"We Set the Dark on Fire" and "We Unleash the Merciless Storm" - A Dystopian Fantasy Series Where A Teen Girl Has To Decide To Fight the System and Risk Love With Another Girl, Or Keep Her Life of Privilege

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia

At the Medio School for Girls, distinguished young women are trained for one of two roles in their polarized society. Depending on her specialization, a graduate will one day run a husband’s household or raise his children. Both paths promise a life of comfort and luxury, far from the frequent political uprisings of the lower class.

Daniela Vargas is the school’s top student, but her pedigree is a lie. She must keep the truth hidden or be sent back to the fringes of society.

And school couldn’t prepare her for the difficult choices she must make after graduation, especially when she is asked to spy for a resistance group desperately fighting to bring equality to Medio.

Will Dani cling to the privilege her parents fought to win for her, or will she give up everything she’s strived for in pursuit of a free Medio—and a chance at a forbidden love?

We Unleash the Merciless Storm

Being a part of the resistance group La Voz is an act of devotion and desperation. On the other side of Medio’s border wall, the oppressed class fights for freedom and liberty, sacrificing what little they have to become defenders of the cause.

Carmen Santos is one of La Voz’s best soldiers. She spent years undercover, but now, with her identity exposed and the island on the brink of a civil war, Carmen returns to the only real home she’s ever known: La Voz’s headquarters.

There she must reckon with her beloved leader, who is under the influence of an aggressive new recruit, and with the devastating news that her true love might be the target of an assassination plot. Will Carmen break with her community and save the girl who stole her heart—or fully embrace the ruthless rebel she was always meant to be?

Add your review of "We Set the Dark on Fire" and/or "We Unleash the Merciless Storm" in comments!

Coda and Chorus - A Dystopian Two-Book Series with a Bi Teen Guy Who Has To Save The World

Coda by Emma Trevayne

Ever since he was a young boy, music has coursed through the veins of eighteen-year-old Anthem—the Corp has certainly seen to that. By encoding music with addictive and mind-altering elements, the Corp holds control over all citizens, particularly conduits like Anthem, whose life energy feeds the main power in the Grid.

Anthem finds hope and comfort in the twin siblings he cares for, even as he watches the life drain slowly and painfully from his father. Escape is found in his underground rock band, where music sounds free, clear, and unencoded deep in an abandoned basement. But when a band member dies suspiciously from a tracking overdose, Anthem knows that his time has suddenly become limited. Revolution all but sings in the air, and Anthem cannot help but answer the call with the chords of choice and free will. But will the girl he loves help or hinder him?

What's queer about it is that Anthem is Bi, and at the same time that he's in a relationship with a girl, Haven, he is also in a relationship with his male bandmate, Scope.

Chorus

The dream is all white from a memory that is too real, and its melody has continued to haunt Alpha, even though she has moved as far away from temptation as possible. Eight years after she was exposed to her first and only addictive musical track from the Corp, Alpha has established a new life with a band of her own in a city that has given her the space she was seeking, Los Angeles.

However, it only takes one urgent call to bring Alpha back home to Anthem, the older brother who raised her as well as a revolution, and Omega, her twin brother whose contrasting personality makes her feel whole. As Alpha spends more time in the Web, she notices that the number of people who look sickly and addicted seems to be rising. With Anthem's health declining, Alpha and her friends will have to dig deeper into the mainframe than ever before in order to find the root of the Corp's re-emergence.

Add your review of "Coda" and/or "Chorus" in comments!

The XY, a.k.a. "Who Runs the World" - a dystopian (or utopian?) world rebuilt by women - a YA novel that explores gender and its roles

The Xy, published in England as "Who Runs the World" by Virginia Bergin

"Welcome to the matriarchy

Sixty years after a virus has wiped out almost all the men on the planet, things are pretty much just as you would imagine a world run by women might be: war has ended; greed is not tolerated; the ecological needs of the planet are always put first. In two generations, the female population has grieved, pulled together and moved on, and life really is pretty good – if you’re a girl. It’s not so great if you’re a boy, but fourteen-year-old River wouldn’t know that. Until she met Mason, she thought they were basically extinct."

Add your review of "The XY" or "Who Runs the World" in comments!

The First Twenty - A Dystopian Future, and a Lesbian Teen Romance that forces a choice: Love or Survival?

