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Welcome to our list of favorite dystopian novels. I am a huge fan of any dystopian novels and have been trying to read more of them now that we are regularly going to the library so I will keep adding to this as I read more. This list is by no means exhaustive so please leave a comment if you have a book to recommend!
The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey – This book really threw me for a loop when I read it because the premise is somewhat believable. It follows Melanie who is a talented girl on how she discovers who she is and how much bigger the world really is. There is also a movie adaptation which was decent but you should really read the book first because the way Melanie’s discovery about the school she goes to is rushed in the movie and very well written in the book. The movie is available on Prime Video and can be found here.
The Silo Saga: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Sil0 Stories by Hugh Howey
The three part series Wool, Shift and Dust is about a group of people living in bunkers in a post-apocalyptic world. These books are well written and the titles are incredibly accurate as to how information about the bunkers is revealed to it’s inhabitants. These books are not so likely to happen but they are a great read and you can’t help feeling for the characters and the predicament they are in. I have not read the Sil0 Stories yet but I am going to find a copy to see what they are about.
Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill – Written during a time when AI is all around and kids are taken care of by nanny bots this book is written from the perspective of a high end tiger nanny bot named Pounce who navigates saving his human while fighting off his fellow robots that are trying to take over the world. I love that this book was written from the perspective of a self-aware robot and not the humans it was trying to protect. It looks like C. Robert Cargill also wrote a book called Sea of Rust that I will have to check out as well.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale is a pretty popular TV series but it is based off of the book by Margaret Atwood which is excellent. Offred is a handmaid to an affluent man in the new world of Gilead where the bible is taken very literally. Infertility is a huge issue and those that can bear children are enslaved by the wealthy elite.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – I will put this one on here although many people have read this book. Fahrenheit 451 is a classic about a world where books are banned and firemen light fires instead of putting them out. It follows Guy as he discovers there may be more to life than being a fireman.
The Giver by Lois Lawry – I will be totally honest and tell you I did not read this book until I was well into adulthood and my oldest daughter was reading it for middle school but I did read it in one night it was so good. The Giver is about Jonas who is coming of age in a world where everyone feels content in their pre-assigned roles. Jonas is given a glimpse into what was before and begins to question his world. There is a movie that goes along with the books that is pretty well done and can be found on Prime here.
Making this list of books reminded me that I need to read the other books in this series. It looks like there are four total and the whole set can be found here.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler – Now I have not read these books but they have been highly recommended to me by multiple people so I am going to include them in my list. It looks like they are about a girl navigating her world after climate change has altered earth which is right up my alley. I plan on reading them in the next few months so let me know in the comments if you have read them and how you like them.
There are so many more books out there I could not include them all but I will update this list as I read more. Please let me know your dystopian book recommendations in the comments and happy reading!
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
