Author: Tracy E Banghart
Publisher: Tracy E. Banghart
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.
'Tracy Banghart' is a really cool name. It's more like a character's name than an author's, but cool names do not a novel make. As this blog keeps harping: it's all in the writing, and this novel just didn't do it for me, for many reasons, some of which I'll detail below. The novel presents itself as sci-fi, but all it ends up being is a YA high-school romance with sci-fi plug-ins in place of the high-school.
One of the myriad tropes here is that of a woman (Aris Haan) disguising herself as a man in order to get into the military. To achieve this, she uses a holographic projection device (right out of the remake of Total Recall except that here it’s a full-body holograph) which makes her look male. I don't get the point of that, because the deception is over really quickly. Indeed, the deception is ironical because this novel reads like the author downloaded a Divergent template from somewhere online and went through it filling in the blanks and adding a skin of sci-fi in the same way that this so-called "diatous veil" covers Aris's body and makes it look like a different gender. The problem is that underneath it remains unchanged.
Of course, this "Mission Impossible" technology telegraphs half the plot, and we know exactly what's happening when the Ward of Ruslana is kidnapped - which no-one, even for a minute, seems to suspect. Incredibly, they all blindly swallow the story they're given. Clearly she's being impersonated, yet no one has the smarts to imagine that this technology might be in use? You see that wingjet heading out of the country? That's the one on which credibility is riding.
Aris is small, like Beatrice in the execrable Divergent. She has a choice of one of five factions just like Triss, and chooses the most militaristic one just like Triss does. She undergoes punishing, but thoroughly inadequate training, including hand-to-hand combat and hand-guns, just like Triss does. She gets no prior instruction in this training, but is expected to perform competently, just like Triss! There's even a character in it named Tress!
The fact that this is a series means, of course, that we already know we’re reading a novel which will have no real resolution. I find that depressing which is why, and with very few exceptions, I detest novel series. The blurb made this one at least sound interesting, but we all know how misleading blurbs are, don’t we?! I resolved to give it a try anyway, but frankly it did not get off to the best start.
In the very first chapter we're treated to what amounts to an info dump about how wonderful Aris Haan is, which struck me as odd. This novel is about the main female character, so I'm forced to assume she's worth reading about, otherwise why write the novel? There's no need for her to be pumped-up with an info-dump. Please show me how great your character is by telling her story! Don’t tell me how great she is and then undermine your own introduction by showing us, for the next eighty percent of the novel how weak, incompetent and scared she is.
As it is, Aris comes off looking like a female Luke Skywalker with nowhere near the courage: an ace pilot working on a farm, but dreaming of escape? I can think of far better ways to have done this, but isn't my novel, so let’s deal with what we have.
On the positive side, at least it wasn't in first person, so I'm grateful to the author for that. It was a very smart decision, but even so, it led to some problems, such as when the author is cussing in the narration, as though it's being told in first person when it isn't! When I say cussing, I use that term very euphemistically. The cuss-word of choice is 'blighting' which is pathetic for a military yarn. Also appearing: "sons of asses!" Yes, someone actually says that!
That latter is issued when one of the S&R ships goes down, but get this: no one on board sends out even so much as a m'aider call for assistance! You'll see shortly that this is entirely unsurprising given the thoroughly insufficient training they've had, but don't worry, this gives Aris some real quality time with the other leg of the triangle, and very conveniently this three-crew ship is, for no reason at all, carrying only two crew on that particular day.
Aris's boyfriend is Calix Pavlos, who belittles and demeans her by calling her 'Mosquito', as a pet name. Despite this, Aris's entire life revolves around him, and that's as sad as it's pathetic. She's all Calix all the time and it really drags the story down into the dumps. I remember thinking as I read this that there had better be some major character growth here or this main character is definitely going to be too much of Tris to waste my time on. There was no such character growth - not up to the point at eighty percent in where I couldn't stand to read about her OCD over Calix for even one more screen.
As to the writing in general, it's not that great: weak and boiler-plate for the most part, and really, I mean really irritating in that not one of the women depicted in it is capable of having any sort of real conversation unless it's about men. Way to pigeon-hole, cheapen, and demean women! But don't worry. This is an equal opportunity novel where men are also pigeon-holed, cheapened, and demeaned.
