The Scorch Trials

by James Dashner

Disappointing!

A few tantalizing hints about WICKED and the real purpose of the trials, but really just more of the same and nothing truly new. It's making me mentally reëvaluate The Maze Runner. Rather like those stupid teenage vampire books I read, the poor quality of the writing becomes all to apparent once you get past the novelty and excitement of the first book. A really good idea for a story is maybe enough to carry a bush-league author through one book, but especially in young adult there are nearly always plans for a trilogy (at least). A rather dreary reflection of the state of the publishing industry? Or am I the wretched one, becuase I'm going to read the third book, however much it pains me?

Feed

by M.T. Anderson

The fourth book I picked up because of the teen dystopian fiction article in the New Yorker, and the least like the others. Set in a future of near-earth space travel and the intertubes — complete, even replete with context-sensitive advertising — piped directly into the brain, related viruses and diseases, plus a hint of disaffected youth and potential resistance, it has all the right ingredients. The ending, however, was rather anti-climactic and left me feeling as if the story, and the experience of reading it, had no point. Which is, in a way, an accurate adolescent feeling, but still disappointing.

The Maze Runner

by James Dashner

Oh, damn bloody hell! This excellent young adult book is the first of a planned trilogy; the second book might be out in October, but my library doesn't appear to have it on order yet. I dare say it's very close to almost as good as The Hunger Games, and finishing it certainly gave me similar feelings of elation laced with frustration, despair and impatience.

I heard about it in a short article about teen dystopian fiction in the June 14, 2010, issue of the New Yorker. It's an interesting article comparing/contrasting adult and young adult literary dystopias (dystopiae?), and it mentions The Hunger Games, of course, and several other books I decided to read based on what it said about them. This is the first of those that I've read. It's exciting, filled with danger and death, combining elements of Hunger Games, Ender's Game, 13 Monkeys, in a wrapping of fresh mystery and cruel unknowing: memory wiped, a young man wakes in the center of huge maze that changes every night, as yet unsolved by the 40-some young men already trapped there. Oh, and there's scary mechanized creatures that mostly come at night, mostly.

Just as a side note, I think the author might be Mormon. A page on the website for the book has a link to a profile of him in the Deseret News, a Mormon newspaper. Interesting, since Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) is Mormon, as is Stephenie Meyer (Twilight series). Wonder if Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) is too?

Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

I guess this is speculative fiction, since it isn't cataloged as science fiction. Future, space travel, extrasolar colonization, aliens... but somehow not sci-fi. The story doesn't have to be set on another planet, it could easily be re-worked as a western or in any kind of frontier/colonization situation. Except for that one thing, which I can't really tell you about.

In my experience, a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books are coming-of-age stories, whether it's a character growing up or a civilization maturing (or declining). There's a convergence in the liminal aspects of both the transformation narrative and the imaginative effort of writing or reading without reference to conventional reality. Girl in Landscape inhabits the same territory.

It's a fairly breezy read that I think would appeal to teens (the protagonist is a psychologically mature 13-year-old girl), but there's a barely contained complexity that keeps a multitude of themes and potential conclusions afloat. (I'm trying to think of an expressive image, but all I can come up with is a pillowcase full of kittens.) The ending is kind of abrupt, but I suppose it has to be, since it's also the collapse of all those possibilities into a single eventuality.

I don't want to get into the plot too much, but here's the set up: abandoned by both parents (one dead, one abdicated), Pella Marsh moves with her father and younger brothers to a very small human settlement on a planet whose inhabitants are strange remnants of a once-great culture that left their home and took to the stars; transplanted into this environment, she faces the tyranny and the disappointment of adults, while becoming one herself.

Burndive
    and
Cagebird

by Karin Lowachee

The first book in this sort-of-series is Warchild, which I wrote about here. It's not exactly a series, because the stories aren't sequential; instead they're the same basic story told from the points of view of three different characters (another echo of Orson Scott Card's "Enderverse"). I don't know why I didn't just check the publication dates, but I somehow managed to read them out of order. It didn't really matter for these two, but reading either of these before Warchild would have ruined that book's ending, so I'm glad I at least got that part right.

These books are definitely of the military sci-fi subgenre, but there's also the heavy focus on character and emotion typical of the soft/social sci-fi subgenre. Each of the main characters experiences physical and psychological trauma, and ultimately finds the inner strength to endure, first, and then to free themselves from their pasts. The way the protagonists evolve sort of reminded me of some of Octavia Butler's heroines, too.

