SOLVED. YA SciFi. Desert Wasteland with Quadrants that have different 'anomalies' and artifacts. Spoiler.

[Quinn]

Its a book where there are these people that train to become these explorers in this wasteland that is arbitrarily split into different quadrants after these alien robots have taken over. Each quadrant has different anomalies, like one I remember is a big gravity well that is a pillar of light that a city is built around because the gravity is so low they can build really high. They have this book with information about the anomalies and what quadrants they are in. There are also artifacts that get like frozen in time from when the wasteland was created, I think one was an abacus, and they have special properties or powers. There is also tribe that is super in tune with the wasteland and they are DNA themed and have cool rods with multicolored crystals on them and they can flip around and do agile things while traversing. (Slight Spoiler) The anomalies begin to change and some go between quadrants, leaving their book basically useless. The gravity well stops working and the whole city falls and breaks, and the robots are looking for the main protagonist because she is the "Zion" and catch her and hold her in some warehouse next to a gas station. I also remember some town of metal or airplanes or something with an elevator in it that gets attacked by glowing balls of electricity? I don't know why I remember so much about the book and plot but cannot remember any proper nouns regarding the book. Thank you guys so much!

[Ayshe]

Midnight City maybe?

[Mir]

I remember very few of the specifics about this book but there were some powers (robots? aliens? gods?) competing by having wars using humans. Shade's Children. I'm pretty sure some children were altered to make them stronger or better at fighting.

[Kris]

Google Books has a preview of Midnight City by J. Barton Mitchell - Ayshe's suggestion:

- https://books.google.com/books?id=mqe...
- There are different cover images.

Quotes from the book:

- Pulsars that seemed to be all colors at once hoveing over gravity wells. Geysers sprayed fountains of dark matter into the air.
- Quickly, he pulled out the aging abacus from his pack, held it in his hand.

[Quinn]

Quinn wrote: "Its a book where there are these people that train to become these explorers in this wasteland that is arbitrarily split into different quadrants after these alien robots have taken over. Each quad..."

YES THIS IS IT GUYS THANK YOU SO MUCH

[Kris]

Great! Glad you found your book, Quinn.

Midnight City (book 1 of the Conquered Earth series) by J. Barton Mitchell - Ayshe's find.