Review: Survival Show

Set in a future shaped by climate disaster, inequality and society’s obsession with entertainment, Survival Show by Juno Dawson transforms the familiar world of reality television into something far more sinister.

After devastating floods destroy their home, Taryn Beck and her family are forced to relocate as refugees. Struggling to survive in a society where food, housing and healthcare are increasingly limited, the pressure on Taryn’s family becomes unbearable — especially when her younger brother Jenson relies on medication to stay alive. Desperate for a way to support her family, Taryn auditions for Starmaker, the country’s biggest reality television show.

At first, Starmaker appears to offer everything audiences love about talent competitions: glittering costumes, dramatic performances, celebrity judges and the promise of fame. But beneath the glitz lies something much darker. In this dystopian future, contestants are literally competing for their lives, with eliminated participants executed as part of “Project Population”, a government initiative designed to reduce the strain on society’s resources.

Book Lists: Top 5 YA Dystopian Fiction

Many teenagers gravitate toward dystopian fiction because it helps them unpack real-life issues through the safety of an imagined world. Here are my Top 5 YA dystopian fiction novels:

Review: The Lastling

Following Victor Kelleher’s last excellent book, The Cave, The Lastling comes with food for thought. 

Kelleher’s incredible talent and imagination have produced an outstanding exploration of AI, and a view of the results when controlled by a lust for power. 

This is a superbly crafted novel in four parts, that introduce the passing of time, with two amazing leading characters - one a young orphan girl, the other a Droid, whose paths intersect with life-changing outcomes. 

Guido is the friendly Droid guide, that leads hikers through the Wilderness Park. 

On a day like any other, he is warned to escape into the mountains before the Enforcers arrive. 

Review: Sunny At The End Of The World

Predicting the future is a tricky thing. It is, invariably, one of the most inconstant of certainties. One never knows how one’s narrative will play out, either in life or between the pages.

Perhaps that is what I like best in Steph Bowe’s posthumously published, Sunny At The End Of The World. Even this ingenious title suggests something beyond utter hopelessness. Can an ending really be the start of something new? This premise forms just one part of Bowe’s YA fiction which prima facie, seems a straightforward dystopic foray into Zombieland.

We’ve seen that all before, right? An almost comic romp into the horror of the after dead. And yet, within Bowe’s capable and quirky hands, Sunny’s worlds, past and future, assume a reality that teens immediately warm to.

It’s 2018 just days after a global outbreak leaves the world afflicted and stricken. Zombies plague the major living centres, destroying civilisation as we know it, undermining any survivors’ sense of security and sanity. 

Review: Anomaly

The world has ended. It’s done. It’s all over.

A virus has infected everyone. Killed almost everyone.

Expect for Piper Manning.

Piper got sick the day after she buried her aunt, but she didn’t die. She woke up again, and she woke up different. 

With a strange power she can’t control, she has no intention of leaving her aunt’s mountain hideout. But when her dwindling food supplies force her to leave and she discovers an injured boy, she learns that the virus is the least of the world’s problems.

Review: Aisle Nine

It’s the end of the world. Bloodthirsty demons from your worst nightmares have broken through portals and the world will never be safe again.

But don’t fret too much. The Vanguard Corporation has taken control of the situation. They have a huge military. They patrol the danger zones and fight the monsters. And they keep everyone safe. 

State of the art apps alert you when a demon breaks free. You get points for following the rules and clicking the links Vanguard wants you to. Life has pretty much gone back to normal. 

As long as you don’t ask too many questions.

Review: Stepping Sideways: Worlds Of Steampunk And Dystopia

Stepping Sideways is an exhilarating and wonderful read. This collection of short stories by established and emerging authors takes us into the worlds of Steampunk and Dystopia, to experience danger and wonder by turns - and in rapid succession!

Edited by Emily Larkin and Lynne Stringer who each have stories included, the anthology also contains a fantastic offering from KBR’s own Shaye Wardrop among other excellent narratives.

Reading this book is a little mind-blowing, and kind of like riding a roller-coaster (in the best ways of having the breath sucked out of your lungs for fun). 

