Her Fine Eyes

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: If you squint past the time travel errors, and manage to swallow the Anakin-Skywalker-esque explanation for how the Bad Guy came to be, this is basically one giant, entertaining YA chase scene, with a nice theme of learning to love yourself thrown in for good measure.

The plot. All Our Yesterdays is YA dystopia sci-fi, without (unfortunately) actually showing the reader the dystopia. We see a hardened prisoner named Em escaping from the evil Doctor with her devoted next-door cell mate, Finn, to make their way to a time-travel machine called Cassandra, in order to travel back in time four years and prevent the creation of said machine. Based on a note written in Em's handwriting and stuffed in a drain in Em's cell, they know that this is the fourteenth attempt, and the only course of action they haven't tried is to kill the younger version of the Doctor before he can create Cassandra. Unfortunately, the younger version of the Doctor is James, Em's lifelong crush and best friend. Marina, Em's younger version, is just a girl who wants a happily ever after with the brilliant, handsome, slightly volatile boy next door, who happens to be destined to become an evil genius. In alternating chapters narrated by Em and Marina, we see the two time streams intertwine and collide. 

What I liked. I quite liked Em's motivation to protect Marina, her younger self. I liked the implication that she had grown to love herself over the years, enough to have a big-sister or even maternal desire to secure her own youthful innocence, no matter the cost to her current, scarred self (Em will never have existed if she and Finn are successful in their quest). I like that we're following the exact four-years-ago timeline that matches this final attempt to destroy Cassandra, so that we get to see the final outcome for young Marina. I liked the open ending promising that her affection for Finn is growing as they mourn together. More generally, I liked Finn's and Marina's relationship, and Em's and Finn's. I also really liked the exploration of the question of whether a person is responsible for a future crime if he hasn't already thought of it--the idea of intention and free will are cleverly poked at. (I disagree with the moaning on goodreads of readers who hated that Em couldn't pull the trigger on young James. This was a wonderful dilemma she struggled with.)

What didn't work so well. There were some time-traveling glitches that made me stumble. For instance, how does Em know what happened in previous attempts (where she and Finn presumably died)? She has dialogue-specific memories from West Virginia (e.g. Rena snoring), which couldn't have been written on that tiny paper in the drain pipe. Was I not reading carefully, and that information was gleaned from one of her time-travel, epileptic-like seizures? Similarly, how could Finn have a scar on his hand (the one he fondles when he's nervous) from one of the previous attempts? Wouldn't his body reboot each time the time line fails? And why are the Doctor and the Director demanding to know where the documents are--the scribbled notes that were the "aha" inspiration for Cassandra--if Cassandra has already been successfully invented? (Also, the torture scenes were a tad cliche. I couldn't stop thinking, "Ver ahr ze papers?!" It was much more affecting to know that sometimes the Doctor came in and wanted to talk to her as his old friend; that's subtle torture.)

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: Gorgeous prose and intriguing magical realism, but a lack of depth in one of the key characters ultimately undermines the power of this novel.

All I knew was that she couldn't be down in Olive this long by choice--they were making her stay, punishment for all the things she did. She got too powerful up here on the surface, she stopped being careful, and the people of Olive just didn't like that. I knew that if it were up to her, she'd already be up here, with me.  

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: this was one of the most agonizing, interminable reads ever, with the author's voice dominating the plot and the characters.

I was surprised by how much this book annoyed me. Not for the political reasons that may have bothered other people (I'm the type of person who militantly opts out of the scanner at airports), but because I felt like it was subtly so narcissistic and cis-heterosexual-male, and actually even sexist. Doctorow wants to teach us something, and he's so busy doing it he slips up and lets his own intolerance and vanity show through.

The good? Well, the idea of writing a book about civil liberties is excellent. So many Americans are willing to give up freedom in exchange for "security," it would be great to get kids to question that model, and to understand just how much it opens the system to corruption and abuse. 

Mary Stu. The main character felt like a fantasy stand-in for men who identify as computer-and-gaming geeks and who think they were under-appreciated in high school. Marcus was fake-humble with an undercurrent of hubris, and Ange was his supposedly kick-ass, extroverted, brainy, but nevertheless two-dimensional manic pixie dream girl, only there to admire him and think he's brilliant and buy condoms for them. ("Get down here. I didn't bring a stepladder," she says when she completely forgives him after a long disagreement. Later Marcus says, "I had never been with a girl as...aggressive as her before. It had always been me putting the moves on and them pushing me away." Yuck. He has tried to force himself on girls?) And in the last pages, Marcus even got to have the "good girl" (Van) love him from afar forever, unrequited. Ugh. The whole time I was reading I couldn't shake the creepy feeling that Marcus Yallow was just a masturbatory literary doppelganger for Cory Doctorow. Now that I think of it, "Marcus Yallow" and "Cory Doctorow" are almost a slant rhyme.

Female images (and racial and sexual tolerance). There are other ways in which women are subtly undermined. First and foremost, their characters are superficial to the point of non-existence. They are here exclusively to move the plot along or to highlight how attractive and heroic Marcus is. Masha is badass and nothing else. She is a plot device only: a way for us to see our hero choose preserving freedom in the U.S. over saving himself. Severe Haircut Lady doesn't even get a name until the very end of the book. And what's with that term, "Severe Haircut?" Why is she identified by her grooming choice? It felt a little bit like gay bashing, until Doctorow has Severe Haircut Lady herself verbally bash gays, just to be sure we know she's a hateful person. Meanwhile Marcus casually describes a female bass player in the band The Speedwhores as "a huge fat girl with a dykey haircut and even bigger boots" (even bigger than what?), and the guitarist as "a little pixie of a girl whose face bristled with piercings." So many women are described via their clothing or their body types, while the men's clothes are barely ever mentioned. Upon first meeting Barbara Stratford, a journalist, this is what we learn...what she's wearing:

She was wearing a pair of jeans that were hip enough to be seen at one of the boutiques on Valencia Street, and a loose Indian cotton blouse that hung down to her thighs. She had small round glasses that flashed in her hallway light. 

Ange says of the journalists at the SF Chronicle: "They're total whores....In fact, that's an insult to hardworking whores everywhere." This is truly problematic, and not something Doctorow should have a supposedly empowered female character toss off as witty. Yes, some women make prostitution a career out of necessity, and work hard and don't deserve to be insulted. But some prostitutes are coerced, or trafficked, or they're children, or addicted to drugs and can't escape. This is a clueless-male thing for a feminist female character to say. Earlier in the story when they're playing their multi-discipline online game, Marcus steps on someone's toes in a bad neighborhood and says, "I spun around, worried that some crack ho was going to stab me for breaking her heels." Seriously? Crack ho?

And while Doctorow goes to great lengths to show how unfair it was that Guantanamo-on-the-Bay was disproportionately loaded with Arab-looking men, he doesn't even notice himself writing a stereotype in, when the Turkish coffee shop owner says--in quite broken English--that he has been in the U.S. for twenty years. Why not make the man speak fluently?

And finally: Charles. Doctorow paints the Charles character (one-dimensionally) as a rule-following, brown-nosing, narc-ing, menacing kid, and then allows Marcus to bully him mercilessly in what we're supposed to think is a fitting retribution. Instead, the scene where Marcus leads everyone to tie Charles's clothes into knots and urinate on them in the bathroom made me hate the main character, and made me wonder whether Doctorow himself is tolerant of political or social opinions that diverge from his. 

Sloppy. Little Brother was also unbearably sloppily written (and edited). Plot points crumble under scrutiny: after Masha takes the photo of Marcus and his friends being "truants," why doesn't one of Marcus's gang take her photo, guaranteeing mutually assured destruction? How could Marcus, hacker extraordinaire, not notice that street poles were now outfitted with speakers? How can they get from Oakland to the peninsula in 45 minutes if the Bay Bridge and the BART tunnel are destroyed? The days that have passed since the bombing are inconsistent (first six, then five). There was also so much telling ("I worried constantly about Darryl and fretted about my other friends"; "This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy"). There is superficial characterization, even with main characters; lots of repetition of ideas; and repeated words in sentences: "I couldn't tell what color [her eyes] were in the dark, but I guessed something dark, based on her dark hair and olive complexion." His mother had two different first names in the same chapter (Louisa and Lillian)...where was the copyeditor? Facts are not checked (IKEA does not make a swing set.) Page 32 has the words fiercely, roughly, dispassionately, cruelly, impersonally, and roughly (again), practically in one breath. Sloppy descriptions abound: "locked my hands to something behind me" really means locked his wrists via a plastic ligature; "his jaw muscles ground around"--well muscles don't grind, teeth do).

Filler. Part of the lack of editing is the inclusion of unnecessary information. Some of it is Marcus acting all *wink, wink* teenagery, and imparting pearls of wisdom that Doctorow thinks it would be fun for the reader to know. ("The farthest bathroom stall is always grossest because so many people head straight for it, hoping to escape the smell and the squick--the smart money and good hygiene is down the middle.") But much of the time the filler is useless description of surroundings. Description should be both beautiful and useful. But I suspect Doctorow is impatient with the concept of writing description, so he uses it to try (unsuccessfully) to lend richness to characters he senses are superficial. For instance, when Marcus visits Barbara Stratford's house he says:

Her place was furnished in Japanese minimalist style, just a few precisely proportioned, low pieces of furniture, large clay pots of bamboo that brushed the ceiling, and what looked like a large, rusted piece of a diesel engine perched on top of a polished marble plinth. I decided I liked it. The floors were old wood, sanded and stained, but not filled, so you could see cracks and pits underneath the varnish. I really liked that, especially as I walked over it in my stocking feet.

This passage is of absolutely no help to the plot. Worse, it manages somehow to be telling. He's telling us that Barbara is a good person based on how she dresses and how she decorates, and that Marcus can identify good people. (Marcus actually uses the words "good people" at one point, a pronouncement he lavishes on the massive group of teens he doesn't even know who come to his keysigning party.)

There was also a plotting sloppiness in having Marcus tell the story of his Homeland Security abduction and interrogations not once, not twice, but five times to various people once he decided to tell the truth. 

Structure (conflict). The conflict in this book was exclusively external--bad things are forced on our main character, and on society as a whole. The Department of Homeland Security (and its one-dimensional minions, like Severe Haircut Lady) and power-hungry politicians are the bad guys, inflicting suffering on everyone else--taking advantage of fear to restrict freedom. Marcus never has any sort of internal conflict, and never needs to experience character growth--he is heroically thwarting all wrongs; he always knows the correct, moral answer; he is a natural leader, as much as he protests against that label. At the most, he struggles with whether he should run away (to guarantee his freedom) or stay at home and fight. He tells us he has grown in the end, but really, he's the same clever, street-smart, subversive geek--he's just no longer a virgin.

Structure (secondary characters). Don't expect to grow to love any of the characters in this novel. As I've mentioned, the women are plot points, the bad guys are not just evil they're stupid, and even his dad is there just to be a straw man: to spout the government's security hysteria so that Marcus can chop it down, or to teach us (the readers) about Bayesian statistical analysis. Marcus's best friend, Darryl, ended up being one big MacGuffin (the poor guy) whom Doctorow hobbled with PTSD to keep him out of the picture after his rescue, where he wouldn't interfere with the plot and the glory that is Marcus. 

Oh my gosh, I'm so tired of this book, I can't look through my notes anymore. End of review!

***Spoilers, as usual, but since this is a superhero origin story, you already know what happens, trust me.***

One-sentence review: A sensitive immigration story masquerading as a superhero origin story, but in the end I wish Gene Yang had invented his own character rather than reviving such a problematic one.

The origin of this origin story: Gene Yang became intrigued by a comic book character called The Green Turtle--a 1944 superhero from Blazing Comics--who is rumored to be the first Asian-American superhero. The thirties and forties were the Golden Age of comics, and every press was trying to invent the next Superman, so there are a lot of failed characters and series out there. The Green Turtle series was drawn by Chu F. Hing, and readers speculate that the reason we hardly ever see the hero's face is that Chu wanted him to have Asian features, while the editors wanted him to be white. The Green Turtle was also evasive about his origin, always promising side characters that he'd let them in on his secret later, but ultimately never revealing anything about himself. So Yang decided to fill in this back story (Yang is the author, and Sonny Liew is the artist)--inventing reasons even for some of the idiosyncratic pieces of the original comic. But more on pink skin later.

History. The original Green Turtle comics have to be taken in historical context when you read them. Chinese Americans were horrifically stigmatized throughout American history leading up to the war, but as American involvement in WWII began to ramp up, the Japanese became reviled, and Chinese Americans felt some tiny relief from their social misery. The 1944 Green Turtle adventures take place in China, where he is fighting the oppressive, murderous Japanese bad guys, basically on behalf of the American government and Chiang Kai-Shek (the leader of the Republic of China). The original comic is highly racist in its depiction of Japanese characters, and in its language. It's also practically unreadable as literature--mindless superhero schlock, and poorly drawn at that. 

An immigrant story. The real heart of Yang and Liew's book--the reason it's worth reading--is the immigrant story, not the superhero underpinnings. Hank is the first-generation son of two immigrant parents. His father, a drunk street fighter, was tossed onto a ship bound for America, and his mother arrived as a child, full of hope for this new country, only to live in demoralizing squalor. Hank tells us "The disappointment broke mother's spirit," but almost immediately we see evidence that she's a spunky middle-aged woman. (There are a few disconnects like this in the writing, which could have been a bit tighter, much as I adore Gene Yang.) As a young woman she is married off to Hank's father, a "modestly successful grocer," and obligingly produces a son. But she's perpetually disgruntled, and escapes daily life in the grocery store via her job as a housekeeper for an American woman. Hank, meanwhile, loves working with his dad, does well in school, and looks forward to running the store (which is called "Yu Quai" or "Jade Tortoise") when he grows up. We see the separation between whites and Asians--this is Chinatown, and whites don't shop in Chinese stores--the poverty, and the prejudice even on the part of otherwise sympathetic characters. Gradually we learn that Hank's dad, like all the local shopkeepers, has to pay tithes to the Chinese mob that runs Chinatown, and that the police are bought off. Thus, the people struggling to live in this neighborhood are oppressed, unrepresented, and unprotected. The themes of Hank and his mother discovering their place in their community are wonderful. The mirroring of our society slowly understanding the humanity of Chinese immigrants through Detective Lawful is poignant. So what about Hank's discovery of his strength through the death of his dad, and his desire to bring the killers to justice and rid the neighborhood of its mob oppressors? Meh--that's a tired superhero trope. 

Fantasy. This is a world in which superheros really exist. Or at least, one superhero is real: the "Anchor of Justice" fights crime, is impervious to bullets, and can fly. When Hank's mom is rescued by the Anchor, the quiet shopkeeping ambitions of her husband and son become annoying to her, and they are "cowards." (Later we see that part of her complaint is that Hank's father pays off the mobsters without resistance.) She tries to induce superhuman powers in Hank by exposing him to toxins--with the disappointing result that he turns pink when doused with water. Hank's real superpower comes after the death of his dad, when he inherits the spirit of a turtle god, who asks to live in his shadow. The turtle spirit (and his three brothers) are awesome. But again, they could have been included in a Chinese immigrant story that isn't about superheros.

Why revive a failed character? I'm just not sure whether Yang and Liew should have revived this character rather than create their own from scratch--while still exploring the immigrant story--either using the superhero medium or not.* There's an afterword by Yang giving the history of the original comic, pointing out the historical context for its racism, and including a sample issue. It somehow damages the strength of their own work, to include what is essentially a failed and offensive comic (and exceedingly conventionally drawn) alongside their own strong interpretation. As a historical piece, the original Green Turtle might have been a nice English B.A. thesis subject, but Yang isn't writing non-fiction here. It makes me feel like the "hook" of the project--the marketing angle the publishers hoped for--was that these extremely talented contemporary comic artists were "re-imagining the first-ever Asian superhero!" No one at First Second thought beyond that. I personally would have much preferred an original superhero, or even better: a slightly fantastical story of a non-superhero exploring some of the same personal and cultural issues. In trying to include all the pieces of the original Green Turtle puzzle, they introduce distracting, useless extras. For instance, they give Hank the side-effect of turning pink when he gets wet, as a way of explaining why the Blazing Comics art director chose to make the skin of the original Green Turtle a pinkish, more "Western" hue than the Asian characters. (Yang argues that this coloring choice was to thwart Chu F. Hing's sly attempts to make him Asian, but in my edition of the book, the reprint of the original comic at the back of The Shadow Hero doesn't show any more "R" in the RGB coloring of the Green Turtle's skin than the Asian skin.) 

Art. Liew's style grew on me, although it's not particularly sophisticated or skilled. There's a kind of hairy, sketchy quality to his art, shaping angular corners. It's the way high-schoolers sketch, trying several lines and hoping the sum of them will add up to the curve or line they're looking for. There are also randomly occurring too-bold outlines of subjects and objects. It gives an amateurish quality that's either charming or lame, depending on your mood.

Writing. As I mentioned above, this is not as tight as Yang's regular work. And he needed to trust the art more. For instance, when we see the breath spiraling between Hank and Red Center, we don't need an explanation the first time, let alone the second. I got the impression that this project was not one that Yang had a lot of time for, and that after he turned in the text he didn't participate much in the clean-up stages, or collaborate deeply enough with the editor and Liew.

Trim size. This is a small complaint, but if you're going to reprint a comic at the back of a graphic novel, why not make the trim size the same as the comic?  

*And there's an argument that the superhero origin story is so boring and predictable at this point, if you don't contribute something new to it, maybe you shouldn't do it at all? Neil Gaiman's Sandman revives a tired old superhero from the late 30s, but completely revamps it: Morpheus is a god, the Lord of Dreams, and one of the seven Endless. Gone is the superhero who puts criminals to sleep with gas. Only the name "Sandman" is the same as the original series.

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: the minimalist dialect is not enough to make this derivative, trope-heavy, overly-cinematic hero's journey into something original or complex.

Back up a second. My summary sounds harsh--too harsh for a debut that holds its own in a saturated post-apocalyptic market. There are many things to admire here: a repressed, unenlightened main character with a driving loyalty to her brother; a nice depiction of a world that has lost most of its memories of civilization; Saba's crow, Nero (even though his Lassie skills are too much to be believed: "Get help, Lassie. Get help, girl!"); Saba's little sister's (Emmi's) believable blend of immaturity and maturity; the beginning of an exploration of fate versus agency (although I can't find this thread discussed in reviews of subsequent installments); and finally, there's a nice character change from the beginning of the novel, when Saba idolizes Lugh as "the sun," "beautiful," the strong and smart one, while describing herself as "always following after," to her acceptance of her own skill, courage, and strength as a leader. 

I won't be reading on in this series. As I've mentioned before, I often don't read beyond the first book in a series. I like to get a taste of what the author's writing style is, the world they're establishing, and the complexity of their plot, themes, and characterization. It's rare for me to be so invested in the story and characters that I can't resist the subsequent books. Blood Red Road does not entice me to read on in the Dustlands trilogy because of its lack of complexity--especially in the last third of the book, when Ms. Young seems to pull out all the "movie" stops and forget that this is literature.

Hero's journey. This book includes so many of Joseph Campbell's seventeen stages of the monomyth, you wonder whether Ms. Young followed the Wikipedia entry, right down to the old crone who gives Saba an amulet. In this case, the trinket is not quite essential to the quest, not protection against dragons, but more like a mood ring leading our heroine to "her heart's desire." (Yes, it's written as a cliche. And yes, it turns out to be a boy.) The plot is so damned linear, you can check your brain at the door. Don't get me wrong: the hero's journey is a legitimate art form. For example, it's about all you can fit into two hours of an action-adventure film, so we're okay with it. And in many cases, the journey is deliberately simple because something else about the delivery is complex or ground-breaking. Star Wars is a blatant hero's journey, but we have so much visual complexity and world-building to digest--zipping space scenes! Hyper-drive! Droids! Sand People! Storm Troopers!--it's actually helpful to have a familiar story structure.

Cinematic...to a fault. Speaking of movies, it's no wonder this book got optioned for film. There are so many movie tropes I began to roll my eyes. Bad guys who seem dead but miraculously come to life in the climax (in fact, Saba double-taps Miz Pinch "for Emmi," but fails to do it to the ultimate enemy, Vicar Pinch); Saba throws three matches in "The Cage" in order to escape, only to have the king change the escape route; characters inexplicably fail to tell each other important details (Jack detours to pick up Ike without informing Saba); giant sand worms (Dune, anybody? Beetlejuice?); a bad guy who dresses like Louis XIV and acts cartoonishly insane; our heroine mercifully shoots a comrade through the heart, with an arrow, from a distance, while the friend is in mid air after giving a sacrificial nod of permission and then launching herself like a bird from the roof (a similar scene ruined Code Name Verity for me); our band of misfits cuts a man down from an execution post on a stage in front of the king and a crowd of thousands and several Tonton guards (but don't worry, the crowd is hopped up on chaal), simply by holding a cloak open in front of the person with the knife; after the battle, a Tonton who was incompletely killed comes to and kills an important character before being summarily put down; Saba and Ike knock two Tontons out cold to steal their outfits to get on the execution stage (yes, as in The Wizard of Oz; "O-ee-yah! Eoh-ah!") with none of the guards ahead of them noticing; I could go on and on, but someone has to make it stop.

The dialect. Interestingly, I listened to this in audiobook form, and I think that took away a lot of the potential "magic" of the written dialect. The narrator was able to "act" the dialect and accent quite fluently, which made Saba's voice country-ish and uneducated, rather than Cormac-McCarthy spare and beautiful. I think taking away the only unusual aspect of the writing--the unconventional spelling and lack of punctuation--allowed me to hear the ordinariness of the plot without being distracted. When I finished the audiobook, I downloaded the free Kindle sample of the first few chapters so that I could get a feel for Ms. Young's written word, and I realized that the phonetic spelling and short sentences might have entranced me a bit, had I read it on the page. (I do think Ms. Young was quite consistent in her use of the dialect, but I don't think this is a pathbreaking literary device.)

