An excellent slice-of-life dystopian novel. The world building was fully realized (all internal logic was consistent, the rules of Changes and dangers made sense and seemed rooted in practicality), and while I was left with questions, they weren't big, distracting ones; rather ones that made me want to continue reading. ( )

Teen fiction (sci-fi/fantasy-action/adventure. "Norms" and mutated humans trying to work together in a post-apocalyptic world with vicious predator plants and feuding territorial lords; everyday diversity; series fiction). The diversity of characters here is striking in that it's so rare to see so many mixed ethnicities and LGBTQ people casually thrown into a story (yay, #weneeddiversebooks). For the most part the action and plot move along pretty briskly, and by the end (when you've sorted out who the many characters are and how they relate to each other), you're invested enough to want to continue reading the series. Thumbs up. ( )

It wasn't bad, but it's not a good sign when you get to page 20 and can see what the main plots and subplots are going to be. So I gave it up and am sending it back to the library, mostly unread.

RGG: Exciting fantasy read. The characters are engaging; the setting is cool, and the romances are heart-warming. The number of secondary characters and the familial relationships are numerous and may be confusing. And the diversity of sexual preferences seems a bit forced. Reading Interest: 14- YA

Interesting concept but I found the writing very low-quality, surprisingly so. Lots of explaining and too many characters whose motivations were like cardboard cutouts, and twists were telegraphed. Gave up on this one about halfway through. ( )

A young prospector stumbles across the desert, pursued by a bounty hunter. His only chance at escape is to squeeze past the singing trees--but if they touch him, he'll be dead in a day and turn into one of them.

The opening immediately hooked me, but the rest of the book takes place in a town and was really lacking in tension. The world building for this post apocalyptic YA novel is wonderfully imaginative: a sun flare stopped all machinery from working and changed life on earth. Now, every life form that survived has done so by adapting: rabbits broadcast fuzzy telepathic visions of vegetation where they are, cactii have blood-sucking tendrils, and humans sometimes acquire mutations when their hormone levels change. I loved all the off-hand introductions to how things work in this awesome (and far more dangerous) world.

What I didn't love were the characters or the plot. The characters are a quartet of teenagers: Ross, the loner prospector; Mia, the inventor with a crush on Ross; Jennie, who is stepping up to a leadership role in the Rangers but is torn between how well she spars with Ross and how long she's known fellow-Ranger Indra; Yuka, the only survivor of a city living in an aircraft carrier and now the only person in the village who speaks Japanese; and Felicite, the prim and manipulative daughter of the mayor. Frankly, it was too many view points and stories for a single book, and they all get shortchanged.

The plot was equally disappointing; there's no plot until the last few chapters, and then abruptly, randomly, the village is attacked. It felt disjointed, like the authors were trying to tell a low-key story about life in a post apocalyptic village and then felt the need to slap some Mad Max on at the end.

Much like Sherwood Smith's other books, the characters are a wide range of ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations, there are no predefined gender roles, and it's all presented without comment or undue attention, and it's lovely. I just wish the story or the characters had hooked me in more. ( )

Stranger is a YA novel set in a post-apocalyptic world where some people have gained what are essentially super powers. The story centers around the town of Las Anclas, where “Norms” and “Changed” live side by side, even if there’s often distrust and prejudice between the two groups. The balance in the town is shaken when a teenage prospector, Ross Juarez, shows up at the gates.

Stranger is told through five teenage POV characters. There’s Ross, Mia, Jennie, Yuki, and Felicite. Ross has been on his own his entire life and is only starting to learn how to trust. Mia’s the town’s mechanic, and Jennie’s her friend, a strong willed girl who’s both a ranger in training and an interim schoolteacher. Yuki’s a prince who washed up at Las Anclas years ago but wants to venture out to see the world. Felicite’s the mayor’s daughter, self serving and manipulating.

Going into Stranger, I was wary of the number of POV chapters. However, I think it worked. By switching between so many different characters, Stranger became more about the town itself and the community created there than any one person. I really liked this focus on community. Las Anclas might have its problems, but it is by and large a good place to live. This book isn’t about a group of teenagers fighting the evil government. It’s about a community trying to work together and what it means to be a part of that community.

Also note while is the remarkable diversity of characters. None of our POV characters are white, and racism (or sexism or homophobia) don’t seem to be major forces in Las Anclas. There’s also a number of characters who’d fall under the LGBTQ umbrella, such as Yuki, who has a male love interest. Stranger is also one of the only YA books I’ve seen that proposes polyamory as the solution to a love triangle. However, I do have some problems with the treatment of Mia’s sexual orientation.

