Whose Selection?

The Selection by Kiera Cass

New York : HarperTeen, 2013, c2012.

327 p. ; 22 cm. 

I was not planning to read this YA novel, but about two months ago a student returned it and said she loved it and I should read it. So did I have a choice? Not really. 

I can't say I loved the book, but I certainly did enjoy reading it. It was fun. It's kind of a Hunger Games meets The Bachelor - no, seriously! In the fictional world of the hero - 16 year old girl America Singer - there is a post-war county that is a Monarchy where the laws are harsh, poverty is endemic, and the country is divided up by caste - 8s are the lowest and 1s the highest. America's family is a 5. So that's the world she lives in. In this world, instead of a yearly mortal combat competition as in the Hunger Games, there is a once-in-a-generation chance for 35 randomly selected, eligible young women to compete for a chance to marry the prince of the land and eventually become queen - a grand version of The Bachelor. Just being in the competition has status and monetary benefits, and becoming royalty means attaining the highest status there is.

The hero of this tale already has a beloved (a lowly 6!) and only enters the competition to help her family out. But the prince turns out to be a much better person than she had imagined. Through complicated twists, she finds herself wondering who she really does/should love. All this while competing against a selection (sorry!) of the best and worst of competitors. There's love, drama, intrigue and even danger (rebels twice storm the palace where the competition is being held). Do you wonder how it turns out? Well you'll have to read it to find out - no spoilers here. However, I will warn you that the novel ends without resolution as it sets up for the next installment in the series.

Is is a serious read? Nope. Was it a fun read with some nice touches? It was! So if you're looking for a little escapist fun, this might be just the thing.

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia 

New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of Harpercollins Publishers, [2019]

363 p. ; 22 cm.      

To say that Mejia's debut YA novel has gotten good reviews would be an understatement. Booklist gave it a starred review, it snagged an excellent write up on NPR, and other less notable reviews also highly recommended it. 

I think the praise is well deserved for the premise and set-up of the book; the patriarchal world it creates has it's own origin religion story which underlies it's elite family set-up where husbands have two wives: a Primera who is hard-core business, brains, and no-nonsense, and a Segunda who must be gorgeous, entertaining, and ready to bear children.  The elite - a minority in this fictional world - rely on the exploitation of everyone else, an exploitation enforced by police, violence and legal privilege.  Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Which is exactly what makes it a powerful novel.  I also liked the main characters and the first part of the book's world building.  

My only issues with the book are with the plotting of the resistance and with the rushed descriptions of the rebellion.  I just never believed the main character's acts of joining the rebellion. And the major conflicts of violence seemed a bit rushed and confused to me.  

That being said, it's still an enjoyable read and one that should appeal to a lot of different readers.  It's also got an unexpected lesbian romance simmering away at the center which - though rushed to me - is sweet and unexpected.  

Finally the book is written by a Latinx woman and is touches on issues of xenophobia, border violence, resistance, dangers of patriarchy and economic exploitation - so it is very relevant to the times we are experiencing now in the US. Would I recommend it. You bet.

Before the Road

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
New York : Warner Books, 2017, [2000]
345 p. ; 21 cm.

I was pretty excited to learn that the creative duo who brought Octavia Butler's Kindred out as a best-selling graphic novel  has published another graphic novel adaptation of a work by Octavia Butler: Parable of the Sower.  But before reading the graphic novel, I wanted to read Butler's original novel.

I'm so pleased that Butler's work is experiencing a renaissance of late. Her work is powerfully imaginative and touches on so many relevant themes: racism, injustice, violence, social upheaval, displacement, and compassion.  Additionally, her stories are exciting and her writing engaging. Parable of the Sower is no exception. Set in California in the future (2025) there is a lot that is familiar - technological achievements, drug addiction, police corruption, gated communities, poverty, climate disruption, corporate greed, crime and violence - but the negatives are ramped-up to the extreme. Civic institutions - police, fire, and civic institutions - have become worthless, corrupt, and sometimes dangerous, while violent individuals and bands of criminals wreak havoc on small communities that seek to protect themselves with walls and guns.  Out of this maelstrom a small band of refugees looks to create a new society, led by the protagonist of the novel, a young 18 year old woman. She is a mystical figure who wants to start a new religion, Earthseed.

