Book Cover
Title The Scorpion Rules
Author Erin Bow
Cover Art ---
Publisher Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2016
First Printing Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2015
Book Cover
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 ---




Click to read the summaryThe Scorpion Rules

Click to read the summaryThe Swan Riders




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!




Posted: June 2021

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