Unwind by Neal Shusterman, 352 pp, RL: TEEN
Unwind is the first book in the Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman . Unwind was published in 2007, fourteen years after the thought provoking, conversation starting Newbery winner, The Giver and one year before the book that made "dystopian" a household word, The Hunger Games . I was a bookseller when The Hunger Games was published and my fellow booksellers and I avidly passed around the advance reader copy we got then struggled to explain the book - and convey how amazing it was despite the disturbing plot - to customers once it was released. In terms of thought provoking and disturbing plots, Unwind has The Giver and The Hunger Games beat. Once the three main characters of the book are on the run together, Unwind unfolds at a fast pace with Shusterman revealing more and more horrifically logical elements of the dystopian world he has masterfully created. In The Giver , a purportedly utopian community relinquishes literature, music, art and the