So this week, I finished
The Jewel, read Ally Condie's Matched in less than 24 hours, and began Kaleidoscope.
Matched, by Ally Condie, is the first of a dystopian trilogy. On the back cover, one of the blurbs (from Family Circle) is something along the lines of "For those of you who like romance with your totalitarian government". Which is ... interesting.
I'll probably pick the next one up when it comes through returns at work, but I don't know that I'll seek it out.
As a result of reading this book, I did begin to formulate a theory of reality TV and YA dystopias: I posted my initial thoughts
here earlier this week.
A question I've been pondering this week: why are there no queer couples in these YA dystopias? Does no one ever Match with another girl or another boy? And how would you write something like that without it basically happening in one of those pre-existing universes and being fic. Part of me hopes that question will be answered in the other book I've just started reading...
Kaleidoscope, from Twelfth Planet Press and edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein, is an anthology of YA sci-fi and fantasy with diverse lead characters. So far I've only read Tansy Rayner Roberts' "Cookie Cutter Superhero", the first story in the collection. It was so brilliant I had to put down the book and walk away to let it sink in. Even though the very next story is by Ken Liu, and I've heard amazing things about his work, I couldn't just go straight on to his story after reading Tansy's. I think this is going to be the book of the year for me.
(Also, "Cookie Cutter Superhero" puts an awesome turn on my abovementioned reality TV theory of dystopias.)
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