Pandora Jones: Deception by Barry Jonsberg

Pan is still struggling to distinguish between her dreams and reality. When she wakes in the Infirmary her mind replays the sight of Nate running along the shoreline and the way his body froze and then flopped after he was shot. But her memories hold more questions than answers and she doesn't know who to trust.

When she forms an unlikely alliance with Jen to try to make sense of everyone's haunting similar memories and the conflicting information about The School, she finds herself with unexpected enemies.

Pan and Jen are determined to seek the truth - no matter what rules they must break or how terrible the danger they face. But can they even trust each other?

I'm not a big reader of dystopian novels, possibly because I'm not a big reader of series (and with all modern YA dystopian novels it seems there's an unspoken rule that there must be at least three books to complete the story arc). I like things to be resolved by the end of the book, and I find there's a tendency with series for the books in the middle to be duller than the first and last book. Nothing is being established, but nothing's being resolved, either, but readers keep reading because they've already committed so much time to the characters and the story (a classic example of this is The Two Towers, which is easily the most boring Lord of the Rings book. I much preferred The Hobbit, and it annoys me that they're turning one great self-contained story into I-don't-know-how-many drawn-out films). I am possibly prejudiced towards series, and I'm sure there are plenty of series that don't let down in the middle. I just lack the attention span.

In fact, I'm so rubbish at reading series that I didn't even read the first Pandora Jones book. I thought I had. A couple of chapters in, I realised I hadn't. I was quite involved at that stage and couldn't quite bring myself to stop reading, find the first book, read that, and then come back to where I was up to (I don't think it mattered all that much, in the end). I was excited to read it because it's Australian dystopian YA and I believe that all books written by Australians are by default better than all other books. I have a lot book prejudice. It's a real problem. That said, there's nothing especially Australian about it - The School, where Pan is being kept, is on a very non-specific island, far from her home (or, what was her home, before the majority of the human population got wiped out by a plague).

Jen's the best. Jen's my favourite character. I think it's great that there are now more YA novels that feature non-hetero characters, in stories that aren't centrally about being LGBTQI (YA novels that are centrally about LGBTQI are great, too!). I also loved that both central characters were girls, and both were tough and had practical skills (I entirely lack both toughness and practical skills so I like living vicariously through fictional characters who are action heroines). The quiet menace of the School and its staff is terrific, and the fact that both the characters and the reader know so little about the School's motives and what's actually going on means that suspense is maintained even when the pace slows a little.

The ending is the sort of ending that makes you sit still with the book closed for five minutes, amazed, and then attempt to explain the entire book and the excellent concept and the awesome ending to all nearby humans (complete with acting out scenes and manic hand gestures), so that they, too, can be amazed. Which of course never works particularly well because explaining a book to someone is nowhere near the same experience as actually reading the book. But still. (Do other people do this? This is possibly a weird thing to do.) If you like dystopian YA, I reckon you'll like this. It's speculative, with a fair chunk of science fiction and lots of action, but the character development and interaction keeps it believable.

Pandora Jones: Deception on the publisher's website