"The Long Way To a Small Angry Planet," by Becky Chambers

I have Sam Maggs to thank for this fantastic read - she described this book on Twitter as a cross between Mass Effect and Firefly. That's one hell of a recommendation. This succinct and ultimately accurate review is what led me to give this book a try, and I am so glad I did.

The Long Way To a Small Angry Planet is the best book I've read all year, and probably the best hard sci-fi I've read ever. 

The book concerns the colourful and diverse crew of The Wayfarer, a tunnelling ship that builds transport pathways between stellar systems by literally cutting holes through space. They have enough work to get by, but not enough to get rich - until their captain, Ashby, secures a government commission to build a tunnel to a planet whose mysterious inhabitants have only recently agreed to an alliance. The job comes with a mind-boggling payday, but will take almost a year to complete, so the crew is in for a pretty long haul.

While the eponymous small, angry planet is the overarching plot, the novel unspools in an episodic format - quite a bit happens during the year it takes for The Wayfarer to reach the tunnelling point. Everyone on the ship will find themselves tested in different ways, and the aliens on the crew give Chambers a golden opportunity to explore some pretty bizarre and unique perspectives about the nature of humanity and its relevance to the rest of the universe.

And what a universe! Chambers crafts a fascinating galaxy populated by various cultures and species, and while Humans aren't exactly endangered, they have very little influence beyond their own territories. There are massive cities built to host multiple cultures, as well as isolated frontier planets where the locals have created their own. Best of all, the rich worldbuilding is all expressed through the characters and their organic interactions within the story. Apart from a few articles here and there, there is no info dumping. The reader is free to explore and discover everything along with the Wayfarer's crew.

The novel's strongest, most outstanding selling point is the characters. I loved everyone on this ship - from Rosemary (a shy Human clerk who's never been off Mars), to Sissix (a reptilian pilot), to Dr. Chef (the most lovable alien caterpillar SpaceDad ever). Here's where the Firefly influence kicks in - while there's plenty of drama, conflict, and cultural differences, these characters truly love and care about each other. While spending a whole year together on the ship might bring up issues and baggage, at the end of the day, they're family.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a brilliant, rare science fiction novel that successfully explores vast galaxies and alien themes without sacrificing the warmth and empathy of character-based storytelling. Put down what you're reading and read this instead.
A+

"Starship Troopers," by Robert A. Heinlein

Starship Troopers is my dad's absolute favourite book of all time by one of his favourite authors of all time. So of course I had to read it for my self-imposed Parental Book Club.

But I was worried. Yes, Heinlein was part of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, but this novel was released in 1959 and I thought it would be dated. I'd overheard discussions about his allegedly stilted language and stiff characters  (especially the female ones). It certainly didn't help that certain rabidly conservative groups in the sci-fi community revered this novel for being "simple" sci-fi that focused on action rather than "agenda."

I opened this book with such lowered expectations, it shouldn't be a surprise that Starship Troopers overcame each one of them easily.

This book was nothing but surprises - the vast majority of them pleasant.

The novel follows the military career of Juan "Johnnie" Rico from the point when he joins the Terran Federation's Mobile Infantry (MI) in the 22nd century. Johnnie joins the army on little more than a whim and discovers the military is far tougher than he gave it credit for - especially once war breaks out with the Bugs, a race of super intelligent insects operating under a hive mind. However, over the course of the book, Johnnie not only falls in love with the job, but the man it's turned him into.

My first busted preconception about this book was that it would be simple and apolitical. WRONG. This book is all about politics. In the future, only Citizens (people who have successfully completed a term of military service) are allowed to vote or participate in politics. You can volunteer for the military whenever you want, and the military has to accept you (regardless of sex, age, race, religion, or ability), but then it's up to you to sweat and toil and earn your franchise. If you wash out or resign, you don't get another chance. Ever.

Sure, Heinlein is conservative, and this set-up would do nicely as the dystopia for one of today's YA novels, but you can definitely understand his reasoning - the only people who have the right to vote for society are the ones who've volunteered to put society's needs ahead of their own. The contrast between Johnnie's lifestyle before joining the military with his life after neatly outlines the novel's definition of power: Johnnie was born to a wealthy, privileged Filipino family but had no voting rights and a father who'd already picked out a career for him. He gains his power after joining the military - by choosing his own path and rising on his own merits. In this case, the power to vote is a symbol of Johnnie's autonomy.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the novel's diversity - at least comparatively, for the time period it was published in - with a Filipino hero and a cast that includes hispanic, African-American, and Japanese characters. That being said - while women are apparently "superior pilots" in the future, we only see, like, two of them, and then very briefly.

Did I agree with all the politics? Um, nope. There's a cringe-inducing chapter devoted almost entirely to the Usefulness of Corporal Punishment and how Psychology is Ruining Kids Today that made me want to shout at the teenagers to get off my lawn. And this novel takes a very cynical view of human existence that suggests that morality is a disguised survival instinct and that humans are innately savage, violent monsters.

Preconception number two: this would be an action book. Wrong again - you can blame this one on the terrrrrrrible film adaptation. There's maybe a handful of action scenes, and they're all brief. Heinlein's preferred style is to introduce the reader to a fight and then skip ahead to focus on who won, because the action isn't what's really important. Most of the novel is dedicated to military life in between combat - the training, the technology, the relationships and the social structure. Heinlein's take on the military is an extremely positive and compassionate one. The novel toes a fine line between being pro-military and being pro-war, but it manages that balance pretty well.

I went in expecting a stilted, vaguely-out-of-touch story and wound up sucked into a compulsively-readable, thought-provoking political sci-fi work. I should have known better - they don't give labels like "Golden Age of Sci-Fi" to chimps.
A-

"Carnival," by Elizabeth Bear

Carnival's plot is wildly and enjoyably convoluted, but I'll try to convey the gist: Michelangelo and Vincent are two diplomats (and former lovers) from the Old Earth Coalition Cabinet who seek an audience with the Parliament of New Amazonia, a planet that's managed to remain independent. On the surface, the two men are supposed to broker an alliance. Secretly, they've been sent to discover the source of New Amazonia's miraculously clean energy and claim it for the Coalition. Unfortunately for them, the powers that be in New Amazonia have their own ideas.

Old Earth and its allied planets are under constant pressure from the Governors - a manmade race of artificially intelligent beings programmed to maintain ecological balance. Part of that balance includes population control and resource distribution - the Governors will go into Massacre Mode and start culling if a planet's population gets too high or if the environment starts to decline. The tyranny of the Governors has forced the Coalition to adopt a desperately expansionist philosophy: the more planets they colonize, the more space and resources there'll be to go around, which means fewer excuses for the Governors to intervene. On Coalition planets, resources are tightly controlled, and neither mediocrity nor nonconformity are acceptable.

The Coalition's societal structure is twelve kinds of fucked up, but we quickly learn New Amazonia's freer way of life isn't automatically better. In New Amazonia, women are the ruling class while men are second-class citizens categorized into two camps: "stud" males who have to earn their status by performing gladiatorial challenges, and "gentle" (gay) males who are permitted to be servants and artisans.

Carnival is a clever and intricate science fiction novel about the many ways in which different societies fail to live up to their ideals. The novel encourages you (at least at first) to view the Coalition as the soulless aggressor, but New Amazonia has troubles of its own. Both societies feel they have the science and the history to back up how they've structured their worlds, but their vast generalizations leave swaths of people out in the cold.

It helps that all three protagonists (Vincent, Michelango, and New Amazonia's Lesa) teeter on the edge of being outcasts in their respective societies. Vincent and Michelango have to officially hide their homosexuality from their superiors (the inability to reproduce is seen as a waste of resources), while Lesa rages that her soft hearted, intellectual son will soon be forced to give up his studies because of his gender. While all three are strongly influenced by their environments, due to their outcast status, all three are clear-eyed enough to spot the flaws in their ways of life.

Carnival also asks: should one accept one's society's inevitable inadequacies to preserve the peaceful status quo, or should one risk death and sacrifice to form a better society - even if that society will eventually wind up failing somewhere down the road as well?

Carnival isn't perfect (it can be incredibly difficult to keep up with all the double-triple-quadruple crossing and double blinds going on), but it uses unique settings, nuanced characters, and fantastical set-pieces to ask deeper questions of the reader.
A-

"Farthing," by Jo Walton

The Corpse: Sir James Thirkie, the politician renowned for arranging the Peace with Honour with Hitler. Found in his bed, with a Star of David affixed to his chest with a dagger.

The Gumshoes: 

Inspector Carmichael: An up-and-coming investigator for Scotland Yard.

Lucy Kahn: A wayward daughter of the aristocracy whose Jewish husband falls under suspicion. She knows anti-Semitic sentiment will doom her husband if he's arrested, so she must find the real perpetrator first.

