Review: Sever by Lauren DeStefano

age: YA
genre: post-apocalypse, kind of dystopia?
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Sever is better than Fever, but still doesn't fulfill the potential of the series premise. The pace remains much too slow. Characters spend a lot of time waiting for no real reason. Motivations get forgotten and left behind. The world is only partially described, and much too late.

Spoilers for Wither and Fever below.

When Sever begins, Rhine has recently evaded the clutches of Vaughn and tried to explain to Linden (finally!) the extent of his father's misdeeds. Linden doesn't believer her, perfectly natural--why shouldn't he trust his father, but agrees to help her avoid Vaughn and find her brother. Then, for most of the book, Rhine stays within Vaughn's reach and does very little to track down Rowan. The efforts she does make to find her brother lack urgency, which is strange considering that he's going around blowing up buildings and she thinks that she can stop him. But no worries, she just hangs around and eats nothing but apples.

A big deal is made out of how cars and cell phones are now a rarity, which doesn't make sense to me. If this world contains high tech labs and advanced medical technology, why don't cell phones work? There are still adults around unaffected by the "virus" who know how this stuff functions and could keep the world running. Yes, there could be an explanation for the collapse of the internet and cell phone service, and a half-hearted attempt is made at one just before the book ends, but this leaves me wondering for the entire series why characters don't just do things the easy way. And I can't become invested in their conflicts if the characters seem to be making things unnecessarily difficult for themselves. Forget cell phones, what about landlines? Why can't Rhine call the house where she left Gabriel to see how he's doing? Why doesn't she try to get in touch with Rowan instead of wasting time cleaning for Linden's uncle and then driving across half the country? I know they have phones because Vaughn calls people.

The characters don't come across as vividly as they did in Wither. Cecily is certainly the strongest and stands out in this last installment. Rhine becomes a vague, actionless shell. Linden fades into the background and becomes little more than a flimsy tie linking Rhine to the superficial luxury of her old prison. Her nostalgia for the place that she was so desperate to escape in Wither adds some welcome complexity. However, her conversations with Linden about their relationship disturbed me. He apologizes to her for expecting her affections, or something like that, and Rhine says it's okay, we were married.

What!?

Being kidnapped, imprisoned, and forced into a bond with a stranger is not a real marriage. He is not entitled to expect anything from the slave wives that he picked out of a truck-full of kidnapped girls. And Rhine is suddenly okay with all of this? Because Linden is actually kind of nice? This makes me angry.  Rhine was angry too--what happened?

Sever loses sight of issues originally posed by the series. There's no more talk of the House Governor system, no more freedom and poverty vs. luxury and enslavement, no more determination to survive. I no longer understand Rhine, her relationships with any human beings, or her decision making processes. Rowan needs a slap in the face and a wakeup call. And I still don't understand how this virus/not virus works, how extensive it is, and what the deal is with the outside world. Ultimately, I am confused and dissatisfied. 

Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

age: YA
genre: paranormal, fantasy
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Daughter of Smoke & Bone tells the story of Karou, a blue-haired art student living in Prague. Karou was raised by creatures called Chimaera in a wish shop that connects to portals all over the world. Her guardian, demon-like Brimstone, collector of teeth and purveyor of wishes, sends Karou on shadowy errands that prevent her from living a "normal" life. Karou resents these errands until the portals close, and she's left stranded from her Chimaera family. When Karou embarks on a quest to find them, her adventures dredge up the mystery of her past and she struggles to discover who she is and where she came from. Also she falls in love with a warrior Angel who gazes at her with burning eyes.

I heard a lot of hype about this book before I picked it up, which might explain away some of my disappointment. It has a cool title. It's main character is an art student with sketchbooks full of monsters. The wishes and teeth collecting create a dark fairy tale vibe. All of these elements drew me to the story, but they weren't enough to make me like it.

