The Culling

by Steven dos Santos

Overview

Recruitment Day is here...if you fail, a loved one will die

For Lucian “Lucky” Spark, Recruitment Day means the Establishment, a totalitarian government, will force him to become one of five Recruits competing to join the ruthless Imposer task force. Each Recruit participates in increasingly difficult and violent military training for a chance to advance to the next level. Those who fail must choose an “Incentive”—a family member—to be brutally killed. If Lucky fails, he’ll have to choose death for his only living relative: Cole, his four-year-old brother.

Lucky will do everything he can to keep his brother alive, even if it means sacrificing the lives of other Recruits’ loved ones. What Lucky isn’t prepared for is his undeniable attraction to the handsome, rebellious Digory Tycho. While Lucky and Digory train together, their relationship grows. But daring to care for another Recruit in a world where love is used as the ultimate weapon is extremely dangerous. As Lucky soon learns, the consequences can be deadly...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738735375
Publisher:	North Star Editions
Publication date:	03/08/2013
Series:	Hollow Trilogy #03 , #1
Pages:	420
Sales rank:	275,239
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Steven dos Santos (Miami, FL) spent most of his working career in the legal field, even going to law school for a couple of years before realizing that if he was going to be telling “creative truths,” he’d prefer to be writing novels.

Editorial Reviews

In The Culling, The Establishment governs after America falls. The only remnant of the "land of the free" is the crumbling Statue of Liberty; in this new world, citizens are deprived of food, heat, and electricity, and The Establishment's minions, the Imposers, patrol the streets culling anyone who shows the slightest resistance to its forces. Each year, five recruits are chosen for The Trials, and each recruit has two family members identified for them; failure during any part of the trials results in the recruit having to kill one the "incentives." If both incentives are "shelved" during the course of the trials, the recruit loses. The "winner" is awarded a place within The Establishment. Betrayed by an old love, Lucian Sparks is sentenced to The Trials. Fighting for his life and the lives of his 4-year-old brother and his adoptive mother, Lucian must also negotiate his feelings for a fellow recruit. There is no doubt that "Lucky" will be responsible for the death of someone he loves; the question is, how many? Original and compelling enough to stand on its own, it would be a mistake to label this book a more brutal and violent version of The Hunger Games. Refreshingly, the novel presents sexual orientation and sexuality in a noncontroversial light; while the protagonist is gay, his orientation is not central to the conflict, nor is it something that needs to be explicitly addressed. A heart-pounding page-turner, fans of fantasy and adventure will eagerly await the second installment. Reviewer: Courtney Huse Wika

VOYA - Courtney Huse Wika

Gr 8 Up—The Establishment controls everyone and everything in this bleak future world. Sixteen-year-old Lucky and his four-year-old brother, Cole, live in a rundown building and have little to eat. Their parents are dead, and they have only a friendly (but sickly) neighbor to watch over them. Lucky does his best to provide for Cole. When the time comes for The Establishment to choose its new Recruits, Lucky risks being thrown in prison to get in touch with an old friend, now high in rank, to try to save himself from being recruited. Unfortunately, his actions have the opposite result when the friend betrays him. Along with four others, he must compete to win every round of Trials or else choose which of the two people he cares about most will die. Lucky's situation is made even more complicated by his affection for and attraction to Digory, a rebellious and handsome young man. The book has an interesting, disturbing concept, but it is not very original. Lucky seems bright, and yet makes large errors in judgment. This novel is similar to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games in its brutality, but it fails to provoke the same emotional attachment readers feel for the characters in Collins's blockbuster. In some ways, this dystopian vision seems even more unsettling; throughout the Trials, the Recruits' loved ones are killed in increasingly disturbing ways.—Kelly Jo Lasher, Middle Township High School, Cape May Court House, NJ

School Library Journal

Lucian "Lucky" Spark has run out of luck; he's been selected as a candidate for the Recruitment, a series of brutal tests designed to be a fast track to military leadership for a few of the most promising individuals of society. But there's a catch--one of the four recruits Lucky is pitted against is Digory Tycho, a charming young man for whom Lucky is developing a strong attraction. When Lucky and Digory are assigned as each other's Incentives--effectively, as hostages to ensure cooperation and competition within the trials--they must choose where love and loyalty lie. Except for the gay romance, dos Santos' debut is a by-the-numbers dystopian: An overwhelming divide separates rich and poor; the harsh government crushes resistance; vicious death matches result in lots of gore. Lucky's concern for his little brother (who is initially held by the government to ensure Lucky's cooperation), his gradual embrace of the resistance movement and his sudden survival skills are all familiar tropes as well. There's a certain appeal to dos Santos' depiction of LGBTQ characters--Lucian is treated harshly for being a traitor, not for being gay, and same-sex marriage is routine. None of the supporting characters are developed beyond their flaws, and the gruesome nature of the death traps borders on gratuitous. Entirely derivative from start to finish, it will probably nonetheless appeal to those still obsessed with the torture genre and stands as a rare dystopia in which gay characters exist. (Dystopian romance. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews