Fandom/Canon Name:Plus One by Elizabeth Fama (book, link goes to Goodreads)
What's awesome about it: Dystopian YA - wait, don't backbutton! It's surprisingly enjoyable and novel for dystopian YA, set in an alternate future in which the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 led to the need for split-shift staffing of hospitals, a day set and a night set of doctors and nurses, which in turn proved so efficient that the division between day workers and night workers was expanded to all parts of life, formalized and codified and enforced by law. But as daylight living is more natural and presumably more enjoyable, gradually the night people (Smudges) became stereotyped as stupid, undesirable, lesser than the day people (Rays) - and it took me until about 3/4 through the book to realize this was a civil rights allegory. And yes, people are secretly organizing to fight the power.
Here's the Goodreads blurb: Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge--a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays, who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol concocts a plan to kidnap her newborn niece--a Ray--in order to bring the baby to visit her dying grandfather. Sol's violation of the day/night curfew is already a serious crime, but when her kidnap attempt goes awry, she stumbles on a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population. Sol escapes the authorities with an unexpected ally: a Ray who gets in her way, a boy she might have hated if fate hadn't forced them on the run together--a boy the world now tells her she can't love.
Yes, there is some suspension of disbelief required, but no more than, say, teenagers fighting to the death broadcast on television, or a society discarding all but a hundred selected novels, songs, and films. And what makes this an actually good book is that the plot is legitimately interesting and complex, and goes in unexpected (but foreshadowed) ways. There is a (het) romance, which is somewhat cutesy and predictable, but at least it's not a love triangle - and, speaking of YA tropes, though this is in first person it is in PAST TENSE THANK GOD.
I liked the ending, which is not pat or universally happy, and which leaves a lot of things open-ended for a sequel (or for fanfiction). There is also an enemies-to-friends arc between Sol and Gigi that is very femslashable, and a brother-and-sister rocky relationship between Sol and Ciel.
Where to find: Wherever you obtain books - libraries, bookstores, or online. There is also a prequel short story Noma Girl free online, which is from Gigi's POV, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense on its own, and it is stylistically different from the novel and so doesn't really make a good intro. (But it's a good insight into Gigi and the fringe society of the Noma.)
(I have nominated Soleil, Ciel, D'Arcy, and Gigi.)
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What's awesome about it: Dystopian YA - wait, don't backbutton! It's surprisingly enjoyable and novel for dystopian YA, set in an alternate future in which the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 led to the need for split-shift staffing of hospitals, a day set and a night set of doctors and nurses, which in turn proved so efficient that the division between day workers and night workers was expanded to all parts of life, formalized and codified and enforced by law. But as daylight living is more natural and presumably more enjoyable, gradually the night people (Smudges) became stereotyped as stupid, undesirable, lesser than the day people (Rays) - and it took me until about 3/4 through the book to realize this was a civil rights allegory. And yes, people are secretly organizing to fight the power.
Here's the Goodreads blurb: Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge--a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays, who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol concocts a plan to kidnap her newborn niece--a Ray--in order to bring the baby to visit her dying grandfather. Sol's violation of the day/night curfew is already a serious crime, but when her kidnap attempt goes awry, she stumbles on a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population. Sol escapes the authorities with an unexpected ally: a Ray who gets in her way, a boy she might have hated if fate hadn't forced them on the run together--a boy the world now tells her she can't love.
Yes, there is some suspension of disbelief required, but no more than, say, teenagers fighting to the death broadcast on television, or a society discarding all but a hundred selected novels, songs, and films. And what makes this an actually good book is that the plot is legitimately interesting and complex, and goes in unexpected (but foreshadowed) ways. There is a (het) romance, which is somewhat cutesy and predictable, but at least it's not a love triangle - and, speaking of YA tropes, though this is in first person it is in PAST TENSE THANK GOD.
I liked the ending, which is not pat or universally happy, and which leaves a lot of things open-ended for a sequel (or for fanfiction). There is also an enemies-to-friends arc between Sol and Gigi that is very femslashable, and a brother-and-sister rocky relationship between Sol and Ciel.
Where to find: Wherever you obtain books - libraries, bookstores, or online. There is also a prequel short story Noma Girl free online, which is from Gigi's POV, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense on its own, and it is stylistically different from the novel and so doesn't really make a good intro. (But it's a good insight into Gigi and the fringe society of the Noma.)
(I have nominated Soleil, Ciel, D'Arcy, and Gigi.)