Dystopian lit seems to be one of the two genres every teen is crazy about these days. The other is paranormal romance. I tend to avoid the second like the Plague itself, (I'm a guy). This is gonna sound hipster, but dystopian is becoming waaayy too mainstream. This can make it so that some potentially great books either don't get read (because they're not a part of the dystopian craze) or don't get the high ratings they deserve (because they're buried within the dystopian craze). I'm not the biggest dystopian fan (I'm more of a action/psychological/techno thriller kind of guy) but I feel some of the dystopian books out there are indeed worth reading and recommending, so without further ado, here are my recommendations:
note: parts of titles that are a different colour are links to my reviews of a book of each of those series
The Classics:
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Modern/Recent Dystopian :
The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (do NOT read Mockingjay under any circumstances)
the Gone series by Michael Grant
Variant by Robison Wells
The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials by James Dashner (do NOT read The Death Cure)
The Books of Mortals trilogy by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee (Note, my biggest problem with this series was lack of originality compared to Dekker's earlier work; a reader new to Dekker will not have this problem)
The Enemy series by Charlie Higson
The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
the Six of Hearts series by Jack Heath
For the Non-Purists (those who don't care if the book is actually dystopian so long as it has dystopian elements (which may vary significantly from book to book recommended here)):
the TimeRiders series by Alex Scarrow (I cannot recommend these highly enough - they have enough time travel campiness to be fun and enough dystopian/steampunk suspense and action to be uber-intense at times. I'd give each of them a 5/5. The best news is, RPL has every single one of them, so you have no excuses for not reading them XD)
the Tunnels series by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams (think Journey to the Centre of the Earth on mega-steroids with a religious sect hell-bent (pun intended) on killing everyone on the surface)
any book by Robin Parrish (except for Nightmare, which is a different genre) (I'd especially recommend The Dominion Trilogy and Vigilante to fans of dystopian)
the Tomorrow Series by John Marsden
the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness
If you've read all of the above, there is nothing I can do to help you.
Hey, don't write us girls off as saps! Some of us still enjoy some good ol' fashion violence and gore. XD
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing this post along with the chart Librarian Theresa posted, I am definitely going to try 'The Maze Runner'... eventually. There's just too many books to read, so little time.
BTW, If you want some more dystopian books (even though the collection you have here is HUGE), you could try 'Ship Breaker' by Paolo Bacigalupi and 'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline. Definitely 'World War Z' by Max Brooks as well. They're some of the more guy-ish ones I've read and they're all pretty good. :)
Well, I'm not writing girls off as saps, if I'm pigeonholing anyone it's guys - as non-saps XD
DeleteThx for the recommendations!
I agree with you about the dystopian genre. It's what everybody's talking about now, especially after the hunger games. But there were dystopian books written already a couple years ago.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of reading the maze runner, but I heard that it's basically exactly the same as hunger games and divergent.
Tt has less romance than either the hunger games or divergent (all but one major character are guys).
DeleteTt doesn't have the cautionary themes of the hunger games either but there are some similarities - ppl don't fight each other to the death or anything though.
Ohhh, all right thanks! Maybe I'll check it out!
Delete*It
Deletemy bad XD