Tag: dystopian

Books, Reviews

Book Review: Red Queen Series

Sophie Pinkoski

Red Queen, Cruel Crown, Glass Sword, and King Cage

Author: Victoria Aveyard

Publisher: Harper Teen

Published: 2015 – 2017

Rating:

Red Queen: 3 / 5 Stars

Cruel Crown: 3 / 5 Stars

Glass Sword: 4 /5 Stars

King’s Cage: 4 / 5 Stars

Overall: 3.5 / 5 Stars

For Those Who Enjoyed: The Hunger Games, X Men, The Sineater’s Daughter, Six of Crows, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, The Bone Season

red queen

I’ve had a rather complex relationship with this series, ranging from incensed from its predictability to deeply respecting Aveyard for growing as a writer. It’s fair to say many series openers aren’t always the best representation for the series as a whole, especially for debut authors. The writer is still getting comfortable with their characters and world building and settling in with their token writing style takes some time. Red Queen is one of those books. It reads like a new writer influenced by several classic outside sources, and as a result, her plot is extremely predictable. I could see exactly where the plot was going about 20 pages in, which made for a really boring, formulaic reading experience. On top of this, Red Queen also happens to be one of the closest stories I’ve read to my own YA sci-fi/fantasy series I’m working on. Seeing a “little lightning girl” go up against a thoroughly evil psychologically manipulative queen hit a little too close to home for me and I have to say, I was a little annoyed. Namely, because I knew I could do it so much better.

By Glass Sword, it’s very clear Aveyard’s nice and settled in with her characters. She’s finally gotten her foot in the door in the publishing world, and she can drop the pretence of the tired love triangle trope. In fact, what makes Glass Sword so strong as a sequel is the subtly of the romance between Mare and Cal. Their love story isn’t front and centre, it doesn’t take priority. They’re facing a war, trying to save lives, and going up against an evil kingdom. It’s safe to say they have a lot more on their minds than making out. The dynamic we get instead is one of quiet support. They’re a kick ass battle couple in for the majority of the story, and then they’re there for each other in the moments in between. I was far more eager to get behind them as a couple when their romance wasn’t so in your face. Another aspect I loved about Glass Sword was Mare really coming into her own as a character. And not just as a protagonist, but a morally gray one. She goes to a very dark place of dejection and mistrust and it leads her to do some pretty horrific things, which she feels is 100% justified at the time. This is the exact type of juicy character development I love delving into, and, in fact, is what I strive for my own characters. Again, I see my own protagonist in Mare and by the end of Glass Sword, I’d dropped the annoyed pretence and jumped straight to rooting her on. I’m less worried about writing another female protagonist stereotype, and more thrilled that my own lightning girl has a feisty heroine to follow. My girl will be in good company one day.

The thing about Aveyard is, it takes her 100 to 200 pages to get going in each of her books. Glass Sword doesn’t get really good until halfway through and King’s Cage’s weakness is Mare’s being rendered powerless in captivity for the majority of the book. Cruel Crown suffers from this issue in that it’s a duology of two novellas, 100 pages each. She doesn’t quite have the time to build the tension or rise to her climax properly with “Queen’s Song” and “Steel Scars”. Her strength is in 300-400 plus page novels with that properly build climax. The slow-building rollercoaster is worth the climb to the top because the free fall to the bottom really is something spectacular once Aveyard’s built her momentum.

The nice thing about reading this series, is you can see the layers of awareness in Aveyard’s craft. In Glass Sword, it’s clear her focus in her writing overall is on strong female characters. She adds not only female friendships in Farley and Mare, but characters of colour in Cam. In King’s Cage, she seems to understand her weakness in her slow build-up. Leaving Mare chained up and helpless in Maven’s court leaves very little to play with in terms of narrative. Fortunately, she finds a way around it by offering multiple perspectives. Giving Cam and Evangeline POVs is kind of a genius move. They’re fringe characters at best, with an outsider’s opinion on the main action. It’s refreshing seeing characters give their honest opinions about the protagonist. Cam is critical of Mare, which gives the reader an option to create their own opinion about her, instead of blindly following what Aveyard gives them. We know Mare’s motivations for her actions, and we now see how they are influencing others around her. It’s a very self-aware take on the narrative, and I have a lot of respect for it. You can tell Aveyard’s driven to push herself to be better with each book. She wants to improve in her diversity and she knows how to be a role model for her young readers. If I’m being honest, that’s kind of exactly what I aspire to be. Is it any wonder my urge to leap off the couch and go write something was far stronger than actually finishing my reading sessions with these books?

