The blurb for this novel ought to be more than enough to warn you off it (unless you happen to be as shallow as the main female character is): "To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels..." Ri-ight, because nothing is more important than those things.
Just for the hell of it (and mostly out of boredom!), I used nine words in this review which dictionary.com says are becoming obsolete and may disappear from the dictionary! Take that you word assassins! Now about that cover! Seriously? I have zero respect for YA cover artists. Judged by the size of the skirt on the model's dress, she must have legs that are five feet long from thigh to ankle! Either that or she's wearing platform shows which are two-feet high! I suspect the actual hem of the dress comes to about where the top of the word 'SELECTION' appears. Everything below that was artificially added in Photoshop by the depth-perceptionally challenged inventor who did the cover.
To be perfectly honest (because you know I'm an inveterate liar the rest of the time), I went into this thinking it was going to be bad (it's Harper Collins Teen after all). This novel is Walt Disney meets The Bachelor. It's yet another in a line consisting of way-the-hell too many tedious first person PoV main female character novels. The MFC here is, believe it or not, America Singer. Yeah - that's the name with which her author cursed her (Mer for short, nightmare for how awful she is - I'll refer to her as Night-Mer hereinafter), and this is a novel which is obviously set in America (seriously, what YA novel isn’t, really? It's rampant alienism, I tell you!) although Cass has tried rather ham-fistedly to disguise it. What is it with Americans, so proud of their republic, yet addicted to British royalty? Talk about irony.
Cass's effort had a decidedly frigorific effect on me in the first four pages, but it’s a quick read, so I aimed to reach the end if I could stomach it. Night-Mer deliciates with her boyfriend who is a complete jerk - to which she's utterly clueless. The absurd premise here is that in the country of Illéa (pronounced ill-lay-her presumably…!) consists of a series of provinces (as well a a nightly curfew!), and when the prince has to marry, the selection of a princess is pursued though some sort of lottery where girls over the age of sixteen from each province (a total of 35) are chosen to 'compete' for the Prince's hand in marriage and eventually to become the queen of Illéa.
Night-Mer no longer being a younker, she's eligible chronologically if not via emotional maturity. The prior history of this situation goes unexplained at least in the first third of the novel. How the USA gets a king goes unexplained. Why all citizens in the nation are graded from one to eight, the ones being royalty, the 8's being lower than dog droppings, goes unexplained because, well, that's just he way it is in Cass World™, ok? Deal with it!
To give her her due, at least Cass hasn’t chosen a bunch of truly bone-headed names for her characters (apart from the main one, that is). They're regular, everyday, ordinary names for the most part (although one or two are real clunkers). Her best friend is a 'Marlee' (yes, with the double 'e', suitably belittling her so's not to have her encroach upon the main character's unimpeachable Mary Sue magnificence). Marlee Tames of Kent. Thames of Kent, get it? Except that, despite its spelling, the river which flows through the city of London and the English county of Kent (inter alia) is pronounced Temz. Does Cass not know this? I guess a university education isn't what it used to be.
There is one character who is way over the top: Prince Maxon. Maxon? Seriously? You may not know this but he has a twin: Maxoff. Since we can't tell the difference between the two, I'm going to use the latter name just to be different. With a name like that, is he some sort of long-lasting battery? Maybe he is. He is obviously one leg of the inevitable triangle. Since Cass slams us over the head repeatedly with the threat of "The Rebels", my first guess was that a rebel trope guy with hair falling into his eyes would be the other leg of this pathetic triangle - which I already detest based solely on Night-Mer and Maxoff being ⅔ of it. Oh, and get this: Night-Mer says her mother "...named me after the country that fought so hard to keep this land together."? What in hell does that even mean?