There isn't a huge number of technical gaffs in the writing, which made for a speedy read at least, although at one point a trio of words was repeated, which any beta reader ought to have caught. It's at the very start of a chapter and it reads, "...around a mouthful around a mouthful...". I can't tell you which chapter it is because in the Kindle version, the frilly chapter headers which contain that information are all rendered as per usual when Kindle has to render a picture: a dark gray nondescript rectangle, so the chapter number is invisible.
So when the story begins, Aris is demonstrating to herself her supposedly unparalleled flying skills in a "wingjet", and here's another problem: there's far too big of a disconnect between her skill and confidence here, and her subsequent reduction to a bag of Jell-O when she undergoes military training. It doesn't work and it makes no sense, unless Aris is also a victim of multiple personality disorder which, given that she's pretending to be a man, may well be true.
I suspect that there are many graduates of Parris Island and the San Diego Recruit Depot who would laugh their asses off at the poor excuse for military induction presented here (had their asses not been firmly attached by their exhaustive training beforehand, that is). But I digress. As the story takes off (so to speak) Aris is flying and is visited by Tress, a military official, who first tries to make her crash with his fly-bys and then, on the ground, invites her to join the military.
This offer is as bizarre to her as it was to me. It was bizarre to her because women are not allowed in the military even though they can be a president (termed a 'Ward' in this novel). It was bizarre to me because we're offered no reason whatsoever why a military pilot would fly out to the butt-crack of nowhere to try and recruit a young girl. Where was the incentive for that? Whence came the information to the military that this crack pilot lived out there and was supposedly so good? There's no rationalization ever offered for this credulity-lacking recruitment tactic!
So we're expected to believe that despite the fact that they're losing the war and desperately in need of volunteers, the nation's leaders are so stupid that they stupidly cling to a stupid rule - a rule that's completely illogical. Women are allowed to be Ward (president) and they're allowed to do potentially dangerous jobs like flying, yet they're banned from the military, even as support personnel?
So Tress offers Aris a chance, but he actually leaves her completely in the dark about what it entails, yet she takes up his offer because she's so stupid that she thinks it will enable her to be with Calix, who can't be with her now because he's just been drafted. That's how we end up with 'super-powered' main character and unnecessary mystery - and all in one chapter!
This novel is set in an unspecified future on Earth, wherein the nations are no longer known by their original names, and for no apparent reason. Earth has changed (presumably due to a global warming cliché - and the same kind of inexplicable natural catastrophes which drag down Divergent and Taken). What I assume was the USA (or maybe simply 'North America') is now called Atalanta (like the Academy in the Kiki Strike series), but it has a border with Africa (here named Safara) and Russia, here named Ruslana.
Note that it’s illegal to name a nation and not have it end in the letter 'a' in this novel! Seriously, why not just set this on another planet if you're going to change Earth around in ways which make no geological sense? I didn’t get this at all. Plate tectonics isn’t moving Africa and the Americas towards each other - it’s moving them apart. Maybe they met around the other side of the globe, in which case we're maybe 250 million years into the future? Or maybe I just didn't understand it, in which case the writing was bad. Or maybe it's actually not on Earth and it just resembles Earth in remarkably realistic ways. Who knows?
Safara is an aggressor "nation" fighting against Atalanta over water! The Ward (no presidents or kings and queens here, remember) of Atalanta, Pyralis Nekkos (again no explanation for the pretentiously exotic names other than that it's a sci-fi trope) asks the ward of Ruslana for help to fight them...and still he never thinks for a split second of recruiting women because they're needed bare-foot and pregnant! But that's actually not the worst deficit they're facing. More on this later.
Here's another trope in sci-fi: once again we have humans fighting in X-wing fighters - my bad, wingjet fighters. THIS MAKES NO SENSE! It makes even less sense to vamp-up your planet and rename the nations, and come up with 'cool' names for airplanes, like "wingjet", and even invent new and sad cuss-words like "blighting", but have nothing else change. The autumn is still called "the fall" - a very American term, for example, and still exists despite the catastrophic changes to Earth's geology! Oh,and everyone behaves as though they're in high school (YA style) in 2014.
