Elected

by Rori Shay

Overview

It's the year 2185, and in two weeks, Aloy will turn eighteen and take her father's place as president of the country. But to do so, she must masquerade as a boy to avoid violating the Eco-Accords, four treaties designed to bring the world back from the brink of environmental extinction. Aloy hopes to govern like her father, but she is inheriting a different country. The long concealed Technology Faction is stepping out of the shadows, and as turmoil grows within her country, cryptic threats also arrive from beyond their borders.

As she struggles to lead, Aloy maintains her cover by marrying a woman, meanwhile battling feelings for the boy who knows her secret--the boy who is somehow connected to her country's recent upheaval. When assassination attempts add to the turmoil, Aloy doesn't know whom to trust. She understood leadership required sacrifice. She just didn't realize the sacrifice might be her life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732047907
Publisher:	Rori Shay Author
Publication date:	04/01/2018
Series:	Elected , #1
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Rori Shay is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). She lives with her husband, kids, and two proficient hair-shedders: Misch the cat and Gerry the 90-lb black lab. Rori studied public relations and marketing at the University of Maryland and received an MBA from George Washington University. She enjoys travelling, running, reading, pumpkin-picking, and snow-shoeing!

Editorial Reviews

"Wildly original, with a writing style to die for." Lindsay Cummings, author of The Murder Complex

"Thrilling and smart--I couldn't stop reading this mesmerizing adventure!" Debra Shigley, author of The Go-Getter Girl's Guide and guest contributor on The Today Show

"Rori Shay has expertly crafted a world of tenderness and deprivation, where well-meaning people debate the merits of war and technology and love. It is a world you will believe in, and one that you won't be ready to leave." Nancy Grossman, author of A World Away

"ELECTED was an interesting and unique take on a dystopian future that I haven't encountered before. I stayed up way too late because I kept saying, "just one more chapter." Janine K. Spendlove, author of War of the Seasons

From the Publisher

2020-04-29
This first installment of a YA SF trilogy introduces a teenage girl in North America’s post-apocalyptic future who must masquerade as a boy to serve as the absolute leader of an isolated realm.

In Shay’s dystopian tale, it is 2185, more than a century after climate change, mass extinctions, and nuclear war ravaged Earth. Surviving nations, facing shortages, infertility, and cancer cutting down populations, have agreed to “Eco-Crisis Accords” that pledge rollbacks on all that brought about civilization’s ruin. Now, they forbid electricity and other advanced technology, international travel, and representational democracy. Instead of parliaments and congresses, an “Elected” family serves 100-year terms, with men taking charge at age 18 to enforce the Accords. In struggling, cloistered East Country—which includes what used to be Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake Bay—first-person narrator Aloy and her dynasty occupy the White House, enjoying veneration, food, and no-longer-manufactured medication. But there is a price. The girl’s heir-apparent brother, Evan, ran away, leaving the inner circle no choice but to disguise Aloy as a boy, complete with an arranged fiancee, Vienne. Dutifully, Aloy ascends to the office of Elected on her 18th birthday and prepares for the sham marriage to the lovely, faithful Vienne while also earning the respect of the populace by fighting rising discontent from a faction that demands restoration of industry. In addition, outsiders may be causing trouble on the border. While there are plenty of intriguing ingredients in this YA hero-fronted novel, the story does take sexual elements, including the Sapphic, a bit beyond the usual PG-13 territory. (But nothing gets graphic, as it seems Aloy, while educated in everything else, has never been taught exactly how babies are made.) There are abundant incidents and crises packed into a fairly tight page count. It makes a bit of a difference that the antagonists—at least in this installment—are not Hunger Games–style sadistic elite castes or power-mad dictators. They are just people in extreme circumstances trying to do the morally correct things for the greater good to flourish, even when devotion to duty means deceit and cruelty (plus some evidently great sex). A big to-be-continued hangs over the finale.

This gender-fluid tale opens a dystopian series on a high note.

Kirkus Reviews