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Forbidden by Kelley Armstrong
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Forbidden by Kelley Armstrong (Subterranean Press, 2012) is another story featuring Elena Michaels and Clayton Danvers in the continuing saga of the Women of the Otherworld. In the moment I write these sentences so full of certainty, it’s easy to forget this is my first look at this author and the only reason I’m able to appear so knowledgeable is because I’ve browsed her website and read the Wikipedia entry. I wish I’d done so before agreeing to review this book. I get lazy, assuming Subterranean Press does not publish Young Adult content. Most of the time, I filter out the fiction aimed at those barely able to read and whose sensibilities are so far removed from my senior years. But, yet again, another teen bestselling author has penetrated my defences so I must grit my teeth and offer my opinion (as if it’s not immediately obvious from these opening words).
The problems for me are many and manifold. I suppose they begin with my general lack of respect for the young. It’s not simply that they are inexperienced. That goes without saying and no generation springs from a god’s head fully formed and able to act like adults from drawing their first breaths. But the present young are so alien to me, they might just as well have been born on a different planet. Sadly, this is reflected in the books intended for them to read. When I was growing up, there were books for children, books written for adults but considered suitable for children to read, and then the books we waited to read. Frankly, what’s now marketed as YA fiction is adult fiction dumbed down. Just as the tests and examinations young students take today are significantly easier than those I had to take, so their fiction is emasculated fiction that patronising adult editors consider it appropriate to give the tender young minds to read. If these books represent what teens are genuinely interested in, I have little faith in the future of the human race. Indeed, I note a great irony. In many serious commentaries and newspapers, I see handwringing pieces bewailing the loss of childhood. It seems our young tots are turning into adults before their time. Well these books tell a very different story. They are beyond innocent, inhabiting some weird world of fantasy make-believe in which life can always become beautiful and fulfilling. Although some authors do use darker thematic material, it’s usually in an educational spirit, to suggest ways in which horrors can be mitigated and life made more bearable again.
Kelley Armstrong
So here we have our young adult protagonists. Elena is getting a little long in the tooth for this role but the loyal fans have been following her for many years. She’s now the proud mother of two children but, on this winter’s night, she gets a telephone call which brings her to a small town called Westwood where a young man called Morgan Walsh has been locked up in jail and could do with a little help. She therefore puts down the mantle of motherdom and takes up her role of Alpha of the Pack. She and Clayton, her bodyguard, set off on an adventure with a limited number of characters and no more than 250 pages in which to reach a positive resolution. Well, this is a YA adventure with werewolves as the central characters. This could be scary, if not gory, but we start off with scenes of domestic tranquility. Having seen our central character being all maternal, this is not going to suddenly morph into a book in which she goes to Westwood and, at the first opportunity, takes hold of the throat of a human. “With her teeth sliding into the yielding flesh of her victim’s neck, she rips out a chunk of flesh. Arterial blood from his torn carotid pumps over her muzzle, whetting her appetite. With a casual surge of strength, she hoists him into the air and leans forward to breakfast on the low-hanging nuts.” No, we’re never going to get anything along those lines in a book like this.
Instead, no-one plays nice. Person or persons unknown rip the tyres of their vehicle stranding them in this hick backwater and then exciting stuff happens. At least this is what’s supposed to be exciting to one of today’s teens. Frankly, I couldn’t wait for it to be over, but dutifully read it to the end to see precisely what was forbidden. Was it a major Satanic ritual calling up demons that would fight our werewolves tooth and claw? Or perhaps it was handbags at dawn with the zombie cheerleaders from the local high school? Well, if you’re a fan, you’ve no doubt already added this book to your collection and know the answer. If you’re not a fan but are a young adult as defined by modern marketers, you may find Forbidden exciting. If you’re a curmudgeonly senior like me, death would be preferable to having to read another book by this author.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest
The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest (The Clockwork Century Volume 5) demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of a longer running series. When it’s new, everyone can be genuinely excited by the novelty of the ideas and the loving craft that has gone into realising those ideas on paper. Those who follow the genre will know Boneshaker was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. This is no mean achievement. It signals a book that has striven to reach the pinnacles and only just fallen short. I think there were three reasons for its success in 2009. The first was the resurgence of steampunk in the oughties had not produced the greatest of works. This novel had a depth of invention that none of the others had achieved. The mechanics of survival in the gas-infected Seattle were beautifully worked out. Add in the claustrophobic atmosphere and the flesh-eating rotters, and you had a winner. The next three books see the author ringing the changes to keep the ideas fresh. Although there was some overlap in the characters, each novel or novella featured a different set of technological innovation. Despite this braveness in continually expanding the extent of the alternate history and looking in more detail at developments in the dirigibles, steam-power generally and submarines, I had the sense the series was slowly running out of steam. This is confirmed by the latest book’s return to Seattle. I think this was a fundamental mistake.
Cherie Priest with the backing of flowers
Assessing the “big picture”, there were fascinating possibilities in moving up to proper authorial omniscience and looking squarely at the broader conflict between the Northern and Southern states with Texas almost neutral. We’ve only viewed this version of the Civil War tangentially. There have been mere glimpses of the politics of the conflict and of the various attempts to resolve the core disputes and produce peace. Yet instead of helping us understand the context for this war, we revert to a Young Adult format rerun of Seattle with tedious results. This time, young Rector Sherman reaches his eighteenth birthday and gets thrown out of the orphanage. Driven by guilt that he might have been responsible for the death of Zeke, he decides to enter the city and try to lay the ghost. It should be said the boy is a fairly hopeless sap addict and not wholly rational when he takes this decision. But, as is always the case with books like this, once the primary protagonist has committed himself to the roll of the dice, you have to go with it.
Thereafter, we have all the faults of a YA approach holding this book back plus a genuinely silly introduction. Dealing with the latter first, about a third of the way through the book, I decided there must be a zoo within the walls or just outside, and one or more orangutans had escaped and entered the city. Boy was I barking up the wrong tree! You see I’d thought the essence of steampunk was some degree of realism and not outright fantasy horror. Even the author’s decision might have been defensible if it had been scary. But when Captain Cly can restrain it. . . Even allowing for the gas weakening this usually unstoppable force of nature, this plot element is a non-starter except in a YA novel that’s pulling its punches. Now add in one of the boys can sooth the savage beast. Well that’s what you get when you mix youngsters with the supernatural. They’re all so dim, wandering around the place as if they were invulnerable. After all, the rotters have either been carefully shepherded from the city or pulled to pieces by the newcomer(s). That reduces the danger factor to an effective zero level. So they can do their Famous Five freelance crime-solving act with only a few relatively ineffective adult drug dealers to worry about. It’s a sadly inadequate contribution to a reasonably entertaining series. Even the steampunk element is glossed over. Rather than repeat all the descriptions from the earlier Boneshaker, we’re given a whistle-stop tour of underground and how to get around safely.
So no matter how innovative and successful the first two books in this series, this is one to avoid unless you are reading as a committed fan. I hate to say it but The Inexplicables is terrible.
For reviews of other books by Cherie Priest, see:
Bloodshot (The Cheshire Red Reports 1)
Boneshaker
Clementine
Dreadnought
Fathom
Fiddlehead
Ganymede
Hellbent (The Cheshire Red Reports 2)
Those Who Went Remain There Still
Lost in Darkness by Jeffrey Thomas
Lost in Darkness by Jeffrey Thomas (Bad Moon Books, 2011) presents me with something of a challenge. Not that this is inherently a bad thing. It does us good to be taken out of our comfort zones every now and then, forcing a reappraisal of the prejudices we hold on what to read and/or watch. But this is a first. In all the years I’ve been reading Jeffrey Thomas, it never occurred to me he would write a YA book. This is not YA in the sense of Yellow Assassin or Yammering Aardvark. I really do mean Young Adult. Yes, no matter how you cut it, this is a book which I think is fairly aimed at readers aged around 12. When book marketing became less of an art and more of a science, publishers began to carve their market up into niches so that relevant content could be targeted more directly at individual buyers. I suppose the commercialisation of adolescence began in the 1970s (missing me out, of course) with books looking at the “rite of passage” or “coming of age” tropes. The idea is that, in all cultures, there’s an initiation process for the young to go through at key milestones. So they have to become teens. Later, when they’ve matured and are all growed up, they get to become adults. I suppose all these books are about identity as each protagonist has to discover what kind of person he or she is and whether that’s acceptable. Some of the more interesting books are when our teen recognises the identity is firming up on the dark side and either this is embraced or the youngster must strive valiantly to move towards the light (hopefully not dying on the way).
Jeffrey Thomas with his walls breaking out in teen acne
So here we have a story written with the point of view of a fourteen-year-old girl. Needless to say, she’s not very sensible. So, when she has a near-death experience, she could listen to the nice “angel” telling her to stay on the path and, if she feels inclined, continuing to walk towards the light. But no. She’s one of these naturally perverse teenagers and therefore takes off down a gloomy side corridor and then decides to run down the steps into the darkness. A more brainless thing to do is hard to imagine. This being a YA book, her parents are not on hand to keep telling her to carry on running into the pit — all parents of teens get good results with negative psychology — so our heroine takes full credit for completely screwing up her chances of survival. For those of you taking notes, YA books specialise in showing kids who mess up and then have to figure out how to recover — in this case, carrying on towards the light is no longer an option. So now predatory creatures come out of the darkness and get their claws into her. Things are looking bad for our poor baby. But instead of these creatures eating her on the spot which would be the more realistic outcome, she’s able to run back up the stairs. These dark beings with their claws digging into her are not heavy, you understand. They’re more like clip-on fashion accessories for the Goth-oriented teen girl who wants a little more angst in her life.
Hey, here’s this angel guy offering good advice again. That means she’s edging back to safety. Well we can’t have that. So our young twit runs away from the light and jumps towards where she hopes Earth is. Now she’s exporting dark shadow beings back to our reality with her. Hey, now they can focus on sucking the life out of her friends. That’s her BFF and the boy who’s not quite old enough to confess his feelings and so just moons around the place like a love-sick calf. Well no-one will miss that pair apart from our heroine. So now she’s got to decide what kind of a person she is, how she feels about her friends and resolve those entirely chaste flutterings of the heart when she thinks about young boys.
I kept waiting for this book to turn into an adult novel by the Jeffrey Thomas I know and enjoy reading. It didn’t happen. If you have a twelve year old looking for something to read, Lost in Darkness is it. As YA stories go, it’s a very professional job, nicely put together, with the entirely predictable plot and outcome.
For more reviews of books by Jeffrey Thomas, see:
Beautiful Hell
Blood Society
Blue War
Doomsdays
Red Cells
Thought Forms
Voices From Hades
Voices From Punktown
Worship the Night
Switched by Amanda Hocking
Some times you inadvertently lay yourself open to a world of hurt. It’s just one of those things you have to learn to live with. As regular readers will have gathered, I follow the publishing world, looking for the elusive hot authors and the best books of the year. Most of the time, I manage to hit the middle of the road, finding books that are of a reasonable standard. As you supporters of Sturgeon’s Law might expect, the best are very rare birds. A reasonable standard is a good result. But my eye was attracted to the phenomenon that is Amanda Hocking. Here’s a self-published author who’s leapt from obscurity to millionaire in one of these fairytale stories the mass media believe will sell their newspapers and television shows. Blaming the advent of the internet, the pundits have it that this author is another of the Beatle moments. You may remember them as a group of musicians who managed to sell a few records but, when starting out, they were turned down by a major record label. So this story is that the publishers know nothing. They too rejected this author and she’s proved them wrong by putting her e-books on Amazon. Up to the end of 2011, she had sold 150,000 of her books. That’s not small potatoes, particularly because she’s not paying commission to an agent or living from the royalties a publisher would pay. Now, of course, the publishing world has come to her door with St Martin’s Griffin winning the short straw. The big publish house is acting quite rationally. If there’s money to be made from an existing author brand, why turn it away. No matter what the actual quality of the content, they can package it and put it on shelves.
At this point, I admit to a prejudice against books written for children and young adults. I unthinkingly read them when I was young. Having managed to make it into adulthood, I prefer to spend my time reading books aimed at adults. So, having asked for the chance to review “a Hocking”, I was stunned when I began reading Switched. This is clearly written at a level twelve-year old girls would enjoy. Even the English is simple, uncomplicated and, at times, ungrammatical so the young readers never have to stop and ask themselves what anything means. For example, “I wandered around the house, but not intentionally.” I would like to see someone walk unintentionally without the aid of a hypnotist or some other person affecting their willpower. Or, “Finn led me through the house and down a hall I didn’t even know existed.” This is wonderful. In the present tense, she’s walking down a hall but she does not know it exists. I could go on but this would be unkind to the people in the publishing house tasked with the editing task.
