Author: Sophie Davis
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Rating: WARTY!
This is book one in the "Talented saga", which runs to at least four books, because why write one novel when you can milk the same story for several? Once in a while, a writer makes it work, but this once was not that once, unfortunately. Normally I make it a point to avoid like the plague any book series which contains the word 'chronicles', or 'cycle', or 'saga' in its series title. In this case I made an exception because the blurb did its job - it lured me in. I sincerely hoped I wouldn't read to regret it, but I did!
The book, yet another in an annoyingly endless series of YA novels which for reasons unknown insist upon first person PoV, opens in a village known as Hunters Village where sleeps Natalia (Talia, Tal) in the pretentiously named 'Elite Headquarters' - yes with initial caps! I sincerely hope she doesn't really look like the anorexic girl preening herself on the cover....
Despite supposedly having to be ready on a moment's notice in case of attack, Talia sleeps in her PJs, bless her little cotton socks. She apparently has serious trouble breathing too, because when the attack siren goes off in the middle of the night, all she can do is stand around in her PJs telling herself repeatedly to breathe (yes in italics!). Funny, I thought breathing was an autonomous function....
Apparently the juvenile powers that be-otch have the idea that training consists of failing to train, and then scaring people out of bed with false alarms while they themselves sit around and laugh at the ensuing antics. Yep, adolescent juvenile dick-heads are the ones I'd trust to protect and serve. Talking of which, where are the adult operatives? I know this is a YA novel, but one of the things not explained here is why children are called upon to run these operations when there have to be trained and seasoned grown-ups available. It was one more unexplained mystery (at least in the portion I read).
Talia has psychic powers consisting of, we immediately learn, mind reading and telekinetics. She can suspend the "bombs" (in this case nothing more than neon tinted water in balloons), but she fails to do this successfully. She gets distracted by reading the mind of one of the organizers of this laugh-a-thon, and discovers from boyfriend Donavon that it's all a big joke. Such a joke is it that he and two male friends then come and physically haul Talia out of bed where she retreated in anger, welcoming her to Hunters Pledging (yes, 'pledging' with initial caps). I guess puerile moronic college bullshit hasn't changed in two hundred years.
It's obvious as soon as his name is mentioned that Donavon and Talia are an item, but it's also transparent that there's heaps of room for a triangle here. Donovan is the loyal good guy so let's kick him in the teeth by having Talia fall in love with one of the enemy, who is a bad boy with hair falling in his eyes. I have no way of knowing if that actually happened, but I would have put money on it based on this clichéd writing.
Frankly, though, rather than learn about how tall the boys are, and what color their eyes are, and what length their hair is, and how much they weigh, I'd much rather have been told what the heck is going on, who the hunters actually are (we learn in chapter four that they're 'spies'), what they do (gather information and "neutralize" threats), and who might be bombing them (rebels). Alas, the author doesn't want us to know, because that's not what this grade-school level novel was interested in conveying at this point. I don't know the precise age of the characters, but trust me, middle-grade is what they are, regardless of their actual ages.
One thing I don't get was Talia's whining, needy attitude towards Donovan. They'd had to spend a year apart, but these two can read each other's mind. That's far more intimacy than any of us ordinary humans get, yet she's whining about how hard it was to spend a year apart from him, only able to visit on holidays and special weekends! Since everything, even physical touch, is ultimately experienced in the mind, how did their separation constitute being deprived pray tell?!
I guess I should be careful what I wish for because chapter two brought a huge info-dump which actually conveyed very little. Apparently, a century before, for reasons unspecified, Earth went just plain nuts. There were earthquakes and tsunamis, hurricanes and tornadoes, cities were destroyed, and coastal villages washed away. That wasn't even the worst of it. Nuclear reactors "buried deep in the Earth's surface" also went nuts and contaminated the oceans. Exactly how that happened is not specified. What the reactors were for isn't specified. Why they were buried isn't specified. Why we had reactors when current move is away from that kind of thing and towards solar, wind, and hydro-power isn't specified.
We're told that Margaret McDonough, the founder of the school for the talented, which Talia attended, was the 75th US president, and that we are at least three to five generations along from her presidency, which means that the time-line of this story is completely screwed up! She founded her school for the "talented" before there actually were any talented! She must have been a visionary!
This story is taking place somewhere between roughly around 2200AD and 2300AD, depending upon how long each president's term was between Obama, the 44th president, and McDonough, and how long you allow for a generation, so the buried nuclear power plants makes very little sense.
From the highly improbable the info-dump went directly into the ludicrous as we were told that animal mutations arose, such as horses growing horns and dogs growing feathers. No word on whether pigs could fly. Trees grew stinging bark, and plants glowed at night! I laughed out loud at that stupidity. Evidently she wasn't kept in the dark but she was barking up the wrong tree. This is yet another example of an author who evidently didn't pay anywhere near enough attention in high school biology class, particularly in the portions discussing evolution and genetics, and it shows in this lousy writing.
