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Jul. 16th, 2014 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsWhile we're talking about tropetastic self-published books, I've spent the past few days racing my way through Andrea K. Host's Touchstone Trilogy, which features at least three awesome YA tropes rolled into one.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: I am a geeky Australian teenager and this is my journal and I just accidentally stepped through a portal onto an alternate planet and now I have to survive on my own. Maybe I'll find a fantasy civilization to help me!
THE PLANET: Have some fruit and berries and sheep and mysterious ancient ruins without any sign of humanity.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ... :(
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: Hey! Good job surviving the first fifty pages of the book. Actually this happens all the time and we're constantly rescuing stray people who fall through astral plane portals, it's a huge pain in the ass.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: Great! So you can get me home?
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: Probably not, sorry! We'll let you know if we find your planet, but don't get your hopes up. Here's your culturally mandatory cybernetic brain implant that we gave you without asking permission, your host family and refugee stipend, and your digital guidebook to our imperiled planet and alien language and culture. We have to go back to fighting the monsters from the astral plane that are infesting the multiverse now. Have fun!
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ... :(
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: WAIT HANG ON actually it turns out you have weird superpowers!
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ...?
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: We're taking you for scientific testing and to train with our squads of hot teenaged psychic space ninjas who protect the planet from the astral plane monsters, in case you turn out to be useful.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ...
A BUNCH OF HOT TEENAGED PSYCHIC SPACE NINJAS: Looks like we have no choice but to adopt you and see if you can help us save the world!
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: That's nice, but .... do I get a choice about agreeing to any of this testing ...
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: Probably not! But THINK OF THE WORLD-SAVING.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: And if it turns out I am super-important to the world-saving, what does that mean about letting me go home if you ever find my planet?
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: ....*whistles*
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ....:(
The first book was by far my favorite, because it's the one that grapples most directly with all the stuff I found most interesting -- the subversion of the 'you came through a portal and you're super-important!' fantasy, and the conflict between the fact that Cassandra is perfectly aware that her weird superpowers are super important and probably will save a bunch of lives, and the fact that she's stuck in an alien culture under constant observation with very little choice in anything that happens to her, and the more important she's perceived to be, the fewer real choices she has.
Then Cass grows into her role and makes friends with all the psychic space ninjas and acquires a hot psychic space ninja boyfriend and a cute astral plane kitty and develops even more psychic powers and gets much less conflicted about everything. At this point it's still fun and compulsively readable, but I was disappointed that the trilogy didn't keep pushing at all the tension around choice and responsibility and being a refugee in an alien society and involuntary conscription into a necessary war that I thought was so interesting in the first book.
...also I have conflicted feelings about the whole subplot where the psychic space ninjas are considered elusive superstars on their planet and there are all movies and television shows and fan fiction about them and all this meta about Cass and her friends having their adventures turned into inaccurate television that gets their characterization wrong, because on the one hand IT'S SUPER FUN AND I LOVE IT and on the other hand I find it really difficult to suspend my disbelief in the parallel development of serialized television with regular production seasons on two completely different worlds with different technologies and no previous cross-cultural contact. Serialized television has a long and complicated and technologically specific history, guys! I know, I took that class!
Also, Cass is a true fangirl in that she ships EVERYONE SHE KNOWS, but very heteronormatively, and I refuse to believe in all the various heterosexual crushes among the psychic space ninjas that she thinks she detects because I genuinely just don't believe that all those people are straight.
(...but I still devoured not only whole thing, but also the follow-up book actually titled Gratuitous Epilogue in which everyone hangs around on a bunch of islands getting married and adopting cute orphans and kittens and having babies ad nauseum. Although I also appreciate Host's decision to separate that out and not leave it in the actual book, since leaving it in was IMHO definitely a mistake in And All The Stars.)
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: I am a geeky Australian teenager and this is my journal and I just accidentally stepped through a portal onto an alternate planet and now I have to survive on my own. Maybe I'll find a fantasy civilization to help me!
THE PLANET: Have some fruit and berries and sheep and mysterious ancient ruins without any sign of humanity.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ... :(
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: Hey! Good job surviving the first fifty pages of the book. Actually this happens all the time and we're constantly rescuing stray people who fall through astral plane portals, it's a huge pain in the ass.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: Great! So you can get me home?
