Arellano has talent, but the many reminders that he’s read lots of books fail to save his prose. Even more distressing is...
Holy hybrid! In blending Oliver Twist, A Clockwork Orange, and many recognizable others into a vision of far-off America, first-timer Arellano guesses at the language of the future, but ends up sounding more like the Boy Wonder in epileptic seizure.
It’s mid–century 21. A slice of pizza costs $100. Eddie is a street urchin in Dig City, an urbanscape named for the current renewal project in real-life Boston. He starts out as a contortionist “road rat,” one of a pack of boys living under the tutelage of grifter/ringmaster Shep, a Dig City small-timer. Eddie runs away from the circus to join domestic life in suburbia, going to what he has been led to believe is his true family in Ho-Ho-Kus. When he becomes distracted by his mother’s bountiful bosom, he decides “to go on a little odyssey” back to Dig City, and from there the story becomes a forced picaresque in which Eddie is asked to return home, assume command, find his parents, and come of age. Arellano’s vision sometimes achieves momentum as he builds it brick by brick, but it’s ultimately half-baked: inflation has created the Clinton (a $1,000 bill nonetheless worthless), and while Dr. Seuss is remembered, Michael Jordan has been forgotten. Arellano’s writing style takes center stage here, an anticipation of a world in which the polar opposites of Shakespeare and hip-hop have fused into a distressing language of forced alliteration: “With this legendary loser in mind, I pruned my performer’s pincers”; “Was this just a joke, the cruel caricature of kindness towards the scorned stowaway?” What’s meant as strategy quickly becomes fetish, and if 50-cent words were really worth 50 cents, then the inflation Arellano imagines here might just come to pass.
Arellano has talent, but the many reminders that he’s read lots of books fail to save his prose. Even more distressing is the thought that his predictions might somehow prove right.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-888451-22-X
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and fast-paced read that doesn’t hit the mark it aims for.
The relationship between a young debtor and the trillionaire who owns him serves as a parable for the ills of capitalism.
Debut novelist Szpara imagines an only slightly more dystopian United States than the one that exists today, in which the wealth gap has grown so large that the country is more or less split into trillionaires and debtors. Debtors inherit their family's debt, increasing it exponentially over time. To pay it off, many sign up to become slaves for a predetermined amount of time, with the “choice” to inject a drug called Dociline that turns them into a kind of blissful zombie who has no memory, pain, or agency for the duration of their term. The drug is supposed to wear off within two weeks, but when Elisha Wilder’s mother returned from her debt-paying term, it never did, leaving her docile indefinitely. To resolve the rest of his family’s debt, Elisha becomes a Docile to none other than Alex Bishop, the CEO of the company that manufactures Dociline. He invokes his right to refuse the drug, one of the only Dociles ever to do so. Alex enacts a horrifying period of brainwashing in order to modify Elisha’s behavior to mimic that of an “on-med.” The resulting relationship between them is disturbing. As Alex wakes up to his complicity in a broken system—“I am Dr. Frankenstein and I’ve fallen in love with my own monster”—he becomes more sympathetic, for better or worse. As Elisha suffers not only brainwashing, rape, and abuse, but the recovery that must come after, his love for—fixation with, dependence on—Alex poses interesting questions about consent: “Being my own person hurts too much….Why should an opportunity hurt so much?” However, despite excellent pacing and a gripping narrative, Szpara fails to address the history of slavery in America—a history that is race-based and continues to shape the nation. This is a story with fully realized queer characters that is unafraid to ask complicated questions; as a parable, it functions well. But without addressing this important aspect of the nation and economic structures within which it takes place, it cannot succeed in its takedown of oppressive systems.
An engrossing and fast-paced read that doesn’t hit the mark it aims for.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21615-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perfectly fine despite second-book syndrome.
Cerúlia must grow up and learn to fight for her destiny in Kozloff’s (A Queen in Hiding, 2020) second Nine Realms novel.
Her mother, the Queen of Weirandale, is dead, and Cerúlia isn’t a child any more. She’s left her adoptive peasant family in order to escape evil Lord Matwyck’s clutches and eventually escapes Weirandale altogether. Using her ability to talk to animals and several bird-related aliases, Cerúlia manages to trek her way over the mountains and into the nation of Oromondo. Cerúlia knows that the Oros killed her mother, and she wants to avenge her death. She’s heard of a group of raiders who work to disrupt the Oros as they invade and pillage neighboring nations. When Cerúlia finally manages to find them and convince them to let her join up, she discovers not only new friends, but a newfound sense of purpose. But is any of that enough to win back her throne or even save herself from the Oro army? Interspersed with Cerúlia’s plotline are various threads centering on the Oro army and people, Lord Matwyck’s kindhearted son, and the raiders themselves. This is the second of a four-part series, and, as such, it falls into the expected pitfalls. The self-contained plot works, but it inevitably feels more like a buildup to further books in the series than its own story. It rises above filler, though, and Kozloff is clearly laying the groundwork for something good, particularly with the very last chapter.
Perfectly fine despite second-book syndrome.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16856-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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