Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Happiness is Mandatory

Happiness is Mandatory

Ruiz, Joe M.
Ruiz, Ronan
Ruiz, Tauna

Paperback

Mystery & Thriller

ISBN13: 9798290140315
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 29 2025
Pages: 302
Weight: 0.89
Height: 0.68 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In the not-too-distant future, America has fallen and been occupied by a foreign invader. After a bloody but short war, what remains of the population is rounded up into maximum security prison cities.

Amira Maddox is a sixteen year old orphan trying to get by in one of those cities, called Hangbai. On a fateful day, she is forced to act and try to save her little brother, Kai, who has fallen into the hands of the Central Authority, the city's machine overlords.

Desperation leads her to ally herself with the Shadow Underground, a resistance group within the walls of Hangbai. Their skilled operatives reprogram her Orbot, a basketball size droid assigned to every Lower Class person within Hangbai to track their every movement and emotion, and equip her for a fateful trip into the heart of the Central Authority complex miles to the north.

The only way out is through the choked sewer system, riddled with sentry and maintenance bots, that runs under Hangbai. If she succeeds in getting through the tunnels, miles of war-torn, no-man's land wait on the other side and stand between her and her brother. Her final destination is the menacing fortress of the Central Authority complex and their machine overlords, who will protect their power and control at any cost.

HAPPINESS IS MANDATORY is an adventure tale solidly grounded in literary traditions such as Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. The book will appeal to readers of science fiction and post-apocalyptic adventure in the style of Hugh Howey (Silo Series) and Robert Cargill (Sea of Rust), and also to readers seeking the accessible social critique of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

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