Incarceron by Fisher

It's the future again. There's been a big war that ended in the establishment of a monarchy. The king said the whole technology business was too complicated and decreed everything had to stay as it was in good ol'1700-ish. The people responsible for the war or deemed a stability risk were taken to Incarceron, an inorganic yet conscious prison with a nasty sense of irony. The prisoners live and die there, and so do their children. By the time of the story, no one remembers the outside world except Finn. Finn's memories only stretch back a few years, despite the fact that he's 17. He's convinced he's from the outside and tries to escape. Meanwhile, the warden's daughter Claudia is attempting her own escape from a political marriage to the queen's horrible son. As we all knew they would, the prisoner and the princess manage to cross paths.

The story is a bit bumpy. Keeping track of two separate realities will prove difficult to some readers, as well as keeping characters straight. On a side note, Fisher has some combative moments with grammar, mostly struggling with pronoun-antecedent agreement and some ungainly appositive phrases. In plain language, some of the passages are hard to read because of the way they're written.

Mortal Engines by Reeve

In the far-distant future, the world is decimated in the 60-minute war and cities travel on rolling tracks, sort of like enormous tanks. The cities hunt other, smaller towns and use their resources.

Tom is an apprentice historian in London and helps sort through the old things found on eaten towns. His hero is Valentine, the head historian. When a girl from an eaten town tries to kill Valentine, Tom comes to the rescue. Unfortunately, Valentine is not what he seems so both Tom and the would-be assassin Hester are thrown of the city and left for dead. The pair have to reconcile their ideological differences and work together to get back to London and save the world.

Exodus by Bertagna

The year is 2099. The polar ice caps have melted and the world is flooded. Mara Bell lives with her family on one of the few remaining islands. But even their land isn't safe. The sea continues to rise and soon the people of the island must make a choice: move or die. Mara does some research and discovers that before the great flood, huge "New World" cities were built like trees into the bedrock of the earth below. In their synthetic branches, civilization continues. Mara convinces her people to seek out the New World, but finding it turns out to be the easy part. The challenges that follow their arrival test everything Mara knows about herself and the world around her.

I was expecting a horrible rehash of Waterworld. I was very pleasantly surprised. The book is thoughtful and brings up some interesting issues about immigration, prejudice, and what it means to stay human.