Author: Patrick Ness. Publisher: Walker Books. Pages: 496. Summary (taken from Fantastic Fiction): Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him - something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is. Part one of Ness’s “Chaos Walking” trilogy, “The Knife of Never Letting Go” is gripping literally from the first line. It might go up there as one of my all time favourite first lines along with “The Crow Road” (google it, it’s brilliant.) It only gets better from there, with the pace consistently exciting and Todd’s colloquial, almost stream-of-consciousness narrative giving a natural and very readable tone to the story. It’s not too grown up to realistically portray a teenage boy’s thoughts but it’s also not too immature that it’s beyond obnoxious; there’s just the right amount of slang (to show evidence of Todd’s literacy troubles, which are handled well.) I particularly loved how Todd saw everyone else’s Noise – the different font changes to match each person, the change in font size to show distance and the sheer genius that was the Noise of Todd’s dog Manchee, they all worked fantastically to show the constant chaos of being able to hear everyone’s thought at once. It’s a very effective technique. I thoroughly enjoyed Todd’s character. I understood his frustrations and I wanted him to succeed. Violence pretty much goes hand in hand with dystopia and this book is no exception. Ness is particularly unflinching in his portrayal of violence. Like the rest of the novel, it’s an extremely unsentimental affair. The New World that Todd is a part of is full of complex ideas but not so much that a younger reader won’t understand them. While I was a little worried about how this society viewed women, it worked well within the context of the story and presented an interesting contrast between Todd, automatically considered more worthy than a woman in this society, and Viola, the more worldly and educated of the two. It also presents an interesting and subtle debate on science versus religion. Although the religious element is also what stops me from giving the book 5 stars. The main villain of the piece, the wild minded possibly psychopathic preacher Aaron, is far too one dimensional for this story. He was suitably scary, don’t get me wrong, but it felt like taking the easy way out. The ending, a massive cliff hanger, sort of makes up for him but it still disappointed me enough to stop this getting the full 5 stars. But believe me, I whole heartedly recommend this book. I am dying to get my hands on the other two books and I hope you all go out and do the same. “The Knife of Never Letting Go” is why I read YA. It’s bold, unflinching, gripping, tense, original, intriguing and a whole other bunch of buzz words that don’t do it justice. I read this book in two sittings and still begged for more. 4/5. Coming next: The YA Mafia Ninjas and my thoughts on the clique. 
“The Knife of Never Letting Go”
Cover impressions: Nice, simple and striking. After all the horrors of vampires, werewolves, angels and leaking wombs, I was relieved to return to a comforting familiarity of dystopian sci-fi. It’s a particular favourite of mine, with “The Handmaid’s Tale” being one of my all time favourite books. The dystopian novel has seen a surge of popularity lately, mainly thanks to “The Hunger Games” (which I still haven’t read and will get around to it one day, I swear) and with upcoming novels like “Matched” by Ally Condie setting the hype machine on fire, I can see it becoming the next big thing.
Review: "The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness
Coming soon on the Sparkle Project!
Now that I'm no longer clogging up my poor, infinitely patient LJ friends pages with my ramblings, I feel a sudden urge to spam the hell out of this blog, but since I don't want to run out of things to say too quickly, or annoy the followers I have (12 followers! Hi to you all, that's seriously cool and flattering) I'll pace myself. Until then, here's a brief summary of things to come.
- The House of Night series recap. (I described the first book in the HoN series by P.C. and Kristin Cast as being the YA version of Anita Blake. It has all the trademark crazy but with less sex and more slut-shaming and annoying teen speak. Since I had a little too much fun with my review of the first book Marked and a few commenters said it only got better/worse from there on, I have decided to continue the series for your enjoyment/mental torture. Since the series is currently 7 books long, with an 8th coming soon, I won't be short of material in case I need to pad this blog out a bit.)
- Rambling musings. (I'm still fascinated by the genre and the wider messages and implications of the tropes and cliches, not to mention the business of the YA industry itself, and believe me, I'm not short of things to say on it! So expect a few rants on that, the next one being about the dreaded YA Mafia that I'm so terrified of.)
