Dystopian YA

I finally got my wish. Years ago, maybe as many as ten, I read the few available dystopian YA books and longed for more. I said to myself, Why can’t all YA be dystopian?

Well, I’ve gotten my wish. Nowadays, if a YA book isn’t about the supernatural—vampires, werewolves, ghosts—then it’s about a futuristic world where the teens must fend for themselves without adult help. “In post apocalyptic America, so-and-so must come of age against all odds.”

I have to say at first I was pleased. I really believed that a world of dystopian fiction was what I wanted. But now, after reading Matched, The Hunger Games, Delirium, Hush Hush, The Field of Hands and Teeth, The Maze Runner, Peeps, Divergent, The House of the Scorpion, and a host of others I can’t even remember, the problem with dystopian fiction for young adults becomes blazingly clear: it all falls into a basic formula with very little originality.

I’ve just begun reading Enclave, which is about a girl growing up in an enclave in post apocalyptic America. She becomes 16 and gets a name and a position in her group. She is paired up with a mysterious bad boy type and sent on dangerous missions with him.

Okay. This could be about seven of the last books I’ve read. Why is this one new and worthy? A review for a different novel I was just reading on Amazon said this, “It's possible that I'm getting sick of the same typical dystopian societies in YA now. The girls are either baby makers, zombies are eating brains, or love is forbidden and girls are paired up with boys they're initially madly in love with... until they meet ‘the bad boy.’ Then all bets are off.” I couldn’t agree with this sentiment more. When will publishers realize that saturating the market with the same thing will only flood the market with the wrong thing in the near future? Take a chance on something that isn’t paranormal or dystopian.

I have to say I already like the writing better than in most of the last few books I’ve read. That said, though, I have found several places in the writing (I’m on page 30) where I had to reread the sentence because of an unclear pronoun or unclear phrase. Ann Aguirre, the author, is gifted, but not a great proofreader.

And that leads me to my next rant. Why is so much fiction published with mistakes that should have been caught? Don’t publishers have their people read through for errors BEFORE publication? When I read I Am Number Four¸ there was a typo on page one. An x was in the middle of a word. I thought it was some sort of new term in the novel world for a little while. But no, it was a typo.

I just went through the bestselling dystopian books at Amazon and I’m proud to say I only have two of them in the top twenty. I read about a few of the others that mildly intrigued me, but the premises are the same as what I’ve read. I don’t need a new name on the main character and her homeland which is sequestered from the main world by something. I need a new plot.