Karen Healey: "While We Run"

Title: While We Run [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: When We Wake (2nd of 2 books)
Author: Karen Healey [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Sci-Fi
Year: 2014
Age: 14+
Stars: 4.5/5
Pros: Strong, mostly diverse characters with distinctive voices, often dealing with moral dilemmas and hard decisions to make. Never a dull moment, even when the pace gets slower.
Cons: A few familiar tropes/premises.
WARNING! Offscreen torture (but we also get a few glimpses of it) and rape. Some gruesome deaths.
Will appeal to: Readers who care about the state our world is in. Readers who like a thrilling yet romantic adventure.

Blurb: Abdi Taalib thought he was moving to Australia for a music scholarship. But after meeting the beautiful and brazen Tegan Oglietti, his world was turned upside down. Tegan's no ordinary girl - she died in 2027, only to be frozen and brought back to life in Abdi's time, 100 years later. Now, all they want is for things to return to normal (or as normal as they can be), but the government has other ideas. Especially since the two just spilled the secrets behind Australia's cryonics project to the world. On the run, Abdi and Tegan have no idea who they can trust - and, when they uncover startling new details about the program, they realize that thousands of lives may be in their hands. (Amazon)

Review: I'm ordinarily all for books without tropes, or employing as little of them as it's humanly possible - but sometimes an author can breath new life into an old concept, or make up for a familiar scenario with a great execution. Both things happen in While We Run - hence my rating. (Also, for your information, this one is set in Australia, which is a nice change from your usual all-American scenario).

A DIFFERENT ANGLE

For books with such a meaty sci-fi premise, both While We Run and its predecessor When We Wake are, at their core, good old dystopians, but with an unusually strong SJW vein, dealing with ethical, environmental, and even political issues. And the latter is especially true about WWR, since its main character Abdi (who was Tegan's sidekick in When We Wake) is a Djibouti immigrate, whose politician mother has indoctrinated him since a very young age with the tricks of her trade. This duology may be built on a few tropes, but it's entirely its own thing, and one we rarely see in YA. Especially WWR, with its diverse lead and his peculiar outlook. Abdi is a thinker, an observer, even a manipulator if need be (but he questions himself and realises it's not ethical to act like that around friends). He's also an atheist, unlike Tegan and Bethari (and most of his family, not to mention country), and while believers might find him harsh, he's a fascinating, complex character with a conscience, if not a creed. And he does struggle with doing the right thing, or choosing the lesser of two evils, which makes him stand out among your usual holier-than-thou or (most often) one-track-mind characters. [...]

THE PEOPLE AND I

Relationships in this book are more complex than average, and it's interesting to see them from Abdi's perspective. He loves Tegan, but has trust issues with her after a certain incident (which wasn't her fault, but still, I can see where he's coming from...and no, it isn't one of your usual love tropes, though it has got some love-triangle potential). He would like to keep having her in his life, but questions the hows and ifs of that - and he's aware that it doesn't come with a "happily ever after" guarantee anyway. Abdi's relationship with Tegan's best friend Bethari is antagonistic at first, then more nuanced, as he second-guess himself and realises some basic, but still elusive truths. Also, through Abdi's eyes, we get a better perspective of Joph - designated male at birth, now a lesbian girl (still on hormones), chem genius, former Abdi's partner in crime in smuggling medicines to Djibouti - and see the depth in her that Tegan's POV was partly oblivious of. Then there are the adults - good and bad and in-between - who are a huge part of the story, though definitely less fleshed out than the teens (which is normal anyway, since this is a story about teens surviving stuff, doing stuff and trying to change stuff 😉).

ETHICAL TURN

Even if you're wary of sci-fi, you should give this series a try, because - as I said - the science-y premise blooms into an adventure/survival story with a strong ethical/moral bone set in an alt-future scenario (...wait...are we sure it's so "alternate"?...). Not to mention, it's not like the scientific explanations take over the story at any point (and the little of them that is there won't go to your head). If dystopian novels were still near as popular as they used to be a few years ago, before fantasy stole the scene, and if this duology had been issued by an American press, it could have been the next Hunger Games or something. So, as usual, I'm probably shouting into the wind with this review, but I still hope to be able to convince someone to pick up this series, and to look directly at our world's problems (though from a sci-fi premise) instead of experiencing them through the filter of a made-up place 😉. [Nothing against fantasy OF COURSE. But I just wish that it shouldn't be this or that - one genre being popular to death and suddenly falling from grace in favour of a different one that gets swept under the rug. End of rant 😇]. Read it because it's familiar yet different. Read it because it's diverse without sounding like a bulleted list of politically correct characters. Read it because, despite a few tropes and improbable solutions, it goes to places not many books of its kind have the guts to go. Just...read it because it will entertain you and make you think at the same time. Not a bad feat, uh? 😉

For my "When We Wake" review (first installment in the series) click here.
For more Sci-Fi books click here.

Hardcover/ebook cover. I love that it boldly features an interracial couple, and it does make sense that it would have Tegan in the background, but I prefer the paperback cover because 1) While We Run is told from Abdi's perspective, so he has a right to his own solo cover; 2) I love the single POC on the cover even more, and the contrast/parallel between Tegan on the When We Wake cover and Abdi on the While We Run one; and 3) this Tegan doesn't look like the one on the When We Wake cover at all...