The Suspects/Secondary Characters:

Lady Thirkie: The deceased's flighty, shifty, newly pregnant wife.

Normanby: The deceased's brother-in-law, married to Lady Thirkie's sister Daphne. Has a shot at being the next Prime Minister.

Daphne Normanby: The deceased's sister in law - was married off to Normanby after a scandal in her past. A scandal that might have involved Sir James Thirkie himself.

Lady Eversley: Lucy's chilling, devious, class-obsessed mother, and one of the leaders of the Farthing Set.

David Kahn: Lucy's idealistic Jewish husband, who believes (or at least wants to believe) that England remains a just and decent country, immune to fascism.

The Word: How good was this novel? So good, I went out and got the next two books in this trilogy (Ha'Penny and Half a Crown). Consider me a new Jo Walton fangirl. This sinister, layered novel takes the luxurious discontent of an English country house murder mystery and wraps it within the increasing dread of an all-too-likely alternate history.

In this version of history, England ducked out of World War II by arranging the Peace With Honour with Hitler - a treaty which guaranteed England freedom from the war so long as they left Hitler to his own devices on the Continent. This peace was arranged by a loosely-connected group of politicians and aristocrats known as the Farthing Set - more specifically, by Sir James Thirkie, whose appeasement of Hitler made him a national hero.

However, not long after Sir James arrives at Farthing, the country seat of Lord and Lady Eversley (and headquarters of the Farthing Set), he is found murdered in his bed, a star of David pinned to his chest by his own knife.

The novel divides itself between the POVs of two characters determined to find out what really happened. The first is Inspector Carmichael, an up-and-coming investigator for Scotland Yard who is summoned to the crime scene. Thirkie died during a house party attended by all the closest and most influential members of the Farthing Set, so Carmichael knows he'll have to tread carefully in this politically-delicate situation.

The second is Lucy Kahn, Lord and Lady Eversley's black sheep daughter who scandalized high society by marrying a Jew. Neither she nor her husband David were expecting an invitation to one of her mother's parties - but now Lucy suspects her parents' olive branch may have been an intentional plot to set up her Jewish husband as a scapegoat. With anti-Semitic sentiment in England on the rise, she knows her husband will be condemned if he's ever formally arrested.

But who could have done it? And if it was a member of the Farthing Set - why kill the man responsible for their power and influence?

This division of the point of view is the novel's greatest strength. Carmichael and Lucy come from very different backgrounds and their separate observations contribute equally to the final picture of what really happened. Lucy, in particular, is a marvellous character. While she bucked convention to marry a Jewish banker (with whom she is madly in love), she's also very much a product of her privileged environment and upbringing. While more aware than most of the hypocrisy and bigotry beneath aristocratic privilege, she's not above its influence. She's been raised to think of herself as a rather flighty, not-too-clever daddy's girl, even though her tenacity and her loyalty ultimately reveal her to be a much stronger, smarter woman than she thinks she is.

Carmichael's investigations, meanwhile, reveal more about this alternate England. While Great Britain outwardly appears bucolic, prosperous and peaceful because it bowed out of WWII early, its decision to ignore Hitler rather than fight him has allowed the disturbing infection of Nazi ideology to take root in its populace. Lucy's idealistic husband David may believe that England is "safe" from the fascism of the Continent, but Lucy and Carmichael come to know better.

Jo Walton's brilliant novel is gripping, right down to the last page. The intricate mystery, the dynamic characters, and the disturbingly vivid alternate history combine to make Farthing a powerful, and powerfully addictive read.
A+

"Cinder," by Marissa Meyer

The Protagonist: Linh Cinder. A cyborg mechanic forced to fix cars and robots to support the disdainful stepfamily that owns her.
Her Angst: On top of being part machine, she has a huge crush on the son of the Emperor. While his feelings may be mutual, will they remain so once he finds out she can't pass through any metal detectors at the airport?

Secondary Cast:

Prince Kai: The heir to the kingdom. Fights to preserve his commonwealth from the depredations of pestilence, famine, and psychotic evil queens from the moon.

Dr. Erlhard: A scientist who experiments on cyborgs to produce a cure for the plague that's tearing the planet apart - and he discovers that something about Cinder might just hold the key to the planet's stability.

Andri: Cinder's evil stepmother.

Pearl: Cinder's evil stepsister.

Peony: Cinder's rather nice stepsister, who falls ill with the plague.

Queen Levana: Psychotic evil queen from the moon. Uses her psychic powers to convince other people she's beautiful.

Angst Checklist:

• "What do you expect, Mother? I'M HALF MACHINE!!!"
• Moon Queens be crazy
• I love him but we're from two different worlds
• I love him but my stepmum stole my foot
• Parental Expectations
• Secret Royalty
• The Needs of the Many Versus the Needs of the Few

The Word: Right after reading A Long Long Sleep, a sci-fi retelling of Sleeping Beauty that I appreciated more than I liked, I picked up Cinder - a sci-fi retelling of Cinderella that I did appreciate and like. Well, how about that!

It's not a flawless novel, to be sure, but it has a much more likeable protagonist, a truly original and interesting setting, and it incorporates the elements of the original fairytale in highly amusing and clever ways (the pumpkin!).

Cinder lives in New Beijing, the Imperial City of the new Asian Commonwealth in a futuristic time far removed from ours. She toils as a mechanic in order to support her stepsisters Pearl and Peony, as well as her vicious stepmother Andri. Andri hates Cinder because her husband got sick and died on the trip he made to adopt the orphaned girl, and also because Cinder is a cyborg: significant parts of her (a hand, a leg) were replaced with robotic parts when she was eleven.

Cinder's not too wild about being a cyborg either. Since the country they live in considers cyborgs little better than legal property, she risks imprisonment and death if she tries to escape her unpleasant living situation. The only bright spot in her life is Prince Kai, the earnest heir to the commonwealth who asks her to fix a tutor android carrying sensitive state information. This Prince Charming has his own problems - his father the Emperor is dying of the same plague that is cutting a swath through his country's population, and an avaricious foreign Queen is looking to conquer his weakened kingdom by any means necessary.

When Cinder's kind stepsister Peony comes down with the plague, an unhinged Andri blames Cinder and signs her up for medical experimentation against her will. When Cinder is dragged to the Imperial laboratories, however, she becomes involved in a complex conspiracy involving the Prince, the mysterious and incurable plague, and the sinister Queen of the Moon.

Cinder's freakin' awesome y'all. She's got a lot of reasons to angst, but she's incredibly capable and forward thinking. While she struggles with a fair bit of self-loathing over her cyborg parts, she never lets it sway her into believing she's deserving of the ill treatment she receives. She fights for herself and she's a problem solver. I also really love how her inner monologue incorporates her adjustment to being part machine without ever seeming unrealistic, cutesy-clever or "punny."

And Prince Kai is, well, a VNYM. A Very Nice Young Man. He's earnest and well-meaning and righteous and RULING A KINGDOM IS HARD Y'ALL and Evil Psychic Moon Queens be trippin', but he's also not terribly interesting. Which he shouldn't be, to be fair. It's Cinder's book. But, well - he's a nice guy and he works hard but he really never does anything remotely unpredictable.

But now we're starting to get into the book's flaws. There aren't too many - but one of the major ones is the romance between Kai and Cinder. I just don't buy it - and not because of the class differences. Because they don't actually spend that much time together. They always seem to see each other in passing, a few minutes at a time, and suddenly Kai is asking her to be his date for the Super Important Political Ball, and it never seems like anything but the most Random of Choices. Like asking your pizza delivery guy if he'd squire you to your sister's wedding.

I also had a problem with the villain of the novel (and likely the series) - Levana, the Queen of the Lunar Kingdom (the moon). The way the Lunar people were introduced set me up to actually feel for them. The Earthens distrust them because it's rumoured they have psychic powers and chop off people's feet and set people on fire and kill babies and all I heard was, "They live far away on a tiny rock in the sky and look and act different from us, therefore they are EEEEVIL." Perhaps this is just my own reading expectations, but I felt like I was being led to believe they were simply misunderstood thanks to prejudice and ignorance.

But, as we soon learn, Levana really is just that mind-controlling, baby-killing, foot-chopping-off, niece-immolating evil, and the Moon is North Korea in Space. Levana is depicted as so obviously, over-the-top evil that she clashes with the more well-drawn and complexly flawed characters in the novel. Even Andri the Evil Stepmother has nuance and depth and grief that make her a person and not a cartoon. I get that Levana is intended as the series' ultimate antagonist, and that she represents the amalgamation of every Evil Queen figure from Brothers Grimm central casting, but girl needs to tone it down a notch.

