book reviews: the dead and the undead
May. 5th, 2012 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraThe Forest of Hands and Teeth - YA, zombies. The only reason I didn't repeatedly slam this book shut in annoyance was that I was reading it on my phone; stabbing the off button isn't quite as satisfying (I know, I tried). The best thing about this book was the setting, which was vivid and compelling and I am totally stealing for an RPG someday; unfortunately it was populated by unlikeable people, most notably our first-person narrator, in whose tedious head we are regrettably stuck. I spent the first third of this book imagining an increasingly frustrated GM: "Okay, you're in The Village Where Everything Sucks. There is a Mysterious Door and a Forbidden Path here." Mary the Narrator: "Everything suuuuucks." GM: "Ahem. A MYSTERIOUS DOOR. And a PATH." Mary: "Secrets all around me! Secrets that suck! Oh woe, if only there were more!" GM: "DOOR? PATH? Hello?" Mary: "Blah blah sucks but what can you do." GM: "I give up. Zombie attack." Mary: "SUCKS! Waaaitaminute, maybe I could... flee to this path?" GM: "... ya think?"
I won't spoil ("spoil") the rest of the book but suffice it to say that Mary fails to learn from this experience and has to be prodded through the rest of the plot by similar authorial intervention. She shows a brief spark of initiative towards the end and then bam, back towards being passively moved by outside forces (literally, in the "climax", in which she boldly falls into a river and washes up at the denouement. Oops, spoiler, sorry.) Mostly she spends her time whining about her tiresome romantic tangle, which is only complicated because in their culture they don't have conversations. (Seriously, at one point Mary has a bizarre flash of common sense and suggests very tentatively that maybe they should all try, like, talking about this situation, or something? and gets shot down with an explicit "no of course we can't ever *talk* about it!". I hated that Ethan Frome shit in Ethan Frome, and at least reading Wharton gets you cultural-literacy points.) Oh, and there was one good scene. Otherwise I was pretty much rooting for the zombies.
Oh, and, a worldbuilding nitpick: if you have a very small village that's been surrounded at all times by a horde of zombies for a couple of generations (check), and you know how long most zombies last before they fall apart (check), shouldn't it be relatively easy to figure out whether anyone else in the world outside of your village has survived? Either every single zombie out there is someone who came from your village, or new zombies are coming from *somewhere* else, right?
Guardian of the Dead - YA fantasy. This on the other hand was terrific. Started reading it and could not put it down (I even finished it *at the expense of sleep*, which is a pretty strong statement given the month-old baby.) The characters had me from the start and then delivered a satisfying plot which I will in fact really truly not spoil (and so I have much less to say about it). Three things I liked: our heroine's tae kwon do skills and realistic perspective on their use, the setting in New Zealand and use of Maori mythology, the fact that the main character's best friend is asexual, and it's neither a big deal in the plot nor entirely irrelevant. Reminded me a little of Fire and Hemlock, are you sold yet? Recommended to all YA fantasy readers.
I won't spoil ("spoil") the rest of the book but suffice it to say that Mary fails to learn from this experience and has to be prodded through the rest of the plot by similar authorial intervention. She shows a brief spark of initiative towards the end and then bam, back towards being passively moved by outside forces (literally, in the "climax", in which she boldly falls into a river and washes up at the denouement. Oops, spoiler, sorry.) Mostly she spends her time whining about her tiresome romantic tangle, which is only complicated because in their culture they don't have conversations. (Seriously, at one point Mary has a bizarre flash of common sense and suggests very tentatively that maybe they should all try, like, talking about this situation, or something? and gets shot down with an explicit "no of course we can't ever *talk* about it!". I hated that Ethan Frome shit in Ethan Frome, and at least reading Wharton gets you cultural-literacy points.) Oh, and there was one good scene. Otherwise I was pretty much rooting for the zombies.
Oh, and, a worldbuilding nitpick: if you have a very small village that's been surrounded at all times by a horde of zombies for a couple of generations (check), and you know how long most zombies last before they fall apart (check), shouldn't it be relatively easy to figure out whether anyone else in the world outside of your village has survived? Either every single zombie out there is someone who came from your village, or new zombies are coming from *somewhere* else, right?
Guardian of the Dead - YA fantasy. This on the other hand was terrific. Started reading it and could not put it down (I even finished it *at the expense of sleep*, which is a pretty strong statement given the month-old baby.) The characters had me from the start and then delivered a satisfying plot which I will in fact really truly not spoil (and so I have much less to say about it). Three things I liked: our heroine's tae kwon do skills and realistic perspective on their use, the setting in New Zealand and use of Maori mythology, the fact that the main character's best friend is asexual, and it's neither a big deal in the plot nor entirely irrelevant. Reminded me a little of Fire and Hemlock, are you sold yet? Recommended to all YA fantasy readers.
