Origin by Jessica Khoury

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.

Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when starting this book, but I ended up with my expectations completely blown out of the water.  There was a lot of good in this book.  I love the premise and the setting, they seem totally unique and fresh.  The author did a great job of painting the Amazon rainforest and the scientists' compound as places that I can visualize and seem realistic even though I've never been anywhere close to either of them.  Although I thought the scientific process of the immortality could be better explained I liked how it took time and planning and wasn't just instant.  Pia was a delightful character.  I like how she seemed just like a teenager: secure in her world and how she thinks things are, and a bit rebellious and starting to question things and rebel a bit.  I liked the characterization in many of the scientists, it is nice that there was a variety of people from the cold-hearted to the love of exploration types.  It was also a pleasant surprise to find that it's Pia's father that has an emotional attachment, not her mother. 

I think my biggest problem in this book is Eio.  It really irked me that Eio was half-white.  It didn't seem to add much to the story to make him the son of a scientist rather than just the protege.  He could have learned English and scientific knowledge and still formed an attachment to someone who had an excuse to visit the village a lot in their research.  To make him half white seemed too colonializing, especially with the long, lingering statements about his looks.  The comparison to the Ai'oa makes them seem connected with the land and yet dumb and trusting.  In other words, stereotypical "natives".  This stereotyping of Eio makes him fall a little flat, too, since it seems that all he is can be contained in his dichotomy.  He's not given any personality outside of his tribe or his age.  I also didn't really like how fast Eio and Pia fell in love.  I guess I'm just over the insta-love thing.  If you can get around these problems there is an enjoyable read, and I'm very happy that the ending is concise and closed and seems unable to spawn a trilogy.  It's nice to have a stand-alone every once in a while.

UnWholly by Neal Shusterman

It’s finally here. The long-awaited sequel to the bestselling Unwind, which Publishers Weekly called a “gripping, brilliantly imagined futuristic thriller.”

Thanks to Connor, Lev, and Risa—and their high-profile revolt at Happy Jack Harvest Camp—people can no longer turn a blind eye to unwinding. Ridding society of troublesome teens while simltaneously providing much-needed tissues for transplant might be convenient, but its morality has finally been brought into question. However, unwinding has become big business, and there are powerful political and corporate interests that want to see it not only continue, but also expand to the unwinding of prisoners and the impoverished.

Cam is a product of unwinding; made entirely out of the parts of other unwinds, he is a teen who does not technically exist. A futuristic Frankenstein, Cam struggles with a search for identity and meaning and wonders if a rewound being can have a soul. And when the actions of a sadistic bounty hunter cause Cam’s fate to become inextricably bound with the fates of Connor, Risa, and Lev, he’ll have to question humanity itself.

Rife with action and suspense, this riveting companion to the perennially popular Unwind challenges assumptions about where life begins and ends—and what it means to live.

Shusterman's back with another masterful book on what life is and who people really are.  Like Unwind, this book is brilliantly plotted at a breakneck pace to keep the reader interested and involved in all the lives of the kids.  The characters are real people with flaws and dreams and decisions that make them seem like real teenagers.  In fact, there is a lot of this book that seems flawlessly designed to make you think about the issues the author is presenting.  I think if I had to find a fault with this book it would be that the plot lines are so fractured and tangled that, although it gives a satisfying read, I'm not sure it would be a satisfying stand-alone.  The Lev/Miracolina story line was probably my favorite, I like the idea of Lev having to defend himself and having to deal with the fact that the anti-unwinders may be using brainwashing just like the unwinders are.  The idea of Cam was really revolting to me, and I came to feel for him a bit while also being entirely conflicted over what he really was, which was exactly the type of discomfort the author intended.  Starkey is also a discomforting spot, because there were times when I could agree with him being unwound because he seems truly bad to the bone . . . and yet Shusterman seems to imply that the "badness" or life choices of a person are inherent in not only their brain but also in their other parts, like Connor's hand, which would mean that Starkey is the last person I would want to receive a donation from.   Interesting conundrums, all of them, and they really define a book that's more about thinking about where you really stand on splitting hairs.  Read this book when you really want to examine yourself, even if you might not like the results.