All three characters are young men, ranging in age from 14 to 20 during the main action of the books, with some flashbacks or introductory parts about their earlier childhoods. (At my library, they're classified as young adult books, but I've seen them catalogued as regular SF on other libraries' websites.) Partly as a function of their ages, and also because of a major plot element — war, piracy, kidnapping, forced prostitution — sexual themes arise. It's mostly innuendo of the gay-vague and gay-chicken* variety; only Cagebird has actual gay characters and actual sex happening, which is slightly more explicit than a romance novel but far from the language of erotica.

*Not to be confused with the older gay slang "chicken," referring to a very young gay boy/man usually in the context of a relationship with an older gay man, "gay chicken" is when (supposedly) straight guys say and/or do "gay" things to each other, turning up the intensity and pushing boundaries until one of them "chickens" out. It's related to frat-boy/athlete/military sexual bravado and gay-baiting, and it depends on the paradox that the more secure you are in your masculinity, the farther you can push the gay boundary. In these books, there's also an implied feeling that there's much less social stigma attached to being gay and that gender and sexuality categories are... not exactly fluid, but maybe more mix-and-match.

Final analysis: the action and intrigue of Ender's Game or a Heinliein book, with the added attraction of teen angst and sexiness. I loved this series, and I'd recommend it to teens and adults alike. I'm very sad that my library no longer has Warchild and is down to one copy each of Burndive and Cagebird. I'm even considering putting them in my Top 10.

Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

There are some obvious parallels to Ender's Game, but this is a more mature novel. (My library has it cataloged as young adult, but I just checked two others that both have it as adult.) By the end, the protagonist is still a teenager but nearly post-adolescent; the violence is more gory and visceral; and there's some sexual innuendo — and pretty unsavory innuendo at that (child molestation, prostitution, human trafficking). There's also a much clearer and further psychological journey for the character. (It's been a while, but I remember Ender's Game as being more of a psychological journey for the reader than for the character; at the end of the book, Ender just seemed sort of flabbergasted, or like he had PTSD.)

I don't want to do a plot summary, because that'll make it seem more derivative than it actually is. I mean, on some level it is, but then (almost) all really good sci-fi books share certain story elements and plotting techniques. And this book is really good, potentially classic. (Also, the guy on the cover is hot, and I enjoyed having him in mind while reading the book. Too often the cover illustration ruins one's imagination of the character.)

The Story of Stone

by N.M. Browne

I had this book checked out from the library for a very long time before I finally read it. Would that I had waited forever! (OK, it wasn't terrible, just not thrilling.)

Thematically, with its archaeology/anthropology, exploration of class and gender issues, and the whole mankind vs. nature thing, it's suggestive of the work of Ursula Le Guin with hints of Princess Mononoke. The writing was decent, but the parallel storylines were uneven to the point that I considered skipping some of the "present day" sections. Other than that, I'm not sure where else the book went wrong. Maybe it's just too derivative; it's kind of a rip off of Enchantress from the Stars. But now I think about it, the flashback parts were pretty awesome — almost as awesome as Ursula — so I'll give it half a thumb up and recommend it for those who are heavily into soft-science sci-fi.

The Wave

by Walter Mosley

At just over 200 pages, this science fiction book could pass for young adult. I'm used to sci fi being longer, and I was worried by the slimness of this volume. Having read it, though, I think this is how sci fi ought to be: vast in scope, but focused like a laser.

I haven't read any of Mosley's other work, so I wasn't sure what to expect. His style is very clean and crisp — except for a few idiosyncratic fillips and phrasings — and indicative of his beginnings as a mystery author.

Zombies and primordial ooze; homeland security goon squads and torture chambers; and a billions-of-years-old cosmic romance are woven together into a fast-paced narrative in which loyalties are tested and long-buried secrets are revealed.

The Brief History of the Dead

by Kevin Brockmeier

I guess you could call this speculative fiction. Alternating chapters relate the fates of the dead, "living" in an unnamed city for as long as they are remembered by someone alive on earth, and the doom of all as the last living human slowly perishes in the thawing but still cold enough to be deadly Antarctic.

It's a bonbon of a book, entertaining and brief, without a lot of depth. There's sort of a side plot involving mega-corporations run amok as governments crumble, but it isn't developed enough to be integral to the story; it isn't thought-provoking either, because we all already know corporations are evil and lame, right?