Author: Jodi Baker
Publisher: Between Lions Press (website not found)
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
This is book one of the 'Between the Lions' series. I have to say up front that this is a first person PoV novel, a voice I detest because so few writers can carry it off, and it ends up being arrogant, self-absorbed and self-obsessed. In this case it wasn't too bad, but it was rather annoying. Why is it that young adult authors in particular seem utterly incapable of writing in third person?
One of the biggest problems with 1PoV is that it doesn’t work suspense-wise, because you know the story gets finished – so there's zero drama over whether the narrator will survive! For example when main character (and narrator) Anna gets imprisoned somewhere during this novel, it doesn't make for a chapter-ending cliff-hanger because there is no question of the outcome. We know she's going to escape and in this case the manner of her escape was so convenient that it was really rather sad.
Another problem with 1PoV is, of course, that you're stuck with you! The narrator can't relate anything that they don't experience personally, or the reader ends up with long info-dumps, or boring conversations where the reader has to sit and wait while someone relays what happened elsewhere. It's completely unnatural. Maybe some readers (and far too many writers, particularly those of the YA persuasion as I mentioned!) feel it brings more immediacy, but to me it brings irritation and annoyance. I routinely put books back on the shelf at the library or the book-store as soon as I discover that they're 1PoV, but it's a lot harder to do that with ebooks - and no book blurb ever gives you the PoV!
That aside, I was pleasantly impressed with this novel for the most part - the most part being the first 75% or so of it. After that it went somewhat downhill, but it still managed to stay this side of readable. It was a new and fresh story with some good ideas, and best of all, the main female character wasn't a complete loser who needed a guy to validate her which is another typically ailing of YA stories, so kudos to the author for that. There was a really nice (and slightly creepy) surprise in chapter two, which was most welcome.
Anna lives with an abusive mom - mentally abusive that is - who home-schools her and keeps her from the spotlight, drilling her mercilessly on the need to keep not so much a low profile, as a no-profile. It's obvious that Anna's being shielded for some reason, but she's never told why. This annoyed me somewhat because it's yet another example of the trope of a teen having special powers (of one kind or another) and being kept in the dark, and having no family, or one parent, or being raised by relatives, etc.
Frankly that was irritating, but the way it was done here as fresh enough that I got through it without developing hives. Unfortunately, this business of 'keep the orphan teen in the dark' was rather overdone, I'm sorry to say. Parts of it were good, but I really did become annoyed with it when it went on and on and on.
There were other minor issues. The author is one of those YA authors who thinks it's "bicep" and not "biceps" (Page 19). She disses nurses on page 48 by describing one running out of a hospital room "like a terrified kitten". I've worked in hospitals and it doesn't describe any nurse I've ever met. I know there must be some like that, they're only human after all, but when it comes to children in their care, nurses are as fierce and protective as a parent is, so I felt that slur was uncalled for.
There's also the sorry description that I've read in more than one YA novel: 'skin so black it was almost blue' (Page 135). I've read this in The Walled City by Ryan Graudin and the awful Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. In The Midnight Dress, Karen Foxlee takes in in the opposite direction: "…so blue it was almost black...".
This phrase makes absolutely no sense. The author is conflating hue, chroma, and brightness, which isn't a smart thing for a writer to do. There are very subtle ways like this in which we, as writers, can educate readers and bring them up with us instead of talking down to them. Cat Winters knows how to write this in In the Shadow of Blackbirds: "...navy blue so dark it was almost black.".
Anna finds she has a long, long family history (to a wonderful place as it happens - something which I loved and approved of), but her mom has sought to protect her from this history - foolishly as it always turns out in these novels. Now Anna's mom has disappeared, and she feels threatened, and suddenly a grandmother whom she thought had died turns out to be alive, and Anna is meeting strange people with curiously mythological names. And is she hearing voices?
So the story is for the most part quite gripping, and those quibbles I mentioned aside (and despite a bit of a falling-off of quality in the last quarter of the novel), I was impressed enough with this debut that I'm rating it as a worthy read.
All books to me are either worthy or unworthy of reading. It's a binary thing, not a one, two, three, four, or five star thing! Having said that I'm not a series fan, so I doubt I will pursue this series. It has to be a series of truly octopodally gripping power to get me to follow it! Otherwise it's just a prologue to a series of really long and repetitive chapters, and I don't do prologues! It's hard to see where this can actually go in a series and maintain my interest, but this one volume is worth a read and maybe you'll become addicted where I wasn't.
