For those who aren’t familiar, the novel takes place in a breeding colony deep underground after a gamma ray explosion destroys the earth’s ozone layer and mankind is near extinction. In this vast underground fortress, one human is born every day and one dies every day. This is their destiny… or so what they are told.
What interested me about the book is the breeding colony itself, good dystopias must have a setting that take your breath away, settings that make you shake your head and whisper, ‘whoa…’. The colony, or the city has no name and that’s OK, its nameless setting provokes thought in the brainbox and when you start to imagine how this colony was built and how everything works, it’s a lot to take in. Happily, Sue Yockney doesn’t explain how the colony was designed or what components go into what which of course would make for boring backstory. Instead, she describes the main places of interest where the reader is such as the Museum & Archive building or the SRU Headquarters. The whole book has a whiff of ‘Brave New World’ which I like a lot but it’s the young adult cast that steals the show.
The dystopian setting must always be a character in itself in these sort of books, but the cast themselves must be equally as impressive. Meet Jonathan and Sarah, the two protagonists. They are both eighteen and when Jonathan forgets to take his Supplement, what he thinks are healthy tablets, he begins to experience the signs of puberty and therein lies the love story. Not only does the book handle a well thought out story and setting but it’s is dual-narrative, not something I’ve ever read before. The short and snappy chapters rotate between Jonathan and Sarah and sometimes you get two perspectives of one scene which makes for excellent reading.
‘Happy Deathday’ is a love story set in a dystopian world. You may say that Sue Yockney has injected some ‘Nineteen-Eighty Four’ in the book with all the secrecy behind their meetings in a colony under constant surveillance but ‘Happy Deathday’ also has a love triangle, the third being the SRU leader, Zack. His character is easy to dislike and what’s great about these three characters is that they show so much of the teenage naivety that many of us have probably gone through. When there’s a girl in the picture, boys tend to think irrationally and muddy their own personalities and Jonathan is just such a boy. When Sarah’s mad, he’s not quite sure what to do and Zack displays the telltale signs of a jealous bully who must have his own way. Jonathan and Sarah begin to peel away a deeper understanding of Zack’s obsession of Sarah and there are many times when the two protagonists stumble into ‘Scooby-Doo’ territory when they don their detective caps, the quote, ‘those meddling kids!’ popped into my head a few times, which isn’t a bad thing at all.
If there was one negative point, I’d say that the dialogue lacked a bit of brutality. More than once a punchy, sinister line could make a scene and for me at least, I was left waiting for the breakpoint. It might be because the dystopias and sci-fi novels I’ve read were designed for adults so edgy dialogue would be expected but despite that, the tense moments are still thrilling, and I’m not even a fan of romance!
To sum up then, ‘Happy Deathday’ is something quite special. If you’ve read ‘Brave New World’, I think you’ll spot the faint resemblance which is good. This book has an idea I’m sure many readers will face-palm and say ‘why didn’t I think of that!’ The characters are outstanding, characters you can picture and people you can root for even if you don’t like them, they were probably the characters you weren’t supposed to. And isn’t that what characters should do anyway? The underground city is a great place to be (in the book at least!) and the questions it presents about human preservation and teenage anxieties are relevant today, poignant and demanding of answers. Quality read.
Nick Barton is a YA writer on a quest to finish every book on his never-ending list of books to read. When he’s not playing Skyrim, he’s either writing new stories or editing a YA novel in the hopes to have it published sometime in 2014. He blogs and posts book reviews on nickbartonauthor.co.uk
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