Okay, I was really excited to get to this one on the shelf because Sci Fi is one of my favorite genres. Getting into the book, however, sparked a ranting fest, which we will get to.
Weed or Keep:
I’ll keep it in the library. While it had a really rough start engagement and writing-wise, it does hold an interesting look at discrimination and prejudice and how the Holocaust happened. I can see why it would be appealing to the YA crowd (even though I wanted to slap Toni V several times).
Writing:
Very early on, I started wondering if this was a debut, or at least a debut book in the Sci Fi genre. The worldbuilding was difficult to figure out for too long. As we got further into Pelly D’s POV, I felt more grounded. That was where most of the worldbuilding happened and stuck. When we got back to Toni’s POV, I was often lost or raising way too many unanswered questions about his life and the world around him.
My first sticky note in this book is on an early chapter following one of Pelly D’s diary entries about her mundane life. The chapter starts in Toni V’s POV and describes bugs that are very similar to mosquitoes and how Toni had a bad experience with them once. The sentence that triggered my note was “And that was exactly how it felt reading the last entry.” It goes on to mention that he knew the name Linveki, which was mentioned in the diary entry, and that’s what made him uneasy.
The problem there for me was that I’d already been wondering why the heck Toni was still reading about this rando girl’s life. I knew why I cared, but Toni felt empty and I couldn’t feel anything alongside him and was already getting annoyed with his POV. He didn’t expect her to be dead and even basically said several times “I should just throw it away but for some reason don’t want to yet / for some reason keep reading.”
Side note: I hate the “for some reason” excuses for people in stories to do things. It’s way too close to Deus Ex Machina. It also feels cheap and like too much telling. Don’t tell me they did a thing “for some reason.” At least make me feel that “some reason.” In this way, there was a lot of telling in Toni’s POV. I advocate for a healthy balance of showing and telling, but the balance was not here.
Here, it would have helped two things for me if we knew that Toni knew the Linveki name in the last entry before we read that entry. Then, we could have felt the same shock and discomfort while reading the entry too. That would have helped me make the connection between Toni and Pelly, and why he even cares to keep reading. The discomfort and intrigue is compelling, and as a reader, I’d like to feel that with the characters, not be told they feel that way after the event.
Which—Why did he keep reading? He was constantly only interested in what Pelly looked like and some rather creepy stalker vibes of only caring about knowing more about her mundane life. Like, Toni is fourteen years old and working in demolition. The story starts off with the phrase “Shirking’s for losers” by his supervisor, which instantly makes Toni obey? (The whole “Shirking’s for losers” also irritated me. That sounds more like a joke than an actual…rule? It was so tame and childish compared to how much Toni took it as a threat that…what would happen if he broke the rule? So much was unclear and confusing in his POV.) Either way, that phrase is the main reason Toni is all “I shouldn’t even be reading this diary. It’s not allowed. But Idk, something about it compels me to read more even though I don’t often read and my eyes hurt because this is abnormal for me.”
The Diary was found with the note, “Dig—dig everywhere.” Unfortunately, the setting and context in which this note was found did not make this note feel concerning for me. They are tearing down a Plaza to rebuild, it’s literally already their job to dig everywhere. It’s also seemingly not his first job like this and I’d expect them to find stuff like that often enough—especially with the fact that they have a “Salvage Squad” in the first place.
Whatever the note was about, I’d have assumed it was too late to deal with whatever they were meant to “dig” for anyway. So, tired from work (they were being rationed water and he was exhausted), that wasn’t a strong enough reason for me to believe his decision to break procedure and keep it. The other reason offered was “a laugh with his mates” which even he didn’t really believe. It was all such a casual shrug “I dunno” thing he was doing, which is realistic, I guess, but not a good character motivation for a story. I needed more certainty for why he wanted to keep reading.
On top of that, I was constantly frustrated with Toni’s lack of “She lived here before the War and her diary was left behind in a water can. Did she die? Did she escape the dangers?” and his surplus of “Maybe I’ll see her around! I bet she’s hot. Have I already seen her? Gah, I wish she would stop talking about The Reason this Book Even Exists (Holocaust stuff). I wanna imagine her shopping more!” I know he’s fourteen, but he also knows about the war that very recently happened and that her city had been hit by the hardest missiles and is currently knowingly destroying the places she used to frequent. Like???
Toni V was a poorly developed character. Pelly D was strong and compelling the further we got.
Transitions:
These were rough. We are reading this diary from Toni’s POV, right? So why did I hardly ever know when, where, or why he was reading? We sometimes got a little snippet from his life (which could have used a lot stronger worldbuilding and character development) and then randomly the next page would be a diary entry. It was very jarring and jumbled. My second sticky note was a suggestion for the end of Toni’s POV, “Curiosity brought him back to the pages,” to give us a reason why he started reading again, and that he was about to start reading again.
One of my last sticky notes is about speech flavor. Mostly a comment on worldbuilding. These are kids that are far evolved from Earth humans, yet they use a lot of older colloquialisms—like “Going ape” for freaking out. One page, talks about how “Racism” hasn’t been used in forever, because it was assumed to have been left behind with their ancestors in the ancient Earth days. Near the end, Pelly mentions that dolphins are 1) alien and 2) extinct. So, it begged the question, what…animals exist on this planet? Are not apes also alien and left behind on Earth? Why do we know enough about apes to use it commonly in our vocab? There were a lot of phrases like this that made me squint my eyes in scrutiny.
Okay! That should do it for me. Final note: This book was not bad. It was indeed a debut, and it did make the ALA list for young readers. I do see why. The ending was actually really nice and powerful. But as far as Sci Fi goes, it’s iffy—especially from Toni V’s POV.
That’s the end. That was long. *whew.*
Have a good and go dance in the shower! Don’t give up. Time will pass, and life is a mystery. ^_^ ❤
Disagree with me? Fight me in the comments! Grr! >:) XD 😛
N. K. Valek: Author 