Otherwise, though, Cinder is a finely-paced, creative novel with a fantastic, unconventional setting and a cheeky loyalty to the source material.
B+

"A Long, Long Sleep," by Annie Sheehan

The Protagonist: Rosalinda "Rose" Fitzroy. An heiress who wakes up after spending 62 years in frozen stasis.
Her Angst: Her entire life as she knows it is gone - her parents and friends are dead, and the world has changed in unfathomable ways. Her enemies, however, may still be alive...

Secondary Cast:

Xavier: Rose's childhood friend and first love. Rose met him as an infant, but as her parents put her back into stasis, their ages soon started to match up.

Bren: The boy who accidentally wakes Rose up from her frozen sleep, and one of the few friends she makes in this uncertain future.

Otto: An alien-hybrid boy who attends school with Rose and Bren, he commiserates with Rose on their shared weirdness and outcast status.

Mr. Guillory: The CEO of Rose's parent's company - a shady character who is not happy that this pretty popsicle has stolen his company out from under his nose.

Angst Checklist:

• Being an Outcast
• Scientific Ethics
• Underperforming in School
• I Changed My Boyfriend's Diapers At One Point - But That's Not Creepy, Is It?
• Child Abuse
• Self-Hatred
• Corpse Robots

The Word: I checked this book out from the library after reading an effusively positive review of it from the Book Smugglers. However, I found myself supremely annoyed with the novel and its protagonist. And yet - the ending turned the book around for me, and made me question my own reaction to it.

In this futuristic re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, 16-year-old Rosalinda Fitzroy wakes up from stasis to find a strange boy giving her mouth-to-mouth (the CPR kind, not the non-consensual sexytimes kind). To her horror, she discovers she's woken up 62 years in the future. Her wealthy parents bought a state-of-the-art stasis tube for Rose's protection and preservation, but died in a helicopter crash before they could thaw her out or tell anyone about her whereabouts. For six decades, her tube has been mouldering in a forgotten subbasement of her parents' condo.

Now she's awake, with a serious case of freezer-burn, and has unexpectedly inherited her parents' enormously powerful company, UniCorp. As Rose struggles to adjust to a strange future, grieve her deceased parents and boyfriend (a neighbour boy named Xavier), and tentatively develop friendships with the boy who woke her up (Bren) and the classmate who relates to her (Otto) - someone else isn't happy about her reappearance, and would just as soon put her back to sleep. Permanently. 

For the majority of this book, I hated Rose. She was a cowering, snivelling, useless, foolish, self-loathing, doormat martyr of a heroine who stumbles around around in tears whining about how worthless she is while the men in the story tell her she's pretty and take care of her. She's ignored by her foster parents, exploited by her guardian Mr. Guillory, and attacked by a corpse-robot (for reals) and she has to be squeezed like a lemon before she'll even tell anyone she's unhappy or, you know, in mortal danger. What a moron. I couldn't stand her.

But then we start getting into her backstory. I suppose it is a kind of a spoiler, but for the purposes of my review I want to address it, so you've been warned.

I initially thought Rose was put into stasis for her own protection, or because her parents were hiding a high-tech secret life from her, but the answer was far more mundane, and saddening, than I'd anticipated: Rose's parents used stasis to abuse her. Wealthy and entitled, her mother and father would bring her out of stasis to play at being parents with birthday parties and champagne breakfasts and shopping trips - then put her back in whenever she acted out, or disobeyed, or parenting actually got hard.

They weren't interested in having actual offspring. They wanted a permanent child to worship and obey them. And when it looked like she was growing up, despite their most dedicated efforts to keep her childlike and cowed, they left her in the toy chest for good.

The ordinariness (in a sense) of this explanation, and the surprisingly clever way it was slowly unravelled throughout the story, saved this novel for me. Even the most melodramatic and portentous science fictional technology can and will be misused by petty, small people to solve their petty, small problems.

And it (finally) explains Rose's behaviour to a tee. Her intense dislike of herself, her tendency to shoulder blame for every bad experience, her refusal to complain about mistreatment or point fingers at people who are hurting her, it all makes sense because she's been raised to believe her life deserves to be put on "Pause." As much as I dislike Rose as a protagonist, she's a realistic reaction to trauma and abuse. It's also more than a little fascinating to watch Rose's painstakingly slow realization that she even was a victim of abuse.

I still didn't like this book. The heroine was just too passive and whiny for me - but, looking back on my experience reading this novel, that was more due to my own reading preferences than a literary failing on the novel's part. Rose's character is well-developed and realistic. The narrative doesn't push her too far or end her story with a too-soon love interest (which is nice, because her entire relationship with Xavier squicked me the fuck out). The science-fictional setting was detailed and rounded out - almost too detailed, with a lot of elements that weren't completely relevant to the story.

As a book about the insidious nature of emotional and parental abuse, A Long, Long, Sleep was clever and detailed. I didn't like it because, frankly, I don't like reading modern/futuristic fairy tale retellings where the heroines are further victimized. But to each their own. Consider your own reading preferences - if yours are anything like mine, I'd steer clear.
B-

"The Knife of Never Letting Go," by Patrick Ness

The Protagonist: Todd Prewitt. A boy on the verge of manhood, he lives in an all-male settlement where everyone's thoughts are audible to everyone else, an endless Noise.
His Angst: When Todd finds an unexpected spot of quiet in the Noise - and discovers that spot corresponds with a person, a girl, he and the mysterious female are forced to flee every truth he's ever known.

The Other Protagonist: Viola. A space colonist orphaned in a crash-landing, she discovers the new planet and its settlers aren't the paradise she expected.
Her Angst: Her gender and her immigrant status make her a target for the same people hunting Todd.

Angst Checklist:

• Frontier Life
• Misogyny
• Poo, Todd
• Privacy
• Morality
• Gender Relations
• Religion
• Murder

The Word: I'm usually a literal reader. I expect plots to make objective sense and I prefer characters who act in believable human ways, rather than as puppets for some larger artistic message or theme. It's the reason I've never really enjoyed Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon, where the characters are more symbolic than tangible.

However, I really enjoyed The Knife of Never Letting Go, despite the fact that the core concept of the series is blatantly implausible and the story is a minefield of plot holes. When read literally.

When read allegorically, however, it's a fascinating character study with truly empathetic characters, breakneck pacing, and satisfying tension. A bit like Pilgrim's Progress in space.

Todd Prewitt lives in a cursed, dreary hamlet known as Prentisstown. A long time ago, aliens known as Spackles dropped a germ on the human settlers that killed all the women and forced every man's thoughts out into the open. Every man's thoughts became audible to everyone else, coalescing into a constant, cacophonous Noise that the miserable inhabitants of Prentisstown have had to live with all this time.

However, while walking his dog, Manchee (whose thoughts are also audible - he's bit like Dug from Up), Todd comes across a spot of complete silence - an island of quiet in the sea of Noise. When his adoptive parents, Ben and Cillian, read his discovery in his thoughts, the horrified pair pack him a bag and order him to flee Prentisstown before it's too late.

Prentisstown, it appears, has managed to hide a fair number of dangerous secrets despite the open book of everyone's thoughts and Todd's discovery of the Quiet makes him a target for Prentisstown's sinister mayor, Prentiss, as well as Aaron, Prentisstown's insane preacher. Todd discovers one of these secrets when he tracks down the Quiet and discovers it's a person. A girl. A girl whose thoughts he can't read at all. Todd and the girl, Viola, race towards Haven - a larger settlement that promises safety - all the while learning just how much history the men of Prentisstown have rewritten for their own benefit.

The Knife of Never Letting Go paints a fascinating picture of what it would be like to have absolutely no privacy, and how that affects and distorts personal morality. Being able to hear everyone's thoughts with no way to turn them off. Scratch that - to be able to hear all men's thoughts. As Todd and Viola discover - women don't produce Noise. Todd and Viola soon encounter other settlements whose inhabitants have come up with different ways to deal with the Noise and this new difference between men and women. The novel gallops along at an addictive, breakneck clip, using Todd's stream-of-consciousness narration to pull you deeper into the story.

And Todd is such an empathetic character. He's believed everything he's been told, he's been force-fed a certain idea of right and wrong, and then suddenly he's set adrift and has to make those decisions for himself. We, the reader, are put in the same position as Viola. We get to "read" all of his thoughts, all of his questions and observations about the world. As readers, we're used to this level of intimacy with a protagonist's thoughts, but when framed by the concept that every other character in the novel experiences this as well, it brings home how terrifying and bizarre it would really be to have complete access to another person's mind.

While talking about this during the February meeting of the Forever Young Adult Book Club, my FYA friend Mandy pointed out how the novel serves as a cunning metaphor for the age of social media. So many people are willing to spill every detail of their lives on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Vine, even when these instances of TMI can come back to haunt them years later. And as more and more interactions take place online, it's grown increasingly difficult for people to keep secrets in the electronic age, particularly if they're a prominent or famous person.

