In the case of The Institute, those were all HIGHLY traumatized kids. Children with that level of trauma don't communicate well. I thought it was, at the very least, well thought out in their interactions, even if it wasn't exactly how kids interact. They eventually formed trauma bonds and on and on... I don't want to ruin it too much for anyone else. Someone else brought up Fairy Tale. My interpretation of that young man was a little bit of superimposing older kids attitudes on younger kids personalities. I think that's ok. I always tried to impress the geezers when I was younger, it does track that modern kids could at least attempt to do the same.

Are either of those my favorite books of his? Nah, but I did buy and read them all the way through. It's funny, Duma Key is the one closest to me at this point in my life (not because of major injury, just because of age) and I don't identify with that character at ALL.

I don't agree OP, I think the dialogue is written with intent. But you are 100% welcome to your opinions!

I've lived in several large cities and all of them are full of complaining. I've been here 5 months now and love it so far!

I can tell you I've gotten to my line. The technology based systems that are supposed to be more efficient and effective in tracking our lives is not helping regular people anymore. For a system I have to use regularly, I have to keep a spreadsheet of commands, I have to know how to use spreadsheets, I have a file of screen capture videos explaining how to accomplish regular tasks, an instruction sheet to make the videos, an "if-->then" list of tasks and commands, and a list of instructions to get all your hardware set up in order to make the videos of the instructions of the task to do the thing. This is SO MUCH more time than how we did this job on paper 40 years ago. To me, it seems like the only effective use for technology is to track our spending habits and give us targeted ads, but it would be so easy for a world leader to harness that ability and use it to track our behaviors and stop us from going about our lives. And we just keep letting it happen...

Socially, I used to describe myself as a "knee-jerk-bleeding-heart-pinko-commie-bastard-liberal" but I gotta' say, land acknowledgements and pronouns/gender identifications are performative bullshit, and I can't argue without being labelled a racist/sexist homophobic asshole myself. So many young folk making a huge stink about who they love and how they dress when there's real people with real issues that are being actually oppressed and you're kind of diminishing their life experiences with your bullshit. Stop it. I'm going to call you what you want to be called, you can dress and love (or fuck depending on your mood) whoever you want, please stop telling me to categorize you and stop trying to categorize me.

Authoritarianism is not a line, it's a horseshoe and the far ends of it are a lot more alike than different.