July/August Round-up

You may have noticed that there was no round-up last month – I was away and just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) maintain my blogging routine, so I’m way behind on pretty much everything related to Violin in a Void. In an attempt to catch up a little, I’m doing a double round-up of recent reads and reviews.

I posted my review of Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson, a very good fusion of sci fi and Islamic mythology, with some wonderfully written characters. Unfortunately, I think I under-appreciated this novel, as some of the sf aspects were lost on me.

My first read for July was Waiting for Godalming by Robert Rankin, which I read for a reading challenge where I needed a book with a teacup on the cover. Luckily for me it was a short book because it was also a fairly shit, and the blurb was quite possibly the most misleading blurb I’ve ever read. I didn’t even bother putting the cover in my roundup picture, although admittedly that was because the file was really small and awkward to work with.

The next novel, God Save the Queen by Kate Locke, was much better but by no means great. It’s set in 2012, but in a version of England where a plague turned the British aristocracy into vampires, werewolves and goblins. Queen Victoria has been on the throne for 175 years, and Britain is a still a colonial power. It’s a decent action novel with a bit of mystery and romance, but the major downfall is that these things take precedence over worldbuilding, so it’s sloppy. Also, “lieutenant” is intentionally misspelled as “leftenant” presumably because the book is meant to cater to American audiences.

Advent by James Treadwell is an elegant, complex YA fantasy novel about magic, couched in mythology. It has some flaws in terms of plot, but one of the things I loved about it is that it’s a wonderful piece of rich, old-fashioned storytelling with the kind of fictional spaces you just want to disappear into. I had some issues with the magic system in the novel, so I posed my questions to the author on the Conversation page of his website. Scroll down to ‘Good Questions’ for my question and his thought-provoking answer. Advent might not be the easiest book to read, but I’m very pleased that minds like this are writing YA. I look forward to the sequel.

Sadly, I went from good YA to crap YA when I read Quarantine: The Loners by Lex Thomas (pen name for Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies) about a group of teenagers who are trapped in their school when it’s quarantined following an inexplicable bio catastrophe. The teenagers get infected with some weird virus that makes them all lethal to children an adults. It’s rushed, implausible, and the worldbuilding is so lazy.

Next, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I was intrigued by this when it came out, but I was eventually dissuaded with talk of romance and the fact that it became so popular. I do not have a good record with romance or popular fiction – it tends to be too conventional for me, and the hype leaves me disappointed. This time I am happy to say I was completely wrong. The Night Circus is utterly enchanting, and I even liked the romance. I considered reviewing it, but then decided I just wanted to relax and savour it. Recommended.

Finally, the excellent God’s War by Kameron Hurley. I’ve raved about this in a few posts already, so I won’t say much more. The only thing that bugged about reviewing this was that, for some reason, Night Shade Books didn’t provide a Kindle option, so I had to read a time-limited pdf on my pc and write notes and quotes in longhand. I loved the writing, so I took down a lot of quotes.

August! The last winter month, thank god. I love boots, coats, thick socks and snuggling up, but now I miss the sun and not having to wear five layers of clothing. I read another five books, for this (hopefully) last month of freezing my ass off.

First, Cape of Slaves by Sam Roth (pseudonym for Dorothy Dyer and Rosamund Haden). Disappointing South African middle-grade/YA novel about time travel. At least it was very short.

Then, because I was on holiday and feeling very lazy and distracted, I read a YA paranormal romance. I figured it would be quick and easy to read, which it was. It was also mildly entertaining, and that is the end of the good things I have to say about Unearthly by Cynthia Hand.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn was a birthday present from a friend. I wanted it after reading Gone Girl by the same author. Sharp Objects isn’t as good, but it’s even more messed up. Gillian Flynn has some crazy stuff going on in that head of hers. I like it.

I posted my review of Railsea by China Miéville yesterday. Definitely one of his most entertaining, charming novels.

And if I’m not too lazy, then next week I will post my review of literary horror novel The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle. ‘Literary horror’ seems to mean, in part, that it’s not actually scary, at least not in the ways you expect horror to be scary. However, it is a novel about fear. You’ll see what I mean later.

In the meantime, happy reading!

Review of Advent by James Treadwell

Title: Advent
Series: The Advent trilogy
Author: James Treadwell
Published: First published 02 February 2012; this edition published 03 July 2012
Publisher: Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Genre: YA, fantasy, mythology
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 7/10

In Advent, two tales of magic intertwine and converge.

In 1537, Johan Faust, the most powerful magician of his age, seeks immortality. Humanity has scorned magic in favour of science and religion, and Faust believes that, to save the world from this error, he cannot die. He leaves behind a mysterious woman he once loved, a woman who gave him a ring that contains all the magic in the world.

