26. C'est Pareil

The book:  Pandemonium (Delirium #2)

The author:  Lauren Oliver

The rating:  3 stars

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that Pandemonium was even worse than Delirium, but it certainly wasn't any better.  All the failings of the original were back in full force, coupled with a few new transgressions.

The twists still were dull and predictable, although Oliver does not have Lena figure things out until chapters after it has become blatantly obvious to the reader.  This contributes to Lena's downward spiral into a completely grating, intolerable heroine, although her slowness does not hold a candle to the awful romantic plot of Pandemonium.  I mentioned in my review of Delirium that the Lena/Alex romance was painfully instantaneous—her entire view of the world, morality, and herself is utterly transformed in just a few days with a cute boy?  Really?—but having suspended my incredulity over this unlikely instalove and accepted the fact that Lena and Alex simply had some sort of deep, pure, unfathomable love that seventeen-year-old, never-been-kissed me cannot even begin to contemplate, I found the new romance between Julian and Lena to be completely nonsensical.  It hasn't been years and she is finally healing and moving on—it has been six months, for goodness sake!  Unless Oliver is trying to make a commentary on the shallowness of teenage love (which is doubtful, considering how heavily her novels are leaning on the whole true-love-romance shtick), I cannot comprehend the rationale behind Julian's inclusion in the narrative other than to force our 'completely ordinary' heroine into a love triangle with two incredibly kind, funny, attractive guys.  Oh, how will she ever cope?

My second gripe about the novel is that it seems to have caught the 'overly convenient' bug.  Our heroes are able to guess four-digit, numeric passcodes (twice!) using rather implausible logic; on multiple occasions Lena happens to overhear exactly the piece of information she needs at exactly the right time, like when a guard just happens to mention Julian's hospital while she's eavesdropping.  No mundane, unhelpful chitchat about Joe's new cocker spaniel or how Ann traded Larry for the night shift; the only thing she overhears is exactly what she needs to know.  I understand the need to trim the fat and conserve plot details, but really?  It all oozes of contrived.

I suppose we have time for one final complaint:  Oliver's stock purple prose.  If I have to read one more teen novel where the heroine describes her male love interest as smelling of 'boy,' I am going to puke.  Seriously, was this descriptor in some writing seminar I missed?  Is Chapter ten of Writing Teen Romance for Dummies titled Male Olfactory Attractiveness?  I am finding it just a bit strangely specific.

Despite my general dislike of everything to do with this series, I've already downloaded the trilogy's final installment onto my eReader.  I'm not optimistic enough to chalk Pandemonium up to Middle Novel Syndrome; I'm almost certain that my opinion of this saga won't be saved by reading Requiem, but at least there's something cathartic about a surefire chance to complain. 

25. Tedium

The book:  Delirium (Delirium #1)
The author:  Lauren Oliver
The rating:  3 stars

This book was a dystopia, that's for sure.  An unimaginative, derivative dystopia, whose main 'twist' (love being forbidden) isn't really a twist at all; it's a frequent feature of dystopian literature.  I'd say about half of the dystopian novels I've read also have people paired up in assigned couple units:  The Giver, Matched... even Brave New World's hypersexual society portrays love as something alien and wrong.

Nevertheless, I'm a huge dystopia fan; there are worse things in the genre than cookie-cutter worlds, and so that alone wouldn't ruin the book for me.  However, Oliver does not find redemption on any other front.  The romance between Lena and Alex is one of paper-thin instalove.  Sorry, best-friend-since-childhood, I won't shift my world view one iota based on your pleas.  Oh, hello boy-I-just-met-and-who-I've-been-raised-to-wholeheartedly-believe-is-dangerous, a few days with you and my entire personality has been overhauled!  Secondary characters seem pulled out of cliches:  evil-stepfamily (and, just like in Cinder, the youngest stepsister is the exception);* stone-hearted policemen; so-much-better-than-me best friend (to prove just how 'ordinary' our heroine is)...

The plot twists are equally trite.  Oh, the future dystopian world is enclosed by a fence, outside of which there is no civilization?  I wonder where I've seen that before... (for the benefit of the hypothetical reader who has never, ever read a single dystopian novel in their entire life, the answer to that seemingly-rhetorical question is, of course, everywhere.)  Coupled with the old 'if you don't see the body' law of fiction, nothing Delirium threw at me came as any sort of surprise.

While there is nothing special about Delirium, I don't mean to suggest that it is an entirely terrible novel.  Oliver's prose is rather enjoyable to read, even if her subject matter isn't the most stimulating.  I also found the epigraphs at the start of each chapter to be a nice touch; they allow the reader to become a bit more immersed in the culture of Oliver's world, something that is otherwise too scarcely referenced.

