by Ann Aguirre
Part of Razorland
First published 2011
Deuce has spent her whole life underground, in a enclave carved out beneath the ruins of New York City. On her fifteenth birthday she earns her name and her blades, becoming a Huntress, one of the fighters who patrols the tunnels and holds back the Freaks. She is paired with Fade, a Hunter who carries something rare: actual memories of the world above. On a routine patrol, Deuce and Fade find the neighboring enclave wiped out. The Freaks did it, and something about the attack looks deliberate. Organized. The elders do not want to hear it. When Deuce refuses to stay quiet, she and Fade are cast out of the only home she has ever known. Now she has to learn to live Topside, in daylight she has never seen, moving through the wreckage of a city where the few surviving people have formed violent gangs. Fade knows some of this world from childhood, but his memories are old and the city is dangerous. Deuce was built for the dark. Surviving in the open is a different fight entirely, and she has to figure out who she is outside the rules she was raised on.
Genres: science-fiction, dystopia, adventure, coming-of-age, young-adult, post-apocalyptic
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful
Tropes: coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water, forced-proximity, found-family
Setting: New York City, Underground Enclave, Topside
259 pages · Hardcover · Feiwel & Friends
Content warnings: death, violence