Lifted by Mandy Hager
Lifted from Mandy Hager, is a tense, thoughtful and politically charged work of young adult science fiction, set in 2297 after climate collapse has pushed humanity close to extinction. The remaining human world is haunted by the Avians, a predatory alien presence that has orbited Earth for more than seven decades, and by the memory of the great “Lifting”, when librarians and elders were taken from the planet. In this fractured future, knowledge has become both refuge and burden.
The novel follows seventeen-year-old Elora, Librarian of the Sanctuary and the last-trained guardian of what humanity still knows. Her role gives the book one of its strongest ideas: that survival is not only physical, but intellectual and ethical. In a world stripped back by catastrophe, the preservation of memory matters. Books, testimony and inherited knowledge become forms of resistance against erasure.
Elora’s protected life is ruptured when a stranger arrives with a message suggesting that her father, long believed dead, may still be alive. The discovery forces her out of the mountain refuge and into a larger moral crisis. If humanity’s future depends on sacrifice, how much can one person be asked to give? If the Avians are not merely predators, how should fear be balanced against curiosity, grief and hope? Hager uses these questions to shape a coming-of-age story that is not confined to personal growth. Elora must decide what kind of human being she wants to become when humanity itself is under judgement.
Hager’s experience as a writer for young people is evident in the novel’s clarity and pace. The premise is dramatic, but the emotional engine is straightforward: a young woman must test everything she has been taught against what she discovers beyond safety. The world-building has familiar dystopian elements, including ecological ruin, hidden knowledge and a chosen young protagonist, yet the librarian motif gives the story a distinctive texture. The book understands that information, once lost, may be as difficult to recover as land, trust or species.
At times, the allegorical framework appears quite openly. The Avians, climate collapse and endangered human future carry clear contemporary echoes, and some readers may wish for greater ambiguity in the novel’s political architecture. Yet Hager’s directness is also part of the book’s intended force. She has long written fiction animated by justice, compassion and moral responsibility, and Lifted continues that commitment through the imaginative pressure of science fiction.
This is a novel for readers who want speculative adventure with ethical weight. Lifted combines danger, grief and ecological warning with a belief in courage that is neither naïve nor easy. Hager’s future is bleak, but not empty. As Elora steps beyond the Sanctuary, the book asks whether humanity deserves saving, and whether the answer depends on learning to become less certain of its own importance.
Reviewer: Chris Reed
One Tree House
