Lodestones: Plucky Teens Fight Everything
Jul. 5th, 2019 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseThat "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! In this case, the PoV rotates between three characters.
Teenaged Zélie, member of an oppressed and hated minority in the kingdom of Orïsha, is the first protagonist: her mother had magic, and she would have had magic if it had not been lost eleven years ago, during a night of violence that claimed her mother's life. Princess Amari is of a similar age, cowed by her family and her iron-fisted father the king, who lost his first family to conflict between those with magic and those without. Amari witnesses a rebirth of magic in her beloved attendent Binta's hands, moments before her father murders Binta. Amari steals the token that awoke her attendant's magic and flees her father's palace. Zélie and Amari meet during Amari's flight, narrowly escaping Amari's brother Inan, the crown prince, third PoV character, and a case study in the operation of toxic masculinity. Torn between duty to his country and father, love for his sister and increasing passion for the elusive Zélie, and the secret magic growing in his soul, Inan pursues Zélie, Amari, and Zélie's brother Tzain as they attempt to bring about the return of magic to Orïsha and its peoples.
This book has a very complicated plot, and yet, there are some things that are utterly predictable: homes will be burned, mentors will be killed, and bad boys will be irresistible even after they've been proven untrustworthy. I am incredibly unimpressed that Inan used Zélie's father as bait, got him killed, was directly responsible for her capture and torture at his father's hands, and... Zélie still can't get over her pants-feelings for this guy? Really?! I hope Zélie stabilizes the magic situation, Amari goes on to be a fabulous ruling queen, and Inan either dies mourned for what he could have been or lives an obscure life of penance. Why do people keep casting Kylo Ren types as a romantic figure. Ugh. Give me Zélie and Amari steering their destinies. Give me Amari trying to figure out how dating Zélie's brother would work. That, I would be interested in... but that would cut away from the very teenage dating angst the novel mires later chapters in. I am so very, very over Sexy Bad Boys.
The Belles (Dhonielle Clayton) (2018): Did not finish. Plucky teen girl fights beauty standards and corruption, in first present tense!
Camellia Beauregard is a belle, destined to be one of the celebrated shapers of beauty in a world where the default is - I cannot make this up - gray people with bad hair and blood red eyes. Headstrong and ambitious, she colors outside the lines at her formal debut, and is punished by being offered a high position - but not the dream position of royal favorite that she lusted after.
This is a 52 chapter novel that has been well-received in YA circles. Trying to read this reinforced my conviction YA and I aren't meant to be. By the second chapter I was skimming for Camellia's inevitable downfall. By chapter 10 the story had progressed to "sixteen year old magical beauty queen comes in second", which doesn't speak to any part of me in my mid-30s. This is some Vanyel-level emo! ("Vanyel-level emo" is not a compliment to the protagonist.) Apparently later there's further royal intrigue and the decadent Orleans culture is revealed to be rotten at its core, but the emphasis on lush prose over nuanced characterization or getting an early start on exploring the magic the belles wield quickly lost my attention. The choppy sentence structure also wasn't my thing. Commas are awesome! Bring back the semicolon! Give me dialogue instead of internal musings for a full chapter. Also, give me a protgonist who is either less annoying or less naive. The Belles might be for someone, but it didn't do a thing for me.
Tess of the Road (Rachel Hartman) (2018): Plucky teen girl fights stifling family and social expectations, infirst present tense third person past tense! (Thanks for the correction, cahn.)
Sixteen year old Tess, fresh off arranging her twin sister's marriage, is compelled to run away from home to find herself.
...it's not quite as dire as I make it sound? There is a clear pro-sex ed agenda, especially in the flashback sections of this first person narrative. The story is framed around Tess' growth as a person, with helpful persons and character-building adventures coming along just at the right times. Tess walks away from her family and quickly runs into an old friend; part of her growth is recognizing that she may have a deep and wonderful friendship with this person, but they can still have been a terrible, difficult parent. (She doesn't make the leap to considering what has made her own parents difficult and kind of terrible, but this is the first in a duology.) The sister setup is very similar to Holly Black's novel: oldest of twin sisters as protag, with an older sister having her own adventures. It's tempting to extend the comparison and suggest the Hartman is the novel I'd feel comfortable recommending to teen readers, but the Holly is the one they'd find on their own and fall in love with.
