(no subject)

[skygiants]

You know that writing advice about figuring out the worst thing that can happen to your characters, and then making it worse?

I feel like a lot of contemporary YA dystopia very, very earnestly takes this advice a liiittle too much to heart, but Steven Dos Santos' The Culling is a particularly hilariously dramatic example.

Now, there are definitely things to like about The Culling. For one thing: gay protagonist! And, more importantly, for all the ANGST AND STURM AND DRAM racked up throughout the dystopia, the fact that Lucky is gay is never actually a source of angst, which is a nicely refreshing change.

But, I mean, Lucky has plenty of other things to angst about, include:
- the fact that he lives in a super dystopian regime called THE ESTABLISHMENT, so terrible and grimdark and hopeless and improverished that children's games include Dodge Piss and Shit Dash. Also, there are government-created plagues. Also, there is slave labor. Also, books are banned. Also, everyone gets drafted into the workforce as a teenager
- except for the SPECIAL teenagers who are chosen each year to COMPETE in LIFE-THREATENING TRIALS
- and every time they come in last in a trial, they will be forced to choose to kill one of their Incentives -- the TWO PEOPLE they LOVE THE MOST!

Obviously Lucky gets sent into the trials, with his BELOVED BABY BROTHER and his SICKLY SURROGATE MOTHER as his Incentives. There he bonds with all his fellow trainees, including SUPER HOT BLONDE REVOLUTIONARY Digory.

But then, midway through, when the trials begin, the dramatic twist:
a.) Lucky's Evil Ex, jealous about his budding relationship with Digory, has arranged for Lucky and Digory to become . . . EACH OTHER'S INCENTIVES! This means if Lucky loses, he now has to pick between killing his baby brother or his new boyfriend.
b.) Digory's other Incentive is . . . HIS HUSBAND. Yes, he's MARRIED! Shock! Betrayal! (I laughed so hard.)

The rest of the book is an exercise in ever-increasing angst porn in ever-more-dramatic locations, as various sympathetic teenagers are forced to make choices like "which one of your long-lost twin babies would you RATHER KILL?" or "will you shoot your father yourself . . . or allow him to be eaten alive by GIANT MUTANT RATS?!?!"

My favorite is probably the trial when half of the protagonists and all of their loved ones have been infected with a fatal virus, and have to dig for limited number of antidote vials . . . buried in a floor MADE OF ANGRY ATTACK ZOMBIES. Yes. That happens.

I will say this, though -- my biggest complaint with The Hunger Games (first book) was I felt it dodged out of forcing Katniss to confront the hardest decisions. She's never responsible for the death of a sympathetic character, she only kills in self-defense. And for all the HILARIOUSLY EPIC ANGST-O-RAMA, that's not a mistake this book makes. Lucky does become complicit in the deaths of various other innocent people in order to save the innocent people he likes best, and he knows it. And if you're going to write a GRIMDARK GRIM DARK DYSTOPIA, you have to acknowledge that.

Comments

[ceitfianna]

o.O This book sounds like it was trying to go look, this is how you do it, Hunger Games. It sounds like a definite ride of a book.

[skygiants]

It does give off a definite sense of "The Hunger Games . . . BUT WORSE!!!!!!"

[ceitfianna]

I feel like that is a genre of books, the ones that think whatever the first one in a type or the successful one just didn't go far enough. Then they decide to top it and it becomes a weird game of but look how much more awful I can be.

I feel like G.R.R. Martin started this with the entire grimdark world of fantasy, its not one I like a lot but oh there are a lot of them.

[agonistes]

I nominate the Ember Island Players for the adaptation to stage or screen!!!

[skygiants]

"Did sexy revolutionary love interest just . . . die?"

"I DON'T KNOW IT WAS REALLY UNCLEAR"

[ladysingsthe]

I nominate them for the adaptation of EVERYTHING EVER.

[brownbetty]

+1

[genarti]

AGREED

[evewithanapple]

o.O Aren't these characters teenagers? Why does this Digory dude have a husband? Is he a ringer?

Dodge Piss and Shit Dash makes me think of this one terrible medieval novel I read where one of the kid characters was named PISSPUDDLE. No real reason; her brother had a normal name. Her parents apparently just never bothered to give her an actual name like Joan or Martha, so they just called her Pisspuddle. Because the middle ages were DARK, man, DARK.

[skygiants]

THEY ARE IN FACT SIXTEEN. It turns out at the end his husband is a husband of revolutionary convenience! It is never really explained why it is actually convenient for revolutionaries to have husbands, especially given the whole "force you to choose between people you love" thing, although I bet certain portions of, like, Les Mis fandom would loooove to run with that.

. . . WOW. AMAZING. That is some plausible grim and gritty realism right there, man! YEAH. @___@

[evewithanapple]

Well, I mean. This was also a book where a female character was raped by her father in the guise of a demon, after said father burned her breast off with a hot poker when she was a baby. Also another character was so embitterened by not being able to have children that she went insane and ran off into the woods to make fake babies out of clay because they would never leave her precious! And the closeted gay priest who turns the one female character over to a church tribunal because he's being blackmailed re: his sexuality.

It was something, all right.

[skygiants]

. . . I want to ask what this book was, just so I KNOW in future, AND YET I AM AFRAID.

[evewithanapple]

It was Karen Maitland's THE OWL KILLERS. I was actually really disappointed because it had a cool premise- lingering pagan beliefs versus institutional Christianity and the ways in which groups like the beguines fell in the middle- but it was just an endless waterfall of angst and misery.

[rachelmanija]

It's convenient because then you have an Incentive you don't mind killing. Well - convenient for the Tribute, not so convenient for the Incentive.

How was the prose style?

[skygiants]

Yeah, but I think it's said that if people don't have any easily identifiable Incentives they just basically pick some random people for them, which is what almost happens to Digory (because he only has one person, and no other family.) Which seems like a better option than dragging in your revolutionary buddy!

Histrionic and excessively capitalized, but, I mean, to be fair, there's only a certain level of histrionics you can avoid when your set devices are things like FLOORS MADE OF ZOMBIES . . .

[rachelmanija]

That comment made my day.

[dragovianknight]

I appreciate you reading these things so I don't have to.

[skygiants]

That's what I'm here for!

[cahn]

Hee! I think the phrase "angst porn" should definitely be used more.

[skygiants]

Is it not used a lot already? If not, IT SHOULD BE. It's so often applicable!

[hafl]

This book sounds hilarious. I'll have to read it.

[skygiants]

Yes do! I mean, I want to encourage the existence of [gay YA trope], in general. Read iiiiiiiiiit!

[metaphortunate]

I am reminded of Oscar Wilde's comment on Dickens that one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

[skygiants]

Ha! ACCURATE.