To the New World! Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne

I glanced up to see globules of liquid dancing up from my drinking glass. They shimmered red, like droplets of blood, though I knew it was just cherry-flavored nutri-drink. Dammit, that's my protein ration for the day wasted.

The gravity stabilizers were failing again.

The equipment aboard the agricultural spaceship Stalwart was always breaking down. Stella Ainsley, who doubles aboard as teacher and maintenance engineer, is valued for her skilled small hands, but is nevertheless restless with her first work assignment. Almost 18, half through her expected lifespan in space, Stella feels some romantic stirrings for her fellow crewmen, George and Jon, but she suspects that the decrepit old ship is destined to be de-certified sooner rather than later.

So when a job a governess aboard the high status Rochester, a moon orbiter, comes open, Stella jumps at it. In the days after the apocalypse has left Earth in an ice age, being tutor to the young sister of the captain of the ship seems to offer Stella a better life. At least onboard the Rochester, there will be better food--vegetables and hope for occasional meat--and new people, and by comparison to the Stalwart, what seem like posh quarters.

"How do I turn the lights on?" I mumbled to myself, then jumped as the lights flicked to life, like magic. Maybe Sergei was onto something and this ship was haunted.

A sound, high-pitched and bloodcurdling, jolted me out of my moment. It was like a laugh. But that couldn't be. I was spooking myself. I got up, taking eight steps across the room--insanely large--and pushed the square button. Whoosh, the panels parted and I gasped. I had my own bathroom.

Stella's bold move to the new ship pleases her. Her pupil Jessa is a sweet eleven-year-old, there's even bacon for breakfast, and the strange but handsome Hugo Fairfax, the ship's captain, takes a special interest in her, even inviting her to evening reading sessions from his enormous library in his stateroom. But Stella soon discovers that life on the Rochester has similarities to life in the court of Louis XIV. Staff members angle for the captain's favor, and when the luxe private ship Ingram docks for an extended stay, the beautiful Bianca seems obviously to have set her cap for Hugo. There is a swirl of rumors and intrigue among the elegantly gowned guests, and just as Stella begins to believe that Hugo truly cares for her, she discovers a horrendous plot among the vying aristocrats to reduce the population of the fleet through a deadly virus created by the Rochester's medical officer, Mari Hanada. Stella faces the choice of going along with the plan or trying to escape back to Earth, hoping to be part of the colonization of a livable area of the planet.

Alexa Donne's forthcoming Brightly Burning (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) is a heady mix of Gothic romance, science fiction, and an apocalyptic survival story. Savvy readers may recognize the bare bones of the plot of Jane Eyre, with a wink and a hint from the author when Stella takes the pseudonym of "Jane" as she manages her escape, while elements of that classic love story are played out in a futuristic fleet of spaceships in low orbit around Earth. There is a strong and varied cast of characters with many motives, underlain by an all-too-possible post-apocalyptic setting. Unlike the gentle Jane, however, Stella is a self-admittedly bold heroine with a strong moral sense who finally loves wisely but also well.

All Of A Kind: Your One & Only by Adrianne Finlay

She'd never seen a face like this boy's. His eyes were almost colorless, an odd bluish-gray. Althea-310 shook herself, realizing that was not simply what he looked like that was disturbing. She also felt nothing from him. It certainly seemed like he felt nervous in front of the class. Emotions like that should have been radiating off him like a fever, infecting the whole class. Everyone was rustling and shifting in their chairs. They felt the bone-chilling detachment from the boy as well.

"What's wrong with its face?" Carson-315 asked.

"Nothing. He's simply different from the nine models," Samuel-299 said. He nodded to the painting on the wall. "He's human, like they were."

"So he's not Homo factus," a Carson said, grimacing. "Where are his brothers?"

"No. Like I said, he's human--Homo sapiens. He's alone." said Samuel-299

Three hundred years before, when the human race was in danger of eradication from the Slow Plague, a group of nine scientists had fled to a remote part of the Americas to create a new form of humanity, nine sets of clones, identical to each of themselves, but with DNA altered to eliminate susceptibility to disease and all defects. New clones were cultured every ten years, each group carrying one altered genome and name of one of the Original Nine and its generation number, and each group are identical with each other, capable of communing silently with their clones, and assigned to a task group that fits their nature.

But their scientists have realized that they and the others clones are deteriorating slowly with each re-copied generation, causing eventual "fracturing" and the need for their termination. Faced with another "slow plague," this one from within the core of their own cells, two leaders, Inga-296 and Samuel-299, determine that they must revive a living model of Homo sapiens to procure fresh DNA. Inga-296 mothers the rebuilt child, Jack, to age 15, when he is introduced to the clone colony of Vispera and learns the reason for his existence.

"Why?" Jack asked.

"Because we're dying. Inga-296 wasn't wrong. We've manipulated the code so much... the problems we face now will only get worse. The only answer is new variations from freshly cloned humans. Like the variations we can get from you."

