Shards & Ashes, a collection of dystopian short stories penned by many of the prominent female authors in YA fiction, is an unsettling read that provides a solid sampling of the genre.
Starting out the book, we have Veronica Roth (of Divergent fame), with Hearken, the tale of 8 year old Darya, whose new-found musical aptitude has afforded her the opportunity to bring beauty to a world ravaged by doomsdayists hastening the apocalypse with biological warfare. Darya's kind are known as Hearkeners, musical prodigies trained in various instruments and at 16, outfitted with a brain implant that allows them to hear either "life songs" or "death songs" depending on their preference. While each person has both, the life song plays strongest in the healthy, and in people who are dying, the death song prevails. As in Divergent and Insurgent, an aspect of Roth's writing that sets her apart from other authors in YA fiction/fantasy is in the way she is able to tie her plot together with real science. With light cameos from neuroscience and string theory, her stories sound smarter and have an air of credibility, albeit still undeniably science fiction [think Fringe]. I'd say that Hearken is one of my top choices of the collection.
Next is Branded, by Kelley Armstrong. In a story with a more supernatural flavor, Rayne and her fellow humans live in a fortress protected from all varieties of hybrid monsters, magic users, vampires, etc. that roam the outside world. Her love interest, Braeden, has been identified as a werewolf and is banished to the outside, but Rayne, believing she cannot live without him, enacts a plan to sneak out of the fortress and find him, no matter the cost. Occasionally stilted dialogue and unlikeable characters somewhat hampers the execution of this story, but an interesting story all the same.
Necklace of Raindrops, by Margaret Stohl, is told alternatingly through the perspectives of Jai and Z, citizens of a [Chinese?] dystopia in which one's lifespan is dictated by how little they indulge in the pleasures of their world. At birth, each person is given a "necklace of raindrops," as described by Jai, with a predetermined number of beads that are cashed in for things to experience and enjoy. When the beads run out, members of this society are forced to make "the drop," jumping from a plane, with or without a parachute. Z, a reckless spender, and Jai, a conscientious saver, are polar opposites that come together through the course of the story.
Rachel Caine's Dogsbody is set in a corporation-dominated dystopia where lower-class citizens are treated as expendable labor, snuffed out at a moment's notice to pad the bank accounts of company executives. Xavier Grey fortuitously survives a mass extermination of his peers and makes it his life's mission to work his way up the ranks to seek revenge on the parties responsible. Caine does a fantastic job of setting the scene, with a few memorable metaphors that make for vivid imagery.
In Pale Rider, by Nancy Holder, Delaney and a few other teenagers have managed to survive some sort of apocalyptic scenario and are holed up in a house, using every day to scrounge for supplies. On one such supply run, Delaney meets Alex, a mysterious German man, who tells her that she is somehow involved in this apocalypse by blood and is a missing link to reversing the damage. Now, while I have liked the other novels I have read by Holder, you can probably tell by the vagueness of this description that I found the plot to be rather confusing. It's one of those "struggle through the mystery with the protagonist until the last possible moment" stories, but I found the explanation at the end too out there to accommodate this format. Perhaps this would have been better suited to being a longer novel.
A god has come to earth in Melissa Marr's Corpse Eaters, but unfortunately, he's not human. Nidhogg and his followers [Nidos] eat people, and lately, the natural death rate has not been enough to satisfy their appetites. Harmony and her partner, Chris, have been dedicated to the dangerous mission of taking out as many Nidos as possible, knowing that humans can no longer thrive on earth as long as this god and his people still live. I found this story to be a bit confusing as well, but primarily due to a twist at the end that probably would have been a bit better explained in a longer format.
Kami Garcia is one of the few authors I didn't recognize on the bill for this book, but I found Burn 3 to be the most fleshed out and engaging of the stories. Phoenix lives in a world where the sun's intensity has magnified, leaving the outside almost unlivable. Her parents killed off in the early days, she is responsible for looking after her little sister Sky, the rare blonde-haired, blue-eyed child not fatally burned by the sun. But when Phoenix comes home to find Sky has been drugged and taken from their home, she must take up with some undesirable people to find out what happened and try to bring her sister home.
Love is a Choice, by Beth Revis, is set on the Godspeed, a ship in outer space and details the progression of 19 year old Orion's plot to overthrow the Elder. The Elder, fearing mutiny from his ship's passengers, has been drugging their water supply, with only higher ranking ship workers provided a pill to inhibit the drug's effects. While inhabiting the ship in secret, Orion meets Meg, an employee that shares his vision of revolt aboard the Godspeed. Initially appearing to be a love story, a twist at the end leaves both the integrity of our narrator and the status of the revolution up in the air.
In the final story, Miasma, by Carrie Ryan, Frankie, her mother, and sister are a poor family in a world slowly being consumed by "miasma," a substance that encompasses the earth, the smell of which infects its inhabitants and eventually kills them. Before that happens, however, the infected are much more likely to be rooted out by "the doctors," masked men that arrest the sick and feed them to mutants called "plague eaters." Frankie's mother is taken [geez, kids in YA dystopians simply cannot hold on to their parents, can they?] and her sister falls ill as well. In an effort to keep the household together, Frankie dons her mother's uniform and goes to work in her place as a maid for the wealthy Oglethorpes, where she soon becomes entranced by her employer's son, Charles. While Charles may have taken notice of Frankie as well, she has bigger concerns; she can only keep the doctors away from Cathy for so long. Miasma was a nice choice to end the book with because it's the big romantic of the bunch, and ends on an uncharacteristically optimistic note for a dystopian work.
Shards & Ashes is a great sampler of some of the bigger names in YA sci-fi/fantasy/dystopian fiction for those who are new to the genre, or people already well-acquainted with the genre who would like to read a bit more from their favorite authors. Or, of course, people who enjoy stories about orphans.
*A courtesy copy of this book was provided to the reviewer by HarperCollins.
