Seed by Lisa Heathfield

The Oxford English dictionary describes a cult as:

“A system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object,” 

or: 

“A relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members.”

The second of these two definitions particularly brings to mind the idea that, most probably, those who are part of a cult aren’t likely to think of their group and/or beliefs as being a ‘cult’ because, today at least, the term ‘cult’ tends to have negative connotations – if you were accused of being in a cult, most people’s instinct would probably be to defend themselves against that concept. If Pearl was told she’d grown up as part of a cult, I’m sure she wouldn’t believe it (although someone might first have to explain to her what a cult is!).

I’ve always found the idea of cults kind of fascinating, so was very much drawn to Seed as a result of that. Why do people form cults, join them, and get pulled into their strange rules and belief systems? How can they believe the sometimes crazy things that some cults invoke, and what would possess them to carry out the acts that some cults require of their members?

Pearl has always lived at Seed. She was born there, grew up there; it is everything she has ever wanted and everything she has ever needed. Seed is her family, her home, her world. She is watched over by Papa S and the Kindreds, who have taught her everything she knows and believes, from harvesting honey and planting crops to the dirty, unhappy, state of the outside world – and, given the state of this outside world, it’s little wonder that there will soon be three new people joining them at Seed: teenaged Ellis, his mother, and his little sister Sophie.

Apart from the slightly strange ritual Pearl has to endure in the opening couple of chapters, at first it seems that to grow up at Seed must surely be a sort of idyll: Pearl and everyone there have to work hard to grow the things they need and to take care of each other, but it seems like a fairly free existence, with few concerns other than day to day life. Inevitably, though, as we are introduced to Pearl’s world, little things are revealed that make the reader question Pearl’s reality. At first these things are as simple and subtle in the story as a little comment or hinted-at off-page action, and it feels as if they are just small things, things that hardly happen and could even be neither here nor there. But then I wondered, what if they happen a lot but Pearl has simply glossed over them? What if, care of her indoctrination, she doesn’t understand how significant they are?

And then, of course, Ellis arrives. He says some strange things, things that only a crazy person could believe – like space travel and humans walking on the moon – and even questioning some of things about mother nature that she has always known to be true. But what if they aren’t? Gradually, Ellis’s presence begins to force Pearl to look at things differently, and the ‘little’ things that felt out of place start to escalate, quickly becoming more obvious, more numerous, and more ominous.

I really liked the nature worship aspect of Seed, but in this case the whole manifesto has clearly been dreamt up by some guy with not-so-pleasant intentions. The plotting is really well paced, gradually revealing things - slowly at first, and then with ever greater speed, all whilst carefully straddling the border between only implying certain aspects of the storyline and life at Seed versus shouting out the details from the rooftops. Pearl’s character development is very realistic too, following a similar pattern to the plot: slowly, slowly at first as it is so hard – almost impossible – to imagine that things could be different from what she has always believed, and then faster and faster as events and her gaining knowledge spirals.

There are a lot of different threads to follow too, which gives the story good substance: not everything hinges upon Ellis’s presence and Pearl’s coming-of-age story arc; there is also the mystery of Sylvia, Elizabeth’s illness, Kate’s erratic behavior. What I would have liked more of is the back story to Seed, and the role of Pearl’s little brother Bobby and his insights could have been developed more. And I didn’t think that Pearl’s voice was particularly distinctive – Lisa Heathfield’s style tends towards the ‘I go here’, ‘I have this feeling’, ‘so and so does this’ which is a little bland. The emotions are very guarded somehow, which makes the drama quite guarded too.

Nonetheless, Seed is a gripping first novel brimming with ideas on freedom and truth and lies, the cult setting allowing her to dabble in the dystopian form in a different way whilst simultaneously avoiding the typical dystopian categorization and idea rehashing. Everything seems innocent on the surface, but what are Pearl and those at Seed – her siblings especially – being told just to keep them in line? How far will Papa S go to keep control of his family and what consequences will this have on the person whom Pearl is to grow into?

The Bees, by Laline Paull

The Bees is a most unusual book. Although billed primarily as an innovative and chilling dystopian thriller (which it is), what stood out for me most strongly were the rhythms of life and nature, the rhythms of the hive through the seasons.

