|
|
Title | The Scorpion Rules
| |
Author | Erin Bow
| |
Cover Art | ---
| |
Publisher | Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2016
| |
First Printing | Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2015
|
|
|
|
Title | The Swan Riders
| |
Author | Erin Bow
| |
Cover Art | Sonia Chaghatzbanian
| |
Publisher | Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2016
| |
First Printing | Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2016
|
| |
|
Category | Science Fiction
| |
Warnings | None
| |
Main Characters | Greta, Elian, Talis
| |
Main Elements | Dystopia
| |
Website | ---
|
|
 The Scorpion Rules
The children of world leaders are held hostage in an attempt to keep the peace in this “slyly humorous, starkly thought-provoking” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel.
Greta is a Duchess and a Crown Princess. She is also a Child of Peace, a hostage held by the de facto ruler of the world, the great Artificial Intelligence, Talis. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Start a war and your hostage dies.
The system has worked for centuries. Parents don’t want to see their children murdered.
Greta will be free if she can make it to her eighteenth birthday. Until then she is prepared to die with dignity, if necessary. But everything changes when Elian arrives at the Precepture. He’s a hostage from a new American alliance, and he defies the machines that control every part of their lives—and is severely punished for it. His rebellion opens Greta’s eyes to the brutality of the rules they live under, and to the subtle resistance of her companions. And Greta discovers her own quiet power.
Then Elian’s country declares war on Greta’s and invades the prefecture, taking the hostages hostage. Now the great Talis is furious, and coming himself to deliver punishment. Which surely means that Greta and Elian will be killed...unless Greta can think of a way to break all the rules.
The Swan Riders
Greta Stuart had always known her future: die young. She was her country's crown princess, and also its hostage, destined to be the first casualty in an inevitable war. But when the war came it broke all the rules, and Greta forged a different path.
She is no longer princess. No longer hostage. No longer human. Greta Stuart has become an AI.
If she can survive the transition, Greta will earn a place alongside Talis, the AI who rules the world. Talis is a big believer in peace through superior firepower. But some problems are too personal to obliterate from orbit, and for those there are the Swan Riders: a small band of humans who serve the AIs as part army, part cult.
Now two of the Swan Riders are escorting Talis and Greta across post-apocalyptic Saskatchewan. But Greta’s fate has stirred her nation into open rebellion, and the dry grassland may hide insurgents who want to rescue her – or see her killed. Including Elian, the boy she saved—the boy who wants to change the world, with a knife if necessary. Even the infinitely loyal Swan Riders may not be everything they seem.
Greta’s fate—and the fate of her world—are balanced on the edge of a knife in this smart, sly, electrifying adventure.
This book was available for free for one month on rivetedlit.com so gave it a try and was very glad I did. In a dystopia world, peace is maintained between nations by an A.I. who requires a child from the various leaders to be held hostage and will be executed if that nation makes aggressive moves towards another. I don't know if that would ever really work, you could have an ambitious enough leader to not care, or one desperate enough if their lands can't support their people, in fact, that's exactly what happens to Elian.
While the premise was kind of interesting, what really caught my attention was the A.I. who is, simply put, a freaking insane binky bonkers nutcase. The world isn't being ruled by an evil overlord A.I. or one that is so logical that it is coldly uncaring, this one just went off the deep end and kept going. And yet, he was oddly charming in his own way. And Greta, Elian and the other children need to figure out what to do to survive (some of it involving letting loose a lot of really stinky male goats).
June 2024
Took 3 years to get the next book, so by then of course I'd forgotten some details, but othe overall gist, and Talis, still stuck. You know I was kind of expecting a story taking place on the world stage but it was more like King's Gunslinger, where the gunslinger walks through the desert (in our case Saskatchewan), eventually stumbles into a town (in our case Saskatoon), which is infested with zombies (rebels). Alright, well there was no Man in Black unless you count Talis himself...cough...in fact given there's more than one Talis he could in theory be chasing himself around. Must admit he was my favorite part of both books, he's trying to be good, but not knowing any way to do so without doing bad (and honestly, the human race often doesn't respond to anything else, when told to behave and you don't listen you may need a spank...or have a city wiped out). And his snark. He kills people but he's so chipper and perky about it.
And I'm not convinced that the way to save the world is to make the A.I.'s more human. It won't hurt but not sure that will influence all those political leaders that want more of the scarce resources. Maybe if the A.I.'s spend more of their computational power in cleaning up the world? Except they are doing that too, we don't see it but we're told about Swan Riders handing out vaccines and stuff. Anyway it was interesting, but maybe two books wasn't enough? I felt maybe there were more things to dig into? Or maybe a third book would have been too much, and the two books told the tale the author wanted to tell, about what it means to be human, rather than how to save a post-apocalyptic world.
And not to be morbid, but I smiled a bit when Calgary got zapped. Not because I've anything against it, but you know, its always New York, or Washington, or London, or something like that. Kind of nice to have Canada get a turn. Of course I feel we're the good guys and don't deserve to be zapped, but hey, how often does Saskatoon get mentioned in a YA novel? I thought that was cool. I hope lots of non-Canadians read this book and have the fun of discovering that a crazy sounding place like Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is actually a real place!
|
