House of Stairs
House of Stairs by William Sleator
(first published 1974)
A small group of unrelated 16-year-old foster teens finds themselves trapped in an endless room full of impossible stairs and ledges. They don’t know how or why they got there or what they are supposed to go. They find a machine and quickly learn that it will give them food when they perform seemingly random tasks. As the machine manipulates them to further and further degrees, personalities among the group begin to clash. Tensions grow and the stakes are raised in this strange psychological mystery.
I can’t say that I loved The House of Stairs (however, I can say that I LOVED this cover…I mean, just look at it!). Despite the teen age of the characters, this is most definitely a children’s book rather than a teen book. I liked the intriguing plot elements and setting, however, the emotional drama of the book was really predictable, with the characters acting more like archetypes than people. I picked it up after hearing that it was a good readalike to The Hunger Games or even Maze Runner and, after reading it, I could not disagree with the comparison more! The plot is simple, the characters are whiny and act much, much more like children than teens and the story, while mysterious, does not actually include any action. I think kids and tweens who are really into science fiction might enjoy this one, but I’d be much more likely to direct them to John Christopher’s work instead.
Tags: boys, children, horror, scifi, William Sleator