In the present day, 15-year-old Gavin Stokes takes a train from London to stay with his aunt in the countryside. He was suspended from school after telling his guidance counsellor what his parents are sick of hearing – that he sees things no one else does, like the ghostly woman he calls Miss Grey, who has been appearing to him throughout his life. Gavin used to find Miss Grey’s presence comforting, but his mother and domineering father insist that such things are impossible, implying that he’s either stupid, lying or insane. Unable to reconcile his own reality with the one the world forces upon him, Gavin is lonely and deeply unhappy.

His aunt Gwen has always been more understanding, but when Gavin arrives at her cottage on the ancient Pendurra estate, he cannot find her, or any evidence of where she may have gone. While trying to track her down, he finds that Pendurra is a mysterious place both liberating and terrifying. Gavin meets other people who have experienced magic, making it seem as if he has been simply been living in the wrong place, with the wrong people. But Pendurra is also a place where magic is leaking back into the world after being trapped for centuries, and something cruel and dangerous is coming with it.

The marketing copy for Advent promises a “spellbinding return to old-fashioned storytelling”, and for once the blurb writers are not exaggerating. Or at least not very much. Advent is rich with old, wild magic that infuses a classic coming-of-age story entwined with mythology. The writing is wonderful and the settings include an English forest in winter and an ancient mansion that looks like it hasn’t aged in centuries. The characters are mysterious and varied, and many seem to carry the depth and weight of personal histories that would make good stories on their own. Reading it is a bit like wandering through a vault full of treasure chests and only being able to open a few, and Advent reminded me a lot of some of the YA novels I loved as a kid.

As a hurt, withdrawn teenager, Gavin is what first drew me into the story. I identified with his loneliness and insecurity, and sympathised with the way his reality is considered unacceptable by everyone in his life:

His dreams were a whirl of turbid darkness lit by fire, full of prophetic voices clamouring in alien speech. He was fourteen and miserable. The expensive school did its work and he at least knew that Miss Grey should not exist, that she was impossible, that the fact that he kept on seeing her was like an error in a calculation, a tear in the canvas of a painting, a misprint. He understood that if he tried to explain his life to anyone, the only thing they’d be able to think was that there was something seriously wrong with him. But because it had always been there, it was impossible for him to imagine how it was wrong.

Because of the way people treat him, Gavin has “spent most of the last four years desperately wanting to be left alone”. At one point in the novel, he tries to make polite conversation but fails because “he had no practice at it. He’d spent the past couple of years learning to stop conversations, not start them”.

His parents tend to treat him with disappointment, annoyance or anger. “My mum and dad don’t like me much. Especially Dad” Gavin says. His father is a mean, hateful man. He’s not physically abusive, but he’s an asshole. His parents clearly have a troubled marriage, but this is no longer something Gavin worries about: “Once he’d realised they didn’t want to know about his unhappiness, he’d stopped caring much about theirs.”

For the first half of the novel I kept wanting to give Gavin a hug. It’s comforting to find that things are better for him at Pendurra, especially when he meets Marina, the owner’s 13-year-old daughter. Marina is weirdly innocent and naive. She’s not stupid or completely uneducated, but she seems to know almost nothing about the world outside Pendurra. She often says such odd things that Gavin stops to check if she’s being sarcastic, although I doubt that Marina even knows what sarcasm is. She’s never learned how to be mean, and she’s always straightforward and honest. She has never heard swearwords, and asks Gavin for a definition every time he uses one.

Marina’s innocence makes her the perfect companion for Gavin. She doesn’t treat him with the “contempt, or anxiety, or bewilderment” he’s learned to expect from people. If he tells her something that seems strange or impossible, she is curious even when skeptical, and in fact has her own experiences with magic. Gavin has become so used to guarding his words for fear of being “dismissed, or ignored, or even laughed at” that he’s “lost the power to say what he meant”. But with Marina, he can just be honest; a unique experience for him.

Gavin sometimes finds Marina’s naiveté frustrating, but mostly their budding friendship offers him some solace – he finally knows that he’s not alone, and there’s nothing wrong with him. And Pendurra itself is a life-changing place. The massive house is one of those incredible fictional spaces that you long to visit. It’s centuries old and has never been modernised – there is no electricity and no modern plumbing. It’s structure is all in plain, impressive sight – “great slabs of swelling wood”, “bare patches of grey stone”, “curves of iron”. Nothing is smooth and anonymous; everything is rough and unique. Every door is made of heavy, knotted wood, with every nail visible and slightly different from all the others. It is stunningly, unbelievably old “with that sense of foreignness, forgottenness, that he’d caught as a smell the moment he’d stepped inside; old like the sounds of a dead language”. Gavin emphasises that this is not like some boring museum though – it’s more like another world entirely.

Despite its age, Pendurra is in excellent condition thanks to the magic leaking into the area. The theory of magic in the novel (or at least Faust’s theory) is that it is “the commerce and the interchange” between mankind and God’s “generative spirit”. This is pantheistic rather than religious. Faust deplores monotheistic religion, which sees creation as fallen and corrupt, and views God as nothing but a talented architect. In his view, God is contained within his creation, rather than existing as a separate entity, and some humans have the power to communicate with and manipulate this spirit, although this always comes at a cost. The novel is entitled ‘Advent’ because Advent is about the second-coming; here (I assume) the return of magic is synonymous with the return of God.

