I really enjoyed Tankborn, the first in Karen Sandler’s futuristic series featuring a world (called Loka) where some human beings are genetically engineered for hard labor and other undesirable tasks – a scientifically designed slave class. Our protagonist, Kayla, is one of these GENs – genetically engineered non-humans. At age 15, she was assigned to work for a powerful high-born man who turned out to be the leader of the Kinship, an organization dedicated to transforming the society on Loka, freeing GENs from their crippling restrictions, and gaining them rights of full humans – as the Kinship believes they are. Awakening continues this story, after Kayla has joined the Kinship in her own right.

While Tankborn focused on both Kayla and her best friend Mishalla, another GEN, Awakening focuses almost entirely on Kayla, with the majority of the story told from her third-person perspective. There’s a lot going on with Kayla in this installment. She struggles with her feelings for Devak, the grandson of the Kinship’s leader, a trueborn boy. There’s another GEN boy in the picture, Abran, who has secrets of his own. Then there’s the fact that Kayla keeps discovering things hidden in her brain, downloaded and installed there by an unknown person, that hint at a splinter group called FHE: Freedom, Humanity, Equality.

I assumed that much of the story would entail Kayla’s fight for equality with the Kinship, but that’s not quite the direction the book takes. Instead, a large part focuses on a disease affecting GENs (and only GENs) called Scratch. Even more mysteriously than the disease itself, which has no known cure, is the fact that some GENs seem to have the ability to heal others of Scratch simply by touch.

There’s a lot going on in the book, obviously, but I found it to be much slower than Tankborn despite this. It seems less focused and more meandering, with a few too many sections of dialogue where characters simply muse on what to do next instead of just doing it. A benefit to this, though, is that we get a lot more insight into Loka – its culture, its wildlife, and its environment. We learn more about Loka’s moons and their cycles, about the allabain people and their religious beliefs, about the history of the settlements. As a result, Loka feels like a living, breathing place, and it’s clear Sandler has put a lot of thought into making it seem so. Things like this are of huge interest to readers who love detailed world-building, but may be tedious for those who want a more plot-driven story.

I mentioned it in my review of Tankborn, but it bears mentioning again: Kayla is a black girl, and she is the star of this series. She’s not the best friend or the villain; she doesn’t even share protagonist status in this volume like she did in the first. What’s more, her face is prominently featured on the cover of the book. The series is published by Tu Books, an imprint of Lee and Low, who are dedicated to promoting culturally diverse books. In science fiction and fantasy, the lack of protagonists of color is a worrying problem, so books like this are essential.

While I don’t think this series will necessarily appeal to casual SF readers, it will most certainly appeal to seasoned ones, and I hope they’ll give it a try – it’s original, well-written, and unpredictable. We need to show that we want more SF stories like this featuring girls of color – and the way to do that is to read them, talk about them, and buy them.

Check back tomorrow for a twitterview with Karen Sandler addressing some of these things, plus a giveaway of a finished copy of Awakening.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

One day, as humanity is going about its routine existence, an alien spaceship appears in the sky. While no one ever sees the aliens, it quickly becomes apparent that they are not friendly. In quick succession, they unleash a series of attacks that kill off over 90% of the world’s human population. Billions of people.

The 1st wave: an EMP that knocks out all electricity
The 2nd wave: manufactured earthquakes
The 3rd wave: a deadly disease carried by bird droppings
The 4th wave: surviving humans are picked off
The 5th wave: to be determined

Cassie lost her mother to the 3rd wave, but her father and little brother Sammy miraculously survived. By now, people have long abandoned the idea that the aliens hoped to coexist and they now recognize that humanity is being wiped off the planet systematically and purposefully, most likely to make way for an alien colonization.

Cassie’s family finds their way to a place they call Camp Ashpit, which is basically a tent city where survivors have huddled together, waiting for what is going to happen next. When official-looking people in uniforms with humvees show up, they think it’s the answer to their prayers. The uniformed people take all the children up to age 13 or so (including Cassie’s brother) away in a school bus to a refugee camp where, according to them, they’ll be “perfectly safe.” They say they’ll be back to pick up the teenagers and adults, and they leave a few soldiers behind to look after them.

I’m sure you know where this is going. Cassie quickly learns that the soldiers don’t necessarily have their best interests in mind. She survives the subsequent events, and she fears for her brother’s life. He’s only five, and he’s all she has left. Though she now believes that the aliens have somehow found a way to inhabit the bodies of humans, she’s determined to rescue Sammy. She sets out across alien-infested terrain toward the refugee camp.

This is a Book for Me. I love sweeping stories about the end of the world, and it’s extra special if the end is brought about by aliens. This is the kind of book that is filled with what I loving describe as “crushing despair.” (And hey, it doesn’t involve rape! At all! Imagine that.) It’s nearly as awesome as I wanted it to be.

As with any acclaimed novel, there are a number of readers who gave this a vehemently negative review. Most cite the writing, which is strange for me. It’s not a straightforward narrative; it’s told in a slightly more conversational style with a great deal more fragments and run-ons than you’d find in the average book. It’s nothing close to stream of consciousness, but I suppose this type of writing doesn’t suit everyone. Still, I’d hardly call it bad writing, in an objective sense.

