Defy the Night by Brigid Kemmerer

I really liked this story. It was a great fantasy novel, with a great plot and characters. I also loved the romance element too. I would definitely listen to the sequel.

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

This book won the Newbery Award for 2021, and as soon as I heard it had won I checked it out from the library to read it. Petra and her family get on one of the only three spaceships to leave earth before a comet hits the planet, and they are supposed to stay in hypersleep for something like 500 years until they reach the new planet where they are going to live. But when she wakes up, her family is all gone and the people who are running the ship have gone rogue and are not following the plans, so Petra has to figure out how to fool the people on the ship and escape safely. It was kind of a creepy and scary dystopian novel, which I think was totally fine, but I bet it would be hard for Dane to read, especially with the family disappearing. I think he'd probably be fine but we'll see. I really liked it and I thought it raised some interesting questions about what makes us human and what makes each of us "us" in a kid-appropriate way. 

Followers by Megan Angelo

I really, really, really liked this audiobook. It was way better than what I'd expected. I feel like the cover is not fully representative of what the book was about--it seems like it might be a cheesy, light romance or something, but it was actually much heftier than I expected, in a good way. It tells two alternate storylines, one set in 2015-2016, and one set in 2051. The 2051 storyline is about Marlowe, a woman who lives in a celebrity town where everyone, everywhere is living in a reality TV show where everything is always being filmed. Everyone has millions of followers who are always watching them. The 2015-2016 storyline is about Orla, a Buzzfeed type blogger who makes her roommate famous by blogging about what she did to make her seem important--and about how that ends up blowing up in their faces--and then how the Internet implodes on itself and changes everything. Both stories were fascinating, and the author did a good job keeping my interest by not letting us know exactly what was coming, just by dropping hints and waiting to fully explain what happened down the road. It really made me think about the what ifs--what if this actually happened? And what if the world was like this today? Basically, my one complaint about this book was that it could have been condensed and edited down, because it did feel like it was pretty long and the Orla/Floss storyline could have not gone on so long. But it was so enjoyable and so fun to get through that I really didn't complain much about that while reading it. 

Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I had been feeling like I wanted to re-read these books lately, so I did. There is definitely nothing new for me to say about them that I haven't already written about multiple times here on this blog, but just so I know I re-read them. Ha!

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

I really liked Ready Player One. So I just randomly happened to see on Goodreads that there was a sequel that had just come out, so I immediately checked it out from the library and listened to it on audio. It was basically the exact same thing as Ready Player One, just slightly less enjoyable because it had already happened before and the characters were all slightly less likable for not being the underdogs any more. So definitely not as fun as the first, but still worth a listen for the excellent narration and fast-paced fun plot.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

I did not love this book like I did the Hunger Games when I first read those books. This book is the prequel to that series, about President Coriolanus Snow when he was a teenager, so it provides some interesting backstory to the Hunger Games, but it was missing the fun romance and any sort of likable and relatable characters that you get in the original trilogy. I really disliked Coriolanus, felt no interest in his romance, and I felt like the ending was weird. I had to force myself to finish it, honestly. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Okay. Honestly. This was about the most terrifying book that I've ever read. It wasn't like a horror novel--it was terrifying because it seemed like it could have been real, like this really could happen in our world, and this is how our society could fall apart. This is a dystopian novel, but unlike most dystopian stories, this doesn't take place a couple hundred years in the future after everything's been figured out again--it's written about the moment when everything is falling apart and how our society falls apart, and in the years immediately following. A flu pandemic sweeps through the world, a super-contagious, super-fatal, super-fast-working strain of the flu, and basically 99% of the world's population gets wiped out within three weeks. When this happens, all of the services and products and things we are used to in our society are GONE. No more electricity, gasoline, telephones, Internet, travel, food deliveries, police, anything. The very few people that are left have no choice but to revert basically to the hunter-gatherer stage, and live off of scavenging and start to slowly figure out survival. The story follows four or five people at the time of the collapse and what happens to each of them--how they die or survive, what they do and what their lives are like afterwards.

