Science Fiction romances tend to battle sequences and spaceships, but Homebound by Lydia Hope is set on a dystopian Earth. In The City, an urban ruin that reads like a Dickensian slum, Gemma works for a pittance scrubbing prison cells. A surprise reassignment to the third floor, where the alien prisoners are housed, leads to…
Why should YA have all the dystopia fun? Elle Kennedy takes the post-apocalyptic US in a decidedly adult direction in Claimed, the first book in her Outlaws series of erotic romances. Rather than marry the psychopath who wants her hand, Hudson Lane fled her privileged life in the city and joined outlaws living in what…
Curious about a gender-based dystopia where women have been erased as a concept and testosterone, inborn and taken via shots, rules the day? Check out Y Negative. Ember is Y-negative, a person born without a Y-chromosome. In his early years, he was forced to bear children; now, with the help of testosterone injections, he is…
I like YA dystopias, I like robots, and I like dragons. Unfortunately, this YA dystopia about a robot dragon had very little of anything I liked, and mostly frustrated me. While illegally selling censored books and escaping from police, Prudence Wu is rescued by the titular Rebelwing, whom we learn is a sentient dragon mech…
Deathless Divide is the eagerly anticipated sequel to the bestselling, engrossing Dread Nation. Picking up immediately after the events of the first novel, this story (and therefore this review) contains serious spoilers for that book. After escaping the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene, Kate (Katherine) Deveraux and their small band of followers have a simple…
I have rarely in my life read a YA series where I loved the first book, and then the second book was even better. Pintip Dunn’s Remember Yesterday is no sequel written merely to fulfill a book deal or cash in on the first book. This is a fully-fledged and masterfully interlinked continuation of a…
YA Dystopia is a crammed genre, but also one I truly love when it’s done well – and Forget Tomorrow blasts right past ‘well’ on its way to ‘brilliantly’. The best authors build originality within a genre framework (romance readers know this better than anyone!). Forget Tomorrow has the dystopian classics – the wicked urban…
Like Waterworld, only good, not campy and more difficult to love, is a decent way to describe After the Flood. Set in a post-apocalyptic world in which humanity survives in mountains and on the ocean, it draws focus on one woman, her young daughter, the man they rescue, and the adventure they embark upon in…
If you read only one YA novel this year, make it Dread Nation. Part Zombie Land, part Django Unchained, channeling a bit of The Hunger Games and also something wholly original, this is a tale of what happens when the undead rise while America’s race war rages. The Civil War is over. But not because…
Rejoice, Wulf fans! In Edge of Power we get his story and an enjoyable and satisfying conclusion to the sexy, futuristic Edge series (at least for now). The self-professed King of the West gets the comeuppance he so richly deserves – ending the overarching four book plot, while Ms. Crane rewards fans with a delightfully dark and forbidding King of…