Difference between revisions of "Newest Dystopian Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:New Reviews|Dystopian Fiction]]
 
[[Category:New Reviews|Dystopian Fiction]]
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Helen Phillips
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|author= Ben Oliver
|title=The Beautiful Bureaucrat
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|title= The Loop
 +
|rating= 3.5
 +
|genre= Teens
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|summary= Set during the aftermath of a Third World War where methods of punishment for criminal activities have been amped up to a horrific level by machines, The Loop follows the precarious existence of adolescent Luka Kane. In a world of Have and Have Nots where Alts [cyborgs] have power over Regulars, he is trapped inside a living hell with no chance of escape. A detonator has been sewn inside his heart connecting him to a trigger held by the guards who can end his life with one squeeze. Luka is taunted by limited access to his memories and relentlessly drained of energy through a gruelling daily torture ritual. Doomed to Delay [a risky medical trial where he is a guinea pig for Alts in place of execution] after Delay he is in despair. His prison is based on the model of an infinity loop designed to make its inmates suffer. With the only glimmers of hope being the rumours of rebellion outside and the visits of sympathetic Alt guard Wren, can Luka ever be free? Why has he been imprisoned? What waits for him if he can break the loop?
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|isbn=1912626551
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Margaret Atwood
 +
|title=The Testaments
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=Meet Josephine.  Married to Joseph Jones, she has kept her maiden name to keep at least some character to her identity. As opposed to her new boss, who has no gender, no face, and horrid halitosis. The job Josephine is forced to choose is a simple one, of taking a file's paper contents, clicking up the subject on a huge database, entering a date newly printed on the sheet, and repeating. Told to obey strict secrecy rules, she starts to find unusual signs of malignance all over – a man in a grey sweatshirt following her, post redirected when nobody knows where Josephine and Joseph are even living from one month to the next, and a husband missing from the marital bed more and more often…  Is there a way for her find a spark of happiness in the humdrum, windowless cell she works, and the horrid housing that is all the couple can afford?
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|summary= Finally! Almost forty years on, we have a sequel to  [[The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood|The Handmaid's Tale]]. I don't want to tell you too much about the plot because it's a novel that is entirely plot driven. Suffice it to say that ''The Testaments'' takes place fifteen years later, fifteen years after Offred gets into a van, not knowing what will happen next. It's told by three narrators: Aunt Lydia, who is secretly writing her memoirs in Ardua Hall; Agnes, a girl brought up in Gilead with the expectation she will marry a commander; Daisy, a rebellious teenage girl in Canada who knows of Gilead only from school lessons and its Pearl Girl missionaries who occasionally call into the store owned by her parents...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782273328</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1784742325
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Toner
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|isbn=1789018870
|title= The Weight of the World (The Amaranthine Spectrum)
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|title=Something to Tell You
 +
|author=David Edwards
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre= Science Fiction
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
|summary= One thing great science fiction needs is solid world building. When I pick up a book like this, I need to imagine that the universe has existed before the plot has started and will continue to do so after: it needs a strong sense of history and future. With this book, and series, I feel like I have just had a brief glimpse into something much larger. A great deal happens in the plot, but even more is happening, and has happened, across the Firmament.
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|summary=Sam Murray and Bert Leinster had been friends for a long time. Bert was Sam's boss at CERN, but this never seemed to affect the way that the families got on.  Bert's wife, Natalia, was Russian and seriously rich.  Their twins, fifteen-year-olds Allie and Josh, went to a private boarding school, but at weekends they were great friends with Sam's two children, Liam and Hannah. Sam's wife, Briony, was head of product research at Nestlé.  Life was good for all eight of them, until Sam - a particle physicist - spotted that the rate at which Higgs Boson particles were hitting the earth had risen exponentially.  It's enough of a problem for Sam and Bert to drag the head of CERN, Prof Ralph Moyeur, out of a family lunch.  Then Bert started having conversations with a plant called Lily.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473211395</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= G X Todd
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|isbn=1789550149
|title= Defender
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|title=Poster Boy
|rating= 5
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|author=N J Crosskey
|genre= Dystopian Fiction  
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|rating=5
|summary= ''We have all become strangers to each other and, worse still: enemies. The human spirit that once tethered us together has now divided us as surely as any ocean ever could.''
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
 
