We Are the Ants

by Shaun David Hutchinson

Paperback, 2017

Status

Missing

Call number

813.6

Genres

Publication

Simon Pulse (2017), Edition: Reprint, 480 pages

Description

Science Fiction. Young Adult Fiction. Young Adult Literature. HTML:A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) From the "author to watch" (Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes an "equal parts sarcastic and profound" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving. Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button. Only he isn't sure he wants to. After all, life hasn't been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer's. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend's suicide last year. Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him. But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it...or let the world�??and his pain�??be destroyed fo… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member lilibrarian

Since he was 13, Henry had been repeatedly being abducted by aliens. Now, he is distraught after his boyfriend's suicide. His brother's girlfriend is pregnant and his mother works hard to support them. Bullied at school, he feels abandoned by his friends, until a new guy moves to town and befriends

him.

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LibraryThing member tina_thebookworm

If you knew the Earth was ending and you had the opportunity to press a button that could stop the Earth’s destruction, would you? Would you press it without hesitation? Or would you think about it?

For some of us, the answer is easy of course they would press the button! For others the answer is

not so simple, some may even consider not pressing the button at all.

We are the ants is probably going to be one of my favorite books of 2016. Is it too early to say that? Probably right? Well I’m already shoving this book into other people faces so READ THIS AND READ THIS NOW and if you don’t like it please don’t break my heart and tell me.

Henry is our main character and he is probably one of the realist characters I have ever read. He is not the perfect main character. He has the opportunity to save the world, that’s something main other YA characters would have done without hesitation. But you know what, he isn’t sure he wants to save the world. He’s not sure the world is worth saving or that he is worth saving. He has gone through so much in so little time, his boyfriend killed himself without an explanation, his grandma is slowly losing herself, his brother is a jerk, and his mom is barely keeping it together. He is constantly bullied and ridiculed by his classmates. It should come to no surprise that Henry doesn’t want to save the Earth.

I loved how the story didn’t revolve around the romance in fact it played a little part in the bigger picture. The secondary characters play an important role in showing us that not every one is just one sided but we are complex individuals. Each character had amazing character development.

When I’m reading on my kindle I highlight things here and there throughout every book I read but with We are the ants, I felt like every other page I was highlighting something.

I laughed out loud, I almost cried, I was shocked and I was angry. I love any author who can bring out such intense emotions from me. There were times where I felt like Henry, I understood Henry searching for the answers to his boyfriend’s suicide, and I was always searching for clues when it came to my friend’s suicide. I understood every question, every why, always battling the should’ves, could’ves, would’ves. Even though he is a fictional character, I felt like Henry had a little piece of me in him and that is something I will carry with me for a very long time.

I had never read a book by Shaun David Hutchison before nor had I heard about him. But after finishing We Are The Ants that’s definitely changed and I plan on getting my hands on every single one of his books. I hope you read this and I hope you love We are the ants.

Disclosure: I received a copy in exchanged from an honest review.

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LibraryThing member ainjel

This book was not at all what I expected it to be, and it broke my heart in the most beautiful ways. There were times where I had to stop reading and take a breather because it was too sad. It's not sad in that there's an overflow of emotion dripping off of every word; rather the prose is heavy,

and you know long before our protagonist does that he is definitely not okay. You won't be sobbing on every page, and maybe you won't shed a tear at all. It's not that kind of sad. What makes this book so sad is how real it feels.

It's funny how a book about aliens can feel so real.

I love how the book was filled with unanswered questions, and these questions really don't need to be answered. It adds to the beauty of the text, in my humble opinion.

At times, this book is hard to read, because just when everything seems to be going right, it all comes crashing down. And oh, how you want everything to go right! It's unfair, and it's bitter, but it's beautiful, and it's life. The character development through the course of the book is outstanding, and it's worth reading just for that.

Above all, I want to stress that this book holds hope. Despite everything, there's still hope. And that, I think, is breathtaking.

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LibraryThing member fromthecomfychair

In the manner of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Henry Denton is a self-absorbed gay teenager. He is grieving the suicide of his boyfriend Jesse and on the edge of a breakdown. He believes aliens abduct him and do experiments on him. He also believes the aliens have given him the power to save the

world from imminent destruction. Henry is also being pursued by another boy who alternately bullies him and pursues him romantically. There are also crises going on in his family: grandma has dementia and his brother's girlfriend is pregnant. His mother is trying to hold everything together, and his father has been absent since his childhood. It seems that everything that could go wrong in his life is going wrong.

I had sympathy for this character, yet I thought he was whiny and self-absorbed, maybe just a typical teenager with too much on his plate. He meets a new boy who offers him friendship and more, but he is too broken by grief to appreciate this chance.

Unfortunately, the story is wound up a little too quickly--we get plenty of time to absorb the situation leading to his crisis, but then the crisis seems to be resolved too quickly. Overall it was promising but ultimately didn't quite live up to its promise.

Comments on the audiobook: the main character, Henry Denton sounds believable and even has a slight lisp. When the voice actor shifts to portraying his friend Diego, the voice goes an octave lower and the affect is very flat. Actually he sounds like a rather tedious adult, so that voice doesn't work for me.