That being said, the novel's not perfect. There are lots of plot holes - there's really no explanation for how Todd never heard the town's secrets in their Noise over the years. As well, the novel's main antagonist, preacher Aaron, is a superficially evil whack-a-mole villain with zero motivation who pops up at random moments to move the plot.

But damn if I don't want to keep reading and find out what happens next!
B+

"The 5th Wave," by Rick Yancy (Putnam, 2013)

The Primary Cast:

Cassie: A 17-year-old survivor of the alien attack who needs to rescue her little brother, Sammy, after he's kidnapped by aliens.

Zombie: A former high school  football star who's rescued by the surviving military who want to turn him into a soldier to fight the alien menace. But is he brave enough to make up for his past mistakes?

The Secondary Cast:

Sammy: Cassie's little brother who is kidnapped by alien soldiers (or was he?)

Vosch: The commander of the surviving military who helps train Zombie to fight in the human resistance (or is he?)

Evan Walker: A lonely farm boy subsisting in his family's farmhouse who rescues Cassie from a snowbank (or is he?).

Ringer: A hardbitten but talented recruit on Zombie's team who gives him another perspective on the alien menace (or is she - okay I'm done).

Angst Checklist:

• The threat of complete and utter annihilation
• Trust issues
• Dead Parents
• Dead Pretty Much Everybody
• Hamburgers, and the Dirty Deeds Required to Acquire One

The Word: I realize that I'm relatively late to the 5th Wave party. This book has been touted up and down the blogosphere and, for much of that time, I remained more or less apathetic. I wasn't in the mood for yet another super-depressing dystopian YA. But I kept reading the reviews.

The first wave (heh) were all rapturous reviews, all about the details and the worldbuilding and the super-strong heroine, and the lack of gender-specific and homophobic violence to unsubtly show teen readers that Hating the Gays and Ladies Is Bad (an unfortunate trait in lesser dystopians). The second wave of reviews were the naysayers - the ones who said it was boring and meandering and who didn't like the super-creepy stalkery Twilight-esque romance halfway through.

Well, I've finally finished the book, and while I understand the negative reviews about it, I generally liked it. A lot. A hell of a lot. Even - perhaps especially - the romantic subplot.

The 5th Wave is about an alien invasion - only the aliens are definitely not the type to let Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum take them out with a '90s-era computer virus. No, these are aliens who know how humanity thinks. Thanks to electromagnetic pulses, tsunamis, and engineered diseases, they've successfully exterminated 97% of the human population. And those were just the first three waves of their plan.

Cassie, our teenage heroine, discovers the hard way how horrible the fourth wave is when official-looking soldiers visiting her refugee camp turn out to be aliens in disguise, who swiftly butcher every survivor over the age of twelve. Cassie manages to survive, but now the aliens have her little brother, Sammy.

While this is going on, another survivor named Zombie is rescued by the remaining military, who have found a way to identify which humans are real, and which ones are infested by aliens. Zombie undergoes extremely strenuous training in order to help fight the alien menace - but how far will he be expected to go to keep humanity from going extinct?

Yancy creates a truly hopeless situation for humankind - the fourth wave (aliens who look like humans) psychologically hamstrings any sort of last-ditch human resistance. It's hard to join forces against a common enemy when your enemy is indistinguishable from your friend. The resulting tension, isolation and paranoia further shape our characters and their respective grips on humanity. The 5th Wave is an extremely effective thriller, not least of which because the conflict is just as much internal as it is external.

As for the romance - well, it'd be hard to go into detail without spoilers so you've been warned. While Cassie is injured looking for Sammy, she is rescued by a reclusive boy named Evan Walker. He takes care of her, helps her heal, cooks for her, and eventually falls in love with her (and vice versa). The only problem? He's an alien (of course). While I fully understand the people who thought Evan was a creepy, morally-compromisd, stalkery Cullen from Space, I actually really liked him and his relationship with Cassie.

For one, it is so, so heartbreakingly understandable why Cassie would fall for him. After months without real human contact, Cassie runs into an adorable boy who gives her hot baths and homemade hamburgers. Someone she can relax around. Talk to. Be with. The fourth wave turned even ordinary conversations with other people into an unthinkable luxury. But still - Evan's an alien. And he's not exactly forthcoming about that fact.

The big difference (to me) between Twilight and The 5th Wave is that both the narrative and the heroine of 5th Wave acknowledge the romantic subplot's problematic nature. Evan's stalking of Cassie isn't chalked up to his "being in love." He's a Silencer - an alien in human form who is trained to hunt down and kill other humans. And he does so. Many times. The narrative is pretty clear cut on all of this, with no sugar-coating. And yet he can't manage to take out Cassie. The part of him that is human longs for human contact as much as Cassie does, and that part of him might just be strong enough to overpower the part of him trained to exterminate.

Moreover, when Cassie finds out Evan's an alien (using her own brainpower, thank you!), it is a huge conflict for her. She does not take his being a Silencer lightly or excuse his actions before he met her, and we've already spent the first third of the book understanding her as an uncompromisingly intelligent character. So when Evan continues to fight for her, and she continues to feel for him, it results in a hugely satisfying emotional payoff.

In short, Evan is not so much an Edward Cullen from Twilight as he is Spike from Buffy - he's killed people, both story and heroine acknowledge and respond realistically to this, but he wins us over with his heroism is the present.

To me, what makes The 5th Wave so powerful a novel is that the protagonists' victory doesn't come from surviving to beat the aliens, but from their choice to survive even though they know they're doomed. The aliens have all but won - what's the point of going on? Why bother? Why continue? When everything is all but over, just the act of placing value on human life is an act of defiance. Of course, the flip-side of this is that the novel is extremely dark and depressing. The reason this review isn't an A+ or even an A is because, well, there is a surfeit of navel-gazing what's-the-point? internal monologues from Cassie and Zombie. We get it. Life sucks. That's kind of the whole novel's point.

But if you can get past that, The 5th Wave is a well-developed, psychologically tense yet thoughtful novel with a fantastically-realized heroine.
A-

"Hope's Folly," by Linnea Sinclair (Bantam, 2009) - DNF Review

The Chick: Rya Bennton. A security officer aboard the Hope's Folly,  she's determined to protect its Admiral - Phillip Guthrie - from all threats - including a possible traitor on board.
The Rub: She's also idolized Phillip since she was nine years old, which makes objective thinking rather difficult.
Dream Casting: Christina Hendricks.

The Dude: Admiral Phillip Guthrie. In order to help the Alliance against the evil Empire, he has to transport an outdated, malfunctioning ship to a safe haven.
The Rub: He quickly falls for Rya, but he's worried that the age difference and the fact that she's his best friend's daughter will get in the way.
Dream Casting: George Clooney.

Romance Convention Checklist:

• 1 Silver Fox Hero
• 1 Curvy Heroine with Body Issues
• 1 Relationship-Aiding Pet
• 1 Serious Fire (Unsexy Variety)
• 1 Traitor
• 1 Mental Collapse
• 1,339,008 technical terms

The Word: I am a fan of detailed settings, where the environment comes to life because the author has clearly done her research. Unfortunately, with Linnea Sinclair, I've found you can have too much of a good thing.

While I read and enjoyed Games of Command by Sinclair, I was bored to tears by The Down Home Zombie Blues. The endless deluge of technobabble left me feeling lost and distanced me from the story and the emotional relationship.

I had the exact same reaction to Hope's Folly. I made it about 240 pages in before I had to start to skim. Phillip Guthrie is an Admiral of the Alliance - the band of space rebels who hope to overthrow the evil intergalactic Empire run by the dictatorial Tage. Unfortunately, the Alliance is short on pretty much everything - ships, guns, crew members - so Guthrie winds up with an outdated bucket of a starship, a dedicated but depleted skeleton crew, and orders to transport the ship to the protected dockyards of Ferrin.

One of Guthrie's crew members is Rya Bennton, a talented weapons expert whose father was killed in one of Tage's purges. While part of her hopes to avenge her father's death, another part of her is just happy to be working under Phillip Guthrie - her childhood hero and one of her father's best friends. She is ridiculously in love with Phillip, and has no idea that he soon comes to return her feelings. Unfortunately, there's a pesky 16-year age difference, the fact that Rya is Guthrie's inferior, and the problem of two separate space villains and a space traitor who want to either kill or capture Guthrie before he makes it to Ferrin.

Linnea Sinclair is an absolute master worldbuilder, and if you love and are experienced with military science fiction you will probably love this novel to pieces. If you are, um, more of a novice when it comes to sci-fi, this book may very well bore or confuse you.

Jargon. There's a lot of it, along with endless descriptions of military procedure, the ship's design, the different decks, the training of various crew members, and the technology used to control every little appliance on the ship. It's not enough for Phillip to give an order - the author also has to explain what his order means, his history with the crewmember he ordered, the science behind the technology ordered, and the various parts of the ship that the crewmember will pass or deal with in his quest to fulfil the order.

