It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Pete Hautman’s Klaatu Diskos‘ trilogy. The final book, the Klaatu Terminus, was released a few weeks ago, and I’m happy to say I enjoyed it just as much as the other two.

Part of the reason I love this trilogy so much is that it’s weird. But its weirdness has a purpose. I think the best explanation I can give for it is this: It’s like the television show Lost, where a series of bizarre and inexplicable things keep happening, except that unlike Lost, things actually do get explained and resolved in the end. All the weird, bizarre things that happened coalesce into something that makes you go “Oh! I get it all now! How cool!” (It is super cool.) Everything comes together. And then it makes you want to go back and re-read all of the books so you can pick up on every little thing and make your mental picture even more complete.

It seems like Hautman had a plan for the plot from the beginning, which I appreciate. (Or if he didn’t have a plan, he found a way to make it work anyhow. I’m not sure which is more impressive.) I talk a lot about the crazy plot in this series, but I don’t want it to overshadow the excellent characterization or writing or any of that other good stuff. (I feel like I have to mention that because a lot of SFF gets unjustly painted as big on plot, little on “substance.”)

The Klaatu Terminus focuses mainly on Kosh, telling the story from his point of view. We get a lot of flashbacks to when Kosh was a seventeen year old in the 90s, falling in love with his older brother’s fiancee. Normally I dislike flashbacks, but these were integral to the plot (not merely character-building exercises), and Hautman writes them so well. Plus, Kosh (born with the name Curtis) mentions casually that he took the name Kosh from a currently-airing tv show and I about died. (The tv show can only be Babylon 5, for which I hold a possibly unreasonable amount of love.) I guess you could say I’m a cheap date for this kind of book.

While a lot of the story takes place in the 90s, we also get some present-day stuff too. Or rather, we get some stuff from when Kosh is an adult and Lia and Tucker are teenagers. They spend time in 2012, but they also spend a lot of time in the future…and the far future. Tucker and Lia travel through time intentionally in this book, as opposed to the accidental jumps of the previous volumes. They’re trying to piece together everything they’ve encountered – the Boggsians, the Lambs of September, the timesweeps, the klaatu, the diskos themselves – while also evading people who are out to kill them (naturally). It’s all delightfully bizarre and it all makes wonderful, wonderful sense at the end.

I don’t think I can emphasize enough how satisfying this conclusion is; readers who have invested their time in the first two books won’t be disappointed. The trilogy as a whole is terrific for teens who love a good sci fi adventure, and I’d absolutely hand it to teens who love reading about time travel and the various paradoxes such a thing may create. It’s unlike anything I’ve read, really, so hand this series to readers who crave something new and different and strange.

Final copy checked out from my local library.

Karen Healey writes killer speculative fiction. I think I liked While We Run even better than I liked the first book, which was fantastic anyway. When We Wake had an ending, but an open-ended one, making this sequel welcome but not required. This time, the story is told from Abdi’s point of view, and it begins a few months after the first book ended. I don’t want to share too much, but I will say that things aren’t great – Abdi and Tegan are in government custody and are being manipulated and tortured into being mouthpieces. They have a plan to get away – but at what cost? And what will they need to do once they’re free?

Much of what makes dystopias so powerful is their connection to our own present-day issues. If you read a synopsis of a dystopia and it makes you roll your eyes, it’s probably because the premise lacks this connection. This is not the speculative fiction Healey writes. Her future world is believable because of the way it differs from the present. She’s taken the issues we grapple with now (or avoid grappling with now) and shown how they could progress, how they could worsen – or perhaps get better. She doesn’t focus on any one thing, either, addressing climate change, government and corporate power, class, race, the effects of colonialism and globalization. The result is a complex future world with a variety of problems big and small, and a diverse group of people struggling with them.

Abdi and Tegan grapple with so very much in this volume. Is collateral damage – any amount – acceptable, even for a just cause? Is complete recovery from trauma possible? At what point does reading people too well become manipulation? How the heck do you fix a world? This stuff is hard. In some cases, there aren’t any good answers. It’s a lot for teenagers to handle; it’s also precisely the kind of thing teen readers see going on in their world.

From a thematic standpoint, this book rocks it. From a craft standpoint, it’s terrific as well. Abdi’s narrative is heartbreaking at times. I feel like sometimes writers of dystopias will have their characters go through really horrible stuff and then gloss over any sort of lasting effects it may have. Healey refuses to do this – it’s obvious Abdi is traumatized by his time in captivity and Healey lets him go through it. She makes us as readers feel it, too. And of course, the plot, which features cryonics and lots of government secrets, is exciting and well-paced, too.

