The Space Between

 I always feel as if saying it's time to let go (of anything, regardless of what it is) in any public forum (as the internet is) is akin to storming off in a huff, or to taking my toys and going home.  There are so few people who know what I'm talking about, and all of them follow me in all of those forums (except maybe Tumblr, but all I really use that for is reblogging stuff I think is cool or funny or whatever) and may or may not take it as a passive aggressive stab at them when it's not really anything but trying to do what makes most sense and is most healthy for me.  It takes more than a bit of energy to hold onto a thing, after all, particularly when one is being told "Oh, there's this, but maybe next time" with a startling regularity followed by long stretches of not a word.  This is no one's fault, obviously - I mean, issues and troubles abound everywhere I look and the people (because there's more than one, naturally) on the other end are generally in very different time zones than I.

At least one thing never started and the other seems to have pretty much come to an end, right?  So no harm, no foul.  Given that I don't have the time required to start up on a site again?  I'd guess this navel gazing has as much to do with the hobby in general as anything else.  Maybe it's time to find something new.

Title: Legend
Author: Marie Lu
Publisher: G.P Putnam's Sons (Penguin)
Genre: SciFi, Post Apocalypse, Dystopia
Release Date: November 2011

This book's gotten comparisons with Hunger Games, it seems (I don't know first hand; someone said so on Twitter), but I'd compare it more to Matched (Ally Condie) or Across the Universe (Beth Revis), really - similar subgenre, but not quite the same.

We start with the formula (this isn't criticism by any stretch - formula becomes so because it works) that any dystopia starts with, though it's more vague in this than in many.  One assumes that there was a war and the Republic split from the Colonies and everyone had the best of intentions for a brighter future in mind, but it's not made clear.  At any rate, some unnamed time in the future (from the revolution or what have you), something's caused havoc with weather (I've never heard of hurricanes in California, and not even a slight earthquake?  But I'm a midwestern girl, so what do I know) and a good deal of the southwest has cut itself off from the rest of the country, forming a sharp divide between this new Republic and the Colonies.  There is, of course, unhappiness and upheaval - the socioeconomics of the Republic are a mess.  The rich are, comparatively, obscenely so and the poor grovel in what sounds to me like not long post-Katrina New Orleans.

It gets better!  The Republic's government, which is a near Caesarean god-head sort of thing backed by the military but without that pesky council.  There are, of course, Things Afoot, but the people are, in general, too afraid to challenge this god-head president (Elector Primo, I think it was).  They're too poor in the poor sections where there's discontent, and in the rich sectors they're too complacent (and, in no few cases as we find out later, complicit).

Amongst all this, we have a boy and a girl.  One is the Republic's darling and one is an exile of sorts - a Romeo and Juliet, perhaps, or Tony and Maria.  We're led on a great tracking expedition for the Republic's darling, June, to find the criminal and suspected murder, Day.  Only Day is really just a Robin Hood, and of course he's being set up to take the fall almost from the beginning.

All in all, it's a great read - it's fast paced and interesting, and it promises to make a better movie than any of the other things that I think may well get picked up (rights were sold to CBS, so everyone go buy the books and make it happen, yeah?) by virtue of the way it's written.  The exposition is woven in so that it doesn't seem unwieldy or an interruption of the action, and the voices of the two main characters (who are in some ways a bit too perfect and in others delightfully flawed) are better done than any alternating POV stories I've read in awhile.  It seems like this will be a trilogy or more, and I can't wait to see where Ms. Lu is going with it.

Title: The New World (short story)/The Knife of Never Letting Go/The Ask and the Answer/Monsters of Men (all Nook)
Author: Patrick Ness
Publisher: .....someone
Genre: SciFi, Post Apocalypse, Dystopia
Release Date: 2010?

Oh, these books.  So. very. good.  Short synopsis is: Earth/home planet got screwed up.  People left at various times for various reasons, the better to settle this new planet that had a lot of the same things earth did, geographically speaking.  It was life bearing - there were indigenous plants, animals, and people.  Something happened that drove no small number of the first settlers to varying degrees of insanity, and there was a war that nearly wiped out both sides and quite a few of the human settlements.

