Amelia Bedelia will not be making an appearance on THIS list.

And neither will Farley Drexel Hatcher.

Due to the weirdness of those post-Mockingjay recommendations over at the Huffington Post, I've put together my own list. 

All this despite the fact that I haven't read Mockingjay yet.

If you read a lot of YA, you've probably read most of what's here, but you never know...

Oh, and it should be mentioned that I wrote this entire post AND THEN LOST IT, and am now writing it again.  So if you have any issues with the list, I assure you that my original post was AWESOME and that you would have LOVED EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT IT.

Onward!

Recent YA Dystopian Fight-y Books:

• There is, of course, James Dashner's The Maze Runner.  Thomas wakes up in a huge maze with no memory of his recent past.  He adapts quickly -- too quickly? -- to his new life with 60 other boys, some of whom have have been trying to escape their mysterious prison -- which is populated by stabby slicey monsters -- for years.  Then, the next day, a girl arrives.  Which would be weird enough, but she's bearing a worrisome message from the outside.

• Girl in the Arena, by Lise Haines.  I haven't read this one, but hey, the futuristic gladatorial combat premise makes it a pretty obvious pick.

• Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy, which is due to end this fall and which began with The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Which sounds awesome, but which I still haven't read, because I'm scared of books that feature animals as major characters.  Anyway, in the first book, Todd -- who lives in a world where there are A) no women and B) everyone hears everything everyone else is thinking ALL OF THE TIME -- finds himself face-to-face with a girl.  Shortly thereafter, they are on the run from pretty much everyone, and as they travel, he begins to learn that everything he has believed to be true about the world may be a lie.  (That MAY NOT BE A TOTALLY ACCURATE description -- it's just what it sounded like to me from the few synopses I've read.)

More of a Stretch, But Still Dystopian and with Some of the Same Elements:

• How much did I love Catherine Fisher's Incarceron?  A whole lot.  Why?  Because it's set in a mysterious and possibly unending prison with, yes, cells and gangs and locked doors BUT ALSO a metal forest and wasteland and weird creatures galore.  Finn, an inmate, thinks that he's from Outside, though no one believes him -- and then he finds a way of communicating with the Warden's daughter, who has a whole passel of her own -- very different, but no less threatening -- problems.  (My take.)

• There's Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which feels more like a historical, but which is a survival story with lots of action/adventure, a mysterious and possibly dangerous ruling entity, a love triangle and lots of survival against the elements stuff.  OH, AND ZOMBIES.  It's the first of a planned trilogy.  (I disliked the sequel.  Intensely.) (My take on books one and two.)

• Unwind, by Neal Schusterman, is such a fantastic book that it's almost silly.  Seriously.  It's set in a future in which parents (or guardians) have the power to, for pretty much any reason you can imagine, choose to have their children Unwound.  So if they don't like your attitude, or if you aren't talented enough, or if they just want to Start Over, you get shipped off to a harvest camp, where all of your organs and every other part of you will be removed and sent off to people who need them.  Nice, right?  Along with the action and adventure and mystery and so on, it's a book that'll you'll think about for a long time.  I'm still impressed, over a year later, at how the author was able to deal with such hugely controversial issues without ever tipping his hand, without ever appearing to take a side. (My take.)

• And, a bit older, but still a good fit is Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series.  It's set in a world in which, at a certain age, everyone has mandatory plastic surgery to become Pretty.  There are, of course, drawbacks.  But there is a resistance...  Action, adventure, romance, scary governmental badness, as well as a liberal dose of Oh Hey, The Cultural Norms Laid Out By Hollywood, People Magazine Et Al Might Actually Be A Bit Worrisome.

Even More of A Stretch, But with Some of the Same Elements/Themes:

• In Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It(and follow-ups), our world is forever changed when a asteroid changes the moon's orbit.  Power outages and satellite failures are followed by shortages of food, water, fuel and medical supplies, and then by environmental disasters.  Add to that the fact that scared and hungry people are not always nice people, and you've got a survival story that had me eyeing our meager store of canned goods and really grateful that we have a woodstove. (My take.)