I’m a tad confused about how exactly magic works though, and this was my main problem with the novel. I like the idea that magic is an interaction with God’s spirit, which is basically a life spirit. But then how is it that Faust’s ring contains all the magic in the world? Does this mean God is trapped inside that ring? How is that possible? And how has the world survived with this spirit trapped in one tiny location? Or is it that the world has been dying slowly ever since the ring’s creation, and deteriorated further when Faust trapped the ring in a magically sealed box? It could also be argued that magic is a form of knowledge, but how does that explain the existence of some of the creatures that begin to emerge as the leak gets worse? These concerns aren’t irreconcilable, and I found them tolerable while I was reading, but I would have preferred a more thorough explanation. The novel is set up for a sequel, so hopefully there is more to be discovered.

Another hitch is the change in narrative that happens about halfway through. For the first half, the story is told from two POVs – Gavin’s and Faust’s, with Faust’s story mostly told in reverse. Then we start getting new POVs and a series of flashbacks. After seeing everything from either Gavin or Faust’s perspective, these new narrators made the story feel fragmented and I wondered if there wasn’t a more elegant way to tell it.

It’s also quite slow. At first I liked this – you’re immersed in the rich detail of an unfolding story that’s worth savouring. After a while though, it does get a bit tiring and you might start to wonder when the plot is going to get going. No one knows what happened to Gwen, but there’s no real rush to find out. Gavin does a little investigating that happens mostly by accident. There’s a lot of sorcery in Faust’s narrative, but it’s a long time before you see any in Gavin’s. For me this was just a niggle, but I imagine that YA fans who enjoy the genre for its quick reads will get bored.

In my opinion though, Advent is one of the best kinds of YA. It doesn’t feel dumbed down or glossed over in any way. It also has, as promised, some “spellbinding… old-fashioned storytelling”, including an indescribable sense of escaping into other worlds that it seems I can only find in a few precious YA novels (adults’ novels just don’t achieve quite the same effect). Advent is not without its flaws so I had to give it a rather than an 8, but it’s the kind of book that immerses me in a world I want to disappear into.

But a copy of Advent at The Book Depository

Review of Quarantine: The Loners by Lex Thomas

Title: Quaratine: The Loners
Series: Quarantine #1
Author: Lex Thomas (pen name for Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies)
Published: 10 July 2012
Publisher: Egmont USA
Genre: YA, science fiction
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 4/10

On the first day of school at McKinley High an explosion destroys the East Wing. All the adults suddenly vomit up their lungs and die. Soldiers surround the school and gun down any student who tries to escape. They seal off the building, trapping everyone inside. Over a month later it’s explained that the students are all infected with a virus that thrives only in the bodies of pubescent teenagers, making them instantly fatal to any child or adult they approach. Students will only be allowed to leave the school once they’ve passed through puberty and the virus leaves their bodies, in which case they have to get out quickly to avoid a swift and horrible death.

By this point the students have already divided into gangs based on American-style social cliques – Varsity (jocks), Pretty Ones, Geeks, Sluts, Nerds, Freaks and Skaters. Gangs protect their members and trade services and supplies. They also have a better chance of getting supplies when the students fight over the food drop that is delivered every two weeks. Life at McKinley is brutal, and it’s worse if you don’t have a gang, like David Thorpe and his younger brother Will. David used to be a popular jock but over the past few months he’s withdrawn from his social circle. He’s also made an enemy out of Sam Howard, the vengeful, violent leader of Varsity. David beat Sam up for stealing his girlfriend Hilary, so now Sam hates him. No gang is willing to protect David against the power of Varsity, so for over a year he concentrates on keeping his head down and doing what he must so that he and his brother can survive. But chaos erupts when David saves a beautiful girl from being raped, and accidently kills the Varsity member who attacks her.

Varsity will kill David if they get their hands on him, and to make things worse, Will is spiralling out of control. He’s in love with Lucy, the girl David rescued, but now Lucy is attracted to David instead, who likes her but is concerned about his brother’s feelings. Obsessed with trying prove himself, Will becomes increasingly deluded and reckless while David just tries his best to keep them alive.

I got off to a very bad start with this. The first few chapters rush by in a hurried attempt to set up the plot. Imagine highlighting the most significant scenes in a novel and taking out everything in between. One moment David is talking to a teacher, then there’s an explosion, the teacher dies, kids try to escape but are trapped in the school by soldiers. All this in two or three pages. In the next chapter it’s suddenly two weeks later, then a month, the gangs form, and they get told about the virus. The next chapter begins “One year later”. It’s like the authors (Lex Thomas is a pen name for Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies) were so eager to get to the main story that they wanted to get all the preceding stuff out of the way as fast as fucking possible. I love a pacey plot, but this is ridiculous.

