Melting into Dystopias

As a writer who is friends with other writers, of course my friends and I all read. And of course because we both read and write, we like to discuss the books we read; what we think of the plot twists, the characters, etc. We debate points, consider outside possibilities, predict possible outcomes, and ferret out weak spots.

So during one such discussion, my fellow writers in my writing group and I started talking about dystopias. We've all seen them. The most famous ones right now are The Hunger Games (the second film, Catching Fire, came out semi-recently), followed by the Divergent Trilogy, the first film of which premiers in mid-March. Then there are the classics like Soilent Green and Fahrenheit 451.

But it seems like these days, the classification of dystopia is being thrown around a lot when it doesn't really fit well with the actual premise of the book.

What is the biggest theme of a dystopian novel? A dysfunctional government, seething with corruption, that's basically out to get you. Screw up once, you're dead meat. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, reading actual books is a crime that—if you refuse to surrender said books—can result in your execution.

In The Hunger Games, if you defy the Capitol, they come after you hard (case in point, the ultimate destruction of Districts 12 and 13). In Lauren Oliver's Delirium, anyone who breaks the laws to prevent "infection" from this supposedly contagious mental illness is sanctioned, then put in prison or punished in some horrible way. I recently wrote an essay, actually, about the difference between utopia/dystopia and straight-up dystopia novels, highlighting the acknowledged tyrannical fist of a corrupt government.

But a lot of books these days that I've seen have been labeled as dystopias when honestly, it doesn’t actually seem like they are. Maybe it's a sales ploy sort of thing. Maybe it's to make more people buy the books. I don't know. But I'm seeing less dystopia in my dystopian novels these days, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

In Kiera Cass's supposedly dystopian novel The Selection, we're introduced to the kingdom of Ilea, which is run via a caste system. While they have rebellions, and the laws can be fairly strict (being pregnant outside of wedlock can get you thrown in prison unless you were sexually assaulted), there isn't really anything corrupt in the government that we see in the first novel. The government isn't tight-fisted or cruel or tyrannical. The king and queen genuinely care about their subjects and their kingdom. What is so dystopian about this book, exactly?

Hop over to Wither by Lauren Destefano, first book in The Chemical Garden Trilogy. In Wither (and its sequel, Fever), the government doesn’t really show up in the storyline. You see the president on television maybe once or twice. You hear about riots and rebel attacks and all that.

But no policemen or government workers ever attack the main character or anyone she knows. The bad guys don't have government authority behind them. The government is actually pretty much an ineffective mess sludging around in the background, not doing anything. The tyrannical evil entity is the father-in-law of the main character, Rhine—and he's the villain of the novels, as well. In fact, his creepy attitude and scary dictatorship reminds me more of less-violent and overtly-psychotic Annie from Stephen King's Misery than President Snow from The Hunger Games.

I'm currently reading a so-called dystopian novel called Inhuman by Kat Falls, where the government has a fairly iron-fisted grip on the country. But that's because about twenty years prior in the storyline, a virulent and so-far incurable form of fast-mutating super-rabies swept through the country and martial law was basically put into place to try and stop it before everyone keeled over dead. The virus is still incurable, and outbreaks still happen.

Imagine if zombie plague popped up in the real world. How would the US government handle it? Exactly the way they do in Inhuman. That's not dystopian. The government's not corrupt. No one's rights are being unfairly squashed or whatever. It's a public safety issue, like the cops forcing you to stay in your homes while they try to apprehend a terrorist running around out on the streets.

I could go on for days about this, actually. Novels like Divergent by Veronica Roth, Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel, Rot and Ruin by Jonathon Mabry, The Loners by Lex Thomas, Shatter Me by Tahareh Mafi, Insignia by SJ Kincaid, or Gone by Michael Grant aren't actually dystopian novels. Most (though not all) of these actually fall more under post-apocalyptic, which isn't the same thing—though I fear it may be melting into the blanket-label of dystopian.

Am I being too picky about this? Maybe. But I actually know people who hold the dystopian classification in contempt, and those people aren't buying a lot of the books I mentioned above which are being incorrectly labeled.

What's my point? Authors, editors, agents, publishers, reviewers—be specific. Just because it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, doesn't mean it's a duck. It might actually say "cock-a-doodle-doo" instead of "quack," which probably means it's not a duck. Actually, if it looks like a duck but crows like a rooster, it's probably a parrot in disguise. And maybe readers shouldn’t judge a book by cover or classification, but you know they do. So please, advertise accurately.

Stay tuned for reviews for Shatter Me, Inhuman, The Loners, and Rot and Ruin coming soon!

— LA Knight

Vortex - SJ Kincaid

 

S. J. Kincaid has created a fascinating dystopian world for Insignia, her futuristic science-fiction adventure series perfect for fans of Ender's Game. Earth is in the middle of WWIII, a war to determine which governments and corporations will control the resources of the solar system.

 

Teen Tom Raines grew up with nothing—some days without even a roof over his head. Then his exceptional gaming skills earned him a spot in the Intrasolar Forces, the country's elite military training program, and his life completely changed.

 

Now in Vortex, the second book in the series, Tom discovers that the Pentagonal Spire, where he and his friends are being trained as superhuman weapons, is filled with corruption. He is asked to betray his friends—the first real friends he's ever had—for the sake of his country.

 

Will he sacrifice his new life to do what he believes is right?

So I recently read this book called Insignia by SJ Kincaid, and I loved it sooo much that I checked out the sequel, Vortex, from the library and read it in like, a day. I love this writer SO MUCH! So much, in fact, that I'm willing to download a Kindle app to my computer so I can read the prequel novella, Allies.

But that's not what this review is about. This review is about Vortex! Very rarely does an author maintain the same level of epic with her second book that he/she began with their first, but SJ Kincaid did it! Tom is now fifteen, not fourteen, but he still has that adorkable mid-teenage-boy-ness to him that I love. He's on his way to graduating from the Plebe Class of the Combatant Training Facility (basically the freshmen) to becoming a middle-classman. Progress is being made with his training and everything's great…

Except that some of the things Tom has done in book one are now coming back to bite him. See, I love it when authors take a character's actions and then actually bring down realistic consequences for that action. Not because I don't like the character, but because I get tired of characters in books who do dumb things—either on purpose or by accident—and then don't realize that actions have actual consequences. One of the big themes of this book is that Tom is beginning to realize that.

1 - He has to fix a ruined friendship/romance with the girl he loves.

2 - He has to get sponsors in order to move up to the rank he wants.

3 - He has to deal with new enemies wearing the masks of friendship and try to figure out just what his current enemies are willing to do to get back at him.

4 - And he's not done training yet, either. =)

Now that Tom has graduated from Plebe Class to level one of Middle Company, he has new things to worry about. Passing his classes isn't the be-all/end-all of his world anymore. Now, if he wants to become a Combatant (which he does), he needs to graduate to CamCo—Camelot Company, the best of the best, and the only trainees who become actual combatants. Everyone else gets other jobs, like with the military and stuff. He doesn’t want that. But in order to be a part of CamCo, he also needs sponsors—one of the major plotlines of this book. And in order to get sponsors, Tom has to learn how to schmooze people.

Just to warn you, this review is full of SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!

So, Tom doesn't want to schmooze people. Why? Because he's fifteen, not naturally manipulative, and doesn’t want to sacrifice his dignity and pride by being polite to people he would rather punch in the face. Thing is, as the reader, I can totally sympathize with that! While at the same time, I'm busy begging him to just suck it up one time so he can get a sponsor. It's nice to have a character I can totally root for without reservations. I'm in the middle of another book right now where I'm having reservations about cheering for them and I hate that. But I gotta admire a kid who's so "skilled" that he manages to tick off every single possible sponsor out there within an hour of meeting each of them. Lol!

Of course all five or six of them are basically horrible people, rich CEO types who look down on everyone, and Tom's such an idealist he can't possibly condone the thought of working with them. Like, one lady is the CEO of a company that has overseas factories and condones those horrible conditions where workers are beaten, get paid fifty cents an hour, get no breaks, no air conditioning or heat in the buildings, etc. Being fifteen and having a temper, he tells her everyone in power in her company should throw a party and then go blow themselves up.

That doesn’t end well. Sigh.

