Review: The Bone Season

"As Jax said, better an outlaw than a stiff."

The Bone Season (The Bone Season #1)
Samantha Shannon
480 pages
Summary Link 

Rating: 6.5

+ 10 points to Ravenclaw for coming up with a plausible reason why people in 2059 England would dress like Victorians.

WHAT I EXPECTED:

I hadn't heard the hype for this, so much as I had heard the hype about the hype. Apparently everyone thought this might be the next Harry Potter-type fantasy epic? I mostly avoided caring, because the word "clairvoyant" in a blurb makes me run away almost as fast as the word "dragon", but eventually I grave in. What can I say, I'm a sucker for future dystopias, even though I assumed it would be a fairly boilerplate teen girl paranormal dystopia. Girl has psychic powers, girl gets captured by oppressive government, romance and rebellion ensues.

WHAT I GOT:

By the zeitgeist, you've bloomed like the ambrosial flower you are, right winsome wunderkind! Welcome to the psychic underground of London. Apparently this has already been optioned for a movie, which makes sense since I kept imagining it set the same way as a steampunk-inspired production of My Fair Lady I saw a few years back. Though with more ghosts. And no actual steampunk, thankfully, since it's 2059 and they have proper electronics and guns.

The Bone Season was exactly what I expected in terms of story outline, but...better. It takes the standard body of a YA paranormal dystopia, then dresses it in new and exciting clothes and shoves it out onto the streets of London. It's one of those stories that sucked me right in and I read it straight through without pause, although it's not without flaws. Shannon's unique, interesting alternate-universe London is easily the the best part of the book, and it's obvious she put major effort into it. The downside is that at times she gets carried away and it overflows with confusing jargon. Sometimes it worked and I fell into the rhythm, while other times I was scratching my head trying to remember what a word meant. Other reviewers have used the phrase "overly-ambitious", which is spot on, but that's leaps and bounds better than "boring". Personally, I vastly prefer an author reaching for something new and different, rather than falling back on the same old stuff, even if they can't quite handle their own creation.

Plus, it's always nice to have a female protagonist without debilitating issues. Paige doesn't spend any time bemoaning being a freak or moping about her lot in life; she's damn good her "voyant" crime syndicate job and she knows it. She's not a particularly original or deep character, but she's strong and doesn't sit around waiting to be rescued. The side characters are interesting as heck too, but they don't get enough development...though since there are supposed to be more books, I'll cut Shannon some slack on the condition she flesh them out more later.

What I disliked most was the super-predictable romance (with a gorgeous forbidden special supernatural being, of course), but if I complained too much about that sort of thing I could never read any YA books ever. It also doesn't come into play until the very end of the book, which is nice, though I'm not sure how much it will piss me off in future books. At least it's not a love triangle. And, to be fair, there wasn't anything objectively wrong with how Shannon handled it, I think I've just overdosed on the whole concept.

The Bone Season practically oozes potential, but only time will tell if it'll live up to it. If Shannon works hard and develops as a writer, she could have a major blockbuster on her hands. On the other hand, if she loses the threads, it could all fall apart by book three. Seven volumes are a lot to manage and it'll take serious chops to pull off, but I'm definitely looking forward to the next one.

Review: The Burning Sky

"When you will have done what you need to do, you will have lived long enough."

The Burning Sky (Elemental Trilogy #1)
Sherry Thomas
464 pages

Rating: 4.5

Magic! Not ghosts, parallel universes, psychics, glamours, fae, or paranormals, but wand-wielding, spell-casting, Latin-adulterating, Hermione-would-be-proud magic! I never realized how much I missed it until the first few chapters of The Burning Sky. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy all those other fantastical concoctions, but sometimes you just want a good old-fashioned Wingardium Leviosa!

Unfortunately, The Burning Sky couldn't live up to its own promise. It seemed to be heading down a great road. British boarding schools? Girls pretending to be boys? Evil kingdoms to overthrow? Strange beasts and super-powerful mages? I'm there. But Thomas tries to weave in too many threads and ends up dropping half the stitches.

