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May. 3rd, 2016 08:35 pmOK, I'm just going to quote a whole huge paragraph from the jacket summary for The Scorpion Rules:
Greta will be free if she can survive until her eighteenth birthday. Until then she lives in the Precepture school with the daughters and sons of the world’s leaders. Like them, she is taught to obey the machines that control their lives. Like them, she is prepared to die with dignity, if she must. But everything changes when a new hostage arrives. Elián is a boy who refuses to play by the rules, a boy who defies everything Greta has ever been taught. And he opens Greta’s eyes to the brutality of the system they live under—and to her own power.
There are LOTS of keywords in here that line up pretty much exactly with current trends in YA dystopia -- a Special Girl! who meets a Special Boy! who Doesn't Follow The Rules! Sheeple! WAKING UP! probably in first person present tense! AND THEN THEY LEAD A REVOLUTION -- and it is kind of a brilliant example of marketing misdirection because this book is actually very deliberately setting out not to do most of these things?
(It's also not in first person present tense. THANK GOODNESS. I don't know why first person past tense, such a little change, is so much better and more capable of conveying character, AND YET, SOMEHOW.
Also also, there are no sheeple, but there are asshole goats, which is as it should be. All goats are assholes.)
Like, OK, yes, Greta does live in a world controlled by a slightly psychotic AI, and the AI is going to kill her if her country goes to war for something that is out of her control, and that's crappy and pretty horrible for Greta and the other kids in her situation, specifically. But, I mean -- as a war deterrent, as a small sacrifice that makes it significantly less likely that millions of other people will die -- does it work? As a terrible thing, is it better or worse than many of the other fairly terrible things that happen in global geopolitics?
The book doesn't really have answers to these questions, it does not try to tell you where The Line Should Be Drawn, which is a thing I like. I like a great deal about this book. Not everything (gonna take a moment here to side-eye a little Erin Bow's occasionally lazy portrayals of some of international baby royals, especially Thandi, the Xhosa princess whose initial characterization largely consists of 'ALWAYS ANGRY'), but a lot about it, which I am trying to lay out without spoiling, because I think it's worth not spoiling. And worth reading! Come for the earnest and responsible baby royals, and the weird and loving and monstrous AIs, and the affectionate descriptions of farming, and the asshole goats, and the important relationships between women, and the actually really good Obligatory YA Love Triangle, like, you don't believe me now, I know, but I SWEAR TO YOU I DO NOT SAY THIS LIGHTLY, ( if you trust me you don't need to click this very spoilery spoiler-cut! but I will understand if you don't trust me )
(note: comments also have spoilers)
Greta will be free if she can survive until her eighteenth birthday. Until then she lives in the Precepture school with the daughters and sons of the world’s leaders. Like them, she is taught to obey the machines that control their lives. Like them, she is prepared to die with dignity, if she must. But everything changes when a new hostage arrives. Elián is a boy who refuses to play by the rules, a boy who defies everything Greta has ever been taught. And he opens Greta’s eyes to the brutality of the system they live under—and to her own power.
There are LOTS of keywords in here that line up pretty much exactly with current trends in YA dystopia -- a Special Girl! who meets a Special Boy! who Doesn't Follow The Rules! Sheeple! WAKING UP! probably in first person present tense! AND THEN THEY LEAD A REVOLUTION -- and it is kind of a brilliant example of marketing misdirection because this book is actually very deliberately setting out not to do most of these things?
(It's also not in first person present tense. THANK GOODNESS. I don't know why first person past tense, such a little change, is so much better and more capable of conveying character, AND YET, SOMEHOW.
Also also, there are no sheeple, but there are asshole goats, which is as it should be. All goats are assholes.)
Like, OK, yes, Greta does live in a world controlled by a slightly psychotic AI, and the AI is going to kill her if her country goes to war for something that is out of her control, and that's crappy and pretty horrible for Greta and the other kids in her situation, specifically. But, I mean -- as a war deterrent, as a small sacrifice that makes it significantly less likely that millions of other people will die -- does it work? As a terrible thing, is it better or worse than many of the other fairly terrible things that happen in global geopolitics?
The book doesn't really have answers to these questions, it does not try to tell you where The Line Should Be Drawn, which is a thing I like. I like a great deal about this book. Not everything (gonna take a moment here to side-eye a little Erin Bow's occasionally lazy portrayals of some of international baby royals, especially Thandi, the Xhosa princess whose initial characterization largely consists of 'ALWAYS ANGRY'), but a lot about it, which I am trying to lay out without spoiling, because I think it's worth not spoiling. And worth reading! Come for the earnest and responsible baby royals, and the weird and loving and monstrous AIs, and the affectionate descriptions of farming, and the asshole goats, and the important relationships between women, and the actually really good Obligatory YA Love Triangle, like, you don't believe me now, I know, but I SWEAR TO YOU I DO NOT SAY THIS LIGHTLY, ( if you trust me you don't need to click this very spoilery spoiler-cut! but I will understand if you don't trust me )
(note: comments also have spoilers)