The only time Tom's pride-thing gets annoying (it's only one time) is when he meets this oil sheik or whatever and refuses to bow to him. I'm like, "Okay, I get it, you don't want to bow to someone because you don't believe they're superior to you. I get it. Really. Except one thing—they ARE superior to you! They have more money, more authority, and they can make or break your career. Deal with it!"

But he doesn’t. Sigh. Instead he gives the guy the thumbs-up sign, which in America is cool but in the sheik's country is like flipping someone the bird. Tom didn't know that, but everyone got so in-his-face about it that he got mad and refused to apologize.

So basically his pride holds him back with the sponsors. UNTIL! The end. But let's back up a step first. This book makes me so happy I end up jumping all over the place about it.

So aside from the sponsor thing, there are a few other plot points I adore. One is the relationship between Yuri and Wyatt. I was worried that was going to blow up in their faces, which detracted from the rating I gave Insignia, but it didn't blow up! It's fine! Yay! Thank you, Ms. Kincaid, 'cause that would've made me so sad if it hadn’t worked out. I love Yuri.

One thing does make me sad, though. The adults all thought Yuri, our favorite Russian hottie, was a spy. All the kids thought they were full of it. Unfortunately, the grownups were right. Because of the neural processor chip that gets put into every combatant trainee, it's also possible to introduce malware and spyware into their neural processors and control them. You see it in the first book when someone does it to Tom (though it gets fixed in that book). Well, someone's doing it to Yuri. So he's not a spy, but the person controlling the malware in his neural processor is using him to spy. Boo. Tom, Vik, and Wyatt figure that out and manage to fix the problem, but not before Yuri almost ends up brain-dead. =(

But he's not a bad guy! So I'm happy about that. He's good, and he loves Wyatt very much, and eventually things will get resolved because he's a good guy and the good guys always win except in sucky books where everything falls apart.

Also a nice, complicated, wonderful plot point—Medusa. Now, I didn’t really talk about the combatant known as Medusa in my review of Insignia except briefly. In the first book, Medusa is the heretofore unbeatable combatant from the enemy nation, who Tom defeats near the end of Insignia. She and Tom are also best friends online throughout most of book one and spend a lot of time fighting each other in VR simulations because they're both warriors and they love that sort of thing and they bond with each other and slowly begin to fall in love (though they don't realize it then).

But the thing is, Tom has never seen Medusa's face. She always appears in different guises (for example, the very first time she and Tom face off against each other, she's wearing a sim-image of Achilles at a VR-simulation of the Battle of Troy). In Insignia, Tom used his neural processor and hacked into the security cameras where Medusa lives to see her face during the big fight near the end of the book, and discovers she's horribly disfigured. He uses that knowledge (and the emotional trauma that hits her because now he knows what she looks like) against her to win, which causes a HUGE rift between them. It takes half of book two, which spans several months, for Tom to make up for it.

And that's one of the plotlines I love from Vortex—Tom trying to re-woo Medusa through combat. It's just fun to watch, because Tom's adorkable, and he feels so bad for hurting Medusa (that's not her real name, btw—it's her call-sign; his is Mordred), and he just wants things to go back to the way they were between them, but he realizes they can't because he screwed up. So then he tries to regain her trust. And it's just sweet and cute and fun to read, and it's like…one of the best romantic subplots I've ever seen, and the way it's done is brilliant. I love it.

Going back to consequences of actions, by the way, one of the CamCo kids is murdered by one of their teachers during all of this. And it's like, "OMG WHAT?!" But then if you think about WHY the teacher killed her, it's actually more like, "Never mind, she deserved it." Because Tom can do this thing called interfacing (mentally controlling a machine NOT built for the neural processor), which only one other person in the world can do—Medusa. And it's considered a BIG deal. And it could get Tom killed if anyone but his teacher and Medusa find out.

So then this girl finds out, and she tells the teacher she's going to go blab it to the bad guy. And he keeps telling her, "You don't want to do that. People's lives are at stake. I can't let you. Don't make me do something drastic to stop you." And she's like, "Screw you, it's not like you can call the cops or anything, I'm doing it," so he kills her. It's like, "Well, maybe you shouldn’t have been screwing around with people's lives." And I like that because it's something you don't see a lot in books—that some secrets are actually worth killing for, to protect people.

A really interesting piece of character development in this book also is Vikram (Vik), Tom's best friend. Normally he's right up in the mayhem with Tom, but after stuff goes down with Yuri and the spy-thing and Yuri almost becoming brain-dead because the mayhem got them all in trouble, he starts putting distance between himself and Tom. He's shaken to learn just how serious things can get in the world he's entered into right now. But the thing I love is that when Tom really needs him, Vik puts aside his "holy crap" feelings and steps up to the plate again, and doesn't desert—unlike that little punk, Steven Beamer, from Insignia. I loathe that little twerp. I hope he gets eaten by a shark.

My only issues with this book are, it's shorter than book one, and…oh, wait. That's it. Well, and it sort of ends on a cliffhanger, but that's more me as the reader dying of a heart attack than an actual flaw. The characterization and character development of Vortex blows Insignia out of the water, and Insignia wasn’t bad to begin with. I also love the realism of the situations, the feelings about those situations, and the realism of the consequences of everyone's actions. I love it. LOVE this book!

Which is why I got both of them for Christmas!! WOOT!!

Happy holidays,

LA Knight

PS — The funny quotient in this book is pitch-perfect. Well done, SJ Kincaid!

The Selection - Kiera Cass

For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon.

But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn't want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she's made for herself—and realizes that the life she's always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined


I've never really been a fan of reality television. I watched the first season of The Bachelor and one season of Survivor (guys VS girls) because my mom asked me to. I am fond of Project Runway, but that's about it. So when I heard about this book, The Selection, by Kiera Cass, I was like, "Whatever. Dumb." But then the sequel came out, The Elite, and I was like, "I don't get the connection between these two words." Then the final book was announced, The One, and I got really confused. So I read the summary to see what it could tell me, and the summary of book three was enough to get me to try book one.

I am so glad that I did.

In The Selection, the royal family of the kingdom of Ilea has this tradition of marrying the daughters off to crowned heads of state in other countries, but their sons must marry a woman from their kingdom. No specific woman, just a woman from their country. Okay, I can get behind that. Makes sense; there's no reason why this is a bad idea, especially in a kingdom where rebel forces sometimes are like, "The monarchy sucks!" Gives every girl a shot at being part of that monarchy, and by proxy, her family.

So the first thing that put me off was how the summary presented the situation, but we'll get to that in a minute. The second thing was the MC's name. America Singer. I kind of wanted to bash my head in when I saw that. They explain why that's her name later on in the book, and it's a really cute little family story, actually, but it needed to be earlier on, because the name otherwise is terrible. Her last name, Singer, makes sense—she's from the artisan caste of her country, as is her entire family. But the first name needed to be explained waaay earlier.

Onto the other thing. In the summary, they make it seem like America enters the Selection (the "Princess and the Pea" type contest for the prince's hand) even though she has a boyfriend, which gives off the impression that she's at best fickle and at worst a bit of a slut. So color me surprised when they explain why she signs up for the Selection in the text of the book.

In Ilea, society is broken up into different castes, which have number-designations. Your caste dictates how people treat you, what kind of work you can have (which in turn determines how much money you make), etc. Ones are the royal family. Twos and threes are rich people, celebrities, the aristocracy, etc. Fours are factory workers and the like, Fives are artisans (singers, musicians, sculptors, painters, etc.), Sixes are indoor domestic service, Sevens are outdoor domestic service, and Eights are homeless people.

If a girl who's a Five marries a Four, her caste number goes up to Four. If a girl who's a Five marries a Six, her caste number goes down to Six. America's sister Kenna married a Four. America is in love with Aspen, a Six.

You can see the problem:

- One, her parents would never allow it (and she's sixteen, so she's still a minor, and two years is a long time to be forbidden to see your boyfriend whom you've already been dating in secret for two years).

- Two, you can't just get married outside of your caste in Ilea. There's a lot of paperwork and red tape to deal with. Anyone who's been married knows that this actually costs some money.

- And three, Aspen already provides for his entire family. His dad died when he was sort of young, so it's him and his mom working and providing for a family of like, eight or nine people. That's a lot of mouths to feed. And once he and America get married and start having kids, it's even more mouths to feed, with only one extra person contributing to the cash flow—at least at first. So yeah, big problem. And it's not as if America makes much money herself, since she has to help provide for her family of five people as well.

