![]() In some cases, it wasn’t just the pressure to get straight A’s, but rather the pressure to be the top student in the class - academic excellence at the expense of your classmates. I don’t know how the situation is in North America, but growing up in Asia, the pressure to succeed academically was intense. I also remember hearing horrific stories when I was younger of Japanese students about my age who would literally kill themselves over failing marks. Real life, thankfully, doesn’t have such deadly consequences… Or does it? I recently read an article about a Chinese man who literally worked himself to death. On the other hand, I remember well the intense pressure not just to do well in school, but to be one of the best. Wouldn’t it make more sense to utilize the brainpower of all the smartest people in the country, rather than whittle them down? On one hand, it doesn’t really make sense for a government to, as in The Testing, force the best and brightest in the land to undergo potentially lethal tests, possibly even kill each other. More significantly, The Testing is a fascinating critique of the academic system and the pressures children face to do well in school. How often have I gone through this exact scene myself? Charbonneau has brought the YA dystopia home. ![]() I have always been a complete nerd, so this scene definitely struck a chord in me. Almost always my first instinct will be the correct one. And yet, I hear my parents’ voices inside my head. Did I answer the questions too fast? Did my hurrying cause me to give incorrect or incomplete answers? My fingers itch to open the cover so I can fix the mistakes I must have made. Ten minutes remain in the testing period. My eyes are sore and my body numb with fatigue when I finish and realize the clock is still ticking. It’s not easy to make a scene with teenagers taking tests exciting, but Charbonneau pulls it off. Imagine if Tris from Divergenthad chosen Erudite rather than Dauntless (personally, I’m Team Erudite all the way) - finally, finally, in Charbonneau’s book, nerds get their moment in the sun. And while later stages of the Testing process test the application of this knowledge, the initial stages of competition literally have the teenagers filling out test booklets with essay answers. In contrast, The Testing stands out by positing an intellectual battle - in order to win, characters must remember their lessons in mathematics, history and science. I especially love the academic twist on the story - many of post- Hunger Games dystopias have gone for the high action type of battle, likely because that’s a natural page turner. Charbonneau writes well, and I found myself almost unable to put it down. ![]() That being said, I actually really enjoyed this book. There’s even a love story, though thankfully no love triangle: during the Testing the protagonist Cia falls in love with Tomas, a handsome boy from her hometown, but can she trust him? A Goodreads review called this Hunger Games: School Edition, and I think that sums it up pretty well. Then you get the story: a group of teenagers fight to the death to get one of the twenty spots in University, where a degree will get them a good job and lift their families out of poverty. I see how jacket artist Sammy Yuen used elements from the story to create the cover, but seriously, anyone else take a look at this and get a sense of deja vu? That being said, you get a book like Joelle Charbonneau’s The Testing and realize publishers and authors aren’t even trying to distinguish themselves from The Hunger Games anymore. Similarly, to say a book is like The Hunger Games just because of certain elements is to discount the originality of these other writers and their influences. To compare any kick ass heroine to Katniss Everdeen discounts the depth of Katniss’s experiences, a level of emotional trauma, of raw, absolutely raw, honesty that I have yet to experience in any of these other dystopian YA trilogies. Often, the comparison of these trilogies to The Hunger Games is a disservice both to the new trilogy and to Suzanne Collins’ work. It’s almost as if authors and publishers want to cash in on a trend before badly written erotica takes over the market. Love triangle? Check, unless the author decides she’s too cool for love triangles and fans proudly trumpet the absence of such. And not just any type of dystopian YA trilogy. Ever since The Hunger Gamesmade it big, publishers have been churning out one dystopian YA trilogy after another.
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