The First Twenty by Jennifer Lavoie

Humanity was nearly wiped out when a series of global disasters struck, but pockets of survivors have managed to thrive and are starting to rebuild society. Peyton lives with others in what used to be a factory. When her adopted father is murdered by Scavengers, she is determined to bring justice to those who took him away from her. She didn't count on meeting Nixie.

Nixie is one of the few people born with the ability to dowse for water with her body. In a world where safe water is hard to come by, she's a valuable tool to her people. When she's taken by Peyton, they'll do anything to get her back. As the tension between the groups reaches critical max, Peyton is forced to make a decision: give up the girl she's learned to love, or risk the lives of those she's responsible for.

Add your review of "The First Twenty" in comments!

Escape From Enlightenment - A flipped dystopia where being lesbian is expected... and the main teen character isn't

Escape From Enlightenment by Tessa Rose

Marley is coming of age in a post apocalyptic, radically feminist society. Women have wrested all power and authority from men, who are kept in prison camps so they will never again wage wars and abuse women. Babies are incubated in artificial wombs and engineered to be attracted to their own sex. The process, however, doesn’t always work.
Marley worries about feeling no attraction to other girls until she meets Maddy. But she needs to win Maddy away from the odd values of a barely tolerated subculture. And Maddy would be horrified to know that Marley views illicit online pictures of boys.

The author explains the flip, and the queer content: "The main protagonist is a hetero girl who finds herself in a similar situation to gay teens today … actually a worse situation, because the boys she wants are nowhere to be found in cities populated by lesbians and older eunuchs. The story has subplots about gay teen boys, too."

This novel was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign and author-published. Add your review of "Escape from Enlightenment" in comments!

The Change Series: Stranger, Hostage and Rebel - Post-Apocalyptic YA with an ensemble that includes a Gay Teen

Stranger by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith

Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, "the Change,” arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. "Las Anclas" now resembles a Wild West frontier town… where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of the people they killed.

Teenage prospector Ross Juarez’s best find ever – an ancient book he doesn’t know how to read – nearly costs him his life when a bounty hunter is set on him to kill him and steal the book. Ross barely makes it to Las Anclas, bringing with him a precious artifact, a power no one has ever had before, and a whole lot of trouble.

Hostage

A team sent by King Voske captures Ross and takes him to Gold Point. There he meets Kerry, Voske’s teenage daughter, who has been trained to be as ruthless as her father. While his friends in Las Anclas desperately try to rescue him, Ross is forced to engage in a battle of wills with the king himself.

Rebel

In this perilous landscape, a schoolboy can create earthquakes, poisonous cloud vipers flock in the desert skies, and the beaches are stalked by giant mind-controlling lobsters.

The tyrant king Voske has been defeated, but all is not peaceful in Las Anclas. Ross’s past comes back to haunt him, Jennie struggles with her new career, Mia faces her fears, Felicite resorts to desperate measures to keep her secrets, Kerry wonders if Las Anclas has really seen the last of her father, and shy Becky Callahan may hold the key to a dangerous mystery.

In Rebel, long-held secrets of past and present are revealed, family ties can strangle as well as sustain, and the greatest peril threatening Las Anclas comes from inside its walls.

A note about this series: When the authors were shopping "Stranger' around, they had interest from an agent who said they would be happy to represent it -- but only if the authors made the one Gay protagonist straight. To their credit, Rachel and Sherwood said no and took the project elsewhere. I'm happy these books found their way to being published in this LGBTQ-content intact way!

Add your review of "Stranger," "Hostage," and/or "Rebel" in comments!

Lizard Radio - It's the future, and 15-year-old Kivali doesn't fit into her gender-rigid culture

Lizard Radio by Pat Schmatz

Abandoned as a baby and raised by Sheila, an ardent nonconformist, Kivali has always been surrounded by uncertainty. Where did she come from? Is it true what Sheila says, that she was deposited on Earth by the mysterious saurians? "What are you? "people ask, and Kivali isn t sure. Boy/girl? Human/lizard? Both/neither? Now she's in CropCamp, with all of its schedules and regs, and the first real friends she's ever had. Strange occurrences and complicated relationships raise questions Kivali has never before had to consider. But she has a gift - the power to enter a trancelike state to harness the "knowings" inside her. She has Lizard Radio. Will it be enough to save her?

Parrish Turner's Lambda Literary review called the novel, "...a love letter to genderqueer and gender nonconforming youth." 