The romance with Jack. Hmm. Well, there's not much suspense for the audience when a stone magically heats up whenever "your heart's desire" is nearby. So Young invented suspense by having Saba willfully ignore Mercy's explanation of the stone, and wonder to herself too many times why it burned her skin when Jack was around. I could see why Saba might become infatuated with Jack: the message of the stone for one, and his relative worldliness for another. But all Jack has to go on when he first shows attraction to Saba is her fighting ability. (Later, she returns to the burning prison cell to save him, and for me that's a more believable reason that his interest might be piqued.) In general their relationship was somewhat lacking in chemistry, and when you put that together with the fact that Saba's growth in the novel is not primarily romantic (that is, learning to love and accept love from a man) but learning to love herself, the romance feels tacked on for YA purposes, and labeling Jack as Saba's "heart's desire" becomes a red herring, distracting us from Saba's real growth. Not to mention, there was altogether too much YA-novel-ish focus on Jack without his shirt.  

The romance with Lugh. I don't think I imagined it: there are incestuous undertones, and I believe they're deliberate. I quite liked them, actually. I think it makes sense, given Saba's sheltered life, and her lack of self-worth, and deference to Lugh in every way. It also drives her single-minded quest for him. Part of her growth is meeting another man who is not her brother, and recognizing and accepting her desire for him.

The plot, so I don't forget. As I mentioned, this is a highly linear story. Told in first person present (with ubiquitous "he says" and "I says"), we first get a peek at Saba's home life, including the fact that she idolizes Lugh, and that her mother died giving birth to Emmi. (P.S. another annoying book-and-movie trope: blaming the sibling who "caused" the death of the mother. Why don't these characters ever blame the father who got mom pregnant?!)

Next, we see her twin brother, Lugh, kidnapped and her father killed. It's clear that someone has been waiting for Lugh's eighteenth birthday, and watching him via their neighbor, Proctor John. (Why Proctor John never told the bad guys over all those years that Saba was Lugh's twin is not explained.) I found the mother's death during childbirth to be a nice way of showing us how far this society has fallen. Anyway, Saba sets out to rescue Lugh, and tries to leave Emmi with Mercy, who gives Saba the heartstone.

After entering the Sandsea, Saba discovers that Emmi has (resourcefully) been following her. They bump into a very 2-dimensional, cartoonish couple by the name Pinch, with a domineering (and, according to predictable movie trope #44, fat, ugly, and hairy) wife and obsequious husband. Saba trusts them despite Emmi's warnings not to, and the girls are abducted by the couple. Miz Pinch keeps Emmi as her personal slave, and sells Saba as a girl fighter in the cages of Hopetown.

Saba turns out to be good at fighting, and is dubbed "The Angel of Death." A cellmate named Helen reveals that she was the son of Trask, the man who reported Lugh's birth to the king (but left before seeing Saba's birth two hours later). Helen tells Saba that the king plans to kill Lugh on Midsummer's Eve, to gain the power of his youthful spirit. Never forgetting that her goal is to rescue Lugh, Saba arranges with a Free Hawk named Maev to throw three matches to a fierce fighter named Epona--the deal is that the Free Hawks will protect Saba as she runs the gauntlet if Saba will help burn down Hopetown. Saba almost reneges, but is compelled to honor her promise to help destroy Hopetown, and ends up saving Jack from lockdown while the male prison is in flames. After burning down Hopetown, they move to the Free Hawk camp in DarkTree.

Saba tries to leave Emmi with the Free Hawks, but Jack talks Saba into taking her. They head for the Black Mountains. Lots of trouble ensues, including Saba almost dying over a waterfall and having Jack save her. (I had The Emperor's New Groove in my head: "Sharp rocks at the bottom?" "Most likely." "Bring it on.")They struggle to get to the palace by Midsummer's Eve, just in time to rescue Lugh. Epona and Jack create a diversion (flooding the chaal fields) while Saba and Ike steal Tonton uniforms to get onstage and Maev secures horses. Tommo and Emmi are supposed to get to a safe waiting place. Emmi disobeys, and the king (who has been horribly burned by Saba but is somehow still functional: movie trope #52) captures her. He now wants Saba, not Lugh. DeMalo, the king's second in command, and a character who shared a long look with Saba (and meaningfully called her by her name) earlier in the book, turns against his boss and gives Saba her bow back saying, "Till we meet again." To be honest, I can't remember how the fight happens, but Saba chases the king to a rock formation that looks like teeth, he tries to shoot her, but the bullet (or was it a bolt-shooter?) ricochets and hits him in the neck. Bleeding, and clearly dying, he falls to his death, impaled on one of the rock formations. Cue cinematic moment #68.

In sum. Really, not a bad novel, not a bad debut, and a nice exploration of a girl learning to trust her strength. But like Shatter Me, I think people got caught up in the slightly unusual language and didn't notice the heavy use of film cliches and YA tropes. There's just not much new here.

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: A beautifully written, appropriately (which means "quite") explicit novel about a young woman's growing understanding of both her sexuality and her real value in the world. 

The plot, so I won't forget. When Anna was little, her mother told her a story: her mother's life was empty, until she had her little girl, "and now I have everything." Anna demands this story, like a mantra. It's the cocoon that she wraps herself in to feel safe. But then, when Anna is still a young girl (I got the impression of about seven?) her mother is not satisfied with just Anna, and she begins bleaching her hair, having plastic surgeries, and endlessly looking for men to complete her. Anna suffers through a series of stepdads and stepbrothers (thank goodness none of them is abusive, although all of them are distant and disinterested and rarely earn names in Anna's first-person present-tense narration).

Anna's mother's series of (failed) marriages allow her to trade-up in terms of houses, but Anna's mother becomes distant--eventually not even showing up anymore when Anna is a young teen, because she's either traveling for work or sleeping with another man. Anna eats frozen pizza alone, and her only instruction is reminder notes to rinse the dishes before she loads them. 

With that lack of guidance and love, Anna gleans the only thing she can from her mother's behavior: that a woman's value is her sexuality, and that she's nothing without a man. Anna begins narrating her own life story. "I had no mother. I had no father. And then I met you, and you changed everything." Her introduction to sex happens in a heartbreaking way, on the bus, when a boy named Desmond touches her breast one day and she allows it, not knowing how to draw boundaries (and interested by the way the touch makes her feel). While Desmond's friends are watching, he touches her breast the next day and makes her touch his erect penis through his pants, pushing her hand down again and again until he comes right into his jeans. Anna becomes the slut joke of the school, and her only friend, Nancy, abandons her. But who needs girlfriends when you can have boys? 

A new boy named Joey arrives at school and she takes him home. Their sex life escalates quickly, and he says he loves her. He makes her big suburban home feel less empty, and this is what she thinks she needs. While on one of her (frequent) shopping outings at a thrift store, Anna meets Toy, a girl who is from a similarly dysfunctional home--another beautiful suburban home, this one with a swimming pool that's as empty as Toy's family life. Soon we figure out that Toy's single mother is an alcoholic. But Toy seems to have healthy relationships with boys who love her, vie for her, buy her thoughtful, sentimental gifts, and initiate sex gently and consensually.

Eventually Joey's family moves away (didn't Anna's mother say that all men leave?) and Anna is alone again. On a vacation with her family, she goes to a party, gets drunk, and is raped by her friend's stepbrother, Todd. She knows it's rape, but she can't bring herself to tell anyone. She drops out of school, takes a job in a coffee shop (she's maybe 16 at this point) and meets a boy named Josh, who is also young but living on his own, painting houses for an exhausting, meager living. She moves in with him, and they struggle to make ends meet, but soon she realizes that she has heard all of his stories and we know that she's starting to see that their life together is going nowhere. Unfortunately, they've had unprotected sex and she's pregnant. Anna gets an abortion, and has the first of two views of healthy women: the woman in the clinic, Jane, also had an abortion around Anna's age; she listens well and respects Anna. Anna's friend Toy and her mother and Josh rally around her, helping her through the procedure, but she knows it's over with Josh. She gets her own apartment--sentimentally just doors away from the "tell-me-again" apartment, even though her mother tries to insist that she come home.

There is a meaningful moment when Anna realizes, looking at her own body, that this is all there is in the world: her. It's just an inkling, though. Just the beginning. It takes her a while to understand what it means: that she's enough for herself.

In the water I watch my feet emerge, disconnected in the far end of the tub. This is me, I think, and I sit up suddenly, like a revelation. I hook my knees over the edge, stare at the curve of my stomach, my bent legs, my feet and I think, this is it. This is everything. And it's not like waiting. And it's not like imagining. And it's not like a story I tell myself. Maybe, I think, it's not boys. It's not Josh. Or Joey. It's not this empty house. Or Josh's cold apartment. I climb out of the tub and stand naked in front of my mom's full-length mirror. All I can hear is the furnace. This is all of me, I think, and I stretch out my arms like a five-pointed star. (p. 115) 

At the coffee shop she meets Sam, a boy who's still in school and sexually inexperienced. They have a sweet relationship and he takes her home immediately to have dinner with his family--a loving, tight-knit group who make dinner together, laugh, and support each other. Anna feels for the first time that she belongs, that she knows what a home is. Sam's mother is her second good role model, telling her that she's smart and strong, and can do anything with her life. Still, when Sam goes on vacation and she's alone and insecure about their new relationship, Anna takes a hookup back to her apartment from a cafe, and we realize she's not quite there yet.

At some point Anna drops in unexpectedly on Toy and learns that Toy's "wonderful" boys are all made up. Toy is sad and lonely, too, and has made up stories that make her feel special and valued--that allow her to compete with Anna. Anna leaves, upset.

When Sam returns, their relationship begins in earnest. Anna teaches Sam about sex, and they have clandestine relations in her apartment while lying to Sam's parents that they're "waiting." Soon, on a day when Sam is home feverish and sick from school, he calls her over and they have sex in his room, only to be discovered by Sam's mom, who asks Anna to leave. Anna thinks it's the end of her relationship with Sam, and seeks out another hookup, but ultimately kicks the boy out without sleeping with him. She has had a profound revelation that she doesn't really have it so bad: her mom and Toy are her family. They cared for her in their own ways when she had the abortion, and they depend on her--she is their support structure. She finds the courage to visit Sam's family to apologize, and discovers that she's still welcome. She introduces Sam to Toy--finally seeing her strength, forgiving Toy, and bringing together her worlds, forming her own kind of family.  

The writing. Anna's voice is beautifully spare, and so frank and self-aware, even while she struggles with who she is. The short chapters feel episodic and as disjointed as her life feels to her. The repetition of her "tell-me-again-times" story gives the feeling of poetry.

Themes. I loved the way story-telling was a motif that threads through the novel. Anna tells herself stories and stockpiles internal narrations of her life to tell Toy later. Meanwhile, Toy feels the need to tell stories to make herself feel better and more loved than she is. Anna's mother tells the "tell-me-again" story, but then abandons it, not realizing how much of a loss it represents to her daughter.

Part of Anna's storytelling is visual: she cuts out scenes from magazines that represent the sort of idealized life she wishes she had, and tapes them to her wall--girls in nice clothes, yes, but also girls free on swings, and images of happy families. A big turning point for her occurs when her potential hookup looks at her magazine clippings and misunderstands them: "Is this what you want? To look like a slut?" 

A motif I liked less was clothing. There is way, way too much description of clothing in the book. I think the point is, like the magazine clippings, to show that Anna and Toy are trying on personas, that they think superficial things will anchor who they are. But the exhaustive description of the outfits they're buying and wearing and borrowing becomes incredibly tiresome. For instance, at a pivotal moment when Sam's mom barges into the room and naked Anna is rocking on top of naked Sam, Anna notices exactly what Sam's mom's business suit and briefcase look like. Really?

