, known as Company, which has conquered and enslaved Hari’s people. Her destiny involves marriage that will unite her family with that of the powerful and ambitious Ottmar. It soon becomes clear that the survival of their people depends entirely upon the success of Pearl and Hari’s mission.

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in the Salt Trilogy

How did I get this book: Review Copy from BookExpo American 2010

Why did I read this book: When I was at BEA this year, the quiet, unassuming Orca booth caught my eye – and when I saw Salt (and its sequel, Gool) sitting so prettily on the display table, I knew I had to have it. A post-apocalyptic/dystopian YA novel with a speculative fiction bend? Of COURSE I wanted it!

Review:

In a future world, rules are simple and finite. The Company reigns supreme. Commoners live squalid, wretched lives in the Burrows, fighting amongst each other and feral packs of rats and dogs for food. And, when the Whips come for choosing, those that go to the Deep Salt do not ever return. When Hari’s father Tarl is caught in a Whip raid and rebels against his enslavement, he is sentenced to serve in Deep Salt much to Hari’s horror. Sworn to save Tarl, Hari tracks him through the harsh wilderness that isolates the Burrows and will travel to Deep Salt, tempting death itself to save his father. Along the way his path collides with Company heiress Pearl and her maid Tealeaf – Pearl fleeing her engagement to the much older, cruel Ottmar (incidentally, the owner of the Deep Salt mine). Though the simpering, spoiled Pearl and the spiteful, violent Hari hate each other on sight and seem to have nothing in common, they are more similar than they could ever believe – because both share the almost unheard of human ability to communicate and control others with their minds. United in their quest to understand their shared ability, Pearl’s former “maid” and mentor Tealeaf takes the two young adults to her people, the Dwellers. The fate of their world and every living creature is at stake, and Pearl and Hari are the key to survival.

New Zealand author Maurice Gee takes on a grim dystopian future with Salt; a socio-political and environmentally-conscious post-apocalyptic (and radiation-ravaged) landscape. And, in a subgenre churning out post-apocalyptic/dystopian novels at an ever increasing rate, you might be asking yourself, what if anything distinguishes Salt from the pack? (As a huge fan of the dystopian and apocalyptic, I find myself asking this question more and more, too) Well, gentle reader, I’m here to tell you: Salt is indeed a memorable, old-school SF dystopian adventure-type novel, by virtue of Mr. Gee’s sharp characterizations, gritty storytelling, and – this is completely subjective – the sense of reader nostalgia Salt provides.

If you’re familiar with our reading preferences, you’ll probably know that I am a sucker for dystopias and end-of-the-world stories. And, if you too are a fan of these types of books, Salt will undoubtedly strike a familiar chord with you. Salt is definitely what I’d consider “old school” in the subgenre – there’s the danger of nuclear proliferation, the deadliness of radioactive decay, and the mutations that these isotopes can wreak on all living things. The immediate influence (with Hari and Pearl’s ability to communicate across species’ with their minds) is with another author from Oceana – that is, Isabel Carmody’s Obernewtyn series. (Of course, I love the Obernewtyn series, so this is a good thing.) Also, Salt is reminscent of Patrick Ness’s more recent Chaos Walking books – the knife of the father, the violent, hateful young boy, the rich and pampered (but competent and totally awesome) young girl. Heck, there’s even a sort of Lord of the Rings sensibility with the irresistible power of Deep Salt as a weapon – those who possess the power are almost possessed themselves, refusing to give it up. These similarities, however, are not pointed out to imply that Salt is derivative in any way – rather, it’s a familiar (dare I say, classic?) premise and it’s testament to Mr. Gee’s writing skill that he manages to own this familiarity and create something entirely new and memorable from it. Also, on the note of familiarity, from a world-building perspective there is a twist to the landscape – it’s unclear if this book is set in a future New Zealand or perhaps on some alien planet altogether. I’m pulling for alien world (given the existence of the indigenous strange slitted-eyed and triple thumb jointed Dwellers, like Tealeaf – but that’s just speculation). From a plotting perspective, Salt is a fast paced adventure-quest sort of book, following two protagonists as they journey across unforgiving terrain and hone their powers, as they also discover the truth of Deep Salt. The idea of Deep Salt, the all-too familiar weaponization of this deadly element, well, it is terrifying stuff. There’s also a slight supernatural element too – the “voices” that the Dwellers and certain characters hear, the telepathic powers. These are all tantalizing plot seeds with a whole lotta promise in future books.