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|summary=I first read 1984 in school, in the late seventies when 1984 still seemed like a long time in the future.  It came and went quickly enough.  Some of us may have breathed a sigh of relief that Orwell's nightmare had not (quite) come to pass.  Others, I think, were out there already working on making sure that all he got wrong was the date. Crosskey hasn't put a date on the nightmare.  If she had, I suspect it would not be as far in the future are 1984 was when I first read Orwell.   If she had, I suspect it might hardly be in the future at all.  A lot of what happens in ''Poster Boy'' is already happening.  Sadly. Frighteningly. In the blurb, Christina Racher says "…but keep it far from anyone who might be tempted to turn its fiction into reality".   My only response to that is:  too late!
Defender describes a post apocalyptic world in the which destructive voices have entered people's minds. In three short weeks, these voices have persuaded people to kill their most loved ones and themselves resulting in significant proportions of the worlds population being wiped out. Those who have survived, with voices and voiceless alike, are few and far between.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472233085</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Johanna Sinisalo and Lola Rogers (translator)
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|isbn=0241349176
|title= The Core of the Sun
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|title=The Last
|rating= 4
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|author=Hanna Jameson
|genre= Dystopian Fiction
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|rating=5
|summary= In a different world, women are bred to be beautiful, man-serving and submissive, little more than pretty faces on walking reproductive machines. All the intelligent, independent women are being removed from the gene pool through forced sterilisation, compelled to while away their days doing menial jobs until the blessed end comes. To the world, Vanna is one of the former, an eloi with few rights and of whom there are few expectations beyond being well groomed and keeping her man well fed. But she has a secret – she is not dim at all. She is one of the clever ones, who is playing dumb to further her cause. In between her college courses in good housekeeping, (which she's flunking, to perfection), she has the small matter of a drug addiction to feed, and the mystery of her true-eloi sister's disappearance to solve.
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1611855373</amazonuk>
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|summary=Jon Keller is in a hotel in Switzerland in the remote countryside when the world ends. He has no idea if his family is alive, he has no idea what's going on in the nearest city, or if the nearest city has been obliterated. Shocked, amid the mass hysteria and exodus, Jon decides to stay at the hotel rather than attempt to get to the airport and home. He's not alone, twenty other people also stay and gradually form a small community. One day, when helping the hotel manager, Jon finds the body of a girl deemed to have been killed before the world ended. The community descends into a deep mistrust as Jon becomes fixated on finding this girl's killer and finding the truth about what is possibly the last community on earth.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ryan Graudin
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|isbn=1473203287
|title=Blood for Blood
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|title=Summerland
 +
|author=Hannu Rajaniemi
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=Second and final book in sequence set in a world where Germany won WW2 and Nazi experiments on Jewish children has produced shapeshifting humans. Can Yael defeat the Wehrmacht? Interesting, moving and absorbing.
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|summary=Imagine a world in which death was no longer something to fear but something to aspire to. After the discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, the Big Smoke for the recently deceased. In 1938 the British Empire is caught up in a race against Soviet spies and dealing with a mole buried deep in the heart of Summerland. When Rachel White, an ambitious SIS agent, becomes suspicious about the potential rogue agent, she must decide how far she is willing to go and how much she is willing to risk to uncover the truth.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780622058</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=The Call
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|isbn=1683690613
|author=Peadar o Guilin
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|title=Garrison Girl (Attack on Titan)
 +
|author=Rachel Aaron
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
 +
|summary=''You want me to be like everyone else and spend my life hiding inside the walls where it's safe, but that's an illusion. So long as there are titans out there… no one is safe''
 +
 