Most of the clones are repulsed by the differences they sense in Jack, his attacks of asthma, an actual defect in his DNA, and his urge to make disturbing sounds from something he calls a guitar. The more aggressive Carson clones bully Jack relentlessly and when someone sabotages the tank where the next generation is being gestated, the Carsons lead the rest in blaming Jack for everything.

But somehow, Althea-310 feels a connection to Jack, even coming to hear the beauty in the music he makes, and despite her ties to her eight sister Altheas, she chooses to help him escape from the colony. And then Jack and Althea discover that Jack is not the only human, that he has a brother, Jonah, who is trying to destroy the colony and The Ark, the secret chamber in the Tunnels where not only human artifacts, but multiple specimens of DNA are frozen. Jack and Althea agree that they must stop him before the hope of human life on earth is ended forever.

Among the plethora (some would say glut) of dystopian novels these days, there is that recurring question, as old as the story of Eden--can humans obtain a perfect society before they destroy themselves? Adrianne Finlay's Your One & Only (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) suggests that humanity's destiny depends on something hidden deep inside itself that is necessary for the species to survive and thrive. If the quest for a biological perfection which promises perfect empathy is not the answer to survival, if it attenuates that necessary individual spark within, then what is to be the answer? Is the urge and ability to create something new what makes us human?

It is the human dilemma, to blend and be safe, or to strike out to find a new way to be in a place we cannot completely control, with selves that we cannot completely control, especially in a post-apocalyptic world. Young adult readers who have already encountered Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus (Oxford World's Classics), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or any of a number of current dystopian novels, may well wish our new Adam and Eve, Jack and Althea, better luck the next time around. These star-crossed lovers, from what indeed are two different worlds, make for a compelling love story, and author Finlay closes this book with Jack and Althea still to be tested in their own brave new world.

Salvaging Hope: Jonesbridge: Echoes of Hinterland by M. E. Parker

As Myron's arms and legs adjusted to the pull, the clock struck again. Pain shot through his limbs when the gears, one at each corner of the table, advanced another notch, threatening to tear him apart.

An unseen projector parted the darkness with a beam of light. Flickering on a screen above him, a grainy film entitled A New Day for Jonesbridge began with a bugle corps sounding the anthem. "Welcome to the Jonesbridge Industrial Complex, the jewel of the Continental Alliance," a pleasant female narrator stated.

Hours on the rack with only propaganda films for relief is Myron Daw's introduction to being a slog. Jonesborough is the last redoubt of the Continental Alliance, a brutal government which evolved following a nuclear apocalyse in 2043, one which left only a remnant of humanity and "clean land" to raise food crops. The alliance is under siege by the E'sters, the Eastern Alliance, and protected only by the Great Gorge, too wide for the enemy to traverse. The Jonesbridge operation has only one major mission--salvage--recycling the detritus of a ruined civilization to sustain their defense--and Myron soon finds himself a slog,, one of the ill-fed laborers who get minimal rations and work twelve-hour shifts in a setting grimly reminiscent of Nazi slave labor camps.

When Myron's time on the "stretcher," aimed at breaking his will, is over, he becomes a cog in the salvage operation, almost without hope. But then he remembers the time his grandfather showed him how to build a coal-fired hot air balloon, and realizes that he could construct an aircraft capable to flying over the Great Gorge to some sort of freedom beyond. Myron smuggles bits of salvage and fuel out and begins to assemble it in easily concealed parts. Then, a girl named Sindra comes to work on his floor, and the two are drawn to each other's spirit of rebellion and hope.

Myron and Sindra find ways to communicate, fall in love, and he shares his plan with her just as the Alliance comes under artillery fire from the other side of the Gorge. In the confusion Myron and Sindra escape to the wild lands outside the Complex. But an explosion at the heart of the salvage operation sends the guards searching for infiltrators, and Myron is captured and brought back for possible execution, and Sindra, desperate to save the baby she is carrying, is left to make the voyage by Myron's aircraft alone, finally coming down to a seemingly benign enclave on the coast.

Sindra awoke to the sound of water lapping against the airship. She soaked in the sights of the ocean as she drifted toward a collection of debris. In the side of the largest of the landmasses, tall white letters formed a word,.

H-LLYWO-D.

When the current brought her to the edge of the pier, Sindra climbed out of the basket. Her eyes connected with a woman carrying a basket. People dressed in patchwork clothes approached, not to harm but to welcome her.

If she had made it, then Myron could, too.

Despite the grim, gray portrait of existence in this sober post-apocalyptic novel, there is hope that life for humankind goes on, and it seems a sequel is built into the concluding chapters of M. E. Parker's Jonesbridge: Echoes of Hinterland (Diversion Books, 2015). Young adult readers seem to be more than ready to stomach the grim worlds portrayed by the many dystopian novels, beginning with Huxley's Brave New World, Lowry's Newbery-winning The Giver, and continuing to her well-known books-to-film Collins' The Hunger Games, series, and the popularity of such books suggests that young people still seek out those books that strip down civilization as we know it to reveal what is really important for human life.  This book shows the worst and best of humankind in a riveting novel that ultimately makes the choices starkly clear.