Tag Archives: YA

Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly #50BookPledge

Posted on by
2

Troubled Brooklyn teen Andi has to spend winter break in Paris with her estranged father. Andi’s dealing with a lot: her younger brother is dead, and she blames herself. She finds solace only in her music, but at times, even that isn’t enough to help her deal with her pain.

Over two centuries ago, Paris teen Alexandrine wants to become an actress and ends up becoming a companion to Marie Antoinette’s young son, Louis-Charles. The French Revolution breaks out and Louis-Charles is locked in a tower and starved, leaving Alexandrine feeling helpless about her inability to save him. Alexandrine keeps a diary, which Andi finds. The parallels between both girls are obvious, and Andi finds comfort in reading Alexandrine’s diary.

Andi is a very dark character, and kudos to Donnelly for not shying away from such a potentially controversial protagonist in a YA book. Andi takes recreational drugs, couldn’t care less about her classes (with the notable exception of music) and getting expelled from school, and contemplates committing suicide through most of the book. She is also on psychiatric medication, which causes her to hallucinate about her brother’s death, and sometimes turns to physical pain to escape from her emotions. I expected to get tired of Andi pretty quickly. She often thinks she’s being witty and rebellious, when really she’s just being emo. I generally have very little patience with self-indulgent characters, often wishing they would just get over themselves and do something constructive. That wasn’t my reaction to Andi, however, and I think while it’s mostly because what Andi has been through is so horrible, I don’t even want to imagine how messed up I’d be in her shoes.

Andi’s relationship to Alexandrine is interesting. Andi finds comfort in the hope that Alexandrine’s story with Louis-Charles has a happy ending, despite history stating that Louis-Charles died in the tower. The emotions in Revolution are very raw, and are, I believe, the major strength of the book. I found Andi’s story interesting, with memorable scenes featuring her family, a love interest, and a comically uptight reference librarian. The parallel storyline however isn’t quite as strong. Alexandrine’s story develops into a somewhat watered down version of V for Vendetta. While Alexandrine’s inner struggle – her desire to help Louis-Charles battling with her helplessness against the socio-political forces that work towards his death – remains interesting, her adventures don’t quite have the same level of realism and attention to detail that Andi’s experiences do.

Near the end of the book, the past and the present collide for Andi. Whether it is a hallucination or real is something that Donnelly doesn’t fully resolve, though she does strongly hint that it’s real, and this ambiguity hurts the story, in my opinion. With Revolution’s major strength being the rawness and realness of Andi’s emotions, the need to suspend disbelief to such an extent as the pseudo-mystical events near the end demand I do distances me from the emotions and turns the story into an adventure tale. Granted, Donnelly sets us up for these scenes by establishing Andi’s hallucinations early on. Also granted, this section turns out to be very important for plot development, and helps Andi resolve her emotional issues. I just found it mostly convenient, tying up way too many loose ends, including the mystery behind the musician Andi’s researching for her thesis, and I just wish Donnelly had chosen to complete Andi’s story wholly within the present-day reality. Overall, Revolution is a pretty good book. I can’t call it completely enjoyable, because it deals with such heart-breaking subject matter, but it’s definitely a compelling read.

Divergent, Veronica Roth #50BookPledge

Posted on by
10

I’d heard a lot of buzz about Divergent. A friend had compared it to The Hunger Games, which I love, so I was thrilled when another friend offered me her ARC. I finished it in one day – yes, it’s that exciting – and I liked it. Not as good as The Hunger Games, and it didn’t blow me away, but I liked it. Divergent is a good start to what could be a great series.

The book hooked me from the very first page. The heroine, Beatrice “Tris” Prior, is about to turn 16 and so is about to choose which faction to join for the rest of her life. Tris’s society reminds me a bit of Lois Lowry’s The Giver. To maintain order, society has been divided into five factions, each representing a different virtue necessary to a utopia: Abnegation (selflessness), Dauntless (courage), Erudite (intelligence), Amity (peace) and Candor (honesty). Beatrice’s family belongs to Abnegation, but at 16, she can choose for herself whether to live the rest of her life according to the virtue of selflessness, or choose a different virtue, which will mean leaving her family forever. Once she chooses, she will then have to undergo an initiation process, and if she fails, she may end up among the factionless, who are poor and homeless.

It’s an interesting idea, particularly because I realize that the faction I would’ve chosen at 16 (Candor) is not the same as what I would choose now (Erudite). People change after 16, and Tris’s society doesn’t take that into account. There are Divergents, who exhibit dominant traits from more than one faction, and so technically don’t wholly belong to any one faction. However, Divergents are forced to hide their true nature and pretend to be completely part of one faction, for reasons that will be explained later in the book. Also interesting are the larger political issues characters in the story raise. Majority of the government is comprised of people from Abnegation, and it seems to make sense that society can be much improved by politicians who think more of others than of themselves. However, Jeanine, the Erudite government representative, challenges the current system, demanding a return of democracy, and accusing the Abnegation government of hypocrisy and corruption.

Unfortunately, most of the book barely deals with those issues. Without giving away any spoilers, I can say that once Tris chooses her faction, probably two thirds of book has to do with her training and tests to become a full-fledged member. The bigger political issue is referred to a few times, mostly by a character reading an editorial by Jeanine attacking the Abnegation government, and, by extension, Tris’s family. There are the requisite bullies, sidekicks, terror teachers, and love interest. Imagine the first book of Harry Potter, but with a faction-style training camp rather than Hogwarts. More action, less magic. Not necessarily a bad thing, and there were some exciting incidents during training (especially with the Edward/Peter rivalry), but with such a rich story in the larger picture, I found the training segment much too long. The secondary characters as well were mostly either likable or detestable, but none complex enough that I felt a very strong emotional connection to him/her.

