young adult Archives - Page 14 of 19

Yzabel / March 1, 2014

Review: The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant

The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant by Joanna Wiebe

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

So many secrets for such a small island. From the moment Anne Merchant arrives at Cania Christy, a boarding school for the world’s wealthiest teens, the hushed truths of this strange, unfamiliar land begin calling to her—sometimes as lulling drumbeats in the night, sometimes as piercing shrieks.

One by one, unanswered questions rise. No one will tell her why a line is painted across the island or why she is forbidden to cross it. Her every move—even her performance at the school dance—is graded as part of a competition to become valedictorian, a title that brings rewards no one will talk about. And Anne discovers that the parents of her peers surrender million-dollar possessions to enroll their kids in Cania Christy, leaving her to wonder what her lowly funeral director father could have paid to get her in and why.

As a beautiful senior struggles to help Anne make sense of this cloak-and-dagger world without breaking the rules that bind him, she must summon the courage to face the impossible truth—and change it—before she and everyone she loves is destroyed by it.

Review:

(I received an ebook copy from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Such a weird, weird book. I have no idea if I found it just average, or if I didn’t like it. Probably both.

It’s one of those “good ideas, but…” novels for me. Intriguing blurb, a theme (revealed later) that normally fascinates me… I could’ve liked it, but.

All right, let’s start with the facepalming, to get it out of the way:
* Nothing remarkable about the writing style. I’ve seen worse, but I’ve also seen much better.
* Several “what the hell” and “head, meet desk” moments. The almost-constant lechery undermining the narrative. It’s set in a school, the characters are all pupils, yet some have it with teachers, and Anne’s Guardian is just one seriously disturbed creep. (His role is to determine Anne’s “quality” in life, and grade her on whether she lives up to it or not for the next two years. He determines her quality is “seduction”, and then proceeds—twice—to unzip his pants and suggest they have sex in exchange for good grades.
* Some plot holes. For instance, the aforementioned Guardians: every pupil is supposed to have one, but we only see Teddy? Where are the others? Also, what classes? The only class Anne ever goes to is Art; we never see her study anything else.
* Slut shaming. The cliché beautiful-yet-mean-girls quartet, immediately hostile to Anne, immediately judged and described by the latter as sluts and skanks. Most girls in the story seem to be that; the ones who aren’t vanish before the middle of the book. Not only does this particular cliché annoy me, slut shaming in general makes me want to slap someone.
* The dance off. No. Just… no.
* Anne is of the Too Stupid To Live breed (yes, considering what the novel’s really about, this is quite the irony). She’s supposed to be smart, but doesn’t piece obvious things together before it’s too late. She gives up on looking for something that, if found by anyone else, will cause serious trouble to herself and another person (a shoe with that other person’s name inside). A couple of characters wave huge “hint here!” signs at her by totally changing behaviours, or giving her items, yet she doesn’t bother to check said items. I was surprised she actually guessed what the Big V meant all by herself.
* I didn’t really get the romance part. I understand the connection, but it doesn’t justify romance to me. It felt like some unwanted cherry plopped on sauerkraut.
* Languages and nationality: the description of a French accent didn’t sit with me (trust me, I know what French sounds like, I’ve spoken it all my life, and we don’t “drawl”). Also, it was weird how Anne could immediately exactly pick who was Thai, Indian, Canadian, etc.

However, I did find a couple of redeeming qualities to this novel. It gave off a Silent Hill-esque vibe, and I’m totally partial to anything SH-related. (It’s not a SH rip-off; it simply left me with similar impressions—whether that was intended, or a complete coincidence.) When Anne realises everybody’s dead, and she must be as well, Cania Christy, the island, the village, suddenly take on a whole other meaning, with that claustrophobic feeling of being locked inside a nightmare world from which you can’t get out just by wishing it. I wasn’t too keen on the Big Reveal about the villain behind it all, nor about the sudden heel-face-turn coming from a character who had been creepy from beginning to end, but its deeper aspects, the power play, the way parents were so to speak forced to bow and kneel down for one fickle piece of fleeting hope… Now that was, in a way, cruelly enjoyable, as well as frightening—because who can honestly say “I’d never do it, I’d never sell my soul for a few more years with my deceased child”?