We start our journey in Prentisstown, where there are only men and boys - or a boy, who is about to hit the magical age of thirteen, at which manhood is . . . well, enforced for lack of a better word, but we learn more about that later.  Our young protagonist, Todd, is unhappy.  He's lonely, and he knows something is wrong.  One day, not long before his birthday, he wanders out into the swamp near his village and runs into Viola - who is introduced better in The New World, the short story prequel, than she is here - and is terrified out of his wits, because he's never seen a woman (or girl, as Viola is roughly the same age as he is) before in the time he can remember.  Also because there's a trait that marks her out as starkly different than the men he knows, but to reveal that here would be telling, wouldn't it?

At any rate, Todd meets Viola and his world falls apart.  His village (with the exception of his foster fathers, who took over his upbringing when his mother died), intent on turning him into a man in the creepy, horrifying way they've agreed on for the majority of his thirteen years, go on the hunt for him and Viola both.  There's the dystopic dream team of politics and religion, and Todd and Viola escape death at the hands of a madman so often I lost count.  In the end - which, in this first book, isn't really an end; it reads almost like a serial - Todd and Viola are on completely uncertain and unfamiliar ground, and on opposite sides of what appears to be shaping into a civil war.  This is, all told, some truly amazing world building, and the character building isn't far behind.

In the second book, we pick up exactly where we left off; this is a device I wasn't particularly familiar with before The Hunger Games, though of course it must have been in use.  Todd and Viola are still on opposite sides and everything they think they know about this planet and their surroundings (both environmental and societal), their trust in each other and their endurance (physical, mental and emotional) continue to be tested.  This is, in fact, the darkest YA fiction I've read in . . . perhaps ever, really, and I love it all the more for that.  When I actually was what most people consider YA, there didn't seem to be a lot of light in the world, and that continues to be a theme.  Regardless, there are factions - made up of women which exist in far more abundance than Todd knew of (obviously) and men, in a large part.  Which isn't to say there aren't men in the Answer (one of the factions, clearly), but there truly aren't any women in the Ask.  (The settlers who were on New World, who Viola and her bunch of people didn't know about, are very Old West meets Puritan.  The grammar and writing in the parts Todd tells reflect this well, and often made me twitch.  Dialects in dialog are fine - entire books written in them require my poor little middle class American brain to translate.)  The character progression throughout is fantastic, and Mayor/President Prentiss may be one of the best written villains I've ever come across in any sort of literature, from children's up through adult, in any and all genres.  Aside from Prentiss, the characterization and progression both are phenomenal, though it's truly this man who shines through this and Monsters of Men.

Ah, the final book.  I read these three in a row with no break between them and by the time I hit this one I was ready to be done - not because I didn't like them, obviously, but because they were so very draining.  It's not every book that makes you feel like you're there in that Bastian-fighting-the-Nothing sense, but Ness was fantastic at that throughout, and I was exhausted.  Here, though, is where - if you'll pardon the vernacular - shit got real.  There was violence, there was mind control, there was genocide and all of those things that, in a war, make monsters of men.  Here, Todd and Viola are still uncertain of each other and who they can trust.  Here, Todd thinks he can 'save' Prentiss.  Here, we find out that the 'aliens' - that indigenous species mentioned earlier - aren't as rare as we thought, and they're pissed off.  This is a suitably dramatic and horrific end for an awesome - in all senses - trio (plus a bit) of books.

Five stars.  Superb.  What are you waiting for?  Go read it now.

Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile (Penguin)
Genre: Romance, General Fiction, YA
Release Date: 2010

Title: Lola and the Boy Next Door
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile (Penguin)
Genre: Romance, General Fiction, YA
Release Date: September 2011

These books could, technically, stand alone but they work well as companions, as they were written to be.  They're beautiful to look at and done with very similar photography styles and models for the cover art, which only enhances that impression - after being told for almost a year that I should read Anna, I went out and got it after getting Lola from Penguin Teen, starting it, and deciding I had to read from the beginning.  I was not at all disappointed!  Though the formula for the two books is very similar, and one used to looking for such things might find it a bit repetitive (I must admit, I did), this is easily forgiven on the strength of a plot line that I've seen happen in real life, and characters that so perfectly capture archetypes we all know.  The characterization is brilliant - these books' strength, I think - and the rest is all the best parts of romantic comedies mixed into something delightful.

