Book #94 of 2018: Blindness by José Saramago This novel about an epidemic of sudden contagious blindness has a strong start of creeping desperation and a ruthless military quarantine, but it loses me in the back half of the story when society has effectively crumbled due to everyone losing their sight. There’s so much ableism …
Tag Archives: dystopian
Book Review: The Fireman by Joe Hill
Book #75 of 2018: The Fireman by Joe Hill This Joe Hill novel about a widespread plague of spontaneous combustion has a promising start, but it loses steam as it goes along, especially once it becomes clear that the author is largely just retelling his father’s post-apocalyptic classic The Stand. There are major plot points …
Book Review: The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
Book #64 of 2018: The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken (The Darkest Minds #1) This dystopian YA novel struck me as a very capable early draft that was unfortunately rushed to print before its full potential could be unlocked. From the narrator not really seeming like a teenager who’s spent the past six years of …
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Book Review: Golden Son by Pierce Brown
Book #5 of 2018: Golden Son by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #2) This is my second time reading this novel — although the first time as an audiobook — and I think my original review from 2016 mostly stands: “Given their common themes of dystopian wargames and rebellion against a corrupt government, The Hunger Games …
Book Review: The History of Bees by Maja Lunde
Book #227 of 2017: The History of Bees by Maja Lunde Taken individually, I suppose I like the three different strands that make up this novel, although the stories set in 2098 China and 1852 England are far more compelling than the one set in 2007 America. (Respectively: a woman trying to track down her …
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Book Review: Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
Book #215 of 2017: Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters I have to admit, I had some doubts that a white author like Ben H. Winters would be able to bring the necessary sensitivity for this alternate-history novel of a modern America that never fully abolished slavery. Ultimately, though, I decided to trust Winters on …
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Book Review: The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
Book #157 of 2017: The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau (Book of Ember #1) I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief for this novel, which admittedly may be less of an issue for the younger readers in its intended audience. But so many aspects of Ember’s civilization just didn’t ring true for …
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Book Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Book #54 of 2017: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (St. Leibowitz #1) A slow-paced but intriguing vision of the Catholic church in the centuries after the fall of western civilization and the loss of most earthly knowledge, where monks painstakingly copy manuscripts of electronic blueprints out of faith that one day …
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Book Review: Messenger by Lois Lowry
Book #32 of 2017: Messenger by Lois Lowry (The Giver #3) The Giver series definitely offers diminishing returns as it goes along. This third book at least proves that the books are a single series by tying together the otherwise unconnected first and second novels, although once again there’s a new sort of magic that …
Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell
Book #24 of 2017: 1984 by George Orwell 1984’s vision of a dystopian future has only grown more eerily prescient since I first read it back in high school, foretelling a rise in the surveillance state and government efforts to repress reality through propaganda. The storyline and the characters are honestly not so great, but …
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