The last 30% of the book sort of made up for some of its previous facepalm-inducing moments. Not enough for me to give it 2 stars, but at least 1.5. I can’t say I totally disliked this novel.

Yzabel / February 13, 2014

Review: By Blood

By Blood by Tracy E. Banghart

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

For 17-year-old Emma Wong, spending a summer in England should be a dream come true. Gorgeous scenery? Check. Lots of hot guys with accents? Yes, please.

Throw in an estranged mom, annoying new stepdad, and drooling baby half-brother, and it’s a disaster even her favorite cherry red leather jacket can’t fix. Even worse, there’s (hot) live-in research assistant Josh to contend with. The only thing more embarrassing than drunk-kissing him hours after they meet? Knowing he’ll be witness to her family’s dysfunction all. summer. long.

But when Emma meets a mysterious girl who happens to be a Druid, her vacation suddenly promises to be far more intriguing than she anticipated. Powerful rituals, new friends, an intoxicating sense of freedom…and Simon, the sexy foreign stranger she was hoping for. It’s all a perfect distraction from dirty diapers and awkward family dinners.

Trouble is, intriguing doesn’t often mean simple. And Emma is about to discover just how not simple her life really is.

By Blood is a novel about the ways that blood can bind us to others – or tear us apart.

Review:

(I received this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

2.5 stars. I enjoyed parts of this novel, while others seriously grated on my nerves. It wasn’t a bad story; it contains its share of good elements, only I may have read it at a moment when the ones I didn’t like bothered me more than in other circumstances.

I liked the idea of Druids-related beliefs, and how they were introduced into the story. On the one hand, Emma seemed to join in a little too easily; on the other, she was confused, had to leave her country, learnt some troubling things about her family, and it made sense that she’d want a place, a group of people to belong to. In that, the author did a fairly believable job. 17 is still an age at which you can be impressed by many things (hah, you can be that even later in life, after all), and some of her mistakes are somewhat understandable. Not to mention that the girl who introduced her to the whole thing was bubbly and likeable.

Another thing I found nice enough, although it took too much time to my liking to happen, was how Emma grew up somehow throughout the story. She started as an insufferable, self-centered person, and I must admit her tantrums sometimes made me roll her eyes and think “can we stop now?” However, in the end, she opens up and becomes more accepting, more mature. She drops the bratty attitude, and this is good.

What I really didn’t like:
* For someone who grew up with a cop father, who took and even taught self-defence classes, I found her too gullible and too prone to putting herself in tricky situations. I’ve never attended such classes, but I suppose one of the things they teach you there is how to avoid putting youself in dangerous situations for starters. At least, this seems logical to me. Emma, on the other hand, seemed to seek those, which totally clashed with how she was portrayed at the very beginning of the novel. Being confused should only take you so far.
* It was too heavy on the drama. I may have enjoyed this if I had been younger (I imagine it would ‘speak’ to a lot of teenagers, since those are the years when a lot of us feel rejected—sometimes justifiably so, sometimes not). But it leant a little too much towards woe-is-me moments. For instance, she gets the only small, closet-sized room in the house while her baby brother and basically everyone else get a gorgeous one. It may not seem like much, but considering her overall circumstances, the latter were enough for me to understand her unease; no need for more.
* Love triangle, good boy/bad boy. Predictable.

Yzabel / December 25, 2013

Review: Dead Beautiful

Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

After Renee Winters discovers her parents lying dead in California’s Redwood Forest in what appears to be a strange double murder, her grandfather sends her off to Gottfried Academy in Maine, a remote and mysterious high school dedicated to philosophy, “crude sciences,” and Latin: the Language of the Dead. It’s here she meets Dante, a dark and elusive student to whom she feels inexplicably drawn.

As they get to know each other better, Dante can’t seem to control his attraction either, and their desires gradually deepen into a complex and dangerous romance. Dangerous because Dante is hiding a frightening secret. A secret so terrible, it has him fearing for Renee’s life.

Dante’s not the only one with secrets, though. Turns out Gottfried Academy has a few of its own… Like, how come students keep disappearing? Why are the prefect-like Monitors creeping around campus during the night? And what exactly are the Headmistress and Professors really up to? Renee is determined to find out why.
Dead Beautiful is both a compelling romance and thought-provoking read, bringing shocking new meaning to life, death, love, and the nature of the soul.

