The Quiet Limit

What if you knew what year you’d die?

Since she could first comprehend the meaning of death Lai has known she’d only live to see eighteen years. In her secluded community, scientists calculate residents’ life expectancies at birth and one’s place within society is determined based on their lifespan. Tragically, Lai’s anticipated Year of Death has defined her as someone with little value to society. When her eighteenth birthday comes and goes, she knows she’s living on borrowed time and begins to emotionally withdraw and resign herself to her fate. 
That’s when Lai discovers something that shocks her to her core and forces her to face the reality that the controlled, peaceful, productive community she knows is hiding something deeply sinister. Set in a speculative society that is so imaginatively conceived we’re never quite sure if it’s utopian or dystopian, The Quiet Limit gives us a heartbroken protagonist at the most heightened and emotional moment of her life and sets her on an urgent, dangerous quest to find answers before her time is up.

Reviews

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
If you are looking for an evocative, fulfilling dystopian story that is driven by character, "The Quiet Limit," by Trista Lundquist, should be at the top of your reading list.

"The Quiet Limit" by Trista Lundquist is a compelling, intelligent YA dystopian read so absorbing it will stay with you long after the final page. Here we have the main character Lai, who knows something most of us don't: The year she will die. She has grappled with this reality, this death sentence. Now she has learned to accept the inevitability. The question now is no
longer when. She knew she would die at age eighteen. The question now is how. In the society she lives in, the value of your life is based on how long you will live. This means she is of little value to her community. After she turns eighteen, she knows the clock is ticking down, and she turns inward in resignation. Her highly regulated environment holds a secret, and now she wants to uncover it. This spurs Lai toward a near-impossible quest for the truth.

Lundquist has masterfully crafted a novel that transcends spec fiction, dystopia, or utopia. It speaks to all of us, each of us, and gives us a microscope with which to examine our own ideas, values, and beliefs about life, death, and meaning. In this way it is philosophical, but the author's skill and talent keep it in the lane of entertaining fiction.

The character Lai is someone you can identify with. You are on her side as she struggles through her psychological and real-world challenges. Speaking of worlds, the author builds a world that is striking and, in some ways, familiar with its machinations, secrets, and revelations. Lai is in the most pivotal moments of her life, and she knows time is short. What will she do with that time?

I love the psychological aspect of the story. And even though the novel is driven by the pall of death, it shines as life-affirming. I also like how the author explores the life of this character from a first-person point of view as she grows, and how she handles the day-to-day weight of this countdown. Her friend Evera is an interesting character, and Lai has a brother whose
lifespan is longer than hers.

Threads of censorship, conformity, and complacency run through the narrative. Lai is a heroic character, with admirable attributes, making her charismatic and compelling. If you are looking for an evocative, fulfilling dystopian story that is driven by character, "The Quiet Limit," by Trista Lundquist, should be at the top of your reading list.
-ReaderViews

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Startling... shocking... secrets festering within her seemingly utopian community and within her own memories. Lai’s looming death is present from the first page. In the startling dystopian novel, a doomed teenager confronts her faux-utopian society’s terrifying secret.
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- Foreward Clarion Reviews

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