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.
I’ll believe I made it clear in the review what my standards were. They’re just different than yours. It’s all subjective. You don’t like my critical standards, fine. But don’t try to make yours the objective truth.
HA! When did I EVER make my standards "the objective truth"??? Jesus Christ, man, can you really not have an intellectual discussion about differing ideas?!
Sorry if my tone offended you. This is why I usually avoid arguments, which is what I was trying to get at with my first reply.
Appealing to “critical standards” is itself a claim to objectivity and universality. (Maybe I should have said universality rather than objectivity.) These are the standards everyone agrees on, right? Everyone wants originality all the time, right? So tropes are just cliches.
My point is that no, not everyone agrees with that standard. In fact, millions of readers don’t. Standards vary from reader to reader, and each reader might even apply different standards to the different genres they read. Some people want stories with familiar tropes. By giving those tropes the pejorative label of “cliches”, you’re dumping on those writers and readers. I don’t see how you can deny that you’re claiming superior taste here. I view it as a form of gate-keeping.
Back in the day when publishers and review sections and university literature departments were the gate-keepers, they did try to enforce critical standards like novelty and originality. A genre like science fiction, and certainly dystopian sci-fi, was just trash for the masses. It wasn’t what you studied in lit class, or got your MFA in order to write. But that’s all changed.
My solution to this new situation is that reviews really are no more than “this is what I liked about the novel.” That’s what I tried to provide in this review.
P.S. And no, I’m not “dumping on” the genre or its writers and readers! As I took the trouble to say before — and I’ll say it again — I’M ONE OF THEM. I’m voicing an opinion as a frustrated insider, not an outsider contemptuous of it all.
No, Larry, by “critical standards,” I don’t mean “standards everyone agrees on,” i.e. “universal” standards. If I’d meant that, I would have said that. At no point did I even imply, “You must agree with me about this…” I made an argument about my opinion, that’s all, and nothing in it forbade your disagreement. I don’t even know how you got the idea. Because I spoke with conviction?
“My expectations for YA dystopia are quite different than yours, Joshua. So let me explain why the love triangle in this book isn’t a problem for me and other readers…”
“That may be, Joshua, but this book actually has a fresh take on the love triