Leah Vernon. The Union. 47 North, 2022.

Before going into the story of The Union, let us say that it is derivative. That is not necessarily a negative comment, but as I was reading it, I thought of other works.

First, there is the grandfather of all future dystopias, The Time Machine. The Time Machine has the superior Morlocks suppressing the inferior Eloi in the distant future. So in The Union we have the Elite and the enslaved Lowers.

There is a biological or breeding aspect to this as well. The Elites try to keep themselves genetically untainted like the alphabetic grades in Brave New World. In this case, the future “Union” is ruled by black elites with inferior whites like the alphas over the epsilons in the Huxley novel.

Then there are those “half-breeds” who do not fit into any class, not unlike the divergents in Divergent. In this case one of the main characters is an Impure, neither black nor white, with a white mother and a black father. Like main characters in the Divergent series, no one trusts or identifies with Saige. The only question is why she was allowed to live or not aborted to begin with.

The Elites live in the Citadel, a well-protected city with thousands of trained, brainwashed watchmen protecting them and doing their bidding. Beyond the Citadel is the oppressed but slightly anarchic places where the workers live and work. In other words, society is not unlike the Capitol and outlying Districts of The Hunger Games or Chicago and the factionless on its fringes in Divergent.

We should also note that like the Divergent and Hunger Games books, the protagonists are teens or barely young adults. If nothing else, the readers understand that this is a Young Adult (YA) novel.

Having leaders with African ancestry ruling resembles Acorn in Parable of the Talents. In that story, Olamina is a natural and empathetic leader, and people follow her willingly. It also helps that her husband was an M.D. who saved people’s lives.

Indeed, there is a minor character in The Union named Octavia. Her name may be a shout-out to Octavia Butler the author of Parable of the Talents and other popular sci-fi works.

In The Union, blacks rebelled against the white-dominated United States and took over, reversing the social order and doing away with virtually any middle class. Their nation is called the Union of Civilization or, simply, the Union.

The Union has been in existence for nearly a thousand years. That has given it plenty of time to develop a thesis of racial hierarchy and economic domination. But there are also a few characters that remind us that no civilization will last forever. Will the young adults in the Union be able to set things right like some of the youngsters in the Hunger Games?

The Union is a hereditary monarchy of sorts. The rulers have military ranks, so Avi is the eldest daughter of the General and is due to inherit his position at some point. People often call her the Princess because she is the daughter of royalty.

We understand that the Union teaches a biological racial superiority of the Uppers, the blacks. One professor explains the inferiority of the “Europes” this way:

Surely we are nothing like them. We are not equal. Our genetic makeup has been tested, and the region’s top scientists and physicians have proven the differences. We are mentally stable and intuitive. Everything the Europes ever had, they stole from us. (28)

Darwin and Sanger with their theories racially reversed…

Avi has a younger sister, Jade, who covets her sister’s status. Avi is more of an inquirer. Jade is a true believer. Avi thinks because Jade has paler skin, she has to prove her blackness or negritude in radicalism. From what we see of Jade’s behavior, though, it appears to be more straight-out envy.

Avi and Saige, the Impure, narrate alternating chapters. The plot gets complicated immediately. A lower class rebel tries to kill Avi but Saige rescues her. Now Avi is indebted to her and begins to understand what the life of an outcast (outcaste?) is like. Even though she has saved the life of an Upper, because she is Lower and Impure, Saige is accused of being one of the rebels who tried to kill Avi and is sentenced to death anyhow. Avi intercedes to save her, but all that just complicates things for both of them. How loyal can each be to her side?

Avi grows in awareness. She encounters some Lowers and realizes they are all human. “He [a Lower] made me realize we are no better than they were, and that with too much power, we all fail” (124). She, then, comes to believe she “can change the system” (298). Part of that system suggests something like Near Eastern “honor killings” by family members for Elites who deviate. We also note some darker-skinned Lowers are able to “pass” as black.

Avi realizes that she has been spoiled. She has been entitled and is used to entitlements and respect. Saige, the outcast(e), recalls her mother’s ideals but really does not trust anyone. One cannot say that Avi and Saige are friends. They barely tolerate each other. Avi tries to reach out and understand Saige and the Lowers, but there is little trust.

The name Saige does resemble the word savage, and it means “wise.” It may be a stretch, but I wonder if she was partly inspired by John the Savage in Brave New World. She is surely no weak and passive Time Machine Weena.

Echoing both Divergent and The Time Machine, Avi and Saige both in their own way try to overcome the system before it overcomes them. There is a lot of action. The spate of physical injuries they both endure reminded this reader of the television show 24. Like Jack Bauer, they endure much pain and live.

While the novel does have an ending of sorts, we know that this is not a standalone tale like The Time Machine. Like Divergent or The Hunger Games, there will be sequels. This is not the end of The Union, either the book or the nation-state. Readers who enjoyed those two recent dystopias may enjoy The Union. There is a lot of action and, maybe, even potential for romance. It is not giving too much away by saying that a third character, a young and attractive male, contributes an epilogue.

Some readers may be thrown by some of the language. There are a few instances of profanity and a certain amount of slang and hip-hop spellings—for example, the term ratch which apparently is a slang variation of wretch, or locs, a variant spelling of locks when referring to locks of hair. However, such terms should not be a problem for the young audience which is the author’s target. After all, readers who could not get enough of any of those works mentioned at the beginning, The Union will suit them just fine.