Author: R Scott Boyer
Publisher: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform
Rating: WARTY!
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.
Erratum:
p5 "…but he wretched them free…" should be "…but he wrenched them free."
I couldn't finish this novel. I know it's not written for my age range, not even close, but I've read other novels written for this same age range and had no problem with them; with this one, it seemed I had nothing but problems. Bobby Ether is an entry-level young-adult in high school, who can manipulate reality to a limited extent, to get what he wants. For example, when he throws the winning throw in the final basketball game of the season, he knows it won’t go into the basket, so he kinda wishes it would and something happens to the ball - something subtle, which apparently only he can see, and which gives it that extra oomph and gets him the basket and his team the win.
Bobby isn’t the only one who knows about his power, as he discovers during that very game. A mysterious and striking-looking woman is watching him from the very seats where his absentee parents normally sit. Yeah, another YA novel with missing parents: Bobby expected them to be there but they're not. The mysterious woman appears in the boys' changing room afterwards and has a few words with Bobby; then she disappears when other team players start coming in. Bobby isn't as freaked out by this as you or I would be, taking it completely in stride! But then he's special, right? Inexplicably, Bobby has to walk home after the game - several miles home - since there is no one to give him a ride. Really? He's the star player who just won them the game, and no-one is there for him? There's no after-game pizza party? The coach doesn’t know he needs a ride home? This was a "suspension of disbelief is suspended" moment for me. Maybe the intended audience won't think anything of it.
Who should pick him up when this fourteen-year-old suddenly doesn't have the energy to make it home, and instead starts vomiting at the roadside? The mysterious woman, who's named Cassandra, and who knows his grandfather - and who knows where Bobby lives. Bobby hops into the car without a second thought. Cassandra fixes him up and take shim home, but before she can tell him something of the truth about who he is and what he can do, she and Bobby are forced to escape 'the bad guys'. Fortunately Cassandra has a Porsche 911 on hand and they escape to…The Academy! DUHN Duhn Duhn! This is evidently the start of a series!
This novel appears to be written for a younger audience than Bobby, which is odd. The cover illustration seems to confirm that. I can see how eight to twelve year olds might like this, but then they would likely get lost with the new age material and the physics, yet it isn't really a young-adult novel either. One reviewer has remarked that it has some similarity to the Harry Potter series, and I would add that the similarity is a bit more than superficial. We have an orphan (purportedly) who's the chosen one, attending school away from home. He becomes pretty much insta-friends with another guy and a girl who support him mindlessly. There's a younger Colin Creevy type, and a trope evil villain, although this time it’s a blonde girl rather than a blonde boy, so she cannot play with her waxed Salvador Dalí mustache as she cackles evilly. At least I assume she cannot. The principle - a headmistress rather than a headmaster - has secret plans for Wunderkind-Boy, and there's also a shadowy evil Voldemort-style figure lurking in the background.
Here's a minor point regarding writing: on page 23, Boyer has Bobby settling down to sleep in the Porsche's "patent leather" seats. I'm far from an expert on luxury cars, but I seriously doubt Porsche ever puts patent leather in its 911s. Maybe Boyer doesn't understand what patent leather actually is? It’s the really shiny leather typically found in shoes. It looks like cheap, shiny plastic, but it isn’t; it’s leather which is specially treated to repel water. Cheap-looking shiny seats don't sound very 'Porsche' (not to say posh!) to me, but who knows? Besides, he gives himself an out by making the car almost like a prototype, so he can always argue that this is something not on the market yet. That's a smart move, but I would have gone with something like "rich leather seat" which is relatively nondescript and therefore safe, and still gives a nice impression.
Here's something which also occurred to me as I read this: each chapter in this novel starts halfway down the page. Were this book to be printed, that represents an awful lot of wasted paper. Ah, you say, but this is the age of the ebook, so most people who are likely to read this will get the e-version, and no paper was harmed in the making of this book! Tree-killing? It’s all on old-fashioned fuddy-duddies like me who enjoy real books. You know what? That's really a very valid point (all issues of problematical ebook formatting aside!).
But it’s much more complex than that, and you knew it, didn’t you? Ebooks are dependent upon ebook readers, and whether they be a Kindle or a Nook, or an iPad or an iPhone, or your computer, they're all made using energy, and are composed of some seriously toxic chemicals and materials, as indeed is their construction process. Ah, but you answer, so is the production of real books, which use energy and materials, some of which are toxic, too. So here’s the thought for the day: which process is most benign to the environment, and as an author, how much can you do to protect the planet? The second thought for the day is: will it even make a damned bit of difference no matter what I do, when thousands of other writers and millions of other readers are expressly not doing those things?!
