Book Event: Brave New Teenagers featuring...me!

You may remember last summer I attended a Book Event at the New York Public Library, titled Girl Power? Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction. I loved the event so much and had so much to think about it I covered it in three parts on my blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The presentation was built out from presenter Katherine Broad's research as part of her PhD, as well as the book she was co-editing with two others, all about YA dystopian lit. Back in the fall, I got an e-mail out of the blue from Kate, asking me to participate in the book release party! I was stunned, and honored, and the big day is finally here!

If you're going to be in New York City tonight, I invite you to come listen to me for a few minutes, as well as some other very smart people, at the Brave New Teenagers event at the CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave) to celebrate the release of Contemporary Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers edited by Balaka Basu,Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie Hintz. I'll be speaking for about five minutes about why I spent so much time blogging about dystopian lit before I took my semi-leave-of-absence from the blog (especially in light of the new job, which, BTW, is awesome, and I'm even doing some YA marketing now, so double-awesome).

Event: Girlpower? Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Part 3)

(If you missed them, please check out parts one and two!)

Finally, it was time for questions! I got the ball rolling, noting that I thought it was interesting that Tally was the more progressive of the two characters when laid out side-by-side like this, yet Tally came into being five years or so before Katniss, and I wondered if Broad saw anything of significance in that we went "backwards," so to speak. She responded that Tally as a character-type certainly never had a chance to be cemented like Katniss has been, due to The Hunger Games' explosive popularity. Tally seems to be unique, unfortunately, and Broad didn't have any other texts to reference for characters like Tally. Uglies may be the only contemporary YA dystopian story with a progressive character like Tally.

Next question was about whether either author had written about their goals in writing these stories and characters. Broad mentioned Scott Westerfeld's Blog and how he has said many times that he was interested in writing about rebellion, and that Westerfeld has edited an anthology of other writers writing about his work, from which we can infer at the very least which opinions on his work he considers worth looking into, even if they weren't his exact intention. Suzanne Collins, on the other hand, doesn't keep a blog and has said less about her goals in writing The Hunger Games, other than the famous story of how she was flipping between coverage of the Iraq War and reality television.

Another audience member wanted Broad's opinion on The Hunger Games movie, as the plot seems more straightforward in the film, and she wondered how it might influence the audience's perception of the story. Broad noted that since the books are from Katniss' perspective, not only do we have her constant inner dialogue, but we never get to leave her point of view. Because so much of the romance plot in the first book is from Katniss' inner turmoil about it, Broad felt that in the movie it was actually less pronounced. Additionally, in the film the idea of the brewing revolution is amplified, because we get to cut away from the Games as see more of the Capitol, President Snow, and the general political state of Panem, meaning that from a revolutionary perspective, the movie might be even more interesting than the book.

And then possibly my favorite questioner brought up issues of race and heteronormativity, first asking about the intersection of girlpower and the predominantly white narrative (perhaps best exemplified by the uproar over casting a Black actor as Rue, though personally I would have added the uproar over casting a blond white woman for a character described as having olive skin and brown hair), and then wondering if YA fiction for women is experimental enough to challenge the heteronormative narrative. First, Broad acknowledges that YA dystopian fiction, and YA lit in general, is very whitewashed (a topic regular readers of this blog are surely familiar with at this point). Hunger Games has some awareness of race, but it's not foregrounded (and I wish Broad had taken time here to point out that in some ways race is completely eliminated from the picture in Uglies, as Tally notes that, at least after the Pretty surgery, everyone is the same shade of tan). Readers bring in assumptions of whiteness, and in order to fight that assumption authors need to do more than offer vague cues of "olive" or "dark" skin.

Second, in order to challenge a heteronormative narrative (I just like repeating that phrase), it requires an active, conscious step, that few (if any) books are making now. She also took this time to bring up how there is no disability in these stories. There is a lot of potential for the genre to explore and challenge assumptions of race, sexuality, able-bodiness, etc, but the drive to cash in on this super hot genre may limit the drive to challenge and experiment.

And what did I think of the whole presentation?

There was a boatload of details here - seriously, even though this summary has spanned over three posts, I still have un-tapped notes. And, due to the speed of the presentation, I'm sure that I missed more than a few details. Hopefully none ended up misrepresenting Broad's point of view.

When it comes to analyzing The Hunger Games, I never would have thought to look at it through the lens of its romantic subplot - because you all know how anti-romance I am in general, and especially anti-romance in view of The Hunger Games. But like I said in my first post on this subject, I think when you look at the trilogy as a whole, for better or for worse, the romance becomes increasingly important as the story goes along. It's not nearly as prominent as some dystopian stories that have followed (I swear sometimes "dystopian" has become a synonym for "angsty teen love triangle"), but it definitely affects the narrative in a big way by the time we get to Mockingjay. Broad's analysis of Katniss's "happy ending" in Mockingjay was absolutely spot-on in terms of why it disappointed me. Not necessarily because it was a betrayal of the character (though I don't think Katniss of The Hunger Games would recognize the Katniss of Mockingjay's epilogue), but because it's an ending I've seen over and over again, and I didn't want this character that truly had some revolutionary potential to fall into such a trope.

A few times I felt Broad left out a few important details in her analysis. For example, Katniss ends up having lots of thoughts about babies in Catching Fire. Now, anyone who has read Catching Fire knows exactly where those thoughts come from - Peeta has once again constructed a story to try to ensure Katniss' survival, and has told all of Panem that she is pregnant. Not once was this plot point mentioned in the presentation, so it felt like Katniss just spontaneously went from thinking "I'll never have children" to obsessing over hers and/or Peeta's future babies in Catching Fire.

Looking at the Uglies portion of the talk, I can totally understand why this may have been tangential to the topic, but I really would have liked to hear a bit about the remarkable relationship between Tally and Shay, both how it conforms to tropes (such as girls competing against each other, especially for the love of a man), but also how it defies those tropes (Tally and Shay keep coming back to each other, protecting each other even after apparently unforgivable failures in friendship). I think an argument could be made that Shay's friendship had far more of an impact on Tally than her relationships with David or Zane (man, do I wish we had a female-equivalent to "bromance" because I would totally use it for Tally and Shay).

Overall, however, I'm super excited that there's some academia out there on Uglies now - I wrote my senior thesis on the series and, while I haven't exactly been looking, I haven't seen any other scholarly writing on it since. As mentioned previously, Broad has a book coming out this winter from Routledge - Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults, and looking at the list of essays in it just makes me salivate. The site lists the publication date as November 30th and I can only hope publication doesn't get pushed back! Sounds like an amazing contribution to the academic literature on young adult fiction.

Event: Girlpower? Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Part Two)

(If you missed it, check out Part 1!)

Here's where Broad began to really dig into the two texts, filled with spoilers and plot summaries (and she had a ton to say, all of it very interesting, that I won't recap fully here in the interests of brevity and the fact that much of this talk forms the basis of a chapter in a book Broad is co-editing for release this winter). As an aside, I was mildly amused by her summary of Catching Fire: "They're thrown into another Game." She pretty much moved directly from The Hunger Games to Mockingjay with only a line for Catching Fire. Which I'm not sure I can fault her for. I happen to love Catching Fire, and think it brings us some important character moments, but in retrospect it really is setting us up for the big battles of Mockingjay.

