1) "Red Rising" by Pierce Brown
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Book One of Two: Golden Son
2) "Birthmarked" by Caragh M. O'Brien
Book One of Three: Prized and Promised
3) "Eve & Adam" by Michael Grant
The husband-wife team behind the Animorphs series returns with the first installment of an entertaining saga that pits smart teens against high-tech evildoers and bionic skullduggery.
A run-in with a streetcar left Evening Spiker’s body seriously mangled. Against medical advice, her widowed mother, Terra, insists on moving her from the hospital to Spiker Biopharmaceuticals, the cutting-edge biotech company she owns, renowned for its worldwide medical good works. Assisting Terra—though with an agenda of his own—is Solo Plissken, who takes more than a passing interest in Eve. Both teens feel a deep ambivalence toward Terra and Spiker Biopharm, though for different reasons, and beyond their mutual attraction, share a troubling, mysterious connection from the past. Eve’s healing is strangely swift but leaves her bored and restless until Terra drops a project, billed as genetics education, in her lap: Design a virtual human being from scratch. With help from her feisty, reckless friend Aislin, Eve takes up the challenge. While she becomes increasingly mesmerized by her creation, Adam, Solo edges closer to achieving his own goals. The straightforward narration by Eve, Solo and Adam in compact, swift-moving prose, makes this a first-rate choice for reluctant readers while raising provocative questions about the nature of creation and perfection.
An auspicious, thought-provoking series opener. (Science fiction/romance. 12 & up)
4) "Origin" by Jessica Khoury
A surprising first novel set deep in the Amazonian rainforest.
Inside the electric fence surrounding the secret compound known as Little Cam, scientists have labored for years to create one immortal person. Pia, now 16, has lightning-fast reflexes, inexhaustible stamina, and a body impervious to sickness or injury. She is the perfect creation of the current lead scientist, whom she calls Uncle Paolo, but she is also his pawn, and her still-human soul has begun to chafe at the restrictions and isolation that surround her. When a storm causes a break in the fence, Pia ventures into the jungle, meeting and becoming intrigued by Eio, a boy her age belonging to a nearby tribe, the Ai'oans. Eio speaks English and knows more about Little Cam than Pia does about the outside world. Then a female scientist comes to Little Cam and bolsters Pia's growing sense of rebellion. Gradually she uncovers the secrets and tragedies that led to her immortality. Khoury's debut captures the lush rhythms of the rainforest. Her characters, dialogue and pacing are clean and accomplished, and the plot moves at breakneck speed. As the book progresses toward its emotionally satisfying but logically puzzling ending, cracks start to show in the science of her dystopian world, but by then readers will hardly notice—and will certainly easily forgive.
A teen thriller/romance without werewolves, wizards or vampires—utterly refreshing. (Science fiction. 13 & up)
5) "What's Left Of Me" by Kat Zhang
An unsettling dystopian adventure of two souls trapped in a single body.
Like all children, Addie and Eva were born as two souls in the same body. As young children, the two personalities were both loved and indulged by their parents, but, unlike all the other children, Addie and Eva didn't “settle.” In settling, the dominant soul takes over the single body and the recessive soul fades away. Children who don't settle are labeled hybrids and institutionalized. At age 6, Addie and Eva started seeing specialists to hasten the settling process, but the years of treatments have been unsuccessful. To hide their shame, Addie takes the dominant role and Eva becomes invisible to the outside world, thereby convincing society that they are not a hybrid. However, when an experiment with their classmates goes wrong, Addie/Eva find themselves institutionalized and wrestling with what it means to have a voice. Brackets within the text differentiate Addie’s external communication and Eva’s internal dialogue with Addie, helping to clarify who is speaking when. Worldbuilding is a little on the thin side, but Addie and Eva's emotions are more than enough to carry readers along.
A thought-provoking first installment in a series that unflinchingly takes on ethically challenging topics. (Dystopia. 13 & up)
6) "Insignia" by S.J. Kincaid
An unlikely teen is selected to attend Hogwarts-at-the-Pentagon.
Tom has spent most of his life casino-hopping with his ne'er-do-well father. His only real pleasure is virtual-reality gaming, and his mad skillz bring him to the attention of the U.S. Intrasolar Forces. In short order he is off to the Pentagonal Spire to train to become a Camelot Company Combatant: one of the elite teen "warriors" who pilot the remote spacecraft that wage World War III bloodlessly in space. The Indo-Americans and the Russo-Chinese are propped up by multinationals that fund the enterprise; the neural processors implanted in the kids’ brains—not to mention war itself—aren't cheap. Tom quickly makes friends (warm and funny boy, Asperger's-like girl, goofy boy) and enemies (vicious boy, borderline-crazy professor). He also comes to the attention of his mother's horrible boyfriend, an executive in a multinational that wants a pawn on the inside of CamCo. In addition to obvious echoes of Ender's Game and Harry Potter, debut novelist Kincaid weaves in hefty helpings of Cory Doctorow–like philosophy: "What, you think the American sheeple are going to question the corporatocracy?" Tom's father says memorably. With action, real humor and a likable, complex protagonist, this fast-moving, satisfying adventure also provides some food for thought.
Derivative and sometimes a little silly, but good fun nevertheless. (Science fiction. 13-16)
Book One of Three: Vortex and Catalyst
7) "Variant" by Robison Wells
Wells introduces Benson Fisher, a teen in search of a “real” life instead of a long series of unwanted foster homes—but instead of the utopia he’s searching for, he finds the direct opposite.
Benson thinks he’s found the perfect school in Maxfield Academy, a private school in the wilds of New Mexico. Winning a scholarship with unexpected ease, he looks forward to establishing real friendships and getting a good education at last. What he finds, however, is far from normal. Within minutes of the front doors closing—and locking—behind him, he finds himself in a fight for his life. He joins a gang, the Variants, just to survive. With no adults on campus, classes are taught by fellow students, punishments are passed on by computer and nothing seems to follow a logical path. Benson decides it’s time to make a run for it, until he finds out that no one makes it out of Maxfield…not alive, at any rate. Benson's account unfolds in a speedy, unadorned first person, doling information out to readers as he learns it himself.
Hard to put down from the very first page, this fast-paced novel with Stepford overtones answers only some of the questions it poses, holding some of the most tantalizing open for the next installment in a series that is anything but ordinary. (Thriller. 12 & up)
8) "A Long, Long Sleep" by Anna Sheehan
Sleeping Beauty wakes up to a future world where everyone she ever knew is gone.
Dramatic disasters, diseases and technological advancements have passed during Rosalinda Fitzroy's decades of sleep. In her new role as long-lost heiress to the interplanetary business empire UniCorp, she faces a new world without her family or boyfriend. History lessons hit too close to home at school, and she fails to connect with anyone but Bren, the son of top UniCorp officials and discoverer of her stasis tube, and Otto, the result an unethical UniCorp experiment. The science-fiction elements here are tantalizing but under-explored and under-utilized. Before Rose can fix the mistakes of her parents' company, she needs to fix their parenting mistakes. Rose's first-person narration paints the picture of a girl too accommodating and self-deprecating for her social position. Gradually, her quirks are explained through the mystery of her placement into stasis. Futuristic slang words jar, and the passages don't always mesh well—the all-too-possible descriptions of what went wrong while Rose slept are chilling but not always well-integrated into the story, and the breaks from Rose's point-of-view into that of a mysterious second character are forced. Assassination attempts against Rose feel tacked on to bump up the tension, though they are eventually tied into her emotional story arc.
Thoughtful but uneven. (Science fiction. 14 & up)
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