Reviews

ARC Book Review: Proof of Concept

Sophie Pinkoski

Proof of Concept

Author: Gwyneth Jones

Publisher: Tor

Published: April 11, 2017

Rating: 3 / 5

For Those Who Enjoyed: Never Let Me Go, Arrival, Signs, Star Wars, H.P. Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, Apollo 13

FullSizeRender

I read the first two chapters of this novel and was immediately into it, despite the fact I had no clue what was going on. I was under the impression that everything going on would become clearer as the plot unfolded. That’s… not exactly what happened. In fact, I’m even more confused than when I started out.

Proof of Concept follows Kir, a girl saved from post-apocalyptic Earth by a super-genius scientist who puts an Artificial Intelligence computer in her brain. For some reason, because this happened when she was still very young, this stunted her growth and I suppose, her ability to conceptualise everyday situations. Either that, or the character development and explanations within the narrative are so flat, Jones misses the point entirely… Anyway, Kir sets off on this experiment expedition to subspace, where they’re looking for somewhere new for humanity to settle. That’s barely what I was able to decipher from this plot and even that I’m unsure of.

This novel feels like what would happen if a scientist, with no previous background in writing fiction, wrote a book. There are people, doing sciency things, and the readers are just expected to understand what the author means with very little to go on. Because Kir’s so emotionally stunted and insular, we don’t get the full scope of exactly what’s going on in terms of anything happening around her. Which is maybe the point. But this suffers from the same issues as Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, as well as any novel involving characters completely lacking in social cues. There are too many instances where Jones drops an interesting little nugget of information and I want to delve into it further, but then it’s gone again, and I’m left with nothing to go on. I have no clue what this experiment they’re doing is. I don’t understand the population control situation. I don’t have any grasp on the simulated intimacy that apparently goes on between coworkers… I just don’t understand.

I think the biggest reason this narrative struggles so hard with it’s plot is because it’s way too short. The plot and world building is stretched way too thin across a 175 page novella. There is not enough room there to fully develop characters and the experiment they’re doing, as well as a full breakdown of the futuristic setting. This is something I find most science fiction novels suffer from. Either there’s not enough background information for casual readers to latch onto or there’s far too much to fully appreciate the plot. With Proof of Concept, it feels like Jones took the iceberg principle, wherein an author should develop characters and world building as much as possible, but only show what the readers absolutely must know to understand the plot, and cut out far too much of all her development. She may know exactly what all her characters’ motivations are and how they relate to each other, and what kind of dystopian world we’re in, and how the science works, but she doesn’t share that with the reader. She simply assumes that we already know.

We can’t read your mind, Gwyneth Jones. You have to spell it out for us.

Another really weird tonal thing going on is the fact that this is a murder mystery? I don’t read many murder mysteries (haven’t read a single Agatha Christie novel in my life…) but if I did, I’d want to be at least emotionally attached to these people before they die. There’s no buildup and no real character development for anyone who died, so I didn’t particularly care if they lived or not. It wasn’t shocking, it was just there.

I went into this expecting there to be some Lovecraftian spookiness to it. And I think Jones was really reaching for it, but didn’t quite reach the mark. I was expecting some The Descent level scare-fests. They’re going deep, deep down into these caves, where maybe there are some pre-civilisation humanoids living down there. I wanted people to be picked off one by one that way. I wanted the AI in Kir’s head to take over and really mess things up in a disturbing way without her realising he’s controlling her mind. Give me some “I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that” realness! That’s what I wanted out of this novel!