The love story between Tris and Four is pretty good. Four respects Tris, and compliments her abilities without being condescending the way Harlequin-style heroes tend to do. They also have nice chemistry, and in an especially squeal-inducing scene, Tris shows her mother who Four is, and admits, “He’s kind of intimidating.” Her mother immediately replies, “He’s handsome,” and Tris says, “I find myself nodding without thinking.” However, unlike in Hunger Games, or even Harry Potter, there doesn’t seem to be much at stake for Tris and Four. The most significant conflict is brewing beyond the faction training and so Tris and Four’s romance mostly lacks the gravitas that the Katniss/Gale/Peeta triangle and the Ron/Hermione relationship had.

The issue of Divergents is developed in more detail than the political conflict, mostly the question of why Divergents are considered such a threat to social stability, just because they can fit in with more than one faction. I thought this was an excellent question, and a fascinating link to larger political and social issues, and wished it had been explored even more. However, I found the ultimate explanation simplistic and very one-sided.

In fact, bias is another major concern for me in this book. It might be because I would have chosen Erudite as my faction, but I don’t like how the Erudites are portrayed in such a bad light. In complete fairness to Roth, she mostly focuses on Jeanine as the villain, with Jeanine just happening to be Erudite, and Roth does also include a “good” former Erudite who becomes friends with Tris and disagrees with Jeanine’s tactics. However, Jeanine’s motivations are explained very superficially, and mostly with the judgement call that Erudites just want power. With Erudites representing intelligence and logical thinking, I would have loved to know more about their reasoning, or at least Jeanine’s reasoning, behind her actions.

The final fourth or so of the book, after faction training has been completed, and war suddenly breaks out, is the best part. The stakes have finally become higher, and characters become more complex. If this had happened much earlier in the book, Divergent might have completely blown me away. As it was, what I found to be the best part felt rushed. We get revelations about some of the characters, some dramatic developments and major character growth for Tris. Unfortunately, rather than all these twists at the end making me breathless, they made me feel like Roth was trying to squeeze everything she needed to say into the remaining few chapters.

That’s why I think Divergent is mostly just a good book, but with the potential for a great sequel. There are many threads left untied at the end, and I’d love to see how those get resolved. Roth is a strong writer, and hooked me into the story from the beginning. Divergent, however, works best as the beginning of a series and isn’t quite as strong as a book on its own. It’s a fun, exciting read; I just think it could have been so much more.

Wither, Lauren DeStefano

Posted on by
2

First, kudos to Lizzy Bromley, who designed such a captivating cover. The softness of Rhine’s dress contrasted with the edginess of the geometric shapes wonderfully captures the story’s blend of romance and science fiction.

Wither takes place in the mid- to late 21st century. Humans have discovered a cure for cancer and have created a generation of children (called “first generation” in the book) who are completely free from viruses and other illnesses and who are “practically immortal.” Unfortunately, succeeding generations are genetically cursed with an illness that kills males at age twenty-five and females at age twenty. To keep the human race going, girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages. Sixteen year old Rhine, the protagonist, is one of them, kidnapped by a scientist, Housemaster Vaughn, to become a wife to his son Linden.

The story reminded me of a mix of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Focusing mostly on Rhine’s emotions and her relationships to her “sister wives,” the servant Gabriel, and Rhine’s twin brother back home, Wither is nowhere near as political as Hunger Games or Handmaid’s Tale. It does touch on interesting issues – society is divided between those who want to keep looking for a cure and the “pro-naturalists” who believe the human race should just be allowed to die out. The interesting thing about that is that it is those who are searching for a cure – seemingly the more sympathetic cause – who kidnap girls like Rhine and perform experiments on children.

I love Lauren DeStefano’s characters. They are all incredibly complex and, I believe, are the major reason Wither is such a good book. Rhine is a complicated heroine. She vehemently wants to escape her marriage and return home to her brother. However, even as she falls in love with Gabriel, she also develops sympathy, and even affection, for Linden, who she realizes is also as trapped in his lifestyle as she is. Housemaster Vaughn, the primary antagonist, commits horrible acts for a noble purpose — to discover an cure for the illness and therefore save his son. Linden, who has forced three women to marry him, appears mostly a pawn in his father’s plans, and has a tragic love story of his own. Gabriel, who becomes Rhine’s primary ally, also appears resigned to his life with the Vaughn family, and therefore not as motivated to escape as Rhine is. None of the characters are completely sympathetic or completely unlikable, and this makes them all more engaging.

Wither is a teen book, but it definitely has adult appeal as well. Because of their shortened life spans, Rhine and the other teenage characters are remarkably mature. However, because humanity hasn’t adapted to these shortened life spans, in many ways, the teenagers in this book are still very much teenagers, vulnerable, emotional, and lacking the jadedness and experience of adults. The world in Wither forces teenagers to become adults, and DeStefano beautifully depicts the struggle that comes with this.

The ending is a bit anticlimactic, especially compared to the rest of the book, but it does set up the promise for an interesting sequel. I definitely recommend Wither, and I’m definitely keeping an eye out for the rest of the trilogy.