DISCONNECTED

A girl born without authorization in a computer-regulated, high-tech dictatorship of the future struggles to persevere in Cross’ YA SF novel.

In the future, a Brave New World – –like technocratic metropolis called Unity has evolved amidst the ashes of human civilization that surrounds it. Unity is micromanaged by an omnipotent AI called Auto that regulates social order and (especially) procreation and the development of new citizens. Chiara was disadvantaged from birth: Her parents met and fell in love willingly—the second disobedient generation of her lineage to do so—and consequently the girl suffers the “Anomaly” stigma. Scorned by her teachers, robot guardians, and other minions of Auto, Chiara finds herself on her own after her mother, Elara, and father, Martin, perish in a mysterious industrial explosion (she loses her grandfather in even murkier circumstances). As an honors student, inventor, and hacker, Chiara wants to prove the naysayers wrong and ascend to Unity’s most elite ranks. But first she must undergo a risky surgical procedure to strengthen her online link to the “DataStream”; a major transgression or failure to serve Unity usefully can mean banishment outside the city to languish among the dreaded “Streamless,” “discarded people and robots living outside Unity’s walls” who are routinely harvested and killed to provide Auto’s subjects with fresh organs. The novel is split rather neatly in half, the opening set in the sterile perfection of the city, the latter section in the anarchic, dirty, and toxic environs outside. In both arenas, the hero must determine who is friend and who is foe. Chiara is also faced with a wildly contrasting choice of potential boyfriends. As the action ramps up in the lively finale and the stakes escalate to determine the very fate of humanity itself, invested readers should enjoy the ride, though some of the ingredients might have a strong whiff of cyber–déjà vu.

An engaging adventure in the world of YA dystopian cyberpunk, even if the program code is familiar.