THOSE THAT WAKE

Laura and Mal have both lost their families; Laura’s parents have mysteriously forgotten their only child, and Mal’s brother vanished suddenly. Stuck in a dismal technocentric, corporation-controlled New York City, the two teens join up with disillusioned schoolteacher Mike and shadowy researcher Jon on a quest to find the Librarian, the one person who can explain the strange happenings. Karp’s gray and dispassionate setting unfortunately carries over to the narrative and the characters, as though both plot and people are obscured by fog. Mal is anger incarnate, with attempts at subtler character development providing only the thinnest veneer; Laura’s personality, meanwhile, vanishes as easily as her identity. Instead of engaging with concerns over the cultural acceptance of technology, à la Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (2008), Karp seems to adopt a Luddite position, categorizing all forms of gadgetry as a detriment to society. Both the burned-out–teacher and powerful-librarian tropes appear to be an authorial insider joke to adult readers rather than critical elements of the plot. For more compelling tales of corporate malfeasance, try Max Barry’s Jennifer Government (2003) or Scott Westerfeld’s So Yesterday (2004) instead of this rather bland offering in a field overrun with dystopias. (Dystopia. YA)