Most of the stories combine fantasy with mechanics, allowing readers to explore the wonders and horrors of science, technology and magic.

Guest Post: Shaye Wardrop on the Pull of Dystopian Stories

Across books, movies and art, the dystopian story holds a strange grip on our imaginations.

The Hunger Games, The City of Ember, The Obernewtyn Chronicles. They all paint a rather gloomy vision of the future, but they draw us in. They are thrilling, fascinating and addictive.

But why?

I believe one strong pull is curiosity about the unknown and the uncertain. The dystopian tale transports us to worlds very different from our own. It gives us a glimpse into possible futures shaped by environmental disaster, technology gone wrong and leaders who seek control. It invites us to explore our own values and fears, and to think deeply about the consequences of the actions we (and others) take.

Review: City Knife

The Chimera are on the move. They’re going to push beyond the city limits and attack the world’s remaining survivors. Bayat feels the weight of that threat on his shoulders for the part his own mother played in their creation. Pandora thinks there’s a way the Chimera can be cured. They’re running towards different versions of the future, but still they run together to the city with hope in their hearts — even if that hope is fading fast.

In another place, Emmeline battles the sickness that is slowly turning her into a Chimera, and Fatima gets ready to battle the creatures Emmeline is destined to become. Can Emmaline fight the sickness? Does she even want to? Fatima has believed the Chimera to be the enemy this whole time. But with Emmaline standing beside her, have things changed?

Junior Review: Farhenheit 451

Do you love Dystopia / Science Fiction  then Fahrenheit 451 is the book for you.  

A world where firemen don’t deal with fires, but their purpose is to burn books. 

Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns . A dystopian universe crafted by Ray Bradbury where Guy Montag chooses to challenge everything he’s ever believed. 

After meeting an inquisitive young girl Charisse, Montag decides to go on a treacherous journey to figure out what caused the end of free speech and literature. While naive Montag doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into, sometimes not asking questions about things, the answers might scare you.

Review: The Snow Laundry

In this dystopian world the administration controls absolutely everything and the population know not to challenge the status quo.

Besides it could be a lot worse – many of the country’s homeless are forced to work in the towers with no possibility or hope of escaping. But while their new home is a prison, they are fed and warm.

17-year-old Ally is just of those people enslaved in the towers. Working long hours in the laundry, each day the same, she is resigned to her fate. 

Though there are many people who still exist in the tunnels that are barely surviving, Ally believes she has the better situation; her vote was the price of safety.

Birthday celebrations are in full swing for the Towers Overseer when Ally’s boyfriend Bon goes missing. One minute he was laying beside her in bed, the next he is gone, only leaving behind drawings.

Review: Wanderer

If I were to use the vernacular, I’d say it’s been a long time between drinks Victor, but it was certainly worth it. 

Multi-award winner, Victor Kelleher, has crafted his first middle grade novel in fifteen years with this gripping and absorbing post-apocalyptic narrative. If you think Waterworld for kids, you might get a little sense of the setting.

Orphaned Dane, spends most of his life since the devastation of his village, on his kayak. The world has shrunk to few habitable places and even those are not safe from the ravaging horde who call themselves The Clan. 

Review: The Raven's Song

Imagine a world where you live in a fenced community of only 350 people. 

You care for the land, live a simple life and use minimal things so everything beyond the fence can grow and repair — so the world can heal after all the damage that has been done to it.

You accept this life. You don’t question it. You want to help save the world.

But when someone starts cutting the fence and stealing sheep, and you discover there are secrets hidden in the trees outside your community… well, would you just repair the fence and go back to looking after the chickens?

Review: Youngbloods

Youngbloods is the fourth and final book in the Imposters series by Scott Westerfeld, and you should read the other books before this one. 

It brings readers full circle, linking with the Uglies series even more closely than before, through the return of Tally Youngblood.

Tally is the most famous rebel in the world, and Frey is now one of her crew, the Youngbloods.

After the events of the previous book, Mirror’s Edge, the relationship between twins Frey and Rafia is fractured, perhaps forever. 

Rafia is leader of the city of Shreve, having taken her twin's name to rule. Frey, once her sister’s body double and bodyguard, is a rebel Special, superhuman and living in the wild.

