My general feeling after I finished Monsters of Men last night was one of disappointment. This is really a pretty good book, but I had such high expectations given Ness’ skill at concepts and characters. The themes that I loved and that dominated book one got pushed to the backburner. However, I highly encourage folks to read it though, as it was quite enjoyable. The new themes, while less novel, were well done. It has a relentless pace that kept me turning pages and characters I really cared about, so I had a reason to turn those pages.

If you read through to the next page, there will be spoilers.

Other blogged reviews:

• Things Mean a Lot
• Drew Review
• Jenny’s Books
• The Book Smugglers

Title: Monsters of Men
Author: Patrick Ness
Series: Chaos Walking; 3
Imprint / publisher: Candlewick
Format: Hardcover
Length: 603 p.
Publication date: September 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-7636-4751-3

Why am I reading a sex education book for teens? Two reasons: I loved the Midwest Teen Sex Show (M.T.S.S.), written by and starring Nikol Hasler, and I’ve been mentoring teens at a high school for the last five years. The Midwest Teen Sex Show was an incredibly funny and informative internet web show. They have’t had a new episode for over a year now. I believe they were attempting to make a pilot for Comedy Central. And the kids I’ve worked with have questions, lots of questions. Sex ed leaves a lot to be desired. I was hoping Sex: A Book for Teens would carry the M.T.S.S. humor over, and that it would really cover the questions teens wanted to know. And while it’s a solid book, Hasler’s writing failed to meet my expectations on both counts.

The guide is much better than anything I had when I was a teen, which was essentially nothing. I didn’t even get abstinence education. The school I went to told everyone how fertilization worked, and that was about it. I haven’t sat through any sex ed with the students I work with, so I don’t know how much better it is. But their questions are further along than mine were at that point so I expect they are getting better information than I had.

The M.T.S.S. humor is extremely zany, and often physical. They wouldn’t think twice about having a performer dress up in a giant condom. In Sex: A Book for Teens, the humor seems like the Tonight Show version, toned down and enamored of itself. About the only parts I thought really funny were the last question in the Q&A section at the end of each chapter. That question was always titled There Are No Stupid Questions—Except for This One. An example: I am really mad at my ex for breaking up with me and then still showing up whenever he wants some action. What is the best STI I can get quickly and give to him? An example of the standard humor is this advice for when folks score: It also means you can get out your foam I’m Number One! finger and wave it all around. Meh.

As for advice, it’s all good. And it goes way beyond the standard this-is-how-things-work information into stuff lots of parents and adults don’t want to talk about. It covers the topics it really should (though often times I think the focus is misplaced). It’s very accepting of homosexuality, for instance. It’s got real explanations of the risks of birth control failing. It constantly flogs Planned Parenthood as a good resource. The list of good stuff is quite lengthy.

But it leaves some pretty common issues barely touched. The section on losing one’s virginity doesn’t really answer the question How do I go about arranging it? It warns against doing it if the person isn’t ready (good). It warns of risks (good). It suggests knowing one’s body and that of the gender one wants to get busy with (good). But the guide leaves off questions like how do I bring this up with the other person?, where should we do it?, etc. One of the biggest misconceptions the kids seem to have (and I had too) was that sex wasn’t romantic if it was planned. Combine that with some taboos that say girls (and boys on occasion) aren’t proper if they seem interested in sex, and you get kids who just try to make it happen without real planning. The section on technique for straight kids mentions missionary position and suggest other positions but doesn’t name them or explain them. Nothing about using pillows to put someone in the right position, for instance. Masturbation for boys doesn’t cover cleanup.

A 181 page book can’t cover everything. It doesn’t have to cater to what I think is important. But the subjects I wrote about above, as well as others, came up over and over when I talked with students. The book answers a fair number of important questions, but leaves off a good chunk too. It’s worthwhile compared to what I had (nothing), but I don’t know how it compares to other teen sex advice books out there, since I’m not familiar with them. I really hope this is not the cream of the crop, cause it could be tons better.

Title: Sex: A Book for Teens
Author: Nikol Hasler
Imprint / publisher: Zest Books
Format: Paperback
Length: 181 p.
Publication date: May 2010
ISBN-10: 0-9819733-2-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-9819733-2-6

I received this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program in exchange for a review to be posted on LibraryThing. In accordance with my police on review copies, I will donate $12.20 (the price of the book on Amazon.com) to the A.L.S.A.

I call these things I write about books reviews, but for most items, these aren’t really reviews. They are chronicles of my experiences with books. Sometimes that’s more review like. Sometimes not. I never really try for objectivity. Lots of times these writings are more about me than they are the book. Sometimes the experience I have reading a book won’t be close to the experience someone else has. I am pretty sure that no one else will even come close to having the same experience I’ve had with Split, for a couple of reasons.

