Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY!
Wither is a cut-price knock-off of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale aimed at the YA market. The unbelievable premise is that the world has gone to hell - most of it's flooded, there have been global wars, and a drastic reduction in population.
Can we heap any more onto that? Well, as it happens, yes we can! The scientists had, a century ago, cured all diseases, which is patent nonsense, but a side-effect of this cure (which DeStefano bizarrely refers to as an "antidote") is to severely curtail human life-span. How this works - indeed how any of this came to be - is not so much conveniently glossed-over as it is completely ignored. Indeed, DeStefano's idea of world-building is a van and a nice house with carpets.
There is no mechanism which would explain why, in this novel, all girls die at precisely 20 years of age, and all guys at 25. None. It's not remotely possible, not even in dystopian sci-fi, and DeStefano knows this which is why she doesn't even try to justify or to explain herself. She simply expects us to buy this sight unseen, along with everything else in her murky shop window.
Can we heap any more onto that? Well, as it happens, yes we can! In this new world, women have become commodities. They are kidnapped and sold-off to rich "men" who have multiple wives, yet despite how immensely valuable women are (even outside of this short-sighted attempt at fiction), the ones who are not selected by the buyer are summarily shot, and no one, not the buyer, not the main character, not even either of the main character's two love interests seem to have any issues with this. Indeed, the main character, Rhine (I can think of a better name) is completely unmoved by the brutality which brought her to her present circumstances.
That was enough for me to say "Check please! I'm outta here. This novel sucks.