The title and cover. Um, not so good. The cover would be okay, I guess, if the title were more useful. What does "uses for boys" mean? Am I missing something? I think it's supposed to convey some of the healthy sexual empowerment Anna has. She does realize that her active sex life isn't slutty--that it's part of who she is, and that it has conveyed important knowledge about relationships to her, and that she enjoys sex. But it sounds almost militant, which is not at all how her personality (or her growth) works in this novel. Anna never once says anything that implies she's using boys. Even when she takes home the boy from the cafe for a one-night stand, she's not using him. She's trying (awkwardly, the only way she thinks she knows how) to feel close to someone, because of her confusion over what she means to Sam while he's away. Plus, in multiple instances she's used by boys, but the title doesn't allow us to intuit that.

In sum: I'm dismayed that this lovely novel has an average 3.15 rating on goodreads. Why are some of the best YA books out there so misunderstood by the very people who supposedly love to read? It's getting to be that I only think a book will actually be good if it has under 3.75 as a rating on goodreads. 

I listened to this on audio, which I think helped immensely because it's written so conversationally, with British slang and sentence construction. The narrator, Liz Holliss, is one of those thinking narrators, which means she essentially "interpreted" the informal speech for me as she went along.

I'm fascinated by mortuary science in general, and this gave an interesting view of the sort of experiences technicians in hospitals can expect to encounter. Mostly, they receive the bodies of patients who died while in the hospital, but they also participate in inquests and receive any cases from the county that were unexpected deaths (suicides, accidents, murder) or have no clear cause of death. It rarely occurs to us that there's a morgue in every hospital, where families go to view their deceased loved ones and autopsies are performed, despite the fact that we know all patients don't survive. The technicians are the ones who prepare the body for the pathologist, remove the "pluck," and assist with the details like weighing the organs and sewing the cadaver back up.

Michelle Williams got into the business somewhat on a lark. She was a "carer" for people with emotional and mental disabilities for thirteen years, and was tiring of the job. She wanted to stay in the National Health Service (NHS), because she had already paid nicely into her pension. An opening came up for a mortuary technician post and she applied, not realizing that the first "interview" was really a viewing of an autopsy. She survived that with enough aplomb to get the job. 

The book chronicles not only her life at the office, but her life at home with her family, as well. Ms. Williams is single but with a serious boyfriend, Luke, and owns two slightly misbehaved dogs she calls "the boys." She's close with her parents and her brother, and has a special bond with her grandfather. She leads a sort of "bro" life outside of work, watching rugby matches, going for long walks with the dogs, and especially drinking, drinking, and more drinking in pubs. A fair amount of Indian food is consumed as well.

The book captured my attention better when she wrote about interesting cases her team worked on, complete with medical details, but it was also sort of enlightening to see the bureaucracy of the NHS and hospital systems. (There's a chapter in which an obese cadaver, which won't fit in any of the fridge spaces, is left to rot for almost a week on the specimen table while they wait for a particular piece of paperwork to come through.) 

Complaints:

1. We have to hear about so much coffee drinking! I began to roll my eyes at the word "coffee." These technicians (Clive, Graham, and Michelle) take uncountable coffee breaks, and always guzzle pots of coffee when the mortuary is slow and they've done all the cleaning they can do. (Plus, don't they ever drink tea?)

2. A couple of times it seemed that the author wrote it originally under a pseudonym ("Francesca," perhaps?), and then decided to use her real name after all, but the copyeditor didn't catch all the changes before publication. In at least one instance her co-workers called her "Frankie" as a nickname (and later, another calls her "Frank" and she notices that he has shortened her nickname even further). Throughout the rest of the book, she uses the nickname "Shelly," which I assume is short for Michelle, her real name. 

3. Graham, a prominent co-worker in many of the early stories, injures himself while hunting part-way through the book, and he just sort of disappears. I'm sure that's how it happened in real life, but it's not very satisfying in a literary sense--it's like a dropped thread. Particularly because she introduces aspects of his character that you think might become important later, but you never hear of them again. For instance, when she mentioned that Graham used similar-sounding but incorrect words while he spoke (e.g. "defiantly" instead of "definitely," "poignant" in place of "pertinent", "skellington" instead of "skeleton") I thought we would later discover that he was in the beginning stages of dementia, and we'd have to say goodbye to him that way. There was also an uncomfortable party scene where Graham studiously ignored the young woman who replaced him in the mortuary after his injury, and I thought that would pan out into office drama later, but it didn't.

4. We're told, more than we're shown, that she has a close relationship with her grandfather. We occasionally see her calling him on the phone, but we don't get a sense of how they are together, what they mean to each other. This becomes important later, when she has to face his cancer and death, and wants us to understand her reaction to it.

Overall, while it was easy listening, I do agree somewhat with a reader on goodreads who suggested that Ms. Williams might have had good blog material here, but she didn't know exactly what she was trying to say with her story, and she's perhaps too much of an average writer to attempt to turn this into a book.

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: Another favorite book for me this year, A Creature of Moonlight is a well-written fantasy debut, with a strong character and an undercurrent of feminism.

Readalike: As I read A Creature of Moonlight, I was reminded again and again of Franny Billingsley's Chime and Well Wished. I mean, the main character, Marni, knits a vengeance from tendrils of moonlight, for goodness' sake, singing magic into it as she works. When the vengeance is finished, she lets it slip up her left sleeve and cling to her arm until she is ready to loose it on her betrayer. Romantic, flowery-style fantasy, complete with magical old women and possibly malevolent little beings of nature? Check! Lovely descriptions? Check! Obstinate female character who is also emotionally wounded? Check, and check! Hahn's prose is pretty darned nice, too, though not quite as lyrical as Billingsley's (whose is?!), but Hahn's work is somehow less...flaky than Billingsley's, which I appreciated.

The plot, so I won't forget it. Marni is living with her beloved Gramps in a small hut in a kingdom that has, for lack of a better term, a tree problem. The problem is that the forest is encroaching on human land, and has to be ruthlessly cut back on a daily basis. The trees (and the creatures inside the woods) also seem to lure young women on the cusp of adulthood, like a greenhouse full of sirens, and the women disappear forever once they venture inside.

Marni and her Gramps grow flowers for a living, although it becomes clear that Gramps was an important man in his previous life--which accounts for the occasional instances we see him advising nobles, and once, the king. We slowly learn that Marni's Gramps was the king himself, but he abdicated his throne for his son, to prevent his son from killing Marni as a baby, and to raise her full-time himself. It seems that Marni's mom ran off into the forest, fell in love with a dragon, got pregnant by him, and was one of the only young women to return from the woods, coming home to have her baby. The dragon sent the woods to fetch her, eating up farmland and occasionally making subjects go mad. The prince got more and more riled that his dad wasn't handling the situation properly, and killed Marni's mom, which did in fact temporarily halt the progression of the trees.

Marni is now almost a young woman herself, and she feels the pull of the woods in a fierce way. There is an old woman there who has tried to seduce her into the trees her whole life, teaching her to knit with wisps of smoke and the like as they sit on logs, letting her fly on the backs of phoenixes. Only the miserable thought of leaving her Gramps keeps her returning to the hut, and to the flowers she lovingly tends with something of a magical touch. Suitors are beginning to call, and we soon learn that it's because Marni is the princess, and the only heir to the throne, as her uncle and aunt have failed to conceive a child.

The Lord of Ontrei, Edgar, proposes marriage, promising to bring Marni to court and protect her, but Marni refuses. One day when she's out frolicking a little too long in the woods, almost forgetting herself there, she returns late at night to find her Gramps apparently dead and buried in the backyard, and Edgar waiting to give her the bad news. (Given Marni's personality, I thought she was quite gullible about this step. The Marni I know would have dug up the grave.)

She grows to actually like Edgar, and he is clearly happily surprised by how much he likes her. He alternates between trying to manipulate her and being genuinely enamored of her, which makes him a lovely gray character. Marni resists his marriage proposals at court, but is having trouble resisting the urge to kill the king with the vengeance she has finally figured out how to knit. And now she hears the call of the dragon, far away.

The forest starts to encroach wildly fast again, and that's about as much as her uncle can take. He (or someone in the court) tries to have her killed a couple of times--first with poisoned food, then with thin ice--and finally throws her in jail, in preparation for an execution. The queen spirits a key (from Edgar) into the prison, and Marni escapes, headed straight for the mountain and her dragon father. There she learns that the young women who have left her village have all voluntarily become griffins and phoenixes, and she suspects that she could become a dragon like her father just for the asking...but something holds her back. A couple of years of this wild, magical life, and she longs for home. Like her mother, she misses something about her human life--she can't stand seeing how the phoenixes and griffins can't recall their human selves any longer. She understands they made a choice, but isn't sure she wants to make it herself. She has also heard from a new girl/griffin that the old man is back in the flower hut and she guesses that it's her Gramps. Against her father's wishes, Marni escapes the mountain.

She stumbles on the hut where her mother was killed, and remembers the scene of her death from her babyhood (is a memory of that early age believable?). She recalls how much her mother loved her, and how her Gramps gave up everything for her. She realizes that the dragon sent the trees for her because he couldn't come himself--his power wouldn't allow him. She recognizes that every man in her life is trying to manipulate her, not let her make her own choices. The queen arrives on horseback, trailing a second horse, looking for her. (I forget how this coincidence happened, given that Marni was away for so long.) Marni and the queen go back to the mountain so that Marni can confront the dragon and bargain with him. She tells him that he killed her mother just as surely as her uncle did. By sending the trees he forced the prince to kill her. She tells him she knows everything about his woods and isn't afraid--and by not being afraid, he has no power over her. She'll cut down his trees and they'll stay down. She announces that she'll teach her daughters not to be afraid. She warns him that if he ever wants her, he's not to send the trees. He agrees, but is despondent over what she has said. She leaves the forest, and goes back to see her Gramps, where she forgives him for faking his death. They live again together in the hut, but she visits the kingdom "as much as is needed to keep the lords calm." In the end she knows she'll stop the woods if her father sends them, but she won't stop the lost girls, the ones who "give themselves up to the woods," because "the girls [the dragon] takes choose it with some deep part of them." Marni remains in love with Edgar, and it is left open whether she might eventually choose him, in her own good time and on her terms.

Feminism. A big theme of the novel is whether and how young women can choose their destinies. The girls who disappear into the woods are facing the limited choices that were historically offered to women (arranged marriages, for instance). Lack of agency abounds: a) Marni's best friend, Annel, is slated to be married before she disappears. Forgetting her past and forsaking humanity is a price Annel is willing to pay to be free of a life chosen for her. b) The queen has dutifully and agreeably embarked on her responsibility to marry the king, but she clearly misses her home in the neighboring country. c) Marni is manipulated into giving up her Gramps, is nearly manipulated into marriage by Edgar, is again almost manipulated into giving up her human form and her family ties as the dragon's daughter, and finally makes a stand for herself and for female descendants. In the end she recounts a feminist "what if" scenario to the dragon--a retelling of her mother's story where her mother gets to live, because the dragon doesn't send his tree army to get her and the prince doesn't send his human army to kill her.

Interestingly, none of the men in Marni's life give her full agency. Even her grandfather, who gave up everything for her and is completely loving and accepting of her, circumvents her decision to stay with him for the rest of her life by arranging his "death" so that she'll go to the king's court. Even Edgar, who clearly loves her and respects her, consistently mixes up his own goals with hers. Her father tries to lull her away from her human life, to own her for all eternity. Only Marni's mother and the queen, and perhaps, in the end, the old woman of the forest, want her to live the life she wants. 