 +
In the dystopian world of Attack on Titan, humanity hides behind the safety of high impenetrable walls to keep out the enemies outside. Known as titans, these enemies are impossibly tall human-like creatures, with sharp hungry teeth and regenerative powers. Difficult to kill and innumerable they roam the Earth looking for prey, and whilst the walls have always kept them out, that has begun to change…
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1444944525
 +
|title=The Survival Game
 +
|author=Nicky Singer
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=The Aes Sidhe are back. And in their quest to win back Ireland from humankind, they have placed a magical seal around the entire island. Nobody can get in or out. North? South? Doesn't matter any more. What does matter is ''The Call''. At some point during adolescence, every teenager is transported to the Sidhe realm, that grey, colourless land to which they were banished thousands of years before. If they can evade the vengeful faerie kind for a full day (just three minutes in the human world) then their lives are spared, although they are often sent back with horrific mutilations. Fewer than one in ten children survive.
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|summary=Mhairi Anne Bain is fourteen years old and is on her way home to the Isle of Arran. But Mhairi's world has been ravaged by climate change and the mass movement of people and it is one defined by borders, checkpoints and soldiers with guns. Mhairi has made it across Africa and onto a plane to Heathrow  - which is more than can be said for Muma and Papa. She's even made it out of the detention centre at the airport. And during this journey, Mhairi has learned that you can't rely on anyone else and you can't allow anyone else to rely on you...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>133804561X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Adrian J Walker
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|isbn=North_84K
|title=The End of the World Running Club
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|title=84K
|rating=4
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|author=Claire North
|genre=Thrillers
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|rating=5
|summary=When the end of the world as we know it comes, Edgar is totally unprepared. Still slightly drunk from drowning his sorrows, and in a panic, he throws random items, including his daughter, down into his cellar, and then he and his family eke out a nightmarish existence in the dark until their supplies run out. Fortunately they are lucky, and they are rescued from the cellar.  As they emerge back into the world they see the ruin and disaster around them, caused by hundreds of large asteroids hitting the earth.  Large areas of the country have been destroyed.  Groups of people left alive scavenge houses and towns, turning feral, trying to find what's left to help them to survive. Edgar's family are rescued by a small remaining army unit, but he and his wife and children become separated, and so begins Edgar's desperate race to reach his loved ones, who are hundreds of miles away, before they leave on an evacuation ship for another country.
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785032666</amazonuk>
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|summary=Theo can, he calculates the worth of each person to the penny. ''The Company'' own everything and everyone, including handing out punishments for crime. Theo sleepwalks through life keeping his head down whilst working for the Criminal Audit Office. Doing just enough work to avoid anyone noticing him, he calculates, without emotion, the cost of the crimes filling his inbox. They are variables on a spreadsheet, a simple mathematical equation, the expense of solving the crime added to how much the victim would have contributed to their community. Prisons are uneconomical so criminals in this world pay their debt to society in cold hard cash.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Children of Icarus
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|isbn=0356510700
|author=Caighlan Smith
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|title=Everything About You
 +
|author=Heather Child
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=Daedalum's children have one collective ambition. They pray to be chosen as Icarii - honoured ones between the ages of ten and sixteen who will enter the labyrinth, find their way through it to Alyssia, and become angels. Every child yearns to be chosen. Every parent yearns for their child to be chosen. Clara, our girl's best friend, is the most devout of everyone. She knows she is destined to become an angel. Our girl, though, does not want to be chosen. In her society, this is such a badge of shame that she keeps silent. And, along with Clara, chosen she is.
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|summary=In the future, your social feed is your entire existence. A.I. is here and it is all around you. It fills your fridge, it keeps up to date with your friends and fulfils your wishes. It is also stealing your jobs and, possibly, loosening your grip on reality. Freya is unexpectedly given a beta testing version of the latest smart specs, glasses which give her all the information she'll ever need, right in front of her eyes by barely thinking about it, complete with a personality to guide her. The problem is that the personality on the glasses is that of her missing and presumed dead sister. Freya is thrown and unsettled by this. Her mum tells her to stop using them or at the very least to reset them to a different personality. But Freya just can't do this. Hearing her sister's voice again is like she's right there, and although she knows this is just Ruby's data, part of Freya can't believe that it can be this accurate, it can't be this Ruby. Is it just possible that something more is feeding this personality than Ruby's data?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782024921</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Simon Mayo
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|isbn=Wilson_Extinction
|title=Blame
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|title=The Extinction Trials
 +
|author=SM Wilson
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=''A small hand in hers. 'Is it our fault?' Abi said nothing.'' These tender words show the situation.  Ant (a teenaged girl) and Mattie (her younger brother) are innocent and in a prison – HMP London, no less. Since the death of the EU and a huge, all-conquering recession, people are being imprisoned left, right and centre for the crimes of their parents and their parents in turn, meaning anyone with any slightly dodgy firm or habit in their family that might have taken money away from the common good is having their children imprisoned.  And even though Ant and Mattie are ''legitimately'' in there, due to their parents' activities, they've since been adopted by people who have themselves been accused and imprisoned, thus making them real tabloid-fodder as the worst criminal family in Britain. Surely, then, there's no hope?
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|summary=Storm and Lincoln live on Earthasia, a continent ruined by overpopulation. Space is scarce and energy and food are rationed. Education is minimal and mostly focused around searching for new, efficient food sources. Storm's mother has died and she never knew her father, so she lives in one of Earthasia's overcrowded ''shelters'', goes to school for one day per week and wrestles hay bales for a job. Lincoln's sister is dying from the blistering disease and he has no access to the healthcare that could save her. It's a mean, desperate existence for them both and so they are first to volunteer for the Stipulators' trials for a new mission to the neighbouring continent of Piloria. The aim is to retrieve dinosaur eggs so that a virus to kill them can be engineered and the citizens of Earthasia will have access to the space and abundant food sources Piloria offers...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552569070</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Concentr8
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|isbn=Curtis_Water
|author=William Sutcliffe
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|title=Water & Glass
 +
|author=Abi Curtis