The prose is tight and beautiful, and the story is so well-crafted that it felt 100% believable. That is what made it so terrifying. I seriously cannot stop thinking about how fragile our society is now and how quickly it could all end if something terrible like that happened. For three days after reading this I kept feeling like it really happened and looking around at everything imagining it being a ghost town and trying to figure out how we would survive. And the thing is--we wouldn't. We totally depend on the food being trucked in to our grocery stores, the police to keep us safe, the doctors and medicines keeping us alive. So it would definitely be better for us to die in the flu pandemic than to try and stay alive afterwards... although I'm just going to operate under the assumption that this will never happen.

There was a lot happening in this book. I feel like I wish there had been more with the graphic novel that the title of the book comes from--I don't totally understand the title or much about that storyline. I feel like Mandel could have made more about that storyline to make it make more sense and fit better with the rest of it. But honestly, the quibbles that I had were small.

I feel like this book is going to stay in my psyche though. It was so well-done and so good, but I almost wish I hadn't read it, because it's going to take a long time for me to stop imagining it and worrying about it.

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I've read these books at least five times, but I keep coming back to them every few years because they are so addictive, and at this point, they're so easy and mindless for me to read that I can enjoy them without having to work too hard. I read the first one on Thursday night after having a rough day with the kids, because I needed to just relax my brain, and I just finished the third one tonight, so I really powered through them. I don't have anything interesting or profound to say about them except that they were exactly what I needed to read right now. They hit the spot in my reading life this week, after I've been struggling through some slower, more intellectual books lately, and I just needed something fun and fluffy. Soon it'll be Harry Potter...

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

I've meant to read this book for forever, and now that it's a Hulu series I've heard more and more about it. I haven't watched the show at all, but I guess its increase in popularity has given me more motivation to read the book because I finally got around to it.

This book is about a creepy dystopian future (or actually, now it's probably in the past since this book was written in the 80s or 90s) where this small group of religious nutjobs has taken over the country and implemented super strict Old Testament rules over society. This means that women are not given any power or choices, and they are known simply by their husband's names. Most people are infertile and so there are women who are known as handmaids, who are basically there to try and get pregnant to increase the incredibly low birth rate. The book is told from the perspective of Offred, a handmaid, who tells about her past from before everything changed, and what has happened to her since then.

I had to read this in a few chunks because it was a little bit scary. Scary in the Brave New World and 1984 senses--like this is a dystopian future that seems slightly possible, and even if it's not totally likely, there are some aspects of it that could happen if we are not careful. Like the country being taken over by a really crazy uber religious minority and imposing a completely different set of rules over the country? Not likely, but look what happened to Afghanistan. Decades ago, women were allowed to walk around on their own and wear whatever they wanted, but the Al-Queda took over the government and took away all freedoms that women had had before then. That's what I kept thinking while reading this book--I wanted to complain that it is totally impossible that all of these changes could be implemented within one person's lifetime, that this woman could remember the time Before but still be living in this world as it is now (kind of my complaint about Ready Player One), but aspects of this literally happened in Afghanistan. That's what made this so scary to me.

However, it felt like Atwood kind of dropped the ball on the world-creating aspect of her job. She never really described why or what happened--she says vaguely that the President and Congress were all killed and there were never new elections, but she never really explains who did it or why, and although you know it's just the nebulous "they" who are in charge now, I really wanted to know more about it. I think that's something that we are more used to with these dystopian novels now--there's always spot where the narrator gives you a clear-cut explanation for what's happened and how it happened, and it really didn't happen in this book. It seemed like an oversight to me as the reader. I also kind of hated reading about her past with her husband and daughter and how they got taken away from her--but that's just a personal qualm because I hate any sort of storyline that affects children negatively.

But the book definitely made me think about these possibilities--I couldn't stop thinking it over after finishing it this afternoon. I was reading the Wikipedia page about the book and read about how many people classify this book as science fiction but Atwood doesn't like that classification--she argues that it's speculative fiction, because it's something that really could happen and isn't just based on technology in the future. I definitely don't see this book as a science fiction, and I like her thoughts about it. I feel like I have many more half-baked thoughts about this book and its real meaning, but it's been a long day and I don't want to spend all night writing this up so I'll leave it here.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

I loved this book when I was younger, and so I wanted to read this one this year in my quest to read books that make me happy. I started and finished it last night in about an hour and a half--another thing that makes me happy when reading a book. And I felt the magic of this book, the sense of wondering and worrying about how did these people get there, and is this what the future is going to be like? The choices that the people in the world of The Giver have chosen to live in the safest way possible--without choices and without emotions. But they have one person who is the vault of memories of the whole human race, and Jonas, at the age of twelve, is selected to be the next Receiver to learn about life as it really was and is--pain, and truth, and love, and memories. He even learns about colors for the first time, and begins to be able to see them in a world of black and white. His transformation, and his decisions he makes as a result of his wisdom he gains from learning about life, is the point of this story, and I love it.