• In Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, Daisy's visit with her British cousins looks like it's going to end up being an idyllic summer... until terrorists take over England and it turns into a harrowing story about survival and loss.  That one?  Still with me, five years later. (My take -- which, wow, is from the early days of the blog and really should be re-read and re-written.)

• Graceling's main character, Katsa, will win any battle to the death that she enters in to -- because she has the killing Grace.  Although she'd really rather be something other than a trained dog, her uncle, King Randa, uses her as an assassin.  But what if she just... said no?  Action, romance (AWESOME ROMANCE), mystery, a Secret Council, and lots of political intrigue.  It ain't dystopian, but that's no reason to pass it by. (My take.)

Way Old, And I Haven't Read 'Em, But I Suspect They Might Work:

• I've been meaning to get to this series for an embarrassing number of years, but John Marsden's Tomorrow, When The War Began seems like it would also be a possible pick.  The first book is about a group of Australian friends who return home from a camping trip only to find that their entire country has been taken over by terrorists.  Action, survival, Who Do You Trust issues, you name it.  From what I've read, the series has it all.

For Older Readers Who Want to Kick it Old School:

•Okay, so Koushun Takami's cult classic Battle Royale comes up every single time The Hunger Gamesis mentioned within a three-mile radius of anyone with even the slightest leaning towards hipsterism:

"Blah blah blah Hunger Games blah blah."

"Excuse me.  Just give me a moment to adjust my skinny jeans and Elvis Costello glasses.  Now.  Why on earth would you want to read that YA tripe when you could just read Battle Royale?"

"Um.  Because despite the broad similarity in premise, they're actually completely different books, and were written with completely different audiences in mind?  And maybe you should think about how ass-y it makes you sound when you dismiss an entire genre without even attempting to explore it?"

 

Okay, just because it's an irritating conversation -- AND IT IS, I KNOW -- doesn't mean that we should take our irritation out on the book.  Because, wow.  A dystopian Japan in which every year, teenagers are dumped on an island with weapons and forced to fight to the death?  C'mon.  That's just rad.

 

•And this list wouldn't be complete without two novellas by Stephen King: The Long Walk and The Running Man.  Both are set in dystopian futures, deal with Deadly Contests, and both deal with trust, survival against one's own mind, the elements and of course, attacks by other people. 

In The Long Walk, an annual contest is held in which 100 boys start walking south from the top of Maine.  The winner -- the last one walking -- gets ANYTHING HE WANTS, FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.  The catch?  If they slow to less than 4 miles an hour -- or if they try to quit -- they get shot.  Immediately.  (Well, there's actually a three strikes rule, but once you hit three strikes, you're REALLY dead.)

And lastly, The Running Man (which, yes, inspired the movie, BUT OH MY GOD, THEY ARE TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT ANIMALS) is about a reality television show in which the contestants have to avoid the network's Hunters for as long as possible -- the longer they stay alive, the more money they earn. (My take.)

So there you have it.  I did this off the top of my head, so I'm sure that I've forgotten some that should be here -- I await your suggestions!

 

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Comments

[sassymonkey]

Life as We Knew It -- I still think about that book. Didn't like the second one as much and haven't read the third but LAWKI? Loved it.

[Leila]

Same here. Though Dead and the Gone has grown on me with distance. At the time I read it, though, I was frustrated with the similarites of plotting between the two. I have the third one here at the house, but still haven't read it.

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnn0L35HoydvD9gyunxnVjNBWy8hBrG2Ko]

What a great list! I had no idea there was so much out there, having only read the King shorts and BR... thanks again..

[Erin]

How I Live Now was the apocalyptic YA book that led me down the road of obsession in this genre. Nice recommendation! I disliked The Maze Runner intensely for some reason. Michael Grant also has a trilogy that starts with the book "Gone." That one was pretty good.

[April (Books&Wine)]

Now this is how the HuffPo list should have looked!

Great job, I've read and enjoyed a whole lot of these books, and you've got me intrigued with the Long Walk. I will have to find an audio of that!