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=In a speculative near-future London, there's a new wonder drug to treat ADHD. Concentr8 is cheap and effective. So effective that the mayor has instituted a programme to identify children for early, preventative treatment. Almost every troublesome teen in London is taking it, often before they've actually become troublesome. But then an austerity drive sees the program cut abruptly. Riots break out, led by the unmedicated teens.
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|summary=Something has happened, something very nasty and on a submarine a pregnant elephant is one of only a handful of animals living below the waves. We follow Nerissa Crane, a vet, as she remembers recent events, looks after the animals and falls into a world of intrigue.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408866242</amazonuk>
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 +
It is difficult to properly review this book without giving too much away. There will be mild spoilers throughout this right from the start but I will try to avoid the main ones.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Paul Bird
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|isbn=Beckett_America
|title=The Hunt
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|title=America City
 +
|author=Chris Beckett
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=This is Britain after the Very Big Crash. Life is very different, especially if you live in one of the lower suburbs under the Local Government's authority. Cush lives in one such suburb. He works as a detective in the floating Krawczyk building and, though he thinks it himself, is pretty good at his job. His wife Samir doesn't work, even though she'd like to, and spends her days at home reading those most antiquated of things: books. Their son Nim is sixteen and is obsessed with a video game called The Hunt. Cush and Samir fall out constantly over their differing approaches to Nim's obsession.
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|summary=''America City'' tells the story of Holly, an ambitious publicist who sets aside her own political beliefs in order to help the ambitious Senator Slaymaker with his Presidential campaign. Set in the 22nd century, the novel tells of an incredibly disunited United States, where the effects of climate change have created deep divisions between the affluent Northern States, and the South, which is frequently ravaged by extreme weather. Holly and Slaymaker hope to change this, working together on the plan they believe to be the solution to the problem of where to place the thousands of Americans who have been made homeless by devastating storms.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786106655</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Philip Martin
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|isbn=Featherstone_Paradise
|title=Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos
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|title=Paradise Girl
|rating=4
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|author=Phill Featherstone
|genre=Science Fiction
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|rating=3.5
|summary=If only those critiquing ''Doctor Who'' had access to a time machine, they would be able to temper all their responses. When Mary Whitehouse found the likes of [[Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks|Genesis of the Daleks]] to be too violent, she and her coterie had no idea the series would soon turn to a prison world, where soon-to-be victims of snuff movies are trapped in a reality-show styled existence, and a hard-done-by populous are sat at home doing nothing other than watching the feeds from the executions, the morgues and worse.  If those watching ''Doctor Who'' had the benefit of foresight they might have responded to ''Vengeance on Varos'' differently. They were quite vocal in complaining about a horrific character being a trade delegate who is half-man, half-slug and wholly stupid evil laugh, and such an artificial premise. Little did they know the series would soon lumber people with Bonnie Langford, and aliens looking like liquorice bleeding allsorts…
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785940406</amazonuk>
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|summary=Kerryl lives far away from the urban twenty-first century on a remote Yorkshire farm. The farm is high up on a hill and it's a family endeavour - grandparents, mother, Kerryl. There's a market town below but Kerryl's family is concentrated on the farm and the hard but beautiful living associated with it. Kerryl, though, is a fiercely bright girl - she's won a place at Cambridge University and is looking forward to going. She loves poetry.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Yan Lianke
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|isbn=Sutcliffe_See
|title=The Four Books
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|title=We See Everything
 +
|author=William Sutcliffe
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
|summary=''The Four Books'' is a difficult, challenging novel and not for the feint hearted, or for someone looking for a page-turner. It really challenges the reader's perceptions and opens up a gateway to an era that is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in a western culture. Set in Maoist China it tells the story of four protagonists and a memorable antagonist. The four, found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feel, ''The Four Books'' will come to be regarded as an undoubted masterpiece.
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|summary=Lex lives in what used to be London. Today, it is a closed-off, bombed-out area known as ''The Strip''. Nobody comes in and nobody can go out. Drones are a constant presence overhead, food is short and life is hard. But there's a girl he likes and she can make him forget almost anything. Alan spends all his time watching The Strip. His talent as a gamer got him the job of drone pilot. He hasn't bombed anyone yet but he's hyped up to do it, whatever his mother thinks. It's fighting terrorism, after all. Alan's observation target is a high-profile target - a man high up in the resistance organisation known as ''The Corps''. Alan calls him #K622. But Lex calls him Dad.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Richard Kurti
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|isbn=Roberts_Real
|title= Maladapted
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|title=The Real-Town Murders
|rating= 3
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|author=Adam Roberts
|genre=Teens
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|rating=3
|summary=Cillian isn't an average teenager. He knows he's a mathematical genius, he's already at university studying advanced theory, but Cillian doesn't realise quite how above average he is until he's the sole survivor of a train explosion. With his father is dead and his last words to Cillian a riddle, Cillian's existence is thrown in a whole new light.  
+
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406346292</amazonuk>
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|summary=If you had the choice would you live your life online? In the future, this may be possible, with the development of fully realised virtual reality you may feel that the online world is more real than your own. Even today we spend hours each day looking at phones or checking statuses. The only thing is that with most people online, some of us will have to stay in the real world to deal with unexpected events – such as a real town murder.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Adrian Barnes
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|isbn=Merbeth_Raid
|title=Nod
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|title=Raid
 +
|author=K S Merbeth
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
+
|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
|summary=For anyone who has suffered from insomnia, the idea of a world with no sleep is an unsettling place as it feels so real. The thought of having to drag yourself to work after a night with no sleep is bad enough, but what about two nights, or three, or four?  Society will crumble if everyone missed five meals in a row, but what would happen if we all missed five nights of sleep?  If you end up in the land of Nod, we are all in trouble.
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|summary=A brutal road trip in a blighted landscape that pulls no punches. We travel with Clementine, a bounty hunter, in a world without heroes or hope.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783298227</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Jo Walton
 