This is the story of Flora 717. We meet her as she is born to consciousness and follow her through her life in the hive and her encounters with the world. As she goes about foraging for nectar, feeling the air on her wings and using the air currents to speed her along, Flora forms a symbiotic relationship with the flowers and plants: they yearn for her touch as much as she yearns for theirs.

The outside world is packed with enemies, though, enemies both natural and man-made: the Myriad - spiders and birds and wasps – as well as cars and pesticides and cell phone towers. Thus, as well as being a song to nature, The Bees stands as a warning too: an alarm call to the devastating effect human technology has on the natural world, how they unbalance the ecosystems and race through the food chain, how what might seem minor or unnoticable by you or me is devastating to wildlife.

But enemies reside not only in the outside world, they are in the hive too. For this is not some softly cushioned place but a dystopian horror. The society of the hive is divided rigidly into caste levels, each bee ‘kin’ kept in their place by the Melissae priestesses who use scent barriers and antennae controls to keep the bees in their places, and the Queen who extends her love through the hive like some sort of addictive drug. Information is limited, freedom is an essentially unknown concept, individuality is restricted and dissent or deviation is punishable by death.

What is different about this dystopia, though, is our protagonist: unlike the typical dystopian hero, Flora 717 does not actively seek out change, does not intend to question the laws of the hive; rather these things just seem to happen by some other force of nature. There are secrets hidden everywhere, but Flora doesn’t look for them because she wants to challenge the hive or the Queen or the Melissae, she looks for them only to answer her questions about the world or only when she needs the knowledge. Flora loves the Queen as much as every other bee; it is the Melissae who frighten her.

So when Flora commits the ultimate act of rebellion, the greatest sin of the hive, what will the consequences be? What exactly are the implications of the Melissae’s most closely guarded secret: that of feeding? The Melissae are undoubtedly in control, but what will happen if the icon of the Queen is lost? How tight will their grip on the hive be then?

This is a fairly ingenious idea by author Laline Paull; I would be interested to know what inspired her story and to learn how close the relationship is between the functioning of Flora’s hive and non-fictional hives. How is it, for instance, that Flora is able to commit this act of sin – and so unintentionally too? I wasn’t completely enraptured by The Bees, perhaps because it doesn’t hold the same level of pace as I’m used to from YA dystopias, but it is a wonderful and thoughtful song brought lovingly to life.

I especially loved the relationship Flora had with the outside world and the symbiotic relationship the bees have with the hive itself; I loved the rhythms of the hive, the dancing of foraging directions, the encoding of knowledge within the structure of the hive itself. This perhaps make it sound like a very airy and light book: it is not. The passages involving the spiders were especially creepy; there is terrifying visit to a greenhouse with carnivorous plants; and I’m sure I felt as sick as Flora did when she got trapped by the cell phone tower - though nothing is as shocking to all involved as the Obeisance to the Males. I did find it kind of fascinating that the males were given such an elevated place in the hive, despite it purportedly being a matriarchal society, though their greed and their demands were sickening enough for me to feel more than a little smug once it became clear what the Obeisance rite was really all about.

The final denouement is satisfyingly dramatic: will the Melissae lose their grip? And what fate awaits the hive? If you’re looking for something different to read this summer, The Bees is it.

The Wall, by William Sutcliffe

Hands up if you like dystopia books. Hands up if you think dystopia books are important, fictional methods of pointing out inconsistencies in social order and social thinking. Or if you think they are a way of extrapolating a political idea into a worst-case scenario.

Hands up if you think dystopias don’t exist today. Right now, right here, in our modern world.

The Wall, in its basic form, is a literary dystopia. Joshua lives on one side of the Wall, relatively privileged, plenty of food on the table, nice clothes, a room full of books and games. Joshua’s world is under constant threat, though, from The Enemy. They want to bomb Joshua, his people, his town Amarias. They want to steal Amarias’s land. They want to shoot and kill. This is why the Wall is there: to protect Amarias, to keep the Enemy at bay, controlled.

To Joshua, the Enemy are a faceless people, a people to be kept at arm's length. But when he discovers a hidden tunnel that runs underneath the Wall and through to the other side, his inquisitiveness gets the better of him. And what happens when he emerges on the other side will not only re-align his world, but set into motion a series of terrible consequences.