Speculative Fiction

Really, when we talk about Sci-Fi and Fantasy we're talking about Speculative Fiction. Speculative fiction is the broad category of fiction books that are not set in a realistic world. Unlike contemporary fiction, which is set in the factual present, or historical fiction that is set in the factual past, Speculative Fiction (or spec-fic) deals with book settings that are not realistic in some manner. To relate to this blog, it covers both sci-fi and fantasy books.

So if spec-fic covers both sci-fi and fantasy how do we tell them apart? The difference is in how the non-realistic things are dealt with. In sci-fi all of that is dealt with by science. Ships fly at the speed of light because there are light-speed engines, strange-looking beings are aliens who look different because they evolved on a different planet, or people have greater-than-natural abilities due to genetic manipulation. Fantasy, on the other hand, doesn't have a scientific explanation for things. Things fly because someone wills them to, strange-looking beings are magical incarnations such as faeries or goblins, and people have greater-than-natural abilities because they're under a spell or gifted by a god.


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So what are the types of sci-fi? Here's a list of the categories I'll be using in my tags, shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia:

Hard SF - this is what people usually think all of sci-fi is. It's books that have plots that concentrate on physics and other "hard sciences" and meticulous worldbuilding with plot twists that generally rely on scientific things or phenomenon.

Soft SF - books that concentrate on the "soft sciences" such as sociology and politics. Dystopians are Soft SF books that take sociology or psychology to the extremes.

Cyberpunk - plots that rotate around technological advances of cybernetics - where people and technology merge into one being.

Biopunk - focuses on sciences that manipulate the human body through genetic technology instead of technological implantation.

Steampunk - imagines that the past (usually Victorian Europe or US) had advanced technologies. Called "steam"punk because the technical innovations often run by steam power instead of batteries or the like. There are variations, like decopunk, arcanepunk, and enginepunk, but I'm not going to separate them out.

Time Travel - plots where people travel through time.

Alternate History - plots that imagine the past was different than it really was. Steampunk is a sub-set of Alt History.

Military Sci-Fi - concentrates on wars and soldiers in big battles with advanced technologies.

Superhuman - plots that have human characters that have unusual powers due to some scientific reason. Closely related (and often intertwined) to Cyberpunk and Biopunk.

Apocalyptic - deals with the end of the world, either right before and how humans deal with it or right after and how humanity tries to recover. Usually split into pre- (before the end of the world) and post- (after the end of the world). Differs from Dystopian in that nature caused the end of a society and a rise of a new (sometimes oppressive) one, not people or their actions.

Dystopian - deals with a society that exists based on the deprivation, oppression, or terror of the people in the society. The plot usually searches to overthrow this society.

Space Opera - tales that deal with life on other planets or space travel. Often has a heroic tale slant to the plot.

Space Western - A plot that takes the tropes of westerns (cowboys, shoot-em-ups, frontiers) and combines it with science-fiction tropes (space ships, interplanetary travel, space exploration).

Generation Ship - not often an entirely different sub-genre, but it's become a popular slice of space opera crossed with dystopian so I'm separating it out.


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There are even more types of Fantasy than there are Science Fiction, but I'm not going to use all the variations on this blog. I don't feel there's a lot of need to show people the varieties of fantasy since it's readily embraced by YA readers. Here are the few I'll be using:

Urban Fantasy - modern people in modern settings encounter magic or the fantastic. Contains the Paranormal Romances so popular right now.

Hard Fantasy - where magic exists, but everything emulates worlds we know and is as realistic as possible (magic obeys laws of physics, etc.). This is a very difficult thing to describe, so I'll apply it sparingly.

High Fantasy - Heroes, sorcerers, intrigue, and a quest to resolve it all just like Tolkien.

Historical Fantasy - a historical setting, only with magic.

Mythic - retelling of myths, fairytales and/or folklore.

Mythical Creatures - technically a section of mythic, but there are so many of these today that I'm separating them out.

Superhero - people have magic powers for some reason.



I'll be working in the next few weeks to backdate all my old posts with these tags.

