But soon, she can’t help her curiosity and she is asking him questions about the outside. At first Anna resists, not willing to believe him. That there’s an Underground Movement, hiding Surpluses, trying to fight the regime, trying to fight for the right to exist.

He tells Anna that he’s here for her, that he can take her away from Grange Hall and back to her parents, who love her and miss her and have been trying to figure out how to find her for all these years. He claims to Anna that he knows her parents, he uses her last name when speaking to her (Surplus children don’t have last names as they are nothing and should not exist). He has just been Captured, having survived out there for longer than most. She bears the shame of being a Surplus and the only way she can make up for that is to be a very Valuable Asset.Īll is well in Anna’s world until fifteen year old Peter is brought to Grange Hall. Anna cannot remember a time when she wasn’t supposed to hate her parents. They are taught at the Surplus Houses to hate their parents for breaking the rules, for bringing them into the world when they shouldn’t be there, for burdening the Legal population even further. Her parents are nothing but a disgrace to her now. She is classed as Pending, almost ready to go out and take up a position with Legals, ready to try and make up for the gross error that is her very existence. Anna is determined to be a good Surplus, to become a really Valuable Asset and make up for her Parents Sins in having her. Taken by the Catchers when she was just over 2, she has been living and training at Grange Hall under the watchful malevolent eye of House Matron Mrs Pincent. And naturally, they don’t get the Longevity drugs.įifteen year old Anna is such a Surplus. They are trained to be servants to the Legal’s, to reduce their consumption, their impact on the overcrowded Earth. Being Useful or being a Valuable Asset is how they must make up for the fact that they never should’ve been born. Anyone who breaks this rule and has a child anyway – the child is deemed illegal, a Surplus and sent to a facility where they are to be trained to be Useful. Overcrowding and use of energy and resources are massive problems, so citizens must sign The Declaration and have no children. Naturally with pretty much no one on the planet dying anymore, some adjustments have to be made.

So long as you keep taking the magic Longevity drugs that is. Old age and illness are no longer a problem, you can stay a youthful 40 or 50 for all time.

Gemma malley the declaration series