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Sep. 21st, 2015 08:05 amI just read Malinda Lo's Adaptation duology (Adaptation and Inheritance) which has ... hmm. It's interesting, because I feel like these books are very much in dialogue with a specific kind of YA that tends not to quite work for me, and so the ways in which these do and don't work for me are also very much part of that dialogue.
Adaptation starts off with Our Heroine Reese Holloway and her hot high school debate team partner David Li getting stranded halfway across the country after a MYSTERIOUS EVENT when hundreds of birds attack planes across the country. Over the course of their efforts to get home, David and Reese end up receiving medical treatment in a mysterious facility in Area 51! And once they get home, superpowers? Strange telepathic connections?? Government conspiracies???
Also, Reese meets a hot girl with her own secrets, which leads to the inevitable love triangle.
There is other stuff going on in the book, but I'm going to talk for a while about the love triangle because that is kind of a focus of what both did and didn't work for me. On the one hand: I am definitely excited that there exists a mainstream YA novel with a bisexual love triangle! And Malinda Lo handles all the broader aspects of that -- especially once Reese, David, and Amber all come into the public eye and the internet trolls start having a field day with Amber's sexuality and David's race -- really well. Both Amber and David are sympathetic, and with only vague spoilers, I will also say that the way it is resolved is, I'm pretty sure, a direct and intentional counter to the way most love triangles are handled in YA novels, which I really appreciate.
It is however still a very love triangle-y love triangle while it is going on, and a very, very YA love triangle to boot -- by which I mean (sorry, YA genre) I don't feel like I have much of an idea at any given time why all of these people are SO INTO each other, except that they're all attractive and the plot says so. I think the first 'I love you's start dropping about two or three weeks into the plot, and this may well be the way teenagers behave, but as a not-teenager I'm just like 'NO YOU DON'T, YOU BARELY KNOW EACH OTHER.' Which, I mean, is addressed --
REESE: Why do you like me? You barely knew me. You still barely know me.
AMBER: If you want me to list the top ten reasons, I can't. I only need one reason, and that reason is that you and I work together. We work.
Which -- OK, but ... I would actually like the top ten reasons, please! Or at least to be able as a reader to have some sense of what they are.
Reese is also a very YA heroine in that she's fairly plot-reactionary and I don't have a great sense of what makes her tick in and of herself, other than that she's somewhat insecure and worried about dating. I do really like her relationships with her parents and her best friend Julian, who is fascinated by government cover-ups and aliens and does journalism for a conspiracy website -- in fact Julian is probably my favorite character in the books -- but these relationships don't get anywhere near as much page time as the love triangle, because YA, and love triangle.
Like I said, I think a lot of the things that don't work for me are just things that don't work for me about much of the shape of the genre right now. All the same, I am very glad these books exist and are in the genre they are in; they don't specifically have to be for me.
Adaptation starts off with Our Heroine Reese Holloway and her hot high school debate team partner David Li getting stranded halfway across the country after a MYSTERIOUS EVENT when hundreds of birds attack planes across the country. Over the course of their efforts to get home, David and Reese end up receiving medical treatment in a mysterious facility in Area 51! And once they get home, superpowers? Strange telepathic connections?? Government conspiracies???
Also, Reese meets a hot girl with her own secrets, which leads to the inevitable love triangle.
There is other stuff going on in the book, but I'm going to talk for a while about the love triangle because that is kind of a focus of what both did and didn't work for me. On the one hand: I am definitely excited that there exists a mainstream YA novel with a bisexual love triangle! And Malinda Lo handles all the broader aspects of that -- especially once Reese, David, and Amber all come into the public eye and the internet trolls start having a field day with Amber's sexuality and David's race -- really well. Both Amber and David are sympathetic, and with only vague spoilers, I will also say that the way it is resolved is, I'm pretty sure, a direct and intentional counter to the way most love triangles are handled in YA novels, which I really appreciate.
It is however still a very love triangle-y love triangle while it is going on, and a very, very YA love triangle to boot -- by which I mean (sorry, YA genre) I don't feel like I have much of an idea at any given time why all of these people are SO INTO each other, except that they're all attractive and the plot says so. I think the first 'I love you's start dropping about two or three weeks into the plot, and this may well be the way teenagers behave, but as a not-teenager I'm just like 'NO YOU DON'T, YOU BARELY KNOW EACH OTHER.' Which, I mean, is addressed --
REESE: Why do you like me? You barely knew me. You still barely know me.
AMBER: If you want me to list the top ten reasons, I can't. I only need one reason, and that reason is that you and I work together. We work.
Which -- OK, but ... I would actually like the top ten reasons, please! Or at least to be able as a reader to have some sense of what they are.
Reese is also a very YA heroine in that she's fairly plot-reactionary and I don't have a great sense of what makes her tick in and of herself, other than that she's somewhat insecure and worried about dating. I do really like her relationships with her parents and her best friend Julian, who is fascinated by government cover-ups and aliens and does journalism for a conspiracy website -- in fact Julian is probably my favorite character in the books -- but these relationships don't get anywhere near as much page time as the love triangle, because YA, and love triangle.
Like I said, I think a lot of the things that don't work for me are just things that don't work for me about much of the shape of the genre right now. All the same, I am very glad these books exist and are in the genre they are in; they don't specifically have to be for me.
