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The Headmasters
Winner, Arlene Barlin Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2025 Canadian Childrens Book Centre Book Awards>/p>
How do you learn from the past if there isn’t one?
Sixty years ago, something awful happened. Something that killed everyone except the people at Blue Ring. Something that caused the Headmasters to appear. But Maple doesn’t know what it was. Because talking about the past is forbidden.
Everyone at Blue Ring has a Headmaster. They sink their sinewy coils into your skull and control you, using your body for backbreaking toil and your mind to communicate with each other. When someone dies, their Headmaster transfers to someone new. But so do the dead person’s memories, and if one of those memories surfaces in the new host’s mind, their brain breaks. That’s why talking about the past is forbidden.
Maple hates this world where the past can’t exist and the future promises only more suffering. And she hates the Headmasters for making it that way. But she doesn’t know how to fight them – until memories start to surface in her mind from someone who long ago came close to defeating the Headmasters.
But whose memories are they? Why aren’t they harming her? And how can she use them to defeat the Headmasters? Maple has to find the answers herself, unable to tell anyone what she’s experiencing or planning—not even Thorn, the young man she’s falling in love with. Thorn, who has some forbidden secrets of his own . . .
A new science fiction novel that feels like its already a classic Mortons The Headmasters invites the reader into a dystopian future that is rife with traditional science fiction world building His work brings to light the challenges of control and the puzzles that come with trying to navigate a future when the past is lost to memory This wellpaced young adult novel captures the readers attention right from the beginning engaging them in epic storytelling and reminding them that there is a time when its important to stand up and fight for what you believe in Arlene Barlin Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy Jurors 2025 CCBC Book Awaards
Mark Mortons The Headmasters is a brilliant sciencefiction debut from one of Canadas bestloved nonfiction writers This compelling YA novel is a spoton updating of Robert A Heinleins classic The Puppet Masters for the new millennium with intricate worldbuilding a great sciencefiction puzzle and ironic for a novel about suppressed memories a main character youll never forget I loved it Robert J Sawyer Hugo Awardwinning author of The Downloaded
A striking contribution to the young adult science fiction genre blending elements of speculative fiction with an exploration of autonomy identity and the intricate dance between control and resistance This novel stands as a modern allegory of societal control and individual freedom echoing concerns that resonate deeply in our contemporary digital landscapeSt Louis Literary Review
A provocative and intelligent science fiction novel that challenges its readers to think about oppression and domination what it means to truly resist and what motivates one to fight against a tyrannical system even when the citizens dont know that they are being tyrannized LitPickFive Star Book Review Award winner
Eminently readable and exciting The Headmasters is a worthy companion to books such as Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale and John Wyndhams The Chrysalids in contemplating humanity and freedom in a Canadian contextBill Rambo The Winnipeg Free Press
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Details
Dimensions:
100 Pages
8.5in * 5.5in * 1.05in
1.4000000000000001lb
Published:
February 06, 2024
Country of Publication:
CA
Publisher:
ISBN:
9781989398845
Book Subjects:
YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
Featured In:
Language:
eng
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