Waterbound

Some time in the future, people live with limited resources in a City run by the faceless, bureaucratic ""Admin."" Admin provides everyone with food and medical care, but as Gem discovers soon after she turns 16, it also has a secret: the Waterbound, disabled people exiled from a society where words like ""blind"" and ""wheelchair"" have been declared ""obsolete"" or of ""figurative use"" only. As Gem learns, the Waterbound have been shunted aside to live under the City, ever since ""the Ruling.... Babies like us officially die when they are born,"" so that the City will not have to support them. Gem's curiosity and idealism push her, with the help of a few friends, to reveal the existence of the Waterbound to the citizens above, in such a way that Admin can not keep it quiet. This would be a more satisfying triumph if Admin were not so easily defeated, and if the story were not played out in a too-familiar setting, a Giver-like place, sketchy and symbolic. It's even populated by stock characters from YA fiction, which, although a bit of a change from the stock characters of science fiction, may not be enough to garner a following for this somewhat didactic first novel. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)