|title= The Philosopher Kings
 
|rating= 3.5
 
|genre= Science Fiction
 
|summary= Twenty years have passed since the Goddess Athene founded the Just City. The god Apollo is still living there, albeit in human form. Now married, and the father of several children, the man/god struggles to cope when tragedy befalls his family. Beset by grief and a need for revenge, Apollo sets sail to find the man who caused him such pain, but discovers something that may change everything…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472150791</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jim Carrington
 
|title=Boy 23
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=''Boy 23 isn't in My Place any more. He can't see The Screen, he can't hear The Voice. Boy 23 is alone.''
 
 
 
Before being dumped alone in the forest by The Voice, Boy 23 - or Jesper, as we shall call him - has lived in a room entirely by himself. He has never met another human being or been outside. His only experience of the world has been through a few short video clips, shown to him on his Screen by The Voice in My Place. Now, he finds himself alone with only a bag full of survival equipment and some brief words from The Voice: his life is in danger, people have been sent to kill him, he must head north west to the Low Countries, The Voice will meet him there and explain everything.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408822776</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Kenneth Calhoun
 
|title= Black Moon
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary= Do you ever have those nights when you hear every chime of the clock, when you watch the shadows move round the room painfully slowly as the moon crosses the sky?  Thankfully I have very few of those.  I know that the thing most likely to keep you awake is the worrying about the fact that you're not asleep, and I have distraction mechanisms for when I need them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587343</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Aldous Huxley
 
|title= After Many A Summer
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary= Like many of us, I suspect, I knew nothing of Huxley other than the "required reading" of ''Brave New World''.  Naturally, on that basis alone, he was pigeon-holed in my head under the heading ''Sci-fi - must check out further''.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784870358</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Paul McAuley
 
|title= Confluence
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary=Yama is a foundling orphan adopted as a baby by the Aedile (chief civil servant) of a small city downriver of the mighty, ancient city of Ys, capital of the man-made world of Confluence. Longing to become a soldier and take his late brother's place in the long-running war against the heretics, the restless seventeen year old is about to be taken as an apprentice clerk despite his young age, to keep him out of trouble. Destiny, however, has other plans for him.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057511942X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Ryan Graudin
 
|title=The Walled City
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= In the walled city of Hak Nam, there are three rules; run fast, trust no one, and always carry your knife. In streets controlled by vicious and sadistic drug lords, three individuals all seek something. Dai seeks information on the criminal brotherhood which employs him, lest he be imprisoned. Jin Ling seeks her sister in the Walled City's brothels, evading the roaming street-gangs as she goes. Mei Yee, trapped in a brothel in the city and forced into sexual relations with the two-faced Ambassador Osamu, desperately seeks freedom. The three have just eighteen days to accomplish this, as the officials of Seng Ngoi plan to evict all residents of Hak Nam in preparation for its demolition…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0316405051</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Jo Walton
 
|title= The Just City
 
|rating= 3.5
 
|genre= Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary=Urged on by her brother Apollo, goddess Pallas Athene founds the Just City of Atlantis – a city based on Plato’s republic. Filling it with an assortments of adults collected from throughout time, as well as ten thousand ten year olds, (one of whom is a disguised Apollo). Whilst the city flourishes, the arrival of Socrates may prove to be a fly in the ointment…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472150767</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jon A Davidson
+
|isbn=Mcdermid_Resistance
|title=System: With his face in the sun
+
|title=Resistance: A Race Against Time to Save Mankind
|rating=3.5
+
|author=Val McDermid
|genre=Science Fiction
 
|summary=Wallace Blair, like everyone else, is used to the benefits of a life guided by The System.  After all, The System knows best.  However he is somewhat dismayed when he wakes to a System message on his Commcuff informing him that his happy marriage is about to be dissolved and that's not his only concern.  After being sent to retrieve papers from his grandfather's house, Wallace reflects on how long it's been since he's seen the old man.  Wallace decides to drop in on him but what should be a trip to an elderly care facility takes him down an unexpected path.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1511491094</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tommy Wallach
 
|title=We All Looked Up
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=
+
|summary=It began so innocently, at a music festival in Northumberland. There were some stomach upsets, but what do you expect when the weather's bad, there's inadequate sanitation and 150,000 people out to enjoy themselves? Journalist Zoe Meadows is covering the event and she's filing her copy from the back of a food van run by her friends Sam and Lisa. Sam's fussy about the food he serves - he's The Sausage Man - and he regularly checks out his suppliers. In his business, you just can't be too careful. The stomach upsets seem to last for 24 hours, an unpleasant 24 hours, but then it seems to be over.
Peter, Eliza, Andy and Anita are all about to graduate high school. They all have plans and expectations, even slacker Andy. But those expectations are about to be thrown into disarray. An asteroid is approaching Earth and there's a 66% chance of a collision and an extinction level event. There are just a few weeks before a possible, no a likely, end of the world. What will happen? How will they react? What will they ''do''?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147112455X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Catherine Chanter
+
|isbn=Doctorow_Walkaway
|title=The Well
+
|title=Walkaway
|rating=3.5
+
|author=Cory Doctorow
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
+
|rating=2.5
|summary=The subject and title of Catherine Chanter's debut novel is a country idyll of which dreams are made: charmingly ramshackle, disarmingly verdant and heaving with fertile acreage.  Ruth and Mark can barely believe their luck at finding this perfect retreat, an oasis from their tired and overwrought City existence. Several months down the road and with the entire nation brought to its knees by an almost apocalyptic drought, Ruth and Mark are beginning to question their good fortune in their ownership of The Well.
+
|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782113606</amazonuk>
+
|summary=Science Fiction is not always what it seems. You may think that you are reading an exciting space adventure about many-tentacled aliens, but in fact, it is an allegory for race relations in modern America. The best books are able to balance the hidden meaning of the book, whilst still entertaining the reader with a great story. The worst can feel like an author preaching directly to the reader and leaving their story to struggle in the background.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=Terry_Contagion
 +
|title=Contagion: Book 1 (Dark Matter)
 
