Want Books in Order

The Want series is a near-future science-fiction thriller set in a Taipei where clean air has become a luxury. Pollution and disease shape daily life, while the wealthy protect themselves with expensive suits and medical advantages that help them live longer. For everyone else, the city is a place where survival depends on money, connections, and a willingness to take risks.

The first book follows Jason Zhou, known as Zhou, a teenager still grieving his mother's death. He is angry at the system that let it happen, and he believes the powerful Jin Corporation is profiting from the very pollution that harms ordinary people. With a small group of friends, he plans to get inside the world of the rich and expose what Jin is doing.

It is a dangerous plan from the start.

Zhou's mission brings him close to Daiyu, the daughter of Jin's chief executive. Their growing connection gives the story a personal complication, because Zhou cannot easily separate his feelings for her from his fight against her father. The books are interested in that tension: how do you fight an unjust system without losing sight of the people caught inside it?

The sequel, Ruse, moves much of the action to Shanghai. The group is dealing with the fallout from their earlier choices when Lingyi is drawn into a new crisis involving stolen technology and a deadly corporate threat. Zhou, Iris, Daiyu, and their friends must work through mistrust, grief, and divided loyalties while Jin keeps finding ways to stay in control.

These are fast-moving books, but the setting gives them weight. Pon builds the suspense around unequal access to health, technology, and safety, then lets her characters argue, improvise, and make messy decisions under pressure. Expect chase scenes, infiltration, romance, and a close-knit group of teens trying to take on people with far more money and power.

Read Want first, then continue straight to Ruse. The second book relies on the relationships and consequences established in the first, so the series works best as one connected story.