Amanda Hocking, current Queen of the self-pushing industry
Then we get to the first-person narrative. This is a teenage girl who feels she doesn’t fit into her life. She’s been thrown out of previous schools and is on her last chance when she notices a young boy, Finn, he of the “. . .eyes framed by dark lashes”. I’m not sure what that looks like when the lashes go all the way round the eye, but it can’t be pretty. This is the stereotypical YA love interest for our virginal girl to lust after for the rest of the book. In American YA, the message is always abstinence. This book actually goes further and seems to warn against any kind of active fraternisation with the enemy sex. The usual holding hands or hugging is clearly out. Even being with a boy unchaperoned can lead to serious complications. Who’d be a Trylle — that’s troll misspelt to make it sound better to younger ears? No-one would actually want to be a troll, internet or fairy story, but Amanda Hocking creates a world of wealth and privilege that would tempt any young girl. Add in the fantasy of a dark-haired, brooding boy and you have the perfect nest for dreams. Except, these Trylles are actually running the ultimate baby scam. What they do is switch their own baby cuckoos with the babies of the richest parents they can find. When these changelings come of age, they are brought back into the Trylle “family” and it collects all the wealth by inheritance.
When our heroine meets her natural mother, there’s little or no attempt to explain anything. Like all adults in YA books, she’s suffering major problems in the level of her intelligence and general ability to empathise with the young. Only two adults are interested in her. One does offer some useful advice and the other wants to get her into bed. Finn and two other young men are the real sources of information. Even so, she’s left to guess what’s happening and constantly makes mistakes. What makes this worse is that these Trylles are supposed to have supernatural powers, but only a very small percentage of the adults can manage anything significant. In every way, these adults are pitiful specimens. Naturally, there has to be a problem and this is provided by another group called the Vittra. They want our heroine and, finding little or no security in place, attempt a kidnapping. Finn and several others combine to drive them away. This leads to a slight breach of protocol and our younger lovers lie down together BUT NOTHING HAPPENS, OK?!? There’s not even a hint of getting to first base, let alone scoring a home run. This is a faintly supernatural romance for young girls, remember.
To say I failed to find any redeeming features in Switched would be the understatement of the year so far. I can only assume the word of mouth that sold the e-books was among young girls who were able to afford the maximum $2.99 for a book. Presumably this book will continue to sell into the same market and more strength to Amanda Hocking, say I. It’s a good thing to be able to get the young to read anything. The fact that I, an old and curmudgeonly man, think it rubbish is neither here nor there. It’s money in the bank.
I requested that a copy of this book be sent to me for review.
Secret Vengeance by F. Paul Wilson
Emotions run at different levels depending on events. Normally, when we reach the end of something satisfactory or better, we savour the moment, looking back at the pleasure it has given us. So here I am. I have just finished Secret Vengeance by F. Paul Wilson (Gauntlet Press, 2010). This completes the YA Secret History trilogy, starting with Secret Histories and followed by Secret Circles. Yet the best I can manage is a more dispassionate admiration that we have filled in so many of the backstory elements needed to appreciate the whole of the Repairman Jack cycle.
I suppose, in part, I am less involved because this is written for younger readers. It therefore lacks some of the textual density that can offer a better view of events. Although it does show Jack continuing to develop his interest in fixes, it’s a rather more stripped-down narrative. Nevertheless, it nicely links in with the more supernatural tone associated with the Barrens, and gives us a better look at Mrs Clevenger, her dog and Weird Walt, back in compassionate action again. We also finally get to meet Mr Foster who, as those of you who have read the continuing adult series will know, is rather important.
I was pleased with the exploration of the circumstances surrounding Jack’s birth and it was interesting to learn that, according to the test administered by Mr. Drexler, Jack and his father both have blue overtones. Obviously, the long-term breeding programme works to transmit the right genes. It was intriguing that this is probably responsible for rendering Jack “invisible” to Saree, the Piney children and you know who. It also confirms why the q’qr would keep him safe in Secret Circles.
