I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I mean, it’s asking for trouble, isn’t it? People who live in glass houses and all that. But Amazon recommended me a young adult dystopian book the other day, and out of curiosity I clicked on ‘See Inside’. I won’t name the book or the author (I do have that much decency) – I will only say that this is no indie book, but a bestseller from a respected publisher, with actual paper and a jacket and stuff. Not to mention an Editor who gets paid money.

Anyway, I read the free extract. And in squared brackets below you can eavesdrop on my brain as it reacted.

CHAPTER ONE
Graduation day.

I can hardly stand still as my mother straightens my celebratory red tunic

[Ouch. Clumsy exposition in ‘celebratory’. We don’t say ‘celebratory academic gown’. Just say ‘red tunic’ and tell us the significance of it later.]

and tucks a strand of light brown hair behind my ear.

[And that’s clunky self-description. Makes me wonder whose light brown hair it is – yours, or your spaniel’s? And why is this a good moment to mention your unremarkable hair colour?]

Finally she turns me and I look in the reflector

[Reflector? Truly? They rename mirrors in the future? Of course they do, that’s how they know it’s the future. ‘Mirror’ just wasn’t doing the job.]

on our living area wall.

[They renamed ‘room’ as well. Excuse me, I think I need to visit the batharea.]

Red. I’m wearing red. No more pink. I am an adult. Seeing evidence of that tickles my stomach.

[Is this really your first evidence? You don’t look in that reflector much.]

“Are you ready, Cia?” my mother asks. She too is wearing red, although her dress is made of a gossamer fabric that drapes to the floor in soft swirls. Next to her, my sleeveless dress

[what happened to tunic?]

and leather boots look childish, but that’s okay. I have time to grow into my adult status.

[Does anyone really talk/think like that about themselves? What’s wrong with ‘I guess I’ll grow up properly in time’?]

I’m young for it at sixteen. The youngest by far in my class.

I take one last look in the reflector

[Thank God]

and hope that today is not the end of my education, but I have no control over that. Only a dream that my name will be called for The Testing. Swallowing hard, I nod. “Let’s go.”

Graduation is held in the colony square

[They renamed mirrors and rooms but couldn’t dream up a name for the colony square]

among the stalls filled with baked goods

[curiously unspecific]

and fresh milk because the school isn’t large enough to hold all the people who will attend. The entire colony attends graduation, which only makes sense since everyone in the colony is related to at least one of the students crossing over to adulthood or celebrating their promotion to the next grade.

[Did you really have to bore me with that?]

This year is the largest graduating class the Five Lakes Colony has had. Eight boys, six girls. A clear sign the colony is thriving.

[How small is this damn school if you can’t fit in the relatives of 14 kids? Should you maybe have given us a better reason for using the ‘colony square’ for this ceremony? Or, heck, just asked us to accept that this is where it happens. Because we would have, y’know.]

My father and four brothers, all dressed in ceremonial adult purple,

[Ceremoniously colour-coded for our convenience]

are waiting for us outside our dwelling.

[Dwelling! Is there some sci-fi/fantasy taboo against saying house or home?]

My oldest brother, Zeen

[named after a batharea cleaning product?]

shoots me a smile and ruffles my hair. “Are you ready to be done with school and get out into the real world with the rest of us slobs?”

[I pity the up-and-coming heart-throb who has to spout that exposition – no wait, it’s not even exposition, it’s just hammering home exposition already laid on with a shovel – in the inevitable movie adaptation.]

My mother frowns.

I laugh.

[Now you’re just wasting paper.]

Zeen and my other brothers are definitely not slobs. In fact, girls practically throw themselves at them.

[And that was literally a cliché.]

But while my brothers aren’t immune to flirting, none of them seems interested in settling down. They’re more interested in creating the next hybrid tomato plant than starting a family. Zeen most of all. He’s tall, blond, and smart.

[Being tall and blond makes you that much more keen on hybrid tomato plants.]

Very, very smart. And yet he never got chosen for The Testing. The thought takes away the shine from the day. Perhaps that’s the first rule I will learn as an adult—that you can’t always get what you want.

[Ah. You were a spoilt child.]

Zeen must have wanted to continue on to the University—to follow in Dad’s footsteps. He must know what I’m feeling. For a moment, I wish I could talk to him.

[He’s your BROTHER. And you told us you live in a miniscule community. Has he had headphones on for the past two years?]

Ask him how he got through the disappointment that most likely is awaiting me. Our colony will be lucky to have one student chosen for The Testing — if any at all.

[Just think about the arithmetic of that for one second. Or any at all.]

It has been ten years since the last student from Five Lakes was chosen. I’m good at school, but there are those who are better. Much better.

[There are just 14 in your class. You said you were good. Did you mean average?]

What chance do I have?

[The suspense is killing me.]

Oh, I could go on. But life is too short. Why have I stooped so low as to do this? It’s not for any pleasure I get in ripping apart the work of some other writer, who’s no doubt only doing what they love. I have written far, far worse than that in my time. The only difference is, those early books of mine were never published. Thank God.

I just find it… interesting. I mean, with that book having an Editor, and that Editor being paid money an’ all. I can’t help wondering whether that Editor was maybe uploading their favourite recipes to Pinterest when this book passed by their desk. Either that, or they just thought: ‘Futuristic book about teens in dystopia killing each other. Yup, that’ll probably sell by the bucketload on both sides of the Atlantic, however poorly it reads.’

And you know what? They were right.

Nick Green