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Wither by Lauren DeStefano

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Debut author Lauren DeStefano’s book Wither is getting a lot of buzz.  It’s in that hottest of YA trends – dystopian fiction – and it has many elements of a bestseller.  I was happy to get my hands on a copy.
Sometime in the future, humanity has mastered genetic engineering to a point where disease no longer exists.  The first generation of babies born this way is perfectly healthy and long-lived.  The second generation is healthy to a point – and then they die in a matter of weeks.  Boys live to age 25, and girls to age 20.  People are panicked about the human race dying out, so young girls are kidnapped and sold into polygamous marriages with young boys in order to produce babies.
Rhine Ellery is a sixteen year old child bride who is kidnapped and sold into marriage with Linden, the 21 year old son of a man named Vaughn, who belongs to the first generation of long-lived people.  Vaughn is very wealthy and obsessed with finding a cure for the condition that kills everyone so young.  He conducts experiments on Linden’s wives (three including Rhine) as well as Linden’s children to further his research.
Rhine is not a willing bride.  She wants only to escape her prison mansion and rejoin her twin brother Rowan back home (her parents, also of the first long-lived generation, are already dead).  The novel describes Rhine’s attempts to escape as well as her relationships with Linden, her two sister-wives, Vaughn, and a servant named Gabriel whom she starts to develop romantic feelings for.
I like my dystopias to be able to give meaning to our world today.  Hunger Games does that.  Delirium does that.  XVI (another book concerned largely with sex) does that.  Handmaid’s Tale (which this book is being compared to ad nauseam) does that.  Wither doesn’t, and I don’t even think it tries.  It has the potential to say a lot about how we view marriage and procreation in our own society, but this potential is never realized.  It says a little about the danger of messing with the genetic makeup of embryos, since that’s what caused the early deaths in the first place, but this is only part of the plot’s setup and is not explored further.  Social or political or cultural commentary, done in a subtle way, is what gives a dystopia meaning.  Without it, the book is just a series of events.
I had a number of other problems as well.  Some of the premise just doesn’t make sense – namely, I don’t see the reason for the polygamous marriages.  If people are so interested in finding a cure for the disease that kills everyone at such a young age and they need babies for experiments as well as to carry on the human race, why are polygamous marriages the solution?  Why not concubines?  I understand that marriage is socially accepted in our society, but polygamous marriages are not, and haven’t been for quite some time.  It would make a lot more sense to just accumulate a horde of concubines and impregnate as many as possible.
Moreover, this could be done more quickly and efficiently via in vitro – they have the technology.  (The explanation given is that such technology caused the problem in the first place, but this explanation is cheap.  Engineering the embryos is what caused the problem, not just impregnation via a petri dish.)  It seems like the polygamous marriages were an attempt to make the book seedy.  It succeeds in that regard, but the consequence is I cannot buy into the premise.  That’s a huge strike against a dystopia.
Additionally, a major plot point is that the young girls who are kidnapped but then not chosen to be wives are killed.  What, why???  When the motivation of these kidnappings, marriages, and rapes are to produce as many offspring as possible, why on earth are viable girls (and they are girls, not women) killed?  Couldn’t they use as many of them as possible?  It doesn’t make sense.  Actually, there are so many things about Wither that don’t make sense, I can’t possibly cover them all in a single review without trying our readers’ patience.
 A few other things that bothered me:
  • Why do boys live five years longer?  This book is, of course, the first in a series, so I can assume that an explanation is forthcoming in future books.  This explanation needs to happen and not just become an unanswered question.
  • Rhine refers quite a bit to how her twin brother, Rowan, protected her before she was kidnapped.  Why didn’t she learn how to protect herself, instead of relying on her brother, who is the same age as her and therefore not necessarily better equipped to care for them?  It would have been awesome if the roles were reversed and Rhine was the protector – then she’d have even more reason to want to escape and reunite with Rowan.  I understand that not all female protagonists can be kick-butt girls, so this is my own personal preference rather than a criticism.
  • This is not a complete story.  Obviously I won’t give away the ending, but if someone had spoiled the ending for me after I had read about half of the book, my reaction would have been “And…?  That’s it?”  Sequels.  I loathe them sometimes.  But even books with sequels should tell a complete story.  (That’s beginning to be a motto for me.)
I’ve given you a laundry list of complaints about Wither, but I don’t mean to say it’s a bad book.  It’s just a mediocre one.  I thought the writing was solid and most of the characters well-drawn.  I finished the book and didn’t feel like it was a waste of my time, and I was rarely bored.  DeStefano can definitely produce an interesting story.  But that doesn’t make the book good. 
There are plenty of people who disagree with me, and that’s fine.  The book currently holds a 4.17 out of 5 rating on goodreads.  Even by goodreads standards, where book ratings tend be rather inflated, that’s an impressive score.  I’m sure many readers don’t really care about any sort of social commentary and can forgive a lot of nonsensical world-building, so Wither would suit them well.  But when a niche genre such as this is flooded with so very many books, readers can and should demand better stuff – stuff that is not only written well, but has a believable premise and something more to say beyond just “This book is trendy.”
Wither will be released March 22.  Review copy received from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

