This regular feature gives Booklist critics the opportunity to shout about a recently published book they adored. They’ll tell us why we should read it, then provide five read-alikes for the title. ★ The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault In the decades since its 1985 publication, Atwood’s dystopic classic has spawned audio, […]
Lynn: When I heard that a movie of Philip Reeve’s brilliant Mortal Engines (2003) was in the works, I immediately wanted to reread the series. (I hear a chorus of “Sing it, sister!”) If you HAVEN’T read the series, RUN to get the first book NOW! If you’re a fan of world-building, this series is like […]
Cindy and Lynn: Lynn missed a wild middle-school book club meeting a few weeks ago. I believe it started during Jackson’s rave review of the recent Printz honor title Scythe by Neal Shusterman. This 8th-grade reader loved the book, but commented that he really doesn’t need romance in his dystopian books. “Romance is fine,” he said. […]
Readers are clamoring for dystopian fiction. (Apparently, not everybody has a well-worn, highlighted, dog-eared copy of 1984 sitting on their shelves.) I’d like to suggest some dystopian books from my own library to read during these very interesting times. (For a list of contemporary American dystopian novels, click here.) Reality-based Dystopia Open Doors and Three […]
In this week’s Webcomics Wednesday, we’re taking a short trip to a terrible future. Britt Sabo’s All Night imagines a world that’s come to a halt, leaving one half of the planet permanently in daylight and the other perpetually shrouded in darkness. That darkness allows vicious monsters to emerge, and they’re gradually creeping into the crepuscular […]
Lynn: Mercedes Lackey is a famous name to fans of adult fantasy and I was truly excited to receive a galley of her first YA book, Hunter (2015). The veteran author delivers with practiced panache, introducing teen readers to an Earth devastated centuries ago by the Disery, in which the boundary between the Otherworld and ours was torn […]
Lynn: Greta Gustafsen Stuart is the Duchess of Halifax and Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy. Since the age of 5 she has lived in one of the Prefectures controlled by the UN and Talis, the AI controlling Earth. Greta is the future ruler of a superpower. She is also a hostage. Should her […]
I will admit, I am stealing that comparison from Entertainment Weekly, which has already made the connection between Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games (2008) and Kelsea Glynn of The Queen of the Tearling (2014). But while these two trilogies are not that similar—one is dystopian fiction and the other is a fantasy/science fiction blend—it is true that readers hunger […]
On Sunday, Paolo Bacigalupi, author of the Printz-winning Ship Breaker (2010), stopped by the Booklist booth at ALA’s Midwinter Meeting to talk about his new book, The Water Knife. Our conversation has been edited for length. The Water Knife is firmly dystopian, though I’ve heard you prefer the term accidental futures. Could you say a little about why you like that phrase better than the […]
In addition to talking about Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself with my Other Realms book group, I also recently led a discussion for Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars. I will confess that I was a hold-out on reading the latter book, perhaps unfairly, as I find myself irked by “literary” dystopian novels that get heaped with […]
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