Will keep readers turning the pages.
A powerful teen grapples with love and truth in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Seventeen-year-old Delta lives in a literal wasteland, deadly and unforgiving. But though she is surrounded by the dust, heat, and desiccated misery of the wastes, she has symbols branded onto her back that seem to show the way to the Verdant, a lush oasis that may or may not exist. She hides these markings, knowing—as her Ma has repeatedly reminded her—that her life would be at risk if the wrong people knew about them. When Delta returns from an expedition to find her desolate home settlement of Dead River has been raided and everyone killed or abducted, she suspects the information burned into her skin might be what the General, who ordered the attack, is after. Although Delta sets out in hopes of rescuing her family, what she discovers on her quest upends everything she thinks she knows about the brutal world she inhabits. The rule of the wastes is to trust no one, but in order to survive, Delta must challenge this foundational belief. She is aided by people she meets along her journey, including a long-missing childhood friend and mysterious others. Each encounter pushes Delta toward a deeper understanding of love and trust and the spaces in between in this intense, gritty, and propulsive novel. Main characters follow a White default.
Will keep readers turning the pages. (Dystopian. 13-18)Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-24443-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning.
Two teens train to be society-sanctioned killers in an otherwise immortal world.
On post-mortal Earth, humans live long (if not particularly passionate) lives without fear of disease, aging, or accidents. Operating independently of the governing AI (called the Thunderhead since it evolved from the cloud), scythes rely on 10 commandments, quotas, and their own moral codes to glean the population. After challenging Hon. Scythe Faraday, 16-year-olds Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova reluctantly become his apprentices. Subjected to killcraft training, exposed to numerous executions, and discouraged from becoming allies or lovers, the two find themselves engaged in a fatal competition but equally determined to fight corruption and cruelty. The vivid and often violent action unfolds slowly, anchored in complex worldbuilding and propelled by political machinations and existential musings. Scythes’ journal entries accompany Rowan’s and Citra’s dual and dueling narratives, revealing both personal struggles and societal problems. The futuristic post–2042 MidMerican world is both dystopia and utopia, free of fear, unexpected death, and blatant racism—multiracial main characters discuss their diverse ethnic percentages rather than purity—but also lacking creativity, emotion, and purpose. Elegant and elegiac, brooding but imbued with gallows humor, Shusterman’s dark tale thrusts realistic, likable teens into a surreal situation and raises deep philosophic questions.
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning. (Science fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7242-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Hold tight: You’ll want to stay on this nightmarish roller coaster till the end.
Trapped in an apocalyptic theme park, teens fight back.
Jay has it pretty good, all things considered, in a not-too-distant future absolutely ravaged by droughts, fires, floods, and powder-keg instability. He and his family are live-in employees of Karloff Country, a mountaintop in Virginia taken over by a billionaire family who created their own version of Disneyland as a refuge for their similarly wealthy peers to cavort away from the destruction they helped create. But when the end times loom, Jay realizes that the new guests, the Trustees, are privileged to the point of sociopathy, torturing staff over perceived slights with impunity. Jay rebels along with fellow Karloff Academy seniors Zeke and Connie and Seychelle, his crush and an heir to the Karloff fortune (Chelle’s racist grandfather, Franklin Karloff, hasn’t gotten over her White mom’s having had a biracial Black baby). They’re all fast friends; “the Black kids always find each other.” Narrated through multiple points of view, the novel features Jay’s perspective most prominently, with some interludes from his friends, all presented in Giles’ signature strong, accessible voice. With hints of Cory Doctorow, Jordan Peele, and Richard Matheson, this book stands on its own as a dystopian adventure, but the deeper metaphors around servitude, privilege, class, and solidarity mean that there’s a lot to think about as the characters reckon with their proximity to and complicity in violence both local and far-flung.
Hold tight: You’ll want to stay on this nightmarish roller coaster till the end. (Horror. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75201-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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