Review:

(I got an ebook version of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I don’t know whether to give it 2 or 3 stars. Some parts I liked, some I found OK, some were a little dumb in my opinion.

I must say I really liked the atmosphere in this novel: the boarding school and its odd rules, the Gothic feeling, beautiful buildings… All of this surrounded with a veil of mystery, strange behaviours from some of the characters, and bits of foreshadowing that clicked pretty well once the story reached the moments when they made sense. I also liked the “mythology” behind it all: what happened to the children, the role of the Monitors, and why the school was built. It was a somewhat different take on death than what I’ve read up until now.

The pacing lacked in the first half of the book: I think a few chapters could’ve been condensed without the mystery being lessened. Things picked up by chapter 10, which was too far in the story to my liking (and they happened a little too fast in the end, with the explanation dropped on me rather too suddenly). Descriptions helped set the atmosphere, indeed, but after a while, I was starting to wonder when the main character would finally get it—or, rather, when she would actually take useful steps and ask the right questions to the right people.

My main problem with this novel were the characters. The insta-love between Renée and Dante was explained (and easy to foresee, come to think of it), so it bothered me less here than it usually does. However, I found their relationship too basic, too superficial, and I would’ve appreciated seeing more development here. As it was, it didn’t really feel right with the ending. And, as mentioned above, I expected more action from Renée, more investigating; she looked like she could’ve been so much more, yet wasn’t exploited to her full potential. Instead, she remained too vain.

I guess I’m going to file this novel in my list of “OK books”. I cared enough to keep on reading, but I’ll probably forget about it fast.

Yzabel / November 30, 2013

Review: Angelfall

Angelfall by Susan Ee

My rating [rating=2]

Summary:

It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels’ stronghold in San Francisco where she’ll risk everything to rescue her sister and he’ll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Review:

I’ve thought about this book some more, and still can’t decide if I want to give it a 2 or 3 stars rating.

See, all things considered, it was an easy, entertaining read for me, and I can’t decently blame the book for delivering what I expected from it. Its setting is intriguing, and gives us to see that there’s more, much more, lurking behind the scenes. I liked the darker side, the experiments, the fact that the highest among the angels were far from being all white. What they did to children was horrific, and I must say, I appreciate when an author is gutsy enough to write about such doings and let us work our minds around what the ones behind them are trying to achieve. Nothing can be solved nor explained in just a few chapters here, and I like it when I know things can go deeper.

But can they? I don’t know. While reading “Angelfall”, I couldn’t shake off a nagging feeling, and after mulling over it, now I think I’ve put my finger on it: the angels are too human, and as weird as it sounds, this doesn’t work too well for me with the connections created between the character. We’re introduced to a post-ap world in which angels have killed a lot of people, destroyed a lot of places, and are controlling most of what’s left (the uncontrolled areas being prey to gangs, random violence, and so on). So I guess I was expecting them to be fairly different, non-human, with blue and orange thinking and behaviour patterns—in other words, “the enemy we can’t relate to because he’s just too alien.”

When Raffe an Penryn meet, she doesn’t need that much time to behave around him as if he were another human being, and this didn’t make much sense in retrospect. (I understand her plans of keeping an eye on him because he may be the only link to her sister; but she still warmed up too easily.) Same with Raffe: too easily as well, he passed for a human being, he behaved in such ways that made other humans believe he was like them. I don’t know… I would’ve imagined something like that very difficult to achieve, for a being who’s as old as the world and is supposed not to mingle with those pesky monkeys.

Still, it would’ve worked if Raffe had been some kind of exception; it would’ve added another explanation to his being cast off. (Well, maybe he was the exception; I just couldn’t see it in the progressing plot.) Only the other angels also behaved in very human ways, even going as far as to mimic going to night clubs, living in hotels, and so on. That part just boggled my mind, to be honest. It felt disconnected. Just like how Raffe and Penryn got to connect so much. Travelling companions in hard times, and at some point budding friends? OK. But romance? Not so early, not yet.

A few other things I wasn’t sure of include Penryn’s sister (we barely get to connect with her in the beginning, so it’s a little hard to care), and how society seemed to quickly revert, in a mere weeks, to male-dominated structures. Women doing the laundry, being allowed into the aerie as cheap trophies and perhaps whores on display… It might make sense in some ways, but it’s still annoying, and you’d think that modern USA would’ve ended up a little different in that regard, especially with a lead female character who’re supposed to be trained in martial arts. (She doesn’t use those skills enough, in my opinion; go kick a few more faces, Penryn, they deserve it anyway.)

