Review: My Name is Monster by Katie Hale

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction, Dystopia, Retelling

Goodreads

In My Name is Monster, the world as we know it is over: War and Sickness took over the countries and killed almost all humans – almost. Monster is still alive, and she emerges from the Seed Vault in the Arctic to find food and shelter, surviving.

This beautiful novel is incredibly bold and nuanced – it’s a post-apocalyptic story about society, motherhood, survival, civilization. Its loose inspiration in Frankenstein makes it all the more interesting, too. It took me a few pages to start really getting into the story, but after that it sucked me in. Monster is such an interesting character, so intelligent and cold, sometimes cruel, I could not get enough of her.

Review: The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction, Dystopia

Goodreads

The Memory Police tells the story of our unnamed narrator, a novelist living in an unnamed island where things disappear. One day many years before, it had been hats, and then ribbons, and those things were not missed. The islanders forgot about them and moved on. The disappeared things become slowly more important, and the islanders forget and move on after each one – but not everyone forgets what has been lost, and the Memory Police make sure those people are taken away. When our narrator finds out her editor and friend is one of those people who are unable to forget, she knows she must hide him, lest he end up like her mother – dead.

Review: Severance, by Ling Ma

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction, Dystopia

Goodreads

In Severance, the world has collapsed into apocalypse after fungal spores infected and slowly killed everyone. Inexplicably, Candace survived, and so did a few other people, who she joined in an attempt to survive.

Disclaimer: Due to current events, if you find the content of the book to be potentially triggering for you, definitely give it a pass. I did not find it was a problem for me, and found comfort in a story that had parallels, but was very different, to our situation and had no stakes on my real life. This is however a very personal experience and I don’t recommend everyone read it at this time.

This is a surprisingly beautiful and character-driven book, unlike any other apocalypse story I’ve ever read. Candace joins a group of other survivors, who have not showed symptoms of the strange disease that slowly kills its victims, taking away their consciousness until they perform nothing but their muscle memory routines, stuck serving dinner, or getting ready to go to work, for weeks and weeks until they starve to death. What starts as a survival measure, slowly turns into a cult and Candace is in more danger than she knows.

Review: The Trial, by Franz Kafka

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Classic, Dystopia, Literary

Goodreads / Amazon

This is one of the books that German students seem to get quite often for their High School language studies, and I am very sorry for all the teenagers being subject to this complex novel. I went into it without much knowledge of the plot, and in fact I do recommend you go that way into it! The next paragraph, as per my usual reviews, has a short description of the synopsis, but please feel free to skip it if you’d like to read the book in the dark. Also skip the last part of the review (helpfully called Spoilers) to not have too much of the story revealed 🙂

The Trial is the story of Josef K., a bank worker who one day wakes up to find out he is being arrested for a crime that he is sure he didn’t commit, and doesn’t know the nature of. He then tries to find ways in which to make his case and obtain an acquittal, but there is never any progress, and just a long, maddening, pointless process full of contradictions.

Review: The Book of M, by Peng Shepherd

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Dystopia, Fantasy

Goodreads / Amazon

The Book of M is one of the most talked about books of this year! And still, I was not prepared for it – it was so much more than I expected! It’s a wonderful fantasy world with well-rounded, interesting characters and a thoughtful work about memories and love. Damn, this was such a good book.

The story begins with one boy in India finding out one day that he’s lost his shadow. At first this is seen with much interest from the public, until it becomes apparent that the boy is starting to forget things: at first a few words, and within a few days, his family. When more and more people throughout the world start losing their shadows, the epidemic of memory loss and despair drives the world into apocalypse.

Review: Pestilence, by Laura Thalassa

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Genres: Post-Apocalyptic, Romance

Goodreads / Amazon

The Four Horsemen will destroy humanity. After five years since they last came, the world has been in a post-apocalyptic state: there is barely any electricity, cars stopped in the middle of the road, planes fell down. Now, one of the Horsemen returns with plans to finish what was started: Pestilence. Bringing death in the form of a plague, he’s as cold as he is painfully beautiful. But Sara Burns won’t let him destroy humanity without a fight – and shoots him dead. Except, he cannot die, and now she is his prisoner.

Review: Arena (Arena #1), by Pavan Lewis

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Horror, Dystopia, Young Adult, LGBTQ+

[THIS BOOK IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT]

I have received a free copy of Arena from the author of this book. This in no way affects the opinions reflected on this review.

When seventeen-year-old Tasa Strong is ‘taken’ by the dreaded Iron Cart, she finds herself in a vast arena filled with wild animals and grotesque killers. In order to survive, and save her beloved friend Valeria, Tasa must work with eleven other children to find a way forward – even as she comes to understand that many of them cannot be trusted, and may also be a danger to her life. As they struggle to survive, and compete, they are forced to make horrifying life and death decisions; voting on which in their company should be killed. This act threatens to tear any potential alliances apart; and factions form within their group. Yet still Tasa must struggle forward, led by a boy who seems to want to save her and her friend: yet also clearly has his own secret reasons and brutal abilities – until at last she faces a final and terrifying round of dangers that will reveal the most unexpected and shocking betrayal, and potential reward…

Review: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Recommended: Yes

Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Classic Fiction

Add it to your TBR: Goodreads, Skoob

This is one of the most well-loved classics of all time, and most people I follow on Goodreads gave either 4 or 5 stars to it, and it belongs in many people’s Favorites shelves. Many people have actually recommended it to me (Hi, Bia!), but I should have listened to my boyfriend when he said that, although he had really enjoyed the book, I wouldn’t like it all that much. So hold tight, this might be a rant-view. I’ve held back from making my points too long, but still it’s quite an epic rant.

Review: The Forever War

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Recommend: Yes, with restrictions

Genres: Science fiction, Dystopia

This book was highly recommended by a friend, and it was initially written by the author to be a dystopia, but now that the 1990s (where the story starts) have come and gone, it has shifted into the science fiction category. I did put it in both categories, though. Yes, I gave it two stars. Yes, I recommend this book. See my review below to understand why.

Review: Divergent #1-3 by Veronica Roth

Rating: ★★★★☆

Recommend: Yes

Genres: Young Adult, Dystopia, Fantasy, Fiction

Add it to your TBR: Goodreads, Skoob

This series was lent to me by a friend who highly recommended it. Back when I read Divergent, I was hardly reading any fantasy/dystopia YAs, because I like changing up genres, lest I find boring and predictable a book I would otherwise have enjoyed more. So Divergent was like getting back into my comfort zone – I devoured the three books in about a week.