While on many levels, The Hunger Games trilogy is obviously an action/adventure dystopian story, on another level it's a love story, tracing Katniss' feelings for Peeta and Gale. The courtship(s) within the love triangle directly shape the narrative potential. Now initially this is the sort of commentary that gets my hackles up, but looking at the series in its entirety, it's kind of hard to argue that this is the direction Collins ultimately went in. And Broad makes some interesting arguments how even early on in the first book The Hunger Games falls into traditional romance tropes - for example, in traditional romance literature, the heroine often shows a disinterest in love and is changed over time by the hero. He convinces her that she craves love, while she gets to remain "pure" by stating she has no interest in such base emotions (and, it's implied, the carnal actions that come along with such emotions that Western society has often told women we shouldn't crave). Katniss fits that to a T, as she starts out being so adamant against marriage and children, and then the book concludes with disturbing (to me) references of how Peeta convinced her to have children.

Ultimately, Katniss isn't a character who makes a lot of choices. In terms of the romantic narrative, Katniss ends up with the boy that follows her back home. The men make the choices for her and Katniss follows along. While Katniss in many ways served to inspire a great revolution for the fictional universe, her ultimate choice to fall back into the modern-day status quo of marriage and children forces us to ask what has really changed by the end? Katniss hasn't presented any sort of alternative story for young women reading of her adventures, and in fact has fallen into a long line of adventuresome girl stories where the endings find them "less active, less assertive, and tamed by marriage."

And right there, I think Broad has put to words why I was just so disappointed with the ending of Mockingjay. Yes, within a fictional context, Katniss has won her freedom - to enjoy something she spent the first two books she wanted no part of. It falls back onto tropes of how young women just don't really know what they want and they'll eventually change their mind about things like raising children. And while overall clearly Katniss has a better future than what she would have had before the revolution, from a contemporary standpoint, getting married and having children as a happy ending doesn't look revolutionary at all.
In short, girls stories often end with marriage. Stories of empowered young women must subvert that, bringing us to Uglies.
In my view, when viewed through the romantic narrative lens that Broad used, Tally actually initially has a lot of regressive traits, rather than progressive. While the Tally/Shay BFF relationship is awesome, Tally spends three books being driven between ideologies by David or Zane. David drives Tally's first revolutionary act, to defy Cutter and protect the Smoke. Then, as Broad points out, Tally agrees to undergo the Pretty surgery and essentially go undercover only after David tells her she is beautiful without the surgery. Of course, the surgery is very successful and Tally forgets herself, essentially becoming a Pretty damsel in distress. It's Zane, and his drive to be Bubbly, that "enables Tally's revolutionary tendencies."

So, in my view, it's only in the latter half of Pretties that Tally becomes an empowered hero, when she starts to think her way out of being a Bubblehead. And not only does she think her way out, she realizes that while kissing new people and being in love is one way to stay Bubbly, other things like her trek through the woods can produce the same response. As Broad says, romance doesn't equal personal transformation. Tally ends up embracing change on her own, even if it was inspired by a boy.

At the end of Specials, Tally creates a revolutionary place for herself, not just in the context of her world, but in the context of ours as well. And while she is out there in the wilderness with David, it's not a romantic getaway for them, and she even made the decision before re-connecting with David. Broad states that Tally "asserts a place for herself defined by actions, not gender."

In conclusion, when examining YA dystopian fiction, readers should look at how the fiction imagines the results of adolescents striving to be something more and do something different. Do these rebellious characters get to keep that streak even as they grow up? In a setting that relies on traditional gender roles, how does the hero react against them? In Katniss, we see someone who lost her rebellious streak and falls into very traditional gender roles. Tally on the other hand is going to be a rebel of some kind for the forseeable future, in an action hero role that ultimately defies most feminine literary tropes.

There's one final upcoming post, covering questions and my own reactions to Broad's presentation! Check out part three!

Event: Girlpower? Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Part 1)

I forget when or where exactly I ran across the press release for this event, but on Tuesday the New York Public Library presented a lecture from the  Wertheim Study, titled Girlpower?: Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction.

I pretty much loved every word of that. It was like it was made just for me! So I took a long, late lunch break from work to listen to Katherine Broad present this lecture, based on part of her PhD dissertation about the romance trope in feminist Utopian literature.

(Swoon)

Now, this talk was so interesting and exciting that I kind of got ahead of myself and created one huge massive post. So in the interest of not breaking anyone, this is going to be divided into three parts - first, some background on the genre and the title Broad chose for the presentation. Second will be her dissection of the texts, and the third will be the questions from the audience and my thoughts!

The audience definitely skewed older for this talk - looking around the room I was almost the youngest there. There were a trio of people in the back row that looked like they might have been on the upper-end of the teenage spectrum, and then someone brought their six year old along. It's always so weird to still find myself as the youngest in the room so often.

Anyway.

Broad focused on two of my favorite dystopian works ever, Uglies and The Hunger Games, so I had a lot to chew on as she breezed through her presentation (in fact, that would be my biggest critique of the whole thing - I'm betting Broad had a time limit and wanted to make sure she fit in all of the fascinating bits of her paper into the presentation so at times she just sped through the lecture, making note taking very difficult at times). Another interesting demographic note - Broad polled the audience briefly to see who had read the two series, or at least seen the movie of The Hunger Games. I wasn't surprised that only a fraction of the audience had read Uglies, but the answer wasn't even close to unanimous for readers/viewers of The Hunger Games. There are people interested enough in YA to sit through a scholarly discussion of it on a sunny Tuesday afternoon but haven't read The Hunger Games? My mind boggled.

Broad came out of the gate with fighting words, noting that both Katniss and Tally have been celebrated as feminist heroines, but in fact Katniss ends up with a pretty conservative plotline overall, as she grows up, settles down, marries and has children. Tally is actually the one with far more potential as a strong feminist role model.

I would never argue against Tally as a feminist role model, but to say Katniss isn't one?! Whoa. I needed to know more.

The presentation started with some interesting insights into the origination of Utopian and dystopian genres. For example, did you know that Utopian stories do not require the society to be perfect? Just has to be better than our current society is, and is often concerned with the process and outcome of progressive social change. Dystopias, of course, are the flip side of the coin - but may not be as different as they seem at first glance. After all, most Dystopian stories (especially those aimed at the YA reader), end with a Utopian setting, as social change has been implemented (or is in the process of being implemented), and the dystopian society won't merely be better than it was before, but will clearly be better than our contemporary society. Both Mockingjay and Specials demonstrate this (and we see more of it in Extras, the fourth Uglies book).

The dissection of Utopia/dystopia was followed by a dissection of Broad's choice of title for the presentation: Girlpower. As someone who spent her formative years in the 90s, I definitely remember the girl power movement, and even at a tender age it didn't sit entirely right with me. Yeah, it sounds awesome, you can't argue with the idea that girls should have more power and be recognized for their awesomeness, but I really didn't want to be a Spice Girl when I grew up. And in fact, Broad cited an article that mentions the Spice Girls by name, noting that the girlpower movement grew out of Riot Grrrl music, and co-opted the idea of feminine power into something non-threatening: like the Spice Girls. So, that's the question of the title: Katniss and Tally are both held up as role models of female power, but are they truly powerful or have they been de-fanged and dressing up the idea of "powerful women" in the same-old packaging?

Come back on Monday to see part 2, digging into the texts of The Hunger Games and Uglies!

