For instance, this. Or oh god, this.

Sometimes they’re zombie novels.

Yeesh.

A couple of favorite bits:

The key to dystopia is some element of larger societal commentary. It’s not simply a ruined futuristic world. Some people miss this key point while writing what they believe to be a dystopia. What is your dystopian world trying to say?

(Though I’d say this is maybe more a problem of subgenre semantics. Nothing wrong with a good straightforward post-apocalypse, I say.)

Totalitarian government. ‘Nuff said. You will find the presence of an oppressive, totalitarian government in nearly every dystopia you come across. This naturally makes sense, as a dystopia portrays a society we would fear, and totalitarianism is certainly something most people fear. This makes it a common trope, but not necessarily cliché. It becomes cliché when the government is a one-dimensional bad guy that just likes to torture its people. As with any villain, it should be more nuanced than that – the government leaders should genuinely believe they are doing what’s best for their people. They may believe it in an incredibly twisted way, but they believe it. There’s also the option of going against the grain and creating a dystopia based on something other than an evil, overreaching government. There are other social avenues to explore.

I would love to see a novel about a hippie-run dystopia. (Although I guess that’s every story about failed communes?)

Reading the interview I had the unsettling feeling that he stole the kind of thoughts that are churning around in my brain all the time and used them as interview answers, only making them sound smarter than I usually do:

Rig workers work these insane shifts, so there’s a problem with methamphetamine addiction. They can keep going on shifts that run 12 hours, day after day after day. That’s going to break a person. And we live on top of that. The number of injuries and deaths in the natural gas industry are also on us whenever we turn on our gas stoves. I’m really interested in the idea that some of the things we take for granted—things that seem clean and pristine—are connected to long chains of things we don’t see, or don’t want to see.

And it’s this idea that makes his post-apocalyptic worlds seem entirely believable to me, I think, and therefore the stuff of my nightmares:

We tend to think of one story line of collapse, which is essentially the Mad Max version: the world falls apart and everyone is just driving around tearing everybody apart. But that’s just not what poverty looks like. We still are civil creatures, and we do best when we work together. So when I think of societal collapse, I think more in terms of what does it mean if we back off of our wealth and have less of it—but are essentially us in our character.

Thanks, dude.

(But seriously, thank you. You wonder “whether or not kids are experiencing the larger ideas and themes I’m interested in or if they’re only experiencing the thrill ride,” and I wonder the same thing about books like yours or Feed. But I know some of the kids are getting it, because I got it about the books I read when I was a kid and it changed my life. So thank you for telling these stories; we need them more than ever.)

But then Rose went into stasis again. She wakes up 62 years later, having slept through the Dark Times that killed millions and changed Earth completely. Now everyone she knew is dead and she’s the heir to her parents’ corporate empire, with enemies she doesn’t understand and no emotional connection to her new life.

This was definitely one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time. It is deeply flawed, so let’s get my criticisms out of the way first. The prose is amateurish (lots of descriptions of dreams to convey emotion; so much “telling” that at times I groaned out loud, “You miss Xavier, we get it“). Rose struck me as a tiresome Mary Sue; her endless self-pity was hard to take and I couldn’t understand what Xavier and her new friends saw in her. (I was more okay with this by the end, for reasons I’ll explain if you read past the spoiler space.)

The villains weren’t engaging, either: Guillory, head of UniCorp until Rose came along, is a smarmy straw man for all the worst Evil Corporate arguments imaginable. And the scary robot sent after Rose isn’t so scary — far more original-series Cylon than T-1000. The characters are ethnically diverse, which is nice, but the book is weirdly self-conscious about that; it never lets you forget any character’s genetic heritage. (I bet somebody could write pages about race & ethnicity in this book, but I’m not going to be that person.)

There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world — what does the loss of a huge percentage of the world’s population do to poverty? What are the implications of an interplanetary corporation being the most powerful entity in the world? We do get some of the history of Otto (Rose’s new friend, a telepathic alien-human hybrid bred by UniCorp with questionable civil rights), and that is quite intriguing. But all of this is mostly in the background. (As it probably should be in YA, of course; you know I’m just a sucker for all that sociopolitical sci-fi.)

For awhile, the only reasons I kept reading were because I loved Otto, and because I wanted to find out what was up with Rose’s stasis-studded childhood. And that is where the book gets truly fascinating. The premise — person skips large chunks of history and needs to figure out how to fit into her new world — is solid sci-fi. It lined up nicely with my recent reading of Across the Universe, in fact. But this book does some deeply strange things with it. This is Sheehan’s first book, and my problems with the writing strike me as first-book mistakes. She has a crazy original mind for plot, though, and does some nice world-building as well, so I look forward to seeing what she does next.