I think it is so interesting to remember back and think that this is one of the first dystopian novels set for middle-grade or young adults, and how all of the current dystopian novels are kind of descendants of this one. And it's interesting that this book has been banned so often and viewed as so controversial, when the Hunger Games, a book about children killing children, has been so much less so. I think this one is not even in the same category as Hunger Games--it's much more beautiful and well-written, and has much more interesting themes and ideas. The message may be about the same, about questioning authority, but this story has a lot more depth and imagination in it, and the future world is much more interesting. (Not that I didn't enjoy Hunger Games, as much as the next person.)

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I'd heard a lot about this book, and specifically heard the audiobook version was good. I don't know that I would have bothered to read it if I hadn't had an audiobook copy, because I am trying to work through a lot of other books that are taking more of precedence over random library books for now. But today and the last few days I've been working on a bunch of projects so I couldn't read, but I could listen to an audiobook, so I got a lot of listening in on this and managed to get through it pretty quickly. My main reaction is that I really liked it. It was quick-paced and exciting and engrossing, and a fun read. The story is about Wade Watts, a teenager set in 2045, who is participating in a worldwide contest searching for a hidden Easter egg in the Oasis virtual reality video game. Whoever finds the egg wins the prize of billions of dollars and control over the Oasis.

Here's what I liked about the book: it was fast, fun, and had a super-interesting premise. I thought it was very well-written and it was easy to stay engaged in it, even though I am decidedly not a video game person and the entire book is about video games, past and future. I liked (some of) the 80s references too.

Here's what I didn't like about the book: there were a few things I didn't understand, or quite believe, in the plot. Like, the year is only 2045 and the world is completely unrecognizable from today? I don't believe that. And little things--like Wade goes into debt and has to become the company's indentured servant to pay off his debt? In only 30 years from now? I honestly do not believe that would change that drastically. There were also a few times where I felt like the author contradicted himself about things a few pages or chapters apart (which always bugs me to no end--why did no editor catch that?). It also seemed like a way unnecessarily over-the-top amount of 80s references. It seemed unrealistic that the entire world would be that obsessed with the 80s and not be somewhat annoyed by it, without thinking, "Wow, I don't mind studying all this 80s stuff because it might make us billions of dollars if we win, but I would rather listen to 2045 music once in a while?" There was not a single reference to any sort of contemporary pop culture (other than Oasis video feeds, etc.), which seemed kind of unbelievable as well. There was also some profanity, and more than I thought was necessary.

Anyway, even though my paragraph about the negatives of this book is longer than the positives, I actually thought this book was solid. It's just easier to point out specific things that are irking me than specific things I liked. Here's the main selling point: the book was so good that I kept finding excuses to listen for longer than necessary so that I could get farther along in the story. This is definitely one I'll want to go see the movie. The trailer looks good and I'm excited to check it out.

Book #121: 1984 by George Orwell

I can't believe I hadn't ever read this. It has been on my bookshelf for years and I think it's just been there long enough that I assumed I had read it--it falls into the category of books like Brave New World and Lord of the Flies that I feel like I've read because I've heard a lot about it and know what the main premise is. Like, who doesn't know the Big Brother Is Watching thing? But I didn't really know much more, so I'm glad I finally got around to this. It was super interesting to me, as well as pretty terrifying to imagine as being the future. The principle of doublespeak and the ability of The Party to change the past by constantly revising public records and having control over people's memories is pretty terrifying. I was super enthralled in the beginning while reading about Winston's job at the Department of Truth and how controlled everything was. But I think the most depressing part was the end, how they eventually did get in to Winston's head and fully changed him over to one of them. Obviously the warning to be careful in 1984 is pretty explicit. I thought this was a super worthwhile read, and I had a lot more thoughts about it but I don't have the time or energy to write them out right now.