Book Thoughts: Anachronistic Historical Fiction

A few months back I wrote about the suspension of disbelief in fantasy and science fiction, and how it's not necessary to counter one fantastic element with everything else being hyper-real, especially when it comes to cultures that oppress minorities.

But...now I'm going to go be all complicated and look at when defying reality feels like it goes a little too far for me.

I started reading This Dark Endeavour: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein earlier this week, drawn in by the connection to Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein novel. While the writing is great, however, I think this is one of the few books I'm going to give up on before finishing?

Why? The characters are too darn nice.

In Victor's family, girls are educated just as well as boys. Interest in the arts is cultivated just as much as an interest in science. The rich family spends every Sunday cooking lavish meals for the serving staff!

Any one of these things I would have been okay with - heck, I'd probably be okay with all of them - if the characters weren't so damn smug about how enlightened they are. And, like SF dystopia XVI earlier this year, (so far) there's been no explanation of why this family is so magnanimous. Especially if you're a family with some sort of power, some tangible reason to keep the status quo, if you're going to break that status quo I wan't to know why.

Or? I don't want it to be acknowledged. If the Frankenstein's are wise beyond their years, that is awesome, but why not just show them being awesome? Why make them so aware of their awesomeness? If that awesomeness is integral to the plot somehow, then just show us them being awesome in contrast to evil horrible people who subjugate their women and/or servants and/or artists.

For me there's a difference between escapist literature (imagining a world that is better than the one we live in), and...I guess I would call this overeager literature. It emphasizes that the world MAY HAVE been bad, but look at these people who hold our modern values in this antiquated time!!!

Anachronism can be used well - slightly altering the order of events for better drama, bringing in an invention a few years early or a few years late, or setting aside some common bigotries in order to better get to the story you want to tell. But when anachronism is handled poorly, when that anachronism seems to become a plot point, or a point that overshadows the plot, I get turned off.

How important is historical accuracy to you in historical fiction? What do you think about characters holding 21st century values in settings that are decidedly not the 21st century?

Sci Fi Friday Review: XVI by Julia Karr

This has probably been one of my most-anticipated books of the year so far. What wasn't there to love about it? Dystopian SF that is actually feminist? So perhaps some of my ultimate disappointment comes from high expectations, but I'm pretty sure even if I'd gone in blind I would have come to a lot of the same conclusions.

All Nina Oberon wants is a totally normal, ordinary, boring life. Unfortunately, Nina is mere weeks away from turning 16 - an age all of her friends are eagerly waiting for, since they will receive their government-mandated tattoos and finally be "sex-teens," free to have sex whenever they want.

But Nina doesn't want to have sex. She doesn't even want a boyfriend. She wants to live in peace with her mom and little sister, and avoid her mom's skeevy boyfriend. But when her mother is mysteriously murdered, all of Nina's carefully laid plans are thrown out the window. With her dying breath, Nina's mother makes her promise to deliver a baby book to her father. The only problem: Nina's father died the night she was born. The truth about her father is one of many mysteries Nina must unlock, while trying to avoid her mother's evil ex, meeting a mysterious new boy, and trying to counter her best friend Sandy's increasingly sex-teen ways.

While the premise here is sound, it totally falls apart in the execution by committing one of the gravest sins in speculative fiction - failing to define the new world the readers are dumped in to. Many of the important aspects of this future society are left unexplained - most egregiously the importance of the titular XVI tattoos. Why on Earth is the government so invested in the sexual goings-on of teenage girls? And while I can easily come up with half a dozen reasons the tattoo is mandatory for girls but apparently not for boys, I'd really like to have seen at least the government cover story for the tattoo. Another under-explained point were the Female Liaison Specialists, or FeLS - we know it's really the only way for lower class girls to rise in rank and that they must be virgins, and we end up learning what the real purpose of the organization is, but the cover story is foggy.

Almost as bad, is the fact that I couldn't stand the protagonist. Nina is the worst kind of dystopian protagonist: the one that not only recognizes she lives in a dystopia, but coincidentally holds 21st century values and isn't afraid of telling us and anyone else that will listen why she is better than everyone else for her enlightened views. I don't know why she and Sandy put up with each other - Nina clearly is contemptuous of everything that Sandy finds important. Why would Sandy not only put up with that disdain, but consider Nina her best friend? Nina is also conveniently open minded about people from all classes - she doesn't have a classist bone in her body and goes out of her way to help homeless people, even when it means putting herself in great physical danger. Noble indeed, but very little textual support for having such a counter-cultural attitude.

Slang is a tricky part of any YA novel, and most SF in general, but Karr comes across as quite tone deaf when she makes one of the most-used slang words in the novel a 21st century slur against transgendered people. Really, there was no better way to refer to transportation as "transports" which is then shortened into "trannies"? It was especially disturbing when, before it was made clear what trans/trannies was short for, a character who's been in a fight is asked if he "kissed a trannie." It just made me really uncomfortable and kept pulling me out of the book (which happened quite often because damn do these kids talk about the various transportation options a lot). Please folks, if you're going to make up words for your book, do a quick Google search to make sure it's not associated with something else (do not Google "trannies" while at work - the first several hits are porn sites, which should be the first clue this wasn't the best word choice).

There's lots more I could critique here - including the mystical Asian healer stereotype and this being another entry in the trend of dystopian stories eliminating/ignoring homosexuality - but I think we'd be here all day.

The novel wraps up rather neatly, so I don't think this is going to be part of that growing trend of releasing dystopian stories in trilogies. On the one hand, there's clearly a lot of worldbuilding that could be expanded upon in a sequel, but on the other, all of the major storylines were wrapped up so neatly that there's very little actual story left.

Sci Fi Friday Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

OMG, it's been forever since I've done a SF Friday post. Not for lack of wanting - there's just been a ridiculous lack of science fiction the last couple of months. And my TBR list doesn't have much coming up, either. Boo!

As the daughter of a scientist and a military strategist, 17 year old Amy is selected to be one of the people cryogenically frozen for the 300 year journey across the stars as Earth colonizes its first new planet.

250 years later, Amy wakes up. Alone. It's 50 years ahead of schedule, and thanks to the clumsy work of whoever pulled her out of the freezer, she can't go back under.

Amy must now try to make sense of how humanity has evolved aboard the Godspeed - a society where uniformity and peace are prized above all else. Her only allies are those who are different - Elder, who is to inherit the role of leader after the current Eldest's death, and Harley, an artist who lives in a hospital and fed a constant stream of medications to try to control his individualist ways.

But it quickly becomes apparent that waking Amy wasn't an accident. More people are being pulled from their cryo chambers, and being left for dead. Only Amy, Elder and Harley seem to understand the gravity of the situation, and it's up to the three individuals in a sea of uniformity to solve the crimes.

I was pretty much convinced going into this that this was going to be a love story. Lots of reviews are selling this on the merits of the interracial romance and then there's that Spider-Man kiss cover. However, I found this refreshingly light on the romance. Oh there's some romantic angst and questioning, but Amy and Elder are in such different places psychologically that only one of them really has the time/energy to contemplate romantic feelings. And yet the mostly one-sided romance doesn't come across as creepy/stalkery. Kudos there.

As far as the science fiction aspect goes, this definitely isn't hard SF, but it's not totally on the softer side of the spectrum, like a lot of dystopian YA SF has been in the last few years. I'm hardly a science expert, but there was enough science-talk to convince me this was a future society heavily invested in technology, but doesn't devolve into so much technobabble as to scare off SF newbies.