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Beth Revis’ debut, Across the Universe, is a book after my own heart – a science fiction involving cryogenically frozen people aboard a ship bound for a new planet, combined with a spine-tingling mystery?  Yes please.  I really hate reading books on a screen, so when I tell you that I read the entire first chapter online (available here), you know that the premise has to be pretty darn awesome.
And it is.  The first chapter opens with seventeen-year-old Amy being frozen alongside her parents in preparation for a 300-year trip across space to a new planet.  Her mother works with DNA and her father is a military strategist, so they’re both vital to the mission.  Amy is going along simply because she’s their daughter, but they’re not forcing her to – it’s her choice.  She’s leaving behind her entire life to take this tremendous risk, and it’s tearing at her.
I was so impressed with the first chapter that I knew I had to read the whole thing.  Particularly impressive is Revis’ description of the freezing process.  Amy watches her parents being frozen, first her mother and then her father, and it is neither comfortable nor pretty.  When Amy herself steps into the coffin-like container to undergo the same process, the reader is right there with her, feeling her physical and emotional pain and dreading what will happen next – will she really lapse into dreamless sleep, as she’s been told, or will she be stuck in a 300 year long nightmare?
Unfortunately, Amy’s sleep ends too soon – she’s woken up fifty years before the spaceship is due to land on the new planet, by someone unknown who supposedly wants to kill her.  Amy survives, but other people who are prematurely defrosted aren’t so lucky.  Alongside a few friends she makes on the ship, Amy tries to figure out who the killer is before he or she goes after her parents next.
This is made difficult by the fact that the society on the ship (those people who are descended from the original people who signed up to staff it and prepare for colonization of the new planet) is not a friendly one.  They’ve all interbred over generations so they all look alike with dark hair, eyes, and skin.  Amy has pale skin and bright red hair, so she sticks out.  What’s more, a terrible plague hit the ship many years ago, and since then the society has been restructured.  Most people don’t know about the frozen cargo at all, and they all resemble mindless drones, going about their work with no real questions or defiance of the authority, a man called Eldest. 
Across the Universe has a tremendous amount of potential, but it’s unfortunately pretty uneven.  The first chapter – used in promotions and marketing – is polished and well-written.  We get a great view into Amy’s mind while still being entertained and wanting to turn the pages as quickly as possible.  After that first chapter, however, the perspective shifts for a time to the leader-in-training on the ship, named Elder.  We get a little insight into his character throughout the story, but not nearly enough to really know him, and not enough to believe the romance that blossoms between him and Amy.  To me, the romance was completely unnecessary and the book would have been stronger without it.
Revis relies a lot on short, choppy sentences and paragraphs for extra emphasis.  While this works in moderation, it’s overused here.  When a character we care about dies, it’s hard to really feel its impact since it happens in a single sentence.  Similarly, the rapid back-and-forth shift in perspectives from Amy and Elder don’t allow the reader to ever really become fully immersed in either person’s experience.  While the book is 400 pages long, that’s sort of misleading – the text is large and there’s a lot of white space.  There’s plenty of room for a bit more development, particularly character-wise.
My other main complaint has to do with unanswered questions.  There’s one particular question broached in Chapter 1 that is never resolved – it’s never even alluded to in the rest of the book.  I don’t expect books like these to answer all of my questions, but to me, this seems like an unintentional loose end – the ball dropped by the author.  I know now that Across the Universe is meant to be the first in a trilogy, but you’d never know it from just reading it.  Perhaps some sort of reflection on Amy’s part near the end – What’s next for me? What about that thing in Chapter 1 that I was so worried about but didn’t give a second thought to in the rest of the book? – would have satisfied me. 
Across the Universe, which publishes January 11, is a good choice for people who prefer their science fiction without a lot of science (like me).  If the author tells me that Amy can’t be refrozen due to cellular degeneration, that’s a good enough explanation for me.  It’s also a good choice for people who value a fast-paced plot above all – over character, setting, theme, and so on.  I do believe the plot is a good one, I just wish I could have had the rest, too.
Galley received from the publisher.

Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences by Brian Yansky

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I saw Brian Yansky speak on a panel with three other fantasy/SF writers for children and teens at the Texas Book Festival. At one point, the four writers discussed the first line of their respective books, and Yansky’s hooked me: “It takes less time for them to conquer the world than it takes me to brush my teeth.  That’s pretty disappointing.”
It’s a great beginning for a book titled Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences and sets the mood perfectly.  Jesse, our narrator, is in the middle of class when an alien race called the Sanginians take over Earth.  They do it via telepathy: all humans are turned into slaves in a matter of minutes by the power of the Sanginians’ minds.  A few humans with latent telepathic powers are considered superior to the other humans and taken to serve as slaves in the home of the alien commander.  The rest of the book chronicles Jesse’s attempts to deal with what’s happened to the world and potentially fight back (alongside a few friends made along the way).
I absolutely loved The True Meaning of Smekday, and I hoped that Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences would be a good readalike. In many ways, I was not disappointed. Alien Invasion has a lot of humor in the same vein as Smekday – the “Our entire planet has just been taken over by hostile aliens but I’m going to crack wry jokes anyway” type. It’s also got a likable narrator, albeit a bit older. I definitely enjoyed the reading experience.
However.
It’s no Smekday. I never struggled to read it, but I wanted more out of the experience. Everything about the book was slight: character, plot, setting, relationships, backstory. It all felt underdeveloped, like it needed more substance. It was over much too quickly, and not in the “oh my goodness get me the sequel” way (although if there were a sequel, I’d probably read it – like I said, I thought it was an enjoyable book).
I feel like so often young adult writers tend to sacrifice background or character development in favor of a fast-moving plot, and sometimes it works, but more often it just weakens the entire book. Part of the thrill of reading a science fiction novel featuring aliens, for me, is learning about the alien culture. We get a little of that in Alien Invasion, but not nearly enough. I know much more about the Boov in Smekday than I know about the Sanginians in Alien Invasion.
I could also tell that Yansky really wanted us to get a sense of the relationships between the four main characters (a couple romantic entanglements, a deep friendship between the two boys), and we get a skeleton sense of it, but it’s never fully fleshed out. When our protagonist refers to another boy as his “best friend” near the end of the book, we know that’s what the author was going for, but it still seems like we needed to be told – it wasn’t apparent enough from the story. I so often feel like today’s young adult books are bloated with 100+ pages that really don’t need to be there, but Alien Invasion could have benefited from another hundred, I think.
I think one of the main weaknesses is that there are really no side stories in the book. There’s a little romantic tension going on between a few of the main characters, but it’s never really elaborated upon. Additionally, one of the female survivors, Catlin, is kept as a mistress by the alien commander, but it’s only alluded to a few times. We meet aliens who seem sympathetic to the Earthlings and their plight, but their reasons why are explained away in a couple of sentences. Development of any of these subplots would have strengthened the book significantly. It would have allowed the reader to not only laugh at the funny bits but also feel the gravitas and impact of the very serious situation the characters find themselves in.
That said, Yansky made a good choice to include letters from the alien commander on Earth to his father on the alien home planet. These letters gave me a taste of the alien culture that I felt most of the book lacked, but they’re not enough to really make the book feel complete. Overall, Alien Invasion reads like a well-written outline for a fun novel – additional development in all areas would have pushed it from pretty good to fantastic.

The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex

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While I was disappointed with Fat Vampire, Adam Rex’s sophomore novel for teens, I liked his writing style enough for me to pick up his much-lauded first novel for teens/tweens, The True Meaning of Smekday.  It was a good thing I did – the book made me laugh out loud the whole way through.
Sometime in the future, aliens called Boov invade the Earth.  After the occupation, Earth is renamed “Smekland” in honor of the great Boov leader who led the invasion.  Christmas is renamed “Smekday,” hence the title of the book.  Twelve year old Gratuity “Tip” Tucci is assigned a paper in her class: she must write a five page essay on the true meaning of Smekday.
The rest of the book consists of Tip’s essay, which is basically one long flashback.  Tip’s story, naturally, takes up much more than five pages.  
In her essay, all humans are being relocated via rocketpod to Florida, and since Tip’s mom has been abducted by the Boov, she has to get there on her own (accompanied by her cat, Pig).  She decides to forgo the rocketpod and instead elects to drive.  Along the way, she meets a Boov named J.Lo who transforms her car into a hovercraft, and the relationship between the two characters is both touching and hilarious.  The journey isn’t smooth – the group ends up having to fend off a second alien invasion (the Gorg) before the end of the book, and it turns out J.Lo is a bit of a renegade Boov, meaning he’s being hunted by his own kind as well. 
Like in Fat Vampire, Adam Rex has thrown a lot into this book, but here it all works.  It’s a road trip book crossed with a buddy book set against the backdrop of an alien invasion.  Not only is Tip trying to make it to Florida safely, she’s also trying to find her mother.  When she and J.Lo make it to Florida, she discovers the Boov have changed their minds – all humans are now being relocated to Arizona.  Tip and her crew also run into two ineffective human rebel groups (both came up with the acronym BOOB to describe their organizations entirely independently of each other), a theme park that flips upside down at night, and a replicator which they use on Pig to create a room full of cats (why not?).
Plus, there’s pictures – photographs, comic strips, doodles…and they’re all funny.  J.Lo’s comic depiction of the history of the Boovish race is particularly amusing.  The True Meaning of Smekday is a great book for reluctant readers (if they aren’t put off by the length – 423 pages), and Tip’s voice is the perfect mix of snarky and sympathetic without ever getting annoying.
Despite Tip’s terrific narration, J.Lo is really what makes this book awesome. His alien speech patterns as he attempts to learn and speak English are hilarious, in particular his references to American idioms and habits that we don’t even give a second thought to.  J.Lo’s dialogue just begs to be read aloud. Here’s an example:
“If you are tolooking for the pink squishable gapputty, it is smooshed in the gloves box.  You will have to use brown.”
It makes sense in the context of the book, I promise.  Here’s an exchange between Tip and J.Lo as Tip tries to explain the concept of human families:
“So…the humansmom and the humansdad make the baby all by themself,” J.Lo said slowly.  “Aaand…afters they make the baby they…keep it?”
“Yes.”
“As like a pet.”
“No.”
“[With the Boov] nobody knows their offspring, and nobody knows their parents.”
“Nobody?  Well, that’s one thing we humans do better than you Boov.  Families are better.”
J.Lo shook his head as much as an alien with no neck can do that.  “I haveto seen human families.  Some of them, the peoples, they stay in family they do not like.  Some humans do not have an easy living with their family-mates.  The brothers and sisterns, especiably.”