Frankly, I'm not sure how many of these details are ever relevant, and it's rarely entertaining. After two hundred pages muddling through confusing names and details, I only had the barest sketches of who the protagonists were. Guthrie is Old, has a Bum Leg, and is Stressed All the Time. Rya Thinks She's Fat, loves Fondling Guns, and thinks Guthrie is Hot Stuff. I never felt the story let me dig any deeper than that - there were too many details and schematics and technobabble sucking up air that would be better spent on the romance, which moves at an absolute snail's pace.

After about two hundred pages of determined reading, I realized that it was difficult to pick up where I left off because all the technobabble basically read the same to me, and that's when I realized I needed to back away. I skimmed to the end, but nothing really interesting happened.

I would hesitate to call this a bad novel or even a poorly-written one. It is extremely heavy in technobabble, but if you're familiar with science fiction this may very well not bother you as much as it did me. Bear in mind though, if you're not familiar with science fiction, this may not be the book to start with. Or end with. I'm not sure I'll be trying Linnea Sinclair again.
DNF

"Just Like Fate," by Cat Patrick and Suzanne Young (SimonTEEN, 2013)

The Protagonist: Caroline, a 17-year-old girl who's lived with her grandmother for five years, ever since her parents' vicious divorce.
Her Angst: When her grandmother has a stroke, Caroline has to make a choice - should she stay until the bitter end, or shake it off and spend a few hours unwinding for herself?

Secondary Characters:

Simone: Caroline's BFF, who asks Caroline to go to a party with her three days after her grandmother's stroke. Depending on whether Caroline goes or stays, their relationship encounters a few hurdles.

Natalie: Caroline's estranged older sister, with whom Caroline's always felt at odds.

Teddy: Caroline's understanding older brother, who lives at the nearby Clinton College dorms.

Joel: Caroline's longtime crush - in the "Stay" universe, he comforts her in her grief and the two start a relationship.

Chris: A cute college boy Caroline meets at a party in the "Go" universe on the night her Gram dies.

Angst Checklist:

• Grief
• Guilt
• Broken Families
• Virginity, and the Unsatisfying Relinquishment Thereof
• Pretentious Music
• Fate versus Free Will

The Word: Just Like Fate (which was a lovely gift from the SimonTEEN Blogger Party at BEA) is the perfect example of a fantastic premise utterly wasted.

17-year-old Caroline is horrified when her grandmother, with whom she's been living for the last five years, has a stroke. Her body already weakened by a recent bout with cancer, Gram isn't long for this world. After spending three days by her bedside with her various family members, Caroline gets a call from her best friend Simone, imploring her to take some time for herself to relax at a party. Does Caroline stay with her Gram, or does she go out to try and unwind?

Actually, she does both. The narrative gives us two alternate stories - what would have happened had Caroline stayed and heard her Gram's last words, and what would have happened had she gone to the party and missed her grandmother's death entirely. 

The novel hints at some interesting consequences - in the "Stay" universe, Caroline achieves a shaky reconciliation with her estranged sister Natalie and the two renew their relationship. In the "Go" universe, a guilt-ridden Caroline abandons her family and nearly ruins her friendship with Simone thanks to misplaced resentment. 

And yet, the novel never goes further with the idea of these two paths diverging in a wood. There really are no real, solid consequences to Caroline's actions that separate the "Stay" from the "Go" universes. It's a cheat, really - Caroline never really loses or gains anything significant by her decision to go or stay. She miraculously makes peace with every character in both universes by novel's end and even winds up with the same love interest in the 11th hour, which seemed like a huge cop-out. 

The premise seems to be mainly an attempt to shoehorn in two YA romances as Caroline courts a different boy in each universe - the hipster longtime-crush Joel in "Stay," and goofy college student Chris in "Go" - while ultimately winding up with her Twu Wuv in both versions.

It doesn't help that our main character is a mopey, selfish, and thoroughly unsympathetic drip. Yes, in both universes she's grieving the loss of someone very important to her, and teenagers are not known for their emotional intelligence. However, I cringed at her utter self-absorption and how she acts like she's the only one grieving Gram's death. She holds everyone around her to an unfair standard but demands special treatment because her pain is more important. 

She's particularly egregious in the "Go" universe, in which she abandons her mother (whose own mother just died) to live with a father she's never spoken one word to in five years, and proceeds to ignore all her calls for months. And none of these decisions come with any permanent consequences, which only contributed to the novel's unrealistic tone. You can't just treat someone like that and have your relationship proceed as if nothing's happened.

Caroline is also pretty passive and doesn't solve a lot of her internal conflicts by herself because the narrative conveniently drops some easy solution into her lap at every opportunity. So instead, most of the conflicts come from some Random Stereotypical Cheerleader Villains (for reals) and a Big Misunderstanding that's only a misunderstanding because the heroine is a complete moron. 

The premise promised an interesting story about how much a single decision can alter your life and your relationships with the people around you. Instead this novel's ultimate message seems to be that your actions don't matter because life will just magically fix everything for you. In a world where every decision counts, I recommend the universe where You Don't Read This Book.

C

"Altered," by Jennifer Rush

The Protagonist: Anna O'Brien. Raised in backwoods New York with her workaholic single father, she likes to help out with his important work...
Her Angst: ...experimenting on four super-hot super-powered guys in the secret lab in his basement. Four super-hot super-powered guys who are not very pleased about being locked in that secret lab.

Secondary Characters:

Sam: The Super-Mysterious Love Interest One. He's so mysterious!

Nick: The Angry One! But he's got a Tragic Past!

Cas: The Dumb Blond! He's so cute but so stupid!

Trev: The Nonthreatening Bestie! He knows all of Anna's secrets!

Connor: The leader of The Branch, the super-shady outfit that funds Anna's father's research on Operation Hot Abs for Science.

Riley: Connor's second in command, who tracks the escaped subjects of Operation Hot Abs for Science.

Angst Checklist:

• Absent Parents
• Free Will
• Gee, Could There Be Ethical Implications to Keeping Hot Boys In Cages?
• Gee, Could There Be Ethical Implications to Being In Love with a Hot Boy I Help Keep in a Cage?
• Who's Your Mama Drama
• Abs For Great Justice
• Identity and Memory
• Mad Science!

The Tweets: I Live-Tweeted this little masterpiece here.

The Word: Well, I don't know what I really expected with this book. I picked up the ARC at last year's BEA because the idea of a heroine dealing with Hot Boys In a Science Lab sounded interesting.

And I pretty much got exactly that - Hot Boys in a Science Lab. And nothing else.

Anna is just an ordinary, everyday girl with a Mysteriously Dead Mother and a Secret Science Lab in her dad's basement. Imprisoned in that basement are four Desperately Hot Amnesiac Boys who have undergone genetic enhancements at the orders of Daddy's Totally Not Shady Organization, known as The Branch. 

Anna helps take care of the boys, who are being groomed and altered to become either a) super soldiers or b) the World's Most Expensive One Direction Cover Band. We have Trev - the Non-Threatening Happy One. Cas - the Dumb Blond One. Nick - the Angry But Damaged One. And finally, Sam - the Extra-Mysterious Love Interest One. Anna has been in love with Sam for five years and inexplicably reconciles this really well with the fact that she helps keep him and his bros in cages and doses them with happy gas once a week in order to perform non-consensual tests on them.

But it's all good because she also bakes them cookies and gets them library books. You know, almost as if they were people.

Everything changes when two head honchos from The Branch arrive with a small army of minions to take the boys away because this latest stage of the project is shutting down. Anna is distraught, and suspects the honchos are up to no good - but since her morality radar doesn't so much as beep at the idea of Underage Boys Being Experimented on in Glass Boxes, it's hard to tell whether her fears are legit or she if just doesn't want strangers taking her living Ken Dolls out of her Barbie's Dream Science Horror Basement.

However - surprise! Sam's not as helpless as they assume and he brutally kills eight minions before breaking the other boys out. Anna's dad grows a conscience in three seconds flat and helps them escape, and orders Anna to escape with them. Of course, Anna is still in True Love with Sam, so nothing as pesky as the mass murder of eight people will dim her Speshul Feelings for him, so she flees into the night with Happy, Dopey, Angry, and Love Interest.

There are a few glimmers of originality in this story, I'll admit. Apparently, before Anna started helping her father in the lab, Sam escaped a bunch of times and had to have his memory (and the memories of his bros) wiped each time, but not before leaving a series of clues tattooed and scarred on his own body (and on the bodies of his bros!) that indicate the coordinates of safehouses, the contact information of potential allies, and even the location of hidden evidence that might be enough to buy Happy, Dopey, Angry and Love Interest's freedom. These sorts of clues kept up my interest in the story, but only barely.

