Hirsch, J. (2011). The Eleventh Plague. NY: Scholastic. As you can tell, I’m a big reader of dystopian fiction (but really, who isn’t these days?), and so when I saw an advertisement for The Eleventh Plague, I knew what book I was going to check out next. Set in an unspecified future United States that…
Sheehan, A. (2011). A Long, Long Sleep. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick. Much like Beth Revis’s 2011 Across the Universe, this dystopian novel by first-time YA author Anna Sheehan features a protagonist who has been kept for years in suspended animation or, in the terms of A Long, Long Sleep, stasis or “stass.” When sixteen-year-old Rosalinda “Rose”…
Wells, Robison (2011). Variant. NY: HarperTeen. 376 pages. There should totally be a rule that all slightly science fiction themed mystery trilogies should announce themselves to the reader on the first page. Variant, which I totally expected to conclude in a single volume, is one such example, and, of course, I’m foaming to read the…
Condie, Ally (2010). Matched. NY: Dutton. 384 pages. I really wanted to like this book and I did, sort of. You know me: I’ll take any dystopian fiction you’ll hand me; however, with Matched, I think the book failed to live up to the fanfare. The dystopian premise is intriguing: the novel begins when seventeen-year-old…
Dashner, James (2010). The Scorch Trials. NY: Delacorte. 368 pages. I had been waiting for a while to read the second book in James Dashner’s “Maze Runner” Trilogy (the first novel, The Maze Runner, was released in 2009), and was only a little disappointed. When my husband and I used to watch LOST, we sometimes…
Falkner, Brian (2010). Brain Jack. NY: Random House. 368 pages. Another novel that owes a debt to M.T. Anderson’s Feed (and to all human-melds-with-computer scifi), Falkner’s novel imagines a not too distant future United States that, following a nuclear terrorist attack on Las Vegas, has heightened its security and enhanced its technological resources. The latest…
Mariz, Rae (2010). The Unidentified. NY: Balzer and Bray. First-time YA author Rae Mariz definitely owes a debt to M.T. Anderson; The Unidentified mines much of the same territory as Anderson’s Feed, albeit with a slightly more optimistic conclusion. Set in a not-too-distant future in which young people are pretty strictly governed and essentially serve…
Pfeffer, Susan Beth (2010). This world we live in. Boston: Harcourt. 239 pages. OK, I really enjoyed the first two novels Pfeffer wrote about the fictional breakdown of society that occurs when the moon, knocked astray by an asteroid, shifts its orbit and subsequently disrupts the planet. This third novel, however, dedicated to “Anyone who…
Dashner, James (2009). The maze runner. NY: Delacorte. 384 pages. I’m going to warn you now, if only because I myself wasn’t warned: this book is the first in what seems to be a planned trilogy. I’m only telling you this so that you know what you’re getting into. Although this first novel in the…
Ness, Patrick (2009). The ask and the answer. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press. 513 pages. After I busted through the first novel in Ness’s “Chaos Walking” trilogy (The knife of never letting go, 2008), I was psyched to read the second volume and, in the end, not disappointed by the series’ continuation. The second book begins…