Recently, especially with the snow, my fiance has enjoyed traveling to another world with a dystopian fantasy. He started off slow by reading the Divergent Series and rereading one of his favorites, The Hunger Games, but there are so many newer dystopian fantasies for him to dive head first into. Let's see what is glowing today.
Chain Gang All Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.
Juice by Tim Winton: Survival is only the beginning.
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now, and this is a forsaken place, but as a refuge it’s the most promising they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation.
The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they’re not alone . . .
So begins a searing, epic journey through a life where the challenge is not only to survive; it’s keeping your humanity if you do.
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter: Publishing in the US to a wave of critical acclaim and nominations for two major literary prizes, Megan Hunter’s internationally bestselling, extraordinarily poetic debut novel imagines new motherhood in the midst of an all-too-possible climate change catastrophe. A startlingly beautiful story of a family's survival, The End We Start From is a searing original, a modern-day parable of rebirth and renewal, of maternal bonds, and the instinct to survive and thrive in the absence of all that’s familiar.
As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place. Their journey traces fear and wonder as the baby grows, thriving and content against all the odds.
The End We Start From is an indelible and elemental first book—a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a tale of endurance in the face of ungovernable change.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days following civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
It is fifteen years after a flu pandemic wiped out most of the world's population. Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony, a small troupe moving over the gutted landscape, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. But when they arrive in the outpost of St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave. Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the disaster brought everyone here, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty, telling a story about the relationships that sustain us.