Book #78: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Okay, this was a LOOOOONG BOOK. And it FELT long too. Cinder, the first book in this series, was only eight hours long on audiobook--and this one was 21. Twenty-one hours. I was kind of tired of it even before I started. But I finally got the e-book and was able to speed up the process by reading it and listening to it in intervals and am finally done. This book is the conclusion of the four or five-book Lunar Chronicles, where all the characters from the earlier three books come together to take down the evil queen Levana and put Cinder on the throne of Luna to make her the queen, as the long-lost princess of Luna. All the couples from each of the books pair up and are happy together at the end. Everyone ends up happy in the end.

The title character of this book is Winter, whose story is based off Snow White (and Queen Levana is the evil stepmother). She is a Lunar princess who has refused to use her Lunar gift to manipulate people, which is driving her mad. Literally. She is having hallucinations and acting crazy, and the only person who understands her and can take care of her is her childhood friend Jacin, who only wants to protect her. The queen is overwhelmingly jealous of Winter because of her beauty and tries to have her killed--multiple times.

I felt invested in this book because I'd already read the other four. It was just so. long. I understand that she had to wrap up the whole overarching storyline and write about Winter too and it's hard to have a whole revolution in one book... but man. Also, I felt like it was hard to really care about the revolution, since we never really learned about or experienced what their lives were like--and most importantly, Cinder never did either. It's not like in the Hunger Games where Katniss lives this hard life for forever so she has really good reasons to hate President Snow. It was kind of unbelievable that she could just sweep in and take over with so little preparation and understanding of Luna. Also, I just could never get behind the Kai-Cinder relationship. There is just no reason why Kai would ever be interested in her; she doesn't really do anything interesting or defining, ever. BUT the other relationships, between Scarlet and Wolf, Cress and Thorne, and Winter and Jacin are more compelling. My favorite parts of this book were the Winter-Jacin chapters, following them and the Snow White retelling. All the same, I'm glad that I read it--and I'm glad to have finished it and to be able to move on.

This series was definitely not the highest quality. The writing wasn't terrible, but there were so many things that I had problems with in each story. But it got into me and I didn't want to stop reading it. If I had known how long it was going to be I may not have gone past the first book... but it was worth my while in audiobook listening while rocking Lucy to sleep for endless hours over the last month or so. So it works out.

Book #74: Fairest by Marissa Meyer

This short novel is a kind of prequel to the Lunar Chronicles, telling how Queen Levana--the ultimate evil villain in this series--became who she is. She is based on the evil queen in the Snow White story, obsessed with being the most beautiful one in the whole land--which she can do because Lunars have the ability to cast a "glamour," or to change their appearance by making others see what they want them to see. The story shows why she is so obsessed with it (she was disfigured in a fire when she was a child, which scarred her face and body, and was taunted for it by her crazy evil sister), and how she was driven somewhat insane, dragging a man along to marry her, being convinced he loved her even though he didn't. I definitely wouldn't have read this if I hadn't read the others, and it was kind of annoying to listen to, because I felt like Levana was almost unbelievable. Even though she was so desperate and sad and had a horrible life inside those palace walls, I think it still didn't quite make me see her as a real character/person. But oh well, an interesting part of the series to listen to while rocking a baby in our cabin on vacation.

Book #73: Cress by Marissa Meyer

So, if it isn't obvious by the cover, Cress is the retelling of Rapunzel for the Lunar Chronicle series. Cress is a data-hacking prisoner for the evil Queen Levana, locked away in a satellite circling earth. She is responsible for hacking into all of earth's communication systems and spying for the queen--but she begins to help Cinder and her team in their quest to overthrow her. When they come to rescue her, her mistress discovers and blinds her rescuer and sends them in her satellite plummeting down to earth, and then they have to cross the Sahara desert and survive somehow together, and somehow rejoin Cinder's team and help them come up with a plan to stop Levana.

I liked Cress's storyline pretty well in this one, and I kind of liked how her more timid character contrasts so strongly with Scarlet's brash and overconfident one from the previous book. Not much happened in Cinder's plans to overthrow Levana in this book, except that they managed to stop her wedding to Kai temporarily. Overall, I liked the first two books in the series more, although that may have been because I listened to them and I read this one.