I wanted a straight up space science horror novel and that’s not what this was at all.

Books, Reviews

Book Review: Firstlife

Sophie Pinkoski

Firstlife

Author: Gena Showalter

Publisher: HarlequinTEEN

Published: February 23, 2016

Rating: 4 / 5

For those who enjoyed: Divergent, Hunger Games, Snow Piercer, Lord of the Flies, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Orange is the New Black, Beauty Queens

This is a spoiler-free review!

Firstlife

This novel is bonkers in the best way. It’s like an extremely camp version of Hunger Games and I loved it more than I should have. It’s everything I wanted Divergent to be… There is so much going on, I don’t even know where to start.

The heroine, Tenley Lockwood, who has possibly the best character name I’ve stumbled across since Wuthering Heights, lives in a dystopian society divided into two factions: Troika and Myriad. As you can imagine, one’s peaceful, one’s violent. And Ten has to choose between the two for her second life after she dies. For one reason or another, both sides want her more than anyone else and it seriously irks them that she refuses to choose in an attempt to find her own, independent way. Even though it’s totally unclear why she’s being pursued and why she refuses to sign with one or the other, that’s why I’m completely taken by her. She’s stubborn and obstinate, and unwilling to bend to anyone’s will.

Best of all, she can kick some serious ass.

It’s Ten’s fierce independence that saves her from being a stereotypical YA heroine. There are so many aspects of Showalter’s writing that teeters on the edge of cringe-worthy, but she’s exceptionally good at pulling it back to the right place. For instance, there’s two boys chasing after her? Don’t worry – she sees one of them as her brother. There’s a superficial mean girl bullying her in prison? Oh, look… she’s got complex, grey morals and now they’re best friends. Oh, the heroine keeps finding herself in dire situations she can’t get out of? Doesn’t matter, she’s already beat up her attackers, saved half a dozen people, and is on to the next thing. Amazing. I’m here for all of this.

None of the developments in this plot should work, and yet it does.

Her love interest, Killian, is your conventional bad boy with a secret heart of gold. And maybe I’ve been seduced by his name alone (what? You mean Killian Jones, right? Eyeliner wearing, leather clad bad boy pirate, Killian Jones from Once Upon a Time? Where do I sign up???), but I fell hook line and sinker for him in ways I’m never tempted by YA love interests. He comes from the violent Myriad faction and the entire way through, even though the sensible thing to do would be to join the peaceful Troika faction, the odds are stacked in favour of Myriad. I mean, you get the hot guy and you get to beat people up. It just so happens to make for the more interesting story. The chaotic neutral in me has mad love for Killian and Myriad. You know what? Yeah… go wreak havoc with your hot boyfriend. I’d far rather read that than watch her sing Kumbaya with her new guardian angel bestie for an entire novel…

The whole way through, Tenley knows better than anyone that there are flaws in both Myriad and Troika. Neither is perfect and both have their own ulterior motives she’s constantly aware of. Ten’s incredibly calculating, a characteristic we don’t see too much of in female characters. She’s earned her nickname, Ten, for her love of numbers, and the fact that she’d undoubtedly be a mathematician if the factions let her simply be what she wanted to be, does so much to set her apart from the conventional dystopian heroine. Unlike a lot of dystopian heroines who are thrown into the maylay without any skills for war or rebellion (I take it back, Katniss. You are great with a bow), I can definitely see Ten strategizing and leading rebellions in future books. The factions supposedly want her because of a prophecy stating she’ll be the leader of them all and I can see her doing just that.

The point I’m trying to make her though, is that I want more logically inclined girls in YA. I want girls to be able to read stories about girls like them who are good with numbers, or science, or leadership, so they can feel validated in what they love to do. This is what YA heroines should be doing in the grand scheme of their stories. They should be helping real life girls pursue their passions, no matter how many people tell them they can’t because it’s not a girl’s job. And I think, against all odds, Tenley Lockwood is leading the charge.