The first reason has to do with Deepa D. I bought Split in a charity auction for Con or Bust. I’ve mentioned them before. It’s an attempt to make a bigger science fiction bigger tent by paying the way for fans of color to attend science fiction conventions. Deepa offered a signed copy of her friend’s book, with her own post-it notes included. That’s what attracted me. I love talking books with intelligent book people (which Deepa is), and this could be a slice of book conversation.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from her notes. It wouldn’t be like a review, written after the fact. I figured they would be more immediate and personal. And these were. Since you, dear reader, did not get these notes and will not ever get these notes, you did not read the same thing I did. They changed the experience of reading Split, and enhanced it. Deepa didn’t write anything particularly expository. Just little bits of her own personal reactions as things went along. (If it were Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, it’d be stuff like Oh Sandman, why so emo?) The effect was akin to watching a movie with a friend sitting in the next seat. I comment in their ear periodically (and they in mine). Not loudly, and not long, because no one wants to miss what’s going on next. Just little bits here and there. That’s what this was like, and it was awesome. At least it was with Deepa’s commentary. I’m only going to post her first note, because I paid well for the privilege and don’t feel like sharing.

The second reason is less exclusive, but still extremely personal. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but I know this is the first time I’ve written about it on this blog. My father died when I was just two years old, and my mother remarried a couple of years later. My step-father hit me far more than is acceptable. I won’t write more about that right now, because I’ve made peace with him. Making peace doesn’t fix things though. I was, and to this day remain, somewhat broken.

Split is about the aftermath of child abuse. I did not know this when I bought the book. I did not know this until I started reading the book. I might have left the book alone had I known. I expect fiction about child abuse to feel exploitive. Graphic descriptions trigger very emotional responses in me. I don’t want to go through that for something that exploits my experience. Split was very triggering, not just because it’s graphic, but because it’s very good. Ms. Avasthi gets it, in more ways than one.

Split opens with Jace Witherspoon showing up on his brother Christian’s doorstep in Albuquerque. Christian left home five years earlier at age 17, and Jace hasn’t heard from or seen Christian since. After Christian left, their father turned his violent attention toward 11 year old Jace. Their mother received a good share of violence too. Both boys reached a breaking point. The solution both turned to was leaving. Their mother remains living with Judge Walter Witherspoon.

Split is about what happens afterward. Much stuff I’ve seen is about what happens before. Sometimes it’s about how the cycle repeats and the abused turn into abusers. Split is different. Split is about recovery. Fucked up, messed up, painful, recovery. The people present don’t drag them down. They build them up. Jace and Christian build relationships. Split is hopeful all the way through, but not so positive as to be a sure thing. Steps forward and steps back, and I read through to the end worried that I would lose my friendships with these characters in one final giant leap backward. Either way, in Ms. Avasthi’s hands, it would have been the right ending.

Nearly every character in the book is likable but flawed. Jace and Christian are the highlights, of course. But even the secondary characters like Christian’s girlfriend Mirriam Ngu down to Jace’s soccer and romantic rival Eric were people I cared about.

A few paragraphs back I wrote that often fiction about abuse feels exploitive. There’s a few aspects to that. The most obvious is the feeling that it’s written for looky-loos, the people who slow down at an accident on the freeway to see what happened. Everyone has done something like that on occasion, including me, and some more than others. Child abuse stories go the route of voyeurism much of the time. Fine caring people can read it and think oh how horrible for those children and soothe themselves with their own caringness. One reason I don’t write much about my experience is I don’t want people tut-tut-ing over me.

A second way is when some awful stereotypes are used. I cringe whenever I read a story where an abused kid starts hurting animals and by chapter three is cackling as he uses a laptop to remotely cause a plane to crash (or similar kinds of evil-doing). Less of a caricature, but still just as cardboard, is the abused kid who grows up to abuse his own kids. That happens a lot in real life, but to be written in a non-exploitive manner requires a lot of work.

Split manages to avoid those issues very well. One of the things that is apparent very quickly is that Jace is a bastard. He can be charming as hell, but when something sets him on edge, he isn’t very nice. A good example is in his new school he goes out for the soccer team, which is pretty bad when he joins mid-season. The coach is condescending toward him, as is the team captain. Jace keeps quiet, but promptly embarrasses several teammates defending against him in scrimmage. He’s not just showing he knows his stuff; he wants to put them in their place. He knows the effect his actions have, and regrets it at times. But when irritated or angry, he does it anyway. It’s subtle characterization that makes him very believable.

Christian, like me, handles his past by not talking about it. For him, talk takes him back and he relives. He also runs. Running becomes a zen-like meditation for him, taking him to a mental space where he just is. His methods help him successfully cope, but they also have not fixed him. They are merely temporary.

I bring these two characterizations up because the brothers handle things very differently. This is key to avoiding the exploitive caricatures. And too often in real life people assume there’s a one size fits all pattern to us as well as how to handle us. There isn’t. At one point in the book, Christian realizes that his brother’s experience is not his experience. By leaving, Christian changed the household dynamic. He has no idea what the experience might have been like because he wasn’t there, even if he knew Jace had been abused using the same methods.

One other way that books about abuse can fall down is where the point is obviously to teach readers how they can help by having a caring and persevering teacher/social worker break through the kid’s shell. It’s a version of the Freedom Writers for a different social problem. When it’s a social worker’s story, you know either the kid’s gonna make it, or the social worker’s life will be enriched by the whole experience as he moves on to his next challenge. Split is not a social worker’s story. It’s doesn’t condescend that way. As a story about the kids, it becomes unpredictable and very real.