The rest of the story comes out in fits and starts, with lots of dramatic cliff hangers at the end of chapters, drawn out because Amy and Elder alternate narration duties. It's all pretty straight forward, and the forecasting of the bad guy's badness begins pretty early on (really, there wasn't a more subtle example than saying the bad guy views Hitler as one of the good guys?), but it's a nice enough story, more of a mystery than a romance, with some nice SF set dressing.

In closing, I do want to point out to anyone who missed it in December that Across the Universe was the victim of some subtle whitewashing, as pointed out at The Interrobangs. The original ARC cover emphasized Elder's non-Caucasian features subtly, while in the final cover there's nothing that really differentiates him from Amy (other than being a dude). This is a more subtle racefail than other examples (Liar, Magic Under Glass), which I imagine is why I haven't seen it mentioned much outside of The Interrobangs. Like with Magic Under Glass, I imagine part of the lack of controversy stems from the fact that Elder isn't any specific race - the humans of Godspeed have become monoethnic in the centuries between leaving Earth and Amy's awakening, meaning they all share the same olive skin, brown eyes and brown hair. Since we can't say Elder is supposed to look African, Indian or Japanese, and the fact the faces are almost in silhouette, it's easy to explain away/ignore the cover discrepancies. It probably never would have been noted - if Razorbill hadn't initially released the ARC with a more obviously non-Caucasian cover model.

But to end on a slightly more positive note, I'm desperate for some more SF in my life. Next Friday I'll have Julia Karr's XVI as a SF Friday review, but after that my TBR list is sadly light on the SF front. Someone please tell me there's more great SF on the way this year! I'm more excited about the books coming out in 2011 than I ever have been before, but so far it looks like a light year for SF? Say it ain't so! Give me some good news in the comments!

What Have I Missed? Review: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

This is supposed to be my February book...but I ran out of days in February, thanks to my vacation/honeymoon. So here's the anxiously-awaited (if responses to my Goodreads review tweet are any indication!) of 2005 Printz Award winner How I Live Now.

In an attempt to escape her father and her horrible new stepmother, Manhattanite Daisy is spending the summer in rural England with family she hardly knows - her mother's sister and her four children. What is supposed to be a boring and relaxing summer takes a turn for the unexpected when, a day after her aunt has left the country on business, war breaks out in England.

Alone in the countryside, the five kids band together as a family in ways Daisy never imagined possible - from becoming so close they're practically telepathic to the decidedly more than familial love she shares with Edmond. But as the danger moves closer to their secluded outpost, Daisy must draw on reserves of strength she hardly knows she has to try to keep the little family together.

Pretty much every review of this I saw before going in brings up the incest - and now I guess I'm guilty of that too. But all of those reviews made such a big deal out of it I was sure I was going to end up with a romance story with some vaguely dystopian feelings. Let me assure you, that's totally not the case. Really, I'm kind of surprised that cousin-incest really gets people up in arms at this point. Just because you don't want to bang your cousin doesn't mean it's actually the grossest thing in the world. Much grosser: undead boyfriends that watch you sleep and try to control who you can spend time with. Or kidnappers. Abusive relationships of any kind, really. Priorities, people.

What this is, is a survival story. This is about how Daisy finds the strength, through extraordinary circumstances, to stop beating herself up and rediscovering her family and her will to live.

But ultimately, that wasn't quite enough to keep me riveted to the story. I put the book down a couple of times and wandered away to read something else. It may have had something to do with the writing style - it's very postmodern what with its complete absence of quotation marks. Considering the kids are pretty much psychic that makes it very hard to tell what is actually spoken and what is thought. The psychic-abilities were a bit random themselves - the whole of the writing just felt rather unsettling and unjustified.

What I did like was how Rosoff was able to subtly show how Daisy evolves over the course of the novel. There are hardly any moments when these changes are stated outright and instead they're left for the reader to pick up on and contemplate. An excellent example of an author trusting her audience to get it without hitting us over the head with character development or Messages.

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Girl Who Was on Fire ed. by Leah Wilson

When I got the ARC of this from Smart Pop books, it included a bit of info on the editor - including the name of her degree from Duke University: Culture and Modern Fiction. Um, can I go back to school for that? Seriously, if money (both to go to school and in terms of making a living later) were no option, I would love to get an advanced degree in something like that. Which is probably why the Smart Pop books in general appeal to me so much, as they combine my love of all sorts of bits of popular culture with light academic reading. So when I was asked to look at Smart Pop's April 2011 title, all about The Hunger Games trilogy, I was allllllllllll over it!

13 YA authors tackle The Hunger Games trilogy, looking at topics as varied as the roles of fashion and the media, to politics and PTSD. There is some really serious stuff in here, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who paid attention to more than the (gag) love triangle in the original books.

I'm clearly going to be partial to any essay titled "Team Katniss" - after all, that's the team I officially supported with a t-shirt at the Mockingjay release party - and Jennifer Lynn Barnes offers an excellent analysis on why Katniss herself is who we should be most concerned with - not being preoccupied with her love life. On a more frivolous level, I really enjoyed Terri Clark's look at Katniss' (and Cinna's) many fashion statements throughout the trilogy, and how Cinna was able to use fashion as a rhetorical device. Reading it made me think that Cinna would have loved to design for Madeleine Albright. Sarah Darer Littman, who is a political columnist when she's not writing novels like Life, After, writes a devastating essay comparing the politics of the trilogy to contemporary US politics - especially some of the rhetoric used during the Bush Administration to justify the war on terror (I can see that essay inspiring a LOT of negative criticism. Littman doesn't pull any punches - but it might be my favorite).

All of the essays here are worthwhile - those are merely my favorites, but each of them has something excellent and worthwhile to add to conversations on The Hunger Games. I wouldn't recommend powering through this book in one sitting, however. Unlike a lot of other Smart Pop books, the authors only had three novels to work with, which leads to some repetitive passages - talking about the bombs in the Capitol in Mockingjay or Katniss' use of the berries in Hunger Games. The essays themselves aren't repetitive, and all of them make unique points from the same set of examples, but reading one essay after another really highlighted for me how little material, in a sense, the authors had to work with in comparison to the Smart Pop book on Harry Potter.

I said in the intro that I consider this "light" academic reading and I want to make it clear that I don't intend that as a slight, but on the other hand only a few of these essays rely upon any sources outside of the three novels. Most of those outside sources are excerpts from interviews Suzanne Collins gave while promoting Mockingjay. This isn't hard hitting collegiate-level literary analysis, but would serve as an excellent introduction and as examples of just how many different ways one book (or set of books) can be analyzed.

The Girl Who Was on Fire goes on sale in April, and I consider it a must-read for any fan of The Hunger Games.

Reviewed from an ARC provided by the publisher




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Great Kid Books. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Sci Fi Friday Review: Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

Back when I went to ALA, I knew I was going to meet up with Lynn & Cindy at some point, but probably not until Saturday or Sunday. Yet when I got to the convention hall on Friday evening to register, I saw them across the lobby and snuck up on them like the sneaky person I am. And good thing too - while they were off to do important committee stuff, they clued me in that Candlewick had a few ARCs left of Monsters of Men and I should make that my first stop if I wanted to get my hands on this book before September. I then impressed them when we met up again on Sunday to report that I'd already finished the book!