But the most remarkable thing about Salt lies with its dual protagonists. I *LOVED* these characters – albeit for slightly twisted reasons. Neither Hari nor Pearl are exactly likable characters. They are not “destined” to save the world, and they certainly are not big-hearted or innately courageous, selfless characters beneath a thin veneer of purported “badness” (like so many other protagonists, especially in this subgenre seem to be). Hari is seriously messed up and tries to kill Pearl many, many times . Similarly, Pearl is spoiled, vain and condescending – but what’s cool about this is that both characters truly are products of their upbringings. On the grimy streets of the Blood Burrow, Hari has had to fight for everything he has; in the gilded Company palaces, Pearl has had a life of luxury, and although she’s had Tealeaf’s guidance and training, she still is a self-entitled princess. Both of these characters grow used to each other as a matter of necessity, not choice, and it is all very believable. This forced growth works because they aren’t two characters that automatically understand each other and want the same selfless goals – rather, they are selfish, flawed people that discover they need to work together because so much is at stake. And, in comparison to older characters much more set in their ways, the younger protagonists’ growth is ever more impressive and poignant.

There’s so much in this book – the aforementioned character growth, the horrific journey into Deep Salt itself (seriously monstrous Rats of Unusual Size!), the wars for power. Salt is gritty and it’s grim, and it doesn’t pull any of its punches. It doesn’t attempt to make pretty or condense its characters or its message – while the Company is the oppressor of the moment, it is clear that anyone in power, lowborn or Company born alike are equally ruthless and spiteful – and I admire that. The way this book ends, the tantalizing seeds planted in this novel (especially concerning the slightly supernatural aspect) have me eager for more. You better believe I’ll be back for Gool very, very soon.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

The Whips, as silent as hunting cats, surrounded Blood Burrow in the hour before sun-up and began their sweep as the morning dogs began to howl. Rain fell heavily that day, washing the streets and overfl owing the gutters. The gray tunics of the Whips turned black in the downpour, their helmets shone like beetle wings, and the sparks that jumped from their fingers as they herded their recruits fizzed and spat like sewer gas.

They took ninety men, some from their hovels, some from the ruins, and prodded them, howling, to the raised southern edge of People’s Square, where the paving stones had not yet slipped into the bog. Brown water lapped the buildings on the northern side. Cowl the Liberator, crying Liberty or Death, raised his marble head above the rushes. Mosquitoes bred underneath his tongue.

The Whips, as custom required, paused in their herding and mouthed “Cowl the Murderer” before going on.

A cart with a covered platform and canvas aprons at the sides and back waited on the stones. A clerk sat at a desk under the awning, with a sheaf of forms under his palm and a quill pen, curved like a blade, in his other hand. His uniform was paler than the Whips’ (and dry) and had the Company symbol, an open hand, blazoned on the tunic. He frowned at the rabble herded in front of him and drew his head back in a vain attempt to avoid the stench of rotting shirts and festering bodies.

“Sergeant.”

“Sir?”

“Is this your best effort? My orders are two hundred fit for work.”

The Whip sergeant swallowed and seemed to shrink, knowing he and his men would earn no bonus, even though they had chased hard, sparing none. “They fled like rats. They have holes and runways everywhere.”

“And your job is to know them and bring me no starvelings, no half-dead.”

“They pretend, sir. This one”—he prodded a nearnaked man, making him whimper—“he ran like a marsh deer. Now he stoops. And this—he has swallowed dirt. It makes him vomit.”

“Enough. I know their tricks. Count.”

“Ninety, sir.”

“Silence them. And the women too.”

The Whips raised their electric hands and shot fizzing bolts into the air, and the howling stopped. Outside the ring of guards, the wives and children of the ninety fell silent. Some kept their mouths wide in cries they dared not utter, while others wept soundlessly, their tears mingling with the rain, which fell more heavily, making puddles around their unclad feet.

The clerk stood up under the awning. “Men,” he cried, widening his mouth in a smile, “this is your great day. You are chosen to serve Company in its glorious enterprise. Daily we grow in comfort and prosperity. In this you share. Who serves Company serves mankind. Raise your voices now and give thanks.”

The men closest to the Whips made a few ragged shouts, “Long live Company. Praise to Company,” but somewhere a woman shrieked, “Murderers!” And from the ruined buildings round the square cries like echoes came from doorways and windows: “Murderers, thieves!”

The clerk was untroubled. His speech was part of procedure, and the shouts and cries, and the howling and tears, were something he expected on recruiting days.

He sat down and yawned behind his hand.

“Examination,” he said.

A Whip prodded a man into the space before the cart, and then, with his gloves turned off, stripped off his clothing with raking sweeps of his iron hands. The man, young but stooped and thin, stood shivering in the rain.

“No need for the hose today,” said the clerk, but he yawned again while his underlings sprayed the man’s body with disinfected water from a tank behind his wagon.

“Name?”

“Heck,” the man whispered.

