Shift by Charlotte Agell

I've seen extreme beauty dystopia, computer-in-your-brain dystopia, strange gladiatorial dystopia, and extreme weather dystopia (we'll be getting to reviewing that one soon), to name a few. Shift by Charlotte Agell adds religious-extremist dystopia to that list.
Fifteen-year-old Adrian Havoc lives in a world where Christianity is enforced. Talk of evolution is forbidden, a televised 'rapture' is mandatory viewing, and the government (called Homestate) has begun to warn everyone that the end is near. As in the apocalypse. Fun!
Together with his young sister, a beautiful girl, and a rather disgruntled penguin, Adrian sets off through the Deadlands, a nuclear wasteland created years before in the terrorist attack that preceded Homestate's rise to power. What Adrian finds there will change the world forever.
To be honest, I was disappointed by Shift. It's a good concept, but it was poorly executed. Adrian's departure across the Deadlands seemed ill-planned and sudden, not taken as seriously as it should have been. In fact, most things weren't taken as seriously as I would have liked-- government conspiracies were unraveled, atrocities came to light, and still were never truly explored. No sense of horror was conveyed, only a weak sort of Oh, okay. So that's what happened. There were horrible things going on in this world, and none of them were taken seriously or even thought about overmuch by anyone. The bleak dystopian landscape presented in Shift is only explored in passing mention, taking second place to the events of the novel, when in all rights they should be intertwined.
In addition, while the world is well-imagined (if treated lightly), the plot is... unsatisfactory. It seemed that there were more direct, more sense-making things that the protagonists could have fought against, but the author instead chose to make the main conflict (that is, the Bad Thing that the protagonists are trying to prevent) a strange, convoluted and almost contrived disaster, instead of having something that really, directly confronted the existence and ideology of the world the book creates. Instead, we got something that was a little too off-base, a tad too far-fetched to really make a point.
Shift creates a thought-provoking, terrifying, well-constructed world and then ignores its significance. Put it in the middle of your pile.



Glad not to be ruled by extremist crazies, ruminating on the amusement factor of penguins, and yours,