At the beginning of the book, it really looks like Mia’s asexual and maybe aromantic. She doesn’t get sex, romance, or those passionate feelings everyone keeps talking about. She went on a date only once, because she didn’t want to have turned eighteen without ever having been on a date. She worried about the fact that she was different from everyone else and wondered if there was something wrong with her or if she was “broken.” Over the past year or so, I’ve realized that I was asexual and I could relate to a lot of what was going on with Mia. However, despite her depiction at the beginning of the book, Mia turns out not to be either asexual or aromantic. She starts having romantic feelings for a male character (but could still be asexual) when there’s this scene. It’s the middle of a thunderstorm and she sees her love interest in soaking wet clothes and “suddenly understands” that passion everyone else talks about. It’s possible that she’s demisexual, though the book never uses any sort of labels for its LGBTQ characters and I haven’t found any sort of statement from the authors about Mia’s sexual orientation. However, even if Mia is demisexual, I’m really disappointed and upset about how the book handled her, in a large part because of how her worries about “broken” are fixed by her experiencing sexual attraction. What does this say about people who are asexual? I doubt the authors meant to imply anything, but it’s still bothered me. I think it would have helped if the beginning “broken” narrative had been different, if it used the words, or if it had a character who was asexual among the supporting cast.

All that aside, my main problems with the book steam from lackluster pacing. It starts off fast, with Ross being chased through the desert. Then the action and tension abruptly fall off and the plot slows down. Things pick back up towards the end, but the climax didn’t really have enough build up. I think some of the book’s issues here are that it may be a primarily character focused novel in an action focused genre.

One of my favorite aspects of the book is the world building. There’s a sort of Western feel to the setting. There’s prospectors and sheriffs and many of the other familiar Western tropes, but there’s also squirrels with teleportation abilities and carnivorous trees made of glass. There’s so much imagination, and I loved the attention paid to little details.

I’m not sure if I’ll read the sequel to Stranger. Some of my uncertainty may be all the feelings I have surrounding the Mia situation, but the pacing problems also play a part. There are things that interested me about the book, but I haven’t decided yet if it’s worth expending time on the sequel.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. ( )

Meh. It is an interesting premise with a lot of promise, but the execution leaves something to be desired. There are a lot of plot holes. While some of those are intentional since this is the first in a series, the rest ruin the story’s continuity. The characters are simplistic and one-dimensional, never drawing a reader’s interest or empathy. The story does a fantastic job of promoting diversity and racial/gender/sexual equality, but the discrimination towards the Changed fails to elicit any deep discussion points. While it is not a horrible story, there are many other examples of well-written, thought-provoking dystopian YA fiction that are more worthy of one’s attention.

RGG: Exciting read. The characters are engaging; the setting is cool, and the romances are heart-warming. The number of secondary characters and the familial relationships are numerous and may be confusing. And the diversity of sexual preferences seems a bit forced. Reading Interest: 14- YA

This story takes place in the future years and years after a catastrophic occurrence that wiped out many people, changed the land, plants and animals. It also created in some people what is called "The change". This can be any type of mutation, seen or unseen.

The story takes place in the town of Las Anclas where 'norms' and 'the changed' live together. It is told by 5 different young adults, a couple have 'changed', a couple 'norms' and a Stranger that was found almost dead in the desert.

It is a story of struggle, comrades, coming of age in a hard time and war. The characters are all different from different backgrounds and the reader really gets to know them.

I understand this is #1 and there is going to be more. The second, Hostage, is next and I will be tracking down a copy of it. ( )

Interesting young adult fantasy Western set in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, where tensions between mutants (the Changed) and Norms drive part of the plot. The world-building is first-rate, and so are the characterizations.

But I almost stopped reading this a few pages in, because of eyestrain problems.

This is told from multiple viewpoints, with each character's chapters having a different font. It's an interesting decision--although probably unnecessary--but the implementation is quite annoying. Specifically, several of the fonts are rather difficult to read at length. The first one is the worst, to the point that after a few pages I flipped ahead to see if this font continued through the whole book. (If it had, I probably would have put the book down right then.) ( )

Postapocalyptic YA—in a world transformed by natural disaster and the appearance of strange mutations that change humans, plants, and animals physically and psychically, a stranger comes to town. And kind of gets nailed to a tree, or at least has a tree try to grow out of his blood. The singing trees that eat people are pretty interesting and I’d like to know more about them. Tensions between apparently unaltered humans and altered ones are a significant part of the plot, but it’s also about growing up, figuring out who you are in a world that mostly doesn’t care and also wants to kill you, and falling in love. Lots of ethnic and sexual diversity; one real Mean Girl complicates the protagonists’ lives within the town, but to her credit when the town faces an outside threat she works with everyone else instead of being dumb about it. ( )

For more reviews, Cover Snark and more, visit A Reader of Fictions.