Because honestly? This book was like one, big, stinky pile of stale fan service. Oh gee, the boys have clues literally written on their abs that only Anna with her keen eyesight and a UV flashlight can detect?  Boys who all (with the exception of Angry Nick) adore and want to protect Anna because, hey, in between being drugged and gassed and poked with needles and having their memories erased and their rights infringed upon - she made them cookies! That counts for something, doesn't it?

None of the boys have any serious character development beyond displaying Their One Personality Trait. The Dumb Blond One makes Dumb Jokes. The Angry one acts Angry. The Happy One is Anna's sexually nonthreatening Bestie. Their abs and glutes have more dimension then their personalities do.

This all would have been bad enough if Anna had been anything more than the most empty and passive of Placeholder heroines.

Unfortunately, she's not. She spends the vast majority of this book tagging along with the boys and doing whatever they tell her to while trying desperately not to get shot at. She has no ambitions because leaving would mean spending a life without her Precious Boys. She has no moral identity until the plot demands it - she was happily complicit in the boys' imprisonment for five years and the book never examines this nor does she feel a shred of guilt for it. She makes no decisions, performs no actions that are not ordered, influenced, or motivated by a man - either the boys or her father. 

And guess what? She is one of only three female characters in the entire novel, and the other two get shot in the head mere pages after their introductions, and one of those is a minion who isn't even named.

The characters are empty ciphers for Blatant Wish-Fulfillment, the sci-fi worldbuilding is laughably shallow, and while the clues and puzzles are slightly clever, it's not enough to support an entire novel, much less a series!

If you like the idea of the Mad Science of Frankenstein and The Bourne Identity mixed with the troubling gender dynamics of Twilight, then this is your book.

If that last sentence terrified the living crap out of you, than do what I wished I'd done - and avoid this novel entirely.
D+

"Fitzpatrick's War," by Theodore Judson

The Protagonist: Sir Robert Mayfair Bruce. A talented young engineer with a knighthood for bravery is delighted to find himself noticed by the powerful and influential Fitzpatrick in his quest for glory.
His Angst: Robert finds his loyalty tested as Fitzpatrick's quest for glory promises to wreak untold devastation on the surrounding nations.

The Secondary Cast:

Isaac Prophet Fitzpatrick: A charismatic, brilliant, driven individual who seeks to unite the world under one banner and culture. However, one cannot make a World Domination Omelette without breaking a few tens of millions of eggs.

Charlotte Raft: A possible agent of the mysterious Timermen who falls in love with Robert and decides to be his wife. His beliefs factor very little into her decisions.

Sir Jeremiah Truth Hood: The leader of Fitzpatrick's armies. An upright and religious man, like Robert he also comes to regret his actions committed at his commander's behest.

Pularski, a.k.a. "Buck": Fitzpatrick's hulking bodyguard, who hides a deeply moral soul as well as a talented green thumb. He much prefers tilling beautiful gardens and growing flowers to carrying out Fitzpatrick's murderous orders.

Dr. Murray: A member of the mysterious Timermen society, the only people on the planet who still possess electrical power and outerspace travel. Because of this, they unofficially rule the planet and can easily manipulate any power player to their whims - including Fitzpatrick.

Zimmerman: A nefarious member of Fitzpatrick's secret police force with no capacity for human empathy whatsoever.

Science Fiction Convention Checklist:

• Countless Zeppelins
• 1 Bioengineered Race of Locusts
• 2 Secret Police Forces
• Several Flocks of Biological-Warfare-Mosquitos
• A network of Evil Big Brother Satellites
• 1 Secret Evil Racist Society

The Word: With my ReRead Rollout, it was bound to happen sooner or later - but  Fitzpatrick's War, a novel I read and enjoyed some time ago, did not quite live up to my first experience reading it.

The reason I enjoyed it is still present (in the novel's unconventional formatting), but this time around the cleverness of the narrative framework can no longer disguise how tedious, boring, and repetitive much of the novel is.

The story is a little complicated to describe, but I'll try: Fitzpatrick's War is framed as the personal memoirs of Sir Robert Mayfair Bruce, a soldier in North America circa 2490 A.D., in a nation that has been reduced to a warmongering, steam-powered, Neo-Victorian society in the wake of a global disaster in the 21st century that stripped the world of all electrical power. America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and a number of other nations have all united into a mega-nation known as the Yukon Confederacy.

But the story's gimmick is also the fact that this is a "special anniversary edition" of Sir Robert's memoirs that have been edited and annotated by an obsequeious little university professor exactly 100 years later. Sir Robert's memoirs have, since their publication, been deemed a slanderous text, and thus the novel is full of "helpful" (and hilarious) footnotes that explain, elaborate on, and "correct" Robert's treasonous and deceitful allegations.

The reason Robert's writings have been discredited is because he alleges that the legendary national hero Fitzpatrick (of whom Robert was a companion) was not the glorious, noble figure that Official History paints him as, but rather a megalomaniacal tyrant whose actions were manipulated by an insidious secret society.

Still there? Okay - so most of the story involves how Robert, a talented commoner, comes to be included in the inner circle of Isaac Prophet Fitzpatrick, a privileged boy expected to inherit the title of Consul of the Yukon Confederacy. Robert is initially dazzled by Fitzpatrick's attentions and the privileges and promotions this association wins him, but slowly comes to realize that loyalty to Fitzpatrick comes at an ever-higher moral cost.

This is all good stuff, and the personal politics of Fitzpatrick's War are a treat to read (especially when compared to the point of view of the memoir's future editor), but the novel doesn't really have enough of this.

In many ways, Fitzpatrick's War reminded me a lot of Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem. Both authors pay such meticulous attention to their settings, imbuing them with endless detail. The world Judson creates is so complete and detailed - the societies, the geography, the history, the politics, the weapons, the military ideology, and their steam-powered technology.

However, like Solaris, all this detail cuts into the time used to tell the actual story. Despite the unusual and creative setting, the plot of the novel (how one man is completely and utterly corrupted by power) is hardly new and would have suited a much shorter story. In many parts of the novel (most especially during the Yukon Confederacy's assault on the Chinese), the inundation of detail is simply too much. I really didn't need to know exactly how many platoons there were, the descriptions of the different weaponry they carried, and which members carried which guns. In many places Fitzpatrick's War felt like reading a history textbook - lots of detail and information but no narrative. I found myself skimming many passages.

Again, the parts of the novel that involved around actual human interactions and politics were, for the most part, interesting. All the characters had interesting roles to play - however, the one woman in the story (Robert's wife Charlotte) is such an Insufferably Smug Morally Superior Manic Pixie Dream Wife that I just couldn't stand her. It's not that I don't understand her character, and how she was supposed to shock Robert out of his staid ways and get him to embrace open-mindedness, but she could have been dialled down way more, at least if the author wanted us to interpret her as a realistic character rather than a moral-spewing cartoon.

Is this novel terrible? Hardly. It's still well-written with a splendid eye for detail. It's also very interesting to have a novel with two points of view - Robert's and the "Official Historical Account" of the future that aptly demonstrates how official history is written by winners. If you're a fan of military sci-fi, steampunkish settings, and alternate histories, you might very well enjoy Fitzpatrick's War. If you are more a fan of politics and human characters, you should probably look elsewhere.
B

"Crewel," by Gennifer Albin

The Protagonist: Adelice Lewys. While born with a miraculously powerful ability to weave the fabric of reality, her parents have taught her to suppress it to avoid calling attention to herself.
Her Angst: Unfortunately, the government finds out about her powers and proves willing to do just about anything to control it for themselves.

The Secondary Cast:

Amie: Adelice's little sister, who is captured by the Guild after their parents try to protect Adelice from being taken away.

Enora: Adelice's Spinster mentor - a genuinely nice gal, with some pretty dangerous secrets.

Maela: Adelice's superior, and an insanely power-hungry villain who may or may not be anger-banging her personal assistant.

Erik: Maela's personal assistant, who may or may not be getting anger-banged by her, all the while trying to love-bang Adelice with his eyes. Love Interest #1.

Jost: The head valet of the Coventry, assigned to care for all the Spinsters. Gruff, but kind - and fully aware of the Guild's evil ways. Love Interest #2.

Cormac Patton: The leader of The Guild, who has a definite thing for underage girls.

Pryana: Adelice's training-mate-turned-enemy, thanks to Maela's machinations.

Loricel: The Creweler - the one Spinster capable of creating (rather than just re-weaving) raw matter. Without her, their world is toast, and she's not a spring chicken anymore.