I really really want another sci-fi lit crit nerd to read this so we can discuss. I have the ARC, so I can lend it to you. If you are that person, don’t read the spoilers; it’ll ruin everything. If you aren’t going to read it, though, read on…

Cover: I really hope this isn’t the final version. It makes it look much more like a retelling of Sleeping Beauty than it is, and gives no indication whatsoever that it’s science fiction.

ARC provided by the awesome Shelf Respect Teen Book Club at the Brookline Public Library.

BIG-TIME, MAJOR SPOILERS

I had been guessing that Rose was in stasis so often to elongate her life and thereby extend family control of UniCorp past normal lifespans. She talks a lot about how stupid she is; maybe repeated stasis affects your brain? I theorized. Or maybe her parents wanted her to stay a child because she knew some sort of horrible secret about them that would destroy the company if she attained majority.

It turns out, though, that Rose’s parents were just controlling, abusive monsters. They kept her a child because her mother wanted a dress-up doll and her father wanted absolute obedience. When it became clear that she was a teenager with a mind of her own, they put her in stasis and left her there on purpose. They died nearly a decade after the Dark Times; they could have come to release her, but they never did. In fact, her dad was the one who sicced the robot on her — it was programmed to return her to him if she ever ran away, and if it couldn’t do that, to kill her. (Because at that point, of course, she would know a horrible secret about her parents.) But wait, it gets even worse! Rose had two older siblings, both of whom ended up the same way she did, in endless stasis. Only they were never found and released. That is some creepy shit. And it explains Rose’s weak, self-loathing nature throughout much of the book; her parents deliberately raised her to be that way.

When all this becomes clear, the book turns into a sort of A Child Called “It” abuse recovery narrative. I’m not sure I’ve seen science fiction do that before. Our slow discovery of this — and Rose’s denial, as she continues to insist that it’s totally reasonable to use stasis as a sort of calming time-out from the world — is chilling and well-done. I have often thought during times of grief that I’d love a fast-forward button: just zip ahead to when the problem is solved and/or you don’t hurt anymore. Rose has that fast-forward button, and the book does an excellent job of showing why that is both seductive and a terrible idea.

And then there’s the love story. In some ways, this is a typical YA coming-of-age: Rose escapes her parents and learns to grow beyond their (in this case, literally stunting) influence. She loses her first love, and YA convention would have her find a new relationship in her new, emotionally healthier life. There is some indication at the very end that she and Otto will have that.

But she and Xavier are not done with each other. He turns out not to be dead after all. He’s in his seventies, the grandfather of her friend Bren — the boy who found her in stasis, and on whom she has a crush. It’s a sort of Time Traveller’s Wife story, in a way, except even sadder because except for one year in their teens they are always out of phase with each other. He tried to let her out of stasis but couldn’t find her, and now he’s lived an entire lifetime beyond her. I would expect them to mourn this tragedy and move on, recognizing that they are in different places now; probably Xavier would die shortly thereafter to wrap up everything nice and easy. Nope. He becomes her guardian. The last paragraph is:

I jumped up and hugged him. He smelled old, and of that cologne I noticed in his office, and he didn’t feel like my Xavier when I held him anymore. And I loved him as much as I ever had. Brother. Best friend. Grandfather. What did it matter? He was my Xavier.

This will probably trip some people’s incest squick. But I kind of love the book for according this teenage relationship the respect of true soulmates. That’s so unusual.

Man, I wrote a book here, didn’t I? I’m sorry the writing wasn’t good enough for me to recommend it whole-heartedly, but like I said, I think this author is going to do some really interesting things.

Also reviewed by: Phoebe North, Books, Sweets, and Other Treats, and Stories From My Bookshelf.

It’s a little frustrating, because “Why are dystopias so popular?” is a very different question from “Why are books with dark themes popular?” Paolo Bacigalupi (author of my beloved Ship Breaker) answers the former question, while Maggie Stiefvater (author of the paranormal romance Shiver trilogy) answers the latter. Unsurprisingly they come to very different conclusions.

Also unsurprisingly I’m more interested in Paolo’s answer — both because I heart dystopias, and also because he answers for my pre-adolescent self: “I suspect that young adults crave stories of broken futures because they themselves are uneasily aware that their world is falling apart.” Of course, a lot of what made me aware that my world was falling apart was dystopian/post-apocalyptic literature, so it’s a cycle. Who’s to say we’re right, we doomsaying consumers of dystopiana? Maybe the world will be saved by shiny technology, the way science fiction claimed in the 50s! (Um.)