Perkins writes with a joy and passion that shows in every word, in the way she crafts her sentences, and that draws in almost as much as her skill with creating likeable characters that I truly wanted to know more about.  I can't wait to immerse myself in this world again, when Isla and the Happily Ever After comes out next year.

Title: Dreamland
Author: Sarah Dessen
Publisher: Speak (Penguin)
Genre: General Fiction
Release Date: 2000

This is a well written treatment of a delicate subject - it's a story that needs to be told to a generation that didn't grow up with after school specials.  Covered inside are a lot of teenage problems, some more technically serious than others, and I can't find fault with the way it's done.  My problem with it all, I suppose, is that I did grow up with after school specials.

I don't mean to trivialize the subject or anyone who's been victimized on any level.  And by all means, it was a decent book.  It's simply that I've read it before by various and myriad authors, not to mention seen it on TV and in the occasional movie.  In this particular case, there's very little redeeming about the main character; there's nothing with which I can empathize, though maybe that's part of the point.  It's not just the ones that seem like the 'type' who fall into these behaviors and have to come out of them.

In short, I didn't love or hate this book.  It didn't stand out, and I'll probably forget about it completely in a couple days.  It made me think of any number of books by Lurlene McDaniel (without the potentially mortal illness), Nicholas Sparks or Jodi Picoult, and will blend into the same background noise quite nicely.  I've been told by more than one person, though, that this was their least favorite Sarah Dessen book, so I may go back and give another a try when the vague discontent this one left me with has dissipated.

Title: Incarceron
Author: Catherine Fisher
Publisher: Firebird (Penguin)
Genre: Sci-fi?  Yeah, we'll go with that.
Release Date: 2007

A key.  I have a thing for keys - modern ones, antique ones, toy ones, real ones, it doesn't matter.  I like keys.  I'm not sure what this says about my personality or psyche or whatever, but there it is.  So there's this book, and it has a key on it - not just any key, but an opalescent foiled key in the midst of black and silver and gray with the coolest font I've ever seen used for the title splash.  And under that, there's this little splash for rusty, bloody red and I'm in love and avoided it for years (or as long as I've been seeing the trade paperback edition that looked like this) because I knew it would swallow me whole.  They key, the book, both, whatever.  Anyway!

From the beginning, there are comparisons that can be drawn.  The first thing I think of is the Cube movie franchise, particularly Cube Zero where some of the back story is made clear.  It's a very different future-world that's painted, but no less oppressive for it; everything in this world revolves around a vaguely Regency-seeming 'Protocol', with very obvious social castes and a less parliamentary monarchy than England's current one, but the governmental system is quite clearly influenced by the author's experiences in Great Britain as much as her study of history.  I also think of Beth Revis' Across the Universe to a somewhat lesser extent, though the writing here is more taught, more suspenseful.  Several times in the first handful of chapters I found myself be-goose bumped and with my heart racing a little, yelling at the characters to the point that my children wanted to know what I was reading and what they were doing.

We find out early on that this stalling of time in the Regency era came because a king somewhere back along the line thought life simpler and more idyllic then.  At what I think is roughly the same time a prison that was meant to become a utopia was designed and executed and the earliest prisoners - political dissidents and liberal academics along with murders and the like - put inside to start the experiment.  Each chapter is begun with a quote by some person from that time period, or by a quote from the legends of Sapphique, which I can only imagine will be plumbed further in the sequel titled with his name, and at these beginnings there are vaguely ominous chips and gears and things that match those on the covers.  But these things are light and easy compared to what comes later in the chapters.  Our characters are butterflies pinned to a backing and labled for us, or so we think.  Outside of the obvious prison's confines there are the angry, haughty, rebellious daughter (Claudia) of the cold, seemingly uncaring father (who happens to be Incarceron's Warden), her loyal teacher and friend (Jared), the staff who are all well paid spies and double agents, for the most part.  Inside, we have the amnesiac and unwilling hero, prone to visions and seizures (Finn) - seen as both weak and fearsome by those around him, and daring near to stupidity to make up for it - the loyal-for-his-own-reasons oathbrother (Keiro, which I keep pronouncing in my head as Kiero, like Fiero in Wicked), the teacher (who is of the same . . . race?  Family?  Classification, anyway) as Jared, and the life-debt (and possibly love, of a sort) bound Attia who is far more clever and stronger than she seems at first.  Around them, through them, there are plots and counter plots, some Courtly, some known, some only hinted at until the end.