Book #70: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

This book is the second in the Lunar Chronicles series, the sequel to Cinder. Since Cinder was the futuristic retelling of Cinderella, Scarlet is the retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, in the same world and intertwining with Cinder's storyline. Scarlet lives in a small French town and works on her grandmother's vegetable farm, but her grandmother has been missing for weeks, and the police have decided she just went missing and have stopped looking for her. Scarlet doesn't know what to do or how to find her, until she gets the help of a mysterious and kind of scary street-fighter named Wolf. Dun dun dunnnnn...

I honestly was (and still am) a little creeped out and confused by Wolf, even after getting the explanation of who/what he is (by the end of the book). I don't quite get how Scarlet falls for him (not a huge spoiler, right? When the main character gets paired up with a guy for the rest of the book you expect that to happen). I liked how Scarlet was a super determined and strong-willed main character, although it honestly went a little too far for me and became almost obnoxious, like how she insisted on tracking down her grandmother and trying to save her even though it was COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that it was not just dangerous, but suicidal, and that there was no way a teenage girl could actually manage to do anything. I mean, come on. Nobody is that stupid, right? But I liked getting a little more detail about Cinder's background and learning about her, and I liked Cinder's new sidekick in this book, even though he did come on a little strong and cliche-y. It was definitely a solid book, and both storylines were interesting and fast-paced.

Book #69: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

OH MAN. We were out of town for two weeks in Utah and I actually read/listened to a bunch of books while we were gone and I have so many books to write about on here now. Yikes. I actually finished listening to this one before we left, but I didn't have a chance to write about it with all the packing and craziness of leaving town with three small children. (Seriously, it seems like a lot of children when you're trying to pack up all the things you need to bring with them.) But I remember it pretty well since I have been listening to all the other books in this series since then--which shows that I enjoyed it enough to follow through on the rest of the series.

I feel like Marissa Meyer was sitting one day and had the thought--what if Cinderella didn't lose her shoe when she was running away from the prince, but instead--her foot? That seems like the whole idea behind this retelling of Cinderella. Cinder is a cyborg, in a futuristic New Beijing (the old Beijing was destroyed during WWIV), and her arm and leg are totally made out of machinery. In this world, cyborgs are second-class citizens, and Cinder is a super-skilled mechanic who one day gets an exciting famous customer: Prince Kai, who has a very important broken droid who he needs help getting repaired. And the story goes on from there. Of course, since it's a dystopian futuristic story, Cinder can't just be a girl who falls in love with the prince, but also the beginning of a rebellion against an evil queen as well. But I really liked some of the details of this story--like the cyborg/android aspects of the world, the letumosis plague sweeping the world, and Cinder's hilarious flawed-personality-chip android Iko. The big plot twist came on pretty obvious to me (I won't spoil it), but that didn't really bother me too much.

Some other things did bother me though. Like, okay. There's an evil queen who rules the moon, and the moon people are like a totally different species than earthens because they have magical powers. (Why are there queens in the future? Nobody is going to have queens in a thousand years!) And the moon queen wants to take over earth, but she can't do that without MARRYING THE EMPORER? So she has to marry Kai? Ummmmm. What? And I'm sorry, but there is no way on earth that Kai would talk like an insolent teenager in these important diplomatic conversations with all the other earth leaders and the evil queen of the moon. His obnoxious attitude really got annoying and was totally unbelievable. There's no way he was that poorly trained when he was next in line for the throne. I was also really confused about why Prince Kai would be interested in Cinder in the first place. What on earth did she do to attract his attention? She fixed his droid, but it's not like they ever had any interesting conversations... It didn't make sense to me. BUT those annoying parts were smaller than the overall story, which I enjoyed--I just wanted to rant about them somewhere.

**Note: I listened to this on audiobook and I highly recommend it in that fashion. The narrator was fantastic and did excellent voices for each of the characters that really helped me to get the story. I think that helped me to get over some of the more annoying plot points that would have been overly obnoxious if I had been reading it.

