Summer Book Reviews part 1

[altogetherisi]

I read some books. I had some thoughts about them. I wrote those thoughts down. Ta-daa!

I can't be bothered to post them all at once though, that would be exhausting. Here are spoiler free reviews for Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey and The Traitor Game by BR Collins, which were for the record, both further steps along the way toward my rehabillitating te first person narrative :P 

Guardian of the Dead struck me very much as written for people like me – strong female lead, check, diversity, check, unequivocal rejection of rape culture in passing, check, more complex plot and characters than I was expecting, check, unexpected ending, check. Awesomeness, double check.

I loved the fact of the characters – an insecure tall blonde, an attractive asexual Maori boy, a beautiful and tougher than might be expected girl of Asian descent, a good looking red haired boy – as well as the reality of them, enjoying their  company as it were, their reactions – just who they were. I think this is the first book I’ve read that explicitly included an asexual character, and his coming out story.

And Ellie! I think you are most excellent Ellie, who is – miracle of miracle! – able to be attracted to more than one person at a time. Thank god. Without ever creating a love triangle of painful stupidity. You can’t choose? Well, you may be polygamous, but more likely, you’re an idiot. Ellie is sweet, sensible, straightforward but crucially not at the cost of her character traits. Insecure in some areas, confident in others, she fights with whatever she has, she gets angry and scared and tempted and guilty; and at the end of the day she’s a good person, selfless and doing the best she can to help as many people as she can. Flaws do exist but do not overpower her. Basically, I love you Ellie Spencer. What a wonderful character.

The character that isn’t a character here is the New Zealand setting and Maori culture, myths and traditions touched upon in the book. Obviously it isn’t the job of the book to educate me, but knowing nothing of Maori culture I found it fascinating and so refreshing to read a story involving these elements, and indeed including Ellie’s awareness and acknowledgement of disproportionately white areas and racism, including in a couple of cases the way her own mind works.

Basically, this book is good, interesting and refreshing for a variety of reasons, and perhaps particularly vindicating if you’ve been around the fandom feminism and racism etc discussions of the last couple of years and the ongoing diversity in YA stuff. Yay.


The Traitor Game I got because Play kept nominating it for bookdeyada and though it hasn’t been picked (yet!) I was intrigued. It wasn’t quite the book I was expecting – perhaps I should have read more reviews or something. It was good, a bit painful, a bit harrowing, a bit raw, and yeah, a bit more than a bit different from what I had been expecting.

Essentially, while this book contains two parallel stories about adolescent boys, friendship and betrayals, one set in our world and one in the fantasy world of Evgard, invented by the boys in our world, they are not equally weighted. There is a lot more of the our world story about Michael and Francis, than the fantasy world one about Argent and Columan, and within that our world text an examination of bullying and some aspects of victimhood that I personally found cut very close to the bone. There was also one of those sets of events that due to the characters involved become horrifyingly inevitable – I had many moments of thinking “no, no , no, oh god no, oh please, don’t do that, no, oh jesus, no” D: D: D: And yet, because the character work was so well done I never hated, or ever even really disliked, the character whose actions I was begging to be different, for the words to rearrang themselves on the pag. I Was holding my breath at points, really freaked out and horrified and practically praying for a happy ending while being les and less capable of imagining how it could possibly be fixed.

I don’t think this book passes the Bechdel Test, and I don’t have much to say about female characters in it, expect I suppose that I feel that the two that have any actual character beyond being cameos seem to be generally awesome and distinct and treated fairly as interesting and flawed individuals as much as can be possible given their relatively little amount of screen time, so that’s good. I think it’s an understandable sacrifice in this book expressly about boys, homosocial relationships and friendship and bullying, set in an all boys school.

On the other hand, diversity wise, it does have a gay character, and one that is IMO coded gay, and as I say I think the two female characters given more than a cameo are fleshed out and respected, non formulaic and interesting, and could totally carry a different book on their own, so that’s cool.

Coming back to the actual subject matter, I think it’s fair to warn for bullying including matter of fact (ie non gratuitous) descriptions of violence; homophobia ranging from casual comments through vicious conversations all the way up to physical assault; and contemplation of suicide. However the worst of the events touched upon by the book IMO are those in the past, alluded to but not described, and or being off screen all the more powerful for the author letting the lasting damage speak for itself, and for the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. Horrifyingly, in my case.

I wrote a bunch more about the portrayal/stereotypes of boys in some books/popular media, particularly as opposed to girls, and about different types of bullying depicted also, but I can’t be bothered to type it up right now. Um, maybe at some point. It got long. The point was, this book is a refreshing change IMO, if you can consider something I found raw and a bit harrowing “refreshing”. But, it’s good to see patterns challenged.

Thing I found disappointing about this book: NOT ENOUGH EVGARD. Seriously. Want more Evgard. Like, now. Where is it. Give it to me.

BRB building a Judas Floor.

Comments

[elixer-of-life.livejournal.com]

Guardian of the Dead looks really good! I've reserved it my library. It seems to have all the ingredients I like in a good book too :)

I'll let you know what I think of it!

[altogetherisi.livejournal.com]

It was really good! I'm glad you are going to read it - definitely post what you think about it when you have!