VERONICA Roth’s writing was famed for the skilful use of science fiction and dystopian world-building in the bestselling Divergent series, which went on to become popular films.

These skills are on show again in Poster Girl. While fans of this genre and Roth’s previous work will be delighted by this, there is thematic depth here for those who may never have read anything like it before.

Its discussions on the future of technology, morality and the rise and fall of an oppressive government all have a philosophical curiosity behind them to hook any curious reader.

The central concern it poses is that of what actually happens once a controlling regime is brought down. Many novels of dystopian futures end conveniently after the success of the revolution, but in this latest novel, Roth dares to go further.

When those who suffered under it, and those who benefitted as the children of the oppressors must both live in the building of a new world, who will they grow up to become?

This is approached with the complex main character of Sonya Kantor. When the regime known as The Delegation was in place, she was the child of a powerful family. As she grew up, slogans of “What’s Right Is Right” were cemented in her mind, alongside an all-seeing piece of technology.

All who lived under this authority were given an Insight as children, an addition to the eye which gave them access to all the information they could want in exchange for the constant surveillance of their actions.

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In her youth, Sonya became the face of Delegation propaganda, earning her the titular nickname which stuck even after it fell.

In the novel’s timeline, Sonya is far from the luxury she came to know in childhood, with all her family gone.

Alongside sympathisers and powerful people of the delegation, she is imprisoned in a closed-off community known as The Aperture. The rest of the world is a mystery to them, with the powers of their Insights shut off.

However, while some are allowed to be released and assume new identities under the latest authority of the Triumvirate, Sonya is excluded – unless she completes a mission with freedom as the prize.

Allowed outside of her worn-down prison community to search for a young girl who went missing under The Delegation, she is exposed to all that has changed, and vitally what has not. Under remnants of the world she had once seemed invincible in, she finds herself discovering more about it than she could ever have imagined.

As she unlearns everything she once thought was right, from her associations with her own family to the ethical consideration of morality as enforced by surveillance, the audience is brought along.

Poster Girl does not just feature the unravelling of old ideas but the building of new ones. Every detail of this story proves that there are still new approaches to be found in dystopian science fiction.