I certainly can’t speak for all kids who read these books; almost certainly the “why” is different for everyone. (A theory I have about post-apoc which none of these writers quite mention (Scott Westerfeld comes closest) is that post-apocalyptic societies are so broken and anarchic that they give young people a chance to rise as heroes, to determine their own destinies.) But I know why I read them, and why I still do, and it leans a lot more towards truth-telling than escapism.

(There are seven articles here from YA authors and academics, and they’re all worth reading. Thanks Wandering Librarians for the link!)

Before Kellen was born, the world was on the brink of nuclear war, followed by a terrible plague that wiped out most of the planet’s men but stopped the war. His father, a teenage boy at the time, survived, along with a handful of others in isolated pockets. Now Kellen is a teenager himself, a rare boy in a world of women. The world is better this way, he’s taught: no war, no fear. Men live under strict control in cities, or as loners in rural areas. The female:male ratio is kept very high by women like Kellen’s mom, who has an important job with the Population Apportionment Council. When Kellen overhears some secret PAC business about a plague outbreak in his dad’s loner community, he and his new friends Sunday and Tia take off to warn his dad… and discover that Everything They Thought They Knew Was a Lie.

Whew, that was a lot of explaining! There’s a lot of explaining in this book, too. Within the first couple of chapters, the protagonists go to school, wherein they have a convenient lesson in plague history — followed by some convenient homework in pre-plague history. I have a higher tolerance than many SF readers for “apocalypse how?” but this was too ‘splainy even for me.

And in part because everything got explained so thoroughly, the Big Secrets were too obvious, too soon. You might have figured out the first one just from my first sentence (which is no more spoilery than the first couple of chapters themselves), or from the movie-style tagline on the cover, “What price would you pay for a perfect world?”

Fortunately for my perception of the characters’ intelligence, that secret doesn’t drag out for the whole book. And once Kellen, Tia, and Sunday head out of town, the action moves pretty fast. This is an exciting page-turner, for sure, and it does raise some interesting (if unsubtle) questions about what a world run by women would be like. Unfortunately, it also gives too many easy answers.

I think it will appeal to kids who want a fun adventure book, but for older folks who actually want to consider the difficult gender questions, read Y: The Last Man instead.

Also reviewed by: The Book Smugglers, Steph Su Reads, and Jen Robinson.

If you somehow missed these books, the premise is that aliens invade, in giant metal Tripod conveyances. They enslave all human adults with mind-control Caps and use people as slaves in their huge Cities. The small human rebellion depends on converting kids before they’ve been Capped. In the first book, Will, Henry, and Beanpole join the rebels; in the second, Will, Beanpole, and a new boy named Fritz infiltrate a Tripod City. Pool of Fire is the last book, the climax of the rebellion.

Apocalypse how? Aliens. Big, green, tentacle-y aliens who breathe green air. ‘Nuff said. The world is pretty rural, and there’s mention of human city ruins. I only re-read the last book so I don’t remember, but I think the implication is that the aliens blasted us back to the Middle Ages.

13 vs. 31: The world sure changed in the 10+ years between this book and most of the ones I’ve reviewed this month. Most immediately obvious to me is that there is not a single woman in this book. No named characters, certainly, but not even a shopkeeper or mother of a future revolutionary. (S theorized awesomely that the Tripods killed all the women, but the men were too depressed by this to deal with or even mention it. This interpretation does add a new dimension, you must admit!)

The casual racism and Eurocentrism is also excellent. The final assault on the three Tripod Cities needs to be done at the same time, by different rebel groups in different parts of the world. When they get word that one attack didn’t succeed, Will immediately jumps (incorrectly, as it happens) to, “The one in the east? The little yellow men failed then…” This is particularly interesting given the conclusion of the book, which has our heroes heading off to bring the world’s people together, now that they have the freedom to choose peace or war. I like to think Christopher meant this juxtaposition to be ironic. (I could say so much more about international relations in the Tripod books, but I want to post this sometime this month.)

Most fascinating to me was the portrayal of Julius, the rebel leader. At the beginning of the book, he’s challenged by another man, Pierre, who wants more democracy in their decision-making. Julius shuts him down:

“There will be a time… for us to discuss among ourselves how we shall be governed…. Until then, we have no room for squabbling or dispute…. Nor do we have room for dissension, or the suspicion of dissension.”

