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manwithanagenda 's review for:
House of Stairs
by William Sleator
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The reader is thrown into a perplexing and grim environment right off the bat. One by one we're introduced to five teenagers who have been brought into an experiment. Few details of their outside life are explained, a grim series of foster homes and orphanages for four of them and the last goes at length to describe their formerly privileged existence.
They are in a seemingly limitless room filled with stairs, going up and down in a disorienting manner. Human nature begins to kick in when the subjects run into each other and their personalities clash. They discover stairs, and more stairs, a toilet of sorts, and a machine that provides the only food they can find. They discover the machine has particular demands and their entire existence becomes dependent on following its direction.
I've always enjoyed Sleator's work so it was a pleasure to discover a popular book of his that I hadn't read yet. This is a grim book about human psychology and the terrible things humanity is capable of doing to itself for a perceived reward. I don't know how I would have reacted to this book as a kid, but it holds up to modern scrutiny. His bare-bones world building prevents the book from having details that would harmfully date it. Its short and the writing style is simple enough that a young reader could manage it. This will give them more to think about than your average kiddie dystopian thriller.
They are in a seemingly limitless room filled with stairs, going up and down in a disorienting manner. Human nature begins to kick in when the subjects run into each other and their personalities clash. They discover stairs, and more stairs, a toilet of sorts, and a machine that provides the only food they can find. They discover the machine has particular demands and their entire existence becomes dependent on following its direction.
I've always enjoyed Sleator's work so it was a pleasure to discover a popular book of his that I hadn't read yet. This is a grim book about human psychology and the terrible things humanity is capable of doing to itself for a perceived reward. I don't know how I would have reacted to this book as a kid, but it holds up to modern scrutiny. His bare-bones world building prevents the book from having details that would harmfully date it. Its short and the writing style is simple enough that a young reader could manage it. This will give them more to think about than your average kiddie dystopian thriller.