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: Probably not, sorry! We'll let you know if we find your planet, but don't get your hopes up. Here's your culturally mandatory cybernetic brain implant that we gave you without asking permission, your host family and refugee stipend, and your digital guidebook to our imperiled planet and alien language and culture. We have to go back to fighting the monsters from the astral plane that are infesting the multiverse now. Have fun!
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ... :(
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: WAIT HANG ON actually it turns out you have weird superpowers!
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ...?
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: We're taking you for scientific testing and to train with our squads of hot teenaged psychic space ninjas who protect the planet from the astral plane monsters, in case you turn out to be useful.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ...
A BUNCH OF HOT TEENAGED PSYCHIC SPACE NINJAS: Looks like we have no choice but to adopt you and see if you can help us save the world!
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: That's nice, but .... do I get a choice about agreeing to any of this testing ...
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: Probably not! But THINK OF THE WORLD-SAVING.
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: And if it turns out I am super-important to the world-saving, what does that mean about letting me go home if you ever find my planet?
A SPACE MILITARY ORGANIZATION: ....*whistles*
CASSANDRA DEVLIN: ....:(
The first book was by far my favorite, because it's the one that grapples most directly with all the stuff I found most interesting -- the subversion of the 'you came through a portal and you're super-important!' fantasy, and the conflict between the fact that Cassandra is perfectly aware that her weird superpowers are super important and probably will save a bunch of lives, and the fact that she's stuck in an alien culture under constant observation with very little choice in anything that happens to her, and the more important she's perceived to be, the fewer real choices she has.
Then Cass grows into her role and makes friends with all the psychic space ninjas and acquires a hot psychic space ninja boyfriend and a cute astral plane kitty and develops even more psychic powers and gets much less conflicted about everything. At this point it's still fun and compulsively readable, but I was disappointed that the trilogy didn't keep pushing at all the tension around choice and responsibility and being a refugee in an alien society and involuntary conscription into a necessary war that I thought was so interesting in the first book.
...also I have conflicted feelings about the whole subplot where the psychic space ninjas are considered elusive superstars on their planet and there are all movies and television shows and fan fiction about them and all this meta about Cass and her friends having their adventures turned into inaccurate television that gets their characterization wrong, because on the one hand IT'S SUPER FUN AND I LOVE IT and on the other hand I find it really difficult to suspend my disbelief in the parallel development of serialized television with regular production seasons on two completely different worlds with different technologies and no previous cross-cultural contact. Serialized television has a long and complicated and technologically specific history, guys! I know, I took that class!
Also, Cass is a true fangirl in that she ships EVERYONE SHE KNOWS, but very heteronormatively, and I refuse to believe in all the various heterosexual crushes among the psychic space ninjas that she thinks she detects because I genuinely just don't believe that all those people are straight.
(...but I still devoured not only whole thing, but also the follow-up book actually titled Gratuitous Epilogue in which everyone hangs around on a bunch of islands getting married and adopting cute orphans and kittens and having babies ad nauseum. Although I also appreciate Host's decision to separate that out and not leave it in the actual book, since leaving it in was IMHO definitely a mistake in And All The Stars.)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-16 07:35 pm (UTC)Really? Really?
Amazing.
Edit: oh my WORD actual description:
"What happens when the plot ends? A relentless barrage of weddings, babies, and planetary colonisation! Meandering through the two years following the conclusion of the Touchstone Trilogy, this self-indulgent collection of family reminiscence is more saccharine than dramatic, with the most action to be found in snowball fights.
"For those who truly just want to know what happens next, no matter how mundane, read on for the everyday, ordinary lives of psychic space ninjas playing house."
no subject
Date: 2014-07-16 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-16 07:44 pm (UTC)Yes indeedy.
(And yet when Stargate: Atlantis did its second-to-last episode as a private investigator AU, it sucked! Because they should have left it for after the finale so as not to suck up resources needed for the big finish.)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-16 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-17 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-17 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 02:10 am (UTC). . . I am so happy to know that happened.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 01:27 pm (UTC)