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Obviously, something went terribly wrong. Genetic mutations have festered, reducing human longevity to twenty-five, even less for most women. To prevent extinction, young girls are kidnapped, mated in polygamous marriages with men eager to procreate. Sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery, a recent victim of this breeding farm mentality, has vowed to break loose from its fetters; but finding allies and a safe way out is a challenge she can only hope she will survive. A dystopian fantasy series starter with wings. Editor's recommendation.

Although it was called a modern, YA version of "The Handmaid's Tale", I didn't really identify with this book like I did with Margaret Atwood's Sci-Fi classic. Although the plots have a lot of parallels, Atwood's book is steeped in the religious right of the United States, while Wither is concerned with genetic manipulation gone wrong. The two don't really corrolate, at least not for me, and I was rather confused over the result. The society that is created is strange. Why are girls commodities? If everyone dies at a young age why are there marriages with multiple wives instead of farms where eggs and sperm are harvested and forcibly carried to term in order to perpetuate the species and provide for research? There were many questions that made the world of this book seem rather copied and not well thought out. However, once the world was made up DeStefano worked well within the framework. I loved the character of Rhine and her reactions to the situations she was placed in. She maintained a strong character and drive throughout her situations, and she drew you in to the story when the world failed. The plot was rather unremarkable, containing yet another YA love triangle complicated by the multiple marriage, but Rhine's voice and the characterization of the other players served to keep it fresher than it probably should have been. I'm not sure if I'm completely invested in the story enough to buy a sequel, but I don't regret reading this book as a one-off.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

In a society where unwanted teens are salvaged for their body parts, three runaways fight the system that would "unwind" them Connor's parents want to be rid of him because he's a troublemaker. Risa has no parents and is being unwound to cut orphanage costs. Lev's unwinding has been planned since his birth, as part of his family's strict religion. Brought together by chance, and kept together by desperation, these three unlikely companions make a harrowing cross-country journey, knowing their lives hang in the balance. If they can survive until their eighteenth birthday, they can't be harmed -- but when every piece of them, from their hands to their hearts, are wanted by a world gone mad, eighteen seems far, far away.

In Unwind, Boston Globe/Horn Book Award winner Neal Shusterman challenges readers' ideas about life -- not just where life begins, and where it ends, but what it truly means to be alive.

This was a very interesting book. I wouldn't call it incredibly entertaining, but I think a book about abortion, the definition of life, and consciousness vs vitality should probably be a little uncomfortable in places. This book definitely delivers on that. The premise is pretty simple: as the US has a civil war over abortion, the compromise is that abortion is illegal. Instead it is made legal for a parent or guardian to choose to "unwind" their child between the ages of 13 and 18. Unwinding is a process where the body of the child is dismantled and all the parts are donated to living humans. As long as none is wasted and it is all put into living bodies then the unwound child isn't dead . . . just living in pieces.

I will admit I found a few problems with the premise. First, it seems rather unrealistic for me that abortions-rights advocates would agree to this scenario as acceptable. It seems to me that requiring that an unwanted child be supported until the age of 13 goes against everything they stand for. On the other hand, the concept of "storking" (being able to leave an unwanted baby on someone's doorstep and, as long as you aren't caught - they are obligated to care for that child as if it was their own) may have been the compromise in that situation, because it does remove the obligation to care for a child if the mother is careful. I do see where the general public would start to accept the concept, especially when they explain that unwound donations are the cornerstone of modern medicine and have replaced most traditional cures (why fix it when you can get a new one?). It does seem that modern Americans are able to accept a lot of questionable medical practices as long as they get immediate results. And I found the fundamentalist Christian reaction in the book to be spot-on (they develop a system of "tithing" - giving back to G-d by having a child to be unwound, thus giving themselves completely to help save other people's lives, then spend their life convincing them that this is an honorable and glorious calling).

And, if all that meta doesn't hook you then I don't really think this book is for you. Sure, there are convincing characters acting in a solid plot and working towards a better tomorrow . . . but really the book is about the "thinky bits". And it does them really well. You get so invested in the characters that you begin to understand their points of view and why they react as they do, and, consequently, why they think like they do. There really isn't much preaching about things in the book, it's all filtered through the characters' points-of-view in a way that makes it teachable and yet palatable at the same time. So, while this certainly isn't a light, happy read it is an enjoyable way to get some philosophy and think about your place in the world.