Parable of the Sower reminded me a bit of Cormac McCarthy's The Road which was written long after Butler's novel, but shares some of the same disturbing views of the savagery of human nature. 

I'll be interested to see how the the graphic novel version of this is.  Our library has it and it has been getting excellent reviews.   

If I find a student who is interested in afro-futurism or dystopian fiction, this is a book I'll definitely recommend.

Mild Cover for Real Terror

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
Toronto, Ont. : Dancing Cat Books, an imprint of Cormorant Books Inc., [2017]
234 p. ; 21 cm.

The cover of this book doesn't prepare you for the horrors that await between the covers.  Dimaline's award winning dystopian thriller is a darn good read and I hope it will be reissued with a cover that better conveys the dangerous, terrifying world that confronts the heroes of this tale - a band of indigenous survivors and resisters who are on the move in the middle of this century when global warming has ruined the North American continent, and made Indians once again the hunted targets of white "recruiters."

The recruiters hunt Native Americans in order to bring them into the control of "schools" where they are subjected to cruel and murderous medical procedures aimed at removing their bone marrow.  The idea is that the marrow will somehow restore "dreaming" to the whites who have lost the capacity of dreaming due to the harrows of climate catastrophe.  I like the metaphoric value of the loss of dreaming, but thought it would have worked better if that loss were a symptom that led to death for the whites, since I honestly don't think a loss of dreaming would trouble people enough to hunt and kill others.  Regardless of the plot motives, the recruiters are determined, dangerous and sometimes assisted by Indigenous collaborators.  It's a horrible world. 

This book reminded me of two other disturbing, but excellent books I've read: the historically accurate City of Thieves by Benioff and the dystopian novel, The Road by McCarthy.

I really liked The Marrow Thieves and will recommend it.  It's an added plus that the author is a Metis, Canadian Indigenous author, adding to the diversity of YA collections.  As far as the cover, my main reason for wanting it different is that I'd like to see a cover that tempts more YA readers to pull this fine book off the shelf.

The Hunger Tests

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, [2013]
344 p. ; 22 cm.

Ok, so my title for this post is a little cheeky, but it is hard to read The Testing and not hear many echoes of The Hunger Games.  However, Charbonneau still manages to write a pretty exciting, lethally adventurous dystopian survival tale.  In this series the young people are elites chosen for the "honor" of the annual testing that will decide who continues on to their society's only university where they will be groomed to be the future leaders of the United Commonwealth.  Unfortunately for them, they have no idea just how final some of the testing will be, culminating in a grueling survival trek across hundreds of miles of apocalyptic-war ravaged territory starting at what was - before the catastrophic wars that nearly destroyed humanity - the city Chicago (echoes of Divergent).

I think what makes this novel work is that it is well paced and plotted, and the main character is an interesting, resourceful figure (and female hero).  Like The Hunger Games, the element of trust vs. mistrust between characters keeps things exciting.

I don't think I'll read the next two installments in the series,  but I did enjoy reading The Testing and would definitely recommend it to readers wanting to continue reading exciting dystopian fiction - especially fans of The Hunger Games.

Metal, Wishes, Romance, and Lots of Blood

Of Metal and Wishes by Sarah Fine
New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2015
321 p. ; 21 cm.

I'd give this book a solid B+.  I found it interesting and very readable but not quite as good as I had hoped.  There is a lot to like about Fine's book.  It's setting in a harsh factory-industrial compound rife with brutal working conditions and ethnic tensions are very relevant to current issues around worker exploitation and racial tensions.  The conservative and sexist mores of the world Sarah Fine creates in Metal and Wishes highlights the dangers that girls and women face in the world.

However, like the Kirkus Review writer, I found that the telling of the story was a bit uneven.  The romance between the protagonist Wen and the minority worker Melik is rooted mainly in physical attraction - both characters are clearly striking looking people.  Also the as one review pointed out, the world outside the factory setting is left mostly undeveloped.  Finally some of the gruesome action (people getting shredded by little mechanical security devices) seemed a bit gratuitous.

But given those shortcomings, Fine's dystopian novel is still a pretty engaging read and one that I think some students would enjoy.  With its romance and exoticism and its plot of rebellion and violence it is likely to appeal to both young women and men.

