Book Review: Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

I picked up the advance reading copy of Sophie Jordan's Uninvited to read because the first sentence of the description reads: "When Davy Hamilton tests positive for the Homicidal Tendency Syndrome, aka 'the kill gene,' she loses everything."  Sold!  As someone who was once shunned by my church group for having SATANIC TENDENCIES (I kid you not)*, I knew I wanted to read about Davy.

Big mistake.

Davy, short for Davina, is a musical prodigy AND beautiful AND fairly smart AND popular AND wealthy AND in love with her perfect boyfriend. She's also a pretty nice person.  In other words, she's your typical Mary Sue. Until one day she's uninvited from her prestigious prep school (because it's too posh to expel anybody) for carrying a particular gene.  The US has been overrun with violent crime and they've isolated said gene and are now in the process of rounding up everybody who has it. Most carriers are being put in concentration camps.  Carriers with special talents are put into boot camps to become assassins for the government.  Guess which one Davy qualifies for? If Davy were a more interesting character, that might sound interesting, right? Good jumping off point for a new dystopian series and all that.

Unless your mindsent tends more towards the Bella-from-Twilight-only-romance-can-save-me-girls-aren't-as-good-as-boys brand of thinking, skip this one. This book had tremendous potential but lacked all of the following: subtlety, follow-through on the most interesting parts , a strong female lead, and anything that could pass for character development. Davy is one of the most preposterous characters I've ever met.  Her thought process is embarrassingly shallow and her take on gender equality would have been progressive had this book been written 30 years ago. Why the author thought it would be reasonable for Davy to still be in regular school at the age of 17 when she sat down to a piano at the age of three and could miraculously play a Chopin piece that she'd heard once before, in an elevator (in other words, probably Chopin Muzak and not actually Chopin), I couldn't say.  In fact, Davy's planning to move to New York to attend Juilliard once she finished her senior year at the posh school, but there's nothing about her or her parents in this book that makes me think this character wouldn't have had a private tutor and gone to Juilliard at the ripe old age of, say, 12.

The book is also narrated in first person, present tense, which is the most annoying POV for me.  Your miles may vary on that one. But first person present tense largely depends on the tell, not show brand of storytelling and you can never, EVER get into the mind of a narrator the way you can with third person.

I'm sure non-particular readers of all ages will love this one.  I daresay I would have liked it as a teenager. But Davy is so insipid and two dimensional that I actually laughed out loud while reading what passes for her inner thoughts and musings.  Being stuck in her head for a few hundred pages? Not a treat.  Which makes it all the more extraordinary that I finished this book (albeit with heavy skimming), but I did it for you, gentle reader, so that you might escape this claptrap and read something of value instead.

* It was a Southern Baptist church I attended on Sunday evenings because practically the entire small town went there.  I went to an Episcopal church on Sunday mornings (which I also kinda hated,  but they didn't put me in the center of a circle to pray for me, so there's that), which probably qualified as a Satanic tendency in small town Mississippi in the 1980s. That, and my preference for wearing black, sleeping late, and listening to the Dead Milkmen were apparently enough to clinch the Satanic Tendencies of the Year award for me.  I wish I were making this up.

NB: I read an advance reading copy of this book that was sent to my store.  It will be published by Harper Teen in 2014.

P. S. Happy birthday, Mom!

Book (P)Review: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Warning: ahead there be spoilers.  Please don't read this review if you don't want to know any plot points from this book. This is a review for the third book in the Delirium trilogy, and the book isn't published until March 2013.

Lauren Oliver's Requiem feels far less like the conclusion of a trilogy than the third book of a tetralogy. Readers who are comfortable with ambiguity will enjoy the ending, and readers who want to know what *exactly* happened, and to whom, and who survives and who doesn't, and what will happen next will likely be very disappointed.  Many novels begin in media res, but this one kind of ends there. I'm fine with that.  I'd rather have an ambiguous ending than one whose ends are tied up too neatly or implausibly. And to be honest, I'm not so enamored of this series that I really care all that much.  I'm mildly curious to know what happens to Lena, Grace, Alex, Hana, and Julian after the book ends, but it's not the sort of thing that will keep me up at night.  It is the sort of ending that will inspire much fanfic, though.

This book has two first person, present tense narrators.  Double ugh!  I think employing multiple narrators makes for lazy storytelling (and this book is no exception), and first person, present tense point of view usually makes me want to pull my hair out.  In some books it works to an advantage, but most of the time I think it creates a false immediacy that carries readers along in the absence of real plot.

Anyway, back to the narrators: Lena, whom we know well from all three books, takes up half the book, with the other half narrated by her former best friend, Hana, whom I'd all but forgotten. Lena is still reeling from the revelation in book two that Alex, her love from book one, is still alive, and for most of this book she is torn between loving Julian and not being loved by Alex. In the meantime, Hana is preparing for her wedding with Fred, son of the former mayor of Portland and, it turns out, a very dangerous man to cross.  The kind of man who would make your blood run cold, demanding a deadly level of loyalty and exacting any punishment he can think of for those who cross him.