After reading my review over a few times, I realized something I forgot to write about. I mention that I forgot because it’s indicative of my history, and illustrates one of the reasons why I believe that reviewing really can’t ever be objective. I’ve been writing mostly about getting abuse right and wrong. That’s not the only way to look at the novel though, but in retrospect it’s what my head spins around. It’s also very much about the complex relationship between the brothers. Neither of them change on their own. And neither do they fall in together as soldiers fighting a common enemy. They love each other. They scared each other. And they need each other. Christian feels duty bound to help Jace when he shows up on his doorstep. But he doesn’t want to throw himself into it. Jace disrupts his strategy of burying his past. Occasionally the text moves away from the pair, but Ms. Avasthi brings it back quickly (and sometimes forcefully) every time.

There are two things about the book that I have mixed feelings on. They aren’t drawbacks exactly, but they make me think about things somewhat differently. As they both involve spoilers, I’m going to put them on page 2 (as well as something I really liked about the ending).

Split covers the most important part of child abuse aside from stopping them in the first place, what happens afterward, an under-explored part of the picture. It does so with believable plot and flawed characters I liked. The narrative and author obviously care about kids in these situations, making for fine story.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Shadowy Duck in Asian American Literature Fans
• The Heart Is a Lonely Reader
• Abstractions of Chinchilla
• GAL Novelty
• Engine Summer

Title: Split
Author: Swati Avasthi
Cover creator: The Heads of State
Imprint / publisher: Alfred A. Knopf / Random House
Format: Hardcover
Length: 282 p.
Publication date: March 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-375-86340-0

First thing I want to mention is that Uglies is the second book I’ve read on my new ereader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook. I’ve downloaded a number of ebooks over the last couple of years, but only read a few of them. A laptop just isn’t a good form factor for reading books. I’ll have a more comprehensive review of the Nook after I’ve had the chance to read a few more books on it, but at the moment I kinda like the experience. I doubt I’ll completely drop real books ever; ebooks are too ephemeral to own. But for stuff I’m not too concerned about owning a copy of (e.g., John Grisham or other beach reads), I really like it.

On to Uglies. I thought this was a pretty good book, but I don’t actually have a lot to say about it. That’s because I kept mentally comparing it to John Christopher’s The White Mountains and subsequent Tripods trilogy. It’s not the Uglies is worse, better, or even particularly derivative of Christopher’s work. It’s just that a lot of my reactions are the same as my reactions to The White Mountains. The way I want to write about Uglies is to do something detailed about The White Mountains first. But that hasn’t been done here, and I probably won’t return to this particular book even if I do. So… take all this as an acknowledgment of my failure to properly talk about Uglies. (As if anything I do with this blog is proper…)

In the Uglies universe, nearly everyone in this post-apocalyptic society undergoes extensive plastic surgery to make them pretty. Sometime in the past, someone in power decided the problem with society was related to our appearance. You know how studies show that handsome people get better jobs, higher class mates, and are accorded greater respect? To combat that, the powers that be decide to make everyone look equivalent. Not exactly the same. Beautiful people today don’t look all the same, but they do fit in a much narrower spectrum of possible looks. Same thing in Uglies.

Tally Youngblood is about to turn 16, the age when this plastic surgery is done. She misses her childhood friends, because children without the operation are segregated from pretties. But shortly before she is to become pretty herself, she meets Shay. Shay is a freethinker and even more rebellious than Tally. Where Tally pranked younger kids, Shay likes to escape to the off-limits Rusty Ruins well outside the city, where long ago people like us polluted the environment and killed off civilization.

The conflict arises because becoming pretty entails conformity and a loss of individuality, both physically and mentally. Becoming pretty is a rite of passage, but also an induction into fun and games and fuzzy thinking. Shay wants no part of that, and runs away to join a remote village of uglies who live outside of society. The current powers that be cannot stand to have such a place exist, and lean on Tally to squeal on what she knows about Shay.

I was reminded of The White Mountains because it also deals with issues of conformity with a huge dollop of mind control in a dystopian society where some live outside the confines of smallish city states. There are a lot of differences, so this isn’t a case of seen it already and don’t care anymore.

One issue that Westerfeld brought up in the narrative, but that didn’t really get explored, was that of race. Essentially, the operation eliminates race. Some of the new pretties might acquire some vaguely racial features, but conformity is really the game. I’m sure books and stories exist that do explore the elimination of perceived race through the lens of massive plastic surgery, but I think Westerfeld could have provided a great take on it. This paragraph should not be viewed as a criticism so much as wishful thinking on my part.

I really enjoyed the characters, who seemed to all be well-rounded except when given a reason, rather than embodying stock characters. The plot moves along quickly and interestingly. It’s an interesting setting, and the book includes some cool technological ideas like magnetic skateboards.

And one last thing: Tally makes a couple of major mistakes in the book. I really really enjoyed that she owns up to her mistakes, and in a manner that doesn’t minimize them. Not only that, the people she’s harmed with her poor choices don’t instantly forgive and/or forget the transgression. I wish we had more scenes like these around mistakes/apologies/amends in more books. Most that I come across just make me cringe.

Title: Uglies
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Series: Uglies; 1
Imprint / publisher: Simon Pulse / Simon & Schuster
Format: PDF
Length: 425 p.
Publication date: August 2010 (in PDF format)
ISBN-10: 0-689-86538-4

It’s been 24 days since I finished a book. I’ve started a bunch, but real life sort of intruded on me making a whole lot of progress. However, there’s nothing quite like a deadline to spur focus. I checked this out from the Seattle Public Library; it’s due back Saturday. I can’t renew it either, because someone else has requested the book. Well, it looks like that person got their book another way and I am no longer locked out of renewing it. Except I’ve already finished, so it doesn’t matter. With personal things quieting down a little bit, I devoted my reading time to finishing this particular book.