F. Paul Wilson — proof of life
Anyway, this is a slightly more traditional Jack fix. Weezy is attacked by the local school’s quarterback hero so he must be taken down a peg or two. The primary point of interest is not so much the way in which this is achieved — truth be told, in round three, this is somewhat overwritten — but in the continuing slow evolution of a moral framework for Jack’s activities. Prompted by one of his teachers, Jack extends the debate of what he might consider it legitimate to do in defence of himself or others, continuing the “good work” begun in Secret Circles. Incidentally, this prompts the right response to the temptation offered by Abe Grossman, the man who later becomes Jack’s quartermaster.
Structurally, I feel the trilogy would have built to a better climax if we had reversed the pyramid and the quarterback. Although, in saying this, we still have the big unknown of what’s going to happen in The Dark at the End — the book that finally closes the narrative arc and links us back into Nightworld. So it may be necessary for Jack to make better contact with the Pineys and see the lumens as the concluding elements in the broader narrative pattern. However it does all fit together, Secret Vengeance is slightly more downbeat in tone with Jack inevitably feeling some guilt in contributing to the death. Perhaps, given the darker feel to the adult Jack, that’s not a bad way to say goodbye to him as a teen.
For all my reviews of books by F Paul Wilson, see:
Aftershock & Others
Bloodline
By the Sword
The Dark at the End
Dark City
Fatal Error
Ground Zero
Secret Circles
Secret Histories
Secret Vengeance
Secret Circles by F. Paul Wilson
Well, here we are with the second installment of the young adult series involving the soon-to-be Repairman Jack. Continuing on from Secret Histories, we are once again pitched in with Jack and Weezy growing up in Johnson on the fringes of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. In production terms, Gauntlet Press has produced one of its better pieces of jacket art, neatly capturing the antiquity of the pyramid. It’s interesting to compare this to the jacket design produced by TOR which is completely underwhelming. The repetition of the word “secret” in the titles continues the theme of the secret history of the world which underpins the entire series. But this reference to circles is somewhat pedantic. Let’s take the idea of the narrative arc. As you know, arcs are parts of a circle. To highlight the “obvious” notion that plots develop cause and effect which may have some degree of circularity is uninspiring, to put it mildly. Even a young reader might find it redundant to have all this explained at the end of the book.
I confess to finding the first outing in this Jack Junior version somewhat tedious as, regrettably, I find most modern young adult fiction indigestible. But this is a major improvement. We are caught up in the disappearance and probable kidnapping of a five-year old. It’s not Jack’s fault Cody Bockman goes missing, but he feels guilty in not having seen the boy home when he had the chance. This leaves us in the situation of knowing Jack will be at work in trying to get the boy back.
Why, then, is this “young adult” book more readable? Several factors are at work. The first is a less patronising approach. Despite the explanation of circularity referred to above, F. Paul Wilson has managed not to follow the more usual tendency of authors in dumbing down the plot and the language used. Although the vocabulary is slightly less demanding, it’s definitely pitched at “older” readers. More importantly, the adults are acting with a more appropriate level of intelligence (or lack of it). In part, this is forced because of Jack’s emerging interest in fixing things. Once Jack is exposed to the reality of marital abuse, we are into complex human emotions. Fortunately, Wilson keeps everything reasonably realistic as Jack wrestles with his conscience when “wiser” heads advise him not to interfere. Later thinking about whether he did the right thing strikes the right tone for adults, young and old. For younger readers it’s an engaging teaching vehicle. For the completists among us, it represents the first real attempt on Jack’s part to rationalise his value system. In the first book, there was too much left unsaid. Wilson has begun to take this origins project more seriously and the results are better.
The next factor is a more dense set of references from and to the Adversary Cycle and the Repairman series. Part of the appeal of any origins series is the opportunity to put all the building blocks in place for what we know is to come. By definition, this is an elaborate game. As readers, we can watch the author tick all the boxes while all the characters are going through the pages, oblivious to the significance of the events unfolding around them. So now we see the emerging relationship between Jack and Drexler more clearly and, thanks to Bloodline, we can understand why Cody’s kidnapper would not want to hurt Jack. The Traveling Circus pitches its tents. It’s good to see Walter Erskine back in action after The Touch, and is this an underground village along the lines we first saw in The Keep? The idea of a buried city is always interesting. In this case, we avoid the necropolis cliché and focus on how this might be connected to the pyramid. For those who like a little additional information, the creature is a q’qr, a survivor from the First Age. That said, the idea the pyramid would not have been found by more outsiders is a bit convenient. With the government overflying the area in helicopters, you would expect someone to have seen it, particularly if they were so interested in the first site discovered in Secret Histories. Experienced investigators would have widened the area of search. And then Jack can quickly pick out a fifteen-foot high pyramid on an aerial photo. . . Yeah, well, he’s good like that.
