Dystopian – Page 3 – Marked for Plot

Sunrise on the Reaping (Hunger Games 0.5)

The Hunger Games was part of my high school experience. I’m part of the generation that grew up with Harry Potter, reaching high school right as YA as a genre was beginning to coalesce into something more than a target audience, instead a grouping of stylistic decisions that led to a rather depressing homogeny. Hunger Games has stood the test of time, and for good reason I think. It’s one of the best of the era, and is a phenomenal book to use in a 7th grade Dystopian book club unit, especially when paired with data on mental health and suicidiality of those who go on reality television programs for our enjoyment. I didn’t pick up the other prequel, as Snow never interested me much as a character. When kids started raving about this though, I figured Haymitch intriguing enough for me to return.

The Premise: Not a lot to say here assuming you’ve read the original trilogy. This is Haymitch’s Hunger Games. We already knew from the earlier books that there’s double the number of tributes and an arena themed around utter beauty where everything is poison. The only little tidbits to throw into this are that we’ll see some early apperances of Capitlol characters like Effie and Plutarch, as well as some of the Champion Tributes of Catching Fire (Mags, Beetee, and Wiress all make appearances), and that Haymitch wants to find a way to break the arena, sort of like the returning tributes ended up doing in Catching Fire.

Read if You Like: Hunger Games content, bits of District 12 Lore, Books you know the end of

Avoid if Looking For: the adreneline of the original series, a ‘normal’ hunger games, exploring new thematic depth in the series

Toward Eternity

It’s been a while since I read a book whose back cover so poorly represents what is in the book itself. Anton Hur was done dirty by his publisher on this one, because the premise for the book is much more interesting than what’s shared. I expected a story about how society is adapting to technology that turns people immortal, with a focus on a patient/researcher and his poetry AI bot. While all that is indeed there, this story is actually a millennia spanning reflection on what it means to be a person, a unique individual, and how choices can echo across time. It has at least seven different POV characters who almost never repeat past a single chapter. A much more ambitious novel than it appears; it reminded me a lot of The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez, which is about as high of praise as I can possibly give.

The Premise:
Okay, let’s try to do a better job than the publishers. This book starts in a near-future world where emerging research shows nanomachines can turn you immortal and cure pretty much any ailment. Dr. Beeko runs this lab with Yonghun (who has undergone the research) and who has disappeared mysteriously. One of the only witnesses is Panit, Yonghun’s AI poetry-analysis machine who has been collecting dust for years. From this setup, we start exploring these events from these character’s points of view, then shifting to other patient’s experiences with nanotherapy, before jumping forward in time to explore a new version of the world where we see how these nanobots have shifted the world again … and again … and again. To give some sense of scope, the book is split into five sections: near future, future, distant future, very distant future, and eternity, and the choices of the original cast filter down into later storylines, they aren’t lead characters continuously throughout the novel.

Read if Looking For: books spanning millennia, philosophical musings, epistolary novels

Avoid if Looking For: straightforward stories, single POVs, everything explained in the end

The Sunbearer Duology

As a middle and high school English teacher, I get a lot of book recommendations from kids. YA and Middle Great books are fantastic, though I don’t tend to read very many of them. When some books – especially the books my LGBTQ+ students are recommending – get student momentum behind them though, I’ll give them a try. Sunbearer Trials was pitched as a mashup of Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games with a trans lead, which was a pretty convincing pitch. Add in that Aiden Thomas wrote one of my favorite paranormal romances in Cemetary Boys, and I was happy to throw a few audiobook holds at the library. In the end, I don’t think this duology is as tightly written as Percy Jackson, Hunger Games, or Cemetary Boys, but it has a lot of heart and will land well for its target audience.

Read if Looking For: quality Trans-Masc representation, teenage angst, Aztec Mythology references, tournament arcs

Avoid if you’re Looking For: nuanced worldbuilding or themes, YA books that diverge from genre conventions

The City that Would Eat the World

2025 has not been my best year of reading (yet). There’s been quite a few disappointments, a decent number of ‘good, but not great’ books, and one or two that will stay with me. I’m happy to say that I finally found something addictive in The City that Would Eat the World. It was a raucously fun adventure in an alien world that is both utterly unlike our own, while mirroring it deeply.

The Premise
The City of Wall is … a bunch of interconnected walls. A lot of them. They currently cover about a third of Ishevos, with the age-extending god Cambrias driving its relentless expansion. Thea is a mimic exterminator who hosts a flagstone-counting god inside her soul, and Aven is a traveling adventurer visiting Wall looking for the next great thrill. They end up meeting after a god-killing artifact falls into Thea’s lap, and drawing a lot of attention that Thea very much doesn’t want, and Aven very much does. The resulting events will take them across the vast city, bring them into contact with heroes and monsters, and challenge their beliefs about the goodness of Wall (for Thea) or whether toppling it is even possible (for Aven).

Read if Looking For: easy reading, weird megastructures, batshit crazy plans, anticapitalist themes

Avoid if Looking For: themes you have to dig for, gritty and dark books, romantic subplots

This Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl #7)

Dungeon Crawler Carl has quickly risen to one of my favorite series of all time. It’s brutally fast paced, irreverent, and has a delightful blend of horror, humor, and melodrama that I adore. This review is for Book 7, which focuses on the much-awaited Faction Wars. Be warned, spoilers ahead for anything in books 1-6.

Carl has arrived at Faction Wars, ready to kill a few thousand offworlders, win a bunch of money for Donut’s fan club, and try to figure out how to keep both Katia and Donut alive.

Honestly if you’ve reached Book 7 of Dungeon Crawler Carl, you don’t need me to tell you whether or not you’ll like the series. If you’ve got no idea what this is, look at my review for book 1 linked above.

