Lucas Stoffel

Carve the Mark is Veronica Roth's first post-Divergent novel, and you can feel her stretching into a bigger canvas. Where Divergent was one city, one system, one test — this is an entire galaxy of planets connected by a sentient energy field called the current, and every person in it is born with a currentgift that shapes who they become. It's ambitious, messy, and more interesting than it has any right to be. The story follows two characters from opposite sides of a confl

The Fates Divide picks up where Carve the Mark left off and does what good sequels do — it expands the scope while deepening the personal stakes. Where the first book was about Akos and Cyra surviving, this one is about them choosing. And the choices are terrible. Cyra and Akos are separated for much of the novel, and Roth uses that distance to give each character their own arc rather than tethering them to the romance. Cyra is drawn into the political upheaval of the...

The Impossible Fortress is set in 1987, and it absolutely nails it. Jason Rekulak wrote a coming-of-age novel about a fourteen-year-old boy named Billy Marvin whose initial goal — stealing a copy of Playboy from the local convenience store — accidentally leads him into a friendship with the store owner's daughter, Mary, who is the best computer programmer he's ever met. What follows is a novel about first love, betrayal, and the Commodore 64 that is far better than it has any