Yancey excels at making readers second-guess what they already know. Very early on, Cassie is rescued from certain death by a human boy who says his name is Evan. Evan has a secret, of course, and we know what it is. Cassie only suspects, but we know. And yet, over the course of many pages, Yancey sows a seed of doubt in our minds. How do we know, really? Isn’t it possible that Evan is exactly who he says he is? Isn’t it likely? This line of thought shows the strength in Yancey’s writing: despite the fact that he’s shared everything we need to know beyond a doubt, we still do doubt, because Cassie does. The book is full of plot points like this, and it’s part of what makes the story so engaging.

The romance between Cassie and Evan is a little hard to buy – a blip on
an otherwise stellar book. Cassie is suspicious of him from the
beginning, and Yancey relies too heavily on her falling for him due to
his rescue of her. The problem is, it doesn’t seem in Cassie’s nature to
do this. By now, she’s jaded, she doesn’t trust anyone, and she’s
gotten pretty good at taking care of herself. It’s possible she may not
want to kill him, but romance is another thing entirely.

Only half of the book follows Cassie. The other half shows us events from Ben Parish’s perspective, and his situation is much different, though their stories do converge by the end. He’s at a refugee camp, being trained by surviving adults to fight back. They don’t think they can win, but they plan to take down as many aliens as possible when they go. As with Cassie, things are not what they seem, and Ben’s struggle to sift truth from lies propels the story forward.

The pacing is a little strange. It’s not all breakneck, and at times it does start to drag…except just as I began to think “Hm, this may be getting a bit slow,” Yancey threw something completely new at me that had me fully engaged once more. Consequently, though the book has over 500 pages, it never seems long.

Cassie’s fear is palpable, but so is her drive to survive, particularly when she sets her mind on rescuing her brother. She and Ben both waver between hope and despair, between the need to seek safety and the need to exact revenge. They both witness and perpetrate horrific things. They doubt the humanity of others, quite literally, but they also doubt their own humanity in a more metaphorical sense by the end.

If you’re looking for a happy book, this is not for you. But it should have huge appeal for fans of apocalyptic or alien invasion stories, particularly those readers looking for a different kind of alien, a type that doesn’t necessarily look or act like us. Highly recommended and deserving of its accolades.

Finished copy borrowed from the library.

Delayed sequels are interesting, particularly if they’re for teens. Presumably, the primary audience for the first book has aged out of the target group for the second. If the first book is still being read widely, though, that’s a different story.

It would appear that The Compound belongs to this category. It still circulates fairly well in my public library, and this post on Bodeen’s website shows that the teens at my library are not alone. It’s still making recommended reading lists as recently as 2012, so librarians and other gatekeepers recognize there’s still a teen readership for it as well.

As sequels go, this one is perhaps not “necessary.” By that I mean that the plot points of The Compound were all wrapped up fairly well, with no glaring loose ends or cliffhangers. That said, I can certainly see how teens would wonder how Eli and his family recovered from their ordeal. And that story is told in The Fallout. (I love this punny title. It’s the best.)

The Fallout is not just about recovery, though that’s a good part of it. There’s also a conspiracy involving Eli’s dad’s company, which he is set to inherit, and a very shady businessman who is trying to keep control of the company at all costs. Naturally, this very shady businessman is working with some very shady science – dangerous as well as lucrative, and Eli and his family are involved in his plans.

The story works well as a fast-paced thriller, in much the same way that The Compound did. What this shady businessman has in store for Eli and his family is gradually revealed, and it’s horrifying. (Though it’s not as horrifying as what Eli’s dad had in store in the first book. But then again, what could be as horrifying as that? Nothing.) It’s also interesting to see how Eli and his family adjust to living outside of the compound. They’re famous for all the wrong reasons, recognizable wherever they go, so a “normal” life is out of the question. They have their own set of stalkers, with websites dedicated to spotting them. They don’t know who to trust, and everything is foreign to them – from Costco to a football game.

What doesn’t work so well is the development of the relationship between Eli and his twin brother Eddy, whom Eli assumed had died in the first book. What the boys’ father did to their family is front-page news. Most of the awful details are very public. Therefore, it’s very hard for me to buy Eddy’s continued defense of his father. I get that Eddy could resent the return of these family members whom he barely knows (or doesn’t know at all, in the case of the youngest siblings). What I don’t get is Eddy’s envy of Eli for spending so much time with their dad. It’s not just a matter of not having the whole story, though there are some bits he’s still ignorant of. He knows enough of the truth to know better. I get that Bodeen was trying to instill some tension between the two, and it’s necessary for the plot, but it’s a weak link.

The science, too, is shaky, but I can forgive this a bit more (I’m being deliberately vague about what science is involved, as it’s quite spoilery). I may be ridiculed by hardcore SF fans for saying this, but shaky science doesn’t bug me much. If it gets me to wonder “what if,” then it’s done what I want it to do.

Faults aside, fans of the first will gobble this up. It’s intense, twisty, and should be catnip for reluctant readers.

Review copy received by the publisher. The Fallout will be published September 24.