Angst Checklist:

• My Parents were Murdered and Then Written Out of Existence
• Two Boys, One Love Triangle
• Literally Everything Bad That Happens Is My Fault
• Gender Roles
• The Needs of the Many Versus the Needs of the Few
• Caring For Your Appearance and How That Automatically Makes You a Terrible Person
• Dystopian Futures

The Word: I really wanted to like Crewel. It seemed to have such an interesting story - in an alternate world, the fabric of reality itself is maintained and woven by powerful women known as Spinsters, and every girl who demonstrates potential for weaving is taken away at the age of sixteen to train in the Coventry to help maintain the ordered nature of their world.

Unfortunately, Crewel turned out to be a dud for two major reasons. Firstly, it tries way too damn hard to be The Hunger Games. Secondly, for all of its colourful attempts to present gender roles in an interesting way, it only ends up solidifying sexist ideas. 

In the dystopian world of Arras, Adelice Lewys returns home after being tested for Spinster abilities, unwilling to tell her parents that she failed. Not that she failed to prove herself a Spinster - but the very opposite. She failed to hide the amazing weaving skills her rebel parents have trained her to repress since childhood, and she can't bring herself to tell them that the Guild will soon be coming to take her away.

Which turns out to be a monumentally stupid decision, since once the Guild shows up, her parents resist and her father winds up murdered. Captured and sedated, Adelice is dragged off to the Coventry against her will. 

As Adelice quickly learns, the Spinsters and the Guild can control the very weave of reality itself, and they use this phenomenal cosmic power to make life harder for just about everyone in existence. Not only can they kill people from a distance (by "ripping" their threads), but they can rewrite people's very identities. Revolution is impossible because Spinsters can even "spot" treasonous thoughts because they cause a person's thread to change colour. Even though Adelice has the potential to be an incredibly powerful Spinster, she has no desire to play God or by the Guild's rules. 

Now, all of this would be lovely and exciting, except that the storytelling in Crewel is incredibly derivative of its literary predecessor, The Hunger Games. See if any of this sounds familiar - Crewel has:

• A cloyingly innocent little sister character whose safety guarantees the protagonist's compliance
• A beloved dead father figure to inspire the protagonist's rebellion against authority
• A government-sanctioned team of stylists whose leader becomes a friend who also harbours rebellious leanings
• A love triangle between a charming but untrustworthy diplomat and a damaged, rough revolutionary. 
• A voracious and tacky media machine for which the protagonist is forced to primp and pose in gowns to promote the party line. 

As well, I found the gender dynamics of Crewel were incredibly troubling and hypocritical, even though the unfair treatment of women seems to be a major theme of the novel. The society of Arras is incredibly repressive towards women: girls are segregated from boys and held to high "Purity Standards." The only jobs available for women are as as secretaries, teachers, nurses, and factory workers. In fact, most people in society want their daughters to become Spinsters, since it seems to be a far more powerful and influential position than any woman could expect otherwise. 

And yet, almost every female character other than Adelice is either a) a shallow twit who cares only about make-up and clothes, b) an evil power-hungry slut, or c) a victim. 

Every woman who is depicted as ambitious, as wanting more than what the male establishment allows her to have, is not only written as a villainess, but as a sexually aggressive and/or promiscuous one. Maela is the main baddie - a violent and unstable psychotic who apparently keeps Erik (Adelice's Love Interest #1) as a sexual plaything while secretly wishing to be the wife of Cormac Patton (the President Snow leader of the Guild). 

Second to that is Pryana. Pryana - without actually doing anything evil  - is depicted as evil and inferior to Adelice because she uses men's physical attraction to her to gain power for herself, such as when she dances and flirts with (gasp!) ugly, old, fat men at a social function while Pure Heroine Adelice only dances and flirts with thin, young, hot boys. Oh, and Pryana likes shopping, clothes, and looking hot! TOTALLY EVIL, right?

Because Adelice, our heroine, is such a fine, upstanding individual. So selfless, so caring. So in love with burly, rebellious valet Jost, who tragically lost his teen bride and baby daughter to the Evil Guild of Evil. Yet when our Selfless, Caring Heroine discovers her Super-Special-Spinster powers don't involve time-travel, her first thought is relief because if she had the power to go back in time and save Jost's family, she's not sure she'd be able to do it. 

I am dead serious. Adelice, our heroine, is glad that she doesn't have the power to go back in time and save her OWN family, because it would also mean she would have to save THE WIFE AND BABY of the boy she has a crush on. Really. REALLY. TOTALLY SELFLESS HEROINE, right?

But what about the Spinsters? They have the power to control weather, transport matter, rewrite existence, and even read people's intentions in the colours of the threads. Surely there must be a girl-power reason that all Spinsters are women? There is! As Adelice discovers, the (entirely male) Guild only chooses to train women as Spinsters because women are more easily controlled. 

I almost threw this book at a wall.

I am not even kidding. That is seriously the book's worldbuilding. Women, apparently, are chosen to be Spinsters not because only women have this power but because women are just naturally more easy to manipulate than men. Just dangle some diamonds and Colin Firth DVDs in front of their faces and they'll do anything, am I right ladies?! Women won't care that they're murdering people or ripping entire societies out of existence so long as those hot baths and foot rubs keep coming! 

Do yourself and your ovaries a favour - avoid this misogynist Hunger Games rip-off. 

C-

You can purchase Crewel here. But don't say I didn't warn you.

"What's Left of Me," by Kat Zhang

The Protagonist: Eva. In a world where people are born with two souls, she is the "recessive soul" who was supposed to fade away and leave her sister Addie, the "dominant soul," to live her life as a normal human being. She didn't, and she and Addie have been pretending to be only one person.
Her Angst: No one can know she exists, or else both she and Addie will be shipped off to parts unknown by their tyrannical government.

The Secondary Cast:


Addie: Eva's soul sistah and the one who can control their body. She'd rather fly under the radar and live a normal, unnoticed existence.

Hally/Lissa: Schoolmates of Addie/Eva who hide the fact that they're a hybrid - even though they long to find more people like themselves.

Devon/Ryan: Hally/Lissa's brothers - Devon is silent and introspective, Ryan is open, shy and friendly.

Kitty/Nina: Addie/Eva's roommates at the cruel psychiatric facility they're shipped to when their condition becomes public.

Dr. Lyanne: A doctor at the psychiatric clinic who sincerely believes she can help hybrids reintegrate into society.

Mr. Conivent: A nasty employee of the government who helps round up hybrid children and deliver them to the psychiatric clinic for testing and treatment.

Angst Checklist:

• Personal Identity
• Sisterhood
• Sharing
• Institutionalized Racism
• Medical Ethics
• Sticking It To The Man

The Word: I was excited to start reading this book since I'd heard a lot of positive hype - and, to be fair, I read this book fairly quickly, eager to see what happened at the end.

That being said, I felt What's Left of Me was an example of a brilliant idea with faulty execution.

In an alternate universe, all human beings are born with two souls within their bodies. These two-souled beings were known as hybrids. However, the history our protagonists have been taught is that the nations ruled and populated by hybrids eventually descended into chaos and insanity, and only the Americas managed to free themselves from destruction during the American Revolution by eradicating hybrids from society and closing their borders.

In the Americas, everyone is still born with two souls, but usually by the time a child reaches the age of ten, one soul grows more dominant and the other one harmlessly and peacefully fades away, in a process called "settling." Those who do not settle by this age are taken in hand by the government and sent to shady psychiatric institutions where, more often than not, they are never seen again.

15-year-old Eva hides a secret - she is not supposed to exist. The "recessive soul" to her sister Addie (the "dominant soul"), she was supposed to fade away, and Addie/Eva's refusal to settle by the usual age ostracized and nearly bankrupted their family as they spent years in and out of hospitals trying to "cure" their affliction. For the good of their family (especially their declining brother Lyle who suffers from kidney disease), Addie and Eva have pretended to have settled for three years.

After three years of inactivity, Eva has lost all control over their shared body and is little more than a paralyzed ghost haunting Addie's mind, but she tells herself that it's better than not existing at all. That is, until they're approached by the new girl at school, Hally, who reveals she's secretly a hybrid (her sister soul is named Lissa) and that she can help them hide in plain sight and teach Eva how to move again.

Addie's afraid of jeopardizing their tenuously safe existence, but Eva is so hungry and desperate for the power to move, to live again that she insists. Addie finally consents and they spend more and more time with Hally/Lissa as well as their older hybrid brothers, Devon/Ryan. However, when disaster strikes and their condition is exposed, Addie and Eva are forced to learn the hard way just how "benevolent" their country's anti-hybrid society really is.

Let's start with the good, because there are a lot of interesting facets to this story. First of all, I loved the relationship between Addie and Eva, the push-and-pull, the power dynamic. As someone with sisters, I would seriously go batshit insane if I had to share a skull with one of them and never have any privacy ever, but the two-souls concept allowed for a fascinatingly new examination of sisterly relationships.