By and large I liked this theme of feminism, but I thought its denouement was a bit crammed at the end, that we waited too long to see Marni realize that the dragon couldn't himself retrieve her mother, which led her to understand the reason for the encroachment of the woods and the part the trees played in her mother's death. And then her final confrontations with the dragon and the king were wrapped up too quickly. If she had understood the meaning of the trees sooner, I think the pacing would have felt more satisfying, and the theme of feminism and standing up for the life she wanted would have been a bolder thread throughout more of the book. Until that point we do have Marni endlessly resisting Lord Ontrei, but that gets repetitive and is the only clue we have that the book is about feminism.

Also, I would have liked Gramps to have not failed her, or required her forgiveness in the end. It can still be a feminist story if one man in the bunch behaves honorably, without misstep, and I dislike the message that no man can be fully trusted. Hahn could have easily had Gramps be abducted rather than be complicit in his pretend death, for instance, which I actually thought was the way his disappearance was going to play out while I was reading (although if Edgar had arranged a forceful abduction, we would have had even less sympathy for him as a character, so I would have hoped for it not to be him).

Mother and daughter. I liked the theme of female love, companionship, and protection. Both Marni's mother and her aunt represent mother figures who care for her, and in the end, even the old woman of the woods does, by coming to terms with the fact that she can't control Marni, either. At the same time I'm interested that Marni knows she can't influence other women--that familial bonds (mothers and daughters) are the only way to break the cycle of patrimony. The girls who become griffins and phoenixes are driven by their lack of freedom to a desperate act (a kind of suicide of their human consciousness), but Marni is resigned to not being able to help them, which is ultimately a pretty dark message of helplessness and hopeless societal intransigence.  

Marni's voice was inconsistent. Marni was supposed to speak with a country-ish accent and dialect, a lower-class one, presumably. Her Gramps spoke well, but loved her enough not to correct her. In fact, Marni vacillated between speaking incredibly eloquently, and speaking coarsely, with grammatical errors. When she moves to the royal court, we're meant to believe that she's slowly picking up better language, but the unevenness is about the same before and after her court life. In one breath she says, "I'm not just a princess, neither (p. 106)," and in the other, "You scarce know me, my lord (p. 107)." Her vocabulary is too good for someone from the country, whose grandfather apparently only taught her "her letters": mass, malice, contempt, vertigo.

There's a basic problem in giving a character a country dialect when you're writing in first person and you're also a lyrical author, because you can't stop yourself from putting amazing words like these in her mouth:

As I watch it swoop across the sky again and once again, my ears resound with a cry they can't possibly be picking up this far away--a piercing cry, a roar like the boundless black sky all lit with the moon's cold fire. (p. 149)

The rocks slide toward you and the trees rush up, and you think it's impossible, no matter how many times he's done it--you think there's no way in the world we're going to get ourselves off the ground this time. But the wings are beating windstorms, and he's snorting loud, smoky breaths, and between a moment of vertigo and a wild, crazy hope, we're going up, as high as ever we want. (p. 232)

Her father's squicky control of her. Was the dragon's relationship with her even a tad bit sexual? Did Hahn mean to send that message, or is this a Freudian flaw? The dragon is essentially replacing her dead mother with her. I do love the way she feels the tug of her dragon half: "I'll wonder how much they guess, how much they suspect about the monster in me, pulling at me...(p.168)" But much of the language surrounding her dad implies metaphorical intimacy: "I near wish he would eat me up and make me part of him (p. 217)." "Maybe I like the closeness that comes from riding with him. Maybe he likes that, too (p.234)." "I know that look. It's the one he gives me in the morning when he's of a mind to take me flying. It's a look that sends a thrill right through me, makes me think of the glorious hours to come (p. 244)."

Plot problems. Just a few glitches: 

1. Why does the queen welcome Marni with such open arms, so instantly? Isn't she still hoping to produce an heir? I know she's lonely, and kind, and wants family, but nothing is said about the barren marriage, which must be sore point, and must present her with a desperate, even panicked feeling of failure, and must irritate the hell out of the king.

2. Why doesn't Marni question her father's death at all? Why would she believe that a grave contains her grandfather's body without checking? Wouldn't she wonder whether the drawing he left her was produced under duress? The Lord of Ontrei recently (and she felt presumptuously) proposed to the grandfather that he would marry her, after all.

3. After being away for so long (two years), how coincidental is it that the queen is out on horseback searching for Marni on exactly the night that Marni leaves the dragon? 

4. "Seems he's never heard of my history with stabbing (p. 123)." What stabbing? Did I miss a story somewhere?

5. Sylvie is knitting and muttering to herself in Chapter Seven, and her muttering threw me off. Knitting and singing/muttering is how Marni creates her creatures. It felt like a bit of a red herring, making me wonder what Sylvie was saying--whether she also had powers, but then it turned out to be nothing.

6. In that same chapter, Edgar says right in front of Sylvie, "I don't like what the king has done, and I'd be happy to bring him down. I don't think I'm imagining that you feel the same way." Would he say this in front of a servant--a servant who might gossip with other servants and is fundamentally the employee of the king? Furthermore, would Sylvie just leave when Edgar begins to kiss Marni, or would she ask to excuse herself and wait to be dismissed?

7. Marni makes Gramps tell her who he was in cahoots with, saying, "I promise I won't cast a spell on whoever made you a deal (p. 300)." But there's no way she wouldn't have figured out that it was the Lord Ontrei the minute she heard that her Gramps was alive. Edgar was the person who "buried" the body! 

8. I thought Marni was a toddler or very young child (under 5) when her mother was killed, but her memory of it (once jogged) is too clear for her to have been that young.

Anachronisms. These were few, but when they occurred they took me out of the "historical fantasy" feel of the novel.

"That you'd have my back while I'm at court. That you'd support me in front of the other lords..." (The origin of "I've got your back" is probably from World War II)

"Come on," I say, "give it [the gossip] up."

Swords aren't loud when unsheathed. "[The sword] scraped from its scabbard, harsh, like the first loud sound on a day when you've had no sleep (p. 257)." Sorry, but this is a movie trope that's factually incorrect and needs to die.

The title is weak, in my opinion. I don't know why, but that combination of words is so unmemorable to me, I have to look it up every time I want to type it out. And that fantastical creature she knits isn't really the crux of the book, but I think that's what the title seems to refers to, with no double entendre about Marni or her dad.  

In sum. I don't write journal-length reviews like this if I don't respect the heck out of the book. This one is worth your time, and I predict Ms. Hahn has a lovely career ahead of her.

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: a quite serviceable novel with straightforward themes, centered around the only apocalyptic scenario I've ever believed in YA lit.

The Plot, so I won't forget it. 

If you've visited Yellowstone, you've marveled at the hot springs, sulfur pots, and geysers. They're there because we have a supervolcano brewing under the northwest corner of Wyoming that has exploded three times in the last 2.1 million years. Someday it will blow again. (Most likely we'll have destroyed ourselves or gone extinct before that happens.) A supervolcano event is like Mount Vesuvius on steroids: not only will all living things nearby be killed and buried in several feet of ash, but the entire earth will be changed--geologically and climatically.

Alex Halprin is a fifteen-year-old who would rather not go to Warren IL to visit his uncle and aunt. After a disagreement, his parents take only his sister and allow him to stay home. He's playing World of Warcraft when the power goes out, he hears something like thunder, and a giant boulder crashes into his house, trapping him under his desk. Alex frees himself and his neighbor friends take him in--everyone sleeping in the giant tub in the master bathroom for safety. When one of his neighbors behaves erratically and kills an intruder--a first sign of the social deterioration to come--Alex sets off on his own, hoping to make his way to Warren to find his family. The muddled fire department response (working on autopilot but not comprehending the magnitude of the problem), and the uncertainty on Alex's part and the part of his neighbors--were all quite believable. In a real crisis, it takes a while to mentally adjust.

On his journey, he runs into an unsavory character named Target who tries to kill him. (If I remember correctly, Alex pokes one of his eyes out and escapes.) But Alex has been injured and may be dying. He struggles to a farm where he sees a girl and her mother grinding corn in a barn using a bicycle-driven grist mill, and he collapses inside. Darla and her mom, Gloria, nurse him back to health. Darla is suspicious, resentful of his intrusion (another mouth to feed), and great at engineering and mechanics. (Hooray for strong female characters.) Alex helps with chores (mainly digging through ash for dried corn stalks), slowly winning Darla's trust. The Edmunds' farm has a fresh-water well, so they're better off than most.

Target finds the farm with a criminal accomplice, who brutally rapes and murders Gloria. Alex kills the accomplice, and later kills Target. Alex and Darla set off to find his uncle's farm together, facing the ordeals of living outside in the winter, scavenging for food and water, with so much ash that Alex must cross-country ski through it. They try to save a little girl dying of hypothermia along the way, fending off her protective mother to do so, but fail. They leave food for the family instead--food that Darla points out they can't afford to give.

They're picked up by a FEMA truck, but when they're taken to a camp, they discover the administrators are corrupt and the thousands of inhabitants are slowly dying of hunger and cold. (The camp authorities refuse to retrieve a barge-full of grain that Alex and Darla found, instead passing the location off to superiors in exchange for kickbacks.) Children receive slightly more food rations from a church organization that visits the camp, but not enough to survive. Darla gets a job as a mechanic fixing tractors and trucks, and eventually breaks down the camp's fence, freeing Alex and the other survivors. Alex and Darla narrowly escape, and make it to Warren, where Alex finds his uncle, aunt, cousins, and sister. It turns out Alex's parents left five weeks ago to try to find him. Alex wants to go out to search for them, worried about their survival, but his uncle forbids it. (Alex and Darla want to sleep in the same bed, too, and it takes the uncle a while to allow it.) Darla constructs another mill, which will allow the family to trade services for food, improving their future. The uncle breaks a leg, the doctor in Warren accepts payment in the form of kale (the only source of Vitamin C around), and Alex and Darla decide to stay and help the uncle through his recovery, knowing they'll leave in the spring if they don't hear back from Alex's parents. The book ends at this uncertain but relatively restful moment. 

Theme of growing up. This is a true coming-of-age novel, where the main character is forced to become an adult (and quickly) because of the unusual, extreme circumstances he finds himself in. From a bored, slightly jaded teen who plays video games too many hours a day, to a physically and emotionally strong partner, Alex's character growth is substantial, and portrayed clearly and gradually. Mullin highlights this growth by showing the knee-jerk reaction the adults in his life have to his youth, forcing Alex to confront them with his accomplishments in order to get them to really see the change in him. He understands, better than they seem to, the new world they find themselves in--everything has changed, and Darla is more than a girlfriend, she's his support structure, and a reason he continues to fight.

In the U.S. we have a lot of smart, creative pre-teens and teens, many of whom have been privileged enough never even to have endured power failures for more than several hours. In this way Ashfall is almost a modern update of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet for young readers: they get to vicariously explore how a seemingly average teen like Alex can learn to take care of himself, and perhaps wonder whether, like Alex, they would exceed their own expectations, becoming good and resourceful people.

