Look, I need to get something off my chest before we go any further: I teach dystopian literature to juniors every spring. We do 1984, we do Brave New World, sometimes I sneak in The Handmaid's Tale if the school board isn't paying attention. So when I tell you that Agenda 21 reads like someone took the CliffsNotes of every dystopian classic, ran them through a political talk radio filter, and handed the result to a YA ghostwriter - I'm not being dismissive. I'm being precise.
I started this one during a Saturday morning walk along the lakefront with Denise. She was on a phone call with her sister, I had my earbuds in, and January LaVoy's voice hit me with that opening and I thought, okay, this might work. LaVoy has genuine talent. But by the time we'd looped back to Montrose Harbor, I was already arguing with the book in my head. That's either a sign of engagement or irritation, and honestly, it was both.
The Republic Feels Like a Semester Project Gone Wrong
Here's what bugs me as someone who has spent two decades teaching kids how to build fictional worlds: the Republic - this post-American authoritarian state - never earns its own existence. Emmeline walks an energy board to generate power. Citizens are paired for reproduction by the Authorities. Children are taken from parents and raised in communal facilities. Every single one of these ideas is borrowed from somewhere else, and Glenn Beck (with co-author Harriet Parke, let's give credit where it's due) doesn't push any of them far enough to feel fresh.
The energy board thing is actually the most interesting detail in the whole book - this image of citizens trudging on what amounts to a hamster wheel to power the grid. There's something viscerally degrading about it that works. But the novel never interrogates why this system exists beyond "environmentalism gone mad," which is where the ideological framework starts showing through the fictional wallpaper like water damage.
My students would spot the thesis statement from a mile away. This is a cautionary tale about government overreach dressed in dystopian clothing, and it wears that costume about as subtly as a kid in a bedsheet ghost outfit on Halloween. The prose itself sits at a YA reading level - short declarative sentences, limited internal complexity, emotions stated rather than shown. That's not automatically a flaw, but when you're asking me to take your dystopia seriously alongside Orwell and Atwood, the writing needs to do more heavy lifting.
January LaVoy Deserves Better Material
And here's where I have to separate the performance from the text, because LaVoy is genuinely good at her job. She finds emotional weight in Emmeline's voice - a kind of flattened affect that opens up in moments of fear or tenderness, particularly when Emmeline thinks about her mother. There's a scene where Emmeline recalls her mother's stories about "before times" America, and LaVoy drops her voice into this quiet, almost reverent register that actually gave me chills. The narrator understands that pause is punctuation. She uses silence the way a good actor uses stillness.
The alternating narration with Jeremy Lowell helps break up the pacing, which - I'll be honest - needs the help. The middle third of this book drags. I was grading a stack of personal essays on a Tuesday night, listening at my desk, and I caught myself reading the same student paragraph three times because neither the essays nor the audiobook were holding me. That's a bad sign at hour four.
But LaVoy's dramatic instincts are sharp. She doesn't oversell the emotional beats, which is exactly the right choice for a first-person narrator living under totalitarian rule. Someone who's been suppressed their whole life wouldn't emote like a soap opera character. LaVoy gets that. I just wish the script gave her more to work with.
What the Author Is Really Saying (And Whether It Works)
Let's talk about what the author is really saying. Beck isn't hiding the ball here - this is a fictionalized warning about Agenda 21, the actual UN sustainable development resolution from 1992, extrapolated to its most extreme possible conclusion. As a political argument wrapped in fiction, it's effective for people who already share Beck's concerns. As literature? It shortcuts the hard work of making the reader arrive at conclusions organically. Orwell didn't need to tell you totalitarianism was bad. He showed you Room 101 and let your nightmares do the rest. It's the same trick Harriet Beecher Stowe pulled in Uncle Tom's Cabin - a book I've used in class precisely because its political argument works through feeling first and ideology second, even if the seams show just as badly two centuries later.
That said - and I want to be fair - there's a kernel of a good survival story buried in here. Emmeline's decision to risk everything when the Authorities come for someone she loves has genuine emotional stakes. The final act picks up momentum. If you can get past the heavy-handed worldbuilding, there's a functional escape narrative that moves.
Who Gets the Assignment and Who Gets a Pass
If you're a Beck fan who wants dystopian fiction that aligns with his political worldview, this delivers exactly what it promises. If you're a dystopian fiction reader looking for something that challenges the genre, keep walking. And if you're somewhere in the middle - curious, maybe a little skeptical - the audiobook format is genuinely the best way to experience this, because LaVoy's performance elevates material that would feel thinner on the page.
The Grade on This One
I've given B-minuses to students who showed more ambition but less polish. This is the reverse - polished enough (especially in audio form), but playing it safe with borrowed ideas. LaVoy earns her Golden Voice designation. The book earns a respectful shrug. Worth pausing the faculty meeting for? Only if Principal Martinez is talking about parking lot assignments again.