Taste of Ashes

Ashes by Ilsa Bick
New York : Egmont USA, 2012.
465 p. ; 21 cm.

This book continues my trend of generally not being a big fan of zombie or zombie-type books.  I found it interesting enough, and readable - but I never got lost in the book, neither in the plot or in the characters.

Ashes, in a nutshell, tells the story of Alex, the teen protagonist who is recently orphaned and suffering from a terminal brain tumor when the novel begins.  She is out hiking in a remote area of Michigan when massive electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) sweep the planet - killing billions and essentially destroying modern civilization as we know it.  Additionally, the EMPs turned nearly all teens into vicious zombie-like hunters who are fast and smart.  For a good plot refresher, take a look at Bick's website where she recaps Ashes for those about to start in on book 2, Shadows.  

To me, the novel is essentially a teen adventure / romance / melodrama melded onto a post-apocalypse nightmare world with lots of danger, gruesomeness, and skin of the teeth getaways.  If you like that sort of thing, then I think you'll love Ashes.  If not, you'll be like me and think, "Ok, that was entertaining, but I don't think I'll read books 2 and 3."

Like _________ on Steroids

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
New York : Del Rey Trade Paperbacks, 2014.
400 p. : ill., maps ; 21 cm.

I don't know if I would have read Pierce Brown's Red Rising but for a student who recommended it to me.  This student is an exceptional reader who comes to the library, checks out a trilogy of novels (such as the Red Rising trilogy) and brings them back in three or four days - having read them all! Yes, as a middling-fast reader I am jealous.

So I had to jump into the Red Rising series when this student returned them saying, "These are the best."  Did I have a choice?

I'm glad I read Red Rising.  It is a satisfying read.  As Booklist and Library Journal note, it is in the tradition of The Hunger Games, and should appeal to fans of that series.  I especially liked the opening of the novel, where the underground mining world of the main character, Darrow, is developed.  It is a grueling and brutal world of miners on Mars, laboring to harvest an element necessary for the terraforming of the planet. The miners are the Reds, and as the novel develops we learn that world (solar system) they live in is a hierarchy of genetically modified colors dominated by the beautiful and ruthless Golds - with Reds occupying the lowest rung.

The novel quickly moves from the realm of the Reds to a story of rebellion as Darrow is secreted out of his miserable (but meaningful life) and quickly inserted into a shadowy rebellion that aims to overthrow the entire order of the Golds.  From the paced opening, the novel rushes pell-mell into high-tech, high-combat mode with genetically modified beings and a deadly competition among the young adult Golds which will allow Darrow to gain access to the highest realms of power.  And how did Darrow a Red gain access to this elite competition?  Sorry, you'll have to read the novel to find out.

There is a lot of battle violence, romance, intrigue and tight plotting that holds everything together.  But for me, I found it a bit over-the-top, reminding me of how I feel with many contemporary movies--yes, the special effects are awesome and compelling to watch, but I want more finesse and subtlety.  That criticism aside, I would definitely recommend this series to dystopian, survival, science fiction, and thriller novel fans.  It delivers.

No Solution for X

Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
341 p. ; 19 cm.

This is a funny review to write.  I've written two reviews to cover book one and book two of the Southern Reach trilogy, and though I didn't love this final installment in the trilogy, there is a lot to admire and respect in the writing of the book.

In general, reviews of Acceptance have been very good, but I have to join the minority of readers who ultimately found it lacking.

As I wrote before, I really liked book one, and found book two not as compelling.  For me, book three just jumps around too much - each chapter shifts point of view to one of the characters.  I like the idea of the book ending without tying everything up, but I found myself thinking there were just too many unanswered mysteries.  Is Area X a creation of an extraterrestrial alien of some kind?  I think so... How does is transform humans into strange creatures, or clone them, or develop living words and sentences?

I think the strongest elements of Vandermeer's writing is his uncanny ability to convey the breakdown of rational thought and convey the feeling and texture of strange phenomena.  His writing about setting and emotional/psychic states can also be quite lovely.

The title of Vandermeer's last entry in the Southern Reach series seems very much aimed at his readers.  There is much about the mysterious Area X that defies reason, understanding, and answers - and we readers will just have to accept it.

