Category Archives: Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic

Review: Reached by Ally Condie

Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Reached by Ally CondieReached
Ally Condie
Penguin
Published on November 13, 2012

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After leaving Society to desperately seek The Rising, and each other, Cassia and Ky have found what they were looking for, but at the cost of losing each other yet again. Cassia is assigned undercover in Central city, Ky outside the borders, an airship pilot with Indie. Xander is a medic, with a secret. All too soon, everything shifts again.

My Review
Reached was my favorite book in this series. Through all three books, poetry has served as a kind of rallying point, encouraging Cassia and Ky and others to oppose the Society. In Reached, though, Cassia takes her love of art further by beginning to create her own and to gather others who do the same. At first, she’s told that creating new things doesn’t matter. Even The Rising, which she values so highly, doesn’t hold any love for creativity. Cassia doesn’t agree with them, so she faces a choice on whether to be totally devoted to The Rising, which she’s always dreamed of, or to be kind of on her own side. A free agent, more like Ky has always been.

In some ways this story reminded me of the Matrix trilogy, where things are not at all as they seem. The Society. The Rising. The pandemic sweeping through the provinces. There’s always more going on beneath what they’re telling Cassia, Xander, and Ky. I loved that layered feeling it gave the story. And I loved that it made the story about more than an uprising and shift in power. The answer wasn’t as simple as swapping The Society for The Rising. Which made the story a lot more interesting to me.

I definitely recommend the series to readers looking for clean dystopian books. The second book was a little draggy to me, but on the whole, I thought the series was good.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Cassia wonders about what people experience after death as she’s flying and seeing the sky and clouds.

Violent Content
A vicious illness spreads rapidly through the population, unleashed by one group as part of a battle strategy.

Drug Content
The Society gives each person a case with three pills in it. The red pill causes memory loss, and is used by the Society to make people forget things they’ve done or seen.

Review: Crossed by Ally Condie

Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Crossed (Matched #2)
Ally Condie
Dutton Children’s
Published on November 1, 2011

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About Crossed
The Society chooses everything.

The books you read.
The music you listen to.
The person you love.

Yet for Cassia the rules have changed. Ky has been taken and she will sacrifice everything to find him.

And when Cassia discovers Ky has escaped to the wild frontiers beyond the Society there is hope.

But on the edge of society nothing is as it seems…

A rebellion is rising.

And a tangled web of lies and double-crosses could destroy everything.

My Review
For me, Crossed has that droopy feel of a second book where it’s all about setting up the final story in the series. I wasn’t hooked by the journey from the Carving to look for the Rebellion. I think I wanted the stakes to be different. Cassia wants to find the Rebellion to join them, and while I understood Ky’s reason for opposing her, I didn’t really find Cassia’s curiosity very compelling.

I liked the part of the story where Cassia has to navigate the river. It’s dangerous and foreign to her. The stakes are high. But it’s a short piece of the story.

The characters hooked me enough that I still want to finish reading the series. I also love that the story is pretty clean other than some brief violence. See below for content information.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing and embracing.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Ky witnesses the deaths of his family and friends. The Society sends boys into battle with faulty weapons.

Drug Content
Red pills from the Society are supposed to cause someone to forget what has happened to them. Blue pills may aid or inhibit survival (different characters believe different things about them.).

Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Book Review and Content, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3)
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press
Published on August 24, 2010

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About Mockingjay
Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss’s family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans–except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss’s willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels’ Mockingjay–no matter what the personal cost.

My Review
This is my least favorite book in the Hunger Games series. I still enjoyed reading it, but I felt like Katniss remains a passive character for much of the beginning. I really wanted her to go on the mission to rescue Peeta (though I guess this would have made the book super long) instead of staying home feeling lost.

I thought it was clever the way the whole world sort of becomes an arena as Katniss and the rebel army advance toward the Capitol. The political elements of the story deepen as well, and the rebel force and its leader aren’t quite the benevolent group Katniss had hoped they’d be. On the whole, Mockingjay takes a darker tone than the previous books. While the first two stories show Katniss and others in the arena for sport, now she faces off against the Capitol in warfare. As the war gets more desperate, the rebels face some moral dilemmas concerning battle strategies. The Capitol has sacrificed the children of the districts every year for seventy-five years. Does this mean it’s okay for the rebels to attack Capitol children?

Katniss argues against these kinds of tactics, but not all of her allies agree with her. And as the war grows ever bloodier, even she begins to consider some of these more desperate payback attacks. It showed how easily war makes us forget the humanity of the other side.