Can Frey come to terms with herself, her family, and her past? What could her future hold when she seems on the brink of disaster and death in a world filled with revolution?

Review: Shatter Me

A broken girl tries to survive in a broken world. But when your touch can literally kill people, how on earth can you find a place to belong?

Juliette has been locked away because she’s a threat to everyone around her. In a dark and ominous prison, she is alone and starting to lose her mind. 

Until someone from her past walks into her cell and changes her life forever.

But is Adam there to save or destroy her? Juliette has been locked up and forgotten for so long, so why, now, does everyone seem to want to find her? And what exactly do they plan to do with her?

Review: Mirror's Edge

Prepare yourself for a fast-paced, action-packed story. 

Mirror's Edge, the third book in Scott Westerfeld's Impostors series, opens as a team of young rebels begins a bold and risky stealth mission to Shreve.

It's a city where your every move is watched by surveillance dust. A place where lives are controlled by a dictator. 

Frey and her comrades are out to rescue Boss X who is being held by the dictator, Frey's father.

To succeed in outwitting the city's surveillance, and her father in particular, Frey has had camo-surge, a special medical procedure to change her appearance so she is not recognisable.

This is the latest of many challenges for Frey, who is struggling with her identity and place in the world.

Frey's world has been rocked by revelations that change her understanding of herself and the people around her.

Review: Mountain Arrow

After their trip to the abandoned city to find medicine to save their village, Pandora and her friends have returned to the river. But one of them didn’t make it back and is still out there somewhere, and another is carrying the deadly virus that turns people into feral creatures.

Going back to the way things were before seems impossible, but Pandora tries, all the while battling her feelings for the mountain boy, Bayat, who protected them on their trip to Melney, and trying to accept her fate to be paired with Matthew.

But when the Mountain People appear looking for shelter, other refugees start to flood the river village and Pandora’s visions of the past and future come back, she knows trying to restart a normal life was naïve. 

Review: The Vanishing Deep

Imagine a world floating on water. Little land, few trees, endless oceans. Can you see it?

Can you see the floating communities trying to cobble together a city to sit atop the water? Can you see the owners of what land is left, standing on their shores, holding all the power?

Seventeen-year-old Tempest is a diver. She searches old-world ruins for things she can trade for notes — notes she can use to pay to have her sister, Elysea, resurrected.

One catch… the dead can only be resurrected for twenty-four hours.

And while most people want to bring back their loved ones to spend one last day with them, Tempest’s motive is slightly different: Tempest is resurrecting her sister to find out the secrets she took to her grave.

Review: The Grace Year

A gap year with a difference!

This very dark, speculative fiction novel follows a year in the life of sixteen-year-old Tierney James. 

The tradition is for the sixteen-year-old women of the village to live in an isolated compound for a year, away from their families, ostensibly to wear out their dangerous women’s magic (the sort that makes the otherwise pious men do risky and sinful things – could the symbolism be any stronger?), in order to return home to settle into their duties as wives or unwed servants or labourers.

The tag line reads 'No one speaks of the Grace Year, it’s forbidden.'But the girls know that a sizeable portion of the young women fail to return and those who survive are often disfigured in ghastly ways.

Tierney has always been fiercely independent. As young women may get chosen to be wives in the lead-up to the Grace Year, she has made sure that no man would pick her, as she prefers the freedom of the unglamorous role as a labourer. But to her utter disgust, somebody has! 

Review: Shatter City

Shatter City by Scott Westerfeld, is the sequel to Impostors (review here), and you really should make sure you read book one before you start on number two.

The series (two more books are still to be published) is set in the same universe as the Uglies quartet. And for those reading along with knowledge of the quartet, you'll discover some specific connections.

In some moments I don't know what to say about the story, and in others I want to say so much I don't know where to start, and have to remind myself to be careful not to reveal any spoilers.

Shatter City begins not long after Impostors ends.

Frey, who was born to protect her identical twin sister, Rafi, is thrust into new and unnerving situations as the rebels rise in defence of cities that are not Frey's home of Shreve.