The Declaration

The Declaration (2007)

a novel by Gemma Malley

Waktu edar : October 2nd, 2007

Waktu membaca : This year, forgot when.

Hal paling berkesan : The world building, no doubt. Classic distopian awesomeness.

What would you do in a world where humans live forever?

I was always on the lookout for great science fiction books. And I found just the thing when I found this book, about a distant future where humans have discovered a way to live forever.

In the distant future, humans have found out a way to live forever. They have developed a drug, Longevity drug, that can enable them to live forever. Not forever young, but forever static. Frozen in the age that you are now. In this world, it is forbidden to have children. Because of the ever dwindling energy source and food, and because humans now live forever, it’s a very big crime to have a child.

In this world, there lived Anna, a Surplus. A Surplus is an illegal children. It is forbidden to have a child in this world while still live forever, so every Surplus is considered an abomination, a waste. The parents that were found having a child will be immediately sent to prison and the child will be sent to Surplus Hall, a school where Surplus were taught to learn their proper place in life. They were taught to cook, sew, and basically serve the Legal humans, and they were reminded every day of how they are evil and thieves for stealing energy source and how they were lucky even to be allowed to breathe.

Anna was content living like this. She was the favorite surplus because she knew her place and didn’t dare question about the Longevity drugs or about life on the Outside. She was content to be a good servant someday to a Legal human.

Then came Peter. He was a new Surplus on Surplus Hall, discovered on the age of fifteen. And he told her the most amazing stories. About life on the Outside, about being free. And most importantly, about Anna’s parents, who’s looking for her. And Anna’s life would be forever changed.

Wow. What an amazing book. I read dozens of books about the future. I read the very awesome The Giver series by Lois Lowry. Recently, I read Delirium by Lauren Oliver about a distant future where love is treated as a disease. I read The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan about a distant future where zombies have taken over the world. In short, I read a lot of books about the future.

But this book really got to me. The plot is great, but it’s not the most important thing for me. For me, there are two things about this book that made it absolutely amazing. The world building, and the characterization.

The world building for me is just amazing. I always love books about the future because the world they described is often fascinating. And I love it here as well. Mostly we were only shown life in the Surplus Hall for Anna, but sometimes we get a glimpse of the back story, about the history of the creation of the Longevity drugs. About the people and the country outside. About how the people there lived. The description of life in the Surplus Hall is equally amazing as well. I can picture it very well, and I read every last detail on the book without skipping even one paragraph. I love the world building here. It’s shown in glimpse at first, but with a very straightforward decription so that we can picture the scene very clearly in our mind.

The second is the charaterization. I love Anna. She’s amazing. We can read about her character development, about a girl who’s afraid to question everything around her, to a girl that’s brave enough to defy the authorities. But not even once I felt her characterization is unbelievable. Everything is progressing very naturally and I felt for her. I like Peter too, but the romance between Anna and Peter is not shown very much for my taste so their chemistry is not as strong as other books I’ve read.

Overall, this book benefit from great characterization and descriptive world building. I love this book, and I’m so delighted that this is a three book series. I’m looking forward to reading the next book soon. This is one dystopian book you won’t soon forget.