Monsters of Men is the conclusion to the Chaos Walking trilogy, all of which have had slightly unwieldy names (The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer). When we last left Todd and Viola, they were facing the prospect of all out war, with Mayor President Prentiss' army of men and Mistress Coyle's resistance/terrorist cell of women and cast off men ready to kill each other, if the massive army of rebelling Spackle don't kill all of the humans first. Oh, and Viola's people, her fellow colonists, have reached the planet. Monsters of Men drops us right back into the action, with the adults and the Spackle known as 1017 all itching for war. Todd and Viola are once again caught in the middle, and now 1017 is added to the narrative mix, struggling with many of the same issues as the humans - he wants revenge, and is even willing to go against the nominal leader of his people, The Sky, in his quest. Will cooler heads ever prevail?

First of all, I love how Ness writes the animals in these books. There's Manchee, of course, and his lovable enthusiasm, but Angarath was tugging at my heartstrings throughout the entire book. It's great because these animals retain their essential animal-ness, just now it's easier for them to communicate with the humans around them. It's totally a dream come true for someone like me who would love to know what her cat is thinking (I just gave my cats some catnip, so I'm pretty sure their thoughts right now are I'M SO HIGH, but that's just a guess).

I have to say, I was on the edge of my seat for most of the book, but it was written in such a way that I felt a little manipulated. Every few chapters a new emergency arises or someone blows something up, which is pretty much the sole way the plot moves forward for much of the book. Around page 350 I found myself sighing with each new emergency - and at Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss as they constantly bickered, backstabbed, and manipulated their proteges to get Viola and Todd to follow in their footsteps. After reading Mockingjay, I found myself comparing the two books - Ness moves the plot forward by blowing something up, Collins moves Mockingjay forward by having Katniss suffer a traumatic injury. Both are effective in small doses, but repeatedly in one novel is just...repetitive. The pace picked up again in the last 100 pages or so, but part of that may have been me realizing I was so close to the end and desperate to find out what the payoff would be for the series.

Writing the conclusion to a trilogy has to be super stressful for an author. Undoubtedly, it will be impossible to please everybody (as we saw with Mockingjay last month). While I had a few minor problems with Monsters of Men, it is overall a very satisfying conclusion to this story.

Reviewed from ARC picked up at ALA.


BTW: Last night I attended the awesome Zombies Vs. Unicorns debate! Check back here after 1 PM Eastern to see my re-cap of the event!

Sci Fi Friday Review: Nomansland by Lesley Hauge

Found via: the Amelia Bloomer Project

Feminist science fiction has long explored matriarchies and woman-only worlds/societies. When I saw one pop up for the YA set, needless to say, I was excited.

Sometime in the future, on the island of Foundland, women have established themselves as dominant, and declared men to be the enemy. Trackers are trained in horse riding and weaponry to protect the windswept island in case any men attempt to invade, as greedy, violent men are wont to do. The newest of these trackers are a cohort of teenage girls, who despite having lived all their lives by the strict rules of Foundland find themselves rebelling in subtle and not-so subtle ways. Laing, the leader of the trainees, is constantly trying to invent fashion fads within the strict dress code, from towel turbans after bathing to rolling up her sleeves just so. Keller, our protagonist, longs for friendship, maybe even a best friend, though such relationships are strictly forbidden.

Then Laing lets her fellow trackers in on a secret. She has discovered an underground room, filled with treasures from the Old People of the Time Before. Such objects are supposed to be reported immediately, but the curious girls keep the find to themselves, exploring the strange powdery paints, angled shoes with spiked heels, and glossy pages filled with pictures of people unlike anyone the girls have ever seen. In a society governed by strict rules, what repercussions will the girls' discovery have?

I had high hopes for this one - it seems like it should hit lots of my buttons, but despite Hauge's citation of feminist works as her inspiration, parts of this book actually came off as more anti-feminist. Looking at the Feminist SF wiki, I think feminism anxiety hits my feelings about this pretty closely - the women of Foundland are humorless, sexually frustrated, and uncreative. And the girls' fascination with the trappings of 21st century womanhood struck me as odd. Curious about these objects they'd never seen? Sure. But all of them immediately embracing them as amazing and beautiful struck me as an example of thinking that femininity is an innate trait, rather than a learned behavior (gender is a social construct).

I also felt the world building was extremely shallow. Not only have the women of Foundland separated themselves from men, but the people outside of their borders (and there are apparently both men and women out there) are apparently suffering from some sort of deformity. Were all men and some women effected and that's why Foundland banished men? Also, the jacket copy focuses a lot on the Trackers and their amazing abilities, making this sound like some sort of action adventure novel - but in fact, we only catch a brief glimpse of fully-fledged Trackers, and spend the rest of the time with the teenage recruits who do little more than ride and take care of their horses.

What is excellently done is Hauge's ability to describe objects that are mundane to a 21st century reader, but are utterly foreign in Keller's world. Here's an example:

My eye wanders, eventually settling on two more contraptions, each with two wheels in direct alignment with each other and held together by metal spars and a central inverted triangle of metal, upon which is a tiny, odd-shaped leather saddle. At one end are a pair of curved metal pipes that look as though they are to be held in some way, and at the apex of the inverted triangle is another mechanism flanked on either side by a small block of something solid that surely must provide some kid of propelling force along cogs and a chain that connects to the wheels. -Nomansland, pages 43-44

Passages like this remind me of the old writing exercise - give step-by-step instructions for an easy task, like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, getting into nitty-gritty questions like baking bread vs. buying a loaf from the store. I thought it was extremely well done.

Sci-Fi Friday Review: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/19




You all know that I'm a sucker for science fiction, especially when it falls into the dystopian camp. I'm also a huge fan of books that bring in strong and interesting non-white characters (okay, I prefer my white characters to be interesting as well, but characters of color are harder to find!). Ship Breaker is one of the few books that combines both of those passions into an awesome story.

17 year old Nailer has spent his whole life living on the Gulf coast, working on the crews that break down the ancient oil rigs and shipwrecked boats that were abandoned as fossil fuels were exhausted and the climate changed so radically the coast began suffering through Category 6 hurricanes - aka City Killers. It's a rough and tumble life for everyone, but perhaps a little more so for Nailer who lives with his alcoholic father who isn't afraid to re-live his glory days as a wrestler by taking out his frustrations on his son.

Everyone on the crews dreams of making like Lucky Strike, the former crew member who found a secret oil deposit and was able to smuggle enough out to buy his way off the crew and set up a comfortable life for himself. Nailer thinks he's found his shot with the discovery of a modern and swanky clipper ship wrecked on the shore, filled with silver and gold and copper and, unexpectedly, a survivor - a young woman. Nailer and his friends are tempted to kill the girl and claim the boat as salvage, but ultimately Nailer decides to spare Nita after she promises there'll be a handsome reward for her safe return.

What Nita failed to mention is her rich father isn't the only one looking for her. Trouble is brewing in her father's industry, and a former colleague has pursued Nita across the Gulf, hoping to use her as a hostage. Without Nailer's help, she'll never reach safety. With the promise of adventure and a better life for himself and his friends, Nailer agrees to help, setting in motion an adventure that takes him from the ravaged Gulf to the ruins of New Orleans and out onto the ocean as he's always dreamed.