The Ask and the Answer is Patrick Ness’ sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go, the James Tiptree Jr. Award winning first book of the Chaos Walking trilogy. I don’t normally throw out sentences like that to remind people of a book’s heritage. But in this case I am because both the first book and the second book are awesome and I want to point people at them as much as possible.

Did I say in my previous entry how awesome a title The Knife of Never Letting Go is? I’m betting we’ll see a spate of knife and blade related titles. The Ask and the Answer isn’t quite as great a title, but it’s still pretty memorable. The third book will be called Monsters of Men. Decent, but banal compared to Knife.

Titles aside, The Ask and the Answer returns the great characters from the first book, a little less provocative of a social critique, and a hugely improved plot structure. Todd and Viola return with more adolescent questions about their relationship to each other. Not of the does she like me? variety, but of the will she be there for me? variety. The bad guy is gleefully bad, and the all the powers that be are wonderfully Machiavellian. Now that the novelty of men being unable to hide their thoughts has worn off, the social questions aren’t quite so stark. Our bad guy, Mayor Prentiss, becomes a more clearly defined leader of a Taliban-like group that oppresses women. Nevertheless, woman are significantly important in opposition within the story.

I liked the story even better than the first book for one reason though. The Knife of Never Letting Go follows a quest structure. Todd and Viola traipse across New World searching for Haven, a city where they will be saved. Along the way they encounter episodic obstacles. The plot is very linear. The Ask and the Answer has multiple threads of action: two primary ones for Todd and Viola, and lots of secondary subplots for characters without points of view directly expressed in the story. Todd and Viola separate and come together, their goals sometimes converging but not always knowingly touching. The secondary characters are not left out either, both in a character development sense as well as plot sense. The son of the bad guy Mayor has his own character arc. So does one of the alien Spackle, and multiple healers, and even bit characters. Not as thoroughly told, but definitely present. In the first book, only Todd and Viola were ongoing. Most characters appeared and then dropped out at the end of their episode. The continuing characters were less people than relentless forces of nature. I loved the improvement this time around and it made the book near perfect for me.

Okay, from now on expect possible spoilers. You have been warned.

First, post-spoiler warning, why was the book near perfect instead of perfect? Well, everything just happens a little too patly and sometimes for no discernable reason. Why exactly does Mayor now President Prentiss make such a big deal out of Todd Hewitt? Never explained. The question is asked, but never answered. Why does the previous mayor get locked up with Todd in the tower at the beginning of the story? And how, at the end, do three armies end up converging on New Prentisstown at the exact same moment a scout ship from space investigates the city at the exact same moment that Todd and President Prentiss have their confrontation? Not to mention that Mistress Coyle and President Prentiss are just a little to predictably Machiavellian. Neither of them ever really make any mistakes with respect to each other. The two do a little plot dance around each other that anyone can see, not just smart people.

The theme throughout the first book was women’s roles. That’s still around, but the big exploration here is something else: Stockholm Syndrome. That’s the psychological state where a prisoner comes to identify with his captor. President Prentiss makes a huge effort out of getting Todd to convert to his side. He alternates between punitive and positive measures. The punitive ones aren’t designed to directly move Todd. Instead they work to make the positive measures more effective. Of course, being fiction, the measures can be effective as the authors wants them to be. In real life I don’t know how well they would work. And to a lesser extent, Mistress Coyle works her similar magic on Viola.

On a smaller note, there appeared to be a budding love triangle going on in the story. It played a role in the plot, but Ness did not go the sit-com route of having people turn against each other and against their respective groups because of it. I thought it was handled nicely.

For the upcoming third book, Monsters of Men, Ness appears to be foreshadowing all out war between alien humans and the native Spackle. Given his deft handling already, I am looking forward to reading my first interesting set of aliens in a while. The tidbits so far have been great. They are not unstoppable Heinlein style bugs. I’m betting they will have a range of personalities. 1017, the main Spackle featured in this book, was more than willing to accept the hospitality of who he viewed as his main tormentor, and still he retained his hatred. Plus, I love that the main way he communicated with his human captors was without language. Just sending telepathic images of what he wanted to happen to them. Just awesome.

On a more personal note, there’s one secondary character that dies. It’s a short scene. Very short, actually. I’m a little more emotionally sensitive at the moment than I normally would be (ask me if you want an explanation), so take this with a grain of salt. The scene got my experience of death very very right. It got me crying in remembrance while reading yesterday.

Well, ’nuff said for now. Read the books.

Some other blogged reviews:

• Persnickety Snark
• Save Ophelia
• Presenting Lenore
• Sam Ruddock and Vulpes Libris
• Rhapsody in Books
• Things Mean a Lot

Title: The Ask and the Answer
Author: Patrick Ness
Series: Chaos Walking; 2
Imprint / publisher: Candlewick Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: 519 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-7636-4490-1

In a few weeks, Big Mouth Press (aka Small Beer Press) releases Holly Black’s collection of short stories, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories. It’s a mix of fantasy and horror, most featuring adolescent or college age characters. These well-written stories aren’t light, happy reading. But then, you should expect dark and complex with a title like The Poison Eaters.