The clerk took his quill and wrote on a form.

“Deformities?” he said to a third underling who had stepped down from the cart.

“None.”

“Sores?”

“Multiple. Feet and legs.”

“Condition?”

“E.”

The clerk ran his eyes over the man’s body. “You bring me trash,” he said to the sergeant.

“Sir, he is fast. He goes like a mud-crab. He will fit in narrow places.”

“Perhaps.” The clerk frowned at Heck. “Saltworker,” he said.

“No,” cried the man, falling to his knees. “Not Salt. I’ll go to the farms. I’ll go on the ships. In the name of Company, I pray you, not Salt.”

“Brand him,” said the clerk, tossing a marker to the underling.

The man beckoned his helpers for the acid bucket and the brush. He fitted the metal marker on Heck’s forehead while a Whip held him still, and swiped the brush across the stencil. “Who joins Company joins history. Your time begins,” he intoned, ignoring Heck’s screaming as the acid burned.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Book 2 in the trilogy, Gool is scheduled for release in the US this October. Here’s a peek:

The gool cannot be seen, not properly, but Xantee, Lo and their friends sense its evil presence. It lurks in the jungle in rock clefts, an enemy from …more The gool cannot be seen, not properly, but Xantee, Lo and their friends sense its evil presence. It lurks in the jungle in rock clefts, an enemy from outside nature. And now, a fragment of Gool holds Hari by the throat, draining the life from him. They can hold it back with the force of their minds, but for how long?

Xantee, Lo and Duro set out on a perilous mission to find the Dog King Tarl, Hari’s father, and the ruined city of belong. Can he help them find the source of the gool? Will they find it in time? And do they have the strength to destroy the mother Gool and rid the world of this life-sucking force?

Gool, the thrilling sequel to Salt, is another extraordinary fantasy adventure from the master writer Maurice Gee.

You can read an excerpt from Gool online HERE.

Verdict: Thrilling, thoroughly engrossing and delightfully gritty, Salt is the start of a promising new trilogy from Maurice Gee. Absolutely recommended, especially for fans of the dystopian/post-apocalyptic persuasion.

Rating: 7 – Very Good

Reading Next: The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman

Welcome to our first guest post in the YAAM – 2010 edition. As part of our celebration of all things YA, we tried to invite authors from different genres to write articles about the books and the genres they write. Michael Grant is the author of the Gone books (so far with three books published: Gone, Hunger and Lies), one of Thea’s favourite Dystopian series. Please give it up for Michael Grant!

The GONE series. Oh, good lord, why did I write the GONE series? Approximately 550 pages each. Times 6. Which — if you can believe the calculator app on my laptop — totals 3,300 pages.

Would this be a good point to mention that I don’t touch-type? Two fingers. Left and right index. Occasionally, if it’s something exciting like an action scene, I can use the middle finger on my right hand. Middle finger on my left hand? Totally useless. I swear that finger contributes nothing and I hate it.

Where was I?

The GONE series (GONE, HUNGER, LIES so far and PLAGUE, DARKNESS and LIGHT still to come,) has a simple premise: one day for reasons no one understands at first, everyone 15 and over disappears from the town of Perdido Beach, California. The kids left behind soon discover three salient facts: they are trapped inside an impenetrable dome, some of them are mutating in fairly disturbing ways, and your 15th birthday doesn’t necessarily call for a party.

So, one day I was thinking about 1) LOST, 2) THE STAND and 3) This half-formed idea I have called GUNS AND DRAGONS. (How great is that name? Guns are cool, Dragons are cool. Put them together and it’s a case of coolness squared.)

And one last thing: I was thinking about Disney movies. What do Disney movies always do? Aside from recycling dance sequences? And going with the cute animal sidekick? They kill Mom. Little Mermaid? Dead mom. Bambi? Dead mom. Aladdin? Dead mom. Nemo? Mom was a Filet-O-Fish sandwich some kid ate half of and then threw out.

A slight digression: Everyone said when THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG came out that the cool thing was to have an African-American heroine. That was cool. And about damn time. But the amazing thing, the knock-me-down Disney revolution was: mom was not dead! An actual mother. In a Disney movie!

So, anyway, LOST, THE STAND, GUNS AND DRAGONS and every matricidal Disney movie ever made. That’s what I was thinking about. And suddenly, I had it. A group of characters cut off from the outside world, in an existential struggle between good and evil, with the laws of nature rewritten, and not just dead moms, not even both parents dead, but everyone over the age of 15 wiped out!

Wiped out! Gone! By Michael Grant.