Bacigalupi is a rising star in science fiction right now, having just won the 2010 Nebula Award for his 2009 adult novel. So Ship Breaker continues the trend of adult writers turning towards the YA market, but after reading this one I'm happy to welcome Bacigalupi into the YA field. This is a tightly crafted adventure story, with a setting that feels all the more timely in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill (boo, hiss). I also found an interview with Bacigalupi that's interesting to read in light of the New Yorker article on YA dystopias. The New Yorker notes that a lot of YA dystopias don't truly work as social commentary like 1984 and Brave New World do because teenagers can't do anything to change their place. Bacigalupi, however, takes a different tack, saying "Adult readers nod their heads like a Chihuahua (bobble head) on a dashboard and say, 'Wow, that's really deep.' Then they get in their car and drive to work again. But with young people, they actually still have a chance to make better decisions than we made." Hopefully that means he plans on writing more YA!


The diverse cast is definitely one of the strengths of this novel. Not only are most of the characters not-white (specifically Nailer is Latino and Nita is Indian), but both men and women, boys and girls are part of the action. Nita starts off physically frail, but she's clearly clever and is a fast learner so she can earn the respect of Nailer and his crew who've known nothing but hard labor. Sadna, the leader of Nailer's crew, is a strong and imposing woman who has clawed her way up the ranks. At least in the shanty town, there's no difference between races or gender, it's all about how you can contribute and earn your keep.


When Nita arrives on the scene, class also comes to the forefront of the story as it becomes apparent that the entire world isn't in shambles like the Gulf coast is. Farther inland there are working cities with industries and infrastructure going strong. The only way those cities continue to thrive, however, is by exploiting people like Nailer to salvage every last resource from the wreckage people like us left behind.

Sci-Fi Friday Review: The Line by Teri Hall

Found via: YALit

When I feel like I'm running low on new recommended titles, I head over to the YA Lit site which has a pretty comprehensive listing of all of the recently published and upcoming YA titles. That's how I stumbled across The Line, and decided it was a must-read when I saw one of the editorial reviews was from Booklist - and written by Lynn from Bookends (and one of my awesome librarians dating back to when I was in middle school).

Rachel has lived on The Property for as long as she can remember. Her mother does domestic work for the intimidating Ms. Moore, and the three of them have lived quietly away from civilization and next to the Line ever since Rachel's father was presumed dead in the war,

The Line separates the Unified States from Away - a place where horrible creatures and the Others, people who are no longer even human, live thanks to the weapons used in the last war. Not that Rachel has seen any of this, for while the invisible border runs right behind Ms. Moore's orchid greenhouse, Rachel has never seen any signs of life on the other side of the border. Until one day she receives a mysterious message asking for help, smuggled by an Other across the Line she'd thought was impenetrable. The message inspires Rachel to start asking questions about the Unified States, Away, and just why her mother insists on keeping them as far from the rest of civilization as possible.

 Lynn called this "a good choice for introducing young readers to the science-fiction genre" - and I absolutely agree with that assessment. This is in some ways "dystopia light" - a dystopia more on the level of The Giver rather than The Hunger Games. It's clear that the government of the Unified States isn't all sunshine and lollipops, but Rachel is shielded from a lot of the specifics by her mother and also because she's so young she's not as cynical and jaded as someone like Katniss. This is a solid book for middle grade readers, but more experienced dystopian readers won't find much new here.

Review: Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 2/15

More dystopian fiction! Can we ever get enough of this stuff? I have to admit, that for all my enthusiasm for the genre...my answer is "maybe." The problem when the market becomes saturated with a genre is that new additions have to work so much harder to stand out from the rest of the crowd, and I'm not sure Birthmarked is up to that task.

An accident as an infant condemned Gaia to a life of poverty, hunger...and the love of her birth parents. In Wharfton, every month a certain number of babies must be "advanced" for the good of the Enclave; taken from their birth mothers and given to adoptive families inside who will ensure the child will never want for anything. When Gaia was born, the infants got to live with their parents for their first year before going into a lottery, but after a severe wax burn left Gaia with scars all along the left side of her face she was no longer eligible. Now Gaia is 16 and working as a midwife alongside her mother; the new requirements for advancement call for the first three babies a midwife delivers in a month to be delivered to the Enclave within 90 minutes of their birth.

Gaia has always been unwaveringly loyal to the Enclave - until her parents are arrested in the middle of the night, accused of treason. Gaia narrowly escapes arrest as well, and continues her mother's work outside of the wall, until she hears of her parents' impending execution. Gaia sets out on a nearly impossible rescue attempt, which seems to be thwarted at every turn, but as Gaia is convinced of the rightness of her mission, she refuses to give up.

A lot of life in the Enclave made me think of this as sort of a pre-Handmaiden's Tale. Citizens of the Enclave are increasingly infertile or are carrying debilitating genetic diseases due to generations of inbreeding, leading to the need to take in babies from the outside. I could definitely see the society veering towards Gallahad-ian policies if the birthrate continued to fall - they even already have a class of women who dress exclusively in red! (Though it seems to connote more about their status in society than their fertility)

But even that is a sign of how reductive parts of this book are. There's very little here we haven't seen here before. The bits about inbreeding do add a bit of freshness to the story, as it would be a very real danger for insular societies, but that isn't enough to really keep the momentum of the story going.

I also had a huge, huge problem with the romance. It felt soooooooo forced, like O'Brien got halfway through the book and thought, "Oops, YA books need romance. Quick! Have that boy kiss Gaia!" I exaggerate, but not by terribly much. Authors, I promise you: we don't actually *need* romances in our YA books - sometimes the focus of the story really should remain elsewhere, and you should keep your male and female leads platonic. Those who want/need romance will read sexual tension into the relationship anyway, and sometimes UST can be more satisfying than any on-screen romance (see: X-Files).

I do have to admit, though, I was very excited to realize this was set around the Great Lakes - Wharfton is near Unlake Superior, as the environmental disaster didn't even leave that massive lake unscathed. Whether Wharfton is in present-day Michigan, Wisconsin or Canada isn't revealed, but I like the idea of the upper peninsula becoming a desert wasteland, so I'm going with Michigan ;-)

I suspect this is a great story for those who haven't spent the last year and a half reading every single piece of dystopian literature that's been published. For those of us who are well-versed in the genre, however, there's really nothing substantially new to see here.

Review: Clone Codes by Patricia C., Frederick and John McKissack

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 1/18

I've been waiting a couple of months for this one to come in, so as soon as I got it, it jumped pretty high up in the ol' to be read pile. It has a great concept with a lot of potential it just never quite lives up to.

It's 2170 and humanity has nearly perfected the science of cloning. Clones are officially classified as not human and are governed by a strict set of rules that further establish their place in the world. Leanna is 13 and firmly believes in the hierarchy that places humans as "Firsts" and clones as "Seconds" - until she learns her mother is an extremist and/or abolitionist (depending on your point of view) with the Liberty Bell movement, and is subsequently arrested for treason.

Leanna is forced to run in order to evade the government forces, though she doesn't understand why the government is so interested in her. She's just a regular girl, isn't she?

Luckily Leanna's mother had planned ahead in case she was caught and has set up an elaborate safety network to help hide Leanna from the government. Leanna is determined to do what's right, and do everything she can to save her mother in the process, while learning more than she probably ever wanted to know about history, equality, and what makes us human.

