Panic, by Lauren Oliver

What are your greatest fears? What makes your stomach drop, your legs turn to jelly, your brain shut down? What makes you panic?

For the teenagers of small, run-down Carp, Panic is a game. It’s a game of nerve, a game with a big payoff: $50,000. Only graduating seniors can enter, and you have to be made of steel to win. The players will be pushed to their limits, and forced to discover what will drive them to overcome their fears, to go that extra mile.

Panic, Lauren Oliver’s new book, is a departure from her Delirium series – more thriller, less love story – yet conforms to her signature style, touching on themes and ideas as equally relevant to teens as to adults. Despite being 400 pages long, it feels like I read it in a flash, the adrenaline from the characters seeping off the page, making my palms sweat and my heart race.

Contestants declare their intention to play by jumping off a twenty-foot high rock in the middle of lake at the start of summer, and then they’re gradually whittled down to two or three players over the following weeks through a series of challenges – often with deadly consequences. There’s walking across a plank suspended between two water towers, stealing from the most feared man in town, Russian Roulette, holding out in a burning building. The judges are anonymous, the game a challenge against the poor background of Carp’s inhabitants, a challenge against boredom.

Heather hadn’t been planning to play Panic, but changed her mind at the last minute after seeing her boyfriend making out with another girl. But will this be enough motivation to see her through the death-defying challenges ahead? Dodge, by contrast, has plenty to fuel him: revenge. And he’s willing to go to any length to get what he wants. This is a game with no rules, no holds barred, but plenty of consequences.

Oliver alternates between Dodge and Heather’s viewpoints as the summer ticks by and Panic takes hold of their lives. I related much more to Heather’s story than Dodge’s – as the game progresses, Heather’s life goes under several stages of turmoil, from her freezing lack of self-esteem, losing one job and starting another, dealing with her difficult mother, caretaking her little sister, and the ups and down in her friendships as the tremours from Panic ripple outwards. Dodge is a different cup of tea – an unreliable narrator, I was never entirely sure whose side he was on or which way he was going to turn. This was a brilliant choice of Oliver’s: instead of using Dodge as a love interest (my assumption before I opened the book), by making his loyalties so difficult to predict, Oliver brings an extra level of tension and fear to the story, and plenty of opportunities for betrayal.

In fact, everyone seems to betray everyone else at some point. How will any of them remain friends with each other by the end? It’s interesting how prevalent betrayal is in a story that started life as an exploration of fear – perhaps because, aside from any immediate threat to life and limb, being left alone or abandoned by one’s friends and family is the next biggest fear in most people’s lives. That, or having somebody discover you’re not who you want them to think you are: Heather’s greatest fear is not ever being loved. Dodge’s? Well, the same, essentially, I think – for his disabled sister to not need him anymore. Ironically, Heather, who initially joins Panic on a whim, knows her fear right from the beginning; it’s Dodge who only comes to terms with his fear during the game, despite having a stronger motivation to play to begin with. And as the tables turn, Heather’s motivation to win grows: to win means the chance to hold onto those she loves and those who love her – whilst Dodge’s motivation peters away down the drain as everything he thought he was playing for unravels in front of eyes.

Whist reading, I couldn’t help but wonder: would I play Panic? If it was me, how would I cope with each of the challenges of the game? And not just the game, but the other challenges our characters must face as well. Probably not very well! But then, with those dollar signs before your eyes, who wouldn’t be tempted to try? Panic is and edge-of-the-seat race for the end. And as only one person can win, who will you be putting your money on?

Noble Conflict, by Malorie Blackman

Under what circumstances can a conflict be considered noble? When it’s for a noble and necessary cause? When the ends justify the means? (do the ends ever justify the means?) In Malorie Blackman’s new dystopia novel, Noble Conflict, the government refers to its war as such because they never kill their enemy combatants, only incapacitate them (or do they?).

Kaspar is a newly trained and newly graduated Guardian, a peacekeeper, a protector of the people. The Alliance is stuck in a quagmire of conflict with the Crusaders, terrorists who attack with both stealth and brutality. It’s the Guardians’ job to prevent the Insurgents – Crusader terrorists – from infiltrating society and creating the havoc they seem to love so much. Everyone knows it’s because the Crusaders destroyed their own lands and want to take the Alliance’s lands for their own, but why in their latest infiltrations do they seem intent only on breaking into the computer system and looking at innocuous and out-of-the-way geographical locations?

Noble Conflict starts with a bang, straight into the action and straight into the muddy politics of this world as Kaspar’s graduation ceremony is attacked. It’s a dramatic start to his new career, and drama is certainly something that Kaspar seems to attract. The fact is, he’s just too good at his job – he sees things and questions things that nobody else does and – it soon becomes apparent – things that nobody else is supposed to see or question.

Why did Kaspar’s dead mother leave instructions for him to drink only from the well on his Uncle’s farm? Why do there seem to be two entirely different groups of Insurgents, the phantoms who kill and destroy versus the ninjas, who are more intent on the computer systems? Why does nobody ever try to organize any peace talks? And why do the phantoms only ever seem to go for soft targets? And why does he suddenly have memories - memories that he practically smell and taste - of a place that he’s never been?

At first glance the Alliance doesn’t appear to be typically totalitarian – not to the extent that we see in books like Matched or Delirium, anyway. It seems a comfortable place to live, a prosperous society full of choices, where people live self-determined lives. But as Kaspar begins to peel off the layers, it becomes increasingly apparent how far the Government (‘High Council’) really has extended its web into daily societal life. Kaspar does this not in any standard dystopian search to find some inner truth, but simply as an attempt to understand - to better understand his enemy and thus be a better Guardian.