And so, I remain torn over what I’m thinking of this novel. I can’t say I didn’t like it, since I was entertainted. I guess it just made me go “what?” in too many parts.

View all my reviews

Yzabel / November 25, 2013

Review: Reaping Me Softly

Reaping Me Softly by Kate Evangelista

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Ever since a near-death-experience on the operating table, seventeen-year-old Arianne Wilson can see dead people. Just as she’s learned to accept her new-found talents, she discovers that the boy she’s had a crush on since freshman year, Niko Clark, is a Reaper.

At last they have something in common, but that doesn’t mean life is getting any easier. All while facing merciless bullying from the most powerful girl in school, Arianne’s world is turned upside down after Niko accidentally reaps the soul of someone she loves. This sends them both into a spiral that threatens to end Arianne’s life. But will Niko break his own Reaper’s code to save her? And what would the consequences be if he did?

Review:

(I got this book from its author through ARR #144 in the We ♥ YA Books! group, in exchange for an honest review.)

I’ve had a hard time rating this novel, and am still not completely sure. I guess I’d give it a 2.5: nice enough in some parts, and difficult for me to get into in others.

What I liked:

* The world of Death and the Reapers. Their hierarchical, bureaucracy-like organization formed an interesting counterpart with how some of them, at least, seemed to look out for each other. Death is a harsh master, but also one who can show some forms of concern—or the contrary, depending on the situation and on how you see it.

* The Reapers being immortal in a different way: through reincarnation. This gives them the means to appreciate every step of human life, and I think this is a great idea.

* Carrie. Her positive attitude and optimism, in spite of her predicament, were real sunrays, and reminders that life is fickle, and that all things considered, most of us should really be happy with what we have: bodies that aren’t perfect, but that do their job nonetheless.

* Ben. Such a sweet guy.

* Ari being in love with Niko for years: no insta-love for her, but something that had had the time to develop and get stronger. This is believable for me.

What I couldn’t wrap my mind around:

* Sometimes the text really went in convoluted ways, with similes that just didn’t make much sense, or at best felt weird. I didnd’t understand the need for those.

* Why did Niko remain oblivious to Ari for years, even though they shared some classes, but suddenly started paying attention to her? I wondered if it had to do with his depression, but the latter having been lasting for longer than just a few weeks, I’m not sure.

* The extent of Darla’s influence. Of course, bullying does exist, and there will always be cliques and people who twirl others around their little finger. However, having everybody in her pocket, teachers included? Not believable. I would’ve liked to see more of what was going on behind the scenes with her, to ‘get’ how she managed all that. She seemed close to a sociopath profile, yet we don’t learn enough about her to know for sure.

Overall, it kept me entertained enough, but I admit to rolling my eyes quite a few times.

Yzabel / October 23, 2013

Review: Paradigm

Paradigm by Helen Stringer

My rating: [rating=3]

(I got this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Summary:

“If I ask you to do something, will you do it?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”

“Well, I don’t know what it is yet. But I’m guessing that death is the alternative, so I’m prepared to be reasonable.”

Sam Cooper is seventeen. He drives a cherry red 1968 GTO that he won on a bet, and spends his days exploring the open roads of the great American West. He should be living the teenage dream, but post-collapse America is a hard place to survive.

The United States is long dead, basic resources are getting scarcer, and no one on Earth has seen the stars since before he was born. Vast tracts of the country are now empty as people huddle together for safety. In all this chaos, Sam has survived on his wits and occasional luck. But a visit to the walled and prosperous Century City results in a split-second decision that changes everything. Soon Sam is on the run from the ruthless Carolyn Bast, and by something much more dangerous: MUTHA-a powerful artificial entity that has been watching and waiting for Sam’s return from the barren outlands. Sam unknowingly carries the key to something MUTHA can’t live without, something so dangerous that others are willing to kill him, or worse, to ensure that the great plex never possesses it.

Sam can’t stay one step ahead of them forever. His only hope is to unravel the secrets of his peculiar past and awaken the incredible power that sleeps within-because even in his beloved GTO, without the truth, Sam will never succeed in outracing the nightmare to come.