Night-Mer spends the first few chapters declaring vehemently that the last thing she will ever do is volunteer for the lottery, but her character is so weak that she does precisely that, and despite all this whiny "I don’t wanna be a part of it" crap, she feels immediately and completely at home as soon as she gets to the palace and takes charge. She travels from her local aerodrome, no doubt in a charabanc, and an aeroplane is appropriate given how flighty she proves herself to be. Now doubt she enjoyed a bever on the flight. All the candidates immediately have their caste number upgraded to a three for being selected, and garner the title 'Lady'. Thus: Lady America (honestly?!). She predictably becomes one of the favorites, and therefore the immediate target of the inevitable bitches who are also competing. Absurd. Clichéd. Trope-ish. Nonsensical. Amateur. Weak. Boring. But sadly, that seems to be the state of the bulk of female main characters in recent YA fiction.
When the girls are given their make-over (what part of this novel isn’t coldly calculated to tug at the heart strings, and to pump up the longings, of "homely", young, impressionable USA-dwelling thirteen year olds?) one of the guys who is doing their hair says of Lady America's "humble" preferences, "Hold on to that, Honey." Yeah, 'cause that's how all girls who have the title 'Lady' are spoken to by palace employees…! Oh, BTW, a girl is referred to as one of the "Selected" not as one of "The Select"! Just one example of grammar in Cass World®!
My first impressions were that this is Disney princesses (excesses?) without the pictures and with more brabble. It’s a shameful abuse of women - so why did I read it? I was curious to see if a university graduate like Cass could write her way out of this hole she'd dug for herself by choosing this as her subject matter for a YA novel. This is a topic which could have been made into a great story if it were handled and written well, but after one hundred pages (roughly a third of this novel) I saw no sign that Cass had a clue what she was doing, unless it was calculatedly writing to the lowest common denominator for the sole purpose of pulling down a fast buck for herself. It’s a shameful and inexcusable piece of writing which abuses women in the worst possible way; by belittling, demeaning and undermining them at every step with bigoted characterization.
At one point, quite early in this novel, I found myself wondering what kind of a childhood Cass herself had experienced that her imagination even came up with this stuff in the first place. Clearly there's a huge amount of adolescent wish-fulfillment going on here, but I don't blame any author for ripping off gullible readers for whatever they can. It’s the capitalist system after all. I do blame those who facilitate an author getting away with this by buying these novels. I would advocate a boycott of the publishers who countenance the publishing of genderist novels like this, but that would only punish decent authors who share that same publisher. OTOH, what excuse, in this era of self-publishing, do authors have for accepting offers from publishers who publish bad, abusive, genderist, or otherwise less than acceptable novels? Each of we who write novels has the power to contribute towards changing this paradigm.
For as many times as Night-Mer tells us that her family is poor (for example, she observes at her first palace meal that it was a few Christmasses ago since she last had steak, her family doesn’t seem to do so badly. They seem to have a fairly large house, and she never says it's in a bad neighborhood, and they do have appliances (TV, fridge), so I take her claims of poverty with some salt, as I suspect she takes her popcorn when watching movies on her TV.
There's a "Women's Room" in the palace. It’s not a toilet, it’s literally a room where Women are allowed to go to sit and gossip. The candidate women are forced to sign a pledge of virginity before they can go to the selection! They're told they cannot refuse the prince anything he asks for, even if it’s sex, and even though this violates the rule that women must not have sex before they marry. Why would any self-respecting woman want to marry a man who not only has such bizarre rules, but permits them to remain on the book unchallenged even when he could change them? Why would any decent woman countenance a relationship with a man who allows a caste system to exist, and who knows people are starving while he eats royally, yet does nothing about it?
At one point on p104, Night-Mer says "I tried not to come across as whiny" but she failed in that attempt long before that page. Each of these 35 girls has maids - yes, in the plural, to help them get ready for their day, and also to get ready for bed. Night-Mer has three of them. She "figures out" that the name of one of them is Anne. Excuse me but what? Figures out? Is Anne a mute and does she have to play a charade to reveal her name? So, a minimum of three maids per candidate is over 100 people employed at the palace just for this farcical debasement of women. What do these maids do when there isn't a selection going on? I have no idea. So this is a rich palace with the number 1's living in luxury when there are citizens starving. This is why I detest royalty. There is no excuse for it.