Once the main story (a love triangle, fighting brothers, Sam wanting to murder David) gets going, the novel slows down to a more reasonable pace, but it still lacks substance. The authors just don’t give us enough information. When the virus spread and the adults died, all the students’ hair fell out. When it grows back it’s white. Why? And why do none of the students wonder about this? Frankly, I think it’s just a contrivance that the authors used so that the gangs could dye their hair different colours using stuff like powdered cooldrink and ash.

I can accept that the military tells the students very little about the virus (although this looks like author laziness too), but why do they only communicate with them once? And only after a month? If they can provide food and other supplies, they can communicate with them, try to keep them organised and control all the violence. But they don’t. Why does no one mention what happened to the students’ families? Don’t the families want to communicate? And why the hell don’t any of the students wonder if they families are ok? David and Will conclude that their father must be ok because he was out of town when the virus spread, and that’s the last we hear on the subject.

Why don’t any of the gangs band together to take down Varsity, who takes most of the food? The gangs are so hostile to each other that inter-gang friendships or relationships are unthinkable. I’m quite willing to believe that there’d be a lot of violence in this situation, but would a bunch of teenagers really be this small-minded? Are they really so easily divided by stupid social categories? And given that the gangs take almost all the food, how do all the loners survive? Later in the novel the loners actually form a gang of almost a hundred students – where the fuck were they all hiding and how did they feed themselves?

I have a lot of questions about the gangs themselves too. How are the Freaks defined? There’s nothing particularly weird about them except that they dye their hair blue with toilet cleaner. What makes the Geeks geeky? They’re the art and drama students who put on plays, host a carnival, and are led by a flamboyantly gay boy. They’re more like hipsters. Varsity lives in the gym with the Pretty Ones and they all use the pool – how do they fill it and keep it clean? The Pretty Ones all wear white clothes, which is just ludicrous in that filthy environment. They also waste their time making pointless crap to sell, like lipstick and wigs. WHY?! It’s not like they need stuff to trade anyway – they survive by prostituting themselves to the Varsity boys. The Sluts on the other hand, aren’t even defined by promiscuity; they’re just a strong all-girl group. There are students having sex all the time, and although they apparently get condoms in the food drop, I can’t believe that no one would fall pregnant.

Seriously, the authors barely even tried to make this work. Last year I read Variant by Robison Wells, another novel about teenagers trapped in a school with no real adult supervision and a society made up of gangs. That was a different situation, as the kids lived organised lives and didn’t have to fight to survive or worry about being murdered, but they had no idea why they were imprisoned. However, I couldn’t help but compare Quarantine with Variant because the latter novel was meticulously detailed, explaining exactly how and why the school functioned the way it did, what the students thought of it, and how they coped. I wasn’t plagued by a long list of how’s and why’s because the author had obviously thought about them himself and made the effort to provide answers. As a result, Variant was way more interesting than this and the world-building did a lot to get me fully invested in the story. Lex Thomas seems to treat things like world-building as random crap that’s somehow getting in their way so it gets dealt with dismissively. There’s no saving the novel from this.

The story is actually ok but often frustrating. Will has epilepsy, and feels insecure after having a seizure on the quad and wetting his pants (notably, Will only has seizures when it suits the plot). He becomes obsessed with showing off and never helps David do laundry – a service that they trade for supplies. Will becomes a total asshole after David saves Lucy, and their love triangle becomes a key aspect of the plot. Will’s convinced his brother is some kind of fraud who is stealing his girl, so he frequently undermines him, or does something stupid and dangerous to impress Lucy. Meanwhile poor David shows him endless love and tolerance, and continues to provide for him. Lucy is stupidly manipulative, leading Will on when she wants David and getting close to both as if she has no idea what effect her body and beauty has on them. It makes you want to scream sometimes.

Sam’s vendetta against David is fairly compelling, if only because I had a grim determination to see what would happen. Can David turn The Loners into a strong gang? Will David survive long enough to ‘graduate’ and leave the school? Will Varsity tire of Sam’s murderous tendencies and turn on him? Sam is a very violent, vindictive person, the kind of bland villain who is so utterly horrible he doesn’t seem like a real person. Coupled with the whole gang arrangement, this makes for a great deal of brutality. There are gruesome murders, attempted murders, beatings, and terrible accidents. The Pretty Ones essentially trade in sex, with their leader, Hilary, arranging girlfriends for the Varsity boys. Lucy’s attempted rape is the only one on the page, but the implication is that rape must be fairly common; the authors just don’t address it. Varsity actually brews the own alcohol, and the guy who tried to rape Lucy was drunk at the time.

I don’t mind that this is sordid and bloody. It makes sense in the circumstances. The problem is that the circumstances are so implausible, the world-building so very shoddy. Quarantine: The Loners fails in so many ways and the story, while decent, isn’t nearly good enough to compensate. It actually ends on a cliffhanger that sets us up for a dystopian sequel, but no thanks, I’m done with this.

Still curious? Buy Quarantine: The Loners at The Book Depository.