- Film Fridays. (As well as loving books, I'm a big movie nerd and I thought it would be fun to stir the pot a little by doing a few movie reviews. Some will be random reviews based on whatever I last saw and hopefully I'll share some of my thoughts during awards season - I'm a nerd for that sort of thing and my predictions are usually pretty damn good - but mostly it'll be similar to the Sparkle Project with my thoughts and recaps on the sort of films that women are supposed to like and the further topic of female pop culture that I briefly touched on in this post. If there's a film you think I should review then please leave a comment below.)
- Book reviews! (To quote the oft-imitated M. Bison, Of course! To be honest I'm still looking for stuff to review. I've got my eye on a couple but I'm a bit worried I might just end up repeating myself and rambling on about the same stuff I said in the original project. So if there's something you think I should read then once again, leave a comment here or on my LJ. My next review will be up tomorrow or Thursday. It's a positive one too!)
- Literary Nostalgia. (A suggestion of a friend of mine, I will sporadically be revisiting the books that I read during my adolescenes. I read 65 books in my first year of high school so I'm going to look back at some of those and see how they've aged, if they still hold up to scrutiny, if I still enjoy them and the like.)
And to be honest that's all I have planned for now. Hopefully it will amuse and entertain you all.
Review: "The Dark Divine" by Bree Despain
"The Dark Divine"
Author: Bree Despain
Publisher: Egmont Books Ltd.
Pages: 384.
Summary (taken from Amazon): A prodigal son. A dangerous love. Haunted yearning...Grace Divine, daughter of the local pastor, always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared and her brother Jude came home covered in his
own blood. Now that Daniel's returned, Grace must choose between her growing attraction to him and her loyalty to her brother. As Grace gets closer to Daniel, she learns the truth about that mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes most: her soul.
Cover impressions: Even the most bright eyed and optimistic of YA fans knows that this cover is designed to appeal to the Twilight crowd. I have something of an aversion to feet so the toes sort of creep me out even though the basic design is striking (nice nail polish too), and the freakishly pale skin suggests vampires (which the book does not have, it’s about a sort of wolf-like creature that lives to serve good or something like that, it’s sort of badly explained). I know that vague, mysterious covers with the weakest of connections to the actual book are nothing new but this cover genuinely has absolutely no connection to the story at all. It’s solely to entice Twilight fans. Hell, it got this cynical weirdo to give it a go so it worked. Rule number one of the sparkle project: never trust a cover.
This book came with a lot of blog hype. I saw it being promoted pretty heavily on a lot of paranormal YA blogs, pretty much all of which raved about the book. Personally, I felt like this was a book that did not need to be a paranormal story. The story itself is incredibly weak and not at all helped by an incredibly slow pace and structure (Despain has all these ridiculously unnecessary sub-headings that say things like “Later” or “After lunch”) and amateur, immature writing. It starts off slow and the pace never picks up throughout its 300+ pages. Every event seems incredibly contrived for the sake of creating tension that never appears. For example, Grace’s dad, the most perfect of perfect preachers who always does good, even if the face of the ridiculous and dangerous, gives her a book full of a series of letters which pretty much explain everything she needs to know about Daniel’s condition and how to cure it. So what does Grace do? She ignores it and mopes about her undying and impossible love for Daniel for a few more chapters before picking it up as Despain tries to create some sort of exciting climax.
Like a growing portion of heroines in YA paranormal romances, Grace is not particularly smart, despite what she and other characters say, and is so blank a slate you’d swear she’d just been removed from a box of packaging and thrown into the story before the batteries were put in. She is too perfect, too nice and far too dull, completely willing to do everything and anything for Daniel, no matter how he treats her. There were points where one thinks one sees evidence of vertebrae but they disappear very quickly. There’s this completely baffling scene where Daniel explains that his lycanthropic state is genetic and Grace blames herself! She falls into this sobbing pile of self pity, saying “Why did I have to press the issue, refuse to stay ignorant? Why couldn't I stop myself from creating this mess? If I had just stayed out of things, if I had just minded my own business for all these years, would everything be the way it used to?” I think Despain was trying to show some sort of religious conflict between what Grace wants to do and the beliefs she has been raised with but I never saw it beyond a few scenes where Despains tells us this but doesn’t show us this.
