Two Mexican-American teens living in El Paso in the 1980s, Dante and Ari could scarcely be more different. Moving from the intricacies of teen female friendship to the complexities of the male variety, we have Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a coming-of-age novel as deep and powerful as its title is long. Peeks into the future for this friendship triangle, well fleshed out characters, and the delicious dramatic irony enabled by Lida's first-person narration makes this a compelling page-turner. The frictions and alliances between girls who are locked up for various reasons has been mined often since Girl, Interrupted, but Erin Saladin's variation on this theme is well-told and in some ways unexpected. After being unwillingly dropped off by her father and stepmother, the last thing that Lida expects is to befriend both Boone, the hard-bitten longtime resident, and Gia, the glamorous, opaque newcomer who seems to have enthralled everyone at Alice Marshall except Boone. In the language of the Alice Marshall School, every girl has her "Thing," whether it's starting fires, stealing jewelry, drinking or something darker, and heroine Lida wants to keep hers a secret. Set against the extreme backdrop of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area, Erin Saladin's debut novel explores the connections between teen girls at a wilderness reform school. Bacigalupi provides incredible insight into what it takes to make a soldier, child or otherwise, and how rhetoric, violence and disposition can make or unmake us all. The plot moves quickly to a devastating conclusion, with hope and despair in compelling and realistic proportions. Each responds differently to their extreme circumstances, and it's both gut-wrenching and satisfying to go on this journey with them. Mahlia and Mouse are beautifully written and imagined characters.
When they discover Tool, a hunted half-man genetically engineered for killing, it's only the beginning of a story that will test their loyalty, ingenuity and will to survive. Mahlia and Mouse are bound together by circumstance and friendship as they try to survive in a world ruled by armies of child soldiers. This stand-alone companion to 2011's Printz Award-winning Shipbreaker finds Paolo Bacigalupi returning to post-peak oil America, but instead of focusing on the salvage operations of the Gulf Coast, we're thrown into the war-torn refugee camps of the Southeast. If The Hunger Games left you hungering for more tales of dystopia, pick up The Drowned Cities next.
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