YA Cover Fatigue

These days, it’s impossible for me to spend time on Goodreads, NetGalley or book blogs without seeing at least a few YA cover girls – pretty, slender girls, often in big, flowing dresses with their gorgeous long hair rippling in the wind or flying out behind them as they run through a forest or float underwater. Some covers focus on specific features – eyes, hair, mouth etc. and the models are almost always white. You could actually categorise the covers according to type.

There are the big dress covers:

I always wonder – how often do the protagonists actually wear the kinds of dresses you see on these covers?

The underwater covers:

Covers using shots taken from behind (featuring more big dresses and one utterly useless pair of wings):

And of course, the close-ups:

They’re almost all attractive, often beautiful covers. And I hate them. Firstly, they’re so boring, simply because they’ve become so common. These pretty-girl covers are now so ubiquitous that it seems they’re just as much a part of YA novels for female readers as teenage characters and a YA plot. That idea was suggested in a fairly recent article in the Huffington post, where the author, Mary Pauline Lowry, realised she had made a mistake by not using one of these archetypal covers for her YA novel and going for something that better-suited the story instead. “YA readers are part of a tribe;”, she says, “and YA covers signify that the book is special, meant just for members of their tribe. “This is ours, not yours,” the book cover declares.”

Lowry also raises some excellent points about the models used for these covers – they promote and perpetuate standards of beauty that few girls will actually be able to attain. I think that issue would make a great debate in itself, but for now I’m just presenting my more personal reaction to these pretty-girl covers. Honestly – aren’t YA fans getting just a little bit tired of this trend? Don’t you want to see something more original? Or are you content in your cover-love, just as thrilled by the latest cover as you were by the last? Is this trend the birth of a stable genre feature, much like the sword-wielding hunks and lush landscapes you see on covers for epic fantasy?

The pretty-girl covers certainly do seem to be the ideal marketing for female YA fans – beautiful covers drawing your attention to the kind of book you’re likely to enjoy. Which brings me to the other reason I don’t like these covers – they function as a marker for a certain type of YA, written for a certain kind of female audience, of which I am not a part. To uses Lowry’s image, I’m not a member of the tribe. YA fans see a book they will probably like, while to me the cover says very bluntly, “You’re probably going to hate every minute of this.” I take one look and keep browsing. It’s a weird feeling, since I actually think the covers in themselves look pretty good. But if I read one of those books I’d expect to find the following:

• Too much romance for me to stomach, most likely involving one or two males from a mythological species.
• A female protagonist who is likely to annoy me by being stupid, whiny, self-absorbed, or all of these things and more.
• A plot fit for a Mary-Sue – socially awkward/alienated girl who assumes she’s unattractive turns out to be the hottest thing around

Bascially a repeat or a least a reminder of the nightmare that was Twilight (you can see why I’m not a member of the tribe). I know it’s wrong to generalise though, particularly since it seems that the pretty-girl cover is becoming a requirement for many YA novels and doesn’t necessarily suit the story. It’s just an attempt to increase sales. I always wonder if the protagonist actually wears the big flowing ball gown featured on the cover. One recent example that really bothered me, was the recent rejacketing of the Mall Rats series by Lily Herne. The first cover was great – it was suitably creepy and mysterious, it was directly related to the story, and I thought it looked pretty cool:

With the rejacketing, the series got some really boring pretty-girl covers, presumably to fit the trend:

The models are beautiful and at least they fit the descriptions of the characters they portray, but if I didn’t already have an interest in this series, I wouldn’t have bothered with it because of what these covers imply about the story and the intended audience. And yet I know that the Mall Rats series isn’t the kind of thing I avoid when I avoid books with those YA covers. In fact, I’m sometimes intrigued by YA plot summaries only to be put off by some pale, pouting waif in a giant dress telling me I’m actually not girly enough to enjoy that novel. It’d be nice to see a bit more variation in cover art, like the following, which drew my attention both because I think the covers look good, and because they weren’t the usual clichés:

Does anyone else feel this way? Or am I just being a book snob? Do you prefer to read books with pretty-girl covers? I don’t feel bad about judging books by their covers in general, at least in the sense that covers are typically used to identify a particular genre and draw the attention of the intended audience. And most of the time it doesn’t matter if I don’t like the pretty-girl covers, because I probably wouldn’t enjoy the books they enclose anyway. So am I being too hard on the cover girls?

Review of The Peculiars by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

Title: The Peculiars
Author: Maureen Doyle McQuerry
Published: 1 May 2012
Publisher: Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS Books
Genre: YA, adventure, steampunk, science fantasy
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 5/10

Since she was a child, Lena Mattacascar has been called Peculiar. She has unusually long hands and feet, and each of her fingers has an extra knuckle. “[S]igns of goblinism”, the doctor said, and her grandmother never hesitated to tell her what a no-good goblin criminal her father was (he left home when Lena was five). Lena tries to pass her strange appendages off as “birth defects” but she’s desperate to know the truth about her father and her own genetics.

