Category Archives: post-apocalypse fiction

Sansa Stark Issues a Dire Warning

Posted on by
Reply

rickon towelListen up, people. I am Sansa Stark, and my family and I have been treated most vilely. We came to this foster home believing they would be good to us, and at first I admit they were. Wet food, soft beds, a climbing tree, and we got lots of cuddles and shoulder rides. robb

Yes, thank you, but that doesn’t make up for what came next. One morning bright and early with no warning, that sweet-voiced lady who’s always cooing and carrying us around picked us up and deposited us without ceremony into a box. And closed us in there, and carried us off, despite our protests.

Next thing we know, we’re in this big bright space and dogs are barking and people are petting us and saying things like, “Bath time, babies!”

Bath? What is this thing you speak of? We like petting, and their hands were nice so we didn’t think anything about it until…..

rickonWATER! WATER EVERYWHERE! I watched in horror as someone picked up my baby brother Rickon and set him under a little waterfall. He yelled for help, but there was nothing we could do except watch as they cruelly applied a foul blue gel that foamed and bubbled like a witch’s spell, and then thrust him back under the waterfall, again and again.

Truth be told, I had thought Rickon was black and brown. I didn’t expect him to be so white.

Anyway, no sooner had his cries subsided when they reached for me….

I will be avenged. Do you hear me? I will wreak such havoc as has never been known in this kingdom or the next…..

sansaWe would like to be adopted now, please. Obviously this is not a place we can trust. I will reward handsomely the first person to rescue any of us. Me first, of course.

The Monday Book: THE BAR CODE TATTOO by Susanne Weyn

Posted on by
Reply

First, apologies for last week, when dental surgery knocked me out of the world for a few days. I read Tattoo as escapism – somebody was having a worse time than me.

Weyn’s premise is interesting: everyone gets the bar code tattoo, encrypting all the data about them, on their seventeenth birthday. It isn’t mandatory, but it’s encouraged. Except it’s becoming mandatory. And as this takes hold, more and more people are getting the raw end of this deal, because the government knows everything about them. Promotions, health care, educational access: it’s not an open system  now that people are open books.

What’s interesting is that only one small dialogue in the book is devoted to the Christian take on what is essentially the Mark of the Beast plan. Weyn concentrates instead on the rebellion of teens and the growing awareness among people that the tattoo is ruining instead of assisting their lives.

While the writing is what I’d consider lumpy and the characters pretty thin, I liked reading it because I’m fascinated by dystopian lit, and YA fiction. And Biblical retellings, although this one ignored the religious angle. Her second and third book take up that piece a wee bit more, but overall this is more teen thriller based on futurism than any form of religious fiction.

It’s not the kind of thing I would read every day, but when you’re in the mood for frenzied, freaky, and futuristic, you couldn’t do better than the Tattoo series. (Weyn’s next books are Barcode Rebellion and Barcode Prophecy.)