Starters - Lissa Price

Published by Doubleday/Random House Children's Books: London, Great Britain, 2012.
Followed by 'Enders.'

This book with a weird and striking cover has been sitting on my classroom bookshelf for a while. I decided just to browse it to see if it was suitable to keep in the classroom, and got a lot more caught up in the plot than I expected.

Set in a dystopian future, the world of Starters is one where a virus has decimated the population, leaving only the elderly (or 'Enders') and young people (or 'Starters') behind. This interesting dynamic is explained because those were the two groups most vulnerable to a coming biological attack, and therefore were the groups first immunized against it. The power dynamic is heavily weighted on the side of Enders, with enough medical breakthroughs meaning that they can live for a few hundred years, and laws passed meaning that they are the only ones who can vote, or work. Starters are second-class citizens, and those who have lost both parents in the biological attack are left without resources, either being put into orphanages or roaming the streets.

Our main character, Callie, is one of those on the streets. She has a younger brother, Tyler, who is not as strong as her, and requires the aid of both Callie and her friend Michael to survive. In order to earn enough money to get them off the streets forever, Callie agrees to sign up at 'Prime Destinations' to be a body donor, allowing Enders to 'rent' her body three times - meaning that she is put to sleep and then an Ender's mind is put into her body for an agreed time. The first two rentals are short-term, with the last being scheduled for a month, after which Callie will be free to go with a small fortune.

This is weird enough, but during the long-term rental Callie regains consciousness within her body, and begins to uncover a number of conspiracies, including one to do with Prime Destinations itself.

The book is action packed, a little violent at times, and has a very mild romantic subplot. It also has a few twists, some of which I saw coming and some of which I didn't. 

This book could have been terrible, or very unsettling. It manages to avoid going too overboard in any inappropriate directions, however, and just becomes a fairly original fight for survival, and one with a follow-up sequel that is also sitting on my shelf. 

Who knows, I may even read Enders at some point. 

Completed 25 May 2024.

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