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=182703456]

Somewhat dystopian which I would add to this list is _The Repossession Mambo_, the basis of the recent movie _Repo Men_. In the future, all body organs can be artificially manufactured. If you need one, you can get it replaced, but it is not cheap. Not to worry, the Credit Union will be happy to give you credit, if you qualify of course. However, fail to make the payments, and the CU will send out their repo agents after you to retrieve CU property. This is basically, in a nutshell, a dystopia where health care for profit and the current trend of profiting off the poor (RTO's, Payday Loans, etc) go the extreme.

Best, and keep on blogging.

[Floatinglush.wordpress.com]

That is a pretty accurate synopsis of Knife. I loved loved loved the first two books, and am eagerly awaiting the third, but holy Hannah, they make the Hunger Games books look like happy fluffy little books, full of sunshine and lollipops. I cried, a lot, but DAMN they're good.

[LaurieA-B]

Okay, Knife of Never Letting Go: you've got to read it. It went like this with me. Page 1: "How can I read a book with a talking dog? HATE book with any kind of dog." Page 496: "I can't believe that book had a talking dog, and it was GOOD. SO GOOD." The second book blew me away. Agree with previous commenter about Hunger Games/sunshine/lollipops. Chaos Walking is awesome.

You must read Marsden's Tomorrow series. It gets a grip on you like just about nothing else. As I was reading Mockingjay I was reminded of that series. (Hunger Games trilogy is pretty good; Marsden is better.)

[LaurieA-B]

Also, to add to your list. Lockdown: Escape from Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith. Teenage boys locked up in scary underground prison for crimes they didn't commit. And, while it seems like a stretch, I think Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins is a great next read after Mockingjay. It's also about young people forced to battle each other to the death for no good reason. But it's real. I just finished Bamboo People and thought it was excellent.

[Kasia]

This is a great list! I nice antidote to that ridiculous HuffPo list, ugh. How I Live Now is one of my favorite books... and I have been putting off Knife of Never Letting Go because of the talking dog, too, but I will get to it eventually.

[Liz]

Great list. I love LIfe As We Knew It. I think you have a typo with Tomorrow When the War Began. Or maybe there's an alternate title that I don't know about?

[Jenn]

Thanks for this awesome (and much more accurate and useful) list. Now I have another list I can add to the read-alikes/readers advisory file that I am compiling.

[Lu]

The HuffPo list was SO WEIRD, I'm glad you did your own. I'm going to be checking these out ASAP.

[Lu]

ALSO: Knife Of Never Letting Go MUST happen in your life.

[Jodie]

I just heard about Girl in the Arena today and I am too excited about it. She is a female gladiator - how could this book not be awesome? Fantastic list here (although I haven't read nearly any of them, they're all on my big long list). I would love to see a YA showdown battle/Hunger Games battle written where you battle hipsters :)

[Elfarran]

Ditto the Chaos Walking recs. VERY STRONG and SUBTLE books and VERY DARK in a compelling way. The Monsters of Men comes out in a month!! You have time to read the first two before then!

Equip yourself with hankies.

[Aquafortis]

Dude, I love this list. I've read most of 'em (apparently I have a penchant for this theme) but there are a few major ones I still need to locate.

I think The Running Man is the only Stephen King novel I really LOVED. (Haven't read the other one you mentioned.) Definitely a good one for this list. Someone just recently recommended Fever Crumb (by Philip Reeve) for readers of Mockingjay, and I just started it myself and I'm enjoying it--takes place in a London that's 1000 years in the future and full of dead technology. It would probably be somewhere with Incarceron on the "books that are a bit of a stretch" list.

YOU MUST READ CHAOS WALKING. I agree with Floating Lush's assessment. And the Marsden books are great, especially the first few in the series.

[Brooke Shirts]

Isn't Tomorrow, When the War Began begin made into a film, too? So, y'know, a good excuse to read that one up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxb8rgq_Un8

[Rosemary]

Love _Graceling_. And it is sorta dystopian: tyrannical overlord who forces people to use their gifts to do things they don't want to do, and at the end, King Leck, who can manipulate everyone's consciousness. It may not be a recognizable world like most dystopias, but it's definitely a pretty crappy place to live.

