The Unidentified, by Rae Mariz

Unidentified, by Rae Mariz
Young Adult, October, 2010

from fantasticfiction.co.uk:
Fifteen-year-old Katey (aka Kid) goes to school in the Game - a mall converted into a 'school' run by corporate sponsors. As the students play their way through the levels, they are also creating products and being used for market research by the sponsors, who are watching them 24/7 on video cameras. Kid has a vague sense of unease but doesn't question this existence until one day she witnesses a shocking anticorporate prank. She follows the clues to uncover the identities of the people behind it and discovers an anonymous group that calls itself the Unidentified. Intrigued by their counterculture ideas and enigmatic leader, Kid is drawn into the group. But when the Unidentified's pranks and even Kid's own identity are co-opted by the sponsors, Kid decides to do something bigger - something that could change the Game forever.

Trackgeek:
I was impressed by the vivid description of a future scenario where schooling had been taken over by the business sector where advertising and selling were the two main objectives. I had a bit of a problem with the lack attitude toward learning. It just seemed that the learning "challenges" that the kids would get sent to them (or were sent to Kid in this case) were fairly weak and happened rarely. Of course that might have been part of the point of the social commentary- that in the future the kids wouldn't be challenged as much- simply because money, selling and popularity were more important. As with most futuristic novels (ie Phillip Reeve's Mortal Engines) it is always fun to see the way that the author envisions language developing.

This is definitely a novel for the older teen based on the grittiness of the subject matter, teen's behavior towards authority figures and suggestive language.

Grade: B-