After reading the first couple of pages of any book, you can get a good idea of the mood and focus of the rest of the story. When DSB begins with Karou's annoyance at an arrogant ex-boyfriend and her vengeful pranks, I was already thinking oh boy, this book is not what I thought it was going to be. I like all the stuff with Brimstone, and the necklaces of teeth and the mystery of their purpose. I like the art school stuff, and the way Karou's friends think the portraits she does of her monster family are this really creative story she's invented. I like angels sweeping silently through cities all over the world, their wings visible only in their shadows. I like the black hand prints burned into the portal doors. I like Karou's hidden past and the war that's waging another world. I preferred the sections set in the other world. The flashback stories.

I don't like the cutesy joking dialogue, the rhetorical questions (thank you I understand what I'm supposed to be wondering about), the abandonment of the plot for the omg we just met and now I love you story. Although this last part can be explained, the explanation doesn't diminish my annoyance at having had to read those scenes in the first place. They feel contrived because they're so romanticized and bear so much resemblance to similar scenes in other YA novels. In these sections, the illusion of reality thins and I feel the author manipulating the characters.

I had repeated urges to cross out lines and paragraphs. For me, the book wasn't dark enough, wasn't suspenseful enough, wasn't real enough. I want to inject some Guillermo del Toro into this. As is, the story feels a little like a cartoon. Maybe you like that. In my opinion, it's not a good thing. I want my novels to feel alive.

Review: Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke

genre: fantasy
age: children's
rating: 4/8 tentacles

Ghost Knight is a fun story filled with murderous ghosts, medieval history, and school children sneaking around ancient cathedrals and dark crumbling cemeteries in the dead of night (no pun intended). After behaving badly towards his mother's new boyfriend, Jon Whitcroft is sent off to boarding school, where four ominous ghostly figures call him by his mother's maiden name and threaten his life. His endeavors to escape them lead to a friendship with beautiful Ella, daughter of a local ghost tour guide, and together they work to solve the mystery of the ghosts' determination to hunt Jon.

Some of Cornelia Funke's other works (the Inkheart series, The Thief Lord, and Reckless) have become favorites of mine, but Ghost Knight just didn't measure up. I'm not sure if Funke was targeting a younger age group, but it lacked the complexity of her other works and failed to conjure up a vivid illusion. The story seemed a little hazy, which made it difficult for me to feel as if I was experiencing its unfolding events along with the characters. For example, Jon attends an old cathedral boarding school, but we hardly see any of this part of his life. We watch him sneaking out of his bedroom window at night and we witness brief, ultimately meaningless conversations between Jon and his roommates, but get nothing of life at a boarding school. I think the story needed this scenic backdrop, this context, to anchor it.  I suppose there is much more telling than showing.

Funke seems to leap from event to ghostly event with little build up between. Many opportunities to create suspense weren't taken advantage of. We're just told, "Here's this guy and this is what happened to him." There's very little mystery, nothing to keep us wondering. No drama, no build-up, no suspense. We are simply pelted with ghosts.

That's the thing I didn't like about this book. It's a light and entertaining read, but it led me to believe I was getting a ghost story, and I didn't. Ghost Knight was rushed. It was shallow. I never felt like I got to know anyone besides Jon and Funke failed to cultivate that eerie mood where fear creeps around you like a mist and it always seems that someone (or something) is just out of sight, watching and waiting. My favorite thing about ghost stories is the mystery, and Ghost Knight provided very little of this.

Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

genre: dystopia
age: YA
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Sequel alert: beware of spoilers for Book 1.

Most of Insurgent felt hazy and meandering. It didn't have a solid, forward moving pace. It didn't pull me in or hypnotize me. I read most of the story a little detached from it, waiting to be swallowed up into the world it created. I never really was. Little tiny barriers kept shoving me back out.

The lack of contractions, although a valid stylistic choice, only irritated me. The witty/romantic banter between Tris and Four felt unnatural and not as clever as I assume it was intended to be. The dialogue in general felt staged.