This bumps _How I Live Now_ up several notches on my TBR list--thanks!

[Afton]

I found Girl in the Arena to be disappointing. I think the cover is misleading (not to give too much away) and the whole plot is more emotion than action.

[Madigan]

THIS is the list that HuffPo should have run. Great picks, all.
You are brilliant.

Farley Drexel indeed! What were they thinking??

[Judith Van Alstyne]

You must read the _Tomorrow_ series! Although #5 has been out of print and I have no idea why and Scholastic better fix that what with the MOVIE and all and boy, they also better do the movie right!

[Hannah]

I never could jump aboard onto the Hunger Games ship despite trying (I OWN the first book, I was so excited to try it). I even skimmed Mockingjay last night and it just didn't do it for me. Concept is nice and all but the language severely lacked for me in providing any emotional kick. And I think it's just me, since everyone (a lot of whom whose opinion I usually regard) is all, omg it is the best thing evaaa.

In full admission I love Battle Royale (both film and book) A WHOLE DAMN LOT in a cracktastic kind of way. Its writing ain't so great so at least it proves I'm not a snob - I can bypass just-okay writing if other elements pull me in. But for some reason, I just never clicked with Hunger Games.

I liked Unwind a whole lot as well. I think I'd consider Never Let You Go to involve the dystopian thematic points as well (and that was a quiet kind of book I loved).

[Amy]

Great list! I've read some but there are a few that I'm interested in now based on your recommendations. Btw, I agree with you about UNWIND. Such a fantastic book, and I just found out yesterday that there's going to be a sequel in 2012 called Unwholly, I think. Should be interesting.

[Alyce]

Great recommendations! I've read quite a few on your list, but hadn't heard of How I Live Now. I have added it to my wish list.

[Amy]

Another really good dystopian - Birthmarked by O'Brien. It's about a girl living in a future society after we've gone and destroyed the world. Here's the official summary: IN THE ENCLAVE, YOUR SCARS SET YOU APART, and the newly born will change the future. Sixteen-year-old Gaia Stone and her mother faithfully deliver their quota of three infants every month. But when Gaia’s mother is brutally taken away by the very people she serves, Gaia must question whether the Enclave deserves such loyalty. A stunning adventure brought to life by a memorable heroine, this dystopian debut will have readers racing all the way to the dramatic finish.

Also, the Gone series by Michael Grant is pretty gripping.

Finally, and I can't say this enough, SKIP GIRL IN THE ARENA. It was nothing like the cover and description promised, had a whiny narrator, unbelievable love triangles, and an incomplete world. The one good thing (imho) was the main character's relationship with her autistic brother.

[Tabatha]

Thank you for this.

[erin]

Thank you for this list! Everything sounds terrific and I've only read a couple of the books on it. I actually just finished HOW I LIVE NOW late last night in bed--oh.my.word. What a book. My mind is still processing all of that beautiful, terrifying story.

[Margaret S.]

I read LAWKI and “How I Live Now” on your recommendation. Thank you, thank you! They are so perfectly excellent that I hesitate to start on the rest of the list in case everything else a letdown.

In return for those two books (plus the other two of the LAWKI trilogy), I urge you to get to reading John Marsden’s “Tomorrow.” There are 10 books in all; first the original 7 Tomorrow series, followed by the 3-book series, “The Ellie Chronicles.” (This is meant to be encouraging, not daunting.) I first laid hands on them a year and a half ago, and have read them 3 times already (so far).

[notemily]

Oh jeez, I just realized the above comment was combined from this post and your Mockingjay post and has SPOILERS IN IT. Feel free to delete and I'll repost with it split between the posts.

[Leila]

Will do, notemily! (And thanks!)

[kaye]

GREAT LIST! I really wanna read the Mocking Jay so bad! :) Thanks for sharing!

[Rumibet]

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