Most of the stories feature characters who are somewhat outcast. They fight themselves more than they do anyone or anything else. Sometimes that sort of inner conflict bores me to yawns, but each of these characters have personality that makes them interesting.

One side note, just to get my opinion out there. Nominally targeted at the young adult market, this collection contains dark stories that include sex (not graphic) and that glorify drinking and partying. These stories don’t teach lessons about how it’s better to behave like an adult. These things are by no means foreign to young adult stories, so my opinion isn’t unusual. My opinion: kids can handle anything and everything thrown at them in a book. I’ve never once met a teen that needed to be protected from anything in any book I’ve ever read. Stuff like this book is the antidote that adults get to counteract the bullshit sheltering they received when they were younger. Worries about what kids can handle are really worries about what the adults can handle.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

This story made a couple of Year’s Best anthologies for good reason. Vampires have the coolness factor that they do in Twilight, eternal life (undeath) and eternal parties, though they are quarantined off in Coldtowns in most cities because of how infectious they are. Matilda has been bitten, but is trying to sweat out the incubation period rather than give in to the blood lust that would turn her. She doesn’t want to be a vampire. Her ex-boyfriend who she’s still in love with and his new girl want to become vampires though. One of the few vampire tales I’ve read in a while that really engaged me.

A Reversal of Fortune

A teen signs a pact with the devil to save her dog. If she beats the devil in a contest, the dog is saved. If she loses, she loses her soul. The contest she chooses is an eating competition, and she gets her overweight brother to train her. I think what makes the story is the set-up where Nikki meets the devil on the bus and then spend the day working at the mall, which isn’t the fun time she imagined when she took the job.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

This story was left out of the review copy I received.

The Night Market

A second deal with the devil kind of story. Set in the Philippines, Tomasa’s sister Eva has been snared by an enkanto, a faery of some sort, and lies wasting at home. Tomasa tries to get the enkanto to make her better, and when it refuses ventures into the faery night market looking for someone who can. A little more confusing than the previous story though.

The Dog King

Intelligent wolves terrorize the countryside, but the residents of the stone-walled city are safe inside until people mysteriously start dying. The king promises his throne to the knight who can kill the wolf causing all the havoc. Of course, it can’t be the king’s tamed wolf, can it? This one had me rooting for the wolf.

Virgin

Jen has a thing for Zachary, a homeless teenage junkie. He’s got the looks that girls draw obsessively in the corners of their notebooks. But Zachary tells a wild tale about watching his mom die in the woods after which a unicorn befriends him. Messed up kids have messed up lives, and this ends up messed up for everyone.

In Vodka Veritas

The lightest story in the collection. The king of the prep school nerds gets stood up by his fellow outcast best buddy Danny on prom night. The friend actually got asked to prom. Our hero’s plan is to get dressed in a tux, break into the old abandoned home of the school on the edge of campus with a bottle of vodka, and get drunk. I’ve had similar plans before when I was young and lonely. His plan is foiled by the Latin club. No one expects the Latin club.

The Coat of Stars

Semi-closeted gay costume designer makes costumes for faeries to try and bring back is youthful crush. Good story, but a little too much clothes-whoring for me to get into it. I dress up as a means to an end, not an end to itself. So I don’t get costume-lust like other people do.

Paper Cuts Scissors

Really liked this one! Justin’s girlfriend Linda knows how to put things in stories. As in, the book in your hand is now changed to include the things Linda wants in it, and those things are no longer in the real world. It doesn’t change the book for other people who have it; just that copy. After an argument between the two, Linda puts herself into a classic Russian novel. Justin, heartbroken, goes to library school to get her out of the story. I mostly don’t like stories written for other writers, but I go ga-ga over stories like this that are written for readers. Perfect.

Going Ironside

A loopy story of faeries attempting to get people to impregnate them. Not my thing.

Untitled (A Modern Faerie Tale Story)

The second story not included in this review copy.

The Poison Eaters

Inventive story of three sisters. They are poison. Touch them and die. It’s hard to explain this story without getting into spoiler territory. Well worth the read.

Four of the stories are must-read: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, A Reversal of Fortune, Paper Cuts Scissors, and The Poison Eaters. All the rest were well-written too. Can’t go wrong buying this one.

One other blogged review:

• Book Nerds

Title: The Poison Eaters and Other Stories
Author: Holly Black
Imprint / publisher: Big Mouth House / Small Beer Press
Format: Advanced reading copy
Length: 156 p. (published version will have 256 p.)
Publication date: Feb 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-931520-63-8

Small Beer Press provided me with an advance review copy of this book. In accordance with my policy on review copies, I’ve donated $12.14 (the price of the book on Amazon.com) to the A.L.S.A.

Book Club of the Damned. That’s what Paul Constant over at the Stranger calls it when he reads an awful book on a dare. Well, that’s New Moon for me. I need bleach now. Spoilers abound here. I just don’t care enough about your enjoyment of this book to worry about spoiling it. Plus, if you haven’t read it yet and you’ve stumbled here, then you probably are reading it on your own Book Club of the Damned quest.

