The Survival Games: The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

A shiver snakes up my spine. I don't know what to believe. To believe my father's dreams are something more than dreams is unthinkable. Tomorrow I leave for Tosu City. At the end of the week I will begin my Testing. To refuse is treason and all that implies.

My father puts his arm around me. "Whatever process they used to wipe our memories could have caused the dreams. Our brains might be creating false memories to replace the ones that were taken."

"But you don't believe that." I jump to my feet, angry. "So now what?"

My father doesn't raise his voice to meet mine. "Better that you go to Tosu City prepared to question everything you see and everyone you meet. That might be the difference between success or failure."

"Cia, trust no one," he says in a whisper.

In the post-apocalyptic world of the United Commonwealth, a few hundred sixteen-year-old graduates are chosen to participate in the Testing, with only those remaining eligible for university training and leadership roles. Devastating worldwide war and concurrent environmental collapse has left the surviving humans in small colonies struggling to restore the land and water and repopulate the world, and only those who pass the rigorous Testing can become leaders. Valencia Vale is chosen with four others to represent the Five Lakes Colony and taken to the capital for testing with candidates from other colonies. But the testing involves far more than mere multiple choice questions on history, science, mathematics, and literature. Cia quickly notices that they are watched constantly by surveillance cameras. Those who pass the initial phase are cast into teams which complete hands-on trials, and in her group Cia sees teammate Malachi die almost instantly when he choses to touch the wrong device. The Commonwealth testers offer no assistance to those who die during the trials, and she realizes that simply surviving to the end will be perhaps her hardest task, and that, as her father tried to warn her, one of the threats will be her fellow candidates.

Still, Cia comes to trust Tomas, a boy from her own colony, and they agree to meet and work together on the final test, making their way with only three items of their choice across 200 miles of wasteland from the ruins of Chicago to Tosu City. Uncontaminated water and non-poisonous food are scarce, and there is the threat of mutated wild animals and as Cia learns, mutated humans as well.

The animal snarls as I roll out of its grasp. I scream as the creature's claws slash deep into my left arm. Whatever this thing is, I know I cannot outrun it.

I turn and extend the gun in front of me. As I aim I finally get a look at it. Long legs matted in a tangle of brownish hair. Long arms that are extended toward me with three-inch claws I already know are razor sharp. A hunched back. Curled lips revealing blackish teeth. And the eyes...

My finger pulls the trigger. The eyes of my attacker go wide. There is fear and anger as the wound in its chest blossoms with bright red blood. My enemy sinks to the ground and with its last breath lets out a cry that sounds like a call for help. Now that I have looked into the dark blue eyes of my attacker, I know this isn't an animal. The eyes are too intelligent. The body was twisted and deformed, but there is no doubt. I just killed a human being.

But as Cia and Tomas make their way toward Tosu City, they realize that their greatest danger is from their own kind, the Commonwealth examiners who have set deadly traps along the way and most horrifying of all, from their fellow candidates who will kill to eliminate competition. Although Cia and Tomas share a growing love for each other, Cia remembers her father's portentous words: Trust no one.

Joelle Charbonneau's forthcoming The Testing (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) joins a long list of dystopic novels, beginning with Lois Lowry's notable  The Giver series and most famously Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy, dealing with the rebuilding of human society in which young people face trials in a vastly altered system of survivors. Charbonneau's first young adult novel holds its own with others of this genre, dealing frankly with the often cruel choices to be made among the survivors of worldwide apocalypse. Charbonneau's is a  suspenseful narrative which grips the reader from the first pages and continues with unresolved conflicts even beyond the conclusion of this first book in a projected series. Her characters are heroic but believable teenagers and the setting is far from unbelievable in a dangerously devastated earth where choices are never easy.

Opening to high praise from both her fellow authors and reviewers alike, The Testing (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) offers page-turning intensity and real philosophical questions as it explores what it means to be human and what a human society should be. Publishers Weekly adds "...action, romance, intrigue, and a plausible dystopian premise ... a near-flawless narrative."

In Times Like These: This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

"It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality." --Anne Frank, July, 1944.

Miranda is not a prisoner of political holocaust, but rather a victim of an astronomical catastrophe caused by a meteor strike on Earth's moon, throwing the natural order into an apocalypse of tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions which turn the land and sky into a ashen gray gloom.

In the third book in her series which began with the best-selling Life As We Knew It, award-winning author Susan Beth Pfeffer shows Miranda's family surviving, huddling through the long, cold nights in one room of their house, living on meagre foodstuff from the almost moribund government and what they can scavenge from the deserted houses in their depopulated area.

Approaching the anniversary of the catastrophe, Earth, cut off from sunlight, has become a wintry world where only the strong survive. Electricity is infrequent; firewood laboriously cut by Miranda and her brothers Matt and Jon provides only enough heat to keep them from freezing; and no one knows if Earth's stores of food will hold out until the ash clouds clear enough to grow more. Knowing that there may be no future for any of them, Miranda continues to write in her secret diary, confessing her anger, her despair, and her failing hope for a better life.

Into this lifeboat existence come others. Matt returns from a fishing expedition with Syl, whom he announces is now his wife. Then Miranda's father Hal reappears with his new wife Lisa and baby, his friend Charlie, and two teenagers, Alex and Julie (the main characters in the second book, The Dead and the Gone (The Last Survivors, Book 2,) a band of strangers drawn together into clan-like bonds of mutual support. Miranda is torn between relief at having her father with them and resentment against the newcomers who drain their meagre rations. Always hungry and cold, the two groups clash and yet begin to meld into a sort of union fueled by their mutual drive to survive.

Then on a foraging expedition, Alex and Miranda discover the attic cache of food of a dead survivalist, and the group begins to hope that they will make it into summer. Drawn together, Miranda and Alex begin to develop a love for each other, and as the deep cold of winter gives way to a chilly summer, hope begins to develop that they may have a life and a future together. Hope, that "thing with feathers," stirs in Miranda. She writes...

"No matter how awful I'd had it, I realized how lucky I was. Even now, in my freezing cold closet, the only light coming from my two flashlight pens, I do understand that, in spite of everything, I'm one of the lucky ones."

But nature is not done with them. A thunderstorm turns into a tornado which demolishes most of their supplies, destroys their homes, and brings about the death of Charlie and Julie. Realizing that they cannot survive where they are, the band decides to try to walk to a distant government "safe city" where they may find a way to survive together. Hastily they gather what they can to begin the journey, and Miranda makes the decision to leave her faithfully kept diary behind:

"This is the last time I'll write in my diaries. I'm choosing not to burn them. They're witness to my story, to all our stories. If I burn them, it's like denying that Mom ever lived, or Jon or Matt or Syl. Dad and Lisa, Gabriel, ... Charlie.

Julie.

Alex.

I can't deny them their stories just to protect mine. My story is told."

In an unthinkable world which is nevertheless made believable, Susan Beth Pfeffer's forthcoming This World We Live In (The Last Survivors, Book 3) (Harcourt, 2010) reveals the resilience of the human heart in characters forced to make choices, almost unimaginable in our current world, but choices that we know are no strangers to the human condition. In unspoken parallels to Anne Frank's diaries, Miranda's writings tell a story with echoes of the self-discovery, growth, and inextinguishable hope that are Anne Frank's legacy, and for the modern young adult reader, the The Last Survivors series has much to say about what it means to be human.