Ok. There’s an argument to be made for despotism in wartime. But it’s a tricky one at best, and in a modern novel, a statement like this would be challenged, by the text if not by the characters. The book would make the risks of this way of thinking a theme.

This book ends with a parallel Council meeting, in which the leaders of the new free world are, in fact, “discuss[ing] among [them]selves how [they] shall be governed.” They’re all set to elect Julius as President, when Pierre starts talking again. He says some stuff that makes a whole lot of sense to me:

“We are expected, out of sentiment, to vote him back into office. We are asked to confirm a despot in power…. There were others who worked and fought for freedom — hundreds, thousands of others. We accepted Julius as our leader then, but that is no reason for accepting him now…. Julius wanted the Conference held here, among the peaks of the White Mountains, as yet another means of reminding us of the debt we are supposed to owe him. Many delegates are from low-lying lands and find conditions here oppressive….”

In a modern book, Pierre might be the hero. In this book, our heroes Will, Beanpole, and Fritz are horrified when the Conference votes against Julius. We could be meant to take this as blind loyalty on Will’s part; his shortcomings are a theme throughout the trilogy. Except that the delegates don’t even suggest any other candidates. Without Julius to lead them, the Conference falls apart and the delegates return to their respective countries. The text comdemns Julius’s ouster just as Will does, which strikes me as distinctly old-fashioned, or British, or probably both.

Ultimately, this book held up. It’s a classic for a reason. I particularly loved how scientific and careful all the planning was — there are no plot holes here. But I couldn’t ignore the datedness. Old-School indeed.

Covers: There’s time for a lot of covers in 30+ years in print! Here’s a selection. None are especially crazy, unfortunately.

So that’s it, folks! I hope you enjoyed Old-School Apocalypse April as much as I did. I now return to my regularly-scheduled diet of YA and middle grade published in the last few years, and I think none of it will be science fiction for a little while. One final plea: it’s easy get stuck on the “I have to read all the new stuff!” treadmill, but take some time to revisit old favorites. It’s definitely never boring.

Some people, plants, and animals survived, of course — some underground, like in Strange Tomorrow, another novel set in this world; some in the spaces between the Sweep’s overlapping fields, as in the first story of this collection.

The stories go on: people live in tiny fertile valleys, often only big enough for a family, and when a new person comes along, someone has to leave and find a new home (or, more likely, perish in the badlands in between valleys). As fertility returns to the land, villages get bigger. People start rediscovering the technology of the pre-Sweep Old Ones, and developing their own.

And then, because this was the ’70s, people discover that the Sweep changed them. They have mental powers we never had, “a force, an energy within [them]selves.” It’s not telepathy; more like the Force of Star Wars. Children go on “sequesterings” to learn to use this force, to “develop [their] inner unity.” When the Clordians come back, this force shows the aliens that humans cannot be conquered, but must be left alone with their inner unity and their one-ness with all life.

From there the stories get really hippie-dippy, as humans learn the awkwardly named “self-space-placement” (they couldn’t just say “teleportation”?) and start exploring other planets populated by sentient, meditative plants and whatnot.

13 vs. 31: I loved the hippieness of it all as a kid, the hope represented by humans moving away from violence and towards unity with all life. As an adult, it makes me roll my eyes a little bit, but it’s still hard not to feel soothed by it. By the end, humans have created something of a galactic utopia, and I am enough of a naive optimist to be drawn to that.

My favorite part of the book, when I first read it and now, is the conceit that it’s “Stories of a Future Past” (as the subtitle claims). These stories are meant to be historical fiction, written from the point of view of that galactic utopia. There are “Notes on Sources” at the end, little write-ups of what is known about each time period, given the surviving records or lack thereof. Nothing says “hope” like the idea that happy, fulfilled humans are telling the story of an apocalypse from far in the future. “It’s going to be rough for a while, guys, but it all gets better. We promise.”

Fun fact: Jean E. Karl was a bigshot in children’s publishing as well as an author. She edited the Earthsea trilogy and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler!(!!) (Her own writing is somewhat less luminous, though she does tell some damn inventive stories.)

Covers: Man, these are some weak covers! The top one is the edition I have now, which makes it look like a collection of sci-fi horror stories. The second one was the edition of my childhood. It’s a good thing the book has a good title and my library had a small children’s science fiction section, or I would never have picked this up. It looks like a geometry textbook.

