The Declaration by Gemma Malley
Dystopian novels are an interesting bunch. They present a bleak vision of the future where some current social problem is magnified to an enormous extent. While these books a great, and it’s always interesting to see what the world could potentially look like, there tend to be a number of cliches that arise from this genre. The main character tends to be indoctrinated completely, believing wholly in the system they were brought up. This is a way for the author to establish how his or her universe works. Then comes the second main character who can see how things are wrong and together with the main character, they fight the system.
The Declaration follows this formula, but still manages to be a good read. This strength comes from the nature of the world Gemma Malley has created. The year is 2140 and pharmaceutical advancements in the form of a drug called Longevity allows humans to live forever. But if everyone lives forever, we’d run out of space pretty quick. In order to begin taking the drug, you must sign a declaration stating that you will never have a child. You are required to make this decision by 16, and you must actively say no, or you have made the declaration by default. The story follows Anna, who was born illegally and is considered a Surplus. It is implied that other countries readily kill Surplus children, but England, where the story is set, is more evolved and tries to give Surpluses a purpose, training them for menial jobs like house cleaning and hard labor.
Malley is very good at slowly giving out clues about this future world. She doesn’t spell it all out on the first page. We learn slowly that the worlds resources are gone, and there are harsh restrictions on energy, food, and water. Christianity appears to have been replaced with a more naturalistic religion. Mother Earth is constantly referred to, and people seem to be afraid to disappoint her. Surpluses like Anna are indoctrinated into believing that they are a strain on the natural order of things, that their very presence is an affront to Mother Nature. It basically boils down to old people refusing to let go of their power, and making new generations illegal. This is ageism taken to the extreme. There are also hints that poorer countries are not given Longevity as freely as wealthier nations. There is something very sad about this world. It reminds me a lot of the movie Children of Men. The world is just tired and in need of new blood.
The outsider character is Peter who refuses to be indoctrinated and convinces Anna that she can fight too. Frankly, I didn’t care too much about this aspect of the story. The world, and how it works, held my interest more than Anna’s discovery that there should be children in the world. This may be that these are little more than cardboard cutouts of characters. The villain is genuinely sinister, but when her backstory is given, I didn’t sympathize with her because I had already guessed it. If Malley had made a more intriguing story set in this amazing world, I would have loved this book even more.
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