Whether to recommend Acceptance to students or not, I think I will stick with my conclusion to book two.  I will let students know that I really loved book one, but that they will have to decide how far into the series to proceed.

    

Slow Creep

Authority by Jeff Vandermeer
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
341 p. ; 19 cm.     

Last month I reviewed Annihilation, the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy, and now I'm posting a short review of book two - Authority.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but I found that book two - though good - was not quite as enjoyable to me. In this novel, the pace is much slower, as we follow an investigator sent in to head up and straighten up Southern Reach, the thirty-year old research/military/intelligence installation that borders Area X - the bizarre and threatening bio-zone that featured in book one.

In spite of not finding it as compelling as the first book, it is still good and has managed to do something that few other trilogies have managed to do for me - I'm really curious to read the third and final book in the series.  If it is a great conclusion, then book two's slower pace will be well worth it, and I will recommend the whole series to students.  If book three is a disappointment, then I'll still recommend book one, but let students decide whether plowing on through to the end was worth it.

Killer Biology Lessons

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
195 p. ; 20 cm.

Annihilation is a different kind of science fiction, dystopian horror/thriller.  The telling of the story is low key, which makes the occasional violence and unnatural events that much more frightening and shocking.  Furthermore, a lot of the weirdness and creepiness of the novel is achieved with psychological and atmospheric touches instead of theatrical events and plot twists.  In this novel of a research expedition gone awry - people suddenly disappear, the fatal events of past expeditions are gradually revealed, and the biological weirdness of Area X is sometimes directly narrated (a strange plantlike growth that spells out an enigmatic message or a dolphin with eyes that look unsettlingly human).

A lot happens in this short and creepy little novel.  There is hypnosis, strange creatures, government lies, death, and deception.  It works as a stand alone and yet intrigues the reader to continue with the Southern Reach trilogy of which it is a part.  I'm glad to see that the book has received positive reviews and I would recommend it to readers looking for a fresh take on the horror genre.

The Silenced Speak Again

The Silenced by James DeVita
New York : Eos, c2007.
504 p. ; 22 cm.

Someone checking out this book these days might be forgiven for thinking, "Oh, it's one of those books that has jumped on the Hunger Games bandwagon," - you know, brave young teen female hero rebelling against the post-war authoritarian dictatorship, etc., etc.  But DeVita published his novel a year before Hunger Games was published and in his afterword he describes writing the book over the course of six years...    

One of the beautiful things about The Silenced, is that it was inspired by DeVita's discovery and subsequent research into the Hans and Sophie Scholl "White Rose" resistance movement against the Nazis. It gives the novel a poignancy and depth - and hopefully will intrigue some young readers into learning about totalitarianism, WWII, and resistance.

The novel is interesting, exciting and well written.  It is set in a fictional post-war dystopian future where power is wielded by the dictatorial Zero Tolerance (ZT) party.  It is a world of Youth Training Facilities (YTFs), drones, disappeared persons, informants, surveillance and censorship.

The back story to my reading this novel was my discovering that it had been reissued by Milkweed Press.  I was reading the Milkweed Press blog - with an eye toward their poetry - when the post about The Silenced caught my eye.  It's a great story - involving a class of 8th grade fans, a teacher, and even Louise Erdrich! After reading the post, I ordered a copy of the paperback with its much improved cover (see the graphic above), and I'll definitely recommend it.

A Ghastly Gift Worth Opening

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
New York, NY : Orbit, 2015.
438 p. ; 21 cm.

Maybe I'll become a fan of zombie novels yet, after reading this one.  It's a darn good read - creative, exciting, moving, well-plotted, and thoughtful - a real gift of a book.

I love a sci-fi book where the premise is somewhat believable - be it the moon getting pushed into a new orbit or a supervolcano blasting away out in Wyoming - there is something very unsettling about terrifying science fiction that has one foot in reality.  In The Girl with All the Gifts the zombie plague that is the setting for this novel was unleashed by a fungus that really does exist, and really does turn its victims into zombies (fortunately the victims currently are only ants).   So this novel has human zombies that are compelled to eat living humans, but - and here is where the author gets creative - some of the zombies are not full zombies; in fact, these semi-zombies are children who retain the full suite of human emotions, abilities and more (they just happen to also be compelled to eat living humans).