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LibraryThing member bookczuk

You know that satisfied feeling you have after reading a book that just pulled you right in? That was me when I finished reading We are the Ants. There were so many moments where the situation, or the author's way with words just pulled me in and held me close. I'm not a teenage boy, being raised

by a single mom. My boyfriend didn't commit suicide. I'm not having a rough time at school. My brother and his girlfriend aren't expecting a baby. My grandmother isn't losing her memories. I'm not periodically being abducted by aliens. It's not up to me to save the world. But dammit-- I was right there with Henry, every step of the way.

And lest you think I'm kidding about the way I got sucked into the words on the page, try this one on for size:
"Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long dead and buried deep."

I'm definitely going to look for more by this author.

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LibraryThing member Rempala

Very good book.

LibraryThing member Pepperwings

A more relatable Holden Caulfield, dealing with some of the everyday pressures of life as a teenager, your mileage may vary.

I appreciate how this book normalizes LGBT life, and shows the pressures and difficulties still present--even if no one is a particular problem with "gayness" I think too many

of the stories have just been about the difficulties of "coming out" and fail to go into depth about the struggles people face just living their lives.

Being gay doesn't mean you can't deal with larger problems, like alien abduction, or mental anguish, or romantic confusion and struggles, relationships are hard either way, it just adds another layer to it.

It's funny that it largely boils down to the question: when everything sucks and you're given a choice--do you save the world?

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LibraryThing member readingbeader

I started this one on audio and then finished it in print. I needed to know how it ended faster than someone else could read it to me.

Henry has been abducted by aliens even so often and for several years, now. His dad left the family when Henry was younger. His boyfriend committed suicide last

year. He is currently being used by the most popular boy school, who leads the bullying when they aren't hooking up. No wonder Henry isn't too interested in saving the world, when given the means to do so by the aliens who abduct him. But this is not an alien story. It's a story of resilience, grief, friendship, family, discovery, and acceptance. I was awed by this story. Read it.

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LibraryThing member reader1009

diverse teen science fiction coping with depression/suicide/mental health (main character is incidentally gay; his love interest is pansexual).
The characters felt very real and realistically tragic; this deals a lot with the loss of m.c.'s previous boyfriend who had unexpectedly committed suicide

(he had suffered from severe depression due to chemical imbalances in his brain, rather than due to any external circumstances), but it also deals with the main characters milder depression in his unwillingness to save the world from imminent doom by the simple push of a button on his abductors' alien ship.
Not a feel-good story by any means, but a compelling read.

parental note: there is language, sexual situations and assault.

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LibraryThing member oldandnewbooksmell

Trigger Warnings: Depression, Suicide, Bullying, Attempted sexual assault, Abuse, Death

We Are the Ants is about Henry Denton who has been abducted by aliens on and off again for the past few years. Recently though, they finally communicated with him that the world is ending in 144 days. And all he

has to do is press a button to save it. The problem? Henry doesn't know if he wants to.

I honestly don't know how I feel about this novel. On one hand, it had beautiful dialogues and quotes that I often wrote down to remember. But on the other, it felt dry and I couldn't connect with Henry as a character. Hutchinson portrayed a realistic way of grieving and self-blaming but Henry's personality I think just turned me away. I know he's grieving, but his selflessness and absorption is just too much. His reasonings behind why he wouldn't/didn't want to push the button were ridiculously melodramatic.

It also didn't feel Sci-Fi for me either. Yes, the aliens were involved, but in all honesty, I sometimes thought they were still something Henry made up to deal with his emotions. It's just because of when and how the sluggers (the aliens) would take him. I may be trying to read into it too much, but it was always a thought. Also, I wanted them to be in the story more! I feel like Hutchinson missed out on something there to include.

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LibraryThing member tuusannuuska

4,5 stars

Thoroughly enjoyable. I don't have first hand experience of losing someone to suicide or of being in an abusive relationship, but I felt like this was a very good representation on what going through those things could be like. I especially thought that Henry and Marcus' relationship was

portrayed very well. This is pretty much how I would imagine someone who stays with an abusive partner would justify the other's actions.

The main message I got out from this was that you have to save yourself if you want to survive, no one else can be happy for you. Just like you can't be the reason for someone else's happiness. I liked how there were no miracle cures, no "love concurs all" plot devices and how real it all felt. Life is ugly, and difficult, and often it'd be easier to just give up. But life is also beautiful, and amazing, and worth living.

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LibraryThing member xaverie

I'm finding it really hard to write a review for this book. All I knew about this book when I started was that it had quite a few positive reviews on here, but I didn't really know what to expect. So I was surprised at how immediately I connected to the story and the characters, especially the main

character Henry. I suppose I expected a standard YA fantasy novel, but We Are the Ants was instead a beautiful science fiction novel.

I wanted to write a longer review but I've found myself at a loss for words and have had a half-finished review open in my browser for over a week. This falls into the very small category of books in YA in particular: where romance is a factor but not the ultimate point AND where the main character is LGBT. I've never read a book that captured how it felt to lose a fellow teenager that you loved deeply as well as captured all the passive destruction of depression.

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