Divergent-- Veronica Roth

So in just two week, I had SIX PEOPLE ask me if I'd yet read Divergent. I had the ARC sitting on my shelf gathering dust for months, and I decided that last weekend was the time to read that book. Um, ya. I started it at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and didn't put it down until I finished it. The last book I read cover to cover like that was Graceling, and you all know how much I loved that book...

Anyway, back to Divergent.

In distopian, futuristic Chicago, there are five factions that govern the city... think Hogwarts houses but more, well, dystopian and YA. Each faction is completely dedicated to a particular virtue, and the people who live within that faction focus on nothing else. Tris, who was born in the selfless Abnegation faction has to work every day to be as completely selfless as the faction demands. When youth turn 16 they get a one-time opportunity to choose whether to stay in their faction or switch to a new one. They undergo a grueling test that lets them know which faction they are naturally inclined toward. Tris is special... she is divergent. This means that there are several factions she would fit within, but she must keep her divergence a secret... but no one will tell her why.

When Tris chooses to leave Abnegation and join Dauntless, the faction that honors bravery over all other virtues, she has to master a huge amount of physical skills (think Katniss/Hunger Games). Although she's invigorated by her choice, when it becomes clear that the factions aren't functioning in the sociologically perfect way they were designed, action must be taken. And it doesn't matter that she's the tiny "Stiff" from Abnegation... Tris is Dauntless now, and she feels the weight of her realm and people's survival-- both Dauntless and Abnegation-- heavily on her shoulders.

This is the first in a trilogy. I'd recommend it to youth who enjoyed Hunger Games, Matched, and The Maze Runner.

Blast of Books III: Journey into Distopia

For some reason, I found myself in a black hole of dystopia last week... and this is what I read:

The Gardener-- S.A. Bodeen (May 2010)

Mason is your average teenage boy growing up in a small town. His father is out of the picture, his mother struggles with alcoholism and works nights at the local nursing home, which is owned by TroDyn. Determined to make something of his life, Mason decides to apply to TroDyn, a local scientific corporation that will pay for his schooling if he agrees to work there afterward. But when Mason visits his mother at work one day, and sees that she is not watching over senior citizens but catatonic teenagers, Mason learns there is more to TroDyn than he originally thought. All at once, he is caught up in a whirlwind of science he never thought possible, and falls hard for a beautiful girl who needs someone to project her.

The Gardener is almost more sci-fi than dystopia, and as you can tell by the cover, the Gardener isn't growing flowers in the greenhouse. And though there are massive plot holes and the character development is poor, Bodeen does a good job of showing how an altruistic idea can have sinister results when science is more highly valued than human life. I didn't enjoy this book as much as some of the others in this post, but I think teens will like it if they are looking for a fast paced sci-fi/dystopia.


Matched-- Ally Condie (November 2010)

It's the not-so-distant future and Society rules. Literally. All personal choice has been removed, and because of that, there is no war, conflict, or confusion. There are 100 approved poems, 100 approved paintings, and no one knows how to write (only type). Your career is chosen for you by your aptitude and social standing. And most importantly, your spouse is chosen for you. It's like an arranged marriage, but instead of loving families deciding what's best for their children, Society uses logarithms to scientifically make matches. And somehow no one questions this.

Cassia cannot wait for her matching day. She is thrilled when she is matched with Xander, the boy who lives next door and is her best friend. This is extremely rare and she is grateful to already know her match. But when she pops in the data disc that has more information about her match, it's not Xander's face that she sees. Instead she sees Ky, the mysterious boy who is always on the fringes. Society acknowledged the glitch in the system and tried to smooth things over. Yet other bits and pieces of Society's rigorous hold are crumbling and Cassia finds that she can't just live a quiet subdued life anymore.

Nomansland-- Lesley Hauge (June 2010)

I'm a sucker for retold mythology and from the cover and synopsis of this book, I thought this would be a retelling of the story of the amazon women... you know, the women who cut off a breast so they could use their bows and arrows better, and spend their lives on the back of a horse. However, it's vaguely inspired by that myth and really focuses more on the post apocalyptic plot.

Something has happened and the world we currently know is gone. A group of women survive the apocalypse on an island and recreate society to survive this new reality. When we meet Keller, the world we live in now is a distant memory. She lives with other women in a strict, almost archaic feeling society and is training to be a tracker. When her friend Laing finds an old dwelling (most likely from the around our current time, so maybe 2020 or so?) buried under the earth, she and the other girls are introduced to a society they never knew. They try on lipstick, look at beauty magazines, and marvel over barbie dolls. But when the women governing their society discovers their secret hideaway, the results are nothing less than tragic.

This World We Live In--Susan Beth Pfeffer (April 2010)

This is book three in The Last Survivors series (the first being Life as We Knew It) and because of this, I won't spend too much time on it. Basically This World We Live In takes the characters we met in the first two books and places them in a situation where their worlds unite. I would think fans of the first two books will be happy to read this, to me it felt uninspired and kind of like an afterthought.

Incarceron-- Catherine Fisher

There's been a tremendous buzz about this book on all the YA lit message boards. Heck, the publisher sent my library district a total of FIVE advanced reader's copies, and they were handing them out like candy at a recent library conference. Did it live up to the hype? Honestly, not for me, but I would be very interested in hearing what you thought of it, and I really think teens will like it.