Review:

This novel range from “okay” to “I like it”. It is interspersed with good ideas and easily recognisable characters, and although some of the latter are a little bit on the cliché side, they still manage to stand on their own. (And let’s be honest: at some point, I do want clichés. I do want to picture the badass poncho-wearing girl slashing at enemies with knives in her hands and razor-blades woven in her braids. In fact, the illustrator in me wants to draw that.)

The villains were a little over the top at times, but I liked that they were also chessmasters, laying plans within plans within plans. Too often in books, I find the antagonists too simple-minded, so when I find one that actually remembers to anticipate, I’m glad.

What I liked less in “Paradigm” was how it could easily become confusing. It relies a lot on the reader’s intrisic understanding of vocabulary and concepts that is, indeed, part of regular readers’ of sci-fi… but not so much of others. Even though I managed to follow most of the technological ideas conveyed throughout the story, there were still moments when I had to flip back a few pages, or wonder if this or that explanation held water scientifically, or was just resting on wibbly-wobbly scientific notions. (My own knowledge in that regard isn’t fail-safe, so I can never be sure.)

The plot, too, is a bit all over the place. On the one hand, it gives off nice vibes of a mad chase; on the other, it also made me feel like the characters were always running around right and left, conveniently finding each other again, too. Things go fast, and you may not notice such details on the moment, but for me, they had a nagging tendency to come back to mind later. (I guess the main character, Sam, was confusing as well: he’s supposed to be smart, yet some of his reactions seemed to run contrary to the Sam I had learned to know until now.)

Last but not least, the romance part was simply useless. I enjoyed Alma’s badass streak and no-nonsense attitude, but friendship would’ve done the job just as well.

I’d give it a 2.5 stars, but decided to round it up to 3 all the same, because all in all, “Paradigm” kept me entertained. Still, I feel it necessary to point out that younger readers might be confused now and then by how the world is presented.

Yzabel / October 6, 2013

Review: Engines of the Broken World

Engines of the Broken World by Jason Vanhee

My rating: [rating=4]

(I got an ARC ebook copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Summary:

Merciful Truth and her brother, Gospel, have just pulled their dead mother into the kitchen and stowed her under the table. It was a long illness, and they wanted to bury her—they did—but it’s far too cold outside, and they know they won’t be able to dig into the frozen ground. The Minister who lives with them, who preaches through his animal form, doesn’t make them feel any better about what they’ve done. Merciful calms her guilty feelings but only until, from the other room, she hears a voice she thought she’d never hear again. It’s her mother’s voice, and it’s singing a lullaby. . . .

Review:

This book left me with an odd feeling, but in a good way: the kind of feeling you cannot define, that puts you at unease, yet that at the same time keeps you enthralled and fascinated. The story is wrapped in a definite atmosphere of raw despair and claustrophobia, and its characters, although bleak-looking at first, become easier to understand chapter after chapter. Merciful is a simple girl who’s led a simple life in a simple place, under the guidance of her mother and the Minister; Gospel, her elder brother, tries to be The Man in the family, although he is only three years older and is still a scared child in some ways. Their only comfort, after their mother’s death and even before that, is the Minister itself, and that is to say a lot, since it’s not even a human being they’re dealing with, but an animal.

While you hope until the end that everything will be fully resolved, there’s that nagging little voice in you that keeps saying “it cannot end well”; part of you wants to ignore it, and part of you wants it to be right, because every element—that lost, backward village, its few remaining inhabitants, the mysterious fog, the setting itself—almost screams for it. In a way, it is terrifying. In another, it is alright. You might never know what really happened, how it really ended, if it really ended… but somehow, it’s alright. And I wouldn’t have wanted it to be otherwise.

I also liked how the author managed to toy with the minds of his characters, by also toying with the reader’s mind. More than once I wondered if I had read too fast, if I hadn’t paid attention enough to this or that detail, or if maybe I had put a finger on a plot hole; then, a few chapters later, it all made sense again, and I realised I had been fooled—again, in a good way.

My biggest qualm, I think, would be that the characters weren’t fast enough when it came to understanding a specific turning point in the plot, and might have been able to understand sooner the whole deal about the machine. But at the same time… could they? Considering the life they had been leading until now, and their present circumstances, wasn’t it normal for them to be a little slow on the taking? I can’t make a proper decision about that. All things considered, I enjoyed this book no matter what.