It is clear from the beginning that Noble Conflict is a dystopian novel and in many ways it’s similar to other dystopia stories – the themes are all essentially the same, let’s face it, and there are plenty of dystopia conventions followed here – but Noble Conflict is different too. It doesn’t follow the path I thought it would: I thought something would happen to make Kaspar question his upbringing outright, that he would get ‘turned’ of a sort, but Blackman has written a story that is much subtler and more of a gradual uncovering. This was enjoyable and fresh, and there is plenty of edge-of-the-seat action and tension, lots of ‘whys’, but it does mean that in some places it took Kaspar quite a long time to reach certain conclusions – conclusions that, to me, were glaringly obvious. However, I think in reality this makes the story more realistic because, actually, I’ve pretty much been trained to see these things (through the piles of other dytsopia novels I've read). Kaspar, though, has never before had to question the reality he’s been presented with, so it’s only natural that it’d take him longer to find his way through. It would never cross his mind, for instance, that the people he interacts with aren’t to be trusted – another interesting twist to the ‘soft’ aspect of the Alliance’s totalitariansim.

Perhaps most interesting is that while I was reading Noble Conflict I also read an article in the Daily Telegraph about Ian McEwan’s new book, Sweet Tooth, where he comments on the use of propaganda by the US government in the 70s to ‘convert’ people to their cause. It made me think: maybe we’re never all that far away from our own version of dystopia, our own version of a totalitarian government. If you’re stuck inside, would you really know it? Especially if choice and freedom is something which is still ostensibly present in everyday life, as it is with the Alliance.

Kaspar is a likeable character, and Blackman’s story trots along with good pace and without any forced elements – it is missing, for instance, the often obligatory heavy romance interwoven within the greater story. And when I say missing, I do not mean lacking. Another article I read recently (sorry, can’t find the source for this one), bemoaned the obsession with many teen writers to include a romance within their pages even when it was completely unnecessary for the story progression. It is great that Malorie Blackman - named yesterday as the Waterstones Children's Laureate for 2013-2014 - has not also fallen into this trap. Don’t get me wrong, there are girls and there is flirtation, but it is a natural part of the story rather than engineered, and does not take over from the bigger themes and the greater focus.

As Kaspar gets drawn progressively deeper into the conspiracies, each apparent truth he uncovers seems to lead simply to more lies. Where does it all end? And what will happen next? A great choice for Waterstones’ Children’s Book of the Month - dystopia is growing up.

Requiem, by Lauren Oliver

Requiem is the much-anticipated third and final installment of Lauren Oliver’s entrancing series about a world in which love is considered to be disease. Its beautiful blue cover with silver writing is highly drool-worthy and the story inside lives up to expectation as Oliver’s characters grab you by the shirt collar and pull you into their world to fight for what they believe in.

Amor Deliria Nervosa was introduced to us in book one, Delirium – love, a disease that leads, among other things, to compromised reasoning skills and a distortion of reality. In the totalitarian world in which Lena and her best friend Hana live, love is something to be feared, to be trodden down and exterminated and so, at the age of 18, everyone undergoes The Cure, brain surgery that renders a person unable to love, that brings a fog over their emotions but purportedly brings clear thinking and rationality. It is only months until Lena will undergo The Cure, but then, just as her future is being mapped out for her, the worst thing happens: she contracts the Deliria. Perhaps, though, it’s not the worst thing? After meeting Alex, the source of her infection, Lena is led to question all that she has been taught and all that she has believed until now.

As Requiem opens, Lena has been living in the Wilds for upwards of six months – the unpoliced land outside the cities, a wild and ruined place where survival must be fought for on a day-to-day basis. She is a part of the resistance, fighting for freedom, and has found strengths she never knew she had, but still has a million questions. She has a tentative happiness here and has faith in her new beliefs and her new world, but is also discovering that much of what the City said about the Deliria is true. Love is complicated beyond belief – and can you love more than person at a time? Just as she finds a way to accept the loss of Alex and begins to make new connections, he steps back into her life and throws her heart into turmoil all over again.

Meanwhile, Hana has had The Cure and is counting down the days to her wedding to the most powerful man in Portland. It’s better, she feels, than it was before – she can keep the past at arm’s length, doesn’t have to feel the guilt, the jealousy and the multitude of other confusing synaptic pulses she had before. But as the past begins to slip back into her present, Hana finds herself questioning everything all over again. Is it her fault that Lena’s family is starving and ostracized? Is The Cure working properly on her? And who, really, is the man she’s got to marry?

Adrenalised and emotionally-packed, Lena and Hana’s alternating storylines take us into their minds and their worlds. Lena’s exploits for the resistance boil up into a dramatic conclusion, bringing her home to where her fight for the freedom to choose all began. Lauren Oliver’s final few paragraphs bring this to the foreground loud and clear, summing up the message behind all three books in a wonderfully succinct and emotionally cathartic manner:

“Take down the walls. Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness. Otherwise you might never know hell, but you will not know heaven, either. You will not know fresh air and flying.” (pg. 342)

Storywise, she has left the ending open – not really open to interpretation, but open enough for there to be more to the story. Some readers may prefer to have had every last detail wrapped up and ticked off (not that there are loose ends, it’s simply that there isn’t an "and they got married and lived happily ever after" conclusion), but I like the way it ends, it feels realistic, it fells like, well, the world is their oyster and they can choose what they do with it, where to go, who to be. Which is, of course, the point.

Requiem is a powerful and compelling conclusion to Oliver’s – and Hana and Lena’s – story that makes me want to go back to the beginning and read the whole series over again. Satisfyingly enjoyable, and great escapism. Perhaps teen readers out there could take it up a notch and try Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale next.