Sir Apropos of Nothing by Peter David
It reminded me a little of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fear, but only in terms of story structure. It is essentially a bildungsroman from rags to riches back to rags again. Or you could interpret it as a knight’s adventure that breaks some tropes along the way (i.e., the story starts with the protagonist fending off the knight whose wife he just slept with). Then it goes back to before the main character was even born and goes from there. Like the editor said the beginning of the book isn’t exciting enough, so there’s just a flash-forward teaser. But it feels more like a bait-and-switch.
Other than that, it is a very good book, in the Peter David style. But it’s a lot more satirical and cynical and snarky than you’d get from something licensed like Star Trek or Marvel. And it’s very long. This is a deconstruction of chivalric knight tropes with themes around the destiny of a hero. This is not a good guy. I don’t mean like a thief, like Kaz Brekker in Six of Crows, but kinda selfish, self-serving. Like a heel wrestler. So if you’re into that, this is the book for you. But you may want to avoid this if you’re having a day where you need to see the good guys win.
But be careful–it has some problematic stuff. For example, our main character is born of rape. This is played for backstory and drama. His mother is a slut, then a whore, then an even worse whore. She prostitutes while pregnant with the main character and afterwards, while raising him. This was written in 2001–I’m surprised the publisher wasn’t more sensitive about topics like this. I didn’t think Peter David was capable of this kind of misogyny (and I’m not saying he’s a misogynist, but this book is not kind to females).
The Between by Ryan Leslie
(unfinished)
From the back cover, I was expecting this to be like A Walk in the Woods, but it’s a city under the earth filled with horrors like a Lovecraft story. Or at least something akin to Dungeon Crawler Carl or The Backrooms. But at about 20-40%, the book starts to become something it did not promise in the premise.
It does have the two friends–one’s successful and the other’s a loser and resentful–descending into the underground. But no one is asking any questions. What is the “Between”? Who put it there? Where did it come from? What is it for? No one seems to care. No one seems interested in finding out the answer. They just… look around. The place has some evidence of people who were here before and magic stuff, but they aren’t interested in exploring it. Nothing follows a direction or goal. At least in Alice in Wonderland, the illogic still had a point. It was a joke or making fun of other children’s literature (like the tweaked nursery rhymes). Here, it’s thrown in without meaning to the story.
And then they split up. They forget about each other. The straight guy finds the way out and… just goes back to his regular life. Doesn’t even bother telling people that this place exists. The other stays down and forms a partnership with another “crawler”. They unlock more puzzles, but still seem to have no interest in any end goal. They just want to be not on Earth, I guess.
And then the S&M starts, and that’s where I dropped out.
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
So… this book centers on a school shooting. This is a touchy subject, and in my experience, whenever someone writes about the topic, they always get it wrong. They always get it wrong. They treat it like any other crisis scenario, like Point Break or Dog Day Afternoon. As if a school shooting is the new hot situation to place an action/crime novel. They treat the antagonist as a psychotic killer like Cape Fear or Natural Born Killers. They never go into HIS psyche. That he’s the main character of his story, the villain protagonist. That he has to be heard, and the gun is the only way they will listen.
These acts are not inexplicable. Sure, you can find superficial commonalities (lack of hope for the future, white males, access to guns, violent games, being bullied, social isolation), but there’s something way underneath the surface, simmering, waiting for a catalyst. But authors would prefer to give the audience something shallow and dramatic (I’m looking at you, Colleen Hoover) over exploring the psyche of a killer. This book takes place in 2007. We should already know a few things about these people eight years after Columbine (which barely gets a mention).
So we have three main characters. Alex, a state judge and single mother. Josie, Alex’s daughter and a popular kid. And Peter, childhood friend of Josie and the killer in question. The story starts with the massacre in the first chapter, and then the rest of it is about the aftermath–everyone affected by this dark day in a small town: the cops, the lawyers, the parents of the victims, the parents of the perpetrator, and all the other parents and students. It all leads up to the verdict on Peter’s trial.