With GONE I started with an over-the-top fantasy/science fiction/horror premise, and then wrote it with absolute seriousness and all the realism I could bring to it. The basic idea may be crazy, but the way it plays out is realistic. My characters aren’t all good or all bad. (Well, except for Drake who is definitely all bad.) My characters make mistakes, do stupid things, do mean or short-sighted things. Some go well beyond short-sighted all the way to evil. But I work at making sure all the characters stay real — even when that frustrates readers.

The result with GONE is a very dangerous, violent, intense world. Because although good often triumphs over evil, it takes its sweet time doing it. There is love and romance in GONE but it’s not the main focus. Characters in GONE are mostly paying attention to finding food, avoiding being eaten by killer worms, avoiding being purged by sick-minded bigots and dealing with the fact that Drake is walking around with a ten foot tentacle where his arm used to be. When they have the time they have romance. But their first priority is survival.

So, it’s a mix of the hot and the horrifying. Kind of like the Megan Fox – Brian Austin Greene marriage.

I have a simple goal as a writer. I don’t care much whether I get good reviews. (Although I do get them.) And I don’t care whether I hit bestseller lists. (Although, it’s kind of cool when I do.) I really set out every day to write a story that makes readers stay up all night reading.

The thing that is special about science fiction, fantasy and horror — and GONE fits somewhere on that spectrum — is that in addition to keeping readers up all night neglecting their homework, I get to think about some interesting ideas. In GONE we deal with politics: who’s in charge, who should be in charge? And there’s just a bit of philosophy: what is true and how do we know it? And moral issues: are right and wrong always the same or do they change when circumstances change?

There are even sneaky bits of history. A rather obscure case is that of Zil and Human Crew. Zil is modeled on the rise of Hitler. Zil’s main supporters are Turk, Hank, Lance and Antoine. Without going into too much boring detail, I’ll say that each is based on a member of Hitler’ inner circle. (One easy clue: Lance means spear, and spear in German is speer. As in Albert Speer, the handsome, well-educated architect who gave Hitler some glamor.) In LIES Zil and Human Crew even stage a sort of burning of the Reichstag, the German parliament building, which was burned by the Nazis who then tried to use the ensuing chaos to take power.

Of course I don’t really expect anyone to see all that while reading the book, but in the course of doing my main job — frightening readers and keeping them up all night — a science fiction sort of premise gives me an opportunity to write about some interesting issues, and I hope make readers think a little about good and evil, and the ease with which good people can cross the line.

It adds a level of interest for me as well as for readers. And that makes it fun to use those two (and occasionally three) fingers to type those 550 page manuscripts.

A quick note on where the series stands. I have completed book #4, PLAGUE. (Which sounds like a happy book, doesn’t it?) And I have just crossed the 200 page mark on DARKNESS.

And still my left middle finger contributes nothing to the writing process. Although it occasionally helps me when I’m driving in traffic.

Thank you Michael!

Last year, we had two days of Bleak Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Book Goodness – and since we love this genre so much, we decided to have a reprisal this year (this is the first of a few dedicated days!). Today, we take a look at some new titles about the end of the world as we know it…

Birthmarked by Caragh O’Brien

Publisher: Roaring Book Press
Publication Date: March 2010
Hardcover: 362 Pages

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixt…more After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.

Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society. As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she herself is arrested and imprisoned.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, BIRTHMARKED explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in a planned series

How did I get this book: Bought (at The Strand during BEA!)

Review:

Since her childhood, Gaia has trained with her mother to become the next midwife for her district, just outside the protective walls of the Enclave. And one fated night, sixteen-year old Gaia finds herself in an exciting position – while her mother is busy with another birth, Gaia is summoned to attend to her very first solo delivery. And, as it is her first delivery, the baby that is born must be Advanced to the Enclave. The laws for midwives are simple and absolute: the first three healthy children they deliver each month are to be advanced (that is, given over) to the walled-off Enclave. These children are the lucky and the blessed, for advancement means that the will never want for food nor suffer the hardships of life outside the fortress’s walls. But despite the happiness this means for those first children, their birthmothers are, understandably, distraught. As Gaia heads home from delivering her very first advanced child, she finds a grim, cold soldier awaiting her return. From his cruel lips, Gaia learns her mother and father have been taken prisoner by the Enclave under suspicion of keeping some sort of illegal records – though Gaia has no idea what her law-abiding parents could have done to anger the Enclave. Gaia also learns that she has inherited her mother’s job as the midwife of her district. Terrified for her family, Gaia struggles to find a way to do the impossible – to understand why her parents were taken, and to breach the Enclave’s walls and rescue her parents before they are executed.