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) (2018): Plucky teen girl fights zombies and discrimination, in first present tense! Set in the 1880s, the novel is told in first person present tense by Jane McKeene, a black teen in a South that didn't lose the war so much as hastily set it aside when the dead started rising from the Civil War's battlefields. African Americans are forced into zombie battle duty in their early teens, with predictably devastating casualty rates. Jane has escaped that fate so far, sent to learn zombie-fighting at a school for Attendants, female fighters who serve upper-class white women. However good her form is, Jane struggles with an intelligent, rebellious nature, which sets in motion the novel.
At the novel's conclusion, we don't know where the undead came from, or if any plan can resist their spread without ruinous propagation of life. We're told Jane's family was forced out of their home and is on their way to a rumored stronghold that Jane knows will not welcome them. And Jane and the hot young doctor are having feelings for each other.
Zombies are Not My Subgenre; Dread Nation didn't shift me on that opinion. There's the seed of an interesting push-pull between rebellious Jane and prim, color-inside-the-lines Katherine; but the narrative keeps throwing these boring potential romantic interests in the way.
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.
Forewarned by Cahn's comments, I was aware the protagonist had been targeted by a "witches float and the innocent drown" neo-Fascist government. In this case, teens are kidnapped by Sidhe, and usually are killed in some horrific fashion. Protagonist Nessa (for for Vanessa) has survived her harrowing ordeal, and is taken by the government on her way to reunite with fellow survivor and second third-present PoV Anto. So when the brutality and cruelty for the sake of demonstrating that the world is brutal and cruel became rather too much, I felt no guilt dropping this.
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! In this case, the PoV rotates between three characters.
Teenaged Zélie, member of an oppressed and hated minority in the kingdom of Orïsha, is the first protagonist: her mother had magic, and she would have had magic if it had not been lost eleven years ago, during a night of violence that claimed her mother's life. Princess Amari is of a similar age, cowed by her family and her iron-fisted father the king, who lost his first family to conflict between those with magic and those without. Amari witnesses a rebirth of magic in her beloved attendent Binta's hands, moments before her father murders Binta. Amari steals the token that awoke her attendant's magic and flees her father's palace. Zélie and Amari meet during Amari's flight, narrowly escaping Amari's brother Inan, the crown prince, third PoV character, and a case study in the operation of toxic masculinity. Torn between duty to his country and father, love for his sister and increasing passion for the elusive Zélie, and the secret magic growing in his soul, Inan pursues Zélie, Amari, and Zélie's brother Tzain as they attempt to bring about the return of magic to Orïsha and its peoples.
This book has a very complicated plot, and yet, there are some things that are utterly predictable: homes will be burned, mentors will be killed, and bad boys will be irresistible even after they've been proven untrustworthy. I am incredibly unimpressed that Inan used Zélie's father as bait, got him killed, was directly responsible for her capture and torture at his father's hands, and... Zélie still can't get over her pants-feelings for this guy? Really?! I hope Zélie stabilizes the magic situation, Amari goes on to be a fabulous ruling queen, and Inan either dies mourned for what he could have been or lives an obscure life of penance. Why do people keep casting Kylo Ren types as a romantic figure. Ugh. Give me Zélie and Amari steering their destinies. Give me Amari trying to figure out how dating Zélie's brother would work. That, I would be interested in... but that would cut away from the very teenage dating angst the novel mires later chapters in. I am so very, very over Sexy Bad Boys.
The Belles (Dhonielle Clayton) (2018): Did not finish. Plucky teen girl fights beauty standards and corruption, in first present tense!
Camellia Beauregard is a belle, destined to be one of the celebrated shapers of beauty in a world where the default is - I cannot make this up - gray people with bad hair and blood red eyes. Headstrong and ambitious, she colors outside the lines at her formal debut, and is punished by being offered a high position - but not the dream position of royal favorite that she lusted after.