Add your review of "Lizard Radio" in comments!

The Elected Series - In A Future America, A Girl Pretends To Be A Man To Become President (With A Girl-Girl-Guy Love Triangle!)

Elected by Rori Shay

It’s the year 2185, and in two weeks, Aloy will turn eighteen and take her father’s place as president of the country. But to do so, she must masquerade as a boy to avoid violating the Eco-Accords, four treaties designed to bring the world back from the brink of environmental extinction. As she struggles to lead amidst a brimming political battle, Aloy maintains her cover by marrying a woman, meanwhile battling feelings for the boy who knows her secret. When assassination attempts add to the turmoil, Aloy doesn’t know whom to trust.

She understood leadership required sacrifice. She just didn’t realize the sacrifice might be her life.

Suspected

In the year 2185 Earth is rebuilding after climate change created a global eco-crisis. Countries maintain complete isolation so there is no warfare over scarce resources. One Elected family is chosen to lead each country for 100 years to ensure stability. Women aren’t allowed to take office and must reproduce at all costs. Technology use of any kind is banned to preserve what’s left of the environment.

And yet, I’m my country’s Elected. I’ve just sanctioned technology use to ready us for war. I’m about to cross the border to spy on our neighbor. And…I’m a girl.

Shhhh…

There's also a prequel story, The Pendant, written from the perspective of Aloy's mother in the anthology Athena's Daughters Volume 2.

Add your review of any or all of the stories in "The Elected Series" in comments!

The Balance - A Dystopian Future, Love between Two Teen Guys and a Battle For Survival

The Balance by Neal Wooten

Piri is a nineteen-year-old boy who lives in a technological metropolis that rises up above the clouds. But when an accident drops him out of the city, everything changes. At first terrified by the atrocious reality of life on the surface, including surviving gruesome creatures known as Scavs, Piri is soon mesmerized by the bond they have for one another. He also comes to understand his own feelings for Niko, the boy who
rescued him.

In the end, Piri chooses love over comfort. But things are never as they seem. When he discovers just how far the city dwellers will go to
maintain control, and the horrific truth behind an ancient and secret alliance, he will do everything he can to protect his new family—and
disrupt the balance.

Add your review of "The Balance" in comments!

Replica - A YA Dystopian Future of Clones, Spies, Murder and A Gay Secret

Replica by Jenna Black

Sixteen-year-old Nadia Lake’s marriage has been arranged with the most powerful family in the Corporate States. She lives a life of privilege even if she has to put up with paparazzi tracking her every move, every detail of her private life tabloid fodder. But her future is assured, as long as she can maintain her flawless public image—no easy feat when your betrothed is a notorious playboy.

Nathaniel Hayes is the heir to the company that pioneered human replication: a technology that every state and every country in the world would kill to have. Except he’s more interested in sneaking around the seedy underbelly of the state formerly known as New York than he is in learning to run his future company or courting his bride-to-be. She’s not exactly his type…not that he can tell anyone that.

But then Nate turns up dead, and Nadia was the last person to see him alive.

When the new Nate wakes up in the replication tanks, he knows he must have died, but with a memory that only reaches to his last memory back-up, he doesn’t know what—or rather, who—killed him.
Together, Nadia and Nate must discover what really happened without revealing the secrets that those who run their world would kill to protect.

It's the first in a series. Add your review of "Replica" in comments.

Superior - A teen lesbian dystopian coming-of-age/adventure/romance Novella

Superior by Zoe Amos

After the Water Wars led to Civil War II, Superior Protectorate established itself in what is now Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Two young women, Miss Kristian and Miss Rhona, will soon be of marrying age, but that means being tied to a hustand instead of each other--a forbidden prospect. Powerless to change the rules of a nation that supposedly protects them, the young lovers are thrust into a perilous journey in their quest for freedom and a life together.

The author, Zoe, is also a blogger at lesbian.com. Add your review of "Superior" in comments!

Blue Magic - A Teen Lesbian Dystopian Novel with Magic and a Transgender Parent

"Blue Magic" by A.M. Dellamonica

Astrid Lethewood fears the chaos and violence that has sprung up in the newly magical world, and seeks to find a solution for the impending global apocalypse. She must work against her former best friend, Sahara Knax, who, after becoming a fanatic self-proclaimed goddess, is now on trial for treason. Astrid’s quest to stop the apocalypse is complicated by her romantic feelings for Sahara, which Sahara had manipulated to achieve her own ends. What’s more, Astrid’s mother now goes by the name of Everett, having transformed into a man.