The religious characters in this book seemed like huge cardboard cut outs. They, like Grace, were too clean and too perfect. Even in moments where Grace wonders about the secrets her family are keeping from her, they’re still too clean. The strange exception is Grace’s brother Jude, who is the most perfect Christian boy and high school hottie but gradually reveals himself to be a very bitter and angry young man. This had potential but Grace needed to keep reminding us that he was her brother and she would always do whatever he wanted her to do, except stay away from Daniel. There was something so stupid about Grace elevating her brother to that level despite his obvious faults, it wasn’t Christian-like at all.
Then of course there’s the bad boy love interest Daniel. He’s not a bad boy – he’s just a jerk. This seems to be a recurring theme, I’m getting far too used to it. How is he a jerk, I hear you say? Let me count the many ways: he’s arrogant, often very rude and has mood swings at the drop of a hat. There’s one scene where he genuinely cries whilst proclaiming his love for Grace (reader, I eye-rolled) which feels more like a fantasy love scene written in a fan-fiction. Beyond a common love of art, Grace and Daniel have nothing in common except for growing up together for a couple of years and we’re supposed to take this as good enough evidence that they love each other. Even though it’s not mentioned on the blurb and it’s supposed to be some shocking reveal, I guessed Daniel’s furriness pretty early on. There’s a difference between subtle hints and constantly telling us moments where Daniel “barks”, “growls” or looks “like a starved dog.” It began to feel a little condescending. The paranormal element was very under-developed and didn’t feel organic to the story. If Despain had written a story about a girl’s inner conflict with her beliefs and her family as she grows up then it would have been a much better story. As it is, “The Dark Divine” is the blandest of stories. There’s nothing about this book that grips the imagination or encourages me to read the upcoming sequel. For the incredibly easily satisfied, this book may fill some sort of hole but for everyone else, it’s a badly written, badly plotted mess with no originality. It’s too dull for me to even properly rant about. This book was made for meh-ing. And that’s just what I’ll do.
2/5.
(End note: the typeface for this book was really weird. It was like it had been written in bold with some very obscure font that felt distracting and annoying to read. Keep it simple, publishers. Just because the prose is overtly dressed up, that doesn’t mean you need to make the type so.)
The Boy Problem vs The Girl Problem.
Anybody who is unfortunate enough to follow me on Twitter probably saw me post a link to this article written by YA author Hannah Moskowitz entitled “The Boy Problem” and they most certainly would have seen me react accordingly. For 10 consecutive tweets. My apologies for that. So to christen the new blog I thought I’d share my polished opinion here.
Moskowitz states in her blog biography that she’s the author of several books, most of which have yet to be released, and also states that most of them have male protagonists so maybe she’s doing some sort of self promotion here. She also offers a brief disclaimer that this piece is her opinion and there will always be exceptions so I’m going to offer exceptions. I can understand where she’s coming from to a point and she’s made some other interesting blog posts about the genre, including one about the exclusivity of YA which I agree with more than this. Right now the genre is very geared towards a female audience because the trend is for Twilight style books. It’s easier to promote something as “The next [insert trend here]” and this is nothing new. We did it with Harry Potter, we’re doing it with Twilight and Percy Jackson and it won’t be long before we do it with the Hunger Games. I can’t comment on her point that boys don’t read YA because obviously I’m not a boy but it does seem like an odd generalisation to make. Gender specific trending is nothing new and while I’m okay with it to an extent (I’d still love more gender neutral media, not just in literature) it is true that since the current bit trend is very much for girls, all the attention is on that. But my main problems with Moskowitz’s article start here:
This isn’t a complete lie. Right now the YA genre, especially the paranormal trend which I have studied more in depth (well, studied is a very strong word, I ranted more than anything else), is inundated with weak characters that fall into easy to label categories and stereotypes but this isn’t exclusive to the male characters. Take a note every time you come across the bitchy cheerleader type antagonist, their sheep-like hangers on, the kooky best friend, the secretly special heroine, the worldly but passive mother figure, and so on. Right now the genre isn’t getting bucket loads of attention because of strong characterisation; it’s all about the true love. But the reasons Moskowitz gives for this trend are baffling.We've
stereotyped boys.