Book #40: The One by Kiera Cass

After America's obnoxious ambivalence about her two suitors in the previous two books in this trilogy, I was ready for her to make a decision (and luckily, she HAD to, since this was the last book). However, Cass was determined to turn America into a sort of Katniss overthrowing-the-evil-government figure and got her into developing and meeting with all these rebel groups even as she's deciding (spoiler-but-not-really) that she wants to marry Maxon and take on the responsibility of being a princess. I just didn't really understand the rebel groups in the whole series--they were really terrible at what they were doing and it wasn't clear at all what they wanted. It was seriously contrived and didn't feel like a real conflict at all. I know I've said this in the last two posts about the other books in this series, but that was the main problem about these books--they would have been a lot stronger with a much more condensed plot and a lot less convoluted journey to the climax. I think the main idea behind the original book was interesting, but this money-grubbing idea to turn everything into trilogies that everyone has lately really ruined what promise it had. But in the end, America ends up with Maxon (after one final huge rebellion) and they live supposedly happy ever after. And, to be fair, I felt like Cass's writing style improved over the three books, and even though I didn't ever love how she wrote, her dialogue stopped making me want to hit her and it was much easier to get through by the end (or maybe I was just desensitized to how bad it was).

I know I'm making it sound like these books were terrible, but obviously they weren't that bad because I finished all three of them. I guess that's the thing about these love-triangle stories--even when there are lots of annoying things about them, it's hard to put them down until you know what happens.

Book #39: The Elite by Kiera Cass

I can't honestly say why I decided to read through this book. It's been over a week since I finished it and I can't remember anything about it--other than America just goes back and forth between her two love interests, Aspen and Maxon, and cannot make up her mind about which one she wants--and they both still apparently really love her and are perfectly happy waiting while she just tells them she needs more time. I really didn't buy the whole love triangle here--Aspen definitely wasn't very developed as a character and her problems with Maxon seem very contrived (he's forced to abide by the laws of his country, as the prince, and do things she disagrees with, so therefore she gets mad at him). Mainly, this book shouldn't even exist, since this series should really have just been ONE book instead of three, so there wasn't enough action to keep it going. And yet I finished!

Book #38: The Selection by Kiera Cass

I have seriously seen this book around for a year or more, and never forgotten it because of that unforgettable cover (such a beautiful dress!). But I've avoided it because after I read the blurbs about it I decided not to read it--all I kept seeing about it was that it was a cross between the Hunger Games and the Bachelor--and the main character is named America Singer. That seriously is enough to turn me off. America Singer? That is the dumbest thing I've heard in forever. But my sister-in-law Kristen persuaded me to read it, if only to make fun of it with her, and it seemed like the perfect beach read while we were hanging out at Bear Lake all week for the Leininger family reunion. So I read it, and on the one hand hated it and on the other hand really enjoyed it--enough that I did end up reading the next two in the trilogy (although it TOTALLY should not have been made into a trilogy--seriously only had enough material to be one book).

In this dystopian version of future America, a monarchy has been set up and the masses are divided into numbered castes, each caste being assigned a specific career path (the higher castes getting the better jobs and more money). The prince, in order to choose a bride, has a Queen Esther/Cinderella type lottery for all the young women in the land to submit themselves as his potential new princess. So of course America Singer, a 5 and a musician, submits herself, despite the fact she's madly in love with Aspen (seriously, these names), and she's chosen as one of the few to go to the palace and meet prince Maxon to see if she's the prince's bride. She meets Maxon and immediately goes into angry chick mode, fighting with him and somehow making him fall in love with her anyways, and they become friends despite the situation. America stays at the palace as one of the prince's favorites as the pool narrows down.

There are so many ridiculous things about this book that it's hard to describe it all at once. The thing I hated the most was how obnoxious the dialect was. Cass obviously does not know how to talk if that's how she thinks normal conversations between people go. When she meets Prince Maxon for the first time, he calls her "my dear," and she says something like, "Don't call me your dear when you're keeping me in your gilded CAGE!" Seriously? Also, the whole plotline seemed pretty far-fetched to be set in the future--sure, maybe that happened in Queen Esther's time, but a super-strict caste system and lottery for the prince in future America? And Cass's version of American history is completely hilarious--America gets so in debt to China that China invades and makes it the American State of China until people revolt and set up the monarchy of Illea. Yes, that seems very logical and believable. I really shouldn't have liked it at all, but for some reason I was driven to find out what happened between America and Maxon (because she obviously will end up with him, despite her dumb obsession with Aspen), so I kept reading the sequels despite it all. This was the best plot of the three books, but probably the worst writing of the three (she seems to get better as time goes on).