After he goes through the tunnel and gets a glimpse of the other side – even though it’s a terrifying experience for him – his perfect, newly built town, with it’s identical houses and clean streets, seems unreal to him, like a dream, after the vibrancy and dirt and muddle and emotional tensions of the other side. He starts to wonder: why are they the enemy? Why do they hate his side of the wall? And he makes a friend, to whom he feels a debt of gratitude, though every attempt to repay it seems to make things progressively worse, both within his own life and within theirs. How can he fix it? How can he escape it?

The truth behind this dystopia is that it is not entirely fictional. William Sutcliffe has based his story – a fictional town, a fictional boy, a fictional series of events – on the real life, present day happenings in the West Bank. Although it is never explicitly written in The Wall, Joshua is Jewish, an Israeli, those on the other side of the Wall, Palestinian. Sutcliffe (who describes himself as a Jewish atheist)  has drawn on elements of various settlements on the West Bank to create this emotional and thought-provoking portrayal of the situation in Israel in which the Jewish settlers of the Occupied Zone are not-so-quietly condemned by his pen.

It’s an excellent book that, for someone who knows very little about the history and political situation of Israel, was extremely thought-provoking. It would have been useful if Sutcliffe had written a factual summary of the situation at the end of the book to give readers a little extra insight, though he does provide some suggested further reading.

Joshua is a well-rounded character who it’s impossible not to feel for. He makes mistakes – some of which have huge consequences – though the decisions he takes have only good intentions behind them, and it’s kind of excruciating and frustrating to watch events unfold yet be powerless to stop or change them. The willful ignorance of his mother as his stepfather Liev physically abuses Joshua is not unusual in young adult fiction yet is a poignant metaphor, perhaps, for the way in which the western world seems to stand idly by while a whole people is forced into a similar position and held there against their will.

The unerring belief of Liev (and, presumably, the majority of those living in Amarias) in their right to this piece of land reminded me strongly of the book I read just before this one: Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper, which covers the settling of America and practical genocide of the native people there. If I understand correctly, there is a historical precedent for Jewish people belonging to the land which is now called Israel? Which obviously isn’t the case for the whites going in and taking over America, yet surely today the Palestinians have as much connection to the land of the country Israel as perhaps the Israelis do, after farming it and living on it for generations.

Sutcliffe creates this feeling of history through Joshua’s own newly-discovered connection to the land after he begins caretaking an olive grove on the outskirts of Amarias:

“I sometimes think of all the people who might have drunk here. For the last few months it was perhaps only me and Leila’s father, but a hundred years, a thousand years, five thousand years, is the blink of an eye to a leaky rock. Drinking from this spring I feel myself joining a thread of people, linked together through unimaginable chasms of time, who have all knelt here, drunk here, tasted this taste, enjoyed it, been kept alive by it. If the bulldozers ever get here, that will be it. The rock will shift, the trickle will stop, the thread will snap.”

It is irrelevant to Joshua who those people were who have drunk from this spring, tended these olive trees, this soil – irrelevant whether they are Jewish or Christian or Muslim – the land connects us all together if we respect it and it will treat us well if we treat it well. The land doesn’t care who we are, and there is something beautiful in this idea. Why can’t we share it and live on it equally? Why do we have to own it and war over it and diminish others for it?

This is a very complicated history which engenders very complicated feelings. The Wall, though, takes one step towards making us think harder about what we do and how we behave. It’s a very clever idea, to create a dystopian story based on real happenings, though there is a precedent with books such as George Orwell's Animal Farm. Joshua’s actions will change him forever; what he learns, once he learns it, will be forevermore un-learnable:

“This place no longer seems how it was before we left for the Occupied Zone, because back then I barely even knew what The Zone was, and once you know something, you can never unknow it.  

“I have left Amarias, but now I realize Amarias will never leave me. I hated that place because it felt like a huge lie, but this place doesn’t feel so different.”

Poignant and sad and thought-provoking. Who is the real enemy? Liev? The world? Himself? And what sacrifices will he make to do the right thing, to help someone who needs help?

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer

Cinder both is and isn’t what it appears to be: a clever retelling of the Cinderella fairytale. We all know the basics: orphaned girl in indentured servitude to wicked stepmother who, after a visit from her fairy godmother, sneaks out to the Royal Ball, at which the handsome prince falls in love with her. Cinder has all of these essential elements, but also has a lot more: bigger enemies than just the wicked stepmother, wolves in sheeps’ clothing, political upheaval, a deadly plague, and no guarantee of a happily ever after.

