Conform

Born to an Elite family, Emeline has been marked as different from birth and by a society that judges all its citizens on their ability to conform.

Emeline only has one role open to her: to become a mother. Offered a pro-creation contract with Collin, a member of the Illum ­­– the governing body of the Elite ­– Emeline finds herself increasingly torn between her growing complicated feelings for her proposed mate, and another man who lives on the margins of their society who challenges her ideals.

When the marginalized rise up in rebellion, Emeline begins to question everything she has ever believed in.

It’s time to choose a side . . .

 

Beneath

Twenty-three-year-old Sasha Cadell knows time is running out in the underground city, filled with survivors of the nuclear fallout six years ago. She works in tunnel expansion, trying to escape the memories of those she lost. Her bleak existence is upended when Tristian Hayes, a stunningly handsome, frustratingly determined commander of the Force, recruits her to join him. With his elite team of fighters, they are to embark on a secret mission to the surface.

Sasha is thrust into a brutal training with stakes far beyond mere survival. The fate of remaining humankind depends on their success – or failure. As she confronts her own demons, Sasha finds both allies and foes in the training program, as well as a sizzling attraction between her and Tristian that threatens the walls she’s built around her heart.

But under the surface, secrets and deception run as rampant as illnesses. And not everyone will survive the rise of a power more terrifying than anything they’ve ever known.

This is such a unique series to review. Firstly because it’s still in progress; second, because it’s not linear. At all.

Conform was published first, and is set in a far future of technology and rampant class divide, Brave New World-style. Beneath is the sequel, but being marketed as a prequel – because we’re in the same world, just a short time after the war that broke society, when the world of Conform would be nothing but a distance dream.

Both are being compared to other YA dystopian romantasy novels, which I understand – and also disagree with. They’re so much more than that simple tag.

Ariel Sullivan’s writing is beautiful, smooth and clear, never shying away from the awfulness of survival while picking out the beauty to be found in the darkest of places. Whether it be among the haves and have-nots of a sprawling cityscape, or the few remaining humans living underground due to a radioactivity surface world, she tells of survival. These are stories of desperation, grief and despair, but also hope and the will to fight. 

Let’s start at the beginning. Conform is the story of Emeline, working away in her ‘Brazil’-like office job in the darkest depths of the city – until she discovers that she’s been chosen to be a mate to a member of the Ilium, the highest of the high castes. She should be grateful as she joins the privileged few. But as is to be expected, those below are slowly fermenting revolution, and while the principle of (say it with me) The Greater Good is noble, this is a fight for humanity over genetic elitism.

Beneath focuses on Sasha, who has lost her entire family during the nuclear war and survives with everyone else in a subterranean community. Sickness is inevitably rife but somehow she never succumbs, becoming known as ‘Death’s Angel’ in the hospital ward. She is unwillingly forced to join up with a group of soldiers seeking out life and supplies on the surface, while also battling corruption and politics in the small group of survivors. 

Both stories are about survival on a societal level, but also on a very human, personal one. There is romance, although I’m very glad to say that it’s not the focal point of either book – Emeline and Sasha have far more important things to be doing! Each book is told from only one perspective, and the protagonists both go through an engrossing heroine’s journey to discover just who they are in their new world, beyond who they are told they must be.

When considering the similarities and differences of each book, one factor stood out to me. I blazed through Conform in two days. Beneath took weeks. The former is fast-paced and glossy, intriguing and constantly inspiring me to figure out what might happen to Emeline in her fight for her (figurative and literal) life. The latter is a far deeper story of pain, horror and desperate grief and loss within dark tunnels of earth and mind, with so many twists and turns that I had to keep pausing periodically to figure out who was doing what to whom. 

The curiosity of a non-linear series comes as I look back. Conform explicitly states early on that the elites want ‘to erase what life was like before the war… anything that makes [us] feel is – is a threat. Like we might want more, and that would be the end of everything. Or maybe the beginning.’ It then foreshadows the next book by explaining what that life Before was like: ‘Freedom in living hidden underground…? That’s not freedom. That’s prison.’

By the end of the book, we know what prison truly means when it’s not just a physical world that we’re trapped in, but a society that gives us nothing beyond what we are due, or have earned through a genetic lottery. 

Beneath then comes in to show the beginnings of that future social structure with the constant quest of the few at the top for power – and how they’ll do anything to hold on to it. ‘It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about power and control.’

These books cleverly bat a metaphorical ball back and forth between each other. They show in two very different ways the apparently endless cycle of power corrupting and destroying, while at the same time claiming that it’s ‘the only way’, inevitable and justified for the sake of all. ‘There were no saviors, just varying shades of morally corrupt people with different lines in the sand.’

And into this world – in which we can see clear shades of our own – come two messed-up, broken girls and those they (eventually) call friends to claw back what is truly good.

Ariel Sullivan writes in her afterword to Beneath that the book ‘tackles heavy topics: Grief, depression, and self-sabotage are on every page.’ This is ‘the other side of the story… that is dark, often hopeless, and frequently overshadowed by the shinier side.’ Reading that made me realize just how true these words are in the comparative difficulty I had reading the prequel over the shiny, bright YA Dystopian Revolutionary first part. Was that a cunning trick to get us on board? Because it absolutely worked.

Both stories are connected, made up of people fighting in the way they think is best, and both make us consider just what we’re doing in our lives right now as the world seems to crumble. This is what makes them so much more than simple marketing blurbs. These are truly powerful tales that deserve to be read and considered, in the best tradition of stories that make us question and learn. These books tell vital, enduring truths, and I cannot wait to see what comes next as everything comes together after (once again) falling apart.

Conform is available now on Bookshop.org

Beneath is due for publication on 26th March – you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org