Birthmarked is Caragh O’Brien’s first novel, and while highly anticipated, is something of a mixed emotions read. The idea of Birthmarked is unquestionably solid, blending familiar elements of post-apocalyptic dystopian novels such as the question of reproductive problems and rights from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale, or environmental catastrophe and the ‘walled-off haves and have nots’ trope from books such as Julie Bertagna’s Exodus & Zenith or Carrie Mac’s Triskelia trilogy. I love the idea of a future society ravaged by climate change and genetic short-sightedness, and a totalitarian style of government struggling to separate the rich from the poor generations after their walls have gone up. And yet, for all this…there are significant problems with Birthmarked that kept me from enjoying it with full abandon.

I’ll start with What Worked: the backstory of the world (three hundred or so years after global warming has reached a critical point), the overwhelming lack of genetic diversity within the Enclave (leading to prevalent defects, such as hemophilia), the anger of people being told whom they can or cannot marry, and the separation of the poor outside the walls (as their children are taken inside as valuable commodities).

I liked all of these things…but at the heart of Birthmarked is a central fallacy; there is something that almost ALL dystopian novels have in common, a commonality – one at which Birthmarked fails spectacularly.

The book lacks a Truly Villainous Government.

Heck, what the Enclave is doing is by no means ideal – but it’s hardly the stuff of despicable oppression. The Enclave taking children from outside its walls and giving them safe, secure new lives does not exactly an Orwellian Big Brother make. Furthermore, when we finally learn why the government has its panties in a twist over Gaia’s mother’s records, the central conflict of the novel disintegrates completely. Had the Enclave been taking the advanced children and harvesting them for organs or stem cells or mulching them down for food or something equally horrifying, perhaps the story’s conflict might have made a bit more sense. But as it stands…these babies are brought in to help society keep going. Is it ideal? No. Is it EVIL OMG, THE HORROR! THE DYSTOPIAN HORROR?! Not really.

Furthermore, the whole central conflict of the story falls apart under scrutiny – WHY on earth wouldn’t the government keep records of every child? WHY the death penalty and ire at Gaia’s mother for marking advanced children with a tattoo and keeping track of them? It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never before read a book so focused on hemophilia as the downfall for society – and on that note, in addition to hemophilia wouldn’t there be other physical manifestations of generations of inbreeding? If the recessive traits of hemophilia can be expressed in female children, wouldn’t there also be some other recessive trait mutations or disfigurations (of the jaw, of the cranium, etc) present? In a culture so focused on appearances – Gaia is turned away from being advanced because of a burn scar on her face (which IS NOT A GENETIC DISORDER, I might add!) – shouldn’t people look a little more funky and less beautiful, given the rampant inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity?

This is to say nothing of the exposition-y info-dumps along the way (the explanation of chromosomes – using chrome spoons, oho! – for example was particularly cringe-worthy), the superficial examination of certain characters (again with the midwifing/healer women roles!?), the sheer predictability of the plot, or – most infuriating of all – the incredible convenience with which heroine Gaia is miraculously bailed out every time she is in Mortal Peril or has a Big Problem to solve (e.g. Gaia is about to be sentenced to death…BUT LUCKILY a handsome, high ranking soldier saves her life!; Gaia’s luck has run out and she needs to find her mother before she is executed the next day…BUT LUCKILY a handsome soldier takes pity on her and helps her out!).

Suffice to say, I was a little underwhelmed with Birthmarked. That said, the book wasn’t all bad. I certainly finished the book eagerly enough, and certain parts of the story shone – Gaia’s childhood memories, her flashbacks of her father, in particular, stood out as memorable scenes. Although I didn’t much care for the “romance” (which felt stilted, contrived, and utterly predictable), I did like the relationship Gaia had with her family and other characters throughout the book – and Gaia herself is a gutsy heroine with admirable muster (if not the sharpest tool in the shed).

There’s enough to keep readers engaged with Birthmarked, but there are so many excellent post-apocalyptic dystopian novels out there, that it’s hard to truly recommend this one. But, I’ll stick around for book 2, in hopes that the books grow on me.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

In the dim hovel, the mother clenched her body into one final, straining push, and the baby slithered out into Gaia’s ready hands.

“Good job,” Gaia said. “Wonderful. It’s a girl.”

The baby cried indignantly, and Gaia breathed a sigh of relief as she checked for toes and fingers and a perfect back. It was a good baby, healthy and well formed, if small. Gaia wrapped the child in a blanket, then held the bundle toward the flickering firelight for the exhausted mother to see.

Gaia wished her own mother were there to help, especially with managing the afterbirth and the baby. She knew, nor mally, she wasn’t supposed to give the baby to the mother to hold, not even for an instant, but now the mother was reaching and Gaia didn’t have enough hands.

“Please,” the young woman whispered. Her fingers becko ned tenderly.