This is New Beijing and Cinder is not your average girl. Part human, part android, master mechanic. She doesn’t remember anything from before she was eleven years old, but has been told her parents died in the same crash that caused Cinder herself such extensive injuries that only with the installation of android parts was she able to survive. This makes her a second class citizen though, and at any moment she could be called upon to become a test subject for the doctors working to find a cure for the deadly plague that’s ravaging New Beijing. So she’s just trying to get through each day as easily as possible, running her mech shop, and staying out of her stepmother’s way.

Inevitably, though, it’s not long before events take over. First, the Prince strolls into her mech shop with a robot he needs fixing – a robot that could contain vital information for the survival of the kingdom – and then Cinder’s little sister contracts the plague and Cinder is shipped off to become what she fears most: a test subject. Yet this is just the beginning: Cinder’s body is hiding secret information too. Who is she really? And can she stop the evil Lunar queen from getting her claws into Prince Kai, New Beijing, and the rest of earth? Kai’s robot holds the key, but how will she get the information to him in time?

Immensely readable, in Cinder Marissa Meyer has created a dystopian fairytale that keeps the reader on their toes. The characters are a nice mix of moralistically black, white and everything in between, while the action, intrigue, and emotions are perfectly spread through the story, making it a remarkably hard book to put down even at those times when you can see what’s going to happen. Meyer did keep me guessing as to how it would all end though; how much information would be revealed both to the reader and to the characters? – which, as this is just the first book of four, is enough to keep me wanting more.

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.

Maggot Moon, by Sally Gardner

This book is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding and real examples of dystopian fiction I have ever read. If not for its recent win of the Costa Children’s Book Award I probably wouldn’t have picked it up as neither the title nor the cover gave much indication of the hidden gem inside - but thank goodness I did.

Maggot Moon is the story of one brave boy - or one unlikely hero - standing up for the truth he believes in. Standish lives in the Motherland, a country with a ruling system reminiscent of a blend of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. It is 1956 and his government is on the verge of sending a man to walk on the moon. Or are they? Standish may be ‘impure’, an orphan, and virtually illiterate, but he sees more than they (the Greenflies, the soldiers, a man in a long leather coat) think he does, and his story gradually reveals both the ways of his world and what could be the greatest conspiracy theory of all time.

This is fiction writing at its absolute best. Sally Gardner’s writing is subtle and detailed yet simple and straightforward, and her characters literally leap off the page. Her language is effortless, switching from the simple to the intense and full of intent, with sentences like “Doubt is a great worm in a crispy red apple.” (pg. 72) There are themes of desolation and the moon, of rockets and space flight, and of other worlds - worlds with Croca Cola and Cadillacs. And the publishers have added an ingenious extra touch in the form of a flip story running across the pages featuring flies and maggots and a rather curious rat - sounds a bit gruesome I know, but it adds a fascinating extra dimension to the reader’s experience - and I know there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I haven’t quite put my finger on it yet.

After Standish’s best friend Hector disappears, he begins to wonder how on earth he’s going to get through his day to day life. Hector was both friend and protector - now Standish is exposed again, vulnerable to the bullies who populate his school. But he won’t have to worry for long: a trip to the headmaster’s office sets off a series of events in a tumbling snowball. Or is that where it begins? Perhaps it began when the football went over the garden wall? Or maybe when Hector first arrived next door? What soon becomes apparent is that it’s up to Standish to show the world what’s really going on. Does he have the courage?

Standish’s actions and the quality of his character (despite his not-very-inspiring introduction of himself) have gotten me thinking about what it means to be a hero. At the start of his story, Standish makes himself out to be the kind of person least likely to become a hero. Essentially he is the runt of the litter, the bottom of the pile, but he gradually reveals himself to be entirely different to how others view him, entirely different from the person he at first seems to be. This is why I would describe him as unlikely hero, although when you actually start to dig deeper, he does actually possess - right from the beginning - the makings of a hero. But what actually makes a hero a hero?