When Ron visits Manhattan with his dad near the end of the summer, he can’t get enough. (The girls, after all, are “fantastic.”) He runs away from home for a last weekend fling before they close the City. Like a good suburban tourist, he picks up a hot chick who steals his money and gets beat up by a guy who steals his ID. Without an ID he can’t leave the Dome before it closes for the year. He’s trapped.

New York, of course, was not completely evacuated. It’s full of an assortment of gangs, one of which picks Ron up because he happens to be good with machines. From that point on it might as well be any urban gang story, with the violence and girls-as-currency and internal power struggles and tragedy. (Until the end, which I’ll get to in a minute. It’ll be spoilery, because the end is the most interesting part, but the book isn’t so amazing that I think it matters if you’re spoiled.)

Apocalypse how? This isn’t a worldwide apocalypse, but a local one (and very much a dystopia).

Here’s the World-Weary Adult Who Explains It All (every YA post-apoc has one):

“Too many people crowded too close together. People started falling over in the streets, dead from pollution or mugging or just plain brain fever…. The banks threw up their hands and said the city was a bad investment. Eight million bad investments. Then the Federal Health people came in and said the environment inside the Dome had sunk below the level needed to sustain human life. Inside of a year everybody would be dead.
“You should have seen the rush! It was like a riot and an earthquake and a war, all at once. Went on for months. Families separated. Kids left behind…. People running every which way. When the dust finally cleared, the City was declared officially abandoned — empty, nobody here. So they sealed it off.”

Some people stayed behind, of course. Including the World-Weary Adult, some black marketeers who make their money off starving kids and then go home to the Tracts at night, the gang kids’ parents, and, as it turns out, all the people of color.

A lot of talking about race:

From the very beginning you know that the only black people Ron has ever seen are on TV, fighting the distant war in South America. When he joins the gang, it’s made clear that the south of the City is all white gangs, while the north is run by their enemies, the black “Muslims,” who are united under one leader, Timmy Jim.

After the devastating destruction of his own gang, Ron is taken to work for the Muslims, fixing their machines and training more repairmen. (It turns out, by the way, that “black” here includes Latin American and “Indian,” which probably means Native American rather than South Asian. Asian Americans are never explicitly placed in the world of this book.) Timmy Jim adds this to the apocalypse story:

“Oh, they took out the whites, all right [when the city evacuated]. Rich and poor. Irish and Italian and WASP and all. They got out okay. But they kept us inside. When we tried to get out, they beat us back with clubs, electric prods, water cannons, lasers — they didn’t let us out, man! They closed this City and wrote it off as a dead loss and claimed all of us were dead.
“That was why they closed the City down, man. The real reason! Wrote off all the welfare cases…. Left us to starve, to freeze, to be rat bait. They left us to fight with each other and kill ourselves off.”

But Timmy Jim is more than a gang leader — he’s a military commander, and he has big plans. First he got the black part of town under control (Ron describes it as cleaner, with working lights and open shops). Next the Muslims will fight until they unite all the white gangs under Timmy Jim, too. And then they’ll invade Outside. All those black soldiers? Timmy Jim planted them somehow (the book has some plot holes the size of Manhattan Dome), so he knows they won’t defend the Tracts.

Ron is stunned. He no longer feels particularly connected to his home, after a year in New York, but he can’t imagine it invaded either. (And, I’m sure, can’t imagine it controlled by a black man, though he doesn’t say that explicitly.) At the same time, he’s horrified by the starvation and poverty he’s seen in the City. At the end of the book, he manages to get his ID back. He leaves when the City reopens in June, vowing to “change [the Outside people],” to “rub their noses in the filth they’ve left behind them.”

So on the one hand, the blacks have their shit together way more than the whites — their part of town is the part that works. On the other hand, that’s because they’re run by a military dictatorship. I’m not sure what other sort of government would work for people sealed up in a lawless, starving City, but we’re clearly supposed to be afraid of Timmy Jim and the idea of him invading Outside.

Ron is offered as the saner, safer alternative: the Tract whites can change, without the violent revolution. “Even if I have to make myself President,” he vows — not “even if I have to blow some shit up.” We white folks can fix ourselves from the inside, now that we understand the problem. It’ll all be ok, we just need to be shown the way by one of our own!

13 vs. 31: The starkness of the color line felt very ’70s to me — not that we don’t still have plenty of racism, obviously, but I find it hard to imagine this book flying today. It doesn’t even pay lip service to the idea that people of different races should try to get along.