Despite my minor carping, this is a genuinely more interesting effort from Wilson with everything set up nicely for the third installment — Secret Vengeance. It’s worth having a look at.
For all my reviews of books by F. Paul Wilson, see:
Aftershock & Others
Bloodline
By the Sword
The Dark at the End
Dark City
Fatal Error
Ground Zero
Secret Circles
Secret Histories
Secret Vengeance
Alcatraz versus The Scrivener’s Bones by Brandon Sanderson
Being old in body and spirit, I very rarely trespass into the YA market. If I am going to spend time on a book, I prefer that the author is trying to address adult sensibilities. In this case, however, I have found Brandon Sanderson sufficiently interesting as an author for the adult market that I decided to see what he can do in the YA market. For the record, this is the second book in the Alcatraz series. The problem with a book written by an adult for the young is that it represents the author’s attempt to match the culture of a different social grouping. This is a difficult trick. As a writer, I find it difficult to write for a specific group that I do not know and understand. For the purposes of these reviews, I write self-indulgently, not caring whether you readers are genuinely interested in what I believe. I write to crystallise what I think, as a discipline that forces me to make explicit what I would otherwise leave unspoken in my mind. When I write for someone else, the work nearly always goes through an editor before publication. This gives me perspective — someone dispassionate reading the content and making a judgement on its appropriateness is indispensable to hitting the target market. I should admit that I have never attempted to write for young readers. If I did, I would need to find groups of young people to read the drafts and tell me whether I had hit the right tone. Only asking an adult editor would seem like the blind leading the blind unless, of course, the editor has a special insight into the way the young currently think. As an aside, I note the controversy over the jacket artwork for Liar by Justine Larbalestier. This would suggest that the editorial staff at Bloomsbury are out of touch with their intended readership’s views on racism.
The curious thing about Alcatraz versus The Scrivener’s Bones by Brandon Sanderson is that this is metafiction for the YA market. Frankly, I am surprised that this device should appear here. Perhaps I should read more YA books. I had thought them mostly routine narratives rather than an author deliberately introducing inexperienced readers to a bag of authorial tricks. For me, the result is dissonant. I just do not know who the book is aimed at. Much of the humour is fairly juvenile in the pejorative sense of the word. Whereas Piers Anthony’s Xanth books indulge in a lunatic wordplay that, in the earlier books in the series, produces a madcap air of enjoyability, the humour here feels forced. I think Sanderson is trying too hard rather than allowing humour to emerge more naturally from the situations he is describing. Indeed, if anything, we have a fairly routine adventure story with an authorial gloss that stands as a counterpoint to the narrative. Managed well, this can result in a superior product through synergy. In this case, I do not think the parts fit together well enough.
Although some of the author’s monologuing is quite interesting in a didactic way, I find it distracting. I think it would have been better to invest effort in making a more engaging story of the conflict between the group led by our emerging hero and the Scrivener’s Bone called Kiliman. This is not to say that an editor should have directed Sanderson to write a conventional piece of fiction for the target market. There is always room for innovation. But I think the balance of this work is wrong. It would have been better as a less simplistic narrative with fewer authorial interpolations. If you are reading this as an adult, this is nothing like the fantasy fiction Sanderson specifically aims at you. This is not an Elantris/Mistborn style of book. If you are a young adult and you have read this far, congratulations! You get to make the call.
For reviews of six adult novels, see:
The Emperor’s Soul
Hero of Ages
Warbreaker,
The Way of Kings,
The Words of Radiance and
Well of Ascension
There’s another YA novel called The Rithmatist.