|author=Teri Terry
 
|author=Teri Terry
|title=Mind Games
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Luna is a Refuser. In her world, a Refuser is a kind of cross between a conscientious objector and a Luddite. In this post WW3 Britain, almost everyone has a brain implant which they use to spend most of their lives in a virtual environment. People don't just play in the vast array of games: they work, they learn, they date. Even hacking is encouraged. And those who opt out, like Luna, are shut out of the best careers and viewed with suspicion.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408334259</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Antonia Honeywell
 
|title=The Ship
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary=Sixteen year old Lalla has spent her life in London – mostly inside her family home. Because this is not the London of today, or any other day. When Lalla was seven, the apocalypse arrived; banks crashed, flood defences failed, power failed – and the world could only focus on survival. Now the Nazareth Act is in force and without your identity card, you don’t exist – literally, as you will be shot if you don't produce it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297871498</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Daniel Suarez
 
|title=Influx
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Science Fiction
 
|summary=We are told to never judge a book by its cover and that certainly includes any quotes that should adorn the front. Since his debut novel, all the Daniel Suarez books I have read had a quote suggesting that he was the legitimate heir to Michael Crichton. To compare your work with one of the best techno thriller writers of all time is never going to be easy and time after time, Suarez fell short. That is until Influx, a book that finally puts Suarez in the same illustrious company as Crichton.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751557951</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Karen Thompson Walker
 
|title=The Age of Miracles
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary=
 
''The Age of Miracles'' was one of those much-talked about books that I never got the time to read on its first go around. I'm not sure how I managed that, but I did. Anyway, it got debut author Thompson Walker a seven figure deal after a bidding war and it has dystopian themes, so it is right up my alley and not the sort of thing I'd usually miss. And so, I was happy that Simon & Schuster decided to reissue it for a YA market and even happier that they decided to send me a copy.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471124851</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Peyton Marshall
 
|title=Goodhouse
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary=There have been times in history when governments have thought they knew who the criminal underclass was.  This did not lead to anything good under the Nazis and the same can be said of the Goodhouse regime.  If we knew that certain genetics led to an increased chance of criminality, wouldn’t educating these people when they were young be a good thing?  Prevention is better than cure, but I am not sure if fascism is.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085752190X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Leanne Hall
 
|title=This is Shyness
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Dystopian Fiction  
|summary=''This is Shyness'' is an unusual and brilliant story about Wolfboy and Wildgirl, two strangers who meet in a pub in the town of Shyness. The teenagers are drawn together, each adopting a different identity so for the night they can be anyone but themselves.
+
|summary=It's not a spoiler if I tell you that bad things happen to Callie because they do. Callie - Calista - disappeared more than a year ago. Her brother Kai is still looking for her, hopeful that she will be found alive and well. But Callie isn't alive and well. She's been taken to a secretive medical facility on the island of Shetland, experimented on, and then, well, turned into ''something else''. How?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921656522</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Remaining: Aftermath
 
|author=D J Molles
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
 
|summary=A week is a long time in politics, but it feels infinitely longer in a zombie apocalypse. ''The Remaining'' started a new series of books that followed trained military expert Captain Lee Harden and his mission to rebuild America should the undead hit the fan. As an introduction, [[The Remaining by D J Molles|The Remaining]] did a great job in creating the world and exploring Harden’s tenacity to stick to the mission, but it ended so abruptly. ''The Remaining: Aftermath'' picks up moments later and continues the tale, but does it still deliver a week into his mission?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>035650347X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mark Lingane
 
|title=Decay: 2 (Tesla)
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=The city has been rebuilt for war.  The waves of cyborg attacks are just the beginning – what follows is more devastating.  Not only that but also the flood of refugees surging in daily is as much of a problem as a resource. Actually in one or two cases the word 'problem' is a bit of an understatement.  In the middle of this hell Seb and Melanie are doing their best to fight and survive, although survival doesn't look like an option once they realise they have to go into the enemy's hive and bring the battle to the cyborgs.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992377986</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
Move on the [[Newest Emerging Readers Reviews]]

Revision as of 11:55, 31 August 2020

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Review of

The Loop by Ben Oliver

3.5star.jpg Teens

Set during the aftermath of a Third World War where methods of punishment for criminal activities have been amped up to a horrific level by machines, The Loop follows the precarious existence of adolescent Luka Kane. In a world of Have and Have Nots where Alts [cyborgs] have power over Regulars, he is trapped inside a living hell with no chance of escape. A detonator has been sewn inside his heart connecting him to a trigger held by the guards who can end his life with one squeeze. Luka is taunted by limited access to his memories and relentlessly drained of energy through a gruelling daily torture ritual. Doomed to Delay [a risky medical trial where he is a guinea pig for Alts in place of execution] after Delay he is in despair. His prison is based on the model of an infinity loop designed to make its inmates suffer. With the only glimmers of hope being the rumours of rebellion outside and the visits of sympathetic Alt guard Wren, can Luka ever be free? Why has he been imprisoned? What waits for him if he can break the loop? Full Review

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Review of

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

4.5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Finally! Almost forty years on, we have a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. I don't want to tell you too much about the plot because it's a novel that is entirely plot driven. Suffice it to say that The Testaments takes place fifteen years later, fifteen years after Offred gets into a van, not knowing what will happen next. It's told by three narrators: Aunt Lydia, who is secretly writing her memoirs in Ardua Hall; Agnes, a girl brought up in Gilead with the expectation she will marry a commander; Daisy, a rebellious teenage girl in Canada who knows of Gilead only from school lessons and its Pearl Girl missionaries who occasionally call into the store owned by her parents... Full Review

