The Scorpion Rules

Dear Simon & Schuster, who sent me this advance copy: thank you for nothing. Now I have to endure what will be at least a year (probably two) before I can get my grimy hands on the sequel to this. Yes, I entered the giveaway so I brought this on myself but some sort of warning label (especially for those with heart conditions who could die from the anticipaction) should have plastered the cover...

On a painfully realized dystopian earth, nations submit to control by UN robots who were formerly human and each country's leader sends thier children to be raised in a robot-monitored boarding school-cum-hippie farming commune, where they serve as hostages against the possibility of more wars. Princess Greta lives in one of these prefectures in the wilds of Saskatchewan with her cohort of six, plus the younger children of other world leaders, some comic livestock and plenty of disciplinarian spider bots. This is the set up for the most amazingly marvelous sci-fi tale I have read in years. By turns horrifying and hysterically absurd, Greta's journey of self-realization is twined with the arrival of reality in a very tangible way for the whole class.

I already started to read it again. Erin Bow needs to be my new best friend immediately so I can steal a draft of the next volume when she isn't looking.