Plot: At her own birthday party with the Cullens, the vegetarian vampires, Bella Swan accidentally cuts herself triggering their blood lust. Luckily everything ends up okay, but the Cullens decide to leave town rather than accidentally eat Bella. Whatever will Bella do without her beloved but vacuous Edward? Why, she’s start hanging out with the hunky Indian boy Jacob down at the rez, all the while pining for Edward. But she’s too selfish to leave him alone when he develops feelings for her, and he’s too creepy to walk away himself. Then bad vampires start hunting Bella and the Indian youth turn into werewolves (good ones, right?) and Edward in South America thinks Bella has killed herself so he heads to Italy to get the King Vampire to kill him because he is heartbroken. Bella runs to Italy to save him by letting him know that she’s alive, but then the royal vampires give the Cullens an ultimatum to kill Bella or make her a vampire. Which is what she wants anyway, and we are done with the book.

Most codependent relationship I’ve ever read. Bella is just dead inside without her Edward. Edward is the same without Bella. Bella has to have a boy around to feel okay, whether it’s Edward or Jacob. I wanted to strangle her. Edward too. Also Jacob for good measure.

Hated all the navel gazing. A fair amount of action happens. But each time it’s followed by pages of badly written thoughts from Bella about what it all means for her and Edward. 300 levels of parsing.

Edward and now Jacob are just as creepy as before. And as manipulative. Jacob gets to be the nice guy who sticks with Bella in the hope that she comes around to having a thing for him. He’ll be the shoulder to cry on until he can use it to get in her pants. Of course, that’s until Edward returns and then Jacob gets overtly manipulative and somewhat scary trying to get Bella to break it off.

Truly awful tripe.

So why did I read this for Book Club of the Damned? I am being bribed. It’s a good bribe. It involves boots. Plus, sometimes this is just cathartic. And it’s a library book so my only cost was the caffeine necessary to read it.

Title: New Moon
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Cover creator: Gail Doobinin (designer) / John Grant (photographer)
Series: Twilight Saga; 2
Imprint / publisher: Megan Tingley Books / Little Brown
Format: Hardcover
Length: 563 p.
Publication date: September 2006
ISBN-10: 0-316-16019-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-316-16019-3
Subject: Vampires — Fiction
Subject: Werewolves — Fiction
Subject: High schools — Fiction
Subject: Schools — Fiction
Subject: Washington (State) — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.M57188New 2006

When I was a teenager, I lied quite a bit. Mostly about homework and covering for things my parents didn’t want me to do. But also I would do it to make myself look better. Did you know I drove a Ferrari once? (No, not really.) My insides are pretty boring. I still lie sometimes. When you lie you have to remember what you told and who you told it to (and who they might have told). It’s an exhausting experience mentally.

I volunteer as a mentor at a local public high school. The kids I work with lie a lot. Mostly about the same things I lied about as a teenager: schoolwork and covering for things their guardians don’t want them to do. Not so much directly to me, as I’m not an authority figure. But sometimes admitting the truth to anyone makes you feel vulnerable. Very few people want to be vulnerable. For the listener, the experience is trying as well. I stop listening sometimes, because I don’t know what ground is solid enough to stand on anymore.

Justine Larbalestier’s Liar opens with the protagonist Micah Wilkins, a young black girl on scholarship at a private school in New York City, telling the reader that she’s a liar. Then Micah tells the reader about some of the lies she’s told her classmates, such as that she’s a boy. Since she has short hair, is relatively flat-chested, and plays decent basketball, they believe her. That is, until one of the girls hears her laugh and realizes a boy doesn’t laugh that way. Then Micah replaces that lie with another, that she was born hermaphroditic and that’s why she was ashamed to let everyone know she’s a boyish girl.

The book is divided into three running threads of commentary. Before is the thread for Micah’s secret relationship with her boyfriend Zach. Secret from friends at school, because Zach has another girlfriend. Secret from her parents, because Micah’s parents have forbidden her from dating. The After thread concerns what happens to Micah after Zach disappears and the police find his body. Suspicion falls on Micah because of her secret relationship and her well-known proclivity to lie. And the third thread contains bits and pieces of Micah’s history and that of her odd family.

Shortly into the book I realized that Micah could be lying to me, the reader. She sorta warns that this might be the case on the first page, but confirms it solidly later on. After this idea settles in, I didn’t know what to make of any of the things that Micah said. Nothing. And that’s a problem.

In an appearance at the University Book Store on Monday, Justine Larbalestier talked a bit about this. There’s a contract between fiction and a reader. The book is a lie. It’s stuff the author made up. The contract is that the reader pretends the book is the truth. The inability to do that in some cases ruins books. A person might not read fantasy because they can’t pretend wizards flinging bolts of magic is real.

The problem with an unreliable narrator is that it breaks that contract. I can’t pretend what I was just told is the truth. In most stories I’ve read with an unreliable narrator (very few actually), the lies are limited and sometimes there’s a *wink-wink* effect that lets you in on the truth according to the book. Liar doesn’t have those characteristics.

Pretty much everything in the book could be a lie. Micah is the narrator 100% of the way. The perspective never shifts out of the first person. Micah changes her story so often that even the constant things seem inconstant. Micah is the girl who cried wolf one too many times. That interferes with my relationship with the book.

The upshot of all that is that I don’t know if I actually liked the experience of reading the book. Not yet at least. It’s an excellent book. I haven’t read anything else that took the a narrator’s reliability to such depths before, and I can’t imagine many doing it so well. Nevertheless, the experience is very unsettling and I haven’t yet decided if I will recommend it generally.