Despite my reservations, I have already picked up the second book in the series, Pandemonium.  Perhaps some of the more problematic areas of Delirium will be rectified in this second installment, although I certainly won't be holding my breath.

*Yes, technically Lena's adopted family are her cousins, not her stepsisters, but the point still stands.

23. Agency

The book:  Fractured (Slated #2)
The author:  Teri Terry
The rating:  3 stars

Simply put, Fractured pales in comparison to the first novel in the series.  The wonderful, immersive, and thrilling story is replaced by a slew of cheap twists and turns, coming at the reader at the bizarre pace of nothing at all, and then all at once.  There's the twist where that character you knew was a bad guy all along reveals that they were a bad guy all along (to be honest, there's quite a few of these).  There's the twist where that character you knew was going to die dies.  There's the twist where that character you knew was a good guy all along reveals that they were a good guy all along.  And it's not just double agents; its triple and quadruple and pseudo-agents that are all thrown at you at such a rapid-fire pace that you couldn't give two hoots about any of them.

Furthermore, I stopped caring about Kyla.  As she gained literal freedom, losing her Levo and regaining some of her past, her character bizarrely lost agency, tossed between one group and another, constantly manipulated and with no discernible spirit of her own other than an ever-present, grating whine for her instalove, Ben.  The other characters were just as drab.  The interesting cast of the first book was mostly sidelined, their roles marginalized to mere plot devices:  Amy, Kyla's mum, Ben, even Dr. Lysander, to a point.  Their pagetime is given away to an irritating cast of terrorists from Kyla's past life as Rain; Nico in particular was grating to read.  Just as the intriguing characters were replaced by a flat ensemble with obvious fates, the thought-provoking questions of memory and identity were pushed aside to make room for a lackluster exploration of whether killing is ever justified.  The side supporting violence is designed to be soulless and extreme, making this exploration fairly unsatisfying; the reader is never forced to deal with a moral quandary, as it is always obvious that the AGT is just as bad as the Lorders.

However, Fractured is also the opposite of Slated in another regard:  while fantastic-novel Slated had a weak ending, Fractured's final chapters are perhaps the best part of the novel.  If the tone set at the end of Fractured carries over into its sequel like Slated's did, Shattered may well redeem the series for all this middle novel's wrongs.  I'm eager to finally learn more about Lucy and move far, far, away from Rain, easily the most intolerable of Kyla's threefold identities.  Shattered may not be next on my reading list, but Fractured hasn't quashed my spirit enough to stop me from coming back entirely.

17. Fair is Foul

The book:  Macbeth
The author:  William Shakespeare
The rating:  3 stars

As I've lamented about other classic yarns, I have little unique to say about Macbeth.  I suppose the strongest of my opinions is that I do not have any strong opinions one way or another.

While I'm not necessarily a Shakespeare fanatic, I do consider myself a fan of the bard, both written and performed.  I count plays such as Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Comedy of Errors amongst some of my favourites in theatre, but I wasn't really drawn in by Macbeth.  Perhaps this is due to its twists being so ingrained in popular culture so as to render them unimaginative; I've heard the 'none of woman born' riddle and its answer before, not knowing its original context, and this lack of intrigue may have been the source of my apathy.

I was also ambivalent regarding the characterization.  In Hamlet, for example, I found almost the entire cast compelling - Hamlet, of course, as well as Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and so on and so forth.  In Macbeth, the only character who engaged me in such a way was Banquo, and by prophetic necessity he was obviously not long for this world.  As a tragic hero, I much prefer Hamlet to Macbeth.  Hamlet's slower descent made his peripeteia far more poignant, in my opinion.  Macbeth was a sympathetic protagonist for mere pages before he made his turn, far too little time for me as a reader to build up any sympathy for him and his cold-blooded wife.

While I've said rather little, I don't think I have much else to say.  I'd buy a ticket to see it performed, as I would with essentially any Shakespeare play, but that aside, I don't prophesize I will be re-experiencing Macbeth again anytime soon.

5. The Legend Continues

The book:  Prodigy (Legend #2)
The author:  Marie Lu
The rating:  3 stars

Well, it's New England that gets flooded, not Canada, so I guess I'll give Lu points for originality.

Prodigy was a bit of a disappointment for me.  As I mentioned oh-so-long-ago in my review of Legend, I had high hopes for the world-building, but those hopes fell flat.  Social commentaries are great, or any kind of commentary - too frequently YA writers neglect to have these deeper messages in their works, as if teens can't handle interpreting profound themes - but I didn't find that Lu integrated hers well into the novel.  Prodigy definitely seems as if it has something to say about classism and class culture, but instead of really doing anything meaningful with those ideas, it ends up culminating in a second-rate Romeo & Juliet star-crossed lovers shtick.  Similarly, the Colonies appear as if they were intended to be an emphatically exaggerated version of today's American consumer culture, but this allegory came across clunky and without finesse.  It's almost as if Prodigy is Diet Theme (TM) -- tastes pretty much like actual Theme, but with zero calories of brainpower required.