When the offer of Stranger came to me, I almost said no. My hopes were low. I only accepted because of my infernal, unquenchable curiosity and how interesting Stranger sounded. The blurb I saw then mentioned “squirrels that can teleport sandwiches out of picnickers’ hands,” and it was that part which made me incapable of not giving Stranger a try. Even so, I was afraid. There are a lot of dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA novels that sounded amazing but left me underwhelmed at best. After so many let downs, I hardly feel interest in these genres anymore. I am, however, very glad that I gave Stranger a shot, because it’s a truly delightful post-apocalyptic novel with fascinating world building, a diverse cast, and an intriguing plot.

If you follow my reviews, you probably know that I adore books about people with powers. Stranger is totally awesome in this regard. The short version is that radiation from the sun affected the world, sending it into a post-apocalyptic state. Some people have undergone The Change, meaning that they are no longer ordinary humans. The Change happens at some point of hormonal upheaval in the body, like adolescence, menopause, or pregnancy (which totally means women will probably develop badass powers more often). The powers range from completely useless (like a guy who can grow little horns out of his head) to totally epic (like Jennie who is telekinetic). The powers are a total luck of the draw and there’s a lot of creativity in the various things people can do. What I like here is that the results of the change are not the same superpowers in every book.

The other difference from other superhuman books is that nature has been affected as well. Now, I know that’s not totally new either, but again I thought it was done so well. There are these singing trees that throw out crystal shards that kill the victim, turning it into a new tree, which takes on the color of the victim’s clothing or hide. There are rattlesnakes the size of a person. Terrifying creatures have sometimes evolved to look cute and fluffy. The world is recognizable, but everything’s askew. It’s a terrifying world to imagine living in but cinematic and fascinating to read about.

Stranger opens with Ross, the titular stranger, running away from a bounty hunter. The hook totally caught me. The opening chapter establishes the harshness of the landscape really well and sets up how wonderful Las Anclas is. Once Los Angeles, Las Anclas is now sort of like an old western town with some steampunk flair and superpowers. Life in Las Anclas isn’t easy, but they’ve carved out fairly safe, happy lives for themselves. The community has a lot of predictable tension between norms (those unchanged) and the changed. Even so, they seem to be working through that and I found myself really rooting for this town, hoping that the narrow-minded people would see the light and embrace changed and norms alike.

Though I enjoyed basically everything about Stranger, my favorite aspect of the book is the diversity. There’s diversity and then there’s this book. It’s pretty much like I’m used to any urban environment being. There are people from so many different racial backgrounds and not a one of them is defined by their race. Even better, there are both gay and lesbian couples in Las Anclas, and they’re accepted without any judgment. I am so thrilled to read a futuristic novel where, though a lot of stuff is still shit, equality has been gaining ground. Also, the gay couple is basically the cutest thing ever. I ship it. AND, if that wasn’t enough, I swear that there’s possibly going to be a totally canon three-person-couple; I’m not entirely sure if I ship that, but it does have potential. Oh, also, women are in all sorts of respected positions in this town; sexism is pretty much gone too. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

Stranger is told in alternating third person perspectives. Ross, Mia and Jennie get the most focus, but a couple of other characters get points of view as well. I thought the rotating POVs were easy to track and all interesting. One of the aspects I didn’t like as much initially was Felicité, who is just the worst. However, it seems like Brown and Smith are planning to develop her from more than a bigoted bully, which would be fabulous; she could end up having an amazing character arc. It’s easy to love Mia or Jennie, but if they can make me love Felicité by the end, I’ll be impressed. My personal favorite is probably Yuki, mostly because I’m really hoping that “Prince Yuki” is a reference to my favorite manga, Fruits Basket. I also love Jennie’s POV for the realistic relationship struggles with which she’s dealing.

The world building is rather minimal with regards to how the world came to be as it is. For the most part, I was fine with that, since so much time had gone by from the cataclysm and records weren’t really kept. However, I did find the blaming of the backwardness of society on technology a bit frustrating. While it does make sense to have books hard to find because of the popularity of e-readers, I’m getting really tired of that being a plot point in every post-apocalyptic. There’s also a reference to people forgetting how to write by hand because of computers. These things could definitely happen, but they’ve shown up so often that I’m personally over it.

Stranger was a wonderful surprise and has definitely restored some of my faith in the post-apocalyptic YA genre. I am so excited for the next book in the series, though I’ll have to settle in for a long wait. ( )