The Testing

by Joelle Charbonneau

Story Summary: In a world recovering from a horrible, civilization-destroying war, Cia is one of the top students in her class, and is chosen to participate in the highly sought after Testing process, to see if she's suitable for the University. But there's more going on in the Testing than she thought, and she's thrown into death and danger and survival.

Thoughts: I thought this was quite derivative of The Hunger Games and other such YA dystopias. There was the post-disaster North America, divided into small areas which each focused on a separate societal task (called Colonies this time round instead of Districts). Then a bunch of teenagers get called into a series of game-type challenges where most of them die, and many of them kill each other. Plus, of course, there's the underlying issue of a very shady government trying to be evil under the guise of helping the nation survive.
It was a gripping, easy read, though. So there's that. And I enjoyed the first bunch of tests which involved intelligence related testing. Some day I'm going to come across a well-written book which actually delves into that sort of stuff in more detail.
I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to read the sequel, which came out recently. I think I might not, unless I hear really good things about it. Although I was interested in the Michal character, and I might want to see what happens to him. (He seems like the Cinna equivalent from THG, and Cinna was always one of my favourite characters from that series.)

Grade: 2 1/2 stars