It is the year 2049 in dystopian England. Families are populated with robot children because there is a human fertility problem and there are very few children being born. The robot children are programed to look and act like real children but the families are only allowed to keep the robot children until they turn eighteen and they reach their expiration date.

The book begins when we meet eleven-year-old Tania Deeley who lives with her mother and father. She begins her story by writing in a diary in the hopes that in the future someone will read it. She names that someone Zog. Letters from Zog are included intermittently throughout the book so we can assume that someone from the future has found and read her diary. Tania’s diary exposes many surprises for the reader as she shares all about human and robot life in this new world.

The book takes a different approach to the dystopian future with the human fertility problem being the reason robots have become part of a family. The robots help form that family unit and then are just taken away at the age of eighteen. And so the author poses some interesting philosophical questions about human relationships and human existence. What does it mean to be called human? I enjoyed the book but somehow couldn’t relate to the letters that were interspersed from the future Zog who was reading Tania’s diary. But on the other hand, this interaction from the future may be more appreciated by the target YA reader. This review was based on an ARC of the book.
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3.5/5 stars. In a world where people have almost entirely stopped giving birth people have turned to teknoids--android children--for comfort. These teknoids are adjusted periodically to give the appearance of aging and growth, and at age eighteen they are taken away, likely to be recycled to make new teknoids.

No one but their parents know which children are teknoids. Not even the teknoids know of each other or of themselves. Now, imagine you suspect your friend is a teknoid. Now, imagine the teknoid is you.

[I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.] ( )

Expiration Day by William Campbell Powell is a unique twist on a future filled with robots, since the robots look like children and are designed to keep the population sane as the birthrate plummets. Expiration Day is also unique because it is told through diary entries from the main character with a couple of other things thrown into the mix. I was strongly reminded of The Testament of Jessie Lamb while reading Expiration Day, since most of the book deals with the day to day adventures of a teenager in a world that is collapsing out from under the human race. Similarly to Jessie Lamb as well, the ending of Expiration Day is definitely the best part of the book in my opinion, so if you can stick it out to 80%, it’ll hopefully all be worth it ;-).
Note: I received Expiration Day through Netgalley for an honest review. Some things may have changed in the final version.



Expiration Day by William Campbell Powell
Published by Tor Books on April 22nd, 2014
Genres: Sci-fi, YA
Length: 336 pages
How I got my copy: NetGalley

What happens when you turn eighteen and there are no more tomorrows?
It is the year 2049, and humanity is on the brink of extinction….

Tania Deeley has always been told that she’s a rarity: a human child in a world where most children are sophisticated androids manufactured by Oxted Corporation. When a decline in global fertility ensued, it was the creation of these near-perfect human copies called teknoids that helped to prevent the utter collapse of society.

Though she has always been aware of the existence of teknoids, it is not until her first day at The Lady Maud High School for Girls that Tania realizes that her best friend, Siân, may be one. Returning home from the summer holiday, she is shocked by how much Siân has changed. Is it possible that these changes were engineered by Oxted? And if Siân could be a teknoid, how many others in Tania’s life are not real?

Driven by the need to understand what sets teknoids apart from their human counterparts, Tania begins to seek answers. But time is running out. For everyone knows that on their eighteenth “birthdays,” teknoids must be returned to Oxted—never to be heard from again.

Strengths:
As I said above, the ending of Expiration Day really makes the book. All the various tangents that Tania goes on as well as the interludes between her journal entries finally come together in an exciting and intriguing way. The ending also changed my perspective on events that happened earlier in the book, making them more meaningful than they originally seemed.
Tania’s family in Expiration Day is so amazing. Her mother and father are very important secondary characters and really portray the best kind of parents. They aren’t absent while Tania goes off and has adventures; they are right there with her, caring about her choices, punishing her when she messes up, and helping her when the world collapses. I love her parents so much!
The last third of Expiration Day is exciting and awesome to read. I loved the direction the plot went with this crazy trial and we finally got to find out a lot more about the way the future world works, including more about the state of Earth’s human population, other countries, and what is really going on.

Weaknesses:
The first two thirds of Expiration Day mostly consist of teenage relationship and school drama with only bits of interesting sci-fi thrown in. Tania is in a band and dating around at various points, so a lot of the plot is focused on those relationships instead of the more heavy sci-fi.
Tania felt very immature to me especially at the beginning of Expiration Day. She decides to write her diary as if an alien named Zog is reading it in the future, and so she frequently writes directly to Zog, which I found a bit annoying and childish. She’s also not very nice to a lot of the kids around her and even is pretty critical of her closest friend. She gets better towards the last third of Expiration Day, but I was quite put off at first.
In general, the diary style of Expiration Day just didn’t really work for me. I didn’t like how important events were skipped over or summarized because Tania didn’t feel like writing about them. I then found various other scenes inauthentic because it didn’t seem like that is how a teenage girl writing in a diary would describe them. I think that this style actually made it harder for me to connect with Tania, even though I was in theory reading her diary.

Summary:
Expiration Day is an interesting sci-fi near-future story for a specific audience. I wasn’t a fan of the writing style and main character, but if the diary style appeals to you, then this could be a great book for you. I actually almost DNF’d Expiration Day because it just didn’t seem to be going anywhere, but it does eventually pick up once you’re most of the way through. I wouldn’t say the ending makes the entire book worth the read for everyone, but if you’re intrigued, don’t worry if things feel slow for a bit ;-). ( )

It’s 2049, the world’s a mess, and like many near-future dystopian visions, we humans seem to be having some problems reproducing. The unusual few women who can actually carry a child are isolated as Mothers with a capital “m,” because they’re quite literally the mothers of the species.

Of course, when our parenting needs aren’t met, we’ll do anything to have a “child.” For people who don’t want to parent a pet, the friendly neighborhood robotics corporation has created Teknoids, androids that are upgradable to mimic the maturation process of a real boy or girl. But here’s the thing: These AI “children” are returned to the company at age 18, their purpose served.

Powell takes us inside the life of Tania, an “adolescent” Teknoid, who must adjust to learning she’s a robot—and then to actually developing humanity. This is an excellent young adult sci-fi novel, which raises the ethical questions of AI for younger readers, and, like much YA lit these days, is also good reading for adults.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com ( )

This story takes place in a future Earth - an Earth where fertility has declined so drastically that very few children are born. Instead most couples lease android children that are near-perfect copies of the real thing but when they reach 18yrs old they are sent back to the manufacturers.
Tania is a pretty typical teenager - she goes to school, joins a band, falls in love for the first time and worries about what she looks like but she is also interested in the difference between humans children and their android counterparts, tries to decide which of her friends are androids and wonders what happens to them after they turn 18 and are sent back.
Told in a diary format, this is a compelling read that explores what it means to be human. ( )