Enclave by Ann Aguirre

Enclave is a dystopian young adult novel written by Ann Aguirre and published  in 2011.  Many reviewers compare this book to The Hunger Games.  While all dystopian novels bear some similarity to The Hunger Games, this book is actually more of a composite of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The City of Ember, Divergent, and others.

Deuce is a teenage girl who lives underground in an enclave within a series of tunnels.  The people of the enclave are divided into three groups:  the Breeders, the Builders, and the Hunters.  The Breeders are responsible for making sure that the population survives into the next generation.  The Builders create necessary supplies.  The Hunters leave the enclave to hunt for small animals which roam the tunnels.

Deuce is one of the Hunters, so she must venture into the tunnels in search of food.  The tunnels are inhabited by bloodthirsty zombies, known as Freaks.  As the story opens, Deuce accepts the rules of her society, but soon, she learns that the leaders hide certain facts and that some members of the enclave are rebellious. 

This book has far less fighting than The Forest of Hands and Teeth and the Divergent books.  The fighting is still graphic, but the doses are much smaller.  My main complaint with The Forest of Hands and Teeth and especially the Divergent sequel, Insurgent, is the extreme amount of almost constant fighting to where it seems that nothing happens except fighting.  Enclave has less of that.

The plot flows quite well and takes several unexpected twists, which kept up my interest.

After I finished Enclave, I learned that a short supplemental novel, Endurance, is available as a $0.99 download.  Endurance tells the story of what happened to some of the secondary characters from Enclave.  While Endurance does not tell a complete story, it fills in some information that will be of interest to Enclave readers.  Furthermore, the sequel to Enclave, titled Outpost, is to be released next month.  Some of the events from Endurance could factor into the plot.