I loved how loving and fractured their relationship was - especially with the guilt Addie harbours over being the "dominant" soul who's capable of moving their body and being recognized in society and having a life while no one even acknowledges that her sister exists (not even their parents). I loved how Addie didn't have to set the plot going by visiting Hally/Lissa at their house. She controls their body, she could have ignored Eva's pleas and lived her life in peace and safety, but she didn't. That sacrifice adds so many layers and facets to their relationship. At the same time, I understood their frustration when they disagreed over how to act or move.

That being said, the rest of the novel is really frustrating - partly because some aspects of this novel are so good.

In regards to the central concept, the questions kept building up as I read the novel: what's supposed to be good about being a hybrid? What are the advantages? What can they do that one-souled people can't? Because even by the end of the novel it still sounded like having two souls is a major inconvenience compared to having only one. How do the two souls have lives? How do they choose postsecondary education if one wants to go into Arts and the other into Science? What happens when one soul falls in love with a man and the other soul falls in love with another man? And what about their partners' extra souls?!

And the worldbuilding for this type of society was just as frustratingly vague and nonsensical. For instance, why do parents even bother giving both souls names if they expect only one soul to make it? How do they even identify both souls in a newborn? Do they care when the recessive soul disappears? Do they mourn? Is there a social event, some sort of funeral for this sort of thing? If they don't care, why? How do they accept that one of their children will always be doomed to a premature death?

Again - these questions spring from the fact that Kat Zhang is working with a very original and fascinating story concept. There are so many directions to write about and explore with a concept like this, and I think that's where my dissatisfaction with this novel comes from. The novel has a brilliant idea - and it's put to use as mere window dressing to a standard dystopian adventure about a self-righteous teenager fighting The Evil Authority. Yup, the authority is just plain evil because it believes in the black-and-white "Hybridity is Bad" mindset - even though the story never gives a satisfactory explanation of how hybridity is good.

As for the novel's other features, the writing styles demonstrates some effort at writing lyrical prose, and while I sincerely appreciate that since I loooove lyrical writing styles, in some cases this results in cumbersome or confusing passages. For instance, there's a scene where Eva describes having a rubber stopper slammed into her windpipe - and for a few moments I kept reading to figure out who had attacked her like that, until I realized it was a poorly-integrated metaphor for her sudden silence.

That being said, What's Left of Me was still a quick read - part of that might have been my quest for answers, of which there were very, very few. I suspect many of the answers are being saved up for future books, a theory I deeply resent. I understand the need to save suspense and mystery for future novels, but a first book should still resolve and answer certain obstacles and problems, and I dislike first novels that explain nothing and leave open-ended conclusions in order to manipulate people into buying the next books.

Ultimately, though, my main beef with What's Left of Me is that it could been so much more, but it isn't.
C+
Disagree? You can purchase What's Left Of Me: A Hybrid Novel, here.

"Origin," by Jessica Khoury

The Protagonist: Pia. Born in the hidden scientific community of the Little Cambridge Research Facility after five generations of breeding and experimentation, she is the new face of the human race: invincible, immortal, and perfect.
Her Angst: Trouble is, she doesn't feel perfect - she feels stifled and lonely. And what are her creators - her scientist "aunts" and "uncles" - hiding from her about her origins?

The Secondary Cast:

Uncle Paolo: The head scientist of Little Cam. Responsible for Pia's upbringing and education, he trains Pia to believe that she is the next necessary step for the human race, a next step that needs to be preserved, maintained and controlled - at any cost.

Uncle Antonio: Pia's favourite Uncle, he loves and supports her, even as he expresses a mysterious unease with the direction her training is going in.

Eio: A boy from the Ai'oa tribe of South American natives who live near Little Cam, who befriends Pia. He shares her sense of not-belonging - after all, he's only half Ai'oa. His father, whom he refuses to name, is also a scientist in Little Cam.

Ami: Eio's younger foster sister. Mischievous plot moppet and conflict-bait.

Angst Checklist:

• Finding a Place to Belong
• Discovering Your Parents Aren't Perfect
• Discovering Your Parents Are Not Only Not Perfect, But Evil Scientists
• Morality within Immortality
• Science vs. Religion
• Science vs. Morality
• Science vs. Outright Evil Science
• Kittens!
• Killing Kittens! For Science!
• Insta-Love

The Word: Pia is perfect in every way. She knows this because she's been constantly reminded of this fact for seventeen years by every scientist in the secluded research facility of Little Cam, located deep in the Amazon rainforest. The result of generations of genetic and biochemical testing and an experimental drug called Immortis, Pia has heightened senses, sharper reflexes, a flawless memory - and an eternal lifespan. That's right, Pia is immortal - she will not age past twenty and her skin cannot be pierced. She is the reason for Little Cam's existence and its greatest scientific success.

The only person who tells her differently is her Uncle Antonio who tells her that "perfect is as perfect does" (thank you, Rainforrest Gump), all the while significantly wincing and grimacing to indicate he Knows More Than He Lets On.

The first few chapters of this novel are genuinely intriguing, particularly the descriptions of life in Little Cam and the Amazon rainforest setting. Everyone on the staff, from the head scientists to the laundress, is referred to as "Aunt" or "Uncle" by Pia. Each scientist has their own lab and specialty, and Pia learns from all of them and assists in their experiments. However, Pia is only permitted to study scientific and mathematical subjects (literature and history are forbidden), there are no world maps on the site and no one is permitted to mention city names or geographical locations. Pia's never been allowed outside Little Cam and has no idea where Little Cam is.

For all of her seventeen years, Pia has been studying to become a scientist in her own right and join the Immortis team in order to help engineer more immortals like herself. Even though she's still a teenager, she's terrified of the inevitability of outliving everyone she knows and being left alone, and believes helping to create a perfect, undying human race is the only way to avoid this.

Of course, all that changes when a storm-toppled tree leaves a hole in the electric fence around Little Cam. Pia's curiosity gets the better of her, and not five minutes after crawling into the outside world, she runs into a devastatingly hot native boy with washboard abs and sky-blue eyes.

Naturally, Pia's infrequent adventures outside of Little Cam with the Hot Boy (named Eio) and his fictional Ai'oa tribe clue her in to the fact that Creepy Unexplained Things are Afoot at Little Cam and that her scientist Aunts and Uncles may be paying a higher price for Pia's immortality and special abilities than she initially believed.

My first problem? The Instalove. Gross. Nothing says True Love like a hormonal, isolated teenager falling for literally the first boy with abs she's ever seen! The fact that their adventures occur over the span of a week, ending with undying, eternal love makes so much character sense. Right.

Secondly, don't even get me started on the theme of the Special White Girl being "chosen" to save a tribe full of brown people.

Thirdly, the characters - Pia and Eio. Pia did have some depth - I appreciated how alone she felt in Little Cam, how scared she was of the idea of being alone while everyone grows old around her. I liked how goal-oriented she was and how determined she was to keep learning in order to achieve that goal. That being said, her world-weariness at being immortal seemed contrived and unrealistic, considering she's still the youngest person in Little Cam, has never encountered death, and hasn't outlived anyone yet. I also got annoyed really quickly with her goopy InstaFeelings for Eio and her constant waffling. Once she falls for Eio she seems to lose all her drive and her self-confidence in her own intelligence.

And I had far less understanding for Eio. I thought he was an emotionally manipulative prick who is constantly objectified by the narrative - he's apparently allergic to wearing shirts and his exoticism is always overplayed. He's frequently referred to as "the wild jungle boy," who lives as one with the trees and the monkeys with his uninhibited shirtlessness.

I might have tolerated the Instalove a little more if it wasn't constantly used as an excuse for both characters to act like complete fucking morons. Pia makes dozens of flat-out ridiculously stupid decisions because of Eio, and Eio has an unintentionally hilarious scene where he nearly kills himself trying to climb an electric fence to get to Pia, repeatedly shocking himself over and over because he just loves Pia too much - or at least too much to stop, use the brains God gave a butternut squash, and formulate a plan that actually works.

As to the novel's themes, while I appreciated the exploration of morality and ethical responsibility with regards to scientific experimentation and research, I thought the battle between Cold Hard Emotionless Science and Loving Homegrown Spiritualism was way too obvious and black and white. The storytelling itself is also exaggerated, ham-handed and almost cartoonish in places - I'm sorry, but the minute an absentminded scientist "accidentally" creates ants that "thirst for human flesh" but keeps them alive FOR SCIENCE! - the story loses all realistic credibility with me.

Everything was just a little too exaggerated for me with Origin - the Instalove, the Instantly Evil!Scientists, the purely good and spiritual natives, the man-eating ants (for reals). There are some good ideas here and some excellent scenic description, but not enough realistic characterization or emotional depth to hold my interest.
C+ 

Disagree? You can purchase Origin here.