The best way I can describe this book is as sci-fi Les Misérables. Chantine, a thief and con-woman best compared to Éponine, lives in the Frets (slums) of Lattere, but wants nothing more than to leave. To everyone but her family she is known as Théo. Marcellus (most like Marius) is the grandson of General Bonnefaçon, the most powerful man on the planet. His father was a traitor and member of the Vangarde, a rebel group thought to be resurfacing.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a wonderful futuristic sci-fi story about a fascist world full of censorship and where happiness is valued over thinking and free will. The book offers an insight on what our world might become, and even though the book was published in 1953, the problems that it presents are even more present today.
Miles Morales Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds is a fiction novel with a boy named Miles who is Spider-Man. He mourns over the recent death of his uncle, but when he goes to school, he feels his spidey senses go off. He doesn’t know why, but something is off in his very normal school. He has a crush on a girl named Alicia, but he is always distracted or can’t talk to her because he is awkward.
Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood, the writer of The Handmaid’s Tale. Set in the post-apocalyptic future, this book follows Snowman, the last remaining human, as he navigates surviving in a world with few supplies and genetically mutated animals trying to kill him. The only ones to keep him company are a new breed of people called the Crakers, who are the creation of Snowman’s old friend Crake.
The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories by Simon Rich is a collection of eclectic and often surreal short stories centering around love and romance. For the most part, I very much enjoyed this book.
Scythe is the first book in Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe series. It is young adult dystopian fiction and the story follows Citra and Rowan, two teenagers living in a futuristic world in which humanity has conquered death. Citra and Rowan’s Earth is ruled by the benevolent Thunderhead, an evolved form of the Internet that has eradicated all of the problems that once tormented humanity (war, sickness, hunger, etc.). Even death is impossible thanks to revival centers that cover the planet.
Rebel is the fourth science fiction novel in Marie Lu's Legend series. It takes place a decade after Champion and illustrates Daniel and Eden Wings’ new lives in the supposed-utopia of Antarctica. Daniel learns to navigate his relationship with his now-grown brother as Eden tries to escape from his older brother's shadow. The two brothers must take on the notorious criminal Dominic Hann while challenging their government's beliefs and facing their pasts.
This is top-notch science fiction--it takes today's scientific advancements and speculates how they might play out in the future, considering legal, ethical, and practical ramifications along the way. The book does this over the course of six lightly connected stories, each progressively further in the future. The topic is gene editing and body modification.
The action is intense and the storyline is fast-paced; there is always something going on. The setting in intergalactic space and the unforgettable characters make for a perfect storm of events that draws you in deeper the more you read. The writing style is beautiful and the slang feels so natural it's like the culmination of 7 people's autobiographies thrown backward in time.
Whoa! Now here's an exercise in extended metaphor. Andrews has taken an idea that could have been a simple allegory and turned it into a fully developed novel. Imagine, if you will, an alternate reality in which physical size is literally determined by wealth. A standard person is middlescale. The middlerich are those larger than that up two doublescale and the middlepoor extend to halfscale. Smaller than that are the littlepoors: quarterscale, eighthscale, and tenthscale--about the size of a rat. The bigrich just get bigger and bigger to hundreds of feet tall.