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Review of

Something to Tell You by David Edwards

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Sam Murray and Bert Leinster had been friends for a long time. Bert was Sam's boss at CERN, but this never seemed to affect the way that the families got on. Bert's wife, Natalia, was Russian and seriously rich. Their twins, fifteen-year-olds Allie and Josh, went to a private boarding school, but at weekends they were great friends with Sam's two children, Liam and Hannah. Sam's wife, Briony, was head of product research at Nestlé. Life was good for all eight of them, until Sam - a particle physicist - spotted that the rate at which Higgs Boson particles were hitting the earth had risen exponentially. It's enough of a problem for Sam and Bert to drag the head of CERN, Prof Ralph Moyeur, out of a family lunch. Then Bert started having conversations with a plant called Lily. Full Review

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Review of

Poster Boy by N J Crosskey

5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

I first read 1984 in school, in the late seventies when 1984 still seemed like a long time in the future. It came and went quickly enough. Some of us may have breathed a sigh of relief that Orwell's nightmare had not (quite) come to pass. Others, I think, were out there already working on making sure that all he got wrong was the date. Crosskey hasn't put a date on the nightmare. If she had, I suspect it would not be as far in the future are 1984 was when I first read Orwell. If she had, I suspect it might hardly be in the future at all. A lot of what happens in Poster Boy is already happening. Sadly. Frighteningly. In the blurb, Christina Racher says "…but keep it far from anyone who might be tempted to turn its fiction into reality". My only response to that is: too late! Full Review

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Review of

The Last by Hanna Jameson

5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Jon Keller is in a hotel in Switzerland in the remote countryside when the world ends. He has no idea if his family is alive, he has no idea what's going on in the nearest city, or if the nearest city has been obliterated. Shocked, amid the mass hysteria and exodus, Jon decides to stay at the hotel rather than attempt to get to the airport and home. He's not alone, twenty other people also stay and gradually form a small community. One day, when helping the hotel manager, Jon finds the body of a girl deemed to have been killed before the world ended. The community descends into a deep mistrust as Jon becomes fixated on finding this girl's killer and finding the truth about what is possibly the last community on earth. Full Review

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Review of

Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Imagine a world in which death was no longer something to fear but something to aspire to. After the discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, the Big Smoke for the recently deceased. In 1938 the British Empire is caught up in a race against Soviet spies and dealing with a mole buried deep in the heart of Summerland. When Rachel White, an ambitious SIS agent, becomes suspicious about the potential rogue agent, she must decide how far she is willing to go and how much she is willing to risk to uncover the truth. Full Review

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Review of

Garrison Girl (Attack on Titan) by Rachel Aaron

4.5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

You want me to be like everyone else and spend my life hiding inside the walls where it's safe, but that's an illusion. So long as there are titans out there… no one is safe

In the dystopian world of Attack on Titan, humanity hides behind the safety of high impenetrable walls to keep out the enemies outside. Known as titans, these enemies are impossibly tall human-like creatures, with sharp hungry teeth and regenerative powers. Difficult to kill and innumerable they roam the Earth looking for prey, and whilst the walls have always kept them out, that has begun to change… Full Review

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Review of

The Survival Game by Nicky Singer

5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Mhairi Anne Bain is fourteen years old and is on her way home to the Isle of Arran. But Mhairi's world has been ravaged by climate change and the mass movement of people and it is one defined by borders, checkpoints and soldiers with guns. Mhairi has made it across Africa and onto a plane to Heathrow - which is more than can be said for Muma and Papa. She's even made it out of the detention centre at the airport. And during this journey, Mhairi has learned that you can't rely on anyone else and you can't allow anyone else to rely on you... Full Review

North 84K.jpg

Review of

84K by Claire North

5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Theo can, he calculates the worth of each person to the penny. The Company own everything and everyone, including handing out punishments for crime. Theo sleepwalks through life keeping his head down whilst working for the Criminal Audit Office. Doing just enough work to avoid anyone noticing him, he calculates, without emotion, the cost of the crimes filling his inbox. They are variables on a spreadsheet, a simple mathematical equation, the expense of solving the crime added to how much the victim would have contributed to their community. Prisons are uneconomical so criminals in this world pay their debt to society in cold hard cash. Full Review

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Review of

Everything About You by Heather Child

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

In the future, your social feed is your entire existence. A.I. is here and it is all around you. It fills your fridge, it keeps up to date with your friends and fulfils your wishes. It is also stealing your jobs and, possibly, loosening your grip on reality. Freya is unexpectedly given a beta testing version of the latest smart specs, glasses which give her all the information she'll ever need, right in front of her eyes by barely thinking about it, complete with a personality to guide her. The problem is that the personality on the glasses is that of her missing and presumed dead sister. Freya is thrown and unsettled by this. Her mum tells her to stop using them or at the very least to reset them to a different personality. But Freya just can't do this. Hearing her sister's voice again is like she's right there, and although she knows this is just Ruby's data, part of Freya can't believe that it can be this accurate, it can't be this Ruby. Is it just possible that something more is feeding this personality than Ruby's data? Full Review

