While it fails to reinvent the genre, this action-packed ride through a grim but fascinating world should delight fans of...
A power-hungry government controls the populace through music, and one young woman accepts the formidable task of saving her family and helping to kick-start a revolution in this dystopian YA adventure.
Hanson’s debut novel, the first in a planned trilogy, takes place in the walled-off, steampunk city of Revinia, where all the inhabitants have devices called Singers implanted in their ears at birth. The machines ensure obedience to Revinia’s ruler, The Conductor, by transmitting a form of mental and emotional control called The Music. The heroine, Ronja, has been branded a Mutt, the lowest rung on the social ladder. She works as a driver on the underground train system, struggling to keep her ailing mother and two young cousins afloat. Destiny comes calling when she accepts a courier’s job, delivering a mysterious package to a member of an underground enclave of freedom fighters known as The Anthem. Among them, she learns, “Everything you have ever felt besides strict loyalty—love of a partner, hate of an enemy, terror, excitement, anxiety—all are muted by The Music. Every time your passions spike, they are beat down. You have lived your life shackled to a weightless iron ball.” Freed from her Singer, Ronja joins forces with Roark, one of the leaders of the Resistance, to convince her family to join the group and thwart The Conductor’s plan to unleash an even more crippling form of The Music upon the citizens of Revinia. The central premise of music as a mechanism of control works well here, and the plot moves at a snappy pace, introducing distinctive new characters nimbly throughout while adding shades of detail to more familiar ones. Ronja’s journey to adapt to a life as a rebel fighter while negotiating the repressed memories that emerge following the removal of her Singer is captivating and memorable. Although the protagonist’s evolution from guttersnipe to superhero in the novel’s last quarter feels like quite a sudden leap, it makes for supremely fun reading.
While it fails to reinvent the genre, this action-packed ride through a grim but fascinating world should delight fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent and leave many waiting impatiently for the sequel.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-56983-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Calida Lux Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A magnetic coming-of-age novel.
A debut novel of young love, ’90s-style grunge, and teenage angst.
When Danny first sees Mary, she’s running away from her ex-boyfriend Tanner into the back room of the New Jersey grocery store where she works—screaming at the top of her lungs, imploring him to leave her alone. Mary’s loud outburst sets the tone for the rest of the novel, which follows the two teenagers’ eclectic, unusual relationship. The book is structured in acts, letting the momentum build, as it would in a play, until the final section. More specifically, the book is structured using alternating perspectives; as it oscillates between Danny’s and Mary’s points of view, it offers a complete, authentic, and objective narration. Danny is a fairly typical 17-year-old high schooler who loves music (though only music with lyrics, preferably from decades that preceded his birth), smells good, is a talented guitarist, and works at a car wash across the street from the grocery store where Mary works. When he meets her, he’s awestruck but a bit wary: “When my too dry lips peeled apart, I realized I had become that guy. Totally forgetting that this amazingly hot girl was just involved in a shouting match about ten seconds prior to my being captivated by her hotness.” Still, Danny musters the courage to ask her out—but it takes a little while. Mary, on the other hand, doesn’t come off as the most approachable girl for a boy like Danny. She’s an irritable 17-year-old who goes out to bars with her girlfriends, surrounds herself with people who call Danny a “faggot,” and struggles with a physically and verbally abusive father. The duo is an unlikely match—another case of opposites attracting. Debut author Wakil fills the text with moments of pure teenage bliss in which readers will recognize their younger selves experiencing the excitement of love for the very first time. Similar to works like Stephen Chbosky’s 1999 debut novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this book is a testament to the power of conviction, the results of perseverance, and a case study of small-town millennials from varying economic backgrounds. The author has a punchy, irreverent writing style: “So, as we drove through the swampy and winding road, where the crickets were louder than the music Danny played, my head fell back between the headrest and the door, and I let the wind blow back my hair.” With it, he effectively creates a narrative environment in which anything can happen, from stealing a boss’s Porsche to chasing down bullies on the freeway to helping friends cope with debilitating bouts of depression to navigating the changing functions of parent-child relationships. Danny and Mary are captivating, frustrating, and completely imperfect characters that are very much evocative of the current sociocultural climate. They also seem like products of the 1990s, and they drive into adulthood with familiar teenage uncertainties and doubts. Readers will willingly surrender themselves to this book and gain much from it.
A magnetic coming-of-age novel.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5255-0609-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unevenly executed high school drama, but one that addresses important social issues.
In Cliett’s (More Than Friends, 2016, etc.) YA novel, a high school “nothing” becomes something that she never expected.
The initially unnamed protagonist is a high school loner who feels uninspired. She recently lost her father to suicide, which left her and her mother broke and living in a trailer park, referred to by one character as “The Land of Broken Dreams.” At school, she notes, “Kids and teachers act like I don’t exist,” which she begins to believe herself—until she meets an older high school boy on her bus nicknamed “Nietzsche.” He wears all black, reads philosophy books, and the seat beside him is always empty. Intrigued by their shared marginalization, the girl makes it her mission to learn more about him. She follows him around and spends hours poring over philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s works—an exercise that she enjoys, much to her surprise. Eventually, she finds enough courage to speak to the boy, who invites her to join his underground philosophy club. This club stokes her newfound academic passion and gives her a sense of belonging and identity; the members even give her a new nickname: “Socrates.” Not long after Socrates joins, however, the club takes a dark, serious turn: the members, a gaggle of students “outside the school’s social order,” decide to pursue an aggressive anti-bullying campaign involving a fake bomb scare. Cliett’s novel does do some important work in humanizing its young outcasts as they’re moved to extremes over the course of the story, and it effectively highlights how vulnerable teenagers can be to social structures that threaten their senses of self. However, the novel’s overall craftsmanship feels substandard; the characters, though conceptually interesting, are blandly written, and a sudden assault of plot twists at the end of the story has a slapdash feel. The swiftness with which Socrates finds a sense of resolve following a gruesome tragedy is also unrealistic.
An unevenly executed high school drama, but one that addresses important social issues.Pub Date: June 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5464-2630-1
Page Count: 270
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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