Incarceron is a mysterious world full of dark thoughts, half mechanical animals and people, and criminals who rule. It's a prison, and an experiment that went terribly wrong. Finn can remember nothing but Incarceron, but has a tiny tattoo that leads him to believe he was once a part of a world on the outside. At this point life outside of Incarceron is just a myth that most people don't believe in, and even though prophets have told tales of escaping, actually leaving seems impossible... until one day an artifact appears that allows Finn to connect with a woman, Claudia, who seems to be on the outside.

Claudia is trapped in a political intrigue and is set to marry a jerk of a prince at any moment. Her father is the warden of Incarceron, which no one has actually seen, or knows of it's location. When her tutor finds a way for Claudia to communicate with someone on the inside, she finally finds a way to escape her fate.

This book will appeal to teens who enjoy books like Hunger Games or The Maze Runner... but in my opinion, both of those books are superior to this one. It just didn't grab me the way Hunger Games did, and it felt a bit heavy-handed to me. Also, it's going to be a series, and to me it seemed like a story that should have been told all in one book.

Nothing-- Janne Teller

This book broke my brain.

Seriously, it was amazing. And I almost *never* say that about a book on this blog.

One day, 7th grader Pierre Anthon stood up in the middle of class and announced "Nothing Matters." He then leaves behind his normal existence, climbs a plumb tree and doesn't come down. Ever. He lives there and spews existential philosophy about nothingness, life, and death to his bewildered classmates.

His classmates, including Agnes who narrates this story, decide to prove to him that some things in life DO matter. They neglect their every day life and indulge themselves in this pursuit with the single-minded fervor of youth. At first it starts simply; the 7th graders decide to create a pile of meaningful items (later dubbed the Heap of Meaning) and then fetch Pierre Anthon out of the tree and prove to him that life does have meaning by showing him the pile. Each teen demands a meaningful donation from another... Agnes must toss in her favorite pair of shoes, another teen her crutches. But quickly the Heap of Meaning demands more sinister and macabre donations, and in the end the teens simultaneously refute and prove without a doubt Pierre Anthon's assertions about life.

Other reviewers are calling this a modern Lord of the Flies. I can see that correlation, and it also called to mind Cormier's The Chocolate War. I loved the stark way this book was written, the unabashed bluntness, the pace, and way it made me think philosophical thoughts not revisited since college. I think this book will appeal to the teen reader who likes stark, thought-provoking novels. While the characters are 7th graders, I do see the older teen appreciating this book more than the younger teen. Adults are going to either eat this up or blast it for being inappropriate for youth.

Nothing was originally written in Dutch and published in 2008, and was translated into English and published in America in February 2010. I wonder if it's eligible for the Printz, because if it is, I will be nominating it for Mock Printz for sure!

The Maze Runner-- James Dashner

So is it just me or is everything a trilogy these days?

Apparently this book, The Maze Runner, is the first in a trilogy... and I'm moderately excited about that.

This first book in the series was a major page-turner. It begins with Thomas waking up in an elevator-like box in pitch-black-darkness. He can't remember anything about himself but his name, and although he can't see, he can tell that he is traveling upupupupup...

When Thomas arrives at the top, and the door to the box is opened, he is greeted by a Lord of the Flies-esque crew of boys who reluctantly show him the ropes. Apparently they all arrived the same way, no one remembers anything about their history, and they all only know their first names. In order to survive, the boys have created a mini-society and each person has an important role to play. Thomas is most intrigued by the maze runners, the kids who literally run through the maze that surrounds their domaine each day looking for an exit. To make things even more impossible, the walls to the maze move multiple times a day and there are strange murderous creatures roaming around waiting to kill you (think Labyrinth minus Bowie and puppets, plus puss filled robot mosquito thingies).

But one day the box opens up to reveal a girl, the first in two years... and she can telepathically communicate with Thomas. All she knows is that she is harbinger of the endtimes, and the boys must make an escape right away or they will all die.

This is a quick-read and I predict it will be pretty popular with boys. It's reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games, and other books where the adults are gone and the kids survive on their own. This book will be published on October 16, 2009.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth-- Carrie Ryan

Imagine that your whole life was confined to a medieval-like village surrounded by a series of gates and fences that confine the Unconsecrated to the massive forest beyond. What would it feel like to know that the survival of your village rests on your ability to reproduce, as fire and disease has lowered the birthrate dangerously? What would life be like if the entire existence of the remaining human race was sheltered within those fences... would you try to escape? Would you risk becoming one of them, one of the Unconsecrated, just to see what else is out there?

Mary has lived her entire life within these confinements. When her mother becomes one of the Unconsecrated and no man speaks for her, Mary is required to live with the Sisterhood (a group of holy women who protect the village from the Unconsecrated who live in the Forest of Hands and Teeth just beyond the fences). Mary wants more than confinement and religion in her life. She wants love, she wants freedom, and more than anything, she wants to see the ocean. Mary grew up listening to the tales her mother wove about the world beyond the fences, and it's thoughts of the ocean that help Mary manage her burdens.

But one day, the Unconsecrated break through their barriers and Mary is forced to make a choice: should she stay and fight or flee to discover freedom for the first time in her life?

Oh, and what are the Unconsecrated? They're ZOMBIES of course!

While I won't say this is the finest piece of literature I have read, there is something about this book that really stuck with me. I find that although I finished it three days ago, certain aspects of the plot keep jumping to mind. I think teens will like it, and it's a little bit fantasy, a little bit horror and a great, classic tale of zombie. I would recommend this to teens who like futuristic dystopias, zombie books, or tales of unrequited love.

To be published April 2009.