Yzabel / September 23, 2013

Review: The Cypher

The Cypher by Julian Rosado-Machain

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

GUARDIANS INC.: THE CYPHER is two stories in one. A glimpse into a multinational company that is in reality the oldest of secret societies, one that spans close to seven thousand years of existence, weaving in and out of history, guiding and protecting humanity from creatures and forces that most of us believe are only mythology and fairy tales.

The other is the story of Thomas Byrne, a young man thrust into secrets he shouldn’t be aware of and dangers he shouldn’t face, but that he ultimately will, for he is a Cypher. The only one who can steer humanity’s future.

The ultimate conspiracy theory is that Magic is real. Kept in check by technology, but every five hundred years the balance can shift and, if it does, technology will fail and those creatures we’ve driven into myth will come back with a vengeance.

To protect the present, Guardians Incorporated needs to know the future.

Review:

(I got an ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

This novel was likeable enough, but in the end, I’ll probably forget it quickly, in spite of its good points.

You don’t get bored with the story: there’s always something happening. It is also rife with good ideas regarding magic, its role in shaping the world, elementals, various fantastic creatures, and basically lets us see a world close to our own, yet fundamentally different no matter what. Most of the characters all have their distinct features, and pave the way for more development later on. The concept of the Cypher, too, was fascinating: it’s kind of like being a super-librarian and super-translator at once, and as someone who likes both those fields of work, well, of course I would like that! Same with how the author included the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and various books supposedly never published for common people, yet available in the special Guardians’ library.

On the other hand, even though the story was interesting, I found myself dragging through it. I wasn’t sure why at first, but I think it had to do with the discrepancy between the main character and the style, among other things: although Thomas is in high school, the book reads more like a middle-grade novel, and this became strange after a while. I’m sure I’d have liked it a lot more when I was 13, but not at 17-18 (which seems to be the intended audience). Furthermore, while it’s indeed packed with action, sometimes things just moved too fast, and I had to pause and flip back to see if I hadn’t missed anything in between. A downside to this is that the characters don’t get fleshed out as much as they could have in other circumstances—Thomas especially appeared as somewhat ‘flat’ compared to others. Finally, I also wondered several times at some of the decisions made by the adults in the book (I would’ve expected them to be more clever).

All in all, “The Cypher” will likely please readers from the middle-grade crowd, but perhaps not older ones.

Yzabel / September 22, 2013

Dystopian YA worlds: Show us why they’re wrong

What follows is worth for any dystopian story, but I’ve noticed this phenomenon in YA dystopias, more specifically. It all arose from a discussion I was having on Goodreads, regarding a book I finished a few days ago, and I’ve been thinking it might be worth addressing in a blog post.

(Please note that I’m going to use a few existing books as examples, but that it doesn’t mean in any way that I’m attacking those. It’s just my opinion, and/or using them to illustrate my point, whether they actually fall into the issue or not. Also, I haven’t read every dystopian YA book here, so by all means, if you know of a counter-example, tell me about it, so that I can check it. I like this genre, after all, and I, masochistic creature that I am, am never against seeing my to-read pile grow.)

I’ve come to realise that one specific shortcoming in a lot of those novels (well, among the ones I’ve read so far) is the lack of a solid world-building, and the logical consequence of the author having to tell rather than show the reader why society in his/her book is bad. It’s Young Adult, so perhaps teenagers don’t really care about that, and I, on the other hand, am only paying attention because I’m trying to improve my own writing. Nevertheless, it tends to make it harder to enjoy those stories, which is too bad, since a lot of the ideas behind them are actually quite good, and could live up to high expectancies if only things were a little more developed in the beginning.

The format usually goes as this: one (or several) teenager(s) living in a dystopian society start as well-integrated citizens, at least on the outside, but soon come to questioning their world, and end up finding out that everything they know is wrong/being on the run/joining La Resistance/all of that. This is a gross simplification, but it’s still the traditional basis in most stories in that genre.

