All in all an acceptable treatment of a standard theme in SF. Who doesn't remember "Examination Day" by Henry Seslar? It is a standard in midlevel lit books. On examination day all the children are tested and those who test too high are eliminated to maintain a nice level of manageable sheep.
The story is set in some future post-apocalyptic North America. After a few pages the heroine's "Five Lakes Colony" is recognizable as a reference to the Great Lakes, although one might question how a closed colony without much in the way of transportation which is parked on the edge of Lake Superior, for example, is going to be seriously aware of the other four lakes. Those things are big. Other colony names are less obvious, but it becomes fairly clear as we hear more and more of them, a description of the St. Louis's Gateway Arch, etc.
The best and brightest of the graduating class in each colony are selected by some external agency and sent for testing for entry into the university. Only very few are selected, and those who are sent for the testing are never heard from again. The official line is that they are relocated, but as students wash out of the testing, they disappear. We know that some do attend university and are placed in colonies to pursue their field. Cia's own father attended university and works as a plant geneticist at Five Lakes and all teachers are university graduates. So why has it been ten years since graduates at Five Lakes have been selected for the testing and why is Cia's father less than enthusiastic about her selection under the new teacher?
It is too easy to ascribe deep sinister motives to writers of YA fiction, but it appears at this point that having selected potential leaders the purpose of the whole business is to weed out the potential goats from the potential sheep and destroy them. No doubt all will become clear in the next two volumes.
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