Secret Histories: A Repairman Jack Novel by F. Paul Wilson
There is, I think, a misconception among publishers that the so-called young adult market requires a significantly different way of writing. At one level, those who specialise in childhood development try to impress us with studies of vocabulary growth along an age profile. Children know this number of words at different ages. Their ability to comprehend complexity in sentences develops at this age. This is bringing the appearance of science to bear for educational purposes, indicating aspirational norms for each cohort moving through the schooling system. Different forms of test are then used to measure the extent to which language and comprehension skills are being developed.
Frankly, I have no time for this. Average numbers for words held in vocabulary fail to reflect the actual distribution of results. Many children have vast numbers of words at their disposal. Others lack the environmental stimuli to develop a comparable resource. By imposing targets on the education service and then testing students against those targets, you are dumbing down. Instead of challenging children to learn ever more words with new and stimulating lesson plans, you expect no more than these core words at the given age (remembering, of course, that every age is spread over a twelve month period).
As a marketing genre, I suppose it is convenient to package some books as being suitable for children to read because of their content. Nanny publishers make value judgements based on the prevailing cultural norms and decide that children should be protected from some themes. Except that, when you review what is currently shown on television as suitable for children, you find it is often dark and violent with all kinds of interesting sexual subtexts in play. Then through the lack of parental supervision or as a response to peer pressure and natural curiosity, children gain access to “adult” content through libraries, VCDs, DVDs and the internet.
I find the idea of “young adult” patronising. Children develop at their own pace. If the content is sufficiently interesting, they will be motivated to read. If the vocabulary occasionally stretches them, that is good because it is teaching them new words. Let us take nothing away from the authors who write the best of what appears under this label. Within the limits laid down by the commissioning editors and marketing departments, most do a magnificent job. There is some excellent literature out there that just happens to be packaged in a strange way. In fact, this labelling is often counterproductive because many adult (and some child) readers harbour a prejudice that anything classified as “for children” must be beneath their interest. Yet marketing departments continue to build their dedicated imprints, probably hoping that, in due course, these readers can be weaned on to genres with more adult sensibilities. This is somewhat ironic because, if they are already readers, they should be reading anything that looks interesting rather than something packaged by genre.
All of which brings me to Secret Histories: A Repairman Jack Novel by F. Paul Wilson (Gauntlet Press, 2008). As a fan of Wilson’s writing, I was interested to see some of Jack’s backstory. One of the principal fascinations of reading is to explore the author’s vision for the main characters. Repairman Jack has been a stalwart for eleven books. Now we get to see him as a child. Appropriately, Jack is growing up in the Barrens so we remain firmly in the more general mythology underpinning The Adversary Cycle. But Wilson (and the publisher Gauntlet Publications) have decided to label the book as “young adult”. I think I shall probably excuse Gauntlet as an innocent bystander in this decision. It is more likely that Wilson’s eye is more firmly on breaking into the growing YA paperback market, hoping for crossover sales into the full Repairman Jack series and Adversary Cycle.
The nearest model I can come to as a perfect approach is The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale. This is a magnificent piece of writing that looks very firmly at adult issues through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy and his younger sister. It won the Edgar Award for best novel. If any proof was needed that you can write an adult book from the pont-of-view of a child, this is it. Yet, Wilson has decided to pull his punches just enough to creep under what he perceives the bar to be for entry into the YA category.
Frankly, I think this was a mistake. The style is self-conscious. One of Wilson’s consistent virtues as a writer is that his prose is very simple and direct. It sucks a reader in and bustles along at a steady clip. He makes it look so easy. Except in this case when he is consciously trying to make the writing simple and direct. More worryingly, there is a sense of editorialising at several points where self-imposed language constraints and plotting decisions lead to pallid results. All the cast of characters that you would expect does put in an appearance, but it all lacks the genuine feel. This all feels like Jack as a very weedy beanstalk. If only Wilson had created a Lansdale masterpiece to add to the Repairman Jack canon. As it is, it looks as though we have two more books to go to get Jack all growed up. The only thing I can find to say is excellent about this book is that it is mercifully short. YA’s attention spans are short, you see.
This probably for the die-hard fans who want to delve into the “origins” story.
For all my reviews of books by F. Paul Wilson, see:
Aftershock & Others
Bloodline
By the Sword
The Dark at the End
Dark City
Fatal Error
Ground Zero
Secret Circles
Secret Histories
Secret Vengeance
Thinking about books 