Iolanthe Seaborn is, as described, a supremely powerful elemental mage living in a the magical kingdom of the Domain. The Domain is technically ruled by Prince Titus, but he's just a figurehead, as the oppressive Atlanteans are really the ones in charge. Titus know he's prophesied to be the one to protect and guide Iolanthe, and she'll eventually overthrow Atlantis and free the country. But he didn't know she was going to be a girl. Their lives become intertwined and thus begins the adventure.

It's pretty straightforward stuff, but Thomas starts strong. Iolanthe may be powerful and outwardly kind and carefree, but she's been secretly covering for her drug-addicted guardian for years and its taken its toll. Titus is a refreshing subversion of the standard prince-character: his outward selfishness and who-cares-about-my-people-I'm-rich attitude are just a cover for his plan to sacrifice his life to save his country.

The narration alters between them, which I think is the first major misstep of the book. Either would be enough separately, but trying to cover both of them doesn't work. Titus is the much more interesting character and I wish Thomas had written the book solely from his perspective; plus, then we'd have the novelty of reading a YA book with a male protagonist and subverting the expected tropes by telling the hero story from the mentor perspective. Instead, the more subtle, interesting characterizations are quickly lost in a muddle of Iolanthe's irrational anger toward the Prince because he thinks he trapped her (even though she's being hunted by the Atlanteans?) and the Prince's moping about how he's in love with her (and makes a fake version of her in a training exercise so he can kiss her??). Their insta-love doesn't even stand out, since most developments in the book appear out of nowhere when the plot demands it.

This problem is constantly repeated: Thomas brings in too many topics that would be interesting individually, but are strangled by all clutter around them. Iolanthe is in hiding as a boy at Eaton, they have a magic book that makes a training world, Titus's mom left a book of prophecies, Iolanthe's guardian gave up his memories, a crazy lady might have the memories but then later she's not crazy, the Atlantean inquisitor is evil, she's also a mind mage, the inquisitor works for someone even MORE evil who's also immortal, Titus's mother was involved in an uprising, Iolanthe is also an athletic cricket prodigy, insert random training sequence that accomplishes nothing, the magic training book has even more magical abilities, there's an oracle for more prophecies, bullies at the school, a ball, on and on and ON. The story never has a chance to breathe. Instead of nurturing the original sprouts, Thomas just keeps planting new seeds every time she wants to move the story forward (I'm just using metaphors all over the place today).

Plus, what happened to the ending? Nothing the book spent time on ended up mattering much at all. I found myself skimming the last chapters so I could finally be done.

I don't understand the effusive praise for this book at all. I feel like everyone read something completely different. I want to have read that book, with the beautifully crafted blending of historical and fantastical and a romance to make your heart swell. Maybe it's in disguise on a boarding school bookshelf somewhere.

Half Review: Wuthering Heights

"I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to being heaven."

Wuthering Heights

Emily Bronte

337 pages

Rating: 8

This isn't a full review, because frankly, people have been discussing this book a hundred years and at least a few of them have written well-reasoned, comprehensive and nuanced reviews. Instead, I want to discuss expectations.

WHAT I EXPECTED:

I had avoided Wuthering Heights, not only because I tend to avoid 1800s classics, but because all I ever heard about it was ~doomed forbidden love~. I thought it was going to be a stupid, sappy love story about Cathy and Heathcliff pining across the moors for each other yet unable to be together, etc etc, cue more pining and moping and possibly brooding. I mean, for landsakes, it's Bella's favorite book and that girl has the dumbest opinions about romance. People always seem to talk about it as a great love story for the ages and whatnot. 

I have never been so happy to find out that everyone is wrong.

WHAT I GOT:

On page 11, I knew I was going to like this book. That's when our narrator is at the old Heathcliff estate, trying to make pleasant conversation with his less-than-amicable hosts. He notices some cats sitting across the room and asks the lady of the house if they're her favorite animal, only to find that what he thought were some cats is actually a pile of dead rabbits. 

