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Lydia Millet
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Pills and Starships: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Lydia Millet (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 54 ratings
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A teenage girl and her brother fight for their family’s future in a world devastated by climate change: “Thrillingly scary . . . There is much here to enjoy” (The Washington Post).
 
In a dystopian future brought about by global warming, seventeen-year-old Nat and her hacker brother, Sam, have come by ship to the Big Island of Hawaii for their parents’ Final Week. The few Americans who still live well also live long—so long that older adults bow out not by natural means but by buying death contracts from the corporates who now run the disintegrating society, keeping the people happy through a constant diet of “pharma.”
 
Nat’s family is spending their pharma-guided last week at a luxury resort complex called the Twilight Island Acropolis. Deeply conflicted about her parents’ decision, Nat spends her time keeping a record of everything her family does in the company-supplied diary that came in the hotel’s care package. While Nat attempts to come to terms with her impending parentless future, Sam begins to discover cracks in the corporates’ agenda—and eventually rebels against the company his parents have hired to handle their last days. Now Nat will have to choose a side, in this moving and suspenseful novel by a National Book Award–nominated author.
 
Winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People
 
“A deep read, but fast; it lingers in your mind long after it’s been read.” —New York Journal of Books
 
“A brilliant dystopian novel . . . Beautifully written, dark but ultimately hopeful.” —The Buffalo News
 
“The details are terrific . . . and as the tension mounts it becomes a real page turner.” —The Independent
 
“Vivid, moving . . . Will attract mature teen fans of Divergent, Hunger Games, and similar apocalyptic survival stories.” —Midwest Book Review
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  1. Reading age
    12 - 18 years
  2. Print length
    287 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Grade level
    7 - 12
  5. Lexile measure
    920
  6. Publisher
    Black Sheep
  7. Publication date
    May 19, 2014
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  11. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  12. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 7–10—Earth reached its ecological tipping point some years ago, and corporations now manage all aspects of life. No more babies are being born, the elderly must purchase contracts to die, and drugs ("pharma") control a dwindling human population. Natalie's parents have purchased a death contract, and they have one final week together. The 17-year-old must keep a journal, which she addresses to an unknown space traveler—the only place where starships come into the story. As the Bountiful Passing approaches, Nat and her rebellious younger brother, Sam, begin to make plans to save their parents, or, at the very least, to rescue themselves from the tyranny of the corps and their Death Math. A predictable plot and strained teen voice distract from the very beginning and with 90-plus pages of backstory, the real action doesn't begin until well into the book. The ecological theme, clearly a passion of the author, unfortunately comes across as too heavy-handed and didactic in tone. An additional purchase only.—Katherine Koenig, The Ellis School, PA

Review

"A YA novel that runs counter to nearly every YA trend . . . You’ll laugh―until you realize it’s too late, and the world has crumbled around you."
― Brazos Bookstore, Ben’s Year in Books roundup

"Millet’s dense novel has more in common with philosophy than with fantasy . . . Millet, never a writer to settle into predictable patterns, manages to find beauty in ugly places . . . this is the best thing about Millet’s work: it makes you notice the small details of the natural world, makes you recognize those details as holy."
― The Rumpus

"Lydia Millet offers a brilliant dystopian novel that eclipses all others written for Young Adults with this beautifully written, dark but ultimately hopeful tale."
― The Buffalo News

"Pills and Starships, the first young adult novel by Lydia Millet, offers one thrillingly scary scenario . . . There is much here to enjoy.

"
― Washington Post

"Dark apocalyptic reading at its best . . . vivid, moving saga that will attract mature teen fans of Divergent, Hunger Games, and similar apocalyptic survival stories.

"
― Midwest Book Review

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00HK480Y2
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Black Sheep (May 19, 2014)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 19, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3237 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 287 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 54 ratings

About the author

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Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet

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Lydia Millet is the author of more than a dozen novels and story collections. Known for her dark humor, idiosyncratic characters and language, and strong interest in the relationship between humans and other animals, Millet was born in Boston and grew up in Toronto, Canada. She now lives outside Tucson, Arizona with her family, where she has worked as an editor and writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999. Sometimes called a "novelist of ideas," she won the PEN-USA award for fiction for her early novel My Happy Life (2002); in 2010, her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and another collection, Fight No More, received an award of merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019. Her recent novel A Children's Bible, about the intergenerational traumas of climate change and extinction, was a National Book Award finalist and one of the New York Times Best 10 Books of 2020.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
54 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Fran Rossi Szpylczyn
5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic book
Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2014
Verified Purchase
This book was so well written, I fell like I had tumbled down a hole as I read it. And I did not want to get out of that hole! Not that I long for the future painted by Lydia Millet!

This wonderful story, told in a perfectly toned narrative by character Nat, kept me riveted and wondering what would happen next. I thought about how fear is the worst enemy and the isolation it brings. Yet, things are often more hopeful than we think, if we can find a way to see differently.