Teen voice. I found Alex's voice and internal thoughts to be believable and realistic, without much indulgence in beautiful prose or elaborate description. (I think this sort of serviceable prose is what many reviewers actually require for the category "good for reluctant readers," and I'm not sure how I feel about that.) The first page gives a pretty good example of the vocal range in the book: teen-like, with occasional cliches and simple metaphors. (In this case the metaphor is a near-miss for me. I've hoarded difficult memories, but I can't imagine them feeling hard and sharp under my skin.) 

But that Friday was pretty normal at first. I argued with Mom again after school. That was normal, too; we fought constantly. The topics were legion: my poor study habits, my video games, my underwear on the bathroom floor--whatever. I remember a lot of those arguments. That Friday they only fueled my rage. Now they're little jewels of memory I hoard, hard and sharp under my skin. Now I'd sell my right arm to a cannibal to argue with Mom again.

 

I also thought that Darla's voice in dialogue was not as real as Alex's, though I appreciated that she was no-nonsense, with an engineering mind, and a sense of priorities. At times, however, she felt almost like a stylized version of a strong girl.

In sum. This series is a solid addition to children's lit--a good, very competent and engrossing story for school librarians to pass along to young readers, but not necessarily a mind-expanding crossover for adult readers. 

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: A Hamlet retelling, from Ophelia's point of view, delving beautifully into her fragile mind, with only a few debut hiccups along the way.

Carolrhoda Lab shoutout. I've so far enjoyed every Carolrhoda Lab book I've read, even the flawed ones. Andrew Karre (the editor) has interesting, brave taste, and I always feel stimulated reading his list. Being medium-sized means he can take risks, and the YA lit world is better off for it. Dot Hutchison's A Wounded Name is no exception--aiming for something big, something rich with character and theme, and mostly succeeding.

The plot: see Hamlet, of course. But in this retelling the "king," Hamlet senior, is the director of a boarding school somewhere on the East Coast. His son Dane has been friends with Ophelia for years, but during the course of the novel they become intimate, and as Dane's sanity unwinds, his dependence on Ophelia (and abuse of her) escalates. Ophelia has already drowned once in this story: her mother committed suicide with little Ophelia in her arms (or went to join the morgens, whichever version you subscribe to, real or magical), and Ophelia was rescued by Hamlet, who could not also save her mother. Since then, Ophelia has been able to visit and speak with her mother and the morgens, who live in the drowned city of Ys. Her mother wants her to join them. Ophelia resists, feeling she still has some tenuous ties to this life. We know she won't resist forever, however. Ophelia also sees the eternal huntsmen in the forest, and of course she sees Hamlet's ghost, which in this story is cleaved into two parts--peaceful and vengeful. The vengeful half goads Dane into taking revenge. Both Ophelia and Dane take prescribed medications to keep their demons at bay, which I also thought was a nice modern touch.

The risk of Shakespeare. Shakespeare adaptations are awkward beasts, because the plots of Shakespeare's plays are themselves almost never original to Shakespeare, but are old stories and traditions that Shakespeare liked and adapted himself. What makes his plays "original" is his exquisite language and nuance. It makes me wonder whether the best "retellings" are actually the ones like the movie Clueless, which disguised Jane Austen's Emma with such a fresh take, you weren't bothering to make point-by-point comparisons.

What I loved: Ophelia. I loved that she was already essentially dead in the book. It eased the knowledge that she'd die again, especially because she knew it, but it also made her so otherworldly--so deeply ephemeral, like the raw emotions you'd expect to be the last fragments that a soul leaves on the planet before it disappears. She was already nearly a ghost, and you could see it in the way she barely ate, she didn't register as a person in a crowd, she didn't bother to get to know her classmates, and the way her body was so fragile, so barely existent and easily crushed. I think it's brave and true the way Hutchison ended our view of the world with her death. We know what will happen because Ophelia already knows what will happen. And she knows that this is the moment to take herself away as a tool for Claudius to use against Dane. If you think of Ophelia as already dead, you can forgive how weak-willed she seems to be and see her more as a powerless observer. 

Of course I had problems. Why didn't the gardener reveal to anyone in authority that he had found the syringe in the bushes? Why is it Ophelia's job to make the accusation? If he brought up what he found, Ophelia's follow-up testimony would have been that Claudius was the first at the scene of Hamlet's death. Of course it can't work that way if we're following Shakespeare's story, but in the present day, evidence of a murder wouldn't just be handed over to a teenage girl, to keep in her dresser or the pocket of her dress, fondling it.

I listened to this thanks to SYNC YA's free audiobook program. (If you're not downloading these books this summer, you need to!)

I had never read Sophocles's Oedipus the King before, so this audio version was a fun introduction to this iconic story. Michael Sheen's narration was fiercely intelligent, and quite moving in parts, and the supporting cast was excellent, too.

Production. The recording itself is from 2000, and like some older audiobooks I've listened to, there were occasional quality issues--a new voice would sound like it was coming out of a tube before it finally "settled"--and there were pretty serious variations in volume. (Whispering could hardly be heard at any volume on the device.)

Translation. At times the translation soared, balancing perfectly between accessible, modern language and nearly Shakespearean eloquence, and then occasionally there were absolute dud cliches inserted for no reason. I didn't mark them down, but these hack expressions were on the level of "trapped like a rat."   

Plot. As a young man, Oedipus (the prince of Corinth, son of Polybus and Merope) receives a prophecy that he'll kill his father and marry his mother. He decides to leave Corinth and never see his parents again. On the road to Thebes, he encounters a band of men who jostle him in passing. He gets into an altercation with them and kills all but one. Before he reaches Thebes, he comes upon a sphinx that has been tormenting the city by asking travelers a riddle and killing them if they get it wrong. ("What animal travels on two legs, on three legs and on four legs, but is weakest when it's on four legs?") Oedipus answers correctly, the sphinx kills herself, and the city is saved. They welcome him as their hero and crown him king. He marries the late king's wife, Jacosta, they have four children and reign happily for fifteen years. 

A plague and drought settle on Thebes, and when the city is at its worst, Oedipus sends a messenger to the oracle to ask for help. The answer comes back, "Bring justice to the old king's killer, and the plague will be lifted." Oedipus, outraged that the king was killed and his murderer never brought to justice, pushes hard to re-ignite the evidence trail. He goes on a tirade about how the man who did it must be executed or exiled, never to have any civil interactions again. An old man, a seer, begs him not to ask him who killed the king. They have a giant verbal battle, with Oedipus insulting him and blaming him for being in cahoots with his brother-in-law, Creon. The blind man foresees that Oedipus will be blinded by his anger and shame. A former servant was a witness to the king's murder, but has retired to the countryside--exiled himself from town--to tend sheep. We all realized way before Oedipus does that he himself is the killer. Even his wife begs him not to investigate further, not to call in the shepherd. (She loves him, and her language indicates she'd rather live in denial.) She also tells him that prophecies can be wrong, because she and the late king received one saying their son would murder his father and marry his mother, and the old king had a bolt pierced through the baby's heels to bind him, and threw him down a mountainside to die. That prophecy couldn't have been fulfilled, she reasons, because the baby died. Of course it turns out a shepherd rescued the baby, and gave him to the childless king and queen in Corinth, who raised him as if he were their blood. And oops, Oedipus has stigmata on his feet.

The queen hangs herself, and Oedipus uses the two brooches on the shoulders of her gown to put his eyes out. He is allowed to visit with his daughters one last time before he is exiled, to live alone in torment.

Now versus then. I was struck by the similarities to modern times and modern narratives in such an ancient text--the passion, the love, the loyalties, the superstitions--and also by the differences, which were mostly cultural. For instance, the murder of a multiple people on a road for no reason other than "they jostled me" is glossed over, unimportant! That's not the reason Oedipus is being punished--there's no grave injustice in that act. And yet oaths are of supreme importance, and sacred, so that Oedipus's oath that the killer will be publicly reviled must be honored. In our contemporary culture, lying is tolerated, and people break vows all the time, whereas murder is unacceptable except in cases of self-defense. Jacosta's suicide is barely acknowledged as a loss, while the fact of a son and mother having sex (and children) together is the most repulsive sin imaginable, even though it was done unknowingly, accidentally.

The gods. Another cultural difference seems to be the acceptance of the fickle nature of the gods. Why is Oedipus chosen as the poor sap who will suffer this particularly horrifying series of events? Is seeking advice from the oracle in the first place the act that's being punished? Is punishment arbitrary? Is the victim unimportant, and the whole point is the lesson of the last lines? (I'm not a Greek scholar, and I suspect these questions have been answered by others.)

The last lines. I love the slightly macabre theme that a man is not happy until he's dead. Until the moment he takes his last breath, there's always that possibility that his life will be upended and ruined. It's a strong commentary on how little we control our lives, how privilege, peace, and health are temporary, and could be snatched away at any time. 

The visit home. The agreement with Astraia was simply not believable. Why did Nyx acquiesce to her sister's demands? Why didn't she express worry that only the Gentle Lord is holding back the children of Typhon? Why doesn't she even once ask Astraia how killing Ignifex fully avenges their mother, given that father had a part in shaping the curse, too? Why doesn't she once mention what she learned about bargains--the fundamental arrogance of people who make them? And especially: why doesn't she say that Ignifex himself is a slave and the Masters choose whom he should bargain with?

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the first two books in the Under the Never Sky series.***

I listened to these in audiobook form, so please forgive misspellings of names, places, and terms!

One-sentence summary: A book isn't great just because it has no glaring flaws.

I give up. Well, drat, I won't be moving on in this series. I've finished the first two books, but I'm not learning anything from the writing or the story, and my reading time (or listening time, in this case) is precious to me. Don't get me wrong--not everyone is a snob-face like me, and demands to learn from the books they read. As pure consumption, there's more than enough that's fine about this series. It's just there's nothing special: it's a workmanlike post-apocalyptic dystopia, with the nice addition of heightened senses and Aether storms. The pluses are the lack of a love triangle (most of the time), the competence and intelligence of the female protagonist and lack of emphasis on her beauty (though she is beautiful, and I have one related qualm, more on that below), the lack of creepiness or stalking on the part of the male protagonist, and the concentration on survival and on loyalty to family and clan during catastrophic times, rather than on romance. I'm not quite damning with faint praise here, but these traits are minimums that should be in YA novels, not maximums.

Plot Summary, so I won't forget. In a future version of our planet, "massive solar flares have corrupted the earth's magnetosphere, opening the door to cosmic storms--to an alien atmosphere that was unimaginably devastating [a.k.a. the Aether]." I'm quoting that from the book because without a degree in geophysics, I can't be sure whether there's real science in there. In any case, as the Aether storms increased in severity, humans devised pods (think "Biosphere 2"--a closed ecological system) that they could live in underground (Dwellers). The space was cramped, and they developed a reliance on visiting virtual realms together through a "SmartEye," to give themselves a feeling of freedom and space. Unlike a video game, the realms mimic sights, sounds, smells, taste, and touch. (There is no biology included about the health effects of living underground, and the lack of exercise that I presume is prevalent.) Another population was forced outside (Outsiders), to live a more primal existence, bombarded occasionally by Aether, which comes in funnel-like storms mainly during the winter and scorches both people and the earth, destroying farmland and ranches.