Back to the novel: I have to report, and sadly so, since Boyer is a fellow Create-Spacer, that this novel started going downhill somewhat for me as we arrived in the vicinity of page 30. Cassandra takes Bobby to her 'hi-tech to out-tech all hi-tech' headquarters, and starts babbling about 'living energy'. I was just starting to wonder whether I wanted to read any more of this new age nonsense when Boyer dropped the S-bomb! That's when the author of any given novel claims that there are things which science doesn’t understand, and the inevitable non-sequitur which goes hand-in-hand with that claim depends upon what the book is supposed to be about. If it’s a witchcraft or magic book, then the answer is of course 'magic', which explains (supposedly) that which science cannot. If it’s a religious book, then 'god' explains it all! If it’s an 'aliens are among us' book, then alien technology explains those things.
In this case, this 'living energy' fiction (the "oneness"!) explains those things. Of course, if you call 'they who express that attitude' on this, their knee-jerk response is that 'you don’t know everything!" or "Are you a scientist/expert?", but they never issue those same challenges to themselves! They also carefully ignore the steady and remarkable progress scientists have enjoyed. Never once do these authors consider that a hundred years ago there were scores of things which "science couldn’t explain", but which it now can. Four hundred years ago there were even more things. A thousand years ago, even more. In each case, after the passage of some time, and once religious obsession got its fingers out of the science pie, science has been perfectly capable of explaining one thing after another, including things which were considered impossible to understand a mere century ago.
For me, however, the real joke here is that the author of this particular story then goes on to use the science of particle physics to explain these things which he has just got through telling us science can't explain! He has the character Cassandra issue a rather less than honest statement that science cannot explain 'truths' like auras, clairvoyance and telekinesis. The sleight of hand here is that since such claims have actually never been established, there's nothing to explain or refute! Why should scientists have to explain someone's gullibility, or delusional state of mind over and over again?!
The truth is that science can explain how people are deluded into believing in these non-existent phenomena, but magicians - and I'm talking about professional illusionists, not fantasy world magicians - can often do a better job by showing how easy it is to fool people with these cheap parlor tricks. There's nothing inexplicable (and certainly no magic - either fantasy magic or sub-atomic physics "magic") going on here. There's no life force at work. There are no invisible waves or magic rays employed here. It’s lies, fraud, and human blind credulity. Now you may be asking why this tirade? Why is this important? It's just fiction!
You're right - it is fiction, and I don’t have a problem with novelists telling stories about these things as though they're real, but when they write like they've set out to denigrate science - the same science which gave them the very computer upon which they wrote their novel, and which gives their readers the devices upon which those novels will be read, I have draw a line! By all means tell your fantasy story; everyone loves to read a good novel about the magical and the supernatural, but don’t pretend this stuff is real, not outside of the framework of your fiction. Don't trash the hard work of thousands of women and men the world over who have devoted their lives to making your life easier and more interesting!
Anyway, lecture mode: Off! Bobby decides to run away - which isn't a bad idea. He's effectively been kidnapped and no one has made any attempt to tell his parents where he is. His escape results in him being kidnapped by the very people whom Cassandra warned him against. Despite being within sight of his parents, the men take him prisoner and remove him thousands of miles away from the city. He's later told that his parents were killed the car accident he saw, and that it was engineered by a man in Cassandra's employ, who was himself later found murdered. The only "proof" they offer is a series of photographs. I guess Bobby never heard of Photoshop®! I would hope that anyone of Bobby's age and older, who has had a decent education and can think for themselves, would realize that only a moron would swallow all of this story whole. It makes no sense that on the one hand he's been irremediably suspicious of Cassandra from the off, yet on the other hand, he's completely trusting of his new captors. So gullible is Bobby that he demands that this new organization train him so he can wreak revenge upon Cassandra! And that's all the spoilers I'm going to post!
One problem I had with this story is that it has too many tropes, from the 'mystical eastern arts' to new age mumbo jumbo, to high school bullies and bitches. Maybe kids of the age it’s aimed at will not see these things as flaws, but they patently are. In any other context, these tropes might fly. Indeed you can make a good argument that they're stock-in-trade in a story like this, but exactly how do bullies and bitches fit into Boyer's world of harmony? Short answer: they don't; it makes no sense even within his own context.