Books, Reviews

Book Review: Nexis

Sophie Pinkoski

Nexis

Author: A.L. Davroe

Publisher: Entangled Teen

Published: December 2015

Rating: 1 / 5 Stars

For Those Who Enjoyed  Read These Instead: The Hunger Games, The Diabolic, Firstlife, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984

This is not a spoiler-free review! You can find a spoiler-free version on goodreads!

Nexis

This is as good a time to write this review as any, given how much furor Harlequin Teen has received over The Black Witch lately… I read Nexis with full intentions of reading the sequel, Redux in time for its release, but I can’t in good conscience read Redux, let alone finish Nexis. Which I feel really terrible about because I received Redux not just in exchange for an honest review from the publisher, but I got it as a granted Wish on NetGalley… If anything, I hope this post raises awareness as to the types of things publishers should be aware of when considering sensitivity reads.

This series has an interesting enough premise. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world (called Evanescence, by the way. I hope that sets the tone…) where humans have let the Earth fall to ruin. The poor are left to rot in the toxic air of the outside world while the elite literally live in their own bubble of ignorance. It’s essentially a cheap imitation of The Diabolic. The elite pat themselves on the back for doing a favour to the poor by creating virtual reality video games that allows people to essentially live a second life. (So basically, virtual reality Sims.) Fine. Cool. The author says to just roll with it and let it happen.

So I do.

In amongst this dystopian world is Ellani, who happens to go by 500 different pet names, half of them cringe-worthy. She’s a stuck up, bratty teen obsessed with boys and disrespectful to her father, who tries so hard to teach her how the Earth once was and all the terrible things human beings have done to it in their selfishness. I can see where Davroe is going with this. It’s heavy-handed, and you expect Ellani to get it at some point and realise she has to do something about it. But nope.

In one ear and out the other.

While her father’s busy trying to teach her empathy for the world that once was, she’s too preoccupied with begging for plastic surgery for her birthday because she’s the only one who hasn’t been altered in some way. She also happens to solely accept validation in the form of how many boys notice and fall in love with her. So vapid is she, she’s apparently “in love with” the prince, who never gives her the time of day, never said a word to her, and doesn’t even know who she is. Not only that, he owns what Davroe is calling Dolls, who are basically slaves he uses to experiment cosmetic surgery upon… If this were, say, The Hunger Games, this would be making all sorts of really intense social commentary on just how corrupt and beauty-obsessed society has become. But no, this, just like everything else, is treated as the norm.

Not only is cosmetic surgery completely normalised in this world, so is assimilation of culture. It’s explained early on that black people were completely weeded out of the gene pool. They’re literally extinct. At this point, I have to put down my ereader and whisper eugenics to myself, which is never a word I want to associate with books I’m reading unless it’s something making important statements against it. This book is not, and in fact, is so blasé, I almost miss when they use the actual word eugenics to explain the way people look so homogenous. And it’s not in a “eugenics happened and now the world is fucked up” way. But in a “and also, eugenics happened… anyway…” way. Casual as you please. As if the reader’s just supposed to accept it and move on. Because that’s exactly what the characters do…

So, Ellani enters the game, which takes all its world-building from how the world used to be before mankind destroyed it. And for 4.5 seconds, she’s taken with how beautiful it is and what a shame that the sky and wildlife and trees and rain are gone. And I think, thank god, maybe she’ll be motivated to do something about it in the real world.

But then a boy comes along. And it’s instalove, so everything else she was inspired by has instantly been wiped clean from her brain (not literally, but wouldn’t that be interesting?) because clearly boys are more important than stopping planetary extinction…

Just when you think I’m done describing the offensive things being so casually name-dropped in this novel, I have one more horrifying tidbit. The big, instigating plot device that gets Ellani into the game in the first place is this big crash which (spoiler alert), kills her father. Fine, you could see it coming from miles away. Alright. But then she loses her legs. And given how poorly Davroe has handled literally everything else in this novel so far, you can maybe see where this is going. Two or so chapters later, she enters the game and discovers she can have her legs back. Well, I was looking forward to seeing a disabled character kick ass in a dystopian world (again, please see The Hunger Games!), but sure, this isn’t a horrifying, ableist alternative at all…

I can now glean a couple messages Davroe is leaving with this:

  1. Attention from cute boys is all the validation girls need.
  2. Being beautiful is all girls should aspire to be.
  3. God forbid, if you wind up disabled, you’re better off dead.
  4. You know what was a good idea? The Holocaust.