I liked the new side characters Katniss works with as the Mockingjay. And I loved the way her relationship with Peeta unfolds, even though it involves a lot of disillusionment on both sides. I feel like that allowed them to rebuild their connection from scratch, and on more even footing since they each had to face some flaws in each other.

I’m not sorry to have read this whole series. (I’ve read it more than once, actually, but for some reason I hadn’t managed to review it before now.) This one has a bit more violence than the others (or maybe it seems more violent because of the context of war), so see the content information below for more specifics.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
All major characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between a boy and girl. Finnick reveals that in the Capitol he and other attractive tributes were forced to have sexual encounters with wealthy citizens who purchased their time. Katniss remembers a time a man teased her about buying a kiss from him.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
References to torture. Scenes show some carnage from triggered traps. A net of barbed wire slices up a soldier. A bomb blows another’s limbs off. Bombs kill children and medics. An assassin shoots and kills a political figure.

Katniss and Gale disagree about methods of warfare. Gale believes any violence against the Capitol is justified, since the Capital has used and continues to use awful tactics against the rebels. Katniss believes the rebels must have a higher value of life, and especially a regard for the lives of innocents like children and civilians.

Katniss has nightmares about people who’ve died coming back to haunt her and trying to kill her. She also remembers and sings a song her father taught her about a man talking to his lover and asking her to “meet [him] in the hanging tree.”

Drug Content
Katniss and Joanna takes morphling to alleviate pain due to her injuries. It’s a highly addictive drug and both girls feel the pull of addiction from taking it. Haymitch drinks alcohol.

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press
Published on September 1, 2009

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About Catching Fire
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol – a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she’s afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she’s not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol’s cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can’t prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

My Review
I feel like The Hunger Games is a hard act to follow. In that first book, the whole idea of the Arena, the districts and Capitol were so stark and fresh. In Catching Fire, we already acclimated to the brutality and high stakes of Katniss’s world. So only the plot events can be fresh and new.

I thought the characters, in particular the other victors, added a lot to the story. They were very different from each other and different than the tributes Katniss faced in the Arena in The Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta’s complementary strengths carry into this book, too. His love for her and his savviness with understanding emotions and motives, which Katniss is pretty much blind to, and her ability to solve puzzles and survive dictate their ability to survive the traps the Capitol sets for them. It also makes them a great couple, even if Katniss stays a bit slow to realize what her true feelings are regarding Peeta and Gale.

Side note: I’ve never liked those names—Peeta and Gale. They both seem kind of feminine to me. The names, not the characters. But it has never bothered me enough to interfere with my ability to read and enjoy the books.

In the first book, Katniss uses physical strength to survive the Arena. Here, she has to rely more on her ability to solve puzzles and choose the right allies. I liked the message, again, that violence isn’t the answer. That instead, cleverness and unity can destroy a powerful enemy.

I’ve listened to Catching Fire as an audiobook at least twice, but I think more often than that. I feel like it’s rare for me to find a dystopian series that I like all the way through where the story, characters, and premise all have equal weight and draw. This one probably tops that list for me. Right up there with Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Central characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Katniss and Peeta spend nights together sleeping and comforting one another through nightmares. No sexual contact. At one point Peeta claims he and Katniss have married in secret and she’s pregnant.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Tributes fight in the arena, killing one another. Some brief, graphic descriptions.

Drug Content
Haymitch spends a lot of time drunk. Katniss and Peeta both squirrel away some liquor for him in case there’s ever a shortage (since it’s against the law to make or sell), which is a pretty enabling thing to do. After receiving some terrible news, Katniss drinks some of the liquor with Haymitch and gets pretty drunk herself.

 

Review: Discovered by Lisa M. Clark

Book Review and Content, Christian World-View, Clean Fiction, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Discovered (The Messengers #1)
Lisa M. Clark
Concordia Publishing House
Published on May 1, 2016

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About Discovered
Simon has never been satisfied with the carefully controlled life his government limits him to with its curfews and totally structured time. He longs for a nebulous something more.

When he spots a secret door opening into his father’s workshop, and stumbles onto a secret society charged with protecting spiritual truths long outlawed, Simon leaps at the chance to become involved. Soon he’s training to be a Messenger, carrying bits of scriptures nearly lost from one outpost to another. As he learns more about the man Jesus and the truths he spoke, Simon realizes it’s not enough to carefully guard the secrets. He must find a way to tell others what he knows, even if doing so costs him his life.

