Nothing but Shadows

I read a lot of series. Not by design, but I get a book, I like it, and lo and behold I come to the end and, surprise-it’s a series. The past couple of months I’ve reached the end of a couple of fun series, The Parasol Protectorate being one, and have been lucky enough to also land the ARC’s of many sequels in my series repertoire. I love getting sequels, but as I have stated before there is a certain on edge feeling that goes with them. Namely, you ask yourself “is this book going to make or break my new favorite series?” (see Curse of the Sequel). That question has unfortunately been answered for one of my most touted new series of 2011.

Ashes by Ilsa Bick was a book I really stood behind in September of 2011. I blogged about it, I tried to put it into hands, both young and old, and with a cliffhanger ending, I genuinely could not wait for the next book. So, when a copy of Shadows, its sequel arrived on my desk I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to dive in where I had left off. Which is exactly what I did, only it seemed as though I was diving into something wholly unfamiliar, and gruesomely unappealing.

What I loved about Ashes was Bick’s great twist on the post-apocalyptic zombie-esque thriller, her young characters were forced to survive in unimaginable conditions, but somehow they all managed. The addition of the elderly survivors, and a village straight of The Lottery only added to the appeal. The characters were interesting, and the concept of an EMP bombing aftermath was really ingenious. So, how could the sequel be so bad?

Shadows was a choppy mess—over-ambitious in its goal to cover so many narratives and horrifically violent. Basically, it’s like Rob Zombie took over the writing and tried to add as many bloody cannibalistic torture scenes as he could. Let me preface this upcoming rant with this—I am not a prude, or a wimp. I was a teenager who loved horror movies, wrote a twenty-page research paper about the evolution of the slasher film in college, and don’t typically shy away from watching, or reading about violence. That being said, even I have my limits and this book’s gratuitous use of torture, graphic cannibal scenes, and its villainization of, believe it or not, Vietnam Vets, has not only pushed me to the limit, but well past. There is no happiness in this book. I can deal with that. I can deal with bleak, if it’s delivered within the brilliantly written confines of a book like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but the lengths to which this author goes to instill upon the reader the horrors of this post-apocalyptic world, and the utter lack of humanity presented within these Vietnam Vets, who appear more like Nazi doctors experimenting on young survivors for “knowledge”, is just plain sickening. There is no other way to put it and when you add in an uneven narrative, and a flimsy attempt at creating an underlying mystery/suspense plot within the confines of a horror novel, you just get a ghastly mess of a book.

In some ways I could excuse the atrocities of this novel, and just shrug it off as a book that’s “not for me”, except for more thing—this is a book written for teenagers, with the words 14 & up printed on the back, and shelved in the teen/young adult section of your local bookstore. I’ve sold Ashes to teens—young teens, and there is no way I would put Shadows in a young person’s hands. I would even be reluctant to do so in an adult’s hands without a major disclaimer and a lot of working to persuade them not to buy it. I’ve also noticed that this book will be marketed with AMC’s Walking Dead—a brilliant series for fans of the genre, and filled with it’s own horrors, but here’s the difference—reading is highly personal, the images take place in your mind, the words in your voice, it’s all very insular in a way, making it far more real than when you watch something similar in the movies and television. I’m sure many people would argue with me, but what I read in this teen novel far more horrified me than anything I’ve seen in The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, or even Doomsday—in which there is a scene where someone is literally barbequed on a spit and fed to a roiling mass of punks. This is mostly because the intimacy of the images in my mind while reading far outweighs the actors scripted portrayals onscreen. I can shut the movie off, but it’s hard to do that with my own imagination.

To say I’m disappointed by Shadows would be an understatement. It is one of the most disappointing sequels I’ve ever come across, and definitely the most gratuitously and unapologetically grotesque in it’s display of violence, particularly torture and Veteran behavior. I not only would never recommend this to someone, but I feel as though I need to revoke my earlier approval of it’s predecessor Ashes, which sadly due to it’s cliffhanger style ending can’t stand on it’s own. I love sharing books, and am saddened to see such a promising series go to hell in a hand basket, but Shadows is a book that just needs to go away.


