Review of Shattered by CB Mason (Forged Series Book 1)
A welcome addition to the dystopian YA genre, with a vivid main character caught up in a tragic and disorienting web of lies
I’m doing something a bit different this week, a review of a soon-to-be released novel. I’ve enjoyed reading CB Mason’s (
) posts about her debut novel here on Substack, so I was glad to get an Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review. The novel is available for preorder and is due out on April 15, just in time to ease the pain of tax day!And for those of you looking for free books, check out the Books Spring Eternal giveaway, which features both fiction and nonfiction.
Next week we’ll return to my story about life on Mars.
CB Mason’s Shattered, the first installment in her Forged trilogy, sneaks up on you. At first, the set-up might seem generic: recently orphaned teen grapples with the grief of losing her family, the disorientation of adjusting to a new home, and the angst of fitting in at a new school. But the details soon drew me in to this postapocalyptic future world. First, the catastrophes that brought about this dystopian setting seem like a fresh blend that goes beyond the usual culprits. And second, fourteen-year-old Contessa (Tessa) Wright has to grapple with much more than the grief of losing her family in a horrible accident (and having to witness it, no less). Challenges beyond the personal are to be expected in the dystopian sci-fi genre, but the twists and turns of her situation are intriguing, while the way she grapples with them is both heartfelt and realistic. At first Tessa thinks it’s just her heart that’s shattered, but she soon suspects it’s her mind as well.
The Setting
It’s the year 2134 in the United Pacific Territories of the former United States, roughly the current Pacific Northwest and northern Intermountain West. The country has devolved into separate territories after a 21st-century geological cataclysm known as the Great Changes, in which North America split in two along the Mississippi fault line. That decades-long catastrophe, coupled with climate change and an outbreak called the Perses Pandemic, has reduced the population in this region of the former United States to only 500,000.
Yet life is now relatively stable and prosperous, thanks, according to official accounts, to the technological wizardry of Julia Ryker, now Grand Governor of the UPT. Back when she was the 23-year-old whiz-kid Power Director for the Bannock Zone (nee Boise), she’d shared electricity with neighboring zones during a blackout. She then used that feat as a springboard to become Governor of Bannock and then Grand Governor of the young nation. In addition to having plentiful hydroelectric power, the UPT seems, on the surface, a technological utopia, with human genetic engineering having wiped out most diseases and nanotechnology being tested to support agriculture and to restore ecosystems ravaged by climate change. As you’d expect from a dystopian novel, however, all these advances have their dark sides.
The Characters
The novel opens with young Tessa arriving in her new home in the capital city of Bannock, near the former Boise, Idaho, now submerged. She’d grown up in an area near the ruins of Portland known as The Wilds, and Bannock is the Big City. As she struggles with grief and flashbacks of losing her family, she tries to fit in at her new school, a task made harder for having been home-schooled up to now. Her task of fitting in is further complicated when she tests into third- and fourth-year courses.
And then there are the usual cliques, but with yet another twist. The Elites of this school really are elite, superior to their fellow students in every way, from academics to sports. These aren’t your grandpa’s jocks, lording over the nerdy eggheads. What’s more, they all resemble each other, even though none of them are related. Tessa is at first ostracized from this group, not because they look down on her, but because they view her as competition.
Which is weird, at least in the athletic department. She’s suffered from a compromised immune system since she was five, and has hardly exercised since then. But then the PE instructor has her take a strength test, despite her doctor’s note, and she nearly beats the class’s star athlete. Later, she discovers that she loves running, and she’s fast. She does yoga with her aunt, and she seems to remember doing it before. What’s going on? This is just one mystery Tessa will have to solve as she comes to grips with who she really is, in the most literal sense.
Since Shattered is told in the first person, it makes sense that Tessa is the character we get to know best. Mason depicts Tessa’s struggles with her identity vividly, and also realistically for a fourteen-year-old wrestling with such momentous issues. Her confusion about who she is and where she fits in is palpable, as are the recurring moments where she relives the tragedy that took her parents from her. Like the other Elites, she’s also incredibly smart and mature for her age.