On her 18^th birthday, Lena’s mother gives her two gifts left by her father – a small inheritance, and a letter. Motivated by her father’s words to her, Lena decides to use the money to travel to Scree, the supposed land of the Peculiars. She takes a train to the town of Knob Knoster, on the border of Scree, where she will need to buy supplies and find someone to guide her through the wilderness. One man who could help her is Tobias Beasley, an inventor and historian.

However, Beasley is rumoured to be an eccentric who might be involved in strange dealings with Peculiars. A young but determined federal marshal named Thomas Saltre asks Lena to spy on him and report anything incriminating. Lena agrees, and gets a job in Beasley’s library, working alongside Jimson Quigley, a young man she met on the train. It’s a pleasant, fulfilling life, but Lena finds some suspicious things in Beasley’s home, leading her to make decisions that put the people she cares about in danger.

The Peculiars is a steampunk-ish coming-of-age novel about how difference breeds prejudice. The people who believe in Peculiars see them as sub-human, morally decrepit freaks. Scree has a dubious reputation as “the place where they send criminals. They say the forests are filled with hideous things”. “No one’s there but misfits, political enemies, and aliens”, Lena is told. It’s no surprise then, that all Peculiars are lumped together with thieves, murderers and anyone considered socially undesirable. The government uses this for political gain. Scree is rich in mineral resources, and by stating that Peculiars are non-human and playing into people’s fears and about them, the government is then able to declare Scree terra nullius – “a ‘land belonging to no one’”. It makes it easy for them to justify their actions there – stealing the land from the indigenous people and exploiting them as slave labour. It’s essentially the story of European colonialism. Scree is a metaphor for Africa or Australia, and the Peculiars represent the indigenous people of those lands.

It’s quite a while before you really see any of this in action though. The majority of the novel is set in Knob Knoster where Lena is trying to prepare for her Scree journey. As a result many reviewers have complained about the slow pace of this book. The blurb gives the impression that this is an action-adventure novel set in Scree, but in fact Lena doesn’t even get there until the last quarter of the novel. You also don’t get to see nearly as many Peculiars as you would expect – their very existence is portrayed as something of a myth for a while, although it’s obvious to the reader that they’re real.

Luckily, this didn’t bother me. I don’t trust blurbs, and in general I’m fine with slow-moving plots. I would have liked the Peculiars to play a larger part, but at least they’re intertwined with the politics and social views of the time. What really, really bothered me though, was Lena. She’s such a weak, thoughtless girl that she essentially spoiled the novel for me.

Thomas Saltre asks Lena to spy on Mr Beasley for him. In exchange he promises to provide her with a guide to Scree and since he’ll be focusing on Beasley, he’ll take his attention off Lena’s father, Saltre’s other most wanted criminal. Plus, Lena will be helping her country. Lena agrees, although there’s absolutely no good reason for her to do so at this point. She doesn’t need Saltre’s guide if Beasley will help her (which he immediately agrees to do). Saltre didn’t promise to leave her father alone, just that he would ignore him for a bit. It doesn’t even occur to Lena that Saltre could later use her to lead him straight to her father. And since when does Lena care about her country? The government is opposed to Peculiars, and she’s clearly a Peculiar.

It gets worse once she meets Beasley. She’s welcomed into his home, given a tour of his magnificent library, and invited to lunch. Beasley instantly agrees to be her Scree guide, and to help her pay for the expedition he offers her a job in his library and a place to stay in his lovely home. She accepts, and basically begins an ideal life for a young woman in her society. She has a respectable job doing fulfilling work, she has the independence that comes with making your own money, she lives in a beautiful, stately home, all meals are cooked by the housekeeper, and there’s the potential for a bit of romance with her colleague Jimson. On top of that, Beasley has offered to help her achieve her goal of travelling into Scree and finding her father. Beasley has basically given Lena everything she could want at this point. And still the stupid bitch goes running to Saltre with any information she can find to betray Beasley.

Lena actually carries around a notebook and pen just in case she learns something incriminating, and at one point she endures physical pain and great anxiety to go creeping around Beasley’s house in the middle of the night and steal one of his books. Why? Partly because she has a crush on the handsome Saltre, and partly because Lena is easily duped by authority. Saltre is a marshal, and she believes everything he says. The government says Peculiars are bad, therefore they must be bad (even though that implies that Lena is bad too, since she’s obviously Peculiar). If Beasley is breaking the law he must be stopped, even if he is good and the law is designed to exploit people. Lena is such a twit; it takes quite a while for her to think outside the lines.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the reader had more of a chance to empathise with her, if we could see things the way she seems to see them. For example, if it looked like Saltre might actually have feelings for her, or if there was something potentially sinister about Mr Beasley. But no – while she’s blindly making the wrong decisions, it’s crystal clear to the reader what’s really going on. It’s so obvious that Saltre is a villainous government agent manipulating a vulnerable young woman to get what he wants. He’s going to turn on her the moment she ceases to be useful. It’s so obvious that Mr Beasley, on the other hand, is a good, kind man, and Lena is making a colossal mistake by betraying him. I know Lena is naive, but I just couldn’t take her side when people like Jimson and Beasley are so much more likeable.