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Lost in Persuasion

I’m about to say something that is sacrilegious to many readers. I am not a big Jane Austen fan. Go ahead and gasp, throw something, or think belittling thoughts about me and my reading preferences, but I’m just not. People who know me are probably shocked by this statement, most likely because I own every Jane Austen novel—sometimes multiple copies (Pride & Prejudice), but that’s mostly due to gifts, inheritance, and an odd feeling that every bibliophile is required to own them (also they tend to be pretty). The thing is, I like the stories, the characters, the witty banter, but I tend to tune out during the prose—you see, I prefer the movies. Go ahead and curse me again, I understand. I love the screen versions of Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park, but I just can’t extend that love to their written forms. I’m not saying I hate the books, far from it; I just don’t love them as other readers do.

That being said, for some reason I have always been drawn to Persuasion and most particularly to the books that try to reimagine that narrative. For some reason I am utterly drawn to that tale. I don’t know if it’s the slight tang of melodrama that reels me in, the love-loss story of Ann Elliot and Captain Wentworth, or just a connection with Ann on some subconscious level, that draws me in every time. Whatever the reason, be it psychological on my part, or that it is entertaining for me on a level the other novels cannot attain to, I can’t get enough of Persuasion.

In that vein, I have, over the last several years, found some reimaginings of this novel that have brought me great enjoyment. One is The Family Fortune by Laurie Horowitz, a contemporary look at the tale that takes place in the literary world between the daughter of the founders of an impoverished, yet famous foundation established to help budding writers and an author, once spurned for his lowly station—who is now highly successful. The perfect mix of comic and tragic, this modern romance is a wonderful blend of “chick-lit” and Austen homage.

Another, a teen-aimed retelling with a post-apocalyptic style twist, For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund (release date 6/12/12) is a fun reintroduction to Ann and Wentworth’s love story. Set in a distant future, where the destruction of scientists’ genetic engineering has rendered many of the population into “Reduced”—people with severe mental handicaps, “Luddites” now rule what is left of the world, living as though it were once again the 19th century. Elliot North, the daughter of an esteemed Luddite family falls in love with Kai, a “Post”—descendant of the “Reduced”—lacking any of the malformations of his ancestors, but refuses to run away with him for the sake of saving her ancestral estate and those people who are dependant upon it for life. When years later an impoverished Elliot is forced to take on Post borders, she finds herself once again in Kai’s presence, but now he is the prosperous and famous Captain Malakai Wentworth, filled with a heart-wrenching loathing for Elliot and her past decisions. Despite the post-apocalyptic theme, this book is remarkably true to Austen’s original narrative. She faithfully recreates Ann, her struggles, her narcissistic family, and her seemingly unreciprocated love for Wentworth in the characters of Elliot and Kai. Author Diana Peterfreund was able to evoke in me the same feelings of frustration with (Kai) Wentworth’s actions and his persecution of (Elliot) Ann’s actions. I cursed Kai, and wept for a despondent Elliot, wanted her family packed off to Timbuktu, and hoped for a dramatic reconciliation (although, it was never really in doubt). All the things that drew me to Persuasion I found alive within this book. The addition of futuristic science was also interesting and innovative, recreating the past within a new world, while holding onto the essence of Austen’s original plot. Despite the horrid title—I consistently mess up the title when talking about this book to people, because it is just too convoluted, regardless of it’s underlying meaning to the story—I found myself being drawn in just as much as I was with Austen.

So, while I still stumble through the works of Austen, hoping to someday catch the fever that enthralls so many, I will remain on the outside looking in on enthusiastic readers. Who knows, maybe there is hope for Jane and me in forthcoming years, but for the time being I will hold tightly to my enjoyment of Persuasion and it’s many reincarnations. For now, I will be happy with the newest, For Darkness Shows the Stars, will revisit The Family Fortune, and await whatever the literary world throws at me in the future.


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Really, Another Dystopic? Okay, Maybe One More

As everyone knows, The Hunger Games comes to the theaters today (well, technically at 12:01 this morning) and it’s almost all anyone can talk about. I can’t blame the world, I’m right up there with everyone else and right after work I will in line with the masses to partake in this pop-culture phenomenon. As regular readers of Sifting through the Pile know, I have a slight penchant for dystopic stories. Well, maybe more than slight. I tend to devote a lot of blog and recommendation time to this genre, so recently I have made a concerted effort to specifically mention many of the non-genre books I read that are equally as fantastic and close to my heart. Because of this attempt to diversify my review writing I have mistakenly let a really captivating and rather innovative book go by the wayside. So, in honor of The Hunger Games movie release, I am courteously and briefly going to suck readers back into my obsession with post-apocalyptic/dystopic fiction.