Cool. With that, I have absolutely no interest, or intention of reading the rest of this series. I sincerely hope Entangled Publishing reads this review and strives to do better next time.

Books

Book Review: The Diabolic

Sophie Pinkoski

The Diabolic

Author: S.J. Kincaid

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: November 2016

For People Who Liked: The Hunger Games, The Lunar Chronicles, Throne of Glass, Bone Season, Divergent, Star Wars, Stardust, Jupiter Ascending, Vampire Academy

Rating: 4 / 5 Stars

This is a spoiler-free review!

the-diabolic

As I’m sure many of us are, I’ve been reluctant in the past few years to read dystopians, considering how much closer to home they’re getting every day. I can’t go anywhere without hearing someone reference 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale. But one thing dystopians clearly do very well when done right, is demonstrate just how corrupt modern society really is. And I think, whether intentional or not, that’s what this novel is doing.

By all accounts, The Diabolic is your pretty typical YA dystopian novel. It’s as brutal and damning toward superficial capitalism as The Hunger Games and as faction-divided as Divergent. Yet it’s doing so many other things. This particular dystopian is set in space, where genetically altered human beings are created to protect their upper class charges. Nemesis is one such diabolic who is charged to protect the senator’s daughter, Sidonia. When the family is disgraced, she’s sent in Sidonia’s place to live within the Emperor’s faction. All forms of human knowledge and exploration has fallen away to appease vapid upper class amusements and keep the lower classes in their place. All forms of science, technological advancement, and literature have been banned. I think had I read this prior to Trump’s America, I would’ve thought this is a cool spin on the dystopian genre.  Having read it right as Trump denounced environmentalism and climate change, this suddenly feels very real. I don’t know what Kincaid plans for future additions to the series, but I feel she could really use her world as a mouthpiece for this generation’s worldly struggles. I truly think she could do some amazing, on point things with it. And I’m interested to see more!

In terms of the character developments, I had a ton of fun seeing Nemesis grow into herself and figure out who she is without her charge. But before she gets there, there is so much Throne of Glass style murder sprees, which were fabulous. This novel is everything I wanted Celaena Sardothian to be. She’s gritty and unabashed in her job as an assassin. It’s what she was raised to do, so she goes and does it, because that’s all she knows. There’s no whining and being lulled into security against all her training… She’s just wary and take no prisoners and I loved it. She’s got a foil/love interest in Tyrus, the Emperor’s nephew, who is written as this crazed madman and he reads very vividly like Finn Wittrock in American Horror Story: Freak Show. The whole way through the story, you don’t know if he’s good or bad; you’re just along for the ride and that’s a lot of fun too. He’s in the midst of this complicated political intrigue and his family is full of cut throat, genocidal megalomaniacs. It’s a nice, solid balance of Star Wars, Stardust, Lunar Chronicles, and Jupiter Ascending. Everyone’s corrupt and fighting for power… in space!

I will say the one thing I find disappointing about The Diabolic is how Nemesis’ relationship with Sidonia was played out. If there’s one trope I’m sick of, it’s the eternally devoted female protector to the weak, fragile best friend. They can be lesbians. That’s totally okay. It’s 2017. If there’s anything teen readers can handle, it’s lesbian romances in their sci-fi fantasy. Just go there. It’s time.

So I would say, if you’re still into dystopias in this day and age, and you can stomach some blood and guts, absolutely give this a go. It’s a fast paced space romp with political intrigue and genetically engineered assassins!