That's not the only problem; there were several others. For example, although this is a school in Tibet (of all places), the entire student population seems to be white Anglo-Saxon protestant Americans. There is no language or culture barrier. Indeed, there's no culture at all. Another issue was that despite having it made graphically clear to Bobby (with photographs, even) that both his parents died tragically (a claim which I am not yet convinced I should buy into!), Bobby shows no real signs of grief over their deaths, instead hanging with his buddies, playing with Jinx (the Creevy clone), and cracking jokes. It doesn’t ring true.
A third issue was the two trope henchmen who evidently derive their evilness not from their actions or thoughts, but purely from their appearance: one has Snape-like "greasy hair", the other is overweight, so you just know that such people have to be evil. I'm sorry but that's not only a trope, it’s insulting and rather bigoted. Do all bad guys have to be overweight or ugly, or have "Snape hair"? I don't think so, and I think it's entirely wrong to keep teaching children that people who have such traits are probably evil. Just in passing, in the Adobe Reader version of this novel, on page 88 there's a bizarre clickable link back to chapter five. I have no idea why. Chapter five has nothing whatsoever to do with what’s being discussed in chapter 20. It must be the patent leather effect! Perhaps this was an author's reference which did not become expunged on final read-through?
The whole package Boyer is selling us here is that of living in harmony with nature, thereby availing oneself of the secret powers which such harmony will grant, but the first thing we see as Booby settles into school life is bullies and bitches, not one of whom is even remotely in harmony - and these are people who supposedly grew up in this harmonic world! It makes zero sense. I can't understand why Boyer wouldn't see this as a serious problem, unless he's going with the idea that all these people are the bad guys (as I mentioned earlier), and so it makes all this behavior acceptable. It’s not acceptable to me. I know you need to have some conflict, but seriously?
The novel is all over the place in terms of a philosophy. Every new age and junk science trope is tossed into the mix for no apparent reason, meaning that the end result is a mish-mash of ill-fitting pseudo-scientific 'rationale' for the way things are, and it’s such an unwieldy mess that it collapses under its own weight for me. It also has far too many inconsistencies and contradictions in it. For example, in one portion we’re told that the students don’t eat meat at the academy because killing an animal is bad for its energy aura (or whatever - I lost track of the trope du jour) and consequently bad for those who eat the flesh.
Later we discover Bobby's Buddhist teacher, Master Jong, practically battering a charging bear into submission. Excuse me? What happened to living in harmony? What happened to balancing the chi (or balancing the cliché!)? Master Jong's excuse for beating up on the bear is (he says) that he was a way with animals! Yeah, he sure does. In the course of this incident, Bobby has badly injured his ankle, yet Chi Master Jong apparently can’t call on Cosmic Forces to heal the injury. He can't call the heel to heel and heal it?! I guess not. Again, inconsistent.
Bobby's prayer at the end of chapter 16 is a bit of a joke. Instead of asking for guidance, he makes demands and tries a bargain, still intent upon his idiotic revenge. Well, while the son of his god was supposedly all about forgiveness, the god who was purportedly the 'father' was all about violence, so maybe Bobby is praying to the right one! There are Biblical precedents for this behavior, but the fact remains that nothing fails like a prayer. I’d have a lot more respect for Bobby if he was thinking for himself and trying to figure things out rationally instead of blindly dedicating himself to a misguided course of action. But then he's only fourteen going on twelve. What does he know?!
I looked at some other reviews once I'd decided where these things were leading me in terms of a review, and I found that I appear to be an outlier. It's always good to know if you missed something, or you're ...divergent! No I didn't just write that! Seriously, many other reviews I read were positive. Of course, Kirkus finds everything completely adorable, so their reviews are meaningless, and publishers love such meaningless reviews because they're always so positively fluffy. There was little on Goodreads, but what there was trended towards positive.
None of this caused me to change my mind, because I really can’t trust, for example, a review which says that Bobby was thrown for a loop by his basketball shot when the text makes it quite clear that he wasn't. Another review suggested that it was the principle's idea that Bobby study at the academy, develop his powers, and seek revenge, when it was actually Bobby's own idea (the principle of this school which is all about balance and chi and karma merely didn’t talk him out of it!). You have to wonder if some reviewers actually read the same novel that I did, or if it made such a poor impression on them that they didn't register things. It happens to all of us, but it takes a lot better set of arguments than those I read to persuade me to change my position in this case!
I tried and tried to keep on reading this, but by chapter 30, roughly half-way through, at the point where Evil Ashley Doll slaps Lovable Lily Doll across the face, I was done with this novel. I would have really liked to support a fellow independent writer, but I cannot in good conscience associate my name with a positive review of something as messy and nonsensical as this. This novel is not worthy in my opinion!