These descriptions are only made worse as we learn in this info-dump that as contamination was fought, these 'talents' began to disappear. So how were these talents manifested if not genetically, and if they were genetic, then how come they were not passed on to offspring? Were all mutations beneficial? Were there no horrible death tolls as children were born with life-threatening mutations? None of this made any sense.
It would have been better had the author only vaguely alluded to a horrible, dim, distant, and largely obscured past without trying to actually explain it, especially since we're told that scientists couldn't figure out what it was which made some children different, but all were agreed that it was because of nuclear contamination? I'm sorry, but this is fanfic-level bullshit.
Right out of the X-Men play-book, we're told that children developed in a way very different from animals for no apparent reason. Unlike those feathered dogs and stinging trees, human children developed X-Men talents such as the ability to morph into an animal shape. We're told they developed other talents, too, such as telekinesis, but also "viewing" and "higher reasoning". Don't nearly all humans have higher reasoning? I know for a fact that most of us can see! Can the author not at least look-up the correct words for these things so we know what it actually is that she means?!
These kinds of talents make no sense, when you get right down to it. Or alternately, this kind of story featuring talents like these makes no sense. If you have people who can read minds, why would you need a spy agency and an information recovery team? More importantly, if the world, as we've been told, has been quite literally devastated, then what threats are there to worry about other than the ones nature itself presents? Is there still a low-level cold war, with the communist nations at odds with the non-communist? I don't see how that would work after all this devastation. Is there still a terrorist threat? I don't think so! So what threats are there? This story just didn't seem like it had been at all well thought-through - or actually thought through at all.
We're expected to buy in 'explanation' that the US has split: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas, we're told, seceded to form the Coalition of Rebel States. How, exactly, this happened in a functioning democracy, isn't explained. Why those particular states, isn't explained. How the states managed to do this, and conduct terrorist raids, slaughtering people over the border (including Talia's parents) isn't explained. Why the rest of the states didn't simply invade the rebel states isn't explained.
Back to the story in regress: after a night spent sleeping under the stars, Donavon wakes Talia up for a late breakfast before training resumes later than day. He pulls a Thermos out of a cooler, and then warms it in a fire. Honestly? What is this guy - brain-dead? A Thermos means you intend to keep the contents either hot or cold. If you need it cold, as its being in the cooler indicates, why would you take it out and warm it? If you need it warm, why was it in the cooler? If you put a Thermos in a fire, it's going to explode. Maybe Donavon was conducting an impromptu IED class?
This novel is technically passably written - nothing brilliant but not disastrous either, yet there are some instances where the writing is highly questionable, such as around 22% - 23% in where we read, "The water run for several seconds…" which should have been, "The water ran for several seconds…". On the next screen we read, "...paying the consequences...". I don’t think anyone pays the consequences. I do think people face the consequences!
That whole section is where Talia wakes up after getting drunk the night before. Maybe the author was too? I have several issues with this hang-over, though. First of all, this is supposed to be an Elite (with initial cap!) group, yet they’re out partying and getting drunk? There's no problem with soldiers unwinding and having some R&R, but getting drunk? Note that this was shortly after they'd had the alarm at the start of this novel because they might be (I assume) attacked at any time? How are these people supposed to defend themselves if they’re drunk? How are they supposed to be combat-ready if they have a hangover?
This is made worse when Erik (yes with the official Divergent 'K') insists upon Talia coming with him to the med tent to get rehydrated, because Talia is merely a helpless and directionless girl who needs to be managed at all times by men. The problem is that when they get there, all she gets is a shot. That's not rehydration, that's a shot. Rehydration would mean an IV bag and laying on a cot for as long as it takes for the fluid to get into your system. So yeah, some of the writing was downright thoughtless or ill-informed.
Worse than this, though, was the diminishing of Talia at every turn. The above-related incident is only one example, but the very use of her name is another. Originally, her name was Natalia. It’s shortened to Talia which is kind of a cool name, but then her colleagues shorten it to Tal, and Erik (in the section discussed above) employs that in the form of "Tals". What are these people, thirteen years old? Every time they do this, they diminish the character. Instead of being a promising young woman, she's rendered into a child, to be managed and baby-talked, and this is not a good thing to do to your main character!
At one point Talia suggests that her new friend Penny message her so they can get together later. It’s written like this:
"Um sure. Why don't you send me a comm," I replied, referring to the messages we sent to each other using our communicators.
No, really? 'Send me a comm' means send me a message on the communicator? I'd never, ever, have figured that one out. See what I mean about it being written at a middle-grade level? It was actually at this point, where Donavon shows up again and acts like a complete jerk for no reason other than that the author wanted a rift so she could toss Erik and Tal together and generate a completely artificial triangle, that I gave up due to extreme nausea. I'm actually surprised I made it this far, but at 25% in, I decided that this novel was unreadable because it was so juvenile and so amateurishly written. I cannot recommend it.