There's the clear set up for the sequel, though this could be read on its own and left like that if you're not me - the story is tied up neatly enough at the end that, if you don't care about the secondary characters, there's no real need to read Sapphique (and I think there's another - it's a trilogy, isn't it?).  However, given the writing and the tension I still feel, hours after having finished Incarceron, there's no doubt I'll be at my local bookstore as soon as I have the cash and car to do so, just to pick it up.

In short, this is a must read.  And!  A good part of that is because of the setting-as-character; Beth Revis (again, I mention her!) wrote an entry about it on the Leage of Extraordinary Writers blog somewhere, and Catherine Fisher has made her world so masterfully.  I'm breathlessly (almost literally!) waiting to read more.

Title: If I Stay
Author: Gayle Forman
Publisher: Dutton (Penguin)

I bought this book because I received an ARC of its sequel from Penguin Teen - and I felt about it roughly like I thought I would.  It's a teeny-bopper love story of the variety that I didn't even like when I *was* a teeny-bopper.  This isn't to say it has no redeeming qualities, because despite proclaiming 'LOVED BY PEOPLE WHO LOVED TWILIGHT' or something along those lines, it wasn't nearly that bad.  I loved. Loved. LOVED all the music references (which is probably why I gave it three stars instead of two, especially when paired with the author's thoughts on being so heavily compared to Twilight).

People who loved Twilight probably will love it (sorry, Ms. Forman), as will a lot of the 13-18 set.  And I'll still read the ARC, because . . . well, because I read.  But this one, at least, isn't something that will stick with me for long.

That is all.

Title: Across the Universe
Author: Beth Revis
Release Date: March 2011 (according to the spine, though I've heard January and 'Spring' as well)
Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin Young Readers Group)
Genre: YA dystopian sci-fi

First things first - I'm pretty meh about the aesthetics of this book.  It's fairly brilliant conceptually (I think), in that there's the plain, white world behind Elder and the complicated cosmos behind Amy, but there's nothing that really makes it pop, despite the vaguely holographic sheen with Amy and the stars.  All of this is okay, though, because . . .

Characterization.  Oh. my. gods.  It was fantastic, really - I think Revis got the teenage voice (at least that of my own teenage years) pretty spot on.  So much YA stuff (or stuff with teen-early twenties main characters) comes off as treacly or trying to be cool, or . . . just off, really.  And I wanted SO VERY BADLY  to write this off as the same, except that both Elder and Amy thought and/or said things that I thought or said in the throes of adolescence.  In addition, the world in which the story is set is so wonderfully fleshed and nuanced that it becomes a character itself (and reading a post on Revis' blog, I understand why), but in a wonderfully contained way.  While there's certainly room for other books written in the same world, it doesn't scream with the need for more, more, more the way a lot of serial stuff has lately.  This is because of this fantastic world-build, I'm fairly certain.

Plot-wise, it's solid.  Not unique (I honestly think 'unique' is a next to impossible thing to achieve), but different enough from the stuff that I want to set it beside that it doesn't seem repetitive; it just seems as if I've read a lot of the same books the author must have.  We have a small population on a space ship headed for somewhere far away, a catastrophe, and the resulting chaos that leads to a totalitarian sort of government that becomes more and more of a dictatorship as time goes on.  Like in Ally Condie's 'Matched', the language and phrasing in the beginning (well, that of the male lead, anyway) are fairly simplistic, and indicative of the life he thinks he's leading in the world in which he thinks he lives.  This changes as things progress, as moral and ethical dilemmas - and a certainty that he doesn't know everything he needs to know - change his view of his world and all the people in it, including himself.

The dual points of view are difficult to follow sometimes, largely because the two 'voices' become a bit to similar in places, and is often distracting though the only way to fix that would be to have two separate books.  My trouble with this is simply a stylistic preference.  It will be interesting to see what Revis brings to us in the future!