The New Agenda (New Agenda series, 2)
Simone Pond, 2014
Ktown Waters Publishing
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780692208205
Summary
What would you do if your father was the man responsible for the end of civilization?
Book two of the New Agenda series continues following Ava's journey as searches inside the mainframe to find Chief Morray. For certain, society was disintegrating: humans were self-destructive and wildly uncontrolled.
But young William Morray had hoped, as an idealistic teenager, that his father’s acclaimed Repatterning Program—a precursor to the brilliant New Agenda—could manage the upheaval and get society back on track. They said it was for the greater good: out of chaos comes order and from the ashes the phoenix will rise. They said the Repatterning was a positive event, but like most advertising, it was a lie.
William’s wish had always been to work with his father and win his approval. However, when he is sent away to a remote underground safety shelter in Denver, William is awakened to the grisly truth that the Repatterning is a mass genocide. And worse: his father, the New Agenda leader, is the spearhead of this horrifying plan to eradicate all cities, homes and people outside of the Elite citizenship. William decides to team up with an underground rebel alliance to end the Repatterning and save what’s left of civilization. (From the publisher.)
This is the second book in The New Agenda Series. The first is The City Center (2013). Mainframe, the third, is due out in 2015.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 21, 1970
• Raised—Kensington, Maryland
• Education—B.A., University of Maryland
• Awards—Gold Medal Readers’ Favorite
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, CA
Simone Pond is an award-winning author of a dystopian fiction series, which includes The City Center, The New Agenda, and The Mainframe.
She grew up in Kensington, Maryland—a small town just outside of Washington D.C. As a young girl, she loved writing in her journal and making up stories, but after reading S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, everything changed. Amazed that a woman could write so convincingly from a teenage boy's perspective, Pond became determined to become a writer as well.
Pond currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their Boston Terrier. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Discussion Questions
1. Do you like the way The New Agenda goes back in time to when William Morray was a teenager? How did you feel about seeing the story through his eyes?
2. Do you feel any sympathy toward William or come out of the book with a better understanding about why he turned out the way he did?
3. Why do you think William wanted to win his father’s approval so badly? And do you think he ever overcame his feelings of inadequacy?
4. What were your feelings toward Dru in the beginning of the story? And how did they change by the end of the story?
5. Do you think Sarah did the right thing? What would you have done if you were in her situation?
6. What do you think about the elites and do you feel that this pertains only to the fictional world? Do you see elitism happening in the world today? Have you been affected by it?
7. Ava played more of a backseat role in this story. How did you feel about that?
8. William goes through a series of transformations. What were some of the bigger ones you noticed?
9. What are your thoughts on the budding relationship between John Dickson and Morray?
10. Although this type of upload technology doesn’t exist in our world today, do you think it’s something that is possible in the future?
11. Transhumanism is the development of technologies to enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Where do you stand on this topic? Do you think there could be potential danger?
12. Who would you like to see play what part if a movie or television series were to be made?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)