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Lodestones: Plucky Teens Fight Everything
Jul. 5th, 2019 10:38 pmThat "post as you read" didn't work for me. If I'd waited until I'd read all the Lodestones, the "plucky rebellious teen girl, in present tense..." summary opening opportunity would have presented itself.
Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi) (2018): ( Plucky teen girl fights racism and an oppressive regime, in first present tense! )
The Belles (Dhonielle Clayton) (2018): Did not finish. ( Plucky teen girl fights beauty standards and corruption, in first present tense! )
Tess of the Road (Rachel Hartman) (2018): ( Plucky teen girl fights stifling family and social expectations, in third person past tense! )
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) (2018): ( Plucky teen girl fights zombies and discrimination, in first present tense! )
The Invasion (Peadar O'Guilin) (2018):( Plucky teen girl has survived a fight with the Sidhe, must now fight the government, in *third person* present tense. )
What can I say about the Lodestones?
First: YA is apparently not my genre. All these novels engage with things I should find interesting - racism, sexism, unrealistic beauty standards and class signalling via same, etc - but do so in ways that run counter to telling a story that compels me to keep reading.
Second: I walked away feeling I'd read some long movie pitches. The novels didn't seem to use the written word format to maximum effect. Children of Blood and Bone particularly struck me as having the energy and visual imagination of Star Wars, where the spaaaaaaace! component has been replaced with a fantastic Africa. It would look awesome! You can practically hear the soundtrack! For me, this is not an intrinsic plus! The joy of the written word is that an experienced and talented writer can do things with it that would be difficult or impossible to convey in another medium; or at least, would be best communicated through scripting, staging, and direction that reflect the spirit rather than the letter of a story. To read a novel and think how little it would take to put it on screen is to read something that hasn't made the most of its medium.
The first person present tense prevalent in these nominees may not help. Unless the protagonist is unusually observant, extroverted, or strategic for a teenager, it takes a writer at the top of their game to slide more mature observations around the PoV character.
(And if at any point I think, "but what if the Fair Folk kidnapped Ari Emory? How long until she took over their throne(s)? Or what if they took Caitlin, that would be a Fae bloodbath," it's time for me to put the novel down and admit it's not for me.)
What's interesting to me is that cursory web searches indicates several of these were quite well received in the YA market. What is the attraction? Clearly I need a teen to make dolphin noises of joy at me until I understand what part of the teen reader soul these novels lock into.
For voting... I don't know yet! I suppose I should rank the DNFs at the bottom of my votes, but I'm pretty apathetic about the nominees I did finish. Feel free to suggest rankings in comments.
Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi) (2018): ( Plucky teen girl fights racism and an oppressive regime, in first present tense! )
The Belles (Dhonielle Clayton) (2018): Did not finish. ( Plucky teen girl fights beauty standards and corruption, in first present tense! )
Tess of the Road (Rachel Hartman) (2018): ( Plucky teen girl fights stifling family and social expectations, in third person past tense! )
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) (2018): ( Plucky teen girl fights zombies and discrimination, in first present tense! )
The Invasion (Peadar O'Guilin) (2018):( Plucky teen girl has survived a fight with the Sidhe, must now fight the government, in *third person* present tense. )
What can I say about the Lodestones?
First: YA is apparently not my genre. All these novels engage with things I should find interesting - racism, sexism, unrealistic beauty standards and class signalling via same, etc - but do so in ways that run counter to telling a story that compels me to keep reading.
Second: I walked away feeling I'd read some long movie pitches. The novels didn't seem to use the written word format to maximum effect. Children of Blood and Bone particularly struck me as having the energy and visual imagination of Star Wars, where the spaaaaaaace! component has been replaced with a fantastic Africa. It would look awesome! You can practically hear the soundtrack! For me, this is not an intrinsic plus! The joy of the written word is that an experienced and talented writer can do things with it that would be difficult or impossible to convey in another medium; or at least, would be best communicated through scripting, staging, and direction that reflect the spirit rather than the letter of a story. To read a novel and think how little it would take to put it on screen is to read something that hasn't made the most of its medium.
The first person present tense prevalent in these nominees may not help. Unless the protagonist is unusually observant, extroverted, or strategic for a teenager, it takes a writer at the top of their game to slide more mature observations around the PoV character.
(And if at any point I think, "but what if the Fair Folk kidnapped Ari Emory? How long until she took over their throne(s)? Or what if they took Caitlin, that would be a Fae bloodbath," it's time for me to put the novel down and admit it's not for me.)
What's interesting to me is that cursory web searches indicates several of these were quite well received in the YA market. What is the attraction? Clearly I need a teen to make dolphin noises of joy at me until I understand what part of the teen reader soul these novels lock into.
For voting... I don't know yet! I suppose I should rank the DNFs at the bottom of my votes, but I'm pretty apathetic about the nominees I did finish. Feel free to suggest rankings in comments.