Flying limos. Antigravity landing pads. Robot maids. Programmable birds. No illness. Pantries that cook. It's a mad world, and we're just reading it. Luckily, it's also a totally exciting and fascinating world, which explains why Nancy Farmer's The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm was a bestseller when it was first published in 1994 and won the Newbery Honor award. Not too shabby for a debut novel. And Farmer was just getting started.

Nancy Farmer is a very successful young adult novelist. Her books are all imaginative and creative, and in The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, we're whisked away to Zimbabwe in the year 2194, where Tendai and his siblings Rita and Kuda are kidnapped by a genetically engineered blue monkey and sold to mask-wearing, voodoo-practicing bogeymen. Will Tendai survive? Will he triumph? You don't really think we're going to tell you, do you? Silly.

If that all sounds a bit scary, well, it kind of is. The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm might be a young adult novel, but it mixes in some seriously frightening elements and makes us rethink our plans to time-travel to the future. Although, if there are maid robots in the future…

Rules are tricky. We're supposed to follow them, trusting that they're in place for a reason, but sometimes they can hold us back. This is definitely true for Tendai. Sure, he lives in 2194, but with his super strict parents and all their rigid rules, he finds himself in a pretty relatable situation: Dude's stifled by the rules and desperate to break free. And break free he does.

Does his jailbreak go particularly well? No. Tendai gets in all kinds of trouble. He's repeatedly kidnapped, tricked by a monkey, trapped in a society that lives like it's a totally different era, and much more. Things are beyond terrible many times—and in this way, The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm might seem like a very pro-rule book at first glance.

But here's the catch: In breaking his parents' rules, Tendai finds himself. Free to make his own decisions, Tendai does some serious learning not only about the ways of the world, but about himself and the roles he can play in the world, too. So does a hot mess ensue when he ditches his parents and their rules? Definitely. But it is kind of worth it? Well, we'll let you decide for yourself… but we're thinking it absolutely is.