Teenage Wastelands: Escape From Concordia is a novel by Kent J. Starrett, following the second book in the Teenage Wastelands saga and (possibly) concluding the series.
War has swallowed the country. In the aftermath of the preceding novel, the Raquin Dynasty has declared full-on war on the Outland - their word for out society - with a series of meteorological attacks on five major cities on New Year's Eve of 2000. In response, America has locked its borders and declared a counterattack on conjurors wherever they found them.
In the midst of all this, Craig Steiger is on the run from Raquin Syvier, Empress of this ecoterrorist group. Will and Amy, searching for him and investigating the paranormal, begin to notice a harsh uptick in the amount of phenomenon arising in and out of the rural parts of America. Soon, they begin to suspect that the Raquin Dynasty may not have started this war. And they begin to seek out who - or what - did.
Noted for being a surprisingly sympathetic and bittersweet, if Bloodier and Gorier expansion on the previous two novels. Starrett hasn't confirmed if he will continue the series or not, although he originally planned it as a five-book saga.
This novel provides examples of:
- The '90s: come to a screeching halt on New Year's Eve of 2000, and the book takes a permanent turn for the Alternate History established in the previous novel.
- Ambiguously Human: the black-eyed children are shadow-beings inhabiting human bodies, while Indrid Cold may be some strange parody of an extinct and ancient human race. The Harlequins play this straight, being genetically modified humans that fell completely under the Proxy Horde's control.
- Always a Bigger Fish: The Proxy Horde is this to the Raquin Dynasty. And Indrid Cold's race, the Ultraterrestrials, are this to the Proxy Horde.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The Proxy Horde.
- Anachronism Stew: Within the Concordia House, where children and adolescents captured from their various eras bring their various eras with them.
- Artifact Title: The Proxy Horde is named for the proxies of the The Slender Man Mythos and The Fear Mythos, the worlds in which Jackie and Craig was originally based back in 2011-2014, before being altered and published in 2017.
- Babies Ever After: The purpose of the Proxy Horde is to breed more telethesics into existence who they can control and use to overthrow civilization. Played Straight with Will and Amy's son, William Watson V.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: How humans view The conflict between the Proxy Horde and the Ultraterrestrials, and how they in reflection view the conflict between the sivs and the conjurors.
- Cloud Cuckoo Land: What the Concordia House is, to any who enter. it turns out to be a telethesic proxy deception.
- Covered with Scars: Both Syvier and Craig from the previous book, but also Palamabron, a girl with a Lichtenberg figure
down her right face, arm and side. - Humanoid Abomination: The black-eyed children, Harlequins, Shadow-beings, and our returning 'friend' Indrid Cold.
- Mind Rape: What the nighthawks do to people in their sights, and the proxies do better.
- Really 700 Years Old: The Concordia House can preserve people for decades at the same age, meaning that Palamabron has stayed twenty-one even though she was born in 1918. Her romance with Craig is substantially less squicky than it would be, as it's explained that human proxies remain the same mental and developmental age they were when they arrived in Concordia.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: What Syvier views her hunt for Craig as.
- Uncanny Valley: in spades, but most especially with the non-human proxies such as the becs, harlequins and shadow-beings.