The baby’s cries subsided, and Gaia passed her over. She tried not to listen to the mother’s gentle, cooing noises as she cleaned up between her legs, moving gently and efficiently as her mother had taught her. She was excited and a little proud. This was her first delivery, and it was an unassisted delivery, too. She had helped her mother many times, and she’d known for years that she would be a midwife, but now it was finally real.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Rating: 5 – Meh

POD by Stephen Wallenfals

Publisher: Namelos
Publication Date: April 2010
Paperback: 192 Pages

POD is the story of a global cataclysmic event, told from the view points of Megs, a 12-year-old streetwise girl trapped in a hotel parking garage in Los Angeles; and 16-year-old Josh, who is stuck in a house in Prosser, Washington, with his increasingly obsessive compulsive father. Food and water and time are running out. Will Megs survive long enough to find her mother? Will Josh and his father survive each other?

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in a planned series (I hope?!)

How did I get this book: Bought (during the same trip to The Strand!)

Review:

They appeared one morning, materializing in the sky after an impossibly loud sound heard by every person on the planet – hovering black orbs.

Pods.

The spheres hang in the clouds, suspended by technology unknown to man. More than just ominous shapes in the sky, the pods also prove deadly – disintegrating any humans that attempt to step outdoors and interfering with all methods of communication. With no way to organize, no news, no electricity, and with food running out, humanity faces a bleak future.

Told through the chapter-alternating perspectives of two young adults, POD follows sixteen-year old Josh and twelve-year old Megs. In a small town in Washington, Josh, his father, and their dog are closeted in their home and Josh struggles with the rules and responsibilities his father imposes to help keep them alive. And Megs, alone in a Los Angeles parking lot, hides and scavenges for food and water from parked car to parked car, desperately avoiding the men that have taken control of the hotel and its guests.

And all the while, the pods stand silent vigil…

Unlike Birthmarked, POD left me one seriously satisfied customer. Told from two very different – but equally harrowing – voices, POD rocks. Almost cinematic in its delivery (the image of black alien spherical ships zapping errant humans reminiscent of classic Sci-Fi drive-in B-movies), POD teases readers – though the alien invasion is imminent, not a single extraterrestrial is actually seen. With his apocalyptic invasion, instead of focusing on the sensational, Mr. Wallenfels focuses on the thing that makes the best apocalypse novels successful – the human element. The choice to use two young adults in different locations surviving the same (presumably) global event is ingenious and incredibly effective. Alternating each chapter with Josh and his deteriorating father with Megs and her desperate situation os the “parking lot pirate,” the story builds to a terse, high level of tension.

Which brings me to the reason why POD works so well – in addition to its expert plotting and storytelling technique – that is, because of the strength of its detailed, wholly genuine protagonists. Both characters go through very different ordeals, both do some serious growing up in the span of 28 long, grueling days. Josh’s narrative begins as somewhat spoiled and self-centered, as his biggest problems are initially centered around whining about his father’s strict food rationing methods and cold, cruel indifference to their family dog. While he deals with the injustice of only eating a meal a day, Megs (left behind by her mother in the hotel parking lot before the appearance of the ominous pods) hides from terrifying, violent men with guns, all the while hunting for any food she can – stale popcorn kernels and forgotten lint covered candies stuck between car seats, and subsisting off of ketchup packets and a soup of gunky, tepid, melted cooler water. From the first moment we meet Megs, its clear she’s a perceptive, cuttingly smart young girl – she may only be twelve, but nothing slips by her (as seen in the strained relationship with her mother). While Megs is the character who faces the most overt danger (and yeah, ok, I preferred her gutsy, defiant narrative over Josh’s), Josh also goes through hell of a different, more introspective sort. The relationship between the teen boy and his father is incredibly genuine, running the gamut of emotions from resentment to respect to love – and the fate of this family is harrowing stuff. I don’t want to spoil anything, so just trust me when I say that Josh’s tragic, haunting story is no walk in the park, even though it initially may seem so, especially in contrast with Megs’ adrenaline-fueled game of hide and seek from some very, very bad people.

What else can I say about POD? It’s touching, it’s fast-paced, it’s terrifying, and – like the best freakin’ apocalypse novels – it’s all about flawed, real characters. I loved every second of this book, and I can only hope that Stephen Wallenfels is hard at work finishing up the trilogy. (There’s something of a cliffhanger ending, and I need to know what happens next. IMMEDIATELY.)

Notable Quotes/Parts: Two excerpts, one from each narrator. From Josh:

We share a look but say nothing.

Birds fly from branch to branch. A gust of wind sends leaves skittering across the patio floor. Storm clouds gather and darken a turbulent sky. The sun feels like it’s going down instead of up. Sirens pierce the moment. It’s an ambulance and a fire truck, somewhere close. This wakes Dutch. He sees us, jumps to his feet, presses his nose to the glass.

I reach for the door.

“Josh, wait!”

The urgency in Dad’s voice stops me cold. He’s looking up. I follow his eyes. The air is sucked out of my lungs. My jaw hangs open, numb.

Dropping down through the clouds, silent like a spider on a web, is a massive black sphere.

It’s a mile away at least, but even from this distance it dwarfs the neighborhoods below. I brace myself for the horror of watching houses crushed with people inside. But it stops well above the trees, maybe five hundred feet off the ground. It hovers soundlessly.

Dad whispers, “Sweet Jesus.”

He points to another one, farther to the east. Then another.

Within half a minute the entire horizon is dotted with black spheres. Dutch scratches at the glass, oblivious to the scene playing out above his head.

The spheres begin to rotate.

Then, as if on cue, they all start emitting jagged beams of white-blue light. The beams split off into smaller and smaller ones, like twigs off a branch, some into the air, most striking the ground. Two cars are speeding down a fire road on Horse Heaven Hills. A flash of light and they’re both gone. No explosion, no ball of flame. Just gone.

Dad whispers, “Sweet Jesus.”

From Megs:

It finally stops. My whole body is shaking. The car feels like it’s spinning and my ears hurt. I don’t know what to do, so I bury my head in my sleeping bag and hope that it doesn’t happen again.

Where’s Mom? Why me? Am I sick? All these questions are flooding my brain—when there’s another noise.

Sirens.

Not just a couple. Hundreds. I sit up and look around. There are flashes of light, like lightning only without the thunder. Even though Mom said not to, I turn on the radio. It’s just static, no matter what button I push. Then people start running into the parking garage.

First one or two, then a wide-eyed flood. Men in pajamas, women in nightshirts dragging their sobbing kids. A guy wearing only a T-shirt and boxers unlocks the blue car next to ours. He comes out with a gun, sprints to the exit ramp, and starts shooting at the sky. He disappears in a flash of light. Cars start, engines roar. People are trying to leave and other people are trying to stop them. A mom with her two young kids, a boy and girl, run toward the SUV. The little girl drops her stuffed rabbit. She tries to go back, but her mother picks her up and throws her crying into the SUV.

Horns mix with the sirens.

A man trips and falls to the ground.

Cars drive over him like he’s a speed bump. I yell at them to stop, but no one hears me. Then the sound of breaking glass, tearing metal—more people screaming. Cars screech down from the upper levels and ram into cars on the ground floor. The SUV is trying to back out of its parking spot. A speeding truck clips the rear fender, crashing it sideways into another car. Now it’s trapped. Moments later the mom and her kids spill out the passenger side. Blood is streaming down the little girl’s forehead. The mom looks toward the exit. Cars drive out, one after another, and disappear in flashes of light. A red BMW slams on its brakes. It skids halfway into the street and disappears. The mom picks up the girl and they run for the lobby door. The boy stops and turns like he forgot something, but his mom grabs his arm and pulls him away. His face is twisted in a scream.

I smell burning rubber, engine exhaust, gasoline—and then I feel something.

A warm wetness spreads inside my sleeping bag.

Tears stream down my face, they smear on the glass. I feel like I can’t breathe. The sounds outside swallow up everything, even the air. I curl up into a ball on the back seat and close my eyes so tight they hurt. But I still see it—cars driving over the fallen man.

And those awful blinding flashes.

You can read a full excerpt from both of these characters online HERE.

Rating: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Title: The Line

Author: Teri Hall

Genre: Dystopia, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult

Publisher: Dial
Publication Date: March 2010
Hardcover: 224 Pages

An invisible, uncrossable physical barrier encloses the Unified States. The Line is the part of the border that lopped off part of the country, dooming the inhabitants to an unknown fate when the enemy used a banned weapon. It’s said that bizarre creatures and superhumans live on the other side, in Away. Nobody except tough old Ms. Moore would ever live next to the Line.

Nobody but Rachel and her mother, who went to live there after Rachel’s dad died in the last war. It’s a safe, quiet life. Until Rachel finds a mysterious recorded message that can only have come from Away. The voice is asking for help.

Who sent the message? Why is her mother so protective? And to what lengths is Rachel willing to go in order to do what she thinks is right?

Stand alone or series: Book one of a planned series

How did I get this book: Bought (at The Strand in New York over BEA week!)

Why did I read this book: I have been looking forward to The Line ever since I first heard about it last year – seriously, it was one of my most highly anticipated debut novels of 2010 – and as a review copy remained elusive, when I saw it at The Strand I knew I had to buy it.

Review:

Well, you know that saying about not buying into the hype? I really should have kept that in mind when reading The Line – a book that went from one of my most highly anticipated reads of 2010…to the most disappointing read of the year.