The Outsiders think the Dwellers are weak and selfish people, and the Dwellers think the Outsiders are savages. The outsiders do, in fact, form into pretty fierce tribes, who fight with bows and arrows and knives, and one group (The Croven) are cannibals. Of course, Aria is a Dweller and Peregrine (or Perry) is an Outsider. Aria is exiled to the outside, blamed for the destruction of an agricultural wing of her pod, Reverie, through a fire that Consul Hess's son, Soren, actually started. Perry discovers her while he's on a quest to find his nephew, Talon, who has been taken by the Dwellers. They make a pact: Aria will help Perry get back to the pod to find Talon, and Perry will help Aria find her mother. In fact, unknown to Perry, Talon was sold to Dweller scientists by his own dad, Perry's brother, Vale (who is Blood Lord of the Tides), in exchange for necessary food supplies. Vale also sold his sister, Olivia (or Liv), to a tribe in the north led by a Blood Lord named Sable (also for food). When Perry discovers the betrayals, he challenges Vale for the title of Blood Lord and kills him. There's a sub-plot where a character named Roar, who has been in love with Liv since childhood, sets out on a quest with Aria to find her. And another important sub-plot involves a young boy who has the extraordinary power of controlling the Aether, although every time he manipulates it it kills him a little bit inside.

Some of the outsiders are Marked, which means they have a heightened sense: scires can sense emotions in other people, seers can see exceptionally well, auds can hear exceptionally well. ("Marked" refers to the fact that they get a tattoo advertising their special skill, for full disclosure, i.e. so that anyone can see what they are at a glance.) Perry has two special senses: he's a scire and a seer, and his seeing ability is further specialized into night vision, which is unusual. Roar is an aud. It turns out that Aria is an aud as well, her mother having conceived her au naturel with an Outsider (Aria doesn't know who he is yet).

Book Two is devoted to rescuing Liv (she is killed...apparently?), rescuing Talon, finding the Still Blue, getting the Tides into a safe cave (with Marron's contruction and technological help), allying with Soren against Hess, and trying to get the Tides used to the idea of Perry and Aria being together. 

Points added for: "Fractioning" while using the SmartEye.

Linear plot. These books plod along like they're a padded outline. X happens and then Y, and then Z. Ms. Rossi wants to show us that Perry is an inexperienced leader, despite his natural talent, so hmm, what should she do? Ah! She starts an Aether storm, churns up the water, puts the fishermen in danger, and then has Perry risk his life against the advice of his bodyguards to save an old man. Every plot point feels like it's there to tell us something, so that it can be checked off an outline: "Perry is having trouble adjusting to being a leader."

Lack of tension. The conflicts are truncated before tension can build. For instance, at the end of Book One, Aria decides at the last minute to send Perry a violet, as a message, through Roar. For about ten seconds we're worried that she's not going to contact him, out of principle, and then she changes her mind. It means we see them together again, yes, and the book ends on a restful conclusion rather than an annoying cliffhanger, but it's not a satisfying suspense. In Through the Ever Night they hide their love for each other from the Tides, but we don't sense any risk to that because we know that they know they love each other. There is no miscommunication. (In fact, one plotting problem with the scire skill is that it's impossible to miscommunicate!) Another example occurs when Aria and Roar decide to steal back the SmartEye from Sable, but lo and behold Liv has already done it for them.    

Killing Vale. This seems to be there to introduce angst for Perry, but we know that exiling is a tool used by all the tribes (and in fact, later Perry exiles Wylan). Why would Perry slaughter his beloved brother when he can exile him instead? There was no internal mulling over whether Vale was such a strong leader that he'd be a threat as a "dispersed," so it seemed unnecessarily cruel. (Maybe we could believe that Vale might be able to amass an army, but show us that somehow.) Also, Perry had to look to Reef to make the call about Vale's loyalty, because he couldn't scent his own brother's feelings. So from the reader's point of view, "judge and jury" is Reef in this situation, and "executioner" is Perry. It does seem just a tad savage for these supposed non-savages, doesn't it?  

Reef and his men. Was it believable that Reef would swear fealty to Perry so quickly, after a single drunken battle that Reef could have won while Perry was vomiting? And later we find out that Reef was himself a Blood Lord, with considerable strength, experience, and decision-making skills? 

Aria's beauty. If you know me, you know I'm on a mission against unnecessary beauty in YA characters (particularly heroines) in literature. There's a saving grace in Rossi's books that other characters mostly don't dwell on Aria's looks, which I applaud, but the fact remains that she's unnecessarily beautiful. Here's a girl who can sing like a professional opera singer or pop star at will (with natural performing bravado, I might add). Later she's great with a knife, and such a badass she can grab Roar and pull him over a balcony in a deliberate death fall with him. She's bright, and has a steep learning curve in new situations. She has super sonic hearing. For cripes sake, she doesn't need to be beautiful too. Besides, we're initially led to believe that she was genetically engineered by her mom to sing magnificently and to be beautiful, but later we learn that she was born of a love affair with an aud. So is this actually an insidious sort of political incorrectness that she's naturally beautiful and talented? Just, no. 

Ordinary writing. This may be the primary reason that I'm dropping the series. I felt like I was filling my brain with pedestrian writing, and I was going to forget the magic of words, and how powerful and lyrical prose can be. One of the tics that caught me up was repeated words, which should have been caught by the editor, copyeditor, and proofreaders, if not by the author herself.

The Guardians pressed at wrist pads on their gray suits and donned helmets, moving in quick, practiced movements.

It was all he could do to keep them fed every day. They were overworked and underfed, and he needed a solution [editor's note: have I mentioned all the telling, not showing? It's another thing that makes the writing feel like an outline.]

[In the glass case at Marron's there was] a red old-fashioned sporting shirt with the number forty-five in black numbers across the back.

He usually had the upper hand when they wrestled, but he took it easy because of his hand...

Help me, reader, you're my only hope. Since I won't be reading the third book, feel free to use the comment section to tell me what happens in Into the Still Blue. Do Aria and Perry manage to rescue Cinder? Do the Dwellers that Perry, Aria, and Soren have saved (Caleb and friends) pave the way to sharing the Still Blue between Dwellers and Outsiders alike? Is the mystery of Aria's dad solved? Is he's Roar's dad, by any chance? Is the supposed curse of "blending Marks" resolved? Do we find out what illness killed Mira and was making Talon sick? Why is Aria good at singing and physically beautiful if she was not genetically engineered in a test tube? 

Character list (for me):

Perry

Hooray! This review is NOT particularly spoilery! 

One-sentence summary: A serviceable novel, written by someone experienced in the subject matter, covering an important topic from an interesting perspective, but ultimately not plotted complexly enough or written beautifully enough to be an enduring literary contribution.

The plot. Ani is the new girl in town--a free spirit with a sharp tongue, a strong personality, and an artistic mother. Ben, the protagonist, is a good and decent kid, a half-Haitian swimmer, hoping to get a swim scholarship to a university in Iowa. Ben's and Ani's attachment grows in a believable way, and they embark fairly thoughtfully and deliberately on a sexual relationship. Ani and her mother are so close and comfortable with each other, they also discuss this step together. When Ani is raped at a party that Ben chose not to go to, Ani is devastated and Ben is thrown into a situation he's unprepared for. Ben feels guilt at not being there to protect her, rage at the boys who did it, and confusion about the conflicting "fog of war" reports by other people at the party. Ani suffers pain, humiliation, and the abusive comments of her classmates, who think she was a willing participant. Her response is first to pull inward, and then to become what everyone thinks she is--a promiscuous girl who "asked for it." Ben wants to help her, and he's genuinely supportive, but her spiral down into self-hatred is out of his control. How do you help someone who pushes you away? They are alone dealing with this, as Ben goes along with Ani's desire not to tell her mother. The end does not wrap up neatly, perhaps in keeping with how open-ended healing can be after such a horrific experience.

The topic. Fault Line explores the aftermath of sexual assault from the perspective of the boyfriend of the victim. As such it's a valuable contribution to the discussion, because it's not the voice of a perpetrator, but a boy who is loving and caring and wants to help, but doesn't have the tools. There are plenty of young men who are or will be a family member, or friend, or lover to someone who experiences rape, and bringing them into the conversation is important. Ben initially has nothing at his disposal but rage and a desire to protect. He learns quickly not to judge, to hold his questions at bay, to be supportive, to say (some of) the right things. But he's a beginner; he's in over his head and not used to reaching out for help himself. To top it off, the help he does get is of mixed value. The rape counselor is a very young, unseasoned part-time volunteer; the web forums have anonymous (and therefore questionably real) participants; the advice he gets online is conflicting and sometimes wrong. Ben begins to lose himself--lose swimming, lose his scholarship, lose the closeness he had with his family--because of the secret he holds for Ani, and because of the energy he pours into trying to "fix" her.

The writing. Unfortunately, while the writing is pleasingly plain and grammatically fluent, it's not nuanced. There is almost nothing between the lines, and some sections are downright didactic. The author points this out in almost a meta-way through Ben, who says the rape-counselor-volunteer is speaking some sort of trained psycho-babble. "What does that even mean?" he challenges more than once. But we readers suspect that we're supposed to absorb what she's saying, because the author is teaching us through her.

Ani. One of the only problems with having the narrative from the boyfriend's perspective in first-person is the risk that other characters will become flat. While some of Ani's opaqueness is appropriate--Ben can't understand the changes in her, after all, and we're hearing his voice--I hadn't gotten close enough to her before the rape to know her well. It meant that I was watching something horrible happen to her, without caring deeply for her. Yes, I was outraged as a woman and as a person at the attack, but I didn't connect with her beforehand, which is a shame. It doesn't help that at a key moment she speaks not like a person, but like a case study: "Don't you see? If I don't hate myself, I don't feel anything at all. At least disgust feels better than nothing."

Flash Forward. Chapter One starts with a flash forward, which I think was a mistake. It tells us where Ani ends up, later in the novel, and makes the build to that moment inevitable and expected. It doesn't give us the chance to long for Ani to find peace and help along the way. It would have been better for us to get there in real time. In general, flashbacks and flashforwards disrupt our feeling that we're a fly on the wall, watching the action unfold. They jolt us out of the story--they always risk showing us the structure, or scaffolding of a story, when we prefer to feel transported.

In sum. Like Laurie Halse Anderson's The Impossible Knife of Memory (review here), this book tackles an important issue that needs to be addressed in literature, but does it in a way that's ordinary enough (artistically) that the book itself is not as memorable as it should be. To be fiction that lasts, the story has to have layers, and themes, and a complexity that makes reading and re-reading a process of continual discovery and effort on the part of the audience.

***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.***

One-sentence summary: a fun, romantic "sci-fi-lite" novel, worth reading mostly for the funny heroine, not for any deep underlying themes of tolerance (though they're somewhat present), and be prepared to accept a fairly implausible premise.

The heroine. This is the part I enjoyed the most about Alienated. Cara is hilarious. Truly, I snorted through my nose several times--a high compliment because that rarely happens when I read. And Cara stays true to that personality throughout. Landers keeps the edge on her, never compromising her personality. Even as Cara's feelings grow for Aelyx, she stays sassy and irreverent, with a core of warmth that's appealing. We're supposed to assume Cara is bright (after all, she was chosen to be the exchange host because of her grades) but we don't see much studying. She's competitive as all getout, though, which is so refreshing in a female character. She doesn’t even forget—after one of the hottest makeout scenes I’ve read (but still a meaningful one!)—to take Aelyx’s pulse in order to win a bet. A lot of books claim to have witty heroines, but this is one of the few really acerbic ones I’ve met. And I’m pretty sure there are allusions to Elizabeth Bennet in here. (Aelyx calls her “fairly tolerable” and later he asks himself whether he’d really once considered her family to be “ill-mannered and inferior.”) 