It’s a very bad case of 'the more things change, the more they remain the same' and it's rife in this genre no matter who the author is. David Webber is a classic case in point. How I long for something truly different, and how thrilled I am when I find it. Unfortunately, I didn't find it here.
Here's another thing I have to ask, as usual in a sci-fi novel: "Where are the robots?" One of Aris's chores on her family's farm is crop-dusting. Again with the Luke Skywalker farm chores thing! That far into the future they don’t have robots which can do this? Genetic engineering hasn't advanced sufficiently that crop-dusting isn't needed?
Right now, here and now in 2014, we have robots! We have highly advanced so-called "smart" bombs, we have predator drones, and we have fighter-bomber jets being ever more automated with technology and AI assistance. Even Google is working on auto-navigation vehicles, yet a hundred, two hundred, two thousand years into the future (whenever this novel is set), there is nothing like that? I don’t buy that. I don't buy that women couldn't fight in the military and still stay home and have kids, when they could remotely pilot un-'manned' drones - drones which we already have in 2014!
This is a serious writing problem and it isn't confined to self-published authors for whom I normally have a lot of respect: it’s a trope (and a bad one) of all sci-fi. The human pilots are there because the writers can't write about robots! They have to write about humans (or aliens which are really humans in disguise), and they have to put them in danger no matter how ridiculous and unbelievable the stories are. If they even try to write about robots they just become another variety of alien: either they make them humans in disguise or they make them callous, unfeeling, dangerous sociopaths. So in the end, this means putting humans into positions which logically, for the futuristic setting, make no sense. It's sad, but it's true.
There's a Selection (hell yes, with a capital letter!), just like in Divergent, where young citizens are assigned to their career path. The initiates are selected for one of five factions, just like in Divergent. Not only this, but they get "branded" with the symbol of the faction to which they're assigned! In short, it’s exactly like the Divergent initiates getting tattoos! There's even an 'unselected' faction, just like Divergent has a factionless 'faction'. There's no self-determination here, yet no one seems to find anything wrong with that.
Calix tells Aris that because he was drafted (he's going to become a 'Mender' - they don’t have doctors here! When did that change?), they can’t be 'Promised" (hell yes, with a capital letter!), and they reminisce about their first meeting, where Aris says of her behavior, "I was a silly girl". She hasn’t changed: she still "clambers" into her wingjet, and "scrambles" down! She's still a little child. Oh, and she's a virgin, because: cliched YA! And so is he, because: cliched YA! When she wants sex he manfully refuses, because "...it would be wrong"! Ulp! Does anyone have a crocodile tissue, so I can wipe away this crocodile tear?
Yes, there is a love triangle for fans of same. I am not such a fan - especially not when this girl, who has thought of almost literally nothing but her love for, and her desire to be with, Calix now suddenly starts wanting another man for absolutely no reason whatsoever! There went credibility up in flames. Again. Now I have even less respect for this main character - or more accurately, I would have, if it were possible at this point.
Meanwhile, Ward Balias of Safara is bitching that Atalanta has solar technology and water and won't share it. Now this is a nation on a planet awash with seawater, and they don't have the technology to desalinate it? And no one even thinks of this or mentions it during their summit meeting? They don't have solar-power technology which we've had for decades - and which is already growing in Africa?
Hell, if these people simply evaporated the seawater and collected the condensate they'd have all the water they needed, but apparently they can't even think of that. Again, there goes credibility. These interspersed political chapters did not work for me, and after the first two I skipped every one of them because they were so god-awfully boring.
Aris meets up with Dianthe (yes, the goddess of war, Diana, who happens to be appallingly genderist: "Men don’t discuss their feelings"! Seriously?) This is one of many genderist slights delivered to men in this novel, such as "...too graceful to be a man" and "Men don't cry", and so on. It became nauseating to read so many blind, biased and insulting bullshit claims one after another.
Aris is told that if she wants to fly for the military, she has to be disguised as a man and complete a week's physical training. Like one week will do it! Well, if it worked in Divergent there's no reason at all why it shouldn’t work here, too! Her first task is to run one mile.
