But all that changes when Darius meets Sohrab, a Bahá’í boy, in Yazd.

When he arrives in Iran, learning to play the Persian card game Rook, socializing, and celebrating Nowruz with a family he had never properly met before is all overwhelming and leaves Darius wondering if he’ll ever truly belong anywhere. He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either. Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in.

When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life. Whipping Boy + Blade Runner with a sprinkling of The Hunger Games (plus, of course, a dash of A Tale of Two Cities) = a treat for teen SF fans.ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him. Accidental Adventures author London drops his first initial for his teen debut, a smart, stylish science-fiction thriller that deftly weaves big issues like guilt, accidents of birth, redemption and commerce into a page-turning read. As the boys avoid the Guardians, they discover that the secret to forgiving everyone’s debts may be in Syd’s blood. Fed up, Syd escapes and accidentally comes face to face with Knox, who’s beginning to wonder if he isn’t the one who owes a debt to his proxy. When Knox’s antics kill a girl, Syd’s sentenced to years of hard labor on top of the debt he still owes. Whenever Knox acts up, Syd is punished, sometimes violently. (Two other orphans are named Tom Sawyer and Atticus Finch.) To repay that debt, they assigned him to be a proxy for Knox Brindle, whose father runs the powerful SecuriTech company. The Benevolent Society rescued him, named him after the Dickens character and charged him for the rescue as well as his future education. In a post-apocalyptic, near future, gay teen Sydney Carton was a “swampcat” orphan from the eastern wastes of what was once America. Sixteen-year-old Syd is a good guy but he’s “proxy” to a “patron,” so Syd has to pay for someone else’s crimes.

Proxy by Alex London