The premise. Absurd, but I'm sure teens will roll with it. Cara and her family have been chosen to host a teenager from the planet L'eihr, as part of a cross-cultural exchange to promote goodwill. The people of L'eihr have DNA almost identical to our own--and as I recall there's some discussion about how they may have colonized our planet. They're much more advanced, technologically, than we are--witness their light-speed travel--but they've bred emotions out in favor of logic, very much like the Vulcans in Star Trek. In exchange for receiving medical advances from the aliens (for instance, Cara's mom's cancer was cured using a gift of technology), humans will eventually introduce some genetic diversity to the L'eihrans. Aelyx and his younger-generation cohort are not enthusiastic about this program, devised by the elders. They like the system of raising children as test-tube babies, and having an appropriate partner betrothed to them. On their home planet (which is neutral in shades, quiet, with bland food), the three exchange teens formed a pact to sabotage the program, by introducing a plant in their respective host cities (including Paris and Beijing) that will kill all plant life and crops within a certain radius. They'll uproot the plant and reverse its effects in time to prevent permanent damage, but they hope humans will see the connection, become resentful, and stop the exchange themselves. Even without this sabotage, though, there's a loud group of humans (HALO, or "humans against L'eihr occupation") who fear and hate the aliens, and want them off earth.

While he's out poisoning the earth, Aelyx stumbles on a more serious threat to the planet: a fast-spreading algae that will destroy the water supply. There's something having to do with nanotechnology here that I've forgotten, but the author claims this part of the science is real. 

 What's absurd is the notion that teens would be chosen to effect a cross-cultural exchange, rather than adults, and that it would be done via high schools and random homes of ordinary people. But if you're a teen reader, that will seem fun to you, I'm sure. Even more ridiculously, Cara is whisked away to L'eihr with Aelyx while escaping from the townspeople with (metaphorical) pitchforks, and somehow she becomes the mouthpiece for all of humanity; her daunting task is to persuade the leaders of L'eihr to address the eco-disaster that's about to happen on earth. Seriously, the debate-team skills of a seventeen-year-old are all we have to save us from destruction via rampant algae. But in the end I was able to accept that this is not a serious piece of literature, and embrace the silly.

Missed themes. There's a lot of possibility here for themes of tolerance, and commentaries on immigration and bigotry. The author's most successful foray into the theme of tolerance is the way she shows Aelyx warm to his host family, a bit in the manner of  Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. The more overt thread of tolerance (or rather intolerance) depicted by the narrow-minded mob (and unusually violent teen "junior HALO" members) is not nuanced enough to be anything but a caricature of prejudice, though.

In sum. It's fun to watch Cara and Aelyx's relationship develop, and to see the generous ways in which Cara tries to make Aelyx feel welcome and comfortable, even while she's adjusting to having him invade her private space. In that way it was very much like real foreign exchanges that I've seen and experienced. It was also nice to see Aelyx question his sabotage plot as he becomes more acquainted with the Sweeney family, and becomes fond of Cara. In this sense, the smaller examples of tolerance (between the characters we care about) become much more meaningful than the broader, mindless intolerance of the HALO mob, which is not handled as deftly by Landers. A nice, "lite" read, perfectly adequate for the summer.  

And there is that one wonderful makeout/sh'ellam scene.

Post script. Am I the only one who thought the L'eihr language seemed like transliterated fake Hebrew? And at the end of the second book, will cancer still be cured on earth? If so, something about that outcome will make the series feel more fantastical than time-travel to distant solar systems.

Characters to remember (in case I read the sequel): Cara, Aelyx, Syrine (exchange student in France), Eron (exchange student in China who adjust quickly to human life but is killed), Elle (Aelyx’s biological sister), Tori (best friend who winds up dating Cara's ex-boyfriend), Troy (Cara's brother, already on L'eihr).

***Virtually spoiler-free!***

One-sentence review: Beautiful and so real, this is the deceptively simple story of a boy stumbling and staggering toward maturity, but with a mesmerizing internal grace.

What? Lizzie Bennet is writing a spoiler-free review? I know, the world must be ending, right? But this book is so lovely, and I inexplicably have a platform of 1500 followers now, and none of you is likely to have read it yet (it comes out in 4.5 months), so I feel compelled to use this space to persuade you to put Perfectly Good White Boy on your TBR pile.

The writing. Mesrobian is absolutely fearless, and her dialogue is so real and raw, but when you put it all together the result is beautiful and artful. It's told in first-person, past. The main character, Sean Norwhalt, has one of the richest internal lives I've ever read on paper. I was massively engrossed, even though it's really such a spare, simple story of slow growth. The key is that Sean feels like a real person, not like a character in a book, which made me care deeply about every little thing that happened to him.

The story. Sean Norwhalt starts the book getting lucky. Or at least, it's the kind of "lucky" that some high school boys dream of: the popular, pretty senior inexplicably chooses him as her new boyfriend after a party. Right away we know it's an imperfect, superficial relationship--that Hallie is slightly using him, slightly holding him at bay, and perhaps has problems of her own. Although Sean has an inkling of that, too, the fact of being chosen, of getting to hang around with her friends, and his overwhelming sexual attraction to her, allow him to lie to himself. He also doesn't know any better...yet. After they have sex for the first time he says, without seeing the ambivalence in himself, "I wanted to touch her again. I wanted to leave. I wanted to scream at her." He's secretly a decent, totally immature kid who wants to fall in love but doesn't know how or what real love is. The good parts of him sense that something is wrong in his relationship with Hallie, that there's more in the world. The immature teenage-boy parts of him are fooled by sex. Reason is drowned out by emotional inexperience. It takes the whole book, a special relationship, and a lot of lousy experiences to give Sean the tiny blossoming understanding of what love and friendship are, and to see his potential value in the world. The book doesn't wrap up neatly, but if you peer closely it's quietly hopeful; Sean is definitely on his way.

Fearless writing about sex. Sean is a virgin when he meets Hallie, and their first sexual experience is both horrible and beautiful at the same time. Horrible because while Hallie gives him permission, she doesn't participate: there's no give-and-take, no caring discussion between them about how to give her pleasure (no discussion of her pleasure at all in fact), no sense of a partnership and intimacy and love; and beautiful because Sean's pleasure--his wonder, his wonder at his own pleasure--is a thing to behold in Mesrobian's deft hands. As far as mature, consensual, shared, joyful sex goes, we (adult) readers know that this experience is sort of a dud. But as far as Sean is concerned, the newness, the flood of sensations (tactile and emotional) that being inside a woman give him is a major discovery. We ache for him to grow up and find the same pleasure in a healthy relationship with sharing and love. I see what you did there, Ms. Mesrobian! Here's an example of how frank her writing is:

The little packet crinkled in my hand. How do I know she's really on the pill? What if she's lying? Does she know I've never done it either? What if she did it with Dan? And other guys too?

 

What if I come the second I put the condom on me?

 

Finally she was looking at me funny so I just ripped open the packaging. The second I did that, she laid back, her wrist over her eyes, like she couldn't bear to watch what came next or she was getting herself all mentally prepared or something dramatic. This hiding her eyes from me and my dirty condom business might have made me feel bad, but instead I was relieved to go through the whole thing on my own. Chucking the wrapper on the floor. Slipping the little circle-blob from the packet. Unrolling it, all slippery, with its weird Band-Aid smell, down my dick. I mean, it was pretty gross, if you thought about it for a minute. I was glad she wasn't watching. (p. 31, uncorrected proof)

Sean's subtle decency. Sean is not a sparkly vampire. He's not a time traveler or an undiscovered wizard. He has an absent, alcoholic dad and a struggling mom who may or may not have a new boyfriend. Sean is ashamed of the house they're renting, after losing their nice home. He works in a secondhand shop. He likes his boss, hates one of his coworkers, is indifferent to Neecie, the deaf girl from school who works at the shop with him. He loves his dog, Otis. He's annoyed by his brother, Brad--a guy who wants to be helpful, especially to their mom and his fiancee, but can't get past being a jerky older brother, can't listen well. Sean has a wonderful grandfather he hunts with, who seems to understand and believe in him, which seems to ground him somewhat. Sean is an observer. He's not a good student. He doesn't want to apply to colleges. He's not with the program, but he quietly, desperately wants a program of his own. He doesn't want to be a loser, although he appears to be headed that way. The title of the book, which I think is a reference to a line in the movie Better off Dead, is perhaps meant to be the possible outcome, if something doesn't happen soon to Sean...if he doesn't grow up. (In the movie, a couple of black electricians are working on a telephone pole and see a garbage truck go by with an unconscious young man inside. One worker says to the other, "That's a damn shame. Throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that.")

Sean is an observer, which gives us the massive hint that he cares:

"We're doing the flowers now," Krista said. "We got grow lights and everything. I found this website where it's all laid out. It's so AWESOME! Your brother's even here tonight! Isn't that AWESOME? Come on up and help us!"

 

Krista thought everything was AWESOME. Not just Brad and her wedding plans--putting flowerpots on each of the guest tables for favors to take home--but margaritas, certain reality shows, cars with leather interiors, strapless bridesmaid gowns, Weight Watchers fudgesicles, giant sofas that looked like they were ready to explode from overstuffing--these were considered AWESOME too.

In so many ways, Mesrobian allows us to see that Sean is fighting to be a good person: the way he makes sure Neecie, who is deaf, can see his lips when he's talking. If she can't see him, he makes sure to touch her arm to get her attention. There are tiny "decent-kid" cues in his behavior, that even he doesn't see, like driving safely: "Getting back on the country road from the lake involved paying attention [to steering], so Neecie was lucky I didn't ask her anything for a while." He has a personal code of honor, even when it's gruffly spoken: "The only guys who talked about sex in long gross detail were generally total douchebag liars."

Sean and Neecie both have functional families that are also a little dysfunctional. But the family love is there for each of them, and it's what gives this story such a powerful but always tenuous hope. His mom stays up on New Years Eve watching the ball drop on TV with her boyfriend/not boyfriend, both of them tying "little ribbons to some crazy thing that had to be for Brad and Krista's wedding." The affection the Norwhalt family feels for Otis, the dog, is palpable. Neecie's family works together to create a nest of a home, and to keep the younger siblings safe.

Disability. Neecie's deafness is handled beautifully. I finished this review and almost forgot to mention it, because it's so organic to the story. It's just a part of who she is, like her hair color (thin, plain, very straight blond), and her tendency to create a shrine of weird objects in the resale shop. Maybe her disability contributes to her lack of self-esteem in her relationship with a boy named Tristan, maybe it doesn't. That connection is never explicitly discussed. Her beauty as a person is indistinguishable from her beauty as a deaf person.

The cover. Ugh, no Carolrhoda Lab! This cover is boring, boring, boring. It's too monochromatic, and oddly unrelated to anything in the book. I appreciate that it's gender-neutral, but not a single customer in the world will choose this book because of its cover. You can't rely on word-of-mouth to do all your selling for you. 

In sum. Perfectly Good White Boy is not action-packed, but I found it entirely riveting to be in Sean's head, because he has such a muddled teenage grace about him. This book is about one American boy's slow growth to maturity. It's very subtle, very real, and gently moving.