10 dystopian novels to read while you wait for Sunrise on the Reaping

With Sunrise on the Reaping set to be published on March 18, there𓂃 are a lot of people waiting for their next dose of Susan Collins’ post-apocalyptic and dystopian world. If you’re one of those people, there are plenty ✃of options to get you through the next month. 

Post-apocalyptic, dystopian fiction is a hugely popular genre. There’s something almost reassuring about reading tales of alternate realities where the world is beyoඣnd broken. It’s almost a reminder that, as messed-up as our own w𒅌orld can seem at times, things could definitely be worse. 

Whatever kind of dystopia you want to find, there’s a book out there that can provide it. Here are 10 of the best dystopian tales to tide you over until Sunrise on the Reaping comes out.

If you’re looking for dark and dystopian, you probably can’t do better than Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Set in a world where fertility rates have dropped to almost nothing, and successful pregnancies only occur 20% of the time, The Handmaid’s Tale is almost impossibly dark and truly riveting. Absolute⛄ly worth a read if you can stomach the da♊rk themes involved. 

The Divergent series is set in a startlingly similar world to The Hunger Games, with a post-apocalyptic Chicago playing host to five factions defined by societal status and personality traits. Much like The Hunger Games, there is also a subplot of✅ young-adult love that runs through the series, between Tris and Four. There are four books in the series, plus a short story epilogue to tie everything together at the end.

The first in a series of five books, The Maze Runner centers around the battle to overcome the Flare, an apocalyptic illness. The youngest gen♈eration on the planet is immune to this illness and is, therefore, used by WICKED as test subjects to find a cure. Those pl🍌aced into the maze are stripped of their memories, but they all want to find a way to escape. 

It’s almost a travesty that the Red Rising series hasn’t received a silver-screen ada🦩ptation yet because the universe and story created by Pierce Brown are utterly fant📖astic. The story follows Darrow, a “Red” on Mars who begins life as a lowborn miner. As the story progresses, Darrow transforms his entire life (and body) to infiltrate the Golds, the most highborn members of civilization. 

There are some (myself very much included) that class Battle Royale as the story that would eventually be adapted to become the inspiration for Collins to write The Hunger Games. Collins has said that she didn’t know Battle Royale existed when she wrote her books, but it’s got everything that Collins included: a group of children thrown into a battle to the death by a totalitarian government for entertainment, a love story between two of the combatants, and the determination to fight the fascist system. ♈Sound 💙familiar? 

Uglies

Scott Westerfeld

Imagine living in a world where you’re considered “Ugly” until you reach the ripe old age of 16, get massively invasive and body-wide cosmetic surgery, and then enter the world of the “Pretty.” That’s the world laid out in Uglies, and Tally doesn’t like this system. Instead, she joins the resistance and throws up her middle finger to the society ♚thꦆat deems her unworthy unless she submits herself to their standards. Things get violent, and resistance does not come easy. 

Often considered an inversion counterpart to Orwell’s 1984, Brave New World is se𒉰t in a dystopian future where humans are artificially created and then sorted into a pre-determined, intelligence-based social hierarchy. The people are controlled by ෴psychoactive drugs, everything is learned during sleep, and people are conditioned to behave according to expectations, but Bernard Marx is a break from the norm. 

I’ve written about Tender is the Flesh a few times, and I’ll always include it wherever I’m able to because it is something that I’d recommend to everyone, as long as you’ve got a fairly strong stomach and don’t mind detailed descriptions of human slaughter and cannibalism. Rather than focusing on the fight to change the norm, Tender is the Flesh centers around the willingness to conform in a society whe🍌re humans are treated as no more than cattle after a disease renders all animal products deadly to eat📖. 

Matched is set in a world where people are🧔 paired into lifelong romantic relationships at the age of 17 by an expertly designed algorithm. I’m not sure about you, but that’s a pretty terrifying idea for me. Cassia agrees, and after she is matched with her best friend, she begins to question the society in which they live and whet🐻her their match is truly best for them. 

Shen Fever is a fungal infection that causes people who contract it to begin repeating the same routines, without end or consciousness, until they die. This infection, something akin to a slow and almost unnoticeable zombie apocalypse, eventually leads to the complete societal collapse of the United States, but some people are immune. Severance is the story of those who survive, watching people routinely and slowly wander toward💙s impending death.