What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
This topic is about
Skylark
SOLVED: Children's/YA
>
SOLVED. YA post-apocalyptic sci-fi (acting like a fantasy) mild-dystopian survivalist quest, female protagonist [s]
date
newest »
newest »
Intended age-range: YA, teen
Author: I have no idea. Female (odds are best for this subgenre), or "surprised it was by a male"
Illustrations: none that I recall
Cover: I think it had some green or leaves and seemed nonthreateningly creepy
When I read it: 4 or fewer years ago.
Plot, short version:
Girl leaves home city in search of brother, crosses magic (or nano-mutated?) forest on foot, finds unfriendly (to her travel companion) village, leaves village to keep looking for her brother.
The plot's pretty forgettable, but the world-building was fairly keen, so I'm putting a little more plot under Settings.
Characters:
Girl, her brother briefly (or only in flashback?), parents briefly, this boy she meets outside, her hacked spy-bot pixie
Settings:
City:
Protagonist is raised in The (allegedly) Last City in the world. They have robot farming machines that go outside the walls, and a few scouts, but Nobody Else May Leave (for their own safety of course). There are subterranean (sewers?) areas where she runs around against the rules with her friends, pursued by steampunkish flying spy-bots called pixies. Her brother (a scout) hasn't come home, plus she decides not to go through the assigned-job-role rite of passage, so she runs away &/or is expelled (action sequence goes here).
Forest:
She learns that it's not death just to set foot outside the walls. She jailbreaks her pixie-bot. The forest is, nevertheless, semi-hostile to humans, containing pockets (caused by The War) of ghostly time-loops, or of trees that eat you, or that are time-offset so it's day there when it's really night, or it's not raining there, etc. ALSO (for no good reason) contains monster-mutants called werewolves that are really more like periodic zombies. In one of these ghostly pockets, she meets a Boy who then travels with her. Because of SPOILER, he is not welcome in the Village where she expects to find her brother.
Village/encampment:
Hidden in the middle of a metallicized (because of The War) forest, strictly barricaded, etc. Too strict for her, plus unfriendly to the Boy, plus her brother isn't there, so she leaves again to look for her brother farther out in the wilderness.