I've been noticing that a lot of contemporary YA authors write with this introspective, flowery, self aware voice that is sometimes--in extreme cases--so overly descriptive it veers into pseudo-poetry built of descriptions crafted for effect and not function. I think we get a little of that in Insurgent. There's a lot of words flying around but not a lot of substance.

I would hazard that most of my hazy meandering feelings came from being trapped in Tris's thoughts and fears and regrets. In Divergent, we live in Tris's world, experiencing it through Tris. In Insurgent, we live in Tris's head, which is not as interesting.

I floated through the book, until about the last third, when my interest was finally sparked and I sat up in my seat, eager to read ahead. It wasn't until Tris was faced with a clear goal and an intriguing obstacle to outwit that I thought, "Yes. This is what I wanted. This is why I liked Divergent." Insurgent needed more immediate conflict, more tension. And the twist! Oh, the twist. How frustratingly unoriginal. Maybe Roth will do something to the freshen the idea in her third novel, Detergent (a guess), although none of the millions who've already used it in movies, books, and probably television have, so I daren't dream.

Review: Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Oh boy, look at THIS tangle of thorns. Ugliest book cover ever.

genre: dystopia, sci-fi-ish
age: YA
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Sequel alert: beware of spoiling Book 1.

Fever begins just after Rhine and Gabriel have escaped the mansion--their extravagant prison--and we follow them as they attempt to put more and more distance between themselves and the cold science of Vaughn's evil. This type of action calls for a quicker pace than Wither with more focus on plotting and less of that honey-slow description featured in the first installment of the series.  The nature of Fever's plot calls for more movement and a faster pace. Give me action! Give me adventure! Give me... a voyeuristic prostitution tent swathed in vagueness? Wait.

I definitely preferred the second half of the book to the first. There's a kind of slow cloudiness in the beginning, after the initial post-escape excitement. Typical on-the-run adventures primarily move move move. Characters get to one place, interact with people, figure stuff out, go to another place. That's what I expected from Fever Gabriel and Rhine dawdled at times and didn't do much finding out. Like none, actually.

There's definitely some juicy stuff later on. ( Hint: remember how Linden seemed to have no idea that his beloved brides were kidnapped by his father? How he obliviously lavished them with all sorts of luxurious gifts, how he blindly hoped for love? In Wither, I got the impression he almost expected gratitude from his "wives," a repulsive expectation, considering the violent way the girls were extracted from their lives, torn from their families. They witnessed the cold-blooded execution of the other girls, not deemed good enough to belong to Linden. I wanted that violence to be shoved in Linden's face. I wanted his stupid delusions to be shattered into pieces, his stolen happiness punctured.)

It's not that I dislike Linden.  I actually like him a lot--he's a great character. Much more interesting that Rhine's erm... consensual "love" interest.  Oh, Gabriel. What to say about Gabriel. Not much. There's not much about him to discuss. He's blonde, and likes Rhine, and is possessive. That's all I know. He is the paper kite at the end of the string in her hand. If she lets go, he is nothing. He has no characteristics beyond his attachment to Rhine.

Gabriel's bland character contaminates his romance with Rhine (also bland). I blame his possessiveness. They don't seem to have any actual affection for each other. Yes, Rhine shows concern for Gabriel when he's drugged out of his mind. But I think she mostly just feels guilt that she tore him out of one hell only to drag him right into a more horrific one. She feels obligated to protect him, to rescue him from the terrors of this world she's inflicted upon him. I don't see any evidence that Gabriel cares for Rhine, other than the way he glares at those who try to touch her, like a dog snapping at a stranger who wants to take his toy. The guilt is good. I like the guilt; it creates ambiguity and conflict. What I'm not sure I like is Gabriel's flatness. Even if their relationship is a sham, I'd like him to have a little more depth.

What it all comes down to is this: Wither entranced me, this book doesn't feel finished. Nothing pulls the plot forward and I spent most of my time with Fever just waiting.