One of the things that happens when a girl gets Selected is that her family receives financial compensation for the entire time she's at the palace. Reason one of why America agrees (her family needs it; they're not well off).

Reason two: if America is Selected, whether she wins or not, she (and I think her entire family) have their caste elevated to Three, and even if she marries Aspen and becomes a Six, I believe her family stays Threes.

Another reason is that America's mother has agreed that America can keep half of what she earns from her performances to do whatever she wants with if she agrees to sign up (which is not an automatic guarantee of being included, since thousands of girls sign up but only thirty-five get picked). She needs that money because she and Aspen need to save up to deal with all that inter-caste red tape.

But the fourth reason was the most surprising, and one that had me rooting for Aspen to win America's heart…for a little while. Because the fourth reason was Aspen himself. He asked America to sign up because it was such a great opportunity for herself and her family, and he never wanted to be someone who held her back. I was like, "Awww! He's so mature! I like him."

No. No, he's not. He's a little punk. But we'll get to that later on in this review (though I have an entire essay about why I despise him so much right here).

So she signs up, never believing she'll get Selected…but she does. However, right before she gets Selected, guess what happens? Aspen the Jerk decides his pride is worth more than his so-called true love and dumps America.

You saw that right. He—dumps—her. Why?

Pride. I was so disgusted by this, I wanted to scream. Not at the author, at him.

Let me quickly paint a picture for you guys. These two have been dating for two years. Two years. It's been understood between them that they're going to get married for at least a year. Both of them have been saving up as best they can for that long so they can get married. A year. They’ve been engaged for a year.

So America is so happy about everything that's been going on—her new income thanks to her mom, her sister's going to have a baby soon, she found out Aspen's been saving up a lot of money to get married when she thought it was only a little because his family's so strapped—so she makes a dinner for Aspen that they can have in their little tree-house where they have their rendezvous. She likes cooking, does America, and she's always given him leftovers to snack on during their trysts because she knows his family is so poor. And she's so happy about everything, so she goes a little crazy and makes him dinner.

Let me reiterate this: she made the guy dinner.

His reaction: he got mad. You saw that right. He got mad. Not at her, supposedly, but at the situation, because oh gee, due to her being a Five and him being a Six, she makes more money than he does and it hurts his Big Heap Caveman heart to not be the big provider for her.

So after dating for two years, during which—for one of those years—they were engaged, he dumps her. Just cuts it off. He's not going to talk to her anymore, he's not going to meet with her anymore, they're done. The end. Even though she's crying and telling him money doesn't matter and blah-blah, even though when they marry she'll be a Six too and make the same amount of money he does, he's basically like, "I was stupid to think this could work. I'm done. Bye."

Now I know guys in real life like this, so it's not that it's unrealistic of him. That's why it's a flaw with the character, not the author. It's just that Aspen's a moron. When I read that, I was like, "Da frack?"

And then comes the fifth reason why she goes into the Selection instead of backing out after this trauma: to put some distance between her and Aspen so she can heal without being all pathetic and mopey over him. Which surprised me, because I expected her to be like, "I'll show him. The prince will LOVE ME! And then Aspen'll be sorry!" And she's totally not. She's surprisingly mature about the whole thing, though understandably hurt.

So she gets to the Selection, meets the prince (who's a total sweetie, if a tiny bit sheltered; I blame the king), and realizes the two of them could be friends. Now, what I like about this scenario is that she's open and honest with him from the beginning. She tells him she's there because she needs to get away from home for as long as possible, and he's such a sweetheart, he doesn't question it. He can tell that someone hurt her in some way and he's like, "You know what, I'll keep you here as long as I can."

Oh, side note: the thing I like about the Selection (the event) is that the Selection can last as long as the prince needs to find a wife. Unlike with The Bachelor, there's no time limit. Which makes sense because you can't rush love, you know?

So when Prince Maxon says he'll keep her there as long as she wants to be there and as long as he can, that's basically saying, "I'll give you this thing you really need until you don't need it anymore."