And so the novel opens by dropping the reader into a militarized research outpost where the pitiless Dr. Caldwell searches for a cure at the expense of the inmates of the outpost - the semi-zombie children who are being taught classes and kept more or less as prisoners.  Of course the novel would not be much of a thriller if things stayed at this stage, so inevitably the outpost is attacked, overrun, and only a handful of survivors tries to make their way back to one of the few cities where humans are safe from the zombies because of military protection and rule.  The trip back is an adventure.

However, what puts this novel above the usual zombie, survival, dystopian thriller story are the intense and deep relationships that develop between the survivors on the run - one of who happens to be the potentially dangerous little half-zombie girl, the one with "all the gifts."

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in an exciting thriller (especially a zombie thriller), but who also wants a layered, satisfying, and thought-provoking read.

Feeling Down About Being Wound Up

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
San Francisco : Night Shade Books, c2010.
361 p. ; 23 cm.

"Feeling down" in the title of this post is not meant to be a negative critique of this book, just a description of how its grim view of the future had me feeling (and thinking) about the grim present we are living in.  

Bacigalupi sets his novel in a future Thai kingdom that has survived the collapse of the global carbon economy, survived the ravages of plant and human epidemics sparked by genetically modified organisms, survived catastrophic climate change, and survived the predatory depredations of global corporate raiders.  Quite a future, isn't it?  But will it survive the infighting of factions within its ruling parties, and the attempts of global genetic corporation raiders from the outside?  You'll have to read it to find out!

Notice that I haven't even mentioned the novel's eponymous windup girl, Emiko.  She is probably the saddest and most troubling character in the novel.  A creation of Japanese geneticists, she is one of the "new people" who is meant to be an obedient servant, secretary, assistant and sexual plaything of the male Japanese elite.  Her genetic makeup (along with strict training) compels her to be obedient, and makes her physically stunning.  Unfortunately her "owner" has abandoned her in Thailand where "new people" are hated, in constant danger, and not accepted as having any of the rights of other human beings.  She survives as the grotesquely exploited show-piece of a tawdry strip-club/brothel, but eventually finds herself at the center of explosive events in the kingdom when a foreign corporate agent takes a liking to her.

Bacigalupi has a wild imagination and has done copious research for this novel.  Unlike Ship Breaker, which was clearly a young adult novel, The Windup Girl is an adult novel, but will appeal to sophisticated readers who want to move past The Hunger Games or Divergent for something more complex and weighty.

Robophobia

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson
New York : Vintage Contemporaries, 2012, c2011.
396 p. ; 21 cm.

Robopocalypse picks up a fairly common theme in popular culture - the specter of intelligent machines turning on their human creators.  This has come up in movies such as 2001: a Space Odyssey, The Terminator, and I, Robot.  Wilson writes a tense and informed thriller that picks up at the very end of a cataclysmic war where humans have barely managed to defeat machines with AI that have waged a war of extermination against humanity.  Following this opening, the rest of the novel is a retelling of the events of the initial machine uprising, the ensuing war, and humanity's success in fighting back.  There's a lot of action, exciting plotting, and some gruesome machine-on-human violence (e.g. pluggers - little machines programed to take their sweet, agonizing time boring into humans and drilling away until they reach the heart, where they explode).

Given the exponential growth of computer systems and devices and human dependence on them it is no wonder that people worry about where this technology is taking us.  And it's a question that scientists, such as Stephen Hawkings, and institutions like Smithsonian Magazine, take seriously.  

If you are looking for a fast-paced, exciting tale of dystopian survival - Wilson scores a home run with his book.  With a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon, Wilson writes convincingly of the frightening technological capabilities of interactive machines gone rogue.  There are military droids, assassin "smart" cars, drones, and self-replicating/self assembling machines that nearly succeed in wiping humanity from the globe.  Given the current life/death dependence of human on digital systems (e.g. energy, transportation, finance, military, etc) and the almost limitless spending on "smart" lethal military machines - there is a lot to think about and ruminate over after reading Wilson's book.

My main complaint with the book is that it reads like the novelization of a movie.  Each chapter feels mostly like the set piece of the parts of an action movie - the onslaught, the specific roving bands of survivors, the few "liberated" robots, etc.  If you like that style of fiction you will love this novel.  And if you don't, but like that kind of movie, hold on, because Robopocalypse - in spite of many delays - is still likely to end up as a blockbuster action movie (probably under the direction of Steven Spielberg).