Many of the characters from When We Wake return in the sequel, which means the book is quite diverse. Abdi is a black protagonist, an atheist, the son of Muslims. His three friends are a white semi-religious Christian girl (Tegan), a devout Muslim girl (Bethari), and a transgender girl (Joph). Far from feeling like a checklist, this cast simply feels like the people who exist. You know, the people you see when you take a look at your own community.

Readers who may feel they’ve exceeded their threshold for dystopias and books featuring shitty futures would do well to take a look at this series, which breathes new life into the subgenre. It’s worlds removed from books that bear a striking resemblance to this fun little joke.

Review copy received from the publisher. While We Run is available May 27.

I didn’t expect to like Lauren Miller’s Free to Fall as much as I did. I went in with some preconceived notions – that it would  be very heavy-handed with a message, that it would focus on a romance almost exclusively – and I was very happy to be proven wrong. (But you can forgive me about the romance thing, right? I mean, people talk about “falling” in love…)

What I got instead was a very smart, engaging thriller about a number of things: the pitfalls of technology, the danger of ceding any amount of free will, the nature of trust. It’s also a novel very much for teens, covering first love, parental betrayal, and the high school dance. (Did I mention it also has a secret society and some Da Vinci Code-style puzzles? Be still, my heart.)

Here’s the basic idea: Rory lives in the near future (the 2030s or thereabouts) where everyone has a handheld (think smartphone, supercharged). Gnosis manufactures the handhelds everyone has, and they also produce an app called Lux which helps users determine the best choice to make in any situation, right down to “What should I order for dinner?” Rory, along with most of her peers, relies on Lux pretty heavily.

Rory has just been accepted to Theden Academy, an elite boarding school for teens which pretty much guarantees her a ticket to a prestigious college and the good life afterward. But Theden has a lot of secrets, and Rory finds herself personally caught up in it. Her mother attended Theden, but left abruptly, then died giving birth to her. She passed along a cryptic message to Rory, telling her father to give it to her when Rory entered Theden.

This book has a lot in it – parents’ secret past, a mysterious townie boy, a duplicitous roommate, an evil teacher, strange school tests, Paradise Lost, a secret affair, a secret society, math puzzles, future tech, pop science – and it all leads back to Gnosis and Lux in some way. It’s incredibly fun to watch Rory unravel it all. There’s never a dull moment. It’s a true thriller with a new secret at every turn. I won’t say much more since the joy of reading the story is discovering just what Miller throws at you next.

A couple quibbles: some of the foreshadowing is too heavy-handed, and the denouement is too much of a deus ex machina. But I was having so much fun, I didn’t care much. This is a near-perfect near-future thriller. It’s twisty,
surprising, fast-paced, and very timely. The sketchy boarding school aspect may appeal to fans of The Testing or Variant, the dangerous technology aspect may appeal to fans of Feed, and the sci fi mystery may appeal to fans of Unremembered or Starters (though I think Free to Fall is the smartest of them all). Highly recommended.

Finished copy received from the publisher. Free to Fall is available now.

Meyer knows so well how to write a good series. Focusing on a different character for each book is such a brilliant way to tell a larger story. I feel like we get all the benefits of a series without sacrificing the good things about a standalone. Each volume provides a satisfying beginning, middle, and end with a unique storyline. Then we also get a larger, overreaching plot that brings things to a more epic level – plus the chance to revisit and follow characters we grew to love from the prior volumes. I know Meyer isn’t the first to do this, but it works really well for her.

While I enjoyed Scarlet, I think Cress is even better. It uses Rapunzel as its springboard, focusing on a girl named Cress who lives in a satellite and spies on the Earthens for Queen Levana. Her hair grows long because she has no need to cut it. She has connections to Cinder, as you’d expect, which are teased out over the course of the story. As in Cinder, some of the major plot revelations are expected – but not all.

Cress as a character is different from both Cinder and Scarlet. She’s incredibly naive due to her situation – she’s never been out in the world and has no clue how to interact with anyone other than her captors. With no one around to keep her company, she’s taken to fantasizing about the people she spies on, namely Carswell Thorne. It’s easy to admire someone from afar, to create elaborate stories about them in your head. It can be very difficult to then reconcile the person as they are with the person you imagined them to be. Such is Cress’ dilemma. Cress and Thorne’s interactions are often funny but also quite painful (secondhand embarrassment is a killer for me). Cress herself is socially awkward, and not really in a “I’m a special snowflake” sort of way. She’s awkward in a way that makes you cringe. She’s awkward in a way that I know teen girls can relate to.

Cress is full of action and excitement. These books are long but never feel long. The major plot is furthered nicely. Nothing feels extraneous or makes you think “Wow, I can really tell this is a middle book in a series.” And the end of this volume has a fantastic tease for Winter, due out in 2015. So far, this series hasn’t disappointed.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Cress is available now.