Another thing I had loved about Legend was the strong supporting characters, but Prodigy completely disregards this strength.  Aside from Day and June, the cast is all either killed off, sent away from the plot, or they are simply boring cardboard cut-outs, without the depth that I had loved about Legend's characters.  Throw in some artificial-tasting love triangles (yes, plural, although I guess that might just make it a love square?) and a completely cliche 'twist' ending that seems more at home on a daytime soap than in an adventure-dystopia novel, and you've got a recipe for a disappointing sequel.

With these reservations aside, the overall plot was enjoyable enough; I'd go as far as to say Prodigy was stronger than the original in the plot department.  Instead of relying on old dystopian cliches, Prodigy had its own flavour and twists.  Some worked and some did not, but they did succeed in making an entertaining enough story.  Despite this more original plot, I wasn't as enthralled with Prodigy as I was with Legend, but that's mostly attributed to characters and pacing.  We spend a lot of time watching characters sit around, worry, and do nothing; reading about your protagonists wringing their hands and whining for pages on end does neither them nor the pacing any favours.

I'm a strong proponent of the 'Middle Novel Weakness' theory, in which the second novel in a trilogy is typically the poorest; the first has the benefit of originality, the third has the thrilling conclusion, but the second is that awkward middle child that has to bridge the gap, not able to pique interest or present resolution.  Therefore, my hopes for the third book in this trilogy remain unshaken:  Prodigy may have had its rough spots, but perhaps Champion will finally allow the saga to reach its lofty potential.

3. Heart's Desire

The book:  A Streetcar Named Desire
The author:  Tennessee Williams
The rating:  3 stars

Humble reader, you might be looking at my entries and thinking, 'One of these things is not like the other.'  And yes, you'd be correct:  Streetcar is a play, not a book, so you've got me there.

In all seriousness, Streetcar is not my usual reading preference.  I'm not a big fan of 'realistic' fiction; I don't read YA because I can't 'handle' the big-girl books, but because I sincerely like YA better.  It's not even truly a comparison between YA and adult; I simply prefer genre to literary fiction, so tales like Streetcar don't usually do it for me.  I love Shakespeare; I love Conan Doyle; I love Baroness Orczy; I hella-love Aldous Huxley (well, mostly just Brave New World, but that's a discussion for another day).  Streetcar being an older book doesn't colour my judgement nor does it being a classic, but stories like Streetcar (see also A Tale of Two Cities) just feel dry.  But, I was assigned to read the play for IB English, and if I want to make my 50 book goal, skipping out on reviews isn't the way to do it.

The highlight of Streetcar for me would have to be the characters.  This probably isn't a news flash for anyone, but they're incredibly well-written and multifaceted.  No one was truly our 'hero' and no one was completely sympathetic.  Then again, there was no character that never had a moment that you couldn't complete relate to, even the terrifying, animalistic Stanley.  People walk the line between good guys and bad guys; it's less clear cut than some works would have you believe.  Looking at Streetcar in retrospect, it's fairly obvious to say Blanche was the protagonist and Stanley the antagonist, but reading it felt almost like being unable to see the forest for the trees; you didn't really know who was hiding what, and when the (metaphorical) curtains closed with whom you would be sympathizing.

However, I wasn't that big a fan of the plot.  Yes, it was technically brilliant.  You've get parallelism and symbolism and all that good stuff that we're sure to discuss on end in English class.  You've got twists and turns and mystery and mystique.  But despite all this technical prowess, I didn't feel anything as I turned the last page other than a vague churning of my stomach.  The story was dark and depressing and violent, and all that darkness did not engage me.  That makes it seem like I disliked Streetcar because it was a tragedy, but that is not true.  I quite enjoyed Hamlet and Antigone, two other tragic plays, and maybe it is because I feel as if those two succeeded more in evoking pathos.  Hamlet's mask of insanity drew me in, sympathizing with him even when he made some pretty godawful decisions.  Perhaps the things I like and hate most about Streetcar are two sides of the same coin:  I loved the depth and multifacetedness of the characters, but this ability to both relate and be isolated from each of them led me to not quite care about their fates.

So, Streetcar.  I can definitely see your literary merit, but you're not the thing for me.  Maybe I'd enjoy you more as a stage production as opposed to a transcription; you seem to be the type that would fare better on the stage.  In any case, I'm eager to get out of the 'much, much more' section of this blog and back to my favourite lands of 'fantasy, sci-fi, dystopia, adventure.'