"Exploring freedom and what it really means to feel alive, this brilliant female-fronted dystopian thriller is a fast-paced, thought-provoking feat of fiction."
First in a trilogy (huzzah!), Rachel Delahaye’s Electric Life deserves to be held up as a paragon of YA dystopian fiction. Fronted by a character to root for — a young woman whose every decision, dilemma, danger, doubt and desire cuts to the core of what it means to feel alive — it’s set in future versions of London that feel freakily familiar.
Alara lives in Estrella, the hyper-sanitised “Star City” in which everything is digitally monitored, and everything is safe. A place in which no one can be bored or dissatisfied — how can that be possible, when every need is taken care of?
Alara’s family sit near the lower end of Estrella’s social strata, with her talented food technologist mum long overlooked for promotion, and her dad a Refuse Manager. While Alara’s formidable gaming skills might offer her family a route to a more comfortable life, instead they bring her to the attention of Estrella’s leaders, who task her with venturing into the dangerous Void to check out what’s really going on in London Under.
Feared and distrusted by the citizens and leaders of Estrella, London Under is the original city on which Estrella was built. On arrival, though, through the dangers and her fears, Alara’s desire for something more comes to the fore. In London Under, she feels alive — there’s passion, community, imperfection and unpredictability, in contrast to the controlled, comfortable version of life in Estrella.
“Comfort. Is that the best we can hope for in life?” she muses, which is one of the themes of this remarkable novel, along with fear of the other, the conflict between personal need and the desire to do right by your family, and what it means to lead a fulfilling life. Bring on book two!
| Primary Genre | Young Adult Fiction |
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