The thing about Wuthering Heights is that everyone in the story is an awful, awful person who does awful things. It's practically a Jerry Springer episode. These people are monsters and they deserve what they get. I kept cackling as I read at each new horror that they brought upon each other. When Cathy says that her soul is the same as Heathcliff's, she's right: they're just both awful, conniving, cruel people. This isn't a book about forbidden life, it's a book about how the actions of despicable people can poison even their children. It's not so much about love as about obsession. It's a soap opera where all the characters are practically the villains. I loved every minute of it. 

The Bronte sisters are now two for two with me. I need to read something by Anne next to complete the set.

Review: Earth Girl

"The polite people would call me Handicapped, but you can call me ape girl if you like."

Earth Girl (Earth Girl #1)
Janet Edwards 
358 pages

Rating: 5 

This book is okay. It's not terrible, it's not offensive, but it's certainly not outstanding or sensational like some people seem to believe. The reviews of this book are a textbook case of people's tendency to overinflate ratings. You can rate things below "outstanding", people, it's all right. Sometimes things are just fine.

Jarra, our protagonist, is handicapped: stuck on Earth in a future where almost everyone got the hell off the planet if they had the chance. The rest of the galaxy looks down on her kind as primitive relics, but Jarra isn't having any of that- she decides to apply to an off-world university (that holds its first-year courses on Earth) and not tell any of her classmates she's an "ape". She invents a fake backstory for herself and sets to work studying archaeology and digging up the ruins of old New York. Obviously, issues ensue, as Jarra struggles against prejudice against her and also her own prejudice against the "norms". There's also a whole ton of stuff about how people in the future conduct archaeological digs.

The best parts of this book involve the world building. I love far-future settings that still involve Earth, and I feel like there aren't enough of them- usually when we're this far in the future, it's always in a space-exclusive or distant-planet setting. I loved the concept of portal technology, the inevitable Earth exodus, and what it would be like to be trapped on a planet during a space-faring age. It's what Edward's loves writing best (well, that and how to conduct futuristic archaeological digs), and it shows. The main reason I kept reading was to learn more and more about the galaxy Edward's has crafted.

It's also a refreshing divergence from the standard relationship archetype that abounds in YA lit these days. Sure, there's a romance, but it's realistic- a girl and a boy meet because they share interests, become friends, have some issues, start dating, have problems to work through. There's no ridiculous insta-love or undying, forbidden passions. Plus, Jarra is flawed in real ways, not in "she's quiet and shy because she thinks she's plain but is secretly amazing" ways. She can be kind of obnoxious and has a lot of justifiable issues given the prejudice she faces, but she's also smart and works had to be good at what she loves.

The main problem with this book, though, is that the writing...just isn't very good. It's not that bad- there are no grammatical errors or egregious statements, I never rolled my eyes at a stupid line (well, except when Jarra spontaneously goes crazy half-way through) but it's just...fine. The whole thing has a bit of an "uncanny valley" feel to it, where it's hard to put my finger on it but everything is just a little bit off. Phrases get repeated a few too many times. The non-Jarra characters are very two-dimensional, the "races" are excessively stereotyped, the dialogue feels flat, emotions are slightly over-explained, motivations are a bit overly simplistic, and problems and resolutions too quick to arrive and change. There's no depth to anything. Events also just sort of happen and then keep happening; some of them seem like they should be more climactic than others, but the writing can't convey any shift in intensity. I wasn't surprised to learn that Edward's apparently used to write technical documents before switching to fiction.

I'm reading the sequel now, which continues in much the same way (though Jarra ends up in more unrealistic situations- I don't care if she's an archaeology prodigy with a unique perspective, there are whole schools of archaeologists on future-Earth who aren't 18 year old freshman who would be more qualified than her). The world is interesting enough to have kept me reading, and it's a calming enough way to kill a few hours before bed when I'm too tired to read another book. Just don't expect five stars.

(In meta-news, it's occurred to me that I want to get back into writing reviews, so there should be more forthcoming instead of another ten months of nothing! Chemistry homework notwithstanding.)

Review: What I Was

"But would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?"