Jimson is the one who tells Lena that the government is using the Peculiars for political gain. Although he refuses to believe Peculiars exist, you know he’s right about the government. Lena is critical of Jimson for being too rational and scientific, but he usually comes off as a much smarter person in contrast to Lena’s tendency to dismiss evidence in favour of rumour, assumption, and arguments from authority. Jimson and Lena find things that cause them to be suspicious of Beasley, but Jimson takes into account the fact they’ve only ever seen Beasley act with kindness, so he suspends his judgement until they have the whole story and is careful not to do anything rash. Lena on the other hand, runs headlong into doing something rash. This puts everyone in danger, but she has the audacity to criticise Jimson for doing nothing while she took action!

The crap thing is that if it weren’t for Lena being so damn stupid and ungrateful, the story would stand still. It’s her weakness and poor decisions that jumpstart the plot and finally move it out of Knob Knoster and into Scree. It’s a much better book from that point on, but it’s only the last quarter or so. Lena still does some moronic things, but she at least seems to have learned a little from her mistakes and is able to stand up for herself. There’s more danger and adventure in Scree, and of course we learn more about the Peculiars and the government’s operations. Sadly, it’s a case of too little too late. There’s potential for a decent sequel, but The Peculiars is average at best.

Buy a copy of The Peculiars from The Book Depository

Lily Herne’s Mall Rats are going to the UK!

The original Deadlands cover

I heard some great news via the Twitterverse last night – the Mall Rats series by Lily Herne (the pseudonym for mother/daughter writing duo Sarah and Savannah Lotz) has been picked up by Corsair Books and will be published in the UK in 2013. Corsair editor Sarah Castleton bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Deadlands and Death of a Saint, both of which were initially published in South Africa by Penguin and Puffin. The news was announced on The Bookseller and The World SF Blog.

Mall Rats is a post-apocalyptic YA zombie series set a decade after the infection hit South Africa during the 2010 World Cup. It follows a group of kick-ass teen rebels who fight against both the zombies and the corrupt government that worships the undead in a twisted theology of resurrection. Deadlands is set in Cape Town, while Death of a Saint explores the rest of SA. The final book will be The Army of the Left. If you’re interested, I posted my review of Death of a Saint yesterday, and you can check out both my review of Deadlands (I didn’t love the first book, but don’t let that put you off) and the joint review I did with Lu.

Deadlands and Death of a Saint, rejacketed by Puffin Books

I’m really happy for Sarah and Savannah, and it’s always exciting to hear about local genre fiction getting an international audience. I’m curious as to how the UK’s YA readers will react to the series. A glossary of SA slang will probably be in order, but I think readers will find the SA setting a fun and interesting break from the norm. Plus there’s loads of action and some great characters. Oh, and zombies. Lots of zombies.

Review of Death of a Saint by Lily Herne

Title: Death of a Saint
Author: Lily Herne (Sarah and Savannah Lotz)
Series: Mall Rats #2
Published: 1 April 2012
Publisher: Puffin Books, a division of Penguin
Genre: YA, fantasy, action adventure
Source: review copy from the publisher
Rating: 8/10

It’s been a few weeks since the final events of Deadlands. Lele, Saint, Ash and Ginger are camping out the wilderness that is Cape Town because it’s too much of a risk to return to either the mall or their hideout outside the enclave. When they save a family from the zombies however, they have no choice but to take them to the enclave, so they decide to use the opportunity to buy supplies. It’s a big mistake. Corruption has festered, security has become more brutal, and the Resurrectionst government is about to distribute Wanted posters with the names and descriptions of the four Mall Rats. Their days of raiding the mall and selling the products in the enclave are definitely over.

It’s clear to Ash that they need to get the hell out of Cape Town. It’s a difficult decision to make, but they’ll be able to get away from the institution that wants them dead and perhaps find other survivors to help them fight the Resurrectionists. They might even find some answers to the many secrets surrounding the Guardians.

So begins their road trip across a decimated South Africa. They find new companions and new reasons to be hopeful about the future, but mostly it’s a hard journey, and not just because of what the Rotters have done to the country. Some of the Rats are keeping secrets that could destroy their friendships. What they find tests their characters and their relationships, and puts their lives at risk. As it turns out, there are far stranger and more dangerous things than Rotters or even Guardians out there, and the Mall Rats will be sniffing them out.

Now, I didn’t exactly love Deadlands, but Death of a Saint is a book of another calibre. Everything that bugged me about its predecessor is no longer an issue. Firstly, it has a different style. Lele no longer addresses an audience, which she did for no apparent reason in book 1 (she didn’t seem to be recording her experiences, so who was she talking to?). There are no more super-short chapters ending in one-liner cliffhangers. The narrative of Death of a Saint is smoother, more focused and the writing is more refined. Chapters narrated by Lele are now alternated with chapters narrated by Saint, giving us two perspectives on the story. This new tactic can actually be a little confusing as there often isn’t much difference between the two (both characters speak the same way and are mostly in the same situations), but for the most part it wasn’t much of a problem.

