15-year-old Leho and his family are being subjected to ethnic cleansing. They and their people are seen as ‘less-than’ and live in slums, while the other half of the population live in luxury and are free to come and go as they please. The women in Leho’s clan must have injections to prevent pregnancy, and their men have been rounded up and sent into ‘camps’. Over them all presides the ‘Director’, the one who ‘saved’ the city during a drought, and who is issuing increasingly restrictive decrees that lead to a ‘resettlement’ programme for the undesirables. Leho and his older brother know the truth though, the resettlement is to a barren place where there is no food, clothing or shelter for their people. Will it be enough to spark a revolution? Leho knows what his future holds if nothing changes, will he follow through on his dreams of killing the Director and freeing his people. This book starts with a scene of book burning which always grabs a librarians attention! Well-written and compelling, this is a really good read, especially for teens studying how this has happened, and keeps happening, throughout the world. I would be interested in a follow-up book telling the story of Leho’s parents, how his mother was blinded for speaking up, and how his father has spent the last few years in one of the ‘camps’. Well done. ( )

Ursa is a land where there are 2 types of people - Cerels and Travesters. After suffering through a terrible drought and famine, a travester called The Director seems to have solved all Ursa's problems and is voted their leader. And then things start to go pear-shaped for the Cerels as the Director brings in laws about what they can and cannot do which result in the men being taken to work camps and the women told to not have children.
Sound familiar? I wanted to tag this as a holocaust novel but it really is an alternative reality /allegory alluding to Hitler and the oppression of the Jews and to the exile of non-Communist people in Stalin's Russia.

The story takes place some time after the Director has come to power and follows the life of Leho, a 15 year old Cerel who lives in a Cerel slum with his grandmother, older brother and sister and younger siblings. His mother is also at the site but has been blinded by the Black Marks, the infamous henchmen of the Director while his father has been sent to work camp.
Cerel befriends a beautiful Travester girl called Eemee who knows nothing about the hardships of Cerels and he also gets work at the Directors' garden, in the hope that he can perhaps aide his older brother in his efforts to overthrow the Director.
With the reader's background knowledge of what happened in Nazi Germany/Stalinist Russia adding to the suspense, ( will the Cerel's be subjected to the same horrors as the oppressed were?) we are gripped by Leho's story as it unfolds with the Director issuing more and more startling decrees.
My only criticism was the book ended very abruptly. ( )