And when America tells him, "I don’t think I can fall in love with you," Maxon is okay with that. He's just glad she's being honest. And what's nice is, he doesn’t hold this against her or use it as an excuse to withdraw his support. And when she tells him about Aspen, the whole story, he doesn’t get mad at her. He doesn’t make her leave. He comforts her and says Aspen's a dog (I agree). The whole relationship between America and Maxon is one of honesty, and I really like that.

Then Aspen shows up. What, you say? How? How did he get to the palace? He was drafted into the armed forces, and some people in the military get assigned to standard guard duty at the palace. Luck (bad luck) of the draw, I guess. So the moment he arrives, practically, he's in America's room, being like, "Oh, America, I love you, I was an idiot, I'm so sorry, please forgive me and love me and have my babies!"

Sweet, right? At least he apologized, right?

WRONG!

First of all, what they're doing is treason. America was warned about this before she started the Selection. Treason is a capital offense in Ilea. Does Aspen care? No. And every time America tries to protest? He's just like, "Baby, I missed you so much, smooch-smooch-smooch." And because it's only been a few weeks and she loves him still (you don't get over two years in two weeks), she succumbs to his nefarious charms the first couple times.

Second of all, the reason he dumped her? His pride? He hasn’t gotten over that. The problem has been erased. When a guy joins the military, he becomes an automatic Two or Three. So if America marries him, he's making the same if not more money than she is (remember that was his problem before), even with her new elevation to caste Three. He hasn’t learned anything! He's just horny and sad!

Now, here's what I really, really love about this book. America and Aspen have three secret meetings. Once, he kisses her and she's so shocked and happy to see him and confused by her own feelings that she just goes with it. Second time, it's the middle of the night, he woke her up so she's all groggy and confused, and then he kisses her while she's barely conscious. Boo both times.

BUT!

The third time. The third and final time, she is awake and aware and she tells him they can't be together while she's part of the Selection. Not that they can't be together ever, but that while she's part of the Selection, it isn't right or fair to Maxon for them to see each other. And then she goes on to tell Aspen that for right now, she doesn't want him to treat her romantically like he's been doing, and that she does intend to stay part of the Selection (she's in the final six because Maxon is falling for her).

At which point Aspen, the immature "douche canoe" (to borrow a phrase from The Lux novels by Jennifer L. Armentrout, soon to be reviewed here as well), basically throws a quiet hissy fit and says, "So you're picking him over me, even though you're not in love with him."

Here is where Kiera Cass rewarded my patience in reading this book, because America has the BEST answer to the love-triangle situation and this is the ONLY time I have EVER seen it used.

She tells Aspen this: that no, she's not choosing Maxon over him, or Aspen over Maxon. It's not about choosing them. She's choosing herself. She's choosing to do what feels right for her. She explains to Aspen that he really, really hurt her with what he did, and that hurt and her love for him are a confusing mix and she needs to sort out of her feelings before she can make a decision. She also explains that Maxon has never hurt her as Aspen has, that he's her friend, that he needs her help with something very important, that he's done a lot for her (he started a Welfare Program for the poor and starving based simply on the fact that America told him she and her family have been super poor before and had to choose between having electricity/heat in the winter or having something to eat), and that while she may not be in love with him yet, she cares for him and finds him attractive. In effect, she needs time to sort herself out.

This is one of the most mature responses I've ever seen in a YA novel. And honestly, I think America deserves some time, since Aspen's the one who dumped her and Aspen's the one who tried to drag her back. She reserves the right to need to think about it first. I'm impressed with her for standing up for that right. Above all, a girl has the right to choose. A guy shouldn’t be able to pressure her into something, especially after he's hurt her the way Aspen hurt America.

Kiera Cass, I am hooked on your work simply because of this (though the rest of your plot doesn't hurt). America is a nice girl, I like her, I'm rooting for her, and I'm impressed by her maturity. Thank you for delivering a realistic heroine with enough strength to stand up for herself both to her enemies and her friends. To paraphrase from Albus Dumbledore, "It takes a great deal more courage to stand up to your friends than to your enemies."

I give The Selection 5 out of 5 stars. I'm asking for it for Christmas, as well as the other two books (though book 3 will come later, like in May…). And I think there's two combined novellas in print-format, too. If so, I'm getting them.