What I Was
Meg Rosoff
224 pages

Rating: 6.5

It occurred to me the other day that if I really did love Meg Rosoff, maybe I should read more than one of her books. I'd only read How I Live Now (which is a masterpiece, to be sure) but she's written six other books. I'm not quite sure why I never got around to them before, but it's high time to remedy that.

What I Was is a very simple story. It opens with H, our narrator, explaining that he's a hundred years old and wants to tell us about a time in his life that changed everything. At the age of sixteen, he was shipped off to St. Oswald's boarding school for boys on the coast of England. H is smart, but not really good at anything. He hates the imprisonment of school but lacks the skills or knowledge to imagine anything different. But then he meets Finn, a boy living alone in a hut by the sea, and sort of falls in love with him. Their friendship changes the course of H's entire life.

I know what the summary sounds like, but this book went none of the directions I was expecting. It's not a love story in the classic sense, nor a romance (especially not in the way I expected). It's a coming-of-age story, both about H, and also, to a lesser (more surprising) extent, about Finn.

Rosoff is, of course, a beautiful writer. One of the reasons I was attracted to this book now, after putting it off for so long, is that I'm sick of YA plot. Don't get me wrong, I love YA, but they can get so repetitive and tiresome- there's a main character, they have a Problem, they meet A True Love, they Fight Something Against Them, etc. It's lacks a certain "literary-ness". Rosoff may be YA, but this book is literature. It's lovely and haunting and moving.

It's not perfect though. What I Was feels disjointed in parts, like we're viewing random scene's from H's life without comment. It also has feels very emotionally confused at times- the parts of the story that you'd expect to be powerful and moving feel glossed over, as though they just happened in passing. A character death feels like it's the same "volume" as a school play. I'm also not a huge fan of bits of the ending- I don't quite understand what happened in the years between H's days with Finn and his 100-year-old self. Incidentally, when I read the book, I accidentally skipped the last chapter. The penultimate chapter ends on such a perfect note that I assumed the remaining pages were author's notes and didn't notice until the following day.  

I do wish Rosoff had given us more time with H at the end of his life, speaking to us from a world in which rising seas have eaten away at the land. Her writing is at it's best there, evoking bittersweet emotions about time and loss. What I Was was apparently inspired by A Separate Peace, but I've never read that so I can't comment on the similarities. What it did most remind me of though was Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.  When H says "Time erodes us all", he's tapping into the same essence as Atwood's "Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown." They're writing about history, the choices in our lives that shape us, and what remains if there's no one left to understand how it all came to pass.

Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

"If our mother was so important to science, why can't we get health insurance?"

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
400 pages

Rating: 9

A couple months back, I was hanging about my kitchen with my roommate Joyce, lounging while she cooked us dinner. "Oh," she said, "I was reading about this crazy new book recently that I think you'd love. I can't remember the title, but it's some sort of futurey dystopia, kind of like The Handmaid's Tale. Scientists stealing women's cells and growing them. Have you heard of it?"

I hadn't, which I found perplexing. That is the sort of story I love and I'm usually very on top of any hot new dystopian releases. It didn't take me too long to track it down though; apparently everyone had been talking about it for the past year.

"Joyce," I said, "I found it. But it's not a dystopia, it's non-fiction. It is a real story about a woman. It actually happened."

She stared at me. "No! Are you serious? That is way too creepy to be real."

Exactly. That conversation perfectly encapsulates everything about the entirely true story of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal, cellular life. Back in the 1950s, Henrietta Lacks, a poor Black woman from Baltimore, contracted cervical cancer. She went for treatment at Johns Hopkins, but unfortunately died shortly thereafter. However, unbeknownst to her and her family, a doctor had taken a sample of her cancerous cells and managed to grow them in a lab. And keep growing them. They were the first human cells to reproduce without dying in lab conditions, and thus invaluable for research. Everyone wanted them, and since they kept growing, everyone could buy some.

Skloot does a marvelous job. It would have been very easy to only focus on Henrietta herself and the scientists directly involved with her life, death, and post-death immortality. Instead, the true focus of the story is on Henrietta's descendants and the destruction and madness the cells have brought them. Skloot embarked on a personal odyssey with Deborah Lacks, Henrietta's daughter, to uncover the buried truth about her past and who her mother was. She weaves in spiritual questions about what it means to be alive, as well as truly horrifying facts about doctors in the era before informed consent (an era that persisted much, much longer than I had ever thought).