Like I said above, I really wanted to like this one - but I almost put it down 10 pages in because the Publisher's Weekly reviewer and I have vastly different definitions of "preachy." Even for a middle grade book, the narrative felt overly simplified and like the authors were talking down to their audience. And then there's The Message, which boils down to Slavery Is Bad. Is that really a lesson that needs to be hammered home in this way in the 21st century? Maybe if the parallel were to a more insidious form of slavery like sex trafficking or child labor, but the explicit parallel is to pre-American-Civil-War slavery (Leanna is a run away slave in a virtual simulation at the start of the book, and she mentions Harriet Tubman several times as she grows from thinking of clones as tools to clones as people).

I almost gave up again at the end, when it seemed the authors totally messed up the workings of the Supreme Court. I don't pretend to be a legal expert, but generally cases only reach the Supreme Court through an appeal, and they don't call in witnesses in criminal cases (Wikipedia seems to back me up here). I find it unlikely that if the number of justices didn't change in 160 years, they would change the fundamentals of the the court's operations. Also a lawyer cites the Dred Scott Decision as precedent for treating clones as property, and despite the whole dystopian-like world the McKissack's built up, I just didn't see how the country would go back to thinking that was a good court case. Why'd I keep on pressing through? Because it was a slow day on the subway and it was either read this or stare off into space. I'll take reading every time.

Science fiction for teens is a subject near and dear to my heart - I wrote my senior thesis in college on science fiction and young adult literature, using Uglies as my case study. Science fiction has always been my preferred literary/TV/film genre. So to see it manhandled like this was disappointing, because the story is fundamentally sound, and there's some great action and character building for Leanna. But the tone and over-emphasis of the message kind of killed it for me. Looking for some great SF for the middle grade reader in your life? Check out the Golden Duck awards, which recognize excellence in children's/middle grade/YA science fiction. They also have a Good Books page which wins bonus points with me for being filled with Animorphs books for grades 5-6. Leave your middle grade science fiction recommendations in the comments!

Review: The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Found via: B&N Post-Apocalyptic Teen Fiction Panel

I heard about this one back in the day, but put off picking it up. Now that I've read it (and read it fairly quickly), I've been delaying writing my review, because I feel like I have a major bone to pick with the characterization of the lone girl in the story - but I've been having trouble articulating my feelings about her. More on that after the summary:

Thomas enters the Glade in the Box. He doesn't remember where he came from, or even his last name. He knows he is Thomas, and he knows the basics of how the world works, but all of the details of his life have apparently been erased.

He emerges from the Box into the Glade and a group of teenage boys, most of whom don't seem too keen on giving Thomas too many answers on where he is or why he's there. And just when Thomas is supposed to start his grand tour of the Glade, a wrench is thrown into the works.

A girl shows up.

Thomas gets a crash course in the rules of the Glade: two years ago a group of boys was dumped into the Glade, which seems to be in the center of a giant, ever-changing maze. Since that first group, one new boy has joined them on the same day every month. The girl, Theresa, shows up one day after Thomas and is, clearly, the wrong gender. She also comes bearing an ominous message: she is the last teen to be delivered to the Glade. Clearly, everything is about to change.

Thomas is a boy of action - he doesn't like sitting around and obeying the rules of the Glade. The rules are there for a reason, as is explained to him many times: when dozens of nervous and scared boys are forced to live together for years, the rules bring order, and order is the only thing that keeps them sane. The rules include assigned jobs for every boy - and one particularly prestigious, and dangerous, job is that of the runners. The runners are the boys who spend every day running frantically through the Maze, trying to map the corridors and find an exit, even though the walls move every night. The runners have to be fast, because the maze is populated by Grievers - horrifying creatures, part machine and part flesh, that will kill anyone who gets in their way - or at least sting them with a poison that causes the boy to see flashes of terrifying memories of life before the Glade.

After Thomas and Theresa's arrivals, life in the Glade changes quickly. Thomas and Theresa discover they have some sort of connection to each other from Before, and life in the Glad becomes progressively more dangerous until one thing becomes clear: the Gladers need to find that way to escape, or one by one they are all going to die.

Let me get some of the good points out of the way before I launch into my thoughts on Theresa: there are lots of interesting characters in the Glade, and the world is definitely very interesting. There's all sorts of slang in the book, which judging from other reviews has thrown people, but isolated communities are naturally going to create their own slang (two years is more than long enough) and the general meaning of the slang I felt was pretty obvious (it's used in place of traditional curse words. Even if you don't know what "klunker" actually means, context lets you know it's some sort of expletive most of the time).

I was torn between being annoyed with the Gladers a lot, and accepting their portrayals as realistic. Thomas has lots of questions, naturally, upon waking up - and absolutely no one will answer them. This is a recurring theme - if Thomas (and we as the readers) have a question, there's going to be a lot of hesitation and arguing before the answer is given to us. Likewise, every single idea Thomas has is immediately shot down because of course the Gladers have already tried it. It makes the Gladers rather unsympathetic initially. On the other hand, if Thomas really did come in and save the day on his second day in the Glade, I would have questioned the intelligence of the rest of the Gladers that a boy figured out in two days what they couldn't in two years. Generally I think the constant belittling of Thomas just went overboard.

And now. Theresa. I think part of the reason I avoided this book for so long is that I have an aversion to guys-only stories - a habit carried over from middle school and high school when I was protesting the forced-reading of so many stories by and about Dead White Guys so I focused my reading on female-centric stories. I've broadened my reading horizons a lot since then, but I still hesitate before picking up a book that I know features only a token female character. I figured I'd give The Maze Runner a chance finally because I liked The Knife of Never Letting Go so much, and that after all is sold as a story about an entire planet with no women until Viola shows up. But Theresa is no Viola, and Thomas is no Todd. For one thing, Viola is given character development, while Theresa is in a coma or otherwise separated from the action for most of the story, which makes her more of a plot device than an actual character. Despite it being so strange for a girl to show up in the Glade, we don't get to see any actual repercussions from that because Theresa rarely interacts with anyone. I hope her presence is setting something up for the sequel that will explain her importance, but as a character (or even as a plot device) she doesn't work at all in The Maze Runner. Ultimately I was left wondering why Thomas on his own couldn't have served the purpose Theresa ended up doing (aside from future dramatic and romantic possibilities in the sequel. Oh man, was Theresa included just to prove these guys weren't gay? That's a terribly depressing thought - because several guys do go out of their way to mention or ask about how hot Theresa is).

As another contribution to the ever-growing list of YA dystopian fiction, The Maze Runner is a solid attempt. A weird and creepy world was definitely created - and we only get the smallest glimpses of what life may be like outside of the Maze. I'm mildly curious to see where this trilogy goes, but I'll probably wait to hear other people's opinions on it before jumping in myself.

Has anyone else read this one? I looked around for other reviews, but I couldn't find any commentary on Theresa. I would love to know if I'm the only one that has a hangup about her.

Review: Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Found via: Read Roger, Jan/Feb Horn Book Starred Reviews

Incarceron is the perfect fantasy story for me: it has a lot of the trappings of fantasy (pseudo-medieval clothing and social system and mystical characters), but it's also set firmly in the future, which means in my mind I can call it science fiction and be totally accurate.

This is how I justified reading The Dragonriders of Pern when I was in high school - so maybe this line of reasoning doesn't have the world's greatest track record (I kid, Pern fans).