I'll definitely recommend this book to any students who are looking for an action packed dystopian novel.

So-so Dystopia

The Diary of Pelly D by L.J. Adlington
New York : Greenwillow Books, 2008, c2005.
1st HarperTeen ed.
282 p. ; 19 cm.

Tony V runs a jackhammer on City V - just one of the five major cities on a planet colonized by humans long before his birth.  He is working on clearing the city for reconstruction following a war that devastated it.  While working Tony discovers the diary of a girl his age who was in that war. 

L.J. Adlington's novel is creative and clever - the citizens of this world have gills, water is at a premium, there are hints of corporatist totalitarianism and ethnic cleansing - but somehow I just found it not very compelling.  The author of the diary was a young, rich, shallow "it girl" until the civil war started that destroyed her privileged life.  A lot of the novel is the supposed text of this diary, which for me is just too much of the mundane ramblings of this imagined material girl.  The really compelling content of the unraveling of her life and society doesn't come about until the last part of the novel. 

The novel does offer a good starting point for discussing and thinking about civil conflict based on haves and have-nots and on manufactured ethnic conflict.

I read this book due to the glowing teen review of it in VOYA, but I have to agree with Tasha Saecker, of School Library Journal who writes, "The true horrors of what is happening are muted until the end of the book, taking away much of its power. The concept is interesting and the world of Tony V is well rendered, but in the end, the novel disappoints."  Exactly.

Geeky Greatness

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
New York : Broadway Books, c2011.
374 p. ; 21 cm.

This is a great book, one that should appeal to a wide variety of readers.  I'm not a videogamer, but I loved how Cline creates a thrilling, realistic sci-fi adventure story that seamlessly weaves videogaming and videogaming allusions into the text and texture of his novel. Ready Player One is a dystopian adventure, a love story, a paen to geekdom, an homage to 80s pop culture, and frankly a fun and smartly plotted novel.  Not bad!

I found the novel a pleasure to read. It wrestles with the evils of corporatism, the alienation of virtual reality, the pleasures of camaraderie and romance, and the basic human struggle between good and evil.  There is just enough real violence (not much) in the book to keep the reader on edge, and a plot that moves smartly along.  Even for non-geeks, the book has many moments of recognition where the reader thinks, "Ah ha, I know what ______________ he's talking about!" (Fill in the blank with book, movie, videogame, TV show or song depending on the situation.

Cline somehow manages to convey the reality on the online experience, while always the maintaining the more final reality of the actual world - while at times having them almost (almost, but not quite) dreamily/nightmarishly blur closely together.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for an unusual, creative, and thrilling read.  

Alt Control Delete

Slated by Teri Terry
New York, N.Y. : Speak, 2013.
346 p. ; 21 cm.

I found Slated to be a good, but not great read.  I love the plot set-up:  in a near-future authoritarian state young criminals are not executed for serious crimes, but are "slated" - they have there memories wiped and are implanted with a surveillance/control wrist monitor (Levo) that physically requires them to moderate their mood - and will short-circuit their central nervous system if they become extremely angry/violent or extremely depressed.  Upon being released from hospital training/confinement after being slated, the offender is place with an adoptive family. 

But things in Slateland are not what they seem.  Feared secret police / paramilitary agents called the Lorders keep a watchful eye on citizens and it seems likely that not all slated individuals were guilty of any crimes at all.

The story deals with main character Kyla who has a few abnormalities for a slated parolee - she has dream/memories and her Levo doesn't keep her from becoming angry or violent.  In the course of the novel she begins to question her identity and status, all the while falling in love with another slated individual, Ben.

There are some exciting plot developments, and thrilling episodes where Kyla and others are in serious danger, but ultimately the publishing demands for a trilogy, force the plot to turn on too many improbables and the novel ends without any serious resolution.

I think this could have been a great young adult novel - with hints of V for Vendetta and the Handmaid's Tale (the Lorders reminded me a lot of Atwood's "Eyes") - if it had been limited to one volume with tight editing.  But that, of course, would have limited the money-making potential for the publisher, and so instead of a satisfying novel, we are left with a third of a novel - a good third, but still a third.

