Flashfall by Jenny Moyer

Orion and her best friend/partner/love interest Dram are Subpars - miners working to extract enough cirium to earn their freedom from their difficult life and go live in the city.  Their outpost is right on the edge of the radiation laden flash curtain but Subpars are better able to tolerate the radiation than other humans.  Still, they can be overexposed and their are plenty of other dangers in the tunnels.  When some new people show up at their outpost, Orion begins to question their life and whether any of them will ever be able to escape from the mines.

A mining book.  Oh boy.  I don't think I've ever enjoyed any book I've read where the characters are miners or the book is set underground so that might be a personal issue.  This book did not change my mind about that setting, plus it left me cold in many other ways.  

• I have no idea what the Flashfall was or what has brought about this life.  I don't care for didactic explanations in books, but I do like some sort of hint about the world in which we find ourselves.
• The action is nonstop but not in a "wow, can't wait to see what happens next" way.  No, for me it was a "something else is happening but I don't know what it is nor what just happened before this new turn of events" way.  Just one deadly scenario after another.
• I can dig (not in a mining way) a good uprising against the corrupt government book but there needs to be at least some sort of hope of success.  
• I'm not a fan of stories where all sorts of characters sacrifice themselves in order to keep one or two main characters alive. The surviving characters usually do something stupid that makes all the sacrifices pointless.  If someone is willing to die to save you, make that count!
• Although this is a unique-ish world, there are not really surprises in the overall storyline.  Romance between good friends, government that turns out to be oppressive and lying, tough heroine who defies the forces trying to kill her...  Seen it before.