Bogormen

Title: Oasis (The Last Humans, #1)
Author: Dima Zales
Genre: Dystopian, Sci-fi
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 238
Date read: February, 2016

My name is Theo, and I'm a resident of Oasis, the last habitable area on Earth. It's meant to be a paradise, a place where we are all content. Vulgarity, violence, insanity, and other ills are but a distant memory, and even death no longer plagues us.

I was once content too, but now I'm different. Now I hear a voice in my head, and she tells me things no imaginary friend should know. Her name is Phoe, and she is my delusion.

Or is she?


I received this ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I love dystopian novels, so I figured it would be right up my aisle.

And as the rating indicates - it was. Slightly slow to start, but once it did, I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of "Ready Player One" (Ernest Cline) meets "Across the Universe" (Beth Revis) meets "Unwind" (Neil Shusterman). And if you think that sounds like a really weird meshup, I don't blame you... but it works.

I liked the twists and turns - some of which I'd seen hints of ahead of time, others I'd never seen coming, and not only did I feel nicely entertained, but I actually had a hard time letting it go after I turned the last page.

It's the first in a series, and thus no real resolution is achieved, but it didn't contain any of the stereotypical problems of a first book in a series. No cliff-hanger, no excessive world-building at the expense of plot, no major setup that's never followed through on.

If anything, I might say there was too little world-building. Some things were explained in an aside or left to be read between the lines. I think I got most of them, but a bit more 'showing' Theo's every-day life at the start of the novel might have been nice.

Title: Only Ever Yours
Author: Louise O'Neill
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 398
Date read: August 2015

Where women are created for the pleasure of men, beauty is the first duty of every girl. Women are no longer born naturally, girls (called "eves") are raised in Schools and trained in the arts of pleasing men until they come of age. freida and isabel are best friends. Now, aged sixteen and in their final year, they expect to be selected as companions--wives to powerful men. All they have to do is ensure they stay in the top ten beautiful girls in their year. The alternatives--life as a concubine, or a chastity (teaching endless generations of girls)--are too horrible to contemplate.

But as the intensity of final year takes hold, the pressure to be perfect mounts. isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty--her only asset--in peril. And then into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride. freida must fight for her future--even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known.


It is extremely rare that I rate books I actually finish this low, but "Only Ever Yours" would have to be one of the most unpleasant books I've read in a very long time. I have no clue what point Louise O'Neill was trying to make, as there seemed to be none. The evil will succeed, the good will fail, and you should just lie down and take it?

The sad thing is, the book really had potential, and had you asked me about half-way through, I'd have estimated I'd end up giving it 3 stars... possibly even 4. But as the book went on, I got more and more disgusted by it, until I feel I'm being generous by giving it even 1.5 stars. I guess I should be impressed that Louise O'Neill's writing could cause such a visceral reaction in me, but mostly I'm just disappointed that I've wasted a full day's reading on this garbage. Absolutely horrible book.

Title: The Body Electric
Author: Beth Revis
Genre: Sci-fi, Dystopian
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 351
Date read: April, 2015


Ella Shepherd has dedicated her life to using her unique gift - the ability to enter people's dreams and memories using technology developed by her mother - to help others relive their happy memories.

But not all is at it seems.

Ella starts seeing impossible things - images of her dead father, warnings of who she cannot trust. Her government recruits her to spy on a rebel group, using her ability to experience the memories of traitors. But the leader of the rebels claims they used to be in love - even though Ella's never met him before in her life. Which can only mean one thing...

Someone's altered her memory.


I wasn't sure what to think of this book at first, as it seemed to take awhile to find its groove, but once it did it really took off, and I couldn't put it down. It's not quite as good as her "Across the Universe" trilogy, and I did think there were some questions left unanswered - or where the answers given weren't satisfying - but as a whole, I thought it worked.

Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 304
Date read: February 2015

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all.


I'm afraid this book suffered severely from too much hype. It was good, but certainly couldn't live up to my expectation. Mostly I felt like the book couldn't decide which way to go -- was it a story about the "apocalypse" or about the aftermath? Instead it tried to be a little bit of both, meaning that it ended up rich on world-building and low on plot. Even now I'm not sure what the plot was supposed to be... Arthur's life story? Kirsten's life story? How Station Eleven came to be? Eluding the prophet? Getting to the airport? All of the above? None of the above?

It's probably telling that I enjoyed the flashbacks more than the present day events, and as a whole, I found the book well-written, but ultimately too easily forgettable.

The three stars is because the first few chapters and some of the flashbacks had me at the edge of my seat. More of that (=focus on the apocalypse and the early years) and I would probably have LOVED it.

Title: Prepper
Author: Lise Bidstrup
Genre: Dystopian, YA
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 186
Date read: October, 2013

Daniel har altid vidst at jordens undergang en dag vil komme, og at den er nærmere end de fleste tror. Faktisk er han sikker på at det vil ske i hans levetid, for hans forældre er ivrige deltagere i en gruppe der kalder sig selv "Preppere", som aktivt forbereder sig på den naturkatastrofe der vil udslette livet på orden, og arbejder hårdt for at have muligheden for at overleve den.

Og ganske rigtigt - en sen nat ringer alarmklokken, og Daniel forsvinder sammen med sin familie og 15 andre personer ind i et skjult beskyttelsesrum for at overleve det anarki der utvivlsomt vil følge en naturkatastrofe. De har mad og vand nok til 4 år, og vil først dukke op igen når menneskeden er ved at få styr på sig selv igen.

Bogen skifter hele tiden i tid, hvor hvert andet kapitel er i "nutiden" og hvert andet kapitel fortæller om Daniels opvækst, og hvordan hans liv som "Prepper" har påvirket hele hans barndom.