The problem Aris faces is that she's not exactly a first-class specimen. Apparently at some point in her childhood she had 'a fever' (like no child has fevers! lol!), and at present she walks with a limp. How (or even if) these are connected, or what was involved in 'the fever' is never discussed. Nor is it broached upon as to why future medicine (or is it Mending?) could not fix her up. What, they can make a perfect holograph to make a woman look like a man, but they can’t fix a limp? Schools have no physical fitness programs in the future? Or the future has no schools?
This brings me to the problem I referenced earlier: the military financed this 'diatous veil' (there's no cool, snappy name for this. It's always 'the diatous veil'), and now here they are losing a war. One thing we're expected to believe is that this war took everyone unexpectedly, but this veil proves that this is not the case. Ten years before, they were financing technology to recruit women - so if this aspect of the military budget was being attended to so diligently, where was the finance for weapons technology? Again, it makes no sense.
As far as the training and testing goes, why an active eighteen-year-old is so physically unfit that her legs are trembling and her lungs on fire after only a mile on a treadmill is a complete mystery. She's eighteen for goodness sakes, not eighty! She can flip an airplane around the sky and endure multiple g's in acceleration, yet she's struggling to jog one mile? Bye-bye credibility! Again.
We’ve been given no reason whatsoever to think that there's anything wrong with Aris (other than that she walks with a limp). Where were the beta readers and the editor here? It's never a good idea to artificially weaken your main character in order to then show how strong she is. It's unrealistic and in the end it backfires because it makes her seem far weaker than you actually intended to portray, and this in turn robs the credibility from her turn-around. It's just bad policy all-around.
For some reason it takes two weeks to set-up Aris with her holograph - using electrodes! I have no idea why this primitive approach was employed, or why it took so long, but finally she gets sent out into the military wearing this purported disguise. She gets onto the transport - a transjet, not a wingjet now! Or maybe it really is a wingjet? We have no idea what these things are other than airplanes, but if they're merely airplanes, then why give them new names as though they're something advanced?
Aris sits next to another guy, and we're told that she's "resisting the urge to cross her ankles. Men didn’t sit like that." and I'm sitting here reading this with my ankles crossed. I am not kidding you. I guess that means I'm not a man! This endless barrage of genderist slurs against men seriously began to grate after a very short while.
Here's a pet peeve of mine, and I see this happening a lot: someone with a title introduces themselves in this manner: "My name is Title Name". For example, they might say, "My name is Doctor Smith", but their name isn’t Doctor; that's their title! Actually I was once acquainted with someone who was a doctor and whose last name was also Doctor! His official title was Doctor Doctor which sounds like a Thompson Twins song. How weird is that? I also personally knew someone whose last name was Captain, so her medical orders were signed Captain MD, which was pretty cool. And funny!
But I digress! Again! In the case of this novel, it's: "My name is Commander Nyx", but it’s his title that's "Commander". His name is just "Nyx". If he were going to introduce himself properly, he should say "I'm Commander Nyx", or "I'm your commander. My name is Nyx. You may address me as 'Commander Nyx', or 'Sir'."
I just think it's an example of sloppy writing, and this blog is all over writing. Another example of this kind of inattention which caught my attention was where someone shovels "...another hunk of pie in his mouth." It should have been 'into' not 'in', unless he's already holding the pie in his mouth and shoveling it around in there for entertainment. Maybe he is. Or maybe language really is deteriorating in this era of texting, as some scholars like to claim. Who knows? Five hundred years from now, language will be as alien to us as ours would be to people living in Shakespearean times. Que sera so rant.
As an an aside, please note that commander isn’t actually a rank unless you're in the navy. The title of commander might be held by someone who is ranked as a commander or by someone of another rank (lieutenant, for example), but this person, regardless of rank, would still be the commander of the unit - in this case S&R.
I think I've ranted enough about this. I really wanted to like the novel, and I really thought I would from what I read in the blurb, but the execution of the story was really poor, and it did not hold my attention, I kept on reading and reading in the hope that it would get better, but it was a painful slog, and in the end I simply couldn't continue with do it. I cannot in good faith recommend this novel.