It's not a particularly happy read. The scientific history is alarming, the questions about bodily ownership are frightening. I spent the whole time wanting the ending to wrap everything up, to answer the hard questions and to tell me that it's all been figured out and we don't have to worry. Of course, it couldn't do that. Moreover, the Lacks family is disturbing. Skloot doesn't try to whitewash their history- there's child abuse, sex abuse, and mental illness. But neither does she put them on display- she wasn't just writing about them in the abstract. Skloot spent countless hours with Deborah and her relatives, traveling and studying with them. They're not just characters we're supposed to be shocked by, they're people, with beautiful and tragic moments all tangled together. It might not always be uplifting, but it is incredibly powerful.

Beyond it's power as a human story, this book is important. I'm planning on being a doctor, my grandparents were doctors, my father is a doctor, my mother is a social-work researcher. It's easy to get aggravated at people who just "don't trust doctors" and refuse to listen to advice. But as recently as the '70s, doctors were letting Black men in Tuskegee die of syphilis so that they could study the effects. In the '60s, a doctor in New York injected unknowing patients with cancer to watch them fight it off; he went on to be named president of the American Association for Cancer Research. Black residents of Baltimore in the '50s told each other stories that if they stayed out after dark, Hopkins would steal them away. Part of the difficulty the Lack's family faces is that they just don't understand what cells are or what any of the science involved means. It's easy to forget that not everyone gets to take college-level biology. It's easy to get arrogant. It's easy to pretend that it's all in the past, but what The Immortal Life really shows us is that nothing is every truly over.

Review: The Hunt

"When you're craved, you go extinct."

The Hunt (#1 in a series)
Andrew Fukuda
304 pages

Rating: 3

A YA vampire book where the vampires aren't beautiful and brooding, but instead a frightening nightmare species? And our beautiful human protagonist doesn't fall into a ~doomed love~ with one of them? When I first heard about The Hunt, it sounded way too good to be true; finally, a vampire story that didn't instantly read like a list of stupid romantic cliches. Plus I do so enjoy gladiatorial "let's murder kids for entertainment" stories.

Alas, it was too good to be true.

Gene, our teenage protagonist, is the only human left alive and free in a world run by vampires. He survives by blending in, spending his days at school desperately trying not to sneeze or twitch to give away his human status. He's made it to high school, but then gets selected to participate in a super-rare bread-and-circuses spectacle, hosted by the mysterious "Beloved Ruler"- a human hunt! All the sudden attention makes it increasingly difficult for Gene to pass, and complications ensue. He's infatuated with a beautiful classmate, he realizes the humans they'll be hunting aren't just dumb cattle, and the media wants to give him a book deal. How the heck is he going to survive this?

I've made it sound like a comedy- though now that I think of it, I think this book would have worked much better as a parody- which isn't really the case. It's serious and grim, but unfortunately, Fukuda lacks the writing chops to pull it off.

To Fukuda's credit, the vampires in this book are not normal people with a tragic aversion to light. They're disgusting and alien; they sleep upside-down, they melt into pus in the sun, they are driven into an insatiable blood lust by the scent of a human. Imagine if the first time Bella cut her hand in class, Edward ripped off her arms and devoured her alive.

Unfortunately, this ties into first major flaw of the book: the world building doesn't make sense. Are the vampires another species? Humans apparently become vampires if bitten or scratched, but the vampires aren't ageless (but might be immortal?), and reproduce by having babies. Fukuda tries to make them seem even weirder, by giving them an entirely different range of physical expressions (scratching a wrist instead of laughing, etc), which is good when it works, but when it doesn't...woo boy (two words: armpit sex). Not to mention, why is technology at such a weird level? They have touchscreen computers but ride horse-drawn carriages? And what does "heper", vampire slang for human, even mean?