Conflicting ambitions, star-crossed lovers, and those who fear and hate magic combine in a terrible conflagration, pitting friend against friend, magic against magic, and the power of nations against a small band of zealots—all with the fate of the world at stake.

This book is the sequel to Dellamonica’s 2009 Sunburst Award-winning novel "Indigo Springs."  Add your review of "Blue Magic" in comments!

Queer Characters in Dystopian YA

A couple of weeks ago, Paolo Bacigalupi (who won the Printz Award for his novel, Ship Breaker), wrote an article at Kirkus Reviews, The Invisible Dystopia, about why there weren't more GLBTQ characters in Teen Dystopian novels.

His basic point is why include GLBTQ characters in fictional dystopias when no one seems to notice that for queer teens, our society of today is already dystopian!

Juliarios over at outeralliance did a great post, Outer Alliance Spotlight #96: Dystopian YA Stories about the strong community response to Paolo's article.

She noted how rather than being a flash-point of out of control emotions, Paolo's article sparked a conversation - where bloggers, authors and readers of queer YA shared what was disappointing to them in Paolo's perspective. They shared about what sorts of things are important to them in dystopian YA stories, and included recommendations for a number of good dystopian teen novels with QUILTBAG (Queer and Questioning, Unidentified, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual, Asexual, Gay and Gender Queer) content.

Many of the bloggers who wrote in response to Paolo's article cited the idea that to not include GLBTQ characters in dystopian futures tells queer kids that not only is there no place for them in the future, there's no place for them in present.


Author Nora Olsen wrote a great piece about this, saying:

Imagine that this article had been about the paucity of African-American characters in dystopian YA (also a problem worthy of an article.) This article would argue that black youth are being discriminated against and shot down in real life, so they already live in a dystopia. Only by writing a story where white people are the victims of racism could you open the eyes of our true target audience, white kids, to the nature of racism. Bananas, right?

Nora also wrote:

It can also be very affirming for LGBTQ teens to see themselves in fiction, not as a “problem storyline” or example of victimization in society but as a cool character in a dystopia. You’re not really normalized until you’re the star of the show, not just the “very special episode.”

Juliarios' article is a great summary of the discussion so far - and evidently, Paolo is going to write a follow-up piece at Kirkus Reviews...

In the meantime, check out this great list of queer YA dystopian novels!  I've blogged about a few of them, like Nora Olsen's The End, the anthologies Nightsiders and Zombies vs. Unicorns, but there were a handful of titles, both new to me and soon to be released, that I can't wait to include on this blog.

But still, the list of dystopian novels for teens with queer main characters is under ten titles.

So like Juliarios, I'll give the last word to Julie Andrews (not the actress):

Look, we need more quiltbag characters in YA science fiction and fantasy PERIOD. Full stop.

So go forth and write a dystopia where heterosexuality is forbidden. But, also, or instead of, write a dystopia where the main character isn't straight. Write a dystopia where one of the love interests is bi. Write a dystopia where they mess with your gender. Write a dystopia where orientation doesn't matter and it's a dystopia for other reasons. And write a story with rocket ships piloted by lesbians. Write a fantasy full of boy dragons raising eggs together. Write all the things!!

We need it all.

Beautifully said!

***UPDATE March 4, 2012 ***

Paolo published a follow-up piece at Kirkus Reviews that's excellent.

It reads, in part:

"The more I write stories for young people, and the more young readers I meet, the more I'm struck by how much kids long to see themselves in stories. To see their identities and perspectives—their avatars—on the page. Not as issues to be addressed or as icons for social commentary, but simply as people who get to do cool things in amazing worlds."

"...
And when you see that as a writer, you quickly realize that you don't want to be the jerk who says to a young reader, “Sorry, kid. You don't get to exist in story; you're too different.” You don't want to be part of our present dystopia that tells kids that if they just stopped being who they are they could have a story written about them, too. That's the role of the bad guy in the dystopian stories, right? Given a choice, I'd rather be the storyteller who says every kid can have a chance to star."

YES!  Thanks Paolo, for having this insight!  I can't wait to read some of your new dystopian YA adventures that include queer characters!

 ***

Namaste,
Lee