This is a 52 chapter novel that has been well-received in YA circles. Trying to read this reinforced my conviction YA and I aren't meant to be. By the second chapter I was skimming for Camellia's inevitable downfall. By chapter 10 the story had progressed to "sixteen year old magical beauty queen comes in second", which doesn't speak to any part of me in my mid-30s. This is some Vanyel-level emo! ("Vanyel-level emo" is not a compliment to the protagonist.) Apparently later there's further royal intrigue and the decadent Orleans culture is revealed to be rotten at its core, but the emphasis on lush prose over nuanced characterization or getting an early start on exploring the magic the belles wield quickly lost my attention. The choppy sentence structure also wasn't my thing. Commas are awesome! Bring back the semicolon! Give me dialogue instead of internal musings for a full chapter. Also, give me a protgonist who is either less annoying or less naive. The Belles might be for someone, but it didn't do a thing for me.
Tess of the Road (Rachel Hartman) (2018): Plucky teen girl fights stifling family and social expectations, in
cahn.)Sixteen year old Tess, fresh off arranging her twin sister's marriage, is compelled to run away from home to find herself.
...it's not quite as dire as I make it sound? There is a clear pro-sex ed agenda, especially in the flashback sections of this first person narrative. The story is framed around Tess' growth as a person, with helpful persons and character-building adventures coming along just at the right times. Tess walks away from her family and quickly runs into an old friend; part of her growth is recognizing that she may have a deep and wonderful friendship with this person, but they can still have been a terrible, difficult parent. (She doesn't make the leap to considering what has made her own parents difficult and kind of terrible, but this is the first in a duology.) The sister setup is very similar to Holly Black's novel: oldest of twin sisters as protag, with an older sister having her own adventures. It's tempting to extend the comparison and suggest the Hartman is the novel I'd feel comfortable recommending to teen readers, but the Holly is the one they'd find on their own and fall in love with.
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) (2018): Plucky teen girl fights zombies and discrimination, in first present tense! Set in the 1880s, the novel is told in first person present tense by Jane McKeene, a black teen in a South that didn't lose the war so much as hastily set it aside when the dead started rising from the Civil War's battlefields. African Americans are forced into zombie battle duty in their early teens, with predictably devastating casualty rates. Jane has escaped that fate so far, sent to learn zombie-fighting at a school for Attendants, female fighters who serve upper-class white women. However good her form is, Jane struggles with an intelligent, rebellious nature, which sets in motion the novel.
At the novel's conclusion, we don't know where the undead came from, or if any plan can resist their spread without ruinous propagation of life. We're told Jane's family was forced out of their home and is on their way to a rumored stronghold that Jane knows will not welcome them. And Jane and the hot young doctor are having feelings for each other.
Zombies are Not My Subgenre; Dread Nation didn't shift me on that opinion. There's the seed of an interesting push-pull between rebellious Jane and prim, color-inside-the-lines Katherine; but the narrative keeps throwing these boring potential romantic interests in the way.
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.
Forewarned by Cahn's comments, I was aware the protagonist had been targeted by a "witches float and the innocent drown" neo-Fascist government. In this case, teens are kidnapped by Sidhe, and usually are killed in some horrific fashion. Protagonist Nessa (for for Vanessa) has survived her harrowing ordeal, and is taken by the government on her way to reunite with fellow survivor and second third-present PoV Anto. So when the brutality and cruelty for the sake of demonstrating that the world is brutal and cruel became rather too much, I felt no guilt dropping this.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-08 04:52 pm (UTC)I think I'm ranking Tess > Dread Nation > Cruel Prince > Invasion > Belles > Children.
Isn't Tess actually third person past tense?
this may have something to do with my ranking it first(well, okay, actually it doesn't directly, but it's indicative, I think.)But yes, your movie pitches comment is essentially what bugged me about, especially, Children, only you articulated it far better! I just felt like it was just like all the other YA books despite being in fantastic!Africa, but your statement gets more to the heart of it, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-11 03:57 am (UTC)I think I like Children a bit more than you, but as I type that I think, "well, there's some structural complexity from the rotating PoV, but the arcs are bog standard," and "but what about the torture porn?" and "Inan could be interesting, if the author did the exactly the opposite of what I suspect she'll do in the rest of the trilogy". So... maybe I don't like it more than you.
I found Belles unreadable, so I may rank it below Children. Because [spoilers], I want to give it another chance! But also because [spoilers] I suspect trying to read it again is going to go really badly.
The visual language of Belles is another example of YA that would convert to screen very effectively, I think.