I realised that I had become a dystopian novel addict after The Hunger Games
7 Best Dystopian Novel Series:
7. Partials by Dan Wells
Partials is dark, a frighteningly compelling version of our future. But Kira is a heroine that believes, so much so that you’d happily follow her all the way to book three. Plus she’s a medic. Well, in training. With only tens of thousands of humans left, extinction is the next step unless the connection with the Partials (engineered humans) can be figured out.
” The average lifespan of a human child, in the time since the Break, was fifty-six hours. They didn’t even name them anymore. Ariel McAdams, barely eighteen years old. The mother of a corpse. ”
6. Legend by Marie Lu
June is one of the most kick-ass heroines out there, basically able to take on the bad guys because she was trained as a politician/assassin from birth. I want to be trained as a politician/assassin from birth! Her brother gets murdered, so she goes after the only lead she has, a slum boy named Day who is all sorts of cool and seems to be dying. Then we get to take on The Republic. Now who doesn’t love it when the enemy sounds so official.
” Then Mom will put on her usual brave face, only to sit up through the night, quietly wiping tears away. In the morning, they’ll start receiving small rations of food and water and simply wait to recover. Or die. ”
5. New World Rising by Jennifer Wilson
Pheonix lives on the outside. Which may sound simple enough. But when her world is ruled by tribes, and their rule is ‘join or die’, it becomes less simple. So she learnt to be a ghost when she was 11 years old, after watching her parents murdered right in front of her. So she’s kind of like batman but not really.
” ‘My name is Maribel. Everybody says I talk too much, but Mouse doesn’t seem to mind. And since she doesn’t talk at all, I figure I speak enough for the both of us. Veyron says there’s cake. Want to go find out what kind?’ ”
4. Wool by Hugh Howey
Wool is a bit of a slow burner to begin with, as it starts with the characters climbing stairs up and down their underground silo – a lot. But then it just hits you in the feels. An entire civilisation packed into a cylinder, with wars, secrets and baby lotteries. Juliette is real, flawed and strong, and the book wouldn’t have hit its stride without her.
” The boy disappeared behind the counter. He came bac with a thick piece of meat. ‘Is it rat?’ Elise asked. The boy laughed. ‘It’s pig.’ Elise scrunched up her face, remembering the animal that grunted at her earlier. ‘Does it taste like rat?’ she asked, full of hope. ”
3. Arena One by Morgan Rice
Okay, go to Morgan Rice’s website and just listen, that is one amazing voice for the audiobook. Brooke is the daughter of a marine. She’s tough, and loves her sister. So when that sister is taken by slaverunners, there is nothing Brooke won’t do. Including fighting in an arena like the gladiators of old.
” Once the first soldier fell, there was no turning back. The final line had been crossed. An American had killed an American. This became known as the First Wave. ”
2. The Atlantis Grail by Vera Nazarian
I think I have a thing for books about training. Where people are learning. Like in Harry Potter, they go to school. Maybe I subconsciously feel that I’m learning alongside them. If only that actually worked. Though there are studies that show that if you imagine doing something over and over, you can do it better than you otherwise would. I’m holding on to that. The Atlantis Grail series started with Qualify, and starts with a bunch of kids sitting for a test. A test to see if they can go with the aliens-ish (survivors of Atlantis that went to space and control things by singing) to their home planet before Earth is wiped out in few months by a meteor. It is captivating, and it’s not over.
” But once the Atlantean shuttles landed, and we saw them to be human and not little green men or big green lizards, it was okay. ”
1. Time Zero by Carolyn Cohagan
It is everything a book should be. It details the powerlessness that pervades our society now, and the self-sacrifice it takes to be. To just be. Mina doesn’t want more than to simply choose her own path. And Time Zero is a beautiful commentary on how this is what the world looks like now. Not in a dystopian future, but today. It is sad, uplifting and twists you up inside. Oh and I can’t wait for you find out what the Primer is. I also cannot wait for book two. But I will, cause you can’t rush genius.
” She closed the Primer, looking me straight in the eye. “God never said women shouldn’t read. He never said that one of his creatures was built for education while another was not. That’s a rule that a man created ”