Snow Crash

Cyberpunk is not a genre I’m particularly familiar with. I don’t watch a ton of movies, haven’t played the video games, and am only versed enough to know the basic premises of a corporate world filled with technologically enhanced humans slowly being corrupted by power (or trying to plow the power holders up in bombs). At least I think? I’m still a bit unsure.

Anyways, Snow Crash was the pick for an in-person book club I’m in. I found myself pleasantly surprised at how familiar the story felt, and can understand why its considered a classic foundational text of the Cyberpunk genre. I had some fairly major issues with it though, and left it feeling the way I feel about a lot of these older iconic works: greatness colored by cringeworthy reminders of the past.

The Premise:
Hiro Protagonist is a freelance hacker, and one of the original programers of the metaverse. YT is a 15 year old courier, who delivers sensitive parcels by harpooning cars and hitching a ride on her skateboard. The world is parceled into corporate burbclaves, each with its own rules, oftentimes able to be bent with a bit of cash. And amidst it all is a growing virus threatening those who visit the metaverse: Snow Crash.

Read if Looking For: fun blends of futuristic and retro technology, observational humor, dramatic internal monologues

Avoid if: dated depictions of female and LGBTQ+ characters, weirdly sexualized 15 year old girls

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

About an hour into my listen of this audiobook, I was convinced that it was going to be my first 5/5 read of the year. I was lost in Marisa Crane’s intensely emotional writing, and felt like I was living in the skin of another person, feeling what they felt. Then, as the story shifted from something amorphous and reflective into a more traditional plot, I ran headfirst into walls of frustration and disappointment. The things I love about this book are intoxicating, but it wasn’t enough to hold the story together until the ending for me.

The Premise
In this version of America, those who harm others receive an additional shadow. Those with shadows are second class citizens: taxed higher, let go from jobs, harassed on the street. And of course, fairness and justice aren’t particularly high on the list of concerns for the government organization assigning shadows, and people of color, queer folks, and those living with mental health challenges are much more likely to get one. That list includes Kris, who just lost her wife in childbirth, and her newborn baby who got a second shadow for ‘killing’ her mother during birth. Lost in grief, Kris must find a path forward in this world and figure out how to life her life (and raise a child) when the lodestone of her world is gone.

Read If Looking For: meditations on grief and motherhood, dynamic queer relationships (romantic and platonic), thoughtful depictions of mental health struggles

Avoid if Looking For: dystopian settings with the intensity of The Handmaid’s Tale, realistic depictions of children

The Wings Upon Her Back

This book wasn’t really on my radar until a variety of people whose taste I trust recommended it as a fantastic thematic exploration of Fascism, Military Dehumanization, Religious Programming, and Abusive Relationships. I was hesitant about the mix of fantasy and mecha elements, but it ended up being a really enjoyable read that I anticipate being nominated for at least a few awards.

Elevator Pitch:
Zenya is an apprentice with the sect of the Mecha God, desperate to earn the approval of her mentor and prove that her roots in the Scholar sect won’t hold her back as a future warrior and enforcer. Decades later and now named Zemolai, she finds herself disgraced, wings ripped from her back and cast out for a single infraction. Zemolai grapples with her faith as she reflects on how she ended up participating in a system that, from the outside, doesn’t protect the city and citizens like it promises to.

Read If Looking For: theme-focused novels, fantasy about religion and politics, nuanced relationships

Avoid if Looking For: action heavy books, fleshed out side characters

Mistress of Lies

One of this year’s bingo squares is ‘Judge a Book by It’s Cover’ which challenges you to read a book without knowing anything other than what’s on the front cover. Mistress of Lies was my pick for my ‘published in 2024’ themed card. I thought the art was wonderfully evocative, and also visually distinct from a lot of cover art trends I’m seeing these days. Ella Garrett (designer) and Felix Abel Klaer (illustrator) did a phenomenal job.

The Premise:
In a country ruled by an upper class of blood mages and led by a deathless king, a young noblewoman kills her father. She wants to change society for the betterment of her brother, who is Bloodless, and relies on scheming and plots to do so. Meanwhile, a Bloodless commoner stumbles upon a murder victim that has been causing discontentment amongst the Bloodless people, fostered by whispers of rebellion. He finds himself dragged into noble society against his will. And lingering around it all is the Royal Bloodworker, forming a trilogy of attraction as the three struggle to find an equilibrium in the newly unsettled Blood Worker Society.

Read If Looking For: romantic tension, polyamorous storylines, moral ambiguity

Avoid if Looking For: political intrigue, books free of YA/New Adult vibes

Cascade Failure

I picked up Cascade Failure after seeing it compared to Firefly favorably in a few different places, and I am unabashedly a fan of the cult-hit TV show, even if I was rather late getting on the bandwagon. We’ve seen misfit underdog spacheship crews a million times before, but I enjoy books that tread familiar ground just as much as I enjoy those which innovate in the genre. While this book wasn’t particularly original, it does evoke the feeling of Firefly much better than anything I’ve read before.

The Premise:
The Ambit is a spaceship captained by an AI with only two other crew members: a war-torn veteran seeking escape and an augmented mechanic who likes her plasma torch a bit too much. Then Jal stumbles into their ship, on the run from his past as a deserter. On their way back to the central system, the ship gets pinged with an emergency beacon, and everything quickly falls apart. Expect to spend more time exploring crew relationships than the action, as family life on the ship takes center stage until the final parts of the book.

Read If Looking For: found family, touching moments, AI characters

Avoid if Looking For: fast paced stories, in-depth Sci Fi worlbuilding