The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer
The common treads between Colfer's Artemis Fowl series and The Supernaturalist are threefold. Both have science fiction in the form of advanced technology, plus fantasy with magical beings inhabiting the novel. Both include ecological messages.
In The Supernaturalist, we meet teen orphan Cosmo on the day he escapes the Institute where he has spent his whole life as a test subject for products of all kind. Society doesn't care about these kids, nor do the guards paid to keep them in line. Cosmo knows the average resident at the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys is dead before the age of sixteen. He is fourteen. Even with no knowledge of how to survive on the outside, when opportunity presents itself Cosmo runs.
In his escape, Cosmo falls from a roof. Before he blacks out, he sees a little blue creature on his chest. When he awakes, he is at the illegal head quarters of three young people who fight the blue creatures. They took him because he was mumbling about blue beings when they arrived.
The Supernaturalists tell Cosmo the blue creatures feed off the energy of injuried and dying humans. Since most humans do not see them, the Spotters fight the best they can while also staying under the government's radar. Cosmo joins them, having no where else to turn anyway. They give him a mission and, for the first time, a family.
The novel is a perfect dystopia tale for the teenage reader. Each character has depth drawn on the backdrop of life in a city run as a for-profit business. Is it wrong that I smiled at shades of classic apocalyptic movies The Omega Man (scary creatures, scarier diseases), Soylent Green (processed food stuff might not be so great for you) and Mad Max (dirty and fend for yourself)?
I wasn't glad the group of characters had to endure so much, simply glad young readers will be exposed to science fiction concepts so important to the genre. I expect today's Colfer readers to be tomorrows consumers demanding science fiction to feed the mind. With any luck, some of those kids will even write some science fiction.
Great review! I swear, I was just asking a friend if she had ever heard of Soylent Green just yesterday...she thought I was strange! lol!!
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I grew up with that movie along with so much old school science fiction. You've got to rent and watch with your friend.
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