Bellows and Shrieks

The End Games by T. Michael Martin
New York, NY : Balzer + Bray, [2013]
369 p. ; 22 cm.

If you have any doubts that The End Games has been well-received, check out the praise on T. Michael Martin's website - wow!  I wish I could say I loved this book. I guess I'm just not enough of a zombie fan to completely enjoy the book - though I did appreciate the quality of the writing.  That is a positive trend that I've noticed with many YA books - really top-notch writing across many subjects and genres.

I would agree with critics that the book is very imaginative.  I like how it draws on video-gaming language and knowledge in a way that is thoroughly integrated into the plot.  I also liked the unusual pairing of an older brother with a very young brother who has autism.  The plot device of two characters bound up in a survival/journey ordeal is well traveled (think Huck and Jim in Twain's masterpiece, the father and son of McCarthy's The Road, or the Alex and Darla in Mullin's Ashfall) and is well done here.   But for me, I found several key actions of the plot confusing and overwrought, certain characters almost cartoonish, and just too many actions where I had to suspend disbelief and just accept the improbability. I really found the deranged Capt. Jopek a bit much - his abilities with weapons makes him seem more superhuman than real.  I also just never felt the emotional pull I was supposed to feel with the main character's memories of his troubled homelife that existed before the zombie apocalypse.

But problems aside, the book is fast, exciting, dramatic, action packed, and written with striking and fresh language. It has some gory scenes, but rarely seems written for shock effect. The language is also amazingly free of obscenities, and there is a nice romance woven into the plot with a soft touch.  Not bad for a first novel.  So, if I have a student asking about a good zombie novel - I'll definitely send them looking for The End Games.

Oh, and "Bellow and Shrieks"? Bellows is the name that the main character, Michael, gives to the zombies.  Shrieks?  Well, you'll have to read the novel to figure out that reference.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Map of Perdido Beach as posted on WikiFayz

Gone by Michael Grant
New York : HarperTeen, 2009, c2008.
1st pbk. ed.
558 p. : maps ; 21 cm.

This is the first book of the popular  Gone Series by Michael Grant.  It is a blend of science/paranormal fiction, action, horror, and thriller set in a small beachside California that is suddenly hit by a disaster of fantastic proportions: all persons 15 or older instantaneously disappear, the town is surrounded by a 20 mile radius bubble/force-field that is impenetrable, and - to make matters worse - many humans and animals are beginning to develop physics-defying powers and mutations.  Needless to say, it's a setting for the sorting out and conflict of the best and the worst human behaviors.

First, I should say that the book is VERY readable and entertaining, and moves along at a smart clip with lots of action, intrigue, surprises and hooks.  It is also skillfully written with many moments where the interactions of characters are subtly handled. On his website, Grant writes,

"When they're done with the first book, I want them to need that next book desperately. I want to surprise that reader and scare that reader and make that reader fall in love. In the end I want the reader to put down the book and think, 'Man, that was fun.'"

I think he has succeeded well.  Definitely fun, but for me I won't be hurrying to grab up the next installment - Hunger - in the series.  My main problem with Gone was that the necessity for the "willing suspension of disbelief" is stretched to the breaking point.  I was willing to accept the disappearance of all humans, 15 and up (pretty cool set-up), I was willing to accept the morphing preternatural powers of some of the characters and even the strange forcefield bubble that defines the FAYZ as this little landscape of horrors is called (could it be rationally related to the nuclear mishap referred to in the novel when a meteorite hit one of the reactors and fortunately buried its uranium deep underground?). But when the "Pack Leader" coyote started talking - and when he began communicating with some evil presence deep in the gold mine...well, you get the picture.

My second problem was with the ending.  It seemed rushed, chaotic, and not believable.  There is a scene where one of the "good guys" has a chance to easily kill one of the bad guys - who is truly a murderous psychopath - and just can't do it, alllowing the "bad guy" survives for another day (and another sequel). The ending seemed clearly dictated by the demands of allowing a sequel - and that really drives me nuts.

Complaints aside, I would happily recommend Gone for a student who is looking for a fun, somewhat scary, exciting read.  Especially a student who like long series - this one has five more installments: Hunger, Lies, Plague, Fear and Light - all of which our library owns.