My faithful dictionary says a hero is:
1. a man of distinguished bravery and strength; any illustrious person
2. a person who is venerated and idealized
3. in fiction, a play, film, etc: the principal male character or the one whose life is the theme of the story
4. originally a man of superhuman powers; a demigod

Do these apply to Standish? Some yes, others no; in truth, though, this simple definition doesn’t feel like it fully covers the extent of Standish’s bravery or the meaning of what he does. He and his actions are worth so much more and encompass so much more than a dictionary definition can credit. For a more refined idea of the hero, I'm led to Joseph Campbell. In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces he lays out the typical hero’s journey, which seems to get a little closer to Standish’s truth:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Another big theme of Maggot Moon is that of acceptance. Firstly, Gardner’s story got me thinking of the 1990s film Wag the Dog, where a politician recruits a spin-doctor to create a fake war in Albania, thus distracting the media from the politician’s troubles. Its a film that I remember for the way it highlighted the power of the media - creating its own version of events, it showed our willingness to accept what we’re told without question. This idea is perhaps a natural reflection of the dystopian world - you can see it loosely in books like Matched and The Hunger Games - but in Maggot Moon it is really crisp and clear.

“You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see who the real idiots were here: Hans Fielder who believed he was destined for greatness, along with his merry gang. They were all bleating sheep, the whole maladjusted lot of them. They never questioned anything.” (pg. 72)

Although marketed for teens Maggot Moon crosses so many boundaries and contains both writing and storytelling of such quality that I would recommend it as enthusiastically to twelve year olds, fifteen year olds, twenty year olds, sixty years olds, and on and on. It is dystopia in its purest form, and stands alongside classics such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World - a good introduction to teen fiction for the younger generation, or a natural stepping stone between The Hunger Games and more adult titles. True class.

What's Left of Me, by Kat Zhang

Eva is in hiding. Only her twin, Addie, knows that she is still alive. But Eva and Addie are not twins in the way you might expect: in their world, everyone is born a twin. Every body is born with two souls residing inside, sharing one body, taking turns to walk and talk. But in Eva and Addie’s world, it is also normal for one of these two souls to slip away, to pass on, leaving their body for their twin. This ‘settling’ is supposed to happen when they are five or six years old, but Eva and Addie never settled. Now fifteen, every day Addie pretends to her friends and family, to the world around her, that Eva doesn’t exist anymore. Because if they find out she’s lying, they will - at best - lock her up, and at worst, hunt her down and forcibly remove Eva from their body. Because hybrids - bodies where two souls remain - are the enemy. They are considered wrong, dangerous.

What’s Left of Me is Eva and Addie’s story. It’s another title to file under the heading of ‘teen dystopia’, yet it’s fresh and different. The basic concept reminded me of a mix of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host (where an alien soul takes over and shares a human body with a human soul), and Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (where an evil faction are experimenting on the separation of humans from their daemons), but the treatment reminded me strongly of Ally Condie’s fantastic dystopian love story, Matched. For this is where the strength of the story lies, and where the dystopian factor comes in: government conspiracy and manipulation; the discovery that everything you’ve been taught is a lie, the discovery that everything you trusted and believed in is wrong.

Kat Zhang has done a great job of putting her idea into words. Writing two different aspects of one person, or of two souls in one body, could have proven difficult, but her approach makes it easy for the reader to distinguish between Eva and Addie, and you can even see the different characters that not only these two girls have, but the different characters of the other hybrids they encounter as well. Referring to one body as ‘we’ must have kept Zhang on her toes, but how other people in the story use ‘I‘ or ‘we‘ or ‘they’ also gives the reader lots valuable clues about the people encountered and the events going on. Early on she raises the question over the potential problems of two people living in one body, making me wonder whether the government’s stance on hybrids is actually a wise and sensible one, but she also raises a lot of moral ideas too. Is it murder to remove a co-sharing soul? Just because the body still exists and still has a soul within it, doesn’t change the fact that an equally valuable soul has, essentially, died.

Eva and Addie are both fighting for their rights, for their freedom, but how far are each of them willing to go to get what they want? And how far are others willing to go for what they believe in? Zhang sets a good pace, with lots of tension and action as well as the moral aspect, though I did get a tad bored - or not bored so much as bogged down - around two thirds of the way through, where I started to lose track of where the story was going or how it was going to progress. Progress it did, although not at quite the same rate with which the story began. Things are tied up quite nicely at the end, whilst simultaneously leaving it open for the story to continue into part two of what is currently dubbed The Hybrid Trilogy. It’s not as good as The Hunger Games or Matched, but it’s definitely up there with the better dystopian stories, and bound to be a hit with the teenage audience.