Young Rachel lives on The Property with her mother, employed at the will of the home’s owner, Ms. Moore. During the day, Rachel completes chores in the greenhouse, and by night she studies under the watchful, shrewd eye of her mother. But Rachel is young and, as the young are wont to be, curious. While her mother teaches Rachel everything she needs to know about the Unified States, separated by an invisible, un-crossable Line from a wild terrifying realm known simply as “Away,” Rachel hungers to explore, especially since The Property lies right inside the mysterious Line itself. Ignoring the warnings and cautionary lessons from her mother, Rachel is fascinated by the Line, and when she finds a communication device and then meets a young man on the other side of the invisible barrier, she knows that there must be more to Away than she has been told.

Sounds good, right? So what, then, was so disappointing with The Line, you may be asking? I loved the concept of the book, as told in the blurb, but the story (and its execution) was…well, not good. I’ll be frank: the problem with The Line is fundamental. The book TELLS instead of SHOWS.

Allow me to elaborate: while The Line is (ostensibly) Rachel’s story, the book is weighed down by an incredible amount of exposition (in the unimaginative form of “history lessons” and lengthy discussions between mother, daughter and patron Ms. Moore) – and even worse, the most interesting parts of the story are those of mother and her employer Ms. Moore, related entirely in conversation to Rachel. The direction of the book is stilted; the worldbuilding revealed only through dry, uninspired, ridiculously contrived history lessons. That’s not a metaphor, by the way – every detail about the world in which The Line is set in is related literally in history lessons, from mother to daughter. You can imagine this becomes grating after a while. The most infuriating thing about the book, however, is how there are some truly awesome ideas and plot seeds in this book – the story of Rachel’s mother as a resistance member fighting against the Big Brother-like oppression of the government and the tragic love story of Ms. Moore and her lost love, come to mind. These ideas were so intriguing that I found myself wishing that instead of Rachel’s tepid story was her mothers or Ms. Moore’s instead. We learn about these other women, and I couldn’t help but wish we got to experience these stories firsthand, instead of having been told about them in long, uninspired (and, frankly, contrived) conversations. Even when Rachel’s adventure picks up a little steam, the book ends abruptly before any serious momentum is gained.

The characters are marginally better – but again, I wish the book followed the adventures of Rachel’s mother and Ms. Moore, living through them instead of being related to Rachel in long, boring monologues. This writing method didn’t allow anyone to truly gain dimension as a character, and even Rachel herself is a bit off – she’s supposed to be somewhere around 14 years old, but based on her reactions and mentality, it seems she seems more like someone in the 10-12 age group.

The writing is simplistic, and while the ideas in the book (the genesis of the Line, the concept of “Away” and the controlling nature of the government) sound great, they are never taken any further than that surface-grazing level.

There are a number of other failings with the book (the unimpressive, thinly veiled choice of replacement nouns – “Unified States” for the United States, “digims” for photographs, etc). And, well, I’m kind of out of things to say simply because I don’t really care. That’s it. Maybe this will work for readers looking for a brief, simplistic, exposition-laden dystopian novel. But given the sophisticated, exceptionally well-written YA dystopian books out there (The Hunger Games, Chaos Walking, etc, etc) – The Line is utterly insignificant and undeniably forgettable.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

It seemed to Rachel that she had always lived on The Property, though this wasn’t true. Her mother, Vivian, said they moved there when she was three years old, but Rachel didn’t remember. To her, The Property was home. She felt as comfortable there as she did in her own skin. But she knew that for most people, The Property was too close to the section of the National Border Defense System known
as the Line.

The National Border Defense System enclosed the entire Unified States. The section called the Line was only a small part of it, but because of its history it was infamous, at least locally. Strange things were supposed to happen near the Line; dangerous things. Even though there hadn’t been a Crossing Storm in over forty years, people still thought of the Line as a bad place to be near. There were whispers about Away—the territory on the other side of the Line.

There were whispers about the Others.

To read the first chapter of The Line, go HERE.

Additional Thoughts: If you’re a newbie to the dystopian YA genre, seriously, please check out these novels first:

The Book Smugglers’ Guide to Dystopian & (Post-)Apocalyptic YA

Verdict: If you’re looking for a story rife with exposition; if you’re looking for characters content to tell a story rather than experiencing one; if you’re looking for compelling plot seeds that never come anywhere close to fruition; if you’re looking for a simplistic, bland dystopian Young Adult novel, look no further. The Line is for you.

If you want depth, sophistication, or a book that provides a wholly and truly immersive reading experience…well, look elsewhere.

Rating: 4 – Bad, but not without some merit

Reading Next: Crossing Over by Anna Kendall