Review: Shiver by Maggie Steifvater

genre: paranormal romance
age: YA
recommend to: those who liked Twilight
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Don't let this book fool you. It will try. It will pretend to have a plot, just to draw you in. It will dance pretty descriptions before your eyes and hide nonsense behind pretty words, hoping that you won’t notice. Steifvater writes, “As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air.” Isn’t that lovely? It fooled me too.

As soon as girl meets boy (in his human form), all pretense at plot is abandoned in favor of what I like to call Gooey Teen Romance. You’ve seen it. Two teens meet each other for the first time and it’s like a spell has been cast. They think constantly about that person. Every other aspect of their life fades into the background. Everything becomes irrelevant except for this other person. They need to see this person, need to speak to this person. But most of all, they need to touch this person. They yearn for them. Gooey Teen Romance primarily consists of yearning. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to read page after page of descriptions of yearning. I like to read stories. About things happening. With plots that unfold, instead of gathering dust in the corner.

This is the plot, before it was discarded and then vaguely picked up again towards the end of the book like oh yeah, wasn’t I talking about something? The book begins with Grace enduring a wolf attack. She lies there in the snow, motionless, doing nothing to protect herself. This seems like an interesting sub-mystery—why doesn’t she fight to live? But don’t get your hopes up. This is never addressed. So as she calmly submits to death-by-mauling she looks up into the yellow eyes of one of the wolves. And the wolf seems to gaze back before calling the other wolves off. Grace survives.

After this moment, Grace feels a special connection to what she comes to think of as her wolf. He appears in her backyard every winter. She looks forward to Christmas because she knows her wolf will be waiting at the edges of the woods. Watching her. Guarding her, it seems.

Then a boy, Jack Culpepper, is killed by wolves. The town is in an uproar and the boy’s family insists the wolves be eradicated. Jack’ body is stolen from the morgue and Grace could have sworn she heard his voice in the forest. And there’s a new wolf lurking in its shadows. A mercurial wolf with very familiar eyes. She’s determined to save her wolves and also worried about what has become of Jack and what this new, dangerous wolf will do.

Sounds good, right? I thought so. But then human Sam, aka golden eyed wolf, appears and the plot is forsaken. The angry wolf hunters are never mentioned again. The yearning and drivelly romance begins. Grace actually tells us, several times, that she feels like the rest of her life (school, her friends, her parents) doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters now is being with Sam. I had some horrifying Twilight flashbacks. Their relationship is revealed as being even more unhealthy when Grace admits that she fell in love with Sam before she knew he was a human. She fell in love with a dog. Fell. In love. With a dog. He is touched, instead of being properly repulsed by her bestial tendencies.

Steifvater alternates between Sam’s and Grace’s perspectives although the only way to tell the difference between speakers is context. I often skipped reading the chapter heading and mistook who was narrating. Steifvater probably wanted to get both points of view in, but focused on trying to sound writerly instead of creating distinct voices for her characters. See As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner as an example of successful alternating perspectives. One of Sam’s chapters begins, “I was a leaking womb.” First of all, what boy would ever liken himself to a womb? Second of all, leaking? Was it his time of the month? Was he leaking baby juices? Whatever female reproductive organ he feels like, there is no need for metaphorical leakage. It’s just disgusting. Regardless of whether or not this is a successful and illuminating metaphor (it’s not. what does it even mean?), this is not something that ANY boy would say. She really wrote this. Its on page sixty-three.

Further nonsensical imagery include, but are not limited to:
-paper falling "like listless birds" (page 49). Grace drops some loose leaf. Imagine listless (languid, dispirited, indifferent) birds falling to the ground. Now imagine sheets of paper falling to the ground. Do they look similar? Does describing these indifferent birds help you envision the paper? I rest my case.

-The full leaking womb bit goes like this: “I was not a wolf, but I wasn’t Sam yet, either. I was a leaking womb bulging with the promise of conscious thoughts…” Okay, so I think what Steifvater is trying to tell us is that Sam is in between forms and he can almost feel the conscious thoughts coming, like a baby being born? But… I don’t know. If he didn’t already have conscious thoughts he wouldn’t have been able to tell us this, so that doesn’t work either. And I have never heard and can't imagine ever hearing a boy use the word "womb."