Lena's story in the Wilds is mostly about survival, and her clan has to deal with its own treachery and anarchy of a sort. She's kind of mopey until near the end, where she's dealing with three separate females: newcomer Coral, who is a rival for Alex's love, her cousin Grace, and her mother.  Surprisingly, I thought Hana's story was the more interesting of the two; so often in fiction, the stories of those who are left behind intrigue me more than the stories of the wanderers and wayfarers and war makers.

I think Lauren Oliver is an acceptable stylist whose prose serves the story, and I think her plotting across this trilogy shows tremendous potential.  I just wish she would try her hand at something more worthy of her (mostly hidden) talents. I'd like to see her write a chunky, single-volume, plot AND character driven novel for YA or adults that stands on its own merits without capitalizing on the trendy and popular tropes of dystopian love triangle stretched out into trilogies when really a well-edited single volume would suffice.  

Book Reviews: Two YA Novels

I always take a few YA  novels with me on vacation and this year it happened that the first two books I read fell into that category. My coworker, Marika, gave me both books as suggestions without having read either of them based on the dark & depressing aspects of the first one and the multiple awards that the second one has won.

Lara Avery's book would have been more appropriately called Pretty Ordinary. It's a story whose beginning hit somewhat close to home: Bryce is a 17 year old girl preparing for her Olympic diving trials when a miscalculation lands her in a coma. When she wakes up five years later, nothing in her former life is the same. Two years ago, my own 18 year old granddaughter was diving on her college team when she had a terrible accident that rendered her unconscious, knocked all of her front teeth out, and caused a great deal of trauma.  Luckily for our family, her similarity to Bryce ends there.

I always "test drive" my vacation books by reading the first chapter before packing them, and I had such high hopes for this one that it was my airplane book for the trip down, but that turned out to be a big mistake.  This book has narrative inconsistencies, factual inaccuracies, two-dimensional characters, parents whose actions simply cannot be believed, and dialogue that is both flat & insipid. Still, it's a quick read and once Bryce, the main character, gets her last bit of bad news, somewhere around page 275, the book marginally improves.

Many teens will, no doubt, enjoy this book because they'll think it's dramatic (OMG--my boyfriend and my best friend are getting married?! OMG--my new love interest has a younger sibling in a coma--what are the chances?!). More discerning readers (no matter what their age) will know otherwise: the book is one, big, long tell-not-show. I actually think the story arc is a fairly interesting one, so my hope is that in time this very young author will develop a better sense of pacing, dialogue, narration, and character.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi is a strong read, with interesting and well-developed characters, a not-too-futuristic dystopia, and a setting that is richly atmospheric. It's set in the Gulf Coast region of the US, where category-six hurricanes have pummeled the coastline and destroyed New Orleans not once, but twice.  The completely melted polar ice caps have radically brought the coastline inland with the rise of the sea level, and the weather patterns have shifted dramatically to bring monthly "city killer" storms.

Into this world, Nailer is born.  He's a ship breaker on light crew, meaning that for now, he's small enough and wily enough to clamber through the darkness of beached freighters, scavenging for scrap metal.  His father is a monster and the closest thing he has to family is boss girl Pima and her mother. When one day Nailer & Pima discover a wrecked clipper ship with a lone survivor on it, they are faced with the ultimate decision: preserve their humanity by reviving the survivor, or rescue their family permanently from a life of hardship, toil, and starvation by letting her die. It's a hard-earned decision, and one that will make both of them repeatedly question the bonds of loyalty and the importance of honor in a world where cruelty and brute force are valued above all else--and make them question everything they thought they knew about humans versus half-men, a new breed of creature whose combined DNA derives from people, mastiffs, and jungle cats.

Ship Breaker is well written and it covers several themes without feeling like an overt political agenda: the environment, public health care, the rise of globalism, social justice, and the potential dangers that arise when our technology outstrips our empathy and our capacity for greed eliminates our ability to recognize human suffering.  I found it to be a quick read, yet a thought-provoking one, and while I didn't exactly love it, I admire it very much for what it accomplishes.  The paperback version that I read also includes the first chapter of the sequel, in which my favorite character (and arguably the most interesting one in the book), presumed dead, makes an escape from prison.  I will, in all likelihood, read the second book sometime after I get back from vacation.

NB: Anything But Ordinary is slated to be published in September of this year by Hyperion and I received from the publisher a free ARC.  I purchased my own copy of Ship Breaker.

Book Preview: Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

Bethany Griffin's first installment of her proposed trilogy will find many fans.  At this point, I think I'm one of them.  Here's the Good Reads summary: Everything is in ruins. A devastating plague has decimated [sic: it's actually much higher than that, but most people use this word, which means one in ten, carelessly, including this summary] the population and those who are left are in fear of catching it as the city crumbles to pieces around them. So what does Araby Worth have to live for? Nights in the Debauchery Club, beautiful dresses, glittery make-up . . . and tantalizing ways to forget it all. But in the depths of the club—in the depths of her own despair—Araby will find more than oblivion. She will find Will, the terribly handsome proprietor of the club. And Elliott, the wickedly smart aristocrat. Neither boy is what he seems. Both have secrets. Everyone does. And Araby may find something not just to live for, but to fight for—no matter what it costs her. 