Wilson Extinction.jpg

Review of

The Extinction Trials by SM Wilson

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Storm and Lincoln live on Earthasia, a continent ruined by overpopulation. Space is scarce and energy and food are rationed. Education is minimal and mostly focused around searching for new, efficient food sources. Storm's mother has died and she never knew her father, so she lives in one of Earthasia's overcrowded shelters, goes to school for one day per week and wrestles hay bales for a job. Lincoln's sister is dying from the blistering disease and he has no access to the healthcare that could save her. It's a mean, desperate existence for them both and so they are first to volunteer for the Stipulators' trials for a new mission to the neighbouring continent of Piloria. The aim is to retrieve dinosaur eggs so that a virus to kill them can be engineered and the citizens of Earthasia will have access to the space and abundant food sources Piloria offers... Full Review

Curtis Water.jpg

Review of

Water & Glass by Abi Curtis

5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Something has happened, something very nasty and on a submarine a pregnant elephant is one of only a handful of animals living below the waves. We follow Nerissa Crane, a vet, as she remembers recent events, looks after the animals and falls into a world of intrigue.

It is difficult to properly review this book without giving too much away. There will be mild spoilers throughout this right from the start but I will try to avoid the main ones. Full Review

Beckett America.jpg

Review of

America City by Chris Beckett

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

America City tells the story of Holly, an ambitious publicist who sets aside her own political beliefs in order to help the ambitious Senator Slaymaker with his Presidential campaign. Set in the 22nd century, the novel tells of an incredibly disunited United States, where the effects of climate change have created deep divisions between the affluent Northern States, and the South, which is frequently ravaged by extreme weather. Holly and Slaymaker hope to change this, working together on the plan they believe to be the solution to the problem of where to place the thousands of Americans who have been made homeless by devastating storms. Full Review

Featherstone Paradise.jpg

Review of

Paradise Girl by Phill Featherstone

3.5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Kerryl lives far away from the urban twenty-first century on a remote Yorkshire farm. The farm is high up on a hill and it's a family endeavour - grandparents, mother, Kerryl. There's a market town below but Kerryl's family is concentrated on the farm and the hard but beautiful living associated with it. Kerryl, though, is a fiercely bright girl - she's won a place at Cambridge University and is looking forward to going. She loves poetry. Full Review

Sutcliffe See.jpg

Review of

We See Everything by William Sutcliffe

5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Lex lives in what used to be London. Today, it is a closed-off, bombed-out area known as The Strip. Nobody comes in and nobody can go out. Drones are a constant presence overhead, food is short and life is hard. But there's a girl he likes and she can make him forget almost anything. Alan spends all his time watching The Strip. His talent as a gamer got him the job of drone pilot. He hasn't bombed anyone yet but he's hyped up to do it, whatever his mother thinks. It's fighting terrorism, after all. Alan's observation target is a high-profile target - a man high up in the resistance organisation known as The Corps. Alan calls him #K622. But Lex calls him Dad. Full Review

Roberts Real.jpg

Review of

The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts

3star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

If you had the choice would you live your life online? In the future, this may be possible, with the development of fully realised virtual reality you may feel that the online world is more real than your own. Even today we spend hours each day looking at phones or checking statuses. The only thing is that with most people online, some of us will have to stay in the real world to deal with unexpected events – such as a real town murder. Full Review

Merbeth Raid.jpg

Review of

Raid by K S Merbeth

4.5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

A brutal road trip in a blighted landscape that pulls no punches. We travel with Clementine, a bounty hunter, in a world without heroes or hope. Full Review

Mcdermid Resistance.jpg

Review of

Resistance: A Race Against Time to Save Mankind by Val McDermid

4.5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

It began so innocently, at a music festival in Northumberland. There were some stomach upsets, but what do you expect when the weather's bad, there's inadequate sanitation and 150,000 people out to enjoy themselves? Journalist Zoe Meadows is covering the event and she's filing her copy from the back of a food van run by her friends Sam and Lisa. Sam's fussy about the food he serves - he's The Sausage Man - and he regularly checks out his suppliers. In his business, you just can't be too careful. The stomach upsets seem to last for 24 hours, an unpleasant 24 hours, but then it seems to be over. Full Review

Doctorow Walkaway.jpg

Review of

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

2.5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

Science Fiction is not always what it seems. You may think that you are reading an exciting space adventure about many-tentacled aliens, but in fact, it is an allegory for race relations in modern America. The best books are able to balance the hidden meaning of the book, whilst still entertaining the reader with a great story. The worst can feel like an author preaching directly to the reader and leaving their story to struggle in the background. Full Review

Terry Contagion.jpg

Review of

Contagion: Book 1 (Dark Matter) by Teri Terry

4.5star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

It's not a spoiler if I tell you that bad things happen to Callie because they do. Callie - Calista - disappeared more than a year ago. Her brother Kai is still looking for her, hopeful that she will be found alive and well. But Callie isn't alive and well. She's been taken to a secretive medical facility on the island of Shetland, experimented on, and then, well, turned into something else. How? Full Review

Move on the Newest Emerging Readers Reviews