Science Fiction: Omnitopia Dawn

Omnitopia Dawn is actually written for adults, but this excellent science fiction title is written by beloved YA author Diane Duane. Fans of her "So You Want to be a Wizard" series will be eager to pick up another of her titles, even though the protagonists in this book are adults.

Omnitopia Dawn is set in the near future, where genius programmer Dev Logan has created a gigantic MMORPG: a massively multiplayer online role playing game where participants with good game karma can build their own microcosms, and create a universe for every taste.

With over two hundred million people playing worldwide, Omnitopia is more than just an online game: it's a gigantic corporation with a huge financial footprint on the world stock markets. As Omnitopia prepares to roll out a massive game expansion, the company learns that a viscious hacker attack is being planned, with the potential to bring the entire system crashing down. Crashing the game would destroy the company, and ruin the creations of millions of micocosm creators who have invested their time and hearts into the gameworld.

We follow likeable programmer and CEO Dev as he and his idealistic team of elite programmers work frantically to disable the attack, and save the complex and beautiful world of Omintopia. Even in the face of betrayal and impending disaster, Dev retains his good-guy nature: he's portrayed as uniformly likeable, as are his smart and dedicated employees. The teen appeal in this book comes from the very clear good-guy-vs.-bad-guy plot cycle, and Diane Duane adds just enough fantasy science into the game structure to interest technology buffs (while not alienating those of us who just like to play!). Anyone who's every been sucked into an RPG game, or those who just enjoy a great science-fiction espionage yarn, will find Omnitopia Dawn an engaging read.

Science Fiction

Grade 11 and up

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Science Fiction: I Am Number Four

John Smith is number four. You may not believe it, but he's one of the last six survivors from the planet Lorien. He's been living in hiding on Earth, along with his Cepan guardian, for the past twelve years: any day now, he's expecting to die.

Twelve years ago, the Mogadorians destroyed the planet Lorien when they raided it for resources that their own planet had run out of. The inhabitants of Lorien - the Cepan guardians and the warrior Garde - were slaughtered in the surprise attack. Only nine Garde escaped with their keepers, and three of those have already been hunted down and murdered by Mogadorian soldiers.

John Smith was created yesterday, when news of number three's death reached him. When John and his Keeper Henri burned their house and all identification to the ground as they fled, they also erased all traces of John's previous identity, Daniel Jones. Now they live in remote Paradise, Ohio: population 5,243.

John's job is to stay alive and stay hidden until his Garde legacies appear. The legacies are the warrior powers that will tranform John from an althletic and intelligent teen into a superwarrior capable of returning to Lorien, and scouring the planet of its alien invaders. But until he masters his legacies, John is horribly vulnerable to attack by the Mogadorian soldiers who are hunting him day and night, tirelessly seeking to destroy him.

Despite a lifetime of training, John finds staying undercover in Paradise harder than anything he's ever done. A lot of this is to do with Sarah, the gorgeous classmate who's falling hard for John. Unfortunately, her bully ex-boyfriend makes it very difficult to keep out of high school politics and squabbles, and when John accidentally befriends an expert in alien identification and legends, his entire identity is compromised.

With his cover blown wide open, John and Henri are at risk, along with everyone they care for in their new town. This fast paced Science Fiction thriller tears along at breakneck speed, ending in a thrilling climax that just begs for a sequel or two.

Science Fiction
Grades 9-11
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Fantasy: White Cat

Though I liked Holly Black's elfpunk titles Tithe and Valiant, I have to say that her newest dark fantasy, White Cat, blows them out of the water.

Combining elements of mafioso gang warfare, frustrated romance and gypsy magic, this violent and disturbing book propels the reader through the increasingly complicated life of seventeen year old Cassel.

Cassel thinks he's the only untalented member of a wildly magical family of curse workers. He's focused on making a life for himself at an exclusively snobby private boarding school, where he practices his con skills on his trust-fund-baby peers.

When his haunted nightmares strand him in an awkward situation, there's no help for it: Cassel has to go home, where he can't avoid the people and places that remind him of his best friend, Lila.

Lila, whom he remembers killing with his own hands.

But of course, in a world of magic and cursery, memories may not be what they seem; and those who love you may be the most dangerous ones of all. If he wants any sort of future at all, Cassel has to use all of his con skills to uncover the truth about his past from his tortured memories.

With convoluted plots and main characters who hover on the edge of evil, this taut and complicated fantasy novel is just the first in the forthcoming Curse Workers series.

Fantasy
Grades 10-12
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Short Stories: The Poison Eaters

Holly Black sticks to her strengths in this dark, edgy collection of short stories. Like her other teen titles, this collection explores the bleeding underbelly of urban adolescence, where faeries meet GBLTQ lust, vampires sweat out their infection on youtube, and werewolves consort with royalty at a bloodstained court.

Librarians will be particularly thrilled by the doubly-geeky tale of classification gone wrong, and fans of Black's elfpunk Tithe and Valiant will find some familiar characters in the bleak The Land of Hearts Desire.

The standout tale is clearly the last in the set. In The Poison Eaters, three sisters fulfill their destiny by bringing death to their hapless suitors. Merely weapons, the end of the story twists and turns in revealing the double and triple crossings of fate that brought kings and knights to a poisonous end at their hands.

For teens with a taste for supernatural horror, Holly Black is reliably disturbing. Those who love her should check out titles by Laini Taylor or Justine Larbalestier.

Short Stories (supernatural horror)
Grades 10-12
Click here to check out the Port Moody Public Library's catalogue!