Incarceron follows two stories that are eventually interconnected: Finn, a prisoner inside the horrid world of Incarceron, considered to be a starseer by his fellow inmates; and Claudia, the daughter of the warden of Incarceron, betrothed to marry the Queen's son, and chafing under the rules of Protocol. That Protocol is how we get a fantasy setting in a science fiction world: for reasons that are mostly unexplained, it was decided decades (centuries?) ago that humanity would revert to living in medieval style, with kings and queens and serfs and servants and castles and thatched roofs.

Though everyone in Incarceron knows no one has entered or left the prison since it was built, Finn has visions of life outside and believes he once lived outside of the prison. He collects a motley band of fellow inmates who believe him, and are willing to follow him and the mysterious key he has scavenged, a key that matches the mysterious mark on his arm.

Outside of Incarceron, Claudia is determined to learn its secrets, for even though her father is the warden he has never spoken of the prison to her. She doesn't even know where it's located. When she snoops in her father's office one day, she discovers a key to Incarceron - and is startled to discover it is also a way to communicate with inmates inside. Specifically, the inmate holding the matching key: Finn.

As Claudia's arranged marriage is quickly approaching, she spends much of her free time talking with Finn, trying to help him find a way out, and is startled to discover Incarceron isn't the Utopia she'd always been told it would be - that even though it was populated by criminals from before the introduction of Protocol, with proper food and education they would have created a paradise within the prison. As she speaks with Finn, Claudia becomes convinced that he's not just an ordinary prisoner - that in fact he may be a member of the royal family who died under mysterious circumstances several years back. If she can just get him out of the prison and prove who he is, she can avoid her marriage and overthrow the Queen.

Incarceron has all the marks of another great dystopian series (like so many books today, it's the start of a trilogy). There are lots of mysteries left to uncover in the second and third books. At the same time, there are a few hiccups here - a lot of the basic world building goes unexplained, most notably the Sapients. It's pretty clear that they aren't normal humans, and that they are somewhat respected as scholars (both in and out of Incarceron) - but we have absolutely no explanation of anything else about them. No physical description, nor explanation of how another sentient species is living with humans. While I'm fine with some things being left to be explored later in the series, since Sapients play large roles in Claudia's and Finn's lives, I would have liked to have more explanation of who they are.

The lack of background aside, however, this is a great addition to the explosion of dystopian YA we've seen over the last few years, and I'm definitely eagerly awaiting the next installment!

Book Links: Holy crap, there are a lot more dystopian books than I thought!

Came across a link in my blog reader this morning: Half a Century of English-Language YA Dystopias. They're organized by decade from the '60s to today. I love the explosion of books that happened in the first decade of the 21st century. She even has a bibliography of nonfiction works that address YA dystopias!

I consider myself to have read a lot of dystopian novels, but I have barely scratched the surface of that list. Which is simultaneously disappointing (really? Despite all of my efforts I've really only read a fraction?) and inspiring (a challenge to read more!)

If there wasn't so much awesome stuff coming out constantly, I would want to take a month and do nothing but catch up on this list. Maybe if I still had spring break or a summer vacation I would do that.

To complete this week of impromptu dystopian discussion, I'm going to have a review of Incarceron up later today!

Book Links: Apocalypse Now

Dystopian fiction is an undeniably hot topic in YA literature, and lots of people seem preoccupied with figuring out why. Publisher's Weekly has a new article, Apocalypse Now that does the best job I've seen so far, talking to teens, publishing insiders, and retailers to find out why they think dystopian fiction is so popular.

The article also includes several upcoming titles that I hadn't heard of before, and now I absolutely can't wait for. Aside from last week's announcement of Mockingjay to complete the Hunger Games series (or as I now like to call them, "the books that creep out my mom"), I'm looking forward to This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer (conclusion to the trilogy that began with Life as We Knew It and publishes in April), The Unidentified by Rae Mariz (teens go to school in a shopping mall where corporate sponsors watch them on video) and Nomansland by Lesley Hauge (comes out in June, teenage girls are defending their island from men, who are the enemies) are some of the ones that jumped out at me from the article. Looking for a comprehensive list of recent and upcoming dystopian YA? Publisher's Weekly also helpfully includes a list of titles with short annotations. My TBR spreadsheet just gained a whole bunch of titles. I did just knock off one dystopian title though; I finished Catherine Fisher's Incarceron last night - some excellent dystopian sf/fantasy there!

Review: Candor by Pam Bachorz

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations

When I'm traveling, I like to bring along books that match where I'm going whenever possible. So when I was traveling over Thanksgiving to celebrate the holidays with my in-laws in Florida, I brought along Candor, set in a perfect community in Florida. Hm, maybe when I'm going to spend time with my in-laws I shouldn't bring along books that encourage distrust of adults!

Oscar Banks lives with his father in Candor, Florida, the community that his father established as the perfect place, especially for parents to bring their troubled teenagers. Only Oscar knows why the kids become so docile upon moving to Candor - his father has set up an elaborate sound system throughout the town that is constantly pumping subliminal messages into everyone's unsuspecting minds.

Rebelling against his father the only way he can and not be sent to the extreme re-education room, Oscar runs a sort of underground railroad where the richest kids in town can buy passage out of Candor (and Oscar in return has an endless supply of contraband - porn, DVDs and M&Ms are just a few of the things that are outlawed in Candor that Oscar hoards). Oscar's secret? He knows how to create his own subliminal messages, which can counteract the ones his father has set up.

And then Nia arrives. Beautiful and rebellious, Oscar can't stand the thought of her being changed into the perfect Candor citizen. He creates a special batch of messages for Nia to keep her from falling under the spell - but never tells her about it. At the same time Nia arrives, one of Oscar's clients who was supposed to escape is caught at the last minute. Oscar's usual balancing act has become much more precarious - there's now someone else in town who knows what he's up to, who could spill the beans at any moment. At the same time he has to encourage Nia to be herself, but pretend that she's like the other Candor kids - without revealing the secret of the messages. All without his strict, controlling father ever suspecting that the rebellion is being run from inside his son's bedroom.

Candor has all the elements of the quintessential YA novel - untrustworthy parents, conspiracy theories, a beautiful stranger, and a smarter than average protagonist. But with all of these elements, I still felt the book fell a little short in some ways. Big things went unexplained, like why exactly someone goes crazy if they leave Candor but don't bring along a set of subliminal messages. I also never understood why Oscar felt it was so important that Nia not know about the subliminal messages, either the ones his father set up or the new ones he gave Nia. It felt like it was an artificial reason, set up so there would be conflict between Oscar and Nia if/when she did find out. Finally, why on earth did Oscar's dad create Candor in the first place? I can see the appeal of creating a perfect community, but there's never an explanation for why he targeted rich families with problem teenagers. Oscar points out a very real problem with his father's business model: since you die if you leave Candor, no one can ever move away permanently (college-bound students have a special CD pack they take with them, but they always come back to Candor), meaning eventually the town's land will be completely used up, with no new families (and thus no new income for his father) until people start dying off. Unless his father's plan is actually to keep expanding Candor until he's taken over the US, it doesn't seem like a feasible plan.

There are some fun elements, however. I enjoyed Oscar's increasing paranoia throughout the book, trying to figure out what new messages his father was implanting in the populace, knowing when to play along with the messages and when to actively rebel. The story is exciting, despite the occasional holes in the logic, and tightly paced, making this a definite page turner.