Finally, a steampunk post-apocalyptic, dystopian love triangle trilogy I can get behind!  I'm sort of kidding.  I've actually grown weary of the trilogy/love triangle/dystopian ideas.  Why can't we have one great, big book instead of three pretty good-but-incomplete books these days?  Why can't our heroines be faced with impossible life choices instead of impossible love choices?

But beyond those generic criticisms (which I seem to have with almost *every* YA book/franchise these days) I really liked the atmosphere of this book, though I wouldn't call it New Orleans-meets-fin de seicle-Paris as the author's note suggests.  I enjoy both the limitations and the limitless imagination that go hand in hand with steampunk.  Araby is an interesting character, as are her friend April, and the two boys in her life.

This book isn't out for another several months (July '12), but it's got the kind of cover and conceit that marketers love and I feel that we'll be seeing a LOT about this book in the lead up to its publication. I received an ARC of this book from our Harper sales rep, Anne DeCourcey, because she is beyond diligent when it comes to keeping me in books. Masque of the Red Death qualifies for the New Authors Challenge hosted by Literary Escapism.  Two down, thirty-eight more to go!

Book Review: Two YA Duds

I am so happy to be able to write this blog post.  Why is that?  I'm so glad you asked.  Our power went out during a freak October snowstorm last Saturday and only came back on yesterday (Thursday).  Yes, it was cold.  Overnight temperatures dropped to the 40s overnight in the house.  But the real kicker was not being without heat, it was being without running water.  You see, we live in a house on a hill in the middle of the woods and our water comes from a well.  So we actually had to scoop up huge kettles of snow to melt on our stove top (gas, thank goodness!) just so we could flush our toilets.  Dirty dishes stacked up in the sink.  And by the week's end we'd nearly run out of candles and batteries for our flashlights.  Uncharacteristically, we were well-stocked with bottled water because of the hurricane scare back in August, which was surely fortunate because by the time we could get down our driveway and into civilization, bottled water couldn't be found in stores for any amount of love or money.  Let me just say, it was a rather trying time.  But stinky bathrooms aside, it was also cozy.  We rose at dawn, retired just an hour or two after sunset, and never have I cuddled so much with my husband as we did this week.  Our three cats reached a detente and all piled up on the bed with us, sweet purring bundles whose gentle vibrations warmed us seemingly from the inside, out.

It also gave me time to read, and I selected two books for the express purpose of transporting me away from our cold, cold house to a place where I could forget about my surroundings and be completely immersed in the story.  Sadly, neither one lived up to the promise I saw in them. And both of them are well-beloved books, so I'm likely to get flamed here.

The first one was Fracture by Megan Miranda, the story of a girl who falls through the ice when crossing a pond and is without oxygen for 11 minutes.  After several days in a coma, she wakes up--basically a medical miracle, considering how much brain damage her MRI shows.  Everyone cautiously rejoices and she goes home, guarding the secret that whilst in the hospital, somebody tried to kill her.  And oh, yeah--now she can see dead people sense people dying.

I'm growing weary of wishy-washy heroines who cannot seem to react properly when somebody menaces them. Did they just not get the memo?  You're not supposed to feel sorry for, kiss, or fall in love with young men who try to kill you, then act like it's no big deal, then try to kill you again.  These don't seem like difficult concepts to me.  I expected this book to fall somewhere on the spectrum between If I Stay (a great YA novel) and The Sixth Sense. It was much less engaging than it should have been.

The second book, Delirium by Lauren Oliver, I fully expected to be enthralled by.  The premise: in a futuristic society, they've found a cure for love, the most dreaded of all ailments.  On your 18th birthday or shortly thereafter, you undergo a procedure that saves you from all of the passions and pitfalls of love so that you can live a calm and sedate and pleasant life, pair yourself with a compatible partner, raise your children with the proper sense of civic duty and detachment, and fulfill your role in society. 

I loved the premise of this book and after the first 250 pages or so, I thought it was excellent.  But isn't there something wrong in and of itself if you have to wade through 250 pages before becoming truly engaged? Honestly, if I hadn't been housebound and without extraneous entertainment, I never would have stuck with this book long enough to get to the good parts.  I read Matched by Ally Condie not long ago, which pubbed about a year before this book did.  I know enough of publishing to realize that Oliver couldn't have possibly read Matched before this book came out, and yet from start to finish it felt completely derivative of Matched. If I hadn't devoured Condie's two books in her dystopian trilogy, I probably would have enjoyed Delirium a good bit more than I did, but sadly it suffered greatly in comparison. 

NB: A sales rep gave me an ARC of Fracture some time ago and I picked up a comp copy of Delirium (and its sequel, Pandemonium) at the NEIBA fall conference last month.