Young love enters the picture in the form of Isaiah and Zeke, two former best friends who, strangely, have similar eyes, even though they’re not related. Isaiah takes Tessa under his wing on the first day of school, while Zeke is standoffish. Soon the three are in a love triangle. Another YA trope, but this one comes with twists — Zeke is the son of Julia Ryker. But that’s not Tessa’s only link to the leader of the UPT. Her Uncle Finn, with whom she’s now living, is a scientist doing nanotechnology research for the Ryker administration, and Zeke is his intern. Does this all seem too convenient? It takes Tessa a while, but she slowly realizes that things are not all as they seem in this tech utopia.
Then there’s Dr. Weaver, Tessa’s psychiatrist, who uses a treatment called Remote Thought Intervention, complete with electrodes attached to her skull. Weaver seems sympathetic but strangely uninterested in any kind of talk therapy, and usually wants to jump right into the RTI therapy. Tessa remembers nothing from these treatments, but finds herself with new impulses after each session.
The Story
Shattered is the tale of a young girl finding herself after unimaginable loss, which makes for a moving story in itself. But her identity is also bound up in the web of power relationships in the capital of the United Pacific Territories, so her journey of self-discovery has twists and turns that connect it with a larger story. From these brief descriptions of Tessa’s situation, you might have gotten a feel for what’s going on beneath the surface, but trust me, there’s more that I don’t want to spoil. The twists keep coming right to the end.
As the opening installment of a trilogy, Shattered seems like the first act of a three-act tale. In that sense, it’s more like The Lord of the Rings than more recent series like Harry Potter or The Expanse, in which each installment has a complete arc. There’s definitely a big revelation and payoff at the end of Shattered, but it leaves Tessa with more problems and more mysteries to solve. Not to worry, though! Unlike some other famous series that have yet to be completed, the next two installments are already with the publisher. Rest assured, we’ll be able to follow Tessa wherever her adventures take her. I’m looking forward to it!
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This had me intrigued right up until I read the words "love triangle." The follow-up explanation doesn't really make it sound any different from love triangles in other YA dystopia. At this point, it's not just a trope of the genre. It's a cliche. I'm not opposed to love triangles per se, but in this genre, one really needs to stand out from the crowd. I'm not seeing that here yet.
One of the heroine's love interests is a golden boy, so by simple contrast, the other must be the underdog. Oh jeez, who's a wolf in sheep's clothing, and who, oh, who shall I root for? I'm totally stumped! The problem with this setup is that it offers only four possible outcomes, all of them unsatisfying: (1) The golden boy is the wolf. Predictable. (2) The underdog is the wolf. Undercuts the dystopia. Whether or not the author intends it, readers will take the underdog to represent an oppressed underclass. I mean, obviously the golden boy represents the ruling elite, right? (3) The heroine rejects them both. Why have a love story at all? (4) The heroine embraces polyamory and accepts them both. Enterprising, but all the tension flies out of the love story.
Why do YA dystopia authors keep falling back on this? I suspect three culprits: (A) Something is missing elsewhere in the story -- depth in characters, tension in the plot, or a coherent "point" to the dystopia. The love triangle is a stopgap. (B) Lazy copycatting. This is just how it's done now in YA dystopia, isn't it? (C) A lack of imagination about what matters to the protagonist. What else can a fourteen-year-old girl have on her mind than which of her crushes she's going to hook up with?
I'm not claiming this book is necessarily guilty of any of that. I'm saying, having seen so much YA dystopia be guilty of one or more of those things, as a reader I've got to be convinced I won't see the same problems again. Fair or not, a love triangle is an automatic strike against a YA dystopia. Nothing in your review nullified it for me.
Why the diatribe? I love dystopia, I write dystopia, and I want to read new dystopia. The genre is stagnating, though. The "tropes" (cliches) have made it so. Love triangles, oligarchic corporation-states, maverick "visionaries" who turn out to be madmen, genetic engineering with a fatal flaw that turns out to be intentionally designed to breed a superhuman race of elites, etc. I'm tired of writers who can't move beyond this stuff and publishers who won't publish anything else.