My Review
At first I wasn’t sure how much I’d like a story so completely steeped in its spiritual themes, but I think the dystopian world and the gradual unveiling of Jesus’ teachings really works here. My only criticism of the spiritual components is that Simon is just being introduced to these ideas, and in some places, I felt like there wasn’t enough explanation of various rituals or elements. For instance, at first he doesn’t know where the Bible passages he’s learning come from, but at some point the references (Book, chapter, verse) are introduced but never explained.

I liked Simon’s character a lot. He’s thoughtful but vulnerable. At first I worried he would be too snarky and know-it-all, which tends to get on my nerves, but it quickly became clear that he was more than the trouble-making smart-mouth. I kind of wished there were more interactions between him and other teen characters. The cast is weighted and there are a lot of scenes with adult and mentor characters. I think it worked okay because the story stayed focused on Simon’s discoveries and hinged on his developing understanding and planned actions, but I wished there was more involvement from other younger characters and more dialogue to break up some of the longer narrative sections. On the whole, though, I really enjoyed reading it.

I really liked the fusion of dystopian elements and Christian elements. This book is definitely going to have the most appeal to someone looking for strong Christian themes. Fans of Rachelle Dekker’s Seer Series should add this to their reading lists.

Recommended for Ages 10 up.

Cultural Elements
Simon is described as having dark eyes and olive skin. There weren’t very many details like this or any racial identifiers.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Simon feels some attraction toward a girl.

Spiritual Content
Simon learns about a secret group of Christians. They teach him about Jesus. Several passages contain scriptures and some sermon-like moments.

Violent Content
Vague dreams haunt Simon. In them, he’s restrained and threatened by an unknown man. In one, he’s held upside down. In another, water drips onto him.

Drug Content
None.

 

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Review: Everless by Sara Holland

Book Review and Content, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Everless
Sara Holland
HarperTeen
Published on January 2, 2018

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About Everless
In the kingdom of Sempera, time is currency—extracted from blood, bound to iron, and consumed to add time to one’s own lifespan. The rich aristocracy, like the Gerlings, tax the poor to the hilt, extending their own lives by centuries.

No one resents the Gerlings more than Jules Ember. A decade ago, she and her father were servants at Everless, the Gerlings’ palatial estate, until a fateful accident forced them to flee in the dead of night. When Jules discovers that her father is dying, she knows that she must return to Everless to earn more time for him before she loses him forever.

But going back to Everless brings more danger—and temptation—than Jules could have ever imagined. Soon she’s caught in a tangle of violent secrets and finds her heart torn between two people she thought she’d never see again. Her decisions have the power to change her fate—and the fate of time itself.

My Review
I love the concept of the story—the idea that time and blood are connected and you have the choice (or are pressed to) spend from your allotted lifespan to purchase things. This premise set up some interesting stakes straight from the opening of the story. And Jules is immediately a likeable character since what she wants most is to save the person dearest to her, at any cost to herself.

I wasn’t impressed with her infatuation with Rowan Gerling. Yeah, okay, they were childhood playmates, but what’s admirable about him besides his good looks? I kind of kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for Jules to discover some deep fault in him. I liked the other characters, though, from the stable hand Jules recognizes from her past to her best friend in the village even to Ina Gold.

In terms of the plot, I felt like there were a couple threads that got dropped, or else where I missed their connection to the larger story. Jules carries a drawing that belonged to her father which she believes must be her mother. At one point she seems to realize the drawing’s significance, but never shares what that significance is. And it never comes up again as the story resolves.

Everless does have some interesting twists, though, and those kept me reading for sure. I needed to know what was going on with Rowan’s big, scowling brother Liam, and to understand Jules’s connection with the sorceress. All those questions had me charging through the tale all the way to the end.

Medieval-style dystopian fans (think The Selection by Kiera Cass) do not want to miss this one. If you’re a fan of Nadine Brandes’s A Time to Die, or The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, you will love the strong heroine, time-centered story, and forbidden magic elements of Everless.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
No real racial descriptions. All characters appear straight.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Brief, mild profanity used very rarely.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
A sorceress created a system in which time and iron and blood are bound. So that one’s time (lifespan) can be traded as currency for goods and services, like rent or food.

Violent Content
To extract time, a specially trained person cuts one’s palm and captures the blood in a vial. Time-letting is used as a punishment for a woman who’s accused of a grave crime.

Drug Content
Jules, the princess and another handmaiden go to a tavern and drink alcohol as a last night out before the princess marries.