Brava to Lydia Millet for this fine work. Maybe meant for YA, but as someone much older than YA, I loved it.
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Victoria Morgan
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2014
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Well no Starships so only 3 stars
2 people found this helpful
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jwf2.tao
4.0 out of 5 stars Good story
Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2014
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well written,good characters...my only disappointment, I wish was longer with more story development...keeping my review short + sweet...hope you enjoy!
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neeoex
5.0 out of 5 stars A very real view
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2014
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Though this book is delicate in explaining what might happen in our future ,it still impacts your senses and scares your being. So much drug dosage and global destruction are already a fact in every day life ,our animal population is declining at an unstoppable pace and yet we still are not panicked
.we need to awaken
This book is a warning
One person found this helpful
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A reader
5.0 out of 5 stars thought provoking
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2014
Verified Purchase
Makes one think we should take care of what we have now. The great plastic vortex,bigger than South America description, chilled me. Also the big Pharma, only communicating on social media, and being a passive participant in one's own life. Adults and teens should read this.
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Alyssa
5.0 out of 5 stars The one percent won't like this scenario though
Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2014
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brutal prediction of where we are going on the earth .....unless.
The one percent won't like this scenario though, they get off scott free.
Hope this not my grandkids future.
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Jessie Potts
3.0 out of 5 stars 3.5 stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2014
*I listened to the audio*

So I wasn't fond of the beginning of the book. It took a while to get in to and the constant 'oh my starship friend' was a bit irritating. I also didn't like that I had no idea what was really going on in the world. Nat, as our narrator, didn't really understand why the world was like how it was, why she took pills, why Sam was a hacker, what was actually going on and why people took out contracts, so I didn't either. I'm not really a fan of journal/diary writing to tell the story. It seemed a bit cumbersome.

Then came the middle of the book. I saw more and more as Nat's eyes were open, I couldn't believe people actually paid the corporations to kill them. I didn't know what to expect and the I won't give any spoilers but I enjoyed the middle. There was suspense, heartache, her parents' death, a rebel camp, a category six hurricane and the truth about the 'real' world.

Now the ending. It was really only the last chapter or so but I found that I had forgotten Nat had written in a journal so I was enjoying the story. Then she started back about how humans went back up to the moon, and 'oh astronaut friend maybe you don't even look human' and it was a bit irritating again. I also felt like none of the threads were tied up. We know Nat and Sam make it, but not what really becomes of them. It was like the author took the hardest parts of a dystopian: How the world got that way (just global warming doesn't cut it, I wanted to know how it went down and the people's struggle to survive) and rebuilding, and skimmed over it. We have no idea how the world healed and people got back into space. We have no idea if the corps were brought down or by who? Everything is just glossed over.

I was also expecting a 'darker dystopian tale from other YA fare' and it wasn't dark at all. I'm not sure if that's because I just listened to it rather than read but there wasn't anything so dark and violent that I had read in other dystopian books. Having said that I was still interested in the author. I would like to read more of her, especially since a few of my friends have read and loved her adult books. Overall it was bad, it was just a bit... not enough... I wanted more.
One person found this helpful
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Lord Dr. Galbraith
4.0 out of 5 stars but it's a great take on this kind of world
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2014
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It's not the stiff grim thing that you expect, but it's a great take on this kind of world.
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Top reviews from other countries

Joe
1.0 out of 5 stars Would probably have enjoyed more if I'd never read a well written novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2016
Verified Purchase
I'll begin by saying that I actually read the book the whole way through, which is pretty impressive when I have the attention span of a fly. But that was mostly because it was fairly short and I felt compelled to read it to my grandmother, who seemed to enjoy it somewhat.
It's a book with few redeeming features, although the majority of people who read it seem to enjoy it. Thankfully, if Pills and Starships is anything to go by, democracy will soon be dead.
The first section of the book was engaging, albeit preachy, painting a world of runaway climate change and extreme environmental collapse and socioeconomic disintegration. This was mostly repetitive and soon dissolved into page after page of slow, turgid writing by a distinctly limp and dislikeable protagonist, Natalie. Natalie and her family are supposedly "part white people, part slave trade African, part extinct Seminole," which would be great if the girl on the cover wasn't distinctly white. Very white. Her family, in addition, sounded very white. I would ordinarily love the inclusion of POC characters, but they were not. The author merely wrote some rich white people characters with white names without the slightest attempt to portray any aspect of their characters or lives beyond upper-class, heteronormative white Americans.
Natalie is also useless; lacking curiosity, emotional intelligence or any form of motivation, she is a passive protagonist being dragged from plot point to plot point by shallow, two dimensional characters, like her hacker brother Sam and native Hawaiian (see: white) love interest, Keahi. Every scene involving Keahi and Natalie felt like a rancid sex scene with the nouns replaced to make it completely clean. I don't think they even touch, but you can tell that Lydia Millet is thinking of it. As Natalie is the narrator I imagine her layer of delusion clouded what I would assume to be Keahi's resentment of her. He's a proactive man striving for a better future, supposedly, while Natalie has the emotional appeal of a damp sock.
To highlight just how mixed-race her world is, Lydia has included a white character who admits it. She really obsesses over just how white and pure this character is, "Aryan princess," I kid you not, being how Natalie describes her. "Virginal." She's not portrayed as particularly kind, but, "Aryan princess?" Really?
Through Natalie's irritating narration (the book would've been 50 pages shorter by removing all of the time Natalie says "Anyway."), which tediously describes events which may well have been exciting at the time, the plot unfolds in a pointless, unrealistic narrative without the slightest touch of excitement or emotional insight. This is a teenage girl and her brother going to Hawaii at the end of the world to watch their parents die, and it lacks excitement and emotional insight. It's so bad it's impressive.
I've never read any of Lydia's other books so I don't know how good of a writer she is, but here it sounded like she'd typed it up and improvised the plot as she went along. There is no characterisation and no character arc, I should hope it hasn't been proof read or edited since first being typed up, otherwise the editor should find a different career.
To be fair on Lydia, if a dim teenage girl wrote a story, by hand, in a diary, without any skill, experience, or editing capabilities, this is certainly what it'd look like.
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