Night-Mer is pleased with her mirror in her palace room which she doesn’t even have to share. It’s so big that she can wedge family photos around the frame without interrupting her view of herself. I am not making this up - those are Cass's very words (p108). She's been told that it is not only an offense, but will put the girls at serious risk if any of them go out, even into the palace grounds, because: Rebels! Apparently palace security sucks. So what does the spoiled, bratty, self-absorbed Night-Mer do the very first night she's in the palace? You guessed it! She's a moron. She has a panic attack and the fresh air on the balcony isn’t enough for her so she runs downstairs to go outside and the guards stop her as they should. Of course, Prince Maxoff is magically passing at that very moment and, not being one to supererogate by any means, he heroically supports her breaking the rules and putting herself at risk for no better reason than that she's a limp rag of a wuss of a spineless girl who therefore deserves special treatment.
Maxoff keeps referring to her as 'My dear' - what is he sixty? I guess not - Night-Mer describes him as a "boy", and she's a royal bitch to him for no reason, so naturally he can’t help but fall in love with her. She apparently didn’t get sufficient training and advice from her countless advisers and her maids three, because she persistently refers to Maxoff as 'Your Majesty' when it correctly ought to be 'Your Highness' since he's not the reigning monarch. He never corrects her delusion, which I assume is also Cass's delusion. Way to research your topic Lady Kiera!
At one point on the day they're to officially meet the prince, some snotty woman comes in and tells the girls that it's not lady-like to raise your voice above a whisper. Excuse me, but WTF? This is a female writer having a female character telling all the females present to be quiet? So if a number 3 has to whisper, does the number two level have to barely speak, and the number one woman in the land have to be a complete mute? Way to go in completely devaluing women, you jack-Cass. I'm going to try to finish this novel now solely for cheap laughs. It has no other value for me nor should it for anyone with even so much as an ounce of gray matter functioning.
One night the palace is attacked, but there's no evidence of any effort whatsoever to fight back - the entire palace closes the steel blinds on the windows and hunkers down like a tortoise while the attackers throw rocks at the building! We're told that there are literally hundreds of support staff at the palace, yet it’s the king and queen who have to rush into the hall and close these blinds! There aren’t even any guards in there with them. There are guards out on the huge palace walls, but not a one of them seems to be doing anything to either prevent the attackers getting in, or to fight them once they're there. The home base of the rebels (there are actually two factions, no doubt named Dauntless and Erudite) is known, yet apparently despite a military draft being in place, the king has never actually had the idea of attacking the rebel base and pulling out the threat by its roots! I've never read anything so completely ridiculous. This is quite simply lousy writing, period.
You know I can see why a certain class of reader might be attracted even to a sad and trashy story like this. It gives them a sense of family - of belonging to the MFC's family, and of sharing the adventure with her. It’s sad that such people feel so isolated and so bereft of any vestige of dignity that they're willing to swallow material of this tacky consistency. The answer, I think is in asking what impressionable (i.e. lacking in self-respect) pre-teen or early teen female (this novel surely can’t appeal to anyone with an ounce of maturity) wouldn’t be allured by the thought of being pampered, and dressed-up, and having a make-over, and being courted by a prince?
The absurdity of the relationship between the prince and Night-Mer is really rather stark. They're playing at being "just friends", yet neither one of them seems to have the first clue that that this is how a truly great love - a love which will naturally become a real relationship - begins. And what a betrayal of the very idea of friendship! Night-Mer is supposed to be friends with Marlee, but ever since that regal declaration was issued, Marlee is unceremoniously and roughly pushed into the far back seat and is completely marginalized from that point onwards. Cass evidently thinks that other women are unimportant, and that the only worthwhile friendship a woman can have is with a prince of royal blood. Good luck with that.