A lot of the world-building doesn’t hold together. How can New York be so crowded and full of shops and “sharp” girls if everyone who fills it in the summer is from the Tracts just like Ron? He says he feels like a “real” New Yorker when he buys his fancy duds, but there’s no such thing. (Well, of course there is, but he doesn’t know that yet.)

Also, it’s implied that the soldiers don’t mostly come from Cities. So where do the black men who become soldiers grow up? Are there poorer black Tracts? And where did all the poor white City people end up?

I’ve always had a fetish for closed societies, which is I think what appealed to me about this 20 years ago. (Also, who could resist a dramatic title like City of Darkness? Which, now that I think of it, is kind of a terrible pun…) I was more annoyed this time ’round by the things that didn’t make sense. But I was still drawn in (as evidenced by the fact that this is the longest post ever).

Finally, an environmentalist sidebar for Earth Day: Ron and his friends gush a lot about how exciting all the noisy cars and crowded streets of the City are, compared to their own sanitary homes and electric cars or trains. The thrill of the City is in the transgression. When Ron leaves the City to shake things up Outside, it’s the ultimate transgression — maybe he hasn’t grown up, as we’re led to expect from the usual trajectory of the YA novel; maybe he’s just taking his thrill-seeking to the next level.

Covers: The first one was the cover of my childhood (sorry it’s so tiny); you can’t tell it’s science fiction at all. It just looks like urban teen fic (with very ’70s haircuts). The others are obviously SF, but you can’t tell they’re YA. I do kind of dig the one in the middle that looks like a graphic novel.

…Whew! Guess I made up for not posting in a week. Pseudo-academic wankery takes up some space, man. You get a cookie if you made it this far. A post-apocalyptic doom cookie.

Fortunately they are in regular telepathic contact with Ashira and Varas, the tall and beautiful leaders of a civilization called Morrow, where everyone is telepathic and beautiful and civilized. It turns out that Tia and Rabbit are the second-generation products of an illegal experiment in artificial insemination by a Morrowan scientist. When Tia accidentally kills a village Father, Ashira and Varas guide the children’s escape across the wastelands of California to the sea, where the Morrowans’ shiny clean white ship of beautiful people will be waiting to meet them.

In Treasures of Morrow, Tia and Rabbit get used to their new life… until Ashira and Varas force them to return to their village as interpreters. Y’know, for science.

Apocalypse how? Human-created environmental:

As the ocean’s enormous masses of plankton slowly died from the filth man continuously spewed into the water, as the oxygen supply generated by the plankton diminished and the air continued to be heavily polluted, as the plants and trees on the land sickened and turned brown or yellow before death, the chain began to break, link by link, and the slow suffocation of life on the earth began.

The Base survived, presumably, because there was some provision made for sealing up military leaders, but they didn’t retain any technology. The Morrowans’ ancestors had retreated to an underground stronghold designed to survive for many generations, until the earth was habitable again. They kept all the accumulated knowledge of the past, plus epicurean tastes and a vaguely seventies-Californian religious sensibility (which they break as often as Kirk breaks the Prime Directive) called the Balance of the One. Oh, and they breed telepaths. Obvi.

13 vs. 31: As you might have guessed, this didn’t hold up as well as the other Hoover book I reviewed, This Time of Darkness. It ain’t a subtle book. The Base people are short and stocky and have “scraggly” beards and “oily” hair. The Morrowans are always described as tall, clean, and beautiful. The Base people do a lot of greedily lording over one another, and have somehow managed to go umpteen generations post-apocalypse without inventing anything of use. The Morrowans are refined armchair psychologists with hobbies like growing perfect peaches (and a shocking naivete about anyone who’s led a less privileged life).

Tia and Rabbit, of course, are somewhere in between. What is of interest in this book lies there, in their journey (literal and figurative) to understand who they are and where they fit. This would have worked for me a lot better, particularly in the second book, if Ashira and Varas hadn’t always been there guiding their development with annoying perfection. They’re like the parents in a sitcom before TV parents had flaws.

I had a penchant for “makeover” books as a kid, and this falls into that category. The maligned children got to remake themselves in a perfect new world — what lonely kid isn’t drawn to that? As an adult, though, I needed more nuance.

Covers: The Treasures cover is the one of my childhood, but neither of the Children ones are. My cover has a fairly faithful rendering of Tia, Rabbit, and Ashira (to the point that I remember being disappointed that Tia, my hero, wasn’t beautiful). In contrast, please enjoy the second cover above, with its fresh-faced Aryan children and Aboriginal-stereotype Base villain. Classy. (The book, while it judges its characters plenty, at least avoids racial descriptions.)