Jeg elsker dystopisk/apokapyltisk YA og var dybt fascineret af denne beskrivelse af forberedelserne inden og konflikterne under en apokalypse. Beskrivelserne af livet i beskyttelsesrummet - inklusiv alle konflikterne medlemmerne imellem - virkede realistiske, omend de godt måtte have mere detaljerede. Især hvad angår Daniels forhold til de andre personer.

Slutningen var måske en smule forudsigelig, men det er meget typisk for YA, så det i sig selv er ikke grund til at give bogen en lavere rating. Desværre syntes jeg også den var en smule brat, og ville have foretrukket at lidt flere sider var blevet brugt på at udforske reaktionerne... muligvis bare som en epilog: "9 måneder senere..." eller noget i den stil.

Så 3.5 stjerner bliver det til... 4 stjerner hvis den havde været bare en side længere, 4.5 stjerner hvis den have været 10-20 sider længere.

Men udemærket læsning som den var, og den holdt fint min interesse - selv under en 24-hour read-a-thon hvor kravene ellers er noget højere ;)

Title: How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea (Newsflesh #3.5)
Author: Mira Grant
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 132
Date read: July 2013

Post-Rising Australia can be a dangerous place, especially if you're a member of the government-sponsored Australia Conservation Corps, a group of people dedicated to preserving their continent's natural wealth until a cure can be found. Between the zombie kangaroos at the fences and the zombie elephant seals turning the penguin rookery at Prince Phillip Island into a slaughterhouse, the work of an animal conservationist is truly never done--and is often done at the end of a sniper rifle.

Yet another novella in the Newsflesh universe. I wasn't quite as taken in by this one as by the earlier ones, as there seem little new ground to explore... but what little new ground there is, Mira Grant found in this novella. My biggest beef with the story is that like in all novellas, there's not enough page-space to explore the plot and the characters.

Title: Deadline (Newsflesh #2)
Author: Mira Grant
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~15hrs
Date read: June 2013, June 2016, October 2020, June 2024

DO NOT READ THE SUMMARY OF "DEADLINE" ON GOODREADS UNLESS YOU'VE READ "FEED"!!! HUGE SPOILERS!!!

... trying to make this a spoiler-free review though, so I'll leave out the summary for this one...

Very obviously the middle book of a trilogy and therefore really cannot stand on its own. It had me totally hooked from the very beginning, and was as action-packed as I could have wished, but the story was definitely action-driven and character-driven rather than plot-driven... some major twists were thrown at us, but nothing resolved.

I'm still really impressed by the world-building, and how Mira Grant so effortlessly switches between Shaun and George's voices - making both equally believable. I thought the revelations about their relationship more than a little unnecessary though... it makes sense, but I'm not sure that it was necessary for the story... but perhaps that will be revealed in the next book.

Title: The Eternity Cure (Blood of Eden #2)
Author: Julie Kagawa
Genre: Dystopian, Paranormal
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 448 pages
Date read: April, 2013

"The Eternity Cure" picks up 9 months after "The Immortal Rules" left off. Having left Eden behind, Allie is hunting down Sarren, looking for a chance to save Kanin, her sire. Along the way Allie meets up again with both friends and foes - some more expected than others, and Allie will soon learn that becoming undead was the easy part, and her struggles are far from over.

I know this is more than just a little vague, but I really appreciated not knowing what was ahead of me and don't want to rob any other readers of the surprises that are in store. In many ways "The Enternity Cure" is just as good - if not even better than "The Immortal Rules" as the struggles become more complex than just "kill or be killed". I liked seeing the complex interactions between Allie and Jackal, even though I never cared for him much, and was fascinated by the descriptions of the vampires and the pets in New Covington.

The end was even more cliff-hanger'ish than "The Immortal Rules", which did disappoint me somewhat at first. But for once I was very grateful for the epilogue - otherwise I'm not sure I would have been too keen on reading the next book in the series.

Title: The Immortal Rules (Blood of Eden #1)
Author: Julie Kagawa
Genre: Paranormal, Dystopian
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 464
Date read: March, 2013

Red lung disease has claimed most of humanity, and the ones left alive live in fear of the vampire Masters, and the rabids (zombies) who live outside the cities.

So what's a human to do? Live outside the city and be on constant watch for rabids who'll claim anybody who steps outside after dark; or live inside the city and be used as cattle by the vampires?

Allison chose neither. She lived on the fringe of town, as an Unregistered who had to beg or scavenge for food. She could be picked up at any time... but at least she didn't have to go to the regular blood-lettings like the Registered did.

But one day she was caught outside the city walls after dark, and was attacked by a group of vicious rabids. A rogue vampire found her and drove them off, but Ally's dying. She now has to make a choice - stay among the living, but as one of the monsters she always hated; or accept death at the hand of a vampire.

While the outcome of this choice is pretty obvious, further events aren't, and it would be a shame to give any more of the plot away. Though it might at first glance seem like just another in an ever-growing stream of vampire books, it is in fact very different from most recent paranormal novels, and is more of a return to the original roots of the vampire folklore.

I liked the combination of the dystopian and the paranormal genres, and am interested in seeing where Julie Kagawa takes the story next. Fortunately she doesn't make the common mistake of leaving on a cliff-hanger, but it is still obvious that this is the first in a series.

This is the first book I've read by Julie Kagawa, but I liked her writing style, so it won't be the last :)

Title: Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 441
Date read: December, 2012

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn't understand that once love -- the deliria -- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the government demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she'll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.

As dystopian novels go, I wasn't too impressed. It's a decent enough story, but books like "Divergent", "Matched" and "Uglies" do a better job of creating a very similar universe, and all in all this one just ended up seeming predictable.

It did keep me nicely entertained, but I was never fully engaged in the story. It didn't become personal, the way I like books to be.