Night-Mer doesn't ever cry. She weeps. This is important because it makes her special! She's also utterly clueless about Maxoff, yet she never seeks to alleviate her cluelessness by asking him anything important. Their entire conversation repertoire perennially circles the drain of triviality. Night-Mer whines about how he's a bad friend to her because he doesn’t blab everything to her every time they meet; yet all she's interested in learning is what he's up to with the other girls. She never asks a thing about the rebels and what’s going on there, she never asks him how he can put up with a rigid caste system, or with a lottery for a wife. She never asks him why the nation's education system is so lousy. She assumes blindly that he "has a country to run", yet he isn't the king, he's the prince. That doesn’t mean he has no duties, but it does mean it's his father who has a country to run, not him. Besides, isn’t he on a sabbatical right now - trying to find a wife? He has quite literally nothing to do but that.
We're two-thirds the way through this novel before Cass condescends to pass on anything about how the USA came to be Illéa. This is done by means of the girls attending a history class! Why? Why any classes other than etiquette? Isn't the purpose of this to allow the prince to spend time with the girls and find a wife? Yet he seems never to be doing that. He's always off elsewhere. Through this farcical history class, we learn that China invaded the USA because the USA owed them money. Right, because that's how you get your money back! The USA lost! It became the American State of China(!) and the Chinese were behind the scenes "pulling strings" to steer "legislation in their favor". Why? They occupied the country but still had to steer legislation in their favor and pull strings?
Then Russia attacked, but had to fight on two fronts, so they lost. Subsequently, a man named Gregory Illéa put his knowledge and money to use and the country fought back. This is so absurd it has to be a joke, right? First of all, there is no money in the USA - Cass already told us this. How is Illéa so rich and powerful after the Chinese invasion? Bin Laden had a $200 million fortune and all he could manage was to fly four planes into buildings, yet Illéa is so rich that he can single-handedly finance an international war against China? That sound you heard was my ass hitting the floor. I just laughed it off.
If the USA, at the height of its power, lost to the Chinese, how did a broken and ravaged nation manage to beat the Chinese later? Cass wants us to believe that because he paid for the uprising, Illéa not only became "king", but also had the nation named after him. I'm sorry but this is juvenile, and brain-dead beyond any need to be polite. Did Cass think up this plot when she was ten and finally get to publish it? What the hell was going through the literary agent's mind and through the book editor's mind that they let this trash ever get onto a printed page? This is fan fiction at best, and outright trash at worst. If it were written for an audience of children, it would make more sense, but it makes none at all to write like this and claim it’s for a YA novel readership.
It seems to be Night-Mer's opinion that anyone who wouldn’t look nice on a stamp need not apply for the job of princess, because looking good is what it’s all about. This novel is all about superficiality, substance need not apply. This is exemplified magnificently around p230 when Night-Mer, having lectured the prince about how awful it is that he has so much while people are starving, she gets all thrilled that her maids have made her yet another luxurious gown, which she didn’t even need because she already had a brand new one which she has not yet worn. Fortunately, I had the pleasure of witnessing the prime bitch Celeste ripping the arm off it. That was her only useful function IMO. America Singer: all shallow all the time.
At some 200 pages in, at a photo shoot, Night-Mer still doesn’t get it. Seeing one of her supposedly non-competitors (since at this point she's still maintaining the absurd fiction that she's a non-combatant, whisper something to the prince, at which he laughs, Night-Mer asks herself: "How could someone who got along so well with me do the same with someone like her?" yes, she's that shallow and clueless.
Night-Mer reminds people that Janelle, who is sent home mysteriously, is not the only person who has had two dates with the prince, then adds that she's not counting. Excuse me?! It turns out that the reason that Janelle is sent home is that she said something not nice about Night-Mer. Yep - these girls are definitely not allowed to have any opinion of their own.
I could not stand to finish this novel. I got to the point where the TV guy is interviewing the girls and getting their opinion on Maxoff, and as if it were not bad enough up to that point, it went significantly further downhill. I said enough is enough! I could not take any more. I returned this to the library, and the second volume in the series, which I had intended on reading until I read the first volume in this sad and sorry series. This novel is pure adulterated TRASH. Period. And you know what? If an author's agent wants to call me a bitch and get into it with me over this review, I'll be happy to go toe to toe with them. I'll be happy to point out even more problems with this novel that I didn't even bother to include here, and to publicize the "merits" of this lousy, amateur, brain-dead excuse for a YA story.
