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Mar. 8th, 2014 09:42 amSo I meant to do all kinds of stuff on the plane back from Dublin, but instead I just ended up zooming through Andrea K. Host's And All The Stars at LIGHTSPEED.
And All The Stars is exactly the kind of thing I want in a YA apocalypse: PLUCKY TEENAGERS BAND TOGETHER, ACT SENSIBLY, FIGURE OUT HOW TO SURVIVE.
Our protagonist is Madeleine Cost, an Australian high schooler who's skipping school for the day to paint her crossdressing movie-star cousin for a major prize in portraiture, and accidentally ends up at Ground Zero for a MYSTERIOUS AND SINISTER EVENT that leaves her and several million other people around the world contaminated by an alien substance.
I don't want to spoil the actual developments of the apocalypse, because nobody has any idea what's going on at first and figuring it out along with the rest of the world was part of the fun of reading, at least for me. But I will tell you that, like, 50% of the book is Maddie and her new friends Trapped In an Inn, like, classic Trapped In an Inn in which everybody becomes FRIENDS FOR LIFE and checks in frequently on ApocalypseDotCom internet forums and puts on amateur theatricals, in addition to making plans for long-term survival. This is probably bad pacing, given how compressed the actual action is afterwards, but I DON'T CARE, I LOVE IT.
And, I mean, while the plot of the book is centered in What Is This Apocalypse And What Do We Do About It, with an eventual shift towards Plucky Resistance, the real emotional arc is mostly about Maddie -- who's always been a very solitary person -- making connections, and discovering she likes making connections, and having people to rely on. I like it for some of the same reasons I like 7 Seeds; while it's a grim apocalypse, certainly, and plenty of people die and awful stuff does happen, it's not a grimdark book. It embraces the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP and the importance of hope. And that's something that's extraordinarily rare in the current YA apocalypse scene.
( Major spoilers, do not click! )
I mean, the book has its flaws. The pacing, as mentioned above, is totally wonky; several of the cast of Maddie's friends don't really get enough personalization time to flesh them out; and while I love the fact that technology and the Internet and social media play a MAJOR role in the plot development (which is something, again, you don't see a lot in current YA apocalypses) the extent to which all the electricity and power and major services ... kept working all the time ... did occasionally stretch the extent of my disbelief. Also, there may be a character who dies twice, and there is definitely a totally unnecessary epilogue. I DON'T CARE. These flaws are charming. Weird pacing is my jam. I super enjoyed this book.
And All The Stars is exactly the kind of thing I want in a YA apocalypse: PLUCKY TEENAGERS BAND TOGETHER, ACT SENSIBLY, FIGURE OUT HOW TO SURVIVE.
Our protagonist is Madeleine Cost, an Australian high schooler who's skipping school for the day to paint her crossdressing movie-star cousin for a major prize in portraiture, and accidentally ends up at Ground Zero for a MYSTERIOUS AND SINISTER EVENT that leaves her and several million other people around the world contaminated by an alien substance.
I don't want to spoil the actual developments of the apocalypse, because nobody has any idea what's going on at first and figuring it out along with the rest of the world was part of the fun of reading, at least for me. But I will tell you that, like, 50% of the book is Maddie and her new friends Trapped In an Inn, like, classic Trapped In an Inn in which everybody becomes FRIENDS FOR LIFE and checks in frequently on ApocalypseDotCom internet forums and puts on amateur theatricals, in addition to making plans for long-term survival. This is probably bad pacing, given how compressed the actual action is afterwards, but I DON'T CARE, I LOVE IT.
And, I mean, while the plot of the book is centered in What Is This Apocalypse And What Do We Do About It, with an eventual shift towards Plucky Resistance, the real emotional arc is mostly about Maddie -- who's always been a very solitary person -- making connections, and discovering she likes making connections, and having people to rely on. I like it for some of the same reasons I like 7 Seeds; while it's a grim apocalypse, certainly, and plenty of people die and awful stuff does happen, it's not a grimdark book. It embraces the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP and the importance of hope. And that's something that's extraordinarily rare in the current YA apocalypse scene.
( Major spoilers, do not click! )
I mean, the book has its flaws. The pacing, as mentioned above, is totally wonky; several of the cast of Maddie's friends don't really get enough personalization time to flesh them out; and while I love the fact that technology and the Internet and social media play a MAJOR role in the plot development (which is something, again, you don't see a lot in current YA apocalypses) the extent to which all the electricity and power and major services ... kept working all the time ... did occasionally stretch the extent of my disbelief. Also, there may be a character who dies twice, and there is definitely a totally unnecessary epilogue. I DON'T CARE. These flaws are charming. Weird pacing is my jam. I super enjoyed this book.