I could quote passages forever, but I wanted to give you an idea of the tone of the book and why I enjoyed it so much.  This is easily one of my favorite reads of the year.  The thing I’d like to stress most is that it is really, really funny.  My review can’t do it justice, and neither can little snippets from the novel.  You don’t have to be a science fiction fan or even someone who reads a lot of YA or middle grade to like it.  You’ve just got to enjoy a good story and not mind getting weird looks from strangers since you’ll be chuckling to yourself every few seconds.  I loved this book and it’s one of the few I can see myself re-reading later on.

When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead

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If you haven’t heard of this book before, you might believe that it’s a teen romance from the title. Do not let the title fool you. It has a very small romance in it, but it is mostly peripheral, and this story is about something entirely different.

There is so much involved in this 197-page book that it’s hard to know what to mention in this review and what to leave out. Miranda lives in New York City with her mom. It’s 1979, Miranda is twelve years old, and she’s been receiving mysterious notes from a stranger that discuss things that will happen in Miranda’s future. And then those things come to pass, like the fact that Miranda’s mom becomes a contestant on the game show $20,000 Pyramid. Within this time-travel mystery, the book also touches upon class, race, friendship, bullying, homelessness, and so many other issues. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time is a recurrent theme, and any kid who loves that book (as so many did in 1979 and so many do now) will also love the many references to it here.

When You Reach Me starts a bit slow. Miranda doesn’t receive the first note until page 60, and before that happens, I wasn’t sure where the book was heading. Once the first note hit, however, I was hooked.

The book benefits from short, snappy chapters (2-3 pages each) with interesting titles deliberately mimicking the game show (Things That Go Missing; Things That Sneak Up on You; Things That Turn Pink). (For those of us who haven’t ever watched the $20,000 Pyramid, the second round involves one contestant trying to get her partner to guess the category of the words she recites. For example, she might say “Lever, Handle, Hair,” and the answer would be “Things you pull.”)

I think young fans of genre fiction, particularly mysteries and science fiction, will find a lot to like in this book. It has those mystery and sci-fi elements, but it really is something unique that makes it stand out from these genres. At times Miranda’s voice seems a bit too mature, but for the most part she is engaging and seems like a twelve year old. If a young reader makes it to page 60, he or she will not be able to stop until reaching the end. The end is really spectacular, perhaps not as surprising to an adult as it might be to a child, but beautifully written and just challenging enough to require some thought after the last page is turned but also be understandable for its intended audience.

The biggest thing that will prevent this book from moving off the shelves, or at least the copy that I read, is the cover. Not the front cover, which isn’t too bad, but the back. There is no book blurb. Instead, it’s a litany of praise for Stead’s earlier book, First Light. That isn’t terribly unusual, but the book doesn’t have an inside flap. There’s no way for a tween browsing the shelves to find out what this book is about. Something like that is vital, and I’m sad that it’s missing from this copy, because I really think this book could have a fairly large audience. I can think of a half-dozen ways to pitch it: how Miranda’s friend Sal gets punched in the face for no apparent reason on the street one day, the time travel enigma, the mysterious notes…the blurb could easily grab someone.

Despite that (or because of that, really), I encourage you to give this one a try. It’s refreshing and interesting, and you could read it in an afternoon.