I also think that the characters are better written, and the and their interactions are more interesting. The Mall Rats learn new things about each other, much of it unsettling. At the end of Deadlands, Lele learned why the Rotters don’t attack the Mall Rats, but she finds the secret so shameful, she can’t bring herself to share it with the others, even though she knows she should.

Ash and Lele were clearly attracted to each other in book 1 (forming a clichéd loved triangle with Thabo), but now the possibility of a relationship seems to be dying out. Ash seems to be taking Hester’s death harder than the rest of them, and he’s always moody. He might have been the sexy brooding rebel before, but now his attitude gets everyone down and is killing his relationship with Lele. As Saint puts it, “The angst act is getting old” (50). Lele even starts to wonder if Ash’s good looks are the only reason she still likes him, since he’s been such an unapproachable asshole lately. Then Ash’s mood changes when they meet a stunningly sexy girl who’s also immune to Rotter attacks. She’s perky, brave and endlessly nice so everyone instantly likes her (me included). Lele is instantly jealous, not only of the newcomer’s gorgeous curves (compared to Lele’s skinny frame) but of how much time Ash spends with her, talking and laughing. It’s sheer torment.

This may sound mean, but I think it was good that the authors made Lele suffer like this. In book 1 I found her too temperamental and troublesome. Now she seems to have calmed down a bit, and the way Ash keeps hurting her made me more empathetic – it’s a situation we’ve all been in.

Ginger, on the other hand, is a character I always liked. Lele describes him as “the only person in the world who can put a positive spin on a zombie apocalypse” (113), and his ability to crack jokes and think of movie references even in the worst situations easily makes him the series’ most entertaining and likeable character. He occasionally shows a vulnerable side though – unlike the others, he hasn’t had a serious romantic interest, and he’s lonely. It’s quite heart-warming then, when he adopts a baby hyena and gives him the ridiculous name, ‘Bambi’. Despite the name, Bambi is really cute and I can see him growing up to be Ginger’s bad-ass companion. For the moment though, he mostly just has ‘accidents’ in Ginger’s hoodie and gives him my favourite line in the book:

“Don’t shoot! I have a hyena!” (150)

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it’s the characters that made this a great book. I really cared about all of them, and my feelings were like ropes wrapping around my limbs and pulling me into their world. To add to that, ‘the journey’ is my favourite type of YA plot. I like the way that strange new places and people constantly bring uncertainty, surprise, hope and danger to the story, even if that sometimes makes the book discomforting to read. I like the demands that journey put on the characters, testing their strengths, forcing them to face up to their weaknesses, or teaching them new skills. Then, when they find a sanctuary in the midst of all their hardships, you feel just as relieved and happy as they do. Journeys are a source of both delight and torment, sometimes at the same time, and Death of a Saint does this one perfectly.

I enjoyed the story so much that I didn’t mind that they didn’t really learn much about the Guardians or fight the Resurrectionists. This was one of my major problems with the first book because it seemed like the most important and interesting stuff was being ignored. It’s a different case in Death of a Saint. The Mall Rats face these issues at the beginning, but once they’re on the road it makes sense for them to deal with the many other problems that arise.

Zombies, oddly enough, aren’t really one of those problems. Most Rotters don’t attack the Mall Rats, so they seldom have to fight them. Instead, Lele and the others tend to show them compassion rather than hostility. When a Rotter wanders into their camp at the beginning, Ginger gently chases him away instead of chopping his head off. On the road, they find a zombie who’s been dangling from a bungee cord for the last decade, feel sorry for him, and cut him loose. It disturbs them when they see how humans have made some of the Rotters suffer, and there’s a growing question of whether the Rotters still have some humanity left.

Humans, on the other hand, are the ones who pose the greatest danger. As in most post-apocalyptic stories, the breakdown of civilisation has made many people savage and cruel. Or really, really weird. Everyone has to be ready for a fight, not just with the Rotters, but with people who’d rob you, rape you, or kill you. Some show kindness and generosity, but with scarce resources, no one is looking for extra mouths to feed.

There’s less action than in Deadlands, I think, but fans of the first book shouldn’t worry – there’s still plenty to get your blood pumping and anyway, I think this story is more exciting with its ever-present sense of danger and uncertainty. Plus the characters are more engaging and there are some new ones I think you’d like. The writing is better, the structure is better – honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better sequel. My only disappointment is that they changed the cover from the cool creepy style of the Deadlands one, to this YA cliché. The title wouldn’t have been my first choice, but there are still plenty of surprises and a cliffhanger ending to whet your appetite for the final book – The Army of the Left. Kudos Lily Herne – you guys did an awesome job.

Buy a copy of Death of a Saint.