Plus, the general premise doesn't make sense. Why blend in? The risks are so insanely high, not that Gene makes them any easier for himself. Why be on the swim team if goosebumps would give you away? Why play spin the bottle with your vampiric classmates? There's also a nearby desert waste, know as "The Vast", that vampires hate to cross- why didn't his family gather up supplies during the day, take some horses and try to see what's on the other side? Or just secretly live out there and steal supplies? Heck, why not become a vampire and finally fit in just like you've always wanted?

Beyond our weirdly dumb protagonist, the vamps are all just set pieces labelled "antagonist", and even the humans lack dynamic qualities. In their defense, we don't spend a whole lot of time with any other humans in the book, so they haven't had time to flesh-out. The main female character does stand on her own, and there's a genuinely sweet moment between her and Gene bonding over shared human twitchiness. She's also smarter than Gene; frankly, the book should probably have been about her. Bonus points for having no love triangle in sight (yet).

The plot itself isn't bad. There is some genuine tension in watching Gene desperately try not to get caught, and I was truly surprised at a certain "oh shit" moment. I also didn't see the final twist coming, but I suspect that's more because I'm an idiot rather than it being clever. Mostly though, it's pretty predictable. That's not inherently bad- I mean, we all knew Katniss wasn't going to die in the Hunger Games- but without compensating by pulling me into the story or the characters, getting to the end felt like a chore. I had been hoping for intense survival drama, but the hunt itself is anticlimactic and only happens in the last 10% (sidenote: ebooks need to get page numbers). Fukuda also tries to introduce some potential down-the-line political intrigue, but it falls flat.

Tl;dr- This is Fukuda's first book and it shows. The writing is often laughingly melodramatic (Gene refers to swimming underwater as "The Forbidden Stroke") and sometimes weirdly stilted from a lack of pronouns. The Hunt earns a solid participation award for trying, but fails to deliver a coherent, engaging story. But there's definite potential for improvement, so I'll likely be glancing at book two when it rolls around.

Review: The Count of Monte Cristo

"Some lives are predestined, so that a single error destroys all that is to come."

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas

1243 pages

Rating: 9

I know, I know. Your eyes glance over the page count then shoot back up to it, face crinkled in confusion. Yes, really, it's that long. The key is not to panic and remember that it was released as a serial over the course of two years, so if you want you can take that long to read it and smugly claim you did it for authenticity.

You won't want to take that long though. Trust me.

The story of Monte Cristo is pretty famous. There have been a dozen movies, plays, and even an anime version set in the 51st century (which is actually quite good). At its core, the story is eminently simple: Young Edmond Dantes has everything going for him: a beautiful fiancee, a fantastic job as ship's captain, a loving father and devoted friends. But it all comes to ruin when he's thrown into prison for a crime he didn't commit. Fourteen years later, he manages to escape, and sets out on a path of revenge against those who wronged him. 

There's a bit more to it than that, but it's best to discover the details on your own. Even if you've seen screen versions, I promise you don't know everything. Despite the daunting page count and its being written in the 1800s, it's incredibly readable. Dumas (thankfully) lacks that Dickensian quality of writing a sentence so long you forgot how it began. The jokes are still funny, the insults and "sick burns" still scathing, the images so detailed you can close your eyes and see it. And boy does it have everything you have ever wanted in a story: love, betrayal, revenge, murder, insanity, drugs, suicide, lesbians, bandits, serial-poisonings, duels, tragedy, redemption.  

It took me a bit over a week to complete, but I did it while at the beach and had endless free time. I just couldn't put it down. I also couldn't stop talking about it, probably to the annoyance of everyone about me. Every  few chapters I'd mutter "holy crap!" to myself or stare up from the page all wild-eyed. It's the sort of story I wish could have been read out loud to me when I was younger, for maximum effect. My mother told me about how, as a child, she snuck into her parents bedroom at every chance to read it. This is a book that delivers. It's skyrocketed to a coveted position on the list of best books I've ever read, which is saying something. Go read it.

Lastly, if nothing else, it taught me that people in the mid-1800s were just as enthralled with vampire stories as we are today. The more things change...