Aside from the unreliable narrator, there’s much to recommend about the book.

Micah Wilkins is an awesome character. It’s not easy to create an outcast character that isn’t a victim. I got a good psychological sense of why she lied. She’s smart but very messed up. Her rebellion makes sense. She understands her parents’ restrictions but chafes at them too.

The secondary characters aren’t quite as well fleshed out, but they all are realistic and interesting. Micah’s parents and family embody an ex-hippie gone native approach to parenting. Her grandparents live on a farm in upstate New York that’s off the grid. Micah’s dad rejects that approach to live in the city. He still lives a mostly unencumbered life as an underpaid travel writer. Both her parents are loose in how they treat Micah but over-protective and stifling in other respects. The teachers, counselors, and students at school don’t have a lot of depth to them but they aren’t caricatures either.

I think Liar captures the high school experience pretty well too. It never goes into a caricature. The strong kids pick on the weak, but it never seems arbitrary like a sit-com.

And one comment about the cover, a previous version of which got a lot of negative publicity. Some of the kids I mentor really do spend a lot of time covering their faces with their jackets like on this cover. Hiding from any kind of attention like Micah frequently does. It’s heartbreaking. While it doesn’t really say much about the plot of the book, I think it really does capture Micah’s demeanor, or what I imagine her demeanor to be.

Now that that’s out of the way, there’s some things I want to discuss about the book that involve spoiling it. So I will go on to page 2 for that. Don’t read that until you’ve read the book or decided you won’t ever read it. Ms. Larbalestier has written that the ending can be taken a couple of different ways. Reading how I interpreted the ending can bias you toward a particular interpretation. Normally I don’t really worry about spoiling a book when the result is the lack of surprise. A book should be stronger than that. But in this case I’d rather not influence your interpretation of the ending. So read on only when you’ve come up with your own opinion.

Some other blogged reviews:

• Writer Musings (spoilers)
• Babbling About Books, and More
• Presenting Lenore
• Fyrefly’s Book Blog
• Hey! Teenager of the Year
• The Book Smugglers

Title: Liar
Author: Justine Larbalestier
Cover creator: Danielle Delaney (designer) / Ali Smith (photographer)
Imprint / publisher: Bloomsbury
Format: Hardcover
Length: 371 p.
Publication date: October 2009
ISBN-13: 978-1-59990-305-7
Subject: Honesty — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.L32073 Li 2009

The comments below may contain spoilers. Don’t read them if you ever care to read the book and haven’t yet done so.

Charles de Lint’s book Little (Grrl) Lost came across to me as a decent story on the surface with a fair amount of crunchy stuff underneath. It’s quiet. Some of its elements came back to me a few times in the couple of days since I’ve finished the book.

Fourteen year old T.J. Moore’s family has moved from the country to Newford’s suburbs and T.J. isn’t happy about it. She misses the horse that they can’t keep in the suburbs. She’s resentful of her parents for losing the family’s savings, which is why they had to move. Nevertheless, she’s a goody two shoes who loves them anyway and always tries to follow their rules.

Sixteen year old Tetty Elizabeth Wood is a punky teen who storms out of her parents’ house to run away because she doesn’t like their reclusiveness. That’s her on the cover with the awesome Doc Marten style stompy boots. She’s packed her bags and left the house to run away when she meets T.J. Elizabeth is also a six inch tall Little, a magical race of people descended from birds. Small and vulnerable is why the Wood’s stay hidden and reclusive.

The jacket copy for the book talks about Elizabeth and T.J. questioning and learning to trust each other. But really they hit it off right away and can depend on each other. Trust issues are at the center of the book, but not about each other. The two kids spend much of their ink meeting new people and finding out whether or not they can trust them, sometimes the hard way.

I like how the story’s moral isn’t honor thy mother and thy father. In real life, parents are just as prone to screw up things as anyone else. Granted, they have better judgment than teenagers usually, but I hate how lots of books turn back to the tried and true cliché’s where the parents turn out to be right in the end. T.J.’s parents mess up. Right at the beginning they’ve already lost the family’s money. Throughout the book they are loving and nevertheless over-protective to a fault. In addition to the kids trusting the wrong characters sometimes, so do the parents.

In a nice bit of underplayed humor, de Lint has Elizabeth, a mythical creature, disbelieve in other mythical creatures.

I also quite liked the plot structure for the book. I gotta repeat myself again, but it ends with a quiet climax that isn’t overplayed. No battle between good and evil finishes this. Just two teenage girls find their way in the world.

Stuff I didn’t like? Mostly one male who is a stereotyped control freak. He’s introduced as a nice guy, but then goes ballistic partway through. I’ve yet to meet any control freaks who don’t exhibit at least subtle signs of their psychosis in most interactions. It really would have been nice to have some of those red flags show up early. Trusting your gut is one thing, but a person’s gut reactions are informed by little behaviors that we can learn to recognize.

Also, I should mention that this book passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. I think that’s especially good in young adult books.