Most boys in YA fit into four very particular categories: The gay best
friend...the best guy friend...the bad boy...the nerdy boy...
No. Just...no. Frankly, after all the books I’ve read this summer that have included sexual harassment as love and far too many instances of the meek girl needing a big, strong man to save her, forgive me if I seem a little sensitive here when I say that Moskowitz’s point is bullshit of the highest order. Right now the paranormal YA genre is as deep as a puddle. There are obvious exceptions which I’m only happy to talk about but the current fads have led to writers trying to appeal to trends and generally lazy writing. I can’t believe anybody would consider any of the current trend books like Twilight, Hush, Hush and the like in any way empowering to women. They perpetuate the most horrible and archaic of stereotypes that all women need is a big, gorgeous man to take over their life and nothing else. Right now male characters have been stereotyped and arguably sanitised (although turning someone into a sexual harassment expert is hardly sanitising them) but it is not to empower women. It’s to turn them into easy to categorise fantasy figures that perpetuate the worst of messages to impressionable readers. It doesn’t matter if they meant to do this or not because there’s a huge difference between intent and reality. Moskowitz also asks where are the male YA trends, like the boy’s equivalent of Twilight or Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely. There are fantastic books out there for teenage boys, like Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson, The Knife of Never Letting Go (I’m going to review this book later) but the greatest of books transcend gender anyway. This is only a recent trend; right now things are turned in favour of female readers but for much longer it was all about boys. Where was the female version of Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye? To this day, even with the Twilight fad and the sparkle mania, the default gender is male. It’s still considered the unspoken norm for male characters to be relatable to both men and women while female characters are only mouthpieces for ‘women’s issues’ that only girls can relate to.We've
sanitized boys. We've stripped boys of substance
and we did it to empower girls. Somehow, the message "girls can do it too"
became "only a girl can do it," and men became the weaker sex in
YA.
Stop
writing this boy you've imagined in your head and write a real boy. Make him
gross or sweet or angry or well-adjusted or affectionate or uncomfortable or
confused or ambitious or overwhelmed or smitten or anxious or depressed or
desperate or happy. Write a boy the same way everyone has been telling everyone,
forever, to write a girl; free of gender stereotypes, three-dimensional, and
relatable.
Write a girl the same way everyone has been telling everyone, forever, to write a girl’ free of gender stereotypes, three-dimensional, and relatable. Seriously, please do, because right now the most popular YA books aren’t pushing this point Moskowitz is making. I’d love to see well written characters of both genders in YA getting the attention they deserve. They’re not being written badly to empower women, far from it. Right now the genre is brimming full of great stories for both boys and girls, not to mention the wide spectrum of literature that teenagers move onto after YA. Right now, as Tamora Pierce offered in her fantastic rebuttal, the market is more open to girls because girls buy more books while boys are more likely to borrow from libraries and the like. Pierce also writes about why she writes female heroes here.
I wish I could conclude this slightly less ranty piece in a more original manner but Ms Pierce said it best. Both boys and girls need heroes and both need books. We all need strong characters and less sexism and less bullshit.
Welcome to my shiny new home.
Pretty nice, huh? Seriously, it took me far too long to get a template installed.
After I finished up my Summer recap/review series, The Sparkle Project a few days ago, I found myself at something of a wit's end. There was still a lot I wanted to say about the genre, a lot of books I wanted to talk about, both good and bad, and I had a few other ideas for projects/reviews/etc that were connected to discussing YA and its wider influence and implications. So, instead of bugging my LJ friends with constant posts about things they don't care about, I decided to pitch my tent in the proper blogosphere.
So what should you expect from this blog? A bit of everything, I suppose. There will certainly be more reviews and recaps (as well as hopefully an entire series recap of the House of Night books) and you should definitely brace yourselves for more ramblings and musings on the genre and the gufts/curses it bestows upon the faithful reader. I'm also hoping to discuss female pop culture in general, especially that which is designed to appeal to teenage girls. Hopefully there will be lots of surprises too. I will also take requests. Is there a book out there you think I desperately need to read, for good reasons or otherwise? Please tell me and I'll see what I can do.
There's nothing left to say except I hope you all follow.