First, I have to get this out of the way: the way men are portrayed in this book is atrocious. If they aren’t cardboard cutouts, they’re evil Lifetime-movie Bluebeards. Only one is redeemable and he’s the noble cop investigating the massacre. He’s also the romantic love interest–a dogged nice guy–which seems completely appropriate in a story about a massacre. Others are the killer’s defense lawyer (who is a little scummy, but also doing his job) and the killer’s dad, who acts like an undiagnosed autistic.
And then there’s the female teenager’s Jerk Dumb Jock boyfriend. And that boyfriend–oh my god, is he cliche. Everything out of the guy’s mouth is either homophobic, misogynistic, or sexual. I mean EVERYTHING. At no point does he say anything that indicates an identity outside of football, abusing his girlfriend, or bullying. NO ONE would be friends with this guy. Not in the 2000s. At one point, when he and Josie are having sex (which he pressures her about, just like you’d expect), he chokes her–just because he can. (Not exactly Judy Blume’s Forever…)
This is the biggest black streak on an otherwise compelling novel. But it slashes right through, like a gash through a painting. That and the computer stuff. This is 2007. YouTube has been available for two years. Everyone should have a cell phone. No one is chatting online or using Facebook. E-mail is most definitely “a thing”. And like so many authors do, computer code is “magic”. I guess in this universe, you can make a game as good as Doom without once referring to an engine, texturing, lighting, or maps. At some point, Josie tries to find her sperm-donor father and needs Peter’s help to look him up on the “com-poo-ter” because her house doesn’t have one. A state judge who doesn’t even have a PC in her house? I don’t think so.
I guess that’s another big thing about the book. Josie’s storyline is banal as hell, especially because half of it revolves around her aforementioned jerk jock boyfriend. I knew–I KNEW–there would be a pregnancy scare at about 40-60% through. And then–bam–just like I predicted. Lots of parts of the book are just filler that don’t matter to the plot. For example, Josie likes having sex, but not who she’s having sex with. But she won’t break up with him because she likes being popular too much. However, at no time does the narrator tell us what being popular gets her.
And here’s one more thing. The straw that breaks the camel’s back (instigates the shooting) is this: Peter writes an email confessing his feelings to Josie. One of Josie’s popular friends intercepts the e-mail at a sleepover. And sends it to the ENTIRE SCHOOL DIRECTORY (oh, now the writer knows what an email is). This friend also replies to Peter as Josie. So Peter, thinking Josie returns his feelings, goes up to her during lunch and embarrasses himself. And then the Jerk Jock Boyfriend sneaks up behind him and pulls down his pants & underpants in front of the entire cafeteria. A teacher even sees it, but all he says is “hey, what’s going on here? No shenanigans happening, are there?” And there are no consequences for this action.
That is sexual assault. In 2007, that kid should have been EXPELLED. Especially if it’s 2007. But these characters act like it’s the 1980’s. (A problem I’ve noticed–when YA authors write about high school, they rely on their experiences from thirty years ago.) In 2007, EVERY school had concrete anti-bullying policies. You know why? Because they’re so scared of another Columbine happening.
There’s no way these kids would be able to get away with what they do (e.g., a fight drawing blood in front of witnesses and no disciplinary action). It’s acting like high school hasn’t evolved beyond Weird Science or Heathers or The Karate Kid. In this era, high school movies were like Easy A, Superbad, Napoleon Dynamite, Juno, Mean Girls, Twilight. (See also: My review of Jackie Morse Kessler’s Rage and associated books).
I know this review is mostly pointing out flaws, but I still looked forward to reading it every night. I liked seeing what Alex the judge did–how she handled being a single mother AND a court judge. Plus, she was involved in a case heavily tied to her daughter and an offender he knew. I liked reading about Peter, even if the author didn’t go into as much depth with him as I would have liked. It still gave me some PTSD flashbacks to my high school, so I know the author must have done something right. It’s a thick soup of social issues that I care about, like school bullying, peer pressure, and adolescents vs. adults. I was completely satisfied with the reading experience. But also, this is NOT the book to read to understand why school shootings happen. But it’s closer than anything else I’ve read. I guess it takes steps to get there, like trying to understand racism. We must all acknowledge that there will be missteps along the way.
