2015 Review Round-Up: Juv Fiction: The Scavengers, Michael Perry

The Scavengers
Michael Perry
ISBN: 9780062026163
Juv dystopia, spunky girl heroine, a bit overexplained at the end.
Read Summer 2015

This was a fun "beginner level" dystopia.  It had elements of zombies a la Walking Dead, it has the scrappy heroine and a grizzled old mentor and his kitchen-witchery wife.  Family in peril, younger sibling needing protection.  Bonus points for random wordplay (sometimes genuinely funny, sometimes seemed a bit effortful) and a demented chicken.

Our girl has named herself Ford Falcon because it sounds really cool.  Please don't look at the actual car, she knows it's a beater.  But it does provide a nice cozy place to sleep, all half-buried in the abandoned rural scrapyard her family now calls home.  There aren't many people out in the country now, what with the government offering everyone free food and protection inside the new domed cities.  But a few holdouts linger, and her family is one - or they were, until someone trashes the family home and they all vanish.  Now Ford is on her own (but not really, there are wily neighbors to help out) and it's up to her to find her family, and try to build a home again.  A pretty good yarn, and a good gentle allegory for the push-pull of adolescent yearning to be safe at home, but also pretty sick of being stuck at home.  Recommended for kids who are ok with pretty intense scenes of abandonment and lots of pages spent with creepy corn zombies.

Short Reviews: May 2013. Libriomancer & Disaster Diaries

Libriomancer, Jim C. Hines.  ISBN: 978-0756407391
May 2013
Urban fantasy.  Excellent story (I didn't even mind the fire-spider!) with an intriguing magical system based on the creative spark of fiction writers, and the power of the written (typed/inked/tattooed) word available to practitioners.  Awaiting a sequel (Codex Born)

The Disaster Diaries, Sam Sheridan.  ISBN - 9781594205279
May 2013
Funny trip through various unlikely apocalypsae, especially considered that they're all strung together into one single narrative, beginning with a mega-quake, proceeding through into a zombie infestation, escape from totalitarian government, into a desert wasteland road-warrior phase, then a Postman-like scenario, and finally into a nuclear winter.  The fictional narratives are fun and engaging, but they don't always point directly to the real-world lessons that the author learns or experiences.  I'm sure that trapping and tanning is important, but perhaps more so is orienteering, no?  Good companion to such books as the Zombie Survival Guide, but a bit hefty to make it into the Bug-Out Bag.  

Gated, Amy Christine Parker

Gated, Amy Christine Parker.  9780449815977.

YA dystopia/cult thriller:
Read September 27, 2013

Lyla is the "Little Owl" of the community - always watching and observing, staying a bit apart.  She's a gentle soul, who fights against her lingering qualms about the necessity of the sacrifices that the Chosen have made.  Life in the community is peaceful, but they all know that when the End comes, the Unchosen will attack the compound to steal what they need in a desperate attempt to escape their predestined destruction.

Pioneer is the leader of this community, and he's been watching Lyla carefully.  As the end grows ever closer (3 months and counting) he's begun to realize that this one questioning girl could unravel his entire plan.

Cody is the son of the local town sheriff, and he's determined that Lyla realize that she and the community have all been had by Pioneer's careful indoctrination over the years.

Lyla's mom is the true tragic figure of this story, broken and defeated after the unsolved abduction of Lyla's young sister, just days before the Towers fell.  Even now, years later, she yearns for the destruction of the world, and even the dissolution of her own being, to be with the Brethren and experience eternal life with her missing daughter again.  

Excellent story, well-crafted plot, and believable people.  Overall suitable for younger teens, except for the death and violence at the end.  (very graphic in two instances, and many other deaths alluded to)

The end is left a bit unfinished, not in a "to be continued" sense, but in the real-world sense that life goes on but stays connected to the past, and nothing is ever entirely tied up in a nice pat bow.  

Off the Road, Nina Bawden

Off the Road, Nina Bawden

Read September 19, 2013

Juv/YA post-apocalyptic England.  

12 year-old Tom lives in an Urb, secure in the knowlege that he and all other children are the most important people in the world.  Malcontents and "bad people" were exiled from the Inside in his grandparents' days, and everyone here is happy, well-adjusted, and safe in their highly regulated lives.  His information is incomplete, as he'll discover when his grandfather makes a run for the Outside instead of passively relocating to a "Memory Theme Park" for old people.  Gandy has lost his wits due to age, Tom's sure.  Despite this, Tom still loves him, and he follows the old man of 65 into the frightening woods of Outside, to save him from the dragons and wild men that lurk there.

Very similar in themes and world concept to Shyamalan's The Village, and Haddix's first book Running out of Time.  Similar likewise in that too much deep thought after the book ends will bring headaches and irritation, despite an innocuous and forgettable plotline involving the messy nature of family, the balance of convenience and safety against freedom, and who the true movers and shakers of policy are, both In and Outside.  I know I read too much, and am often too demanding of the genre, especially for books aimed at younger readers, but I really do wish writers would apply behavioral science or simple economics to their dystopias and alternate histories.

For one example: Inside, a draconian one-child law is such the absolute reality that the very words "sibling" or "brother/sister" are considered foul language.  So how does that mesh with a child from Outside "visiting" the interior for the summer break, with the gloss from the book that "The Trusties don't run checks on children during the school holidays."  Right.

Raiders' Ransom, Emily Diamand

This is the beginning of a series.

Set in post-apocalyptic flooded England (similar idea to Ship Breaker, but very different feel) there are 10 remaining counties of England, ruled by an idiotic Prime Minister - everything else has been lost to the sea or to Greater Scotland.  (Imagine this set in America, with everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line suddenly part of Expanded Canada.  What shock!  What horror!) 

Anyway - the poor suckers stuck in those last Ten Counties suffer mostly in silence, working fishing boats and trying to keep up with their taxes.  Technology is forbidden.  Up north, the sinful Scots use all sorts of tech, but they're in league with the devil, so that's why. 

Lilly and her seacat only want a nice peaceful fisher life - her, her seacat, and her sweetheart Andy (who will hopefully marry her and still let her go fishing!) living together until the far future.  Yeah right.

Raiders attack, stealing the PM's daughter (who was stowed at the fishing village with her exiled aunt), and Lilly sets off on a quest to retrieve the girl and save her village from impression or hanging from the asanine PM himself.  (Getting the impression throughout this book that the author isn't too fond of politicians.) 

In the alternate viewpoint, Zeph is the younger son of the boss of the Angel Isling gang of raiders.  They fled London in the great flooding, and now they prowl around, stealing from the Scots and the fishing villages alike ("no one helped us escape, so we don't owe them any loyalty" is the idea here).  Family is everything, and life is brutal, with slaves and captives galore, and turf-wars over status and position.  His dad just stole the PM's daughter!  The Boss is actually looking forward to starting a war with the PM - he can't wait to fight it out and prove once and for all that the Raiders are the true Englishmen!

By some miracle, Lilly and Zeph, along with the seacat and an intriguing "jewel," meet up with each other and have to figure out how to survive the chaos wrought by one small theft of one small girl.

Not a world-stopping read - there were some technical difficulties.  There were some really interesting characters picked up and then dropped nearly instantly (Lilly's "uncle" comes to mind) but with a series, I'm willing to give that a chance to repair itself over time (still, for a single installment, it was a bit abrupt).  The plot was strangely herky-jerky, and more than a tad unrealistic in all of the chance meetings and lucky breaks - but so is most juvenile fiction.  Even the world was strangely ad hoc - the PM and bureaucrats were described as well off, but if all they have is a tiny collection of fishing villages, where does that come from?  Likewise, despite religious protestations and enforced borders, technology from Scotland wouldn't be entirely unknown to desperate natives just a few miles down the pike.  Similarly, London itself is totally flooded - or maybe just a muddy mess, or maybe only flooded at high tide.  Lots of questions unanswered about how things work in this world. 

I did appreciate that the dual narratives were very clear and demonstrably different.  I really like knowing who is "speaking" from the very first, and clear character concepts are absolutely necessary for that sort of writing convention.  Also - seacats.  Great idea.  I love cats, and the idea of strange little grey kittens latching on to someone and helping them navigate over undersea obstacles and by forcasting weather changes - really neat concept!

Overall, pretty good - Not an amazing read, but I am looking forward to the sequel.

Previously Published Review: This Time of Darkness, H.M. Hoover

I'll begin by stating that I was unfortunate as a child to never run across this particular author. As an adult, I have so far read Children/Treasures of Morrow, Orvis, and This Time of Darkness. I have to say, all of them are fun reads, and if I HAD read them as a child, would unreservedly have rated them all as 5s, and been quite enthusiastic about the ideas, characters, and plots presented.

Coming to them as an adult, I notice a lot of little things that I wouldn't have noticed or cared about as a child. (There will be spoilers below, but nothing directly concerning the plot - simply to give examples.)

Several of these little things are contradictions in the maturity level of the intended readers. On the low-maturity end, there is very little exposition or explanation for the state of reality as it is presented. Every physical area gone through is accepted as-is, with no questions or commentary on their history, future, or relatedness to the other areas. While it is appropriate for the characters to not know, as a reader, I wanted to have a bit more background information on what they were seeing and experiencing. Limiting the information by simply hinting at past conflicts makes those places seem more juvenile and safe. In addition to that blandness, the relationship between the leads is strictly platonic, placing it securely into lower-middle-school range.

Contrast that with high-maturity flashes such as the following: Amy's mother wants her gone so that she can have a live-in-boyfriend, people who break even minor rules are straightforwardly assigned to torture in the form of 'treatments' which leave them mentally handicapped, a fellow-student is described as so bright that he was bored in school and spent his time "playing with himself until he was fixed." Now, perhaps I have too many pets, but there's only one thing I see that particular phrase referring to, and it's a little jarring to come across in the middle of an ostensibly middle-school read.

Other slight hangups are in the suspension of disbelief. Several times, events unfold in statistically unlikely ways to pave an easier way for the leads, or to present events and/or concepts for them to ponder. While pondering is well and good, I would have preferred a less heavy-handed method to allow the children to arrive at the same ideas. In a similar vein, having the children put a bit more of their own effort and ingenuity into the actual attempt would have made their adventures a bit more dramatic and purposeful.

Now, despite the above nitpicks, overall this was a highly enjoyable read, and I'm holding on to it to offer as a recommended read for any budding sci-fi, futurist, or dystopian literature fans.

Brief Plot Description: Amy lives in the sealed world with everyone else, including crazies who live on the sidewalks.  Space is tight, food and water are scarce and bad, and people are controlled through drugs, media overload, and conditioning.  When a boy appears who claims that there is a world outside, everyone thinks he's crazy.  Amy gives him a chance, and they make their way up and out: first into a domed pleasure world for the elite, and eventually into the agrarian post-apocalyptic world of the unprotected outdoors where the boy is from.