Pure by Julianna Baggott has been available for the past couple of months, and thanks to my misguided attempts to diversify, has gone largely unnoticed amongst my readers. Pure is yet another of those post-apocalyptic books where society has been split apart by war (in this book, the Detonations), with some members of the population secluded within a rigidly controlled, sterile environment and others, outside, starving in what remains of a world that no longer really exists. While this is not an unfamiliar premise in the least, what sets apart Pure from the other novels of similar vein is fusing. Those who live on the outside under an autocratic rule, with little food, and much fear are fused; meaning that during the Detonations (nuclear strikes), some were horribly scarred and disfigured, and others became fused with the environment surrounding them. Mothers became fused with their children—children who are never capable of physically growing, forever tied to their mothers arms, one boy has a flock of birds fused to his back, another is forever fused with the desert floor to become a monster of the worst and most frightening proportions, and our heroine, Pressia has a hand fused to a baby doll—its blinking eyes forever attached to what was once a hand. It is only those within the domed autocratic society that are unmaimed, or rather, “pure”. When Partridge, a pure with the highest of lineages, escapes the confines of the domed society in an effort to find the truth of his brother’s suicide and his father’s machinations, he discovers Pressia and her world of survivors. It is there that the two, along with an unlikely band of fused, uncover a plot and connections between Partridge and Pressia that take them all into a danger beyond their wildest imaginings.

What seems at first glance to be an absurd plot with a concept that could easily become cheesy and idiotic, is in actuality a brilliant use of imagination. The fusing is described in such a way that it actually makes sense from a scientific angle (at least for a layperson), and the fuses themselves—whether they are alive, like the children or birds, or inanimate like Pressia’s doll head—are almost characters in themselves, as Baggott makes clever use of them throughout this first book in, what is to be a series. It’s actually amazing how such a seemingly odd, and possibly ruinous plot point ends up “making” the story and when genetic manipulation, paramilitary groups, authoritarianism , and revolution are thrown into the mix, readers can’t help but become engrossed.

I won’t say that if you read one genre book this year, Pure is the one to read—there are too many well-written vehicles out or about to be released, but I will say, that should you choose to partake, Pure is one to give more than a second glance to.

For a bit of entertainment, check out the book trailer below.

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Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down

In Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick, 17-year-old Alex, suffering from both the loss of her parents and the ever encroaching presence of an inoperable “monster” of a brain tumor, is thrown inexplicably into a war beyond the imagination. Power is out, people are dropping dead, the monster in her head feels like it exploded, and teens are turning into crazed cannibals. Is it the zombie apocalypse? No, but it might seem like it at first glance.

Bick takes a highly unoriginal topic and manages to make it fresh and compelling. Alex, an experienced backpacker is on the outskirts of civilization (the Michigan Mountains to be exact) when EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) bombs are set off throughout the world. Teamed up with an 8-year-old girl and young soldier fresh out of Afghanistan, Alex must navigate and learn to understand the changed world. Bick uses her past as a former Air Force Major to pepper the narrative with brilliant survival tips, weapons knowledge, and very believable plot elements. At times I even found myself wondering what I own that could survive an EMP. This is the cleverness of Bick’s story, she takes something very possible and turns it into a gut wrenching saga that involves, of all things, zombie-like teenagers eating their way through the handful of people, mostly elderly, who survived the attack. Instead of an all out bloody zombie battle, we only see them about four times, but with each successive sight they seem to be growing smarter, planning, and working together. This first book, in what is to be a trilogy, is more about what has happened and how people are going to try and survive, as opposed to a “World War Z”. It’s subtle and smooth, transitioning ever so carefully toward the set-up that is to come in the last pages. I do have to warn of a cliffhanger ending that is preceded by a very “Village-esque” scenario seen all to often in films and books like The Passage, or The Forest of Hands andTeeth, but the prior 300 pages are so real, and move so swiftly, that it’s difficult to be annoyed by Bick falling into the clichéd pit of post-apocalyptic thrillers.

 
So, final verdict: Ashes, great premise, infuriating ending (let’s get that next book rolling out soon please), and all around good read for both teens and adults.



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