Stop with the Dystopian YA Novels

I love The Hunger Games. It's hard for me to find people who genuinely dislike The Hunger Games and those that do usually say it's due to a dislike for the typical dystopian "young adult" novels or media, which is completely understandable. I only got into The Hunger Games through the movies before later going on to read the books and what I found fascinating wasn't just the story, it was the world.

In fact the world of Panem has a lot of connections to the real world and it is the little passages we get about the world from Collins that bring about a lot of interpretations and fascination. However, even I know that there are quite a lot of issues with The Hunger Games as a story, from its predictability, plot holes, love triangle (which I'll get to another time), and more.

But even with all those flaws, I can look beyond that and enjoy it.

Then comes in Divergent.

Granted, I've only read the first book and I only did so when I came across the film, that and its sequel Insurgent. But I can already see what's starting to happen and despite the director's claims that the first film wasn't The Hunger Games, Divergent is just generic.

It's another young adult novel about a dystopian society and deals with themes of maturity, adult authority, corrupt government, features a female protagonist, a romance, is based heavily around a caste system. Do you see the issue now? And sure, there are ways that there could be a novel or series that takes these ingredients for a story and switches them around, changing them in order to be more interesting or even a counterpart to other media such as The Hunger Games.

How interesting would it be to see a similar story of The Hunger Games unfold but it's from the position of someone who is privileged in society. Perhaps someone that is a similar age to Katniss Everdeen or Beatrice Prior (the protagonist of Divergent) that is the child of the leader of this dystopian society and is forced to defend his family because that's all they now of.

But that's the problem. Though dystopia has produced some amazing work in literature from Orwell's 1984 to Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, it's disappointing to see it beginning a cycle to appeal to young adults. What's even more disappointing is that authors think that teenagers want to read re-runs of The Hunger Games as opposed to seeing something new, as if they're too dumb to really trust anything unique.

I don't know how dystopia will change in the future. Maybe there will be more young adult novels that will go out of their way to explore many different themes. However, it's just my concern that certain authors are going to keep beating on a dead horse so that they might try to get a quick movie deal and great success.

I want to see new novels that feature someone who is forced on the side of the government. Someone who is neither in the rebellion or the overzealous government. Maybe even a rebellion where they are portraying the government far worse than anyone could ever imagine and secretly want to establish a government that treats a certain sect of people better than anyone else.

This is the type of dystopia that I'd love to see more of! Heck, even something where it's a typical young adult novel but the government actually wins in the end.

In ten years I'd be surprised if anyone even remembers Divergent, I'd much rather hope that they remember their sequels (because surprisingly the sequels seem to try and break away from The Hunger Games mould). People still remember 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, and I bet people are going to remember The Hunger Games.

If anything, for at least being the first to establish the dystopian young adult recipe that so many authors try to make but only end up with books that crash and burn.

Here's hoping to better dystopian novels in the future.