The problem, in my opinion, is that all too often, the world-building tends to be rushed from the beginning, in order to get more quickly to the “let’s escape”/rebellion part, and we as readers don’t get that much of a feeling for what existed before—and thus, no well-defined society against which to pitch the characters’ upcoming new life. Those dystopian societies are “bad” and we know it, of course, because we can compare them to our own. For instance, most readers would think “how horrible” when presented with the mandatory match-making in Matched by Ally Condie: young people are introduced to their match and expected to start planning their lives with him/her, when they don’t even know that person, have never met him/her, and the whole process is based on criteria entered into computers from the day those people are born. It leaves no room to free will, to spontaneously falling in love, to having a say in who you’re going to grow old with. Everybody, or almost, would normally find all of this wrong from the start, without having to be explained why it’s wrong.

However, this is all preliminary knowledge, and as both a reader and a writer, I think that we need to be shown in what ways exactly such societies are bad for the characters. Are the latter physically threatened? Repressed in what they really want? Are they living in fear, and how is that fear being spread by the authorities in charge? Are there regular descents into “dissident homes”, and “rebels” being paraded in front of everyone so that the “good people” won’t be tempted to follow suit? Do the powers that be stage terrorist acts and pin them down on so-called rebels to keep everyone else in line? Is the hero/ine suffering from the life s/he’s leading, or is s/he perfectly integrated? If integrated, what gets to shatter their core beliefs, then, and how exactly does it happen?

There are many more questions to ask and answer to here, but basically, my point is that the characters have to be placed in more than just one “wrong” situation, forced to react to those, for us to actually find their rebellion logical, even though we, as people, are already aware that their world is totally flawed. It’s not about what makes dystopian societies bad for us, but what makes them so for the characters.

And this is, unfortunately, where some novels fail, because they rely mostly on our knowledge as readers, on what our modern socities consider as right or wrong. In turn, this makes it harder, I think, to view the characters as human beings, as real people. Since we already know what makes their fight “righteous”, we’re told that they’re brave (or not), wilful (or not), hot-headed (or not), instead of being shown through more than one scene how exactly they’re all that, and what made them, or is making them become, that way. We’re told that X realises he’s a coward as he just stands there while his friends are fighting, when simply showing him doing exactly that would carry the point across just as well, and better (provided said scene is well-described and pulled the right way, evidently). We may be shown that the police, government, psi corps, military… is bad, because they do this and that bad thing, but this is usually in the beginning, and afterwards the story seems to wander away from this, and the feeling gets lost somewhere in the middle.

As said, not every YA dystopian story suffers from this. However, the problem arises in more than just one book now and then. Besides, for those among us who want to write such novels, it’s worth keeping in mind, in order to avoid falling in the same trap pit.

So, what novels did you read, that did or did not fit that description? And why do you feel the way you do about them?

Yzabel / August 18, 2013

Review: The Darkest Minds

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.

Review:

Pleasant enough to read, and raising quite an amount of valid points about the wide black-to-white spectrum of human nature. Well, rather black than white in many cases here. It becomes clear enough, and soon enough, too, that whoever those kids encounter, they should be wary of–even their own kind. And yet, if they can’t even trust their kind, then what’s left to them?

Ruby came off as too whiny a lot of times. However, considering her powers, what happened because of them, and how she basically was ripped off from her life at the age of ten, to be thrown in a place where she didn’t exactly have the opportunity to develop other social skills than “must make myself inconspicuous in order to survive”, I could understand that she’d be wary of herself above anyone else. So it kind of made sense.

I’m not rating this book higher, though, because there were also a few things that bothered me. Among other things, the lack of urgency during the travelling parts. We’re told several times about how the Psi Corps (yes, sorry, black + psi letter = Psi Corps forever in my mind), bounty hunters, the League etc. are a danger and are chasing the kids, but the few encounters they have with such groups didn’t give me the thrills, so to speak; there were a couple of opportunities for something bad to happen, the characters were aware of it, you’d expect said bad thing to happen, and… nothing. It made the travelling part of the book less exciting than it could’ve been. Also, some things didn’t make that much sense (Thurmond and other camps could’ve been put to way darker uses way sooner: it would’ve worked pretty well in such a book), and others were a little too easy to predict. The Slip Kid, for instance: Checkhov’s gun—or, in this case, Chekhov’s portrait.

On the other hand, I liked the twist at the end, as well as Ruby’s decision. It was sad, but I feel that it was the only way out, all things considered, and no matter what, it makes me wonder what will happen next. Which means I’ll likely pick the next book when it’s out.