-“Sam and I had spent last night talking about the strange room of stuffed animals at the Culpeppers’ and wondering, with the constant irritation of a scratchy sweater, where Jack was going to make his next appearance” (Page 120). This metaphor makes sense but it’s really crammed in there. Awkwardly. This sentence is as awkward as a leaking womb.

I only wrote three examples down. But there are plenty more. I attribute them to Steifvater paying more attention to what her words sounded like than what they meant. A lot of this novel reads like overwrought pseudo poetry. For example: Sam’s song lyrics. One of Sam’s hobbies is to make up song lyrics in his head and then force us to read them (One of his songs is about truffles). I skipped over them. They seem completely out of nowhere and disconnected to his character.

So who is Sam? In the winter he’s a wolf with yellow eyes that saves girls from being mauled. In the summer he is a boy who makes up songs in his head, feels like a uterus with something oozing out of it, and reads Rilke. Which Steifvater forces us to read too.

When I picked up Shiver, I wanted a story about the silent bond between a girl and a yellow-eyed wolf. I imagined them exploring a lush forest carpeted in pine needles. I imagined the wolf following the girl, the amazement that such a majestic and wild animal had chosen her as its companion. I imagined the adventures they would have together, and her shock and delight when the wolf became a boy. When he could respond to her with words of her own language. Then, the bond they built as girl and wolf might evolve into something else. I was hoping he would still be wild and wolflike as a boy.

But Sam is just ordinary. And this isn’t the story I got.

I’m primarily focusing on the negatives here, and I feel a little bad about that. There is a lot more of the beautiful description I quoted in my first paragraph. But I didn’t like this book. Partly because it didn’t meet my expectations, partly because this kind of story just isn’t my cup of tea, and partly because a lot of things in it didn’t make sense.

Review: The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

genre: sci-fi/dystopia
age: YA
recommend to: indiscriminate lovers of dystopia
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Thomas suddenly finds himself stranded in a strange place called the Glade with no memories but his name. The Glade lies at the center of a labyrinth teeming with venomous monsters and is populated by a group of boys who rely on discipline and structure to stay alive, never losing hope that their perserverance will eventually lead them to escape their unfathomable prison. Thomas’s arrival is the first in a series of events that begins to overturn everything the Gladers thought they knew.

Initially, the premise sparked my interest. I love mysteries and immediately wanted answers to all of the questions Thomas and his friends struggle with: where did they come from, what is the Glade, who sent them there and for what purpose, what’s the deal with the labyrinth etc. As I read on, I found that I did not particularly like any of the characters or care what happened to them—partly because they weren’t quite developed enough to feel like real people and partly for subjective reasons.

Dashner’s writing often seems flat and contrived and is peppered with phrases that, at second glance, make no sense. I was also put off by the Gladers’ slang. In M. T. Anderson’s Feed, characters in a futuristic society use slang that demonstrates the gradual deterioration of language and appears to have evolved over a long period of time. Dashner’s attempt at slang seems random and unnecessary. It adds nothing to the plot and does not seem to have evolved organically. It is, rather, thrust upon the characters in what seems to be a flimsy imitation of other Sci-Fi works, in which having a distinct way of speaking has a more substantial function than decoration.

The plot through both novels felt loose and disjointed—a serial collection of obstacles instead of a flowing narrative propelled by cause and effect. I pushed myself to finish The Maze Runner and picked up the second book in hopes of receiving the answers I was denied at the conclusion of the first. I have read two thirds of the trilogy now, and still only have enough information to put together a vague picture of what’s happening.

I recommend this trilogy to those who like dystopian novels unconditionally and aren’t as picky as me when it comes to the technicalities of writing. I’m not yet sure if I’ll read the third book when it’s published—I still want to know what’s going on, but I don’t think I will enjoy the novel very much unless is an improvement on the previous two.