Expiration Day

February 3, 2014
It’s 2049, and with most of humanity rendered mysteriously infertile, immaculately realistic robotic children called teknoids serve as outlets for adults’ stymied parental urges. Tania Deeley grows up believing she’s one of the few human children left. First-time novelist Powell gets the obvious twist—that Tania herself is a teknoid—out of the way early, focusing instead on the dilemmas that result. If Tania isn’t a real person, why can she perform music, grieve the dead, and even fall in love? And what happens to Tania when her parents’ 18-year lease on her ends? This story covers an unusually long span of time and comes out the stronger for it. The chatty 11-year-old who begins this diary-style novel is very different from the determined 17-year-old who ends it, but the transition is natural, and the essence of Tania’s voice stays true. Sometimes the exposition gets clunky, as in a weighty testimony about teknoid history and neurobiology toward the end of the book, but Tania’s creativity, pathos, and personality prove that she’s just as much a person as any flesh-and-blood human. Ages 13–up.

March 15, 2014
In this coming-of-age diary, a girl navigates life in a dystopic near-future. By the year 2049, the world has become a rather unfriendly place for humans and robots alike. England is divided into color-coded zones, parts of the African continent are shadowed in mystery, and very few humans are still able to procreate. Any woman who can conceive and make it past the first trimester is whisked off to live as a Mother. The global robotics giant Oxted has filled the familial void with the teknoid, "an android that specifically looks like a child." Teknoids are upgraded several times to mimic growing children before the company reclaims them around the 18th birthdays, provided that the parents can maintain the illusion and never enter the Uncanny Valley of disbelief. Through the diary of Tania Deeley, Powell has created a terrifyingly plausible future. Readers follow Tania through six years of her adolescence, as she realizes she's a teknoid, finds love, embraces grief and ultimately discovers her own humanity. The author pays homage to the genre's giants while combining realistic characters (both human and android) and detailed worldbuilding with an unpredictably optimistic conclusion. In the end, the thoughtful balance of narrative and description and the well-paced plot are marred only by a mildly distracting subplot that unreels in interstitial "Intervals." An auspicious debut. (Science fiction. 13 & up)

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May 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-It's the year 2049, and human fertility has drastically declined worldwide. On the brink of a societal collapse, the Oxted Corporation developed teknoids, highly sophisticated robots that stand in for children and are leased to surrogate parents. These teknoids are virtually indistinguishable from human children, and society has become relatively normalized to their presence. This is the world that 11-year-old Tania Deeley inhabits. As she starts secondary school, she begins to wonder which of her friends and classmates are human and which are robots. Even scarier, teknoids are returned to the Oxted Corporation on their 18th birthdays-they are truly children without a future. As Tania moves through adolescence, she begins to rebel more and more against a society in which teknoids are second-class citizens who are "deactivated" at age 18. This is an in-depth exploration into a dystopian society and what it truly means to be human, with many universal teen themes as well: music, romance, body image, family issues. Tania and her friends have believably complex relationships, with the added stress of figuring out who is and is not a teknoid and what that means for relationships. Taking place over several years, the story line, told through diary entries, moves at an uneven pace at times, especially as it races (confusingly) to the end. Still, fans of sci-fi and dystopian fiction will appreciate this tale.-Jenny Berggren, formerly at New York Public Library

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2014
Grades 8-11 In 2049, almost all humans are infertile. Tania has always been told that she is a raritya human girlin an age when most children are teknoids, sophisticated androids built by Oxted Corporation to console the childless and reduce the riots that ensued when hope for the future was lost. When Tania returns to school after the summer, she notices that her best friend has changed, but are those changes natural or upgrades purchased from Oxted? Will she be able to figure out what is human and what is not before the teknoids' designated expiration daytheir collective eighteenth birthday? Though this debut novel's premisethat without the ability to have children all of civilization would go insaneis at times unbelievable, it nonetheless raises very interesting and meaningful questions about philosophy, humanity, personal choice, and feminism, which could lead to rich discussions. Hand this title to fans of Margaret Atwood's classic, The Handmaid's Tale (1986), and Veronica Roth's Divergent (2011).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)