A few other blogged reviews:

• The Hungry Readers
• Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
• Ravenous Bookself
• Stepdadding
• Someone’s Read It Already
• Miss Print

Title: Little (Grrl) Lost
Author: Charles de Lint
Cover creator: Scott Fischer (artist) / Nancy Brennan (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Viking / Penguin
Format: Hardcover
Length: 271 p.
Publication date: 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-670-06144-0
Subject: Runaways — Fiction
Subject: Size — Fiction
Subject: Moving, household — Fiction
Subject: Friendship — Fiction
Subject: Fantasy
LC classification: PZ7.D33954Lit 2007

I’ve read good things about Varian Johnson’s books, so I looked through the Seattle Public Library’s ebooks and audiobooks available for download in order to try his writing out. Red Polka Dot In A World Full Of Plaid is what they had, so I downloaded it to my MP3 player.

I have very mixed feelings about the book. On the positive side, the main character Maxine Phillips is a likable realistic confused teenager. Johnson handles the issue of racial identity thoughtfully. On the negative side, other young adults act more like adults than teens and are very one dimensional. The teen love story follows the standard best friends should be together script, a standard arc that I think is unrealistic and can sometimes be creepy when it happens in real life. More personally, the treatment of religion pushed some of my atheist buttons.

There are some minor spoilers in the rest of this discussion, so skip reading if you care.

Maxine Phillips grew up in South Carolina with her best friend Deke and her single mom Catherine. All her life she’s been told that her father died. Mom loves her, but became a workaholic to provide for Maxine. She takes offense when she doesn’t feel like Maxine properly acknowledges her sacrifices. At the start of the book she’s 18 and has just graduated from high school when she finds out her father is alive. She’s impulsive and has a quick temper, so her quick decision to drive to Oklahoma to meet her dad without her mom’s permission causes some consternation among her family.

On arriving in Oklahoma, she learns several unpleasant facts for her. First, her father Jack is white. This does not go over well with Maxine who has some prejudiced views about whites. The second is that the reason why Jack Phillips abandoned his family is that he spent 15 years in prison for manslaughter. Nevertheless, she decides to face these family problems head on and stay with Jack for the summer to get to know him. Despite her dislike for the man. Deke stays with her for moral support.

I really liked Maxine as a character. As noted, she’s impulsive and quick tempered. She changes her mind often. She doesn’t know how she feels about things. All this matches up well with the teens I know. Her resistance to authority appeals to me as well. She’s a great rebel without being a delinquent. She’s not trying to be bad; she’s just trying to find a her own way to being good. When she finds out her parents have lied to her about her father’s absence and race, the hurt comes through the words.

The short version of Maxine’s view is that she takes pride in being black, and finding out that she has a white father makes her think that pride is misplaced. She also doesn’t feel at home with the white country kids who populate Jack’s hometown of Chickasha, Oklahoma and doesn’t see many black faces (with whom she does identify) either. A large part of Maxine’s bluster is rooted in her uncomfortableness of her situation. She uses a lot of defense mechanisms to avoid facing truths she doesn’t want to know.

While Maxine is awesome to read about, the other teens bothered me. Deke spouts religious platitudes much as a condescending adult would, rather than how religious teens do. He started off well. But midway through the book he transforms into a junior Billy Graham. The religiosity fit the character, but the manner changed from realistic to aphoristic (and that leads into my criticism of religion a few paragraph from now). Other characters like Marcus and Abby were straight out of central casting from the beginning. They were smooth talking players who say all nice things beforehand that get vicious the second they don’t get their way. Any reader should be able to pick up Marcus’ exact role in the story within a couple of sentences of his appearance. He could have been written with far more depth and still retained his spot as the traumatizing force.

Deke’s obvious from the start crush on Maxine really bothered me too. This aspect doesn’t ring false, it’s that I’m not a fan of the best friends who realize they are meant for each other trope. A nice guy that stays close to his not so secret crush is pathetic, manipulative, and creepy. By that I mean the practice of sweeping in to save the girl using all the confidences he’s gained over the years, of playing the nice guy sidekick while the girl goes after the assholes. I think it’s much healthier for people to move on rather than hang on for years.

And lastly, while not something innately bad about the book, the role religion played in the book bothered me. I don’t mind religious characters. Deke and Jack being religious is fine. What bothers me is that Johnson had a free-thinking girl like Maxine become religious because she’s told some b.s. platitudes like god only gives you what you can handle. I don’t insist that my characters stay as resolutely atheist as I am, but I do expect them to have a transformative spiritual experience to switch, and not of the no atheists in a foxhole variety either. Christianity comes off as if it is intrinsically the right thing. For believers I’m sure that makes sense, but I want justification of sorts for belief. Or meaning. It’s hard to explain. Religion should not be a law of nature like gravity that just exists.

Despite all the sour notes, I do recommend the book. Maxine as a character and her struggle with her heritage are readable and meaningful. The bad aspects keep it from being great, but it’s still quite good.

Title: A Red Polka Dot In a World Full of Plaid
Author: Varian Johnson
Narrator: Sisi Aisha Johnson
Imprint / publisher: Recorded Books
Format: Netlibrary download
Length: 5 h. 51 m.
Publication date:
ISBN-13: 978-1-4294-1206-3
Subject: Father and daughters — Fiction
Subject: African American women — Fiction
Subject: African American families — Fiction
Subject: Fathers and daughters — Fiction
Subject: African Americans — Fiction
Subject: Self-acceptance — Fiction
Subject: Interpersonal relations — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.J63844 Red 2005