Preliminary Scan:

In a war-torn future United States, fifteen-year-old Tessa, her childhood friend Gideon, now a traumatized military hero, and Dek, a streetwise orphan, enter enemy territory and discover the shocking truth about a war that began more than seventy-five years earlier.

-synopsis and cover art courtesy of goodreads.com

Atmospheric Analysis: This is a gorgeous, conceptually interesting cover, which would be just at home on an adult literary novel as it would on an upper-middle grade dystopian. I love the drab cover scheme, and the text that’s made up in the negative space created by power outages on the aerial view of the city.

Planetary Class: Dystopian, in the traditional of Orwell’s 1984.

Mohs Rating: This is a 4 on the Mohs scale–the entirety of the premise hinges on one big lie about the nature and scope of artificial intelligence.

Planetary Viability: As mentioned in the Mohs rating, you eventually learn that the premise of The Always War is dependent on a particularly powerful artificial intelligence system. I found the scope and execution of this aspect of the premise to be pretty implausible, unfortunately.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: The best word for Haddix’s prose is “efficient.” It’s largely without adornment, though there are some lovely flourishes in the first half of the novel, but it does its job well. The Always War also stands out within YA/MG as a rare, well-executed example of third person narration.

Expanded Report: In my last review, I wrote that Ally Condie suggests a bit of the “we have always been at war with East Asia” themes of 1984 in her new novel, Crossed. In a weird bit of synchronicity, Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Always War takes those slight, thematic elements of Crossed and expands them into a novel of their own.

Fifteen-year-old Tessa’s society really has always been at war. In a futuristic, but impoverished America, she’s stuck scrubbing hospital floors while her neighbor, a gifted military student, goes on to be a hero. The novel’s first half is richly rendered, and reminded me a bit of the Molly McIntire American Girl books in their accuracy. The society of The Always War has been touched by perpetual wartime at every level–people’s aspirations are directly tied to the war effort; technology is designated solely for military use; and normal people are expected to push up their sleeves and contribute themselves, no matter the color-draining effect this has on their lives.

I loved the beginning of this book, though I must admit that I was a touch unsettled by the extreme youth of Gideon, one of their war heroes (he’s in his teens), and the heroine’s own very young voice and nature. Unfortunately, as The Always War developed, these problematic elements were thrust to the forefront, and compounded by the presence of Dek, a prepubescent rebel said to be only eight or nine years old. She’s trading goods on the black market and knows how to pilot and repair aircraft and all of this stretched the bounds of credulity for me.

As did the core premise as revealed in the last half of the book. Some of this is suggested by the title and the book’s Orwellian, throwback nature (of course the war isn’t real; we suspect that from the first page), but the ultimate revelations struck me as incredibly improbable, as did the fact that these revelations came to all hinge on the actions of a bunch of children. And it’s not as if I’m averse to kids being heroes–it’s only that here, I never quite believed it.

Still, I could imagine eating this book up if I were, myself, a younger reader. I suspect the target audience will enjoy the sparse, survival-oriented details of Haddix’s society, as I once enjoyed Changes for Molly, and I doubt they’ll be as bothered as I was by the twists and revelations. In that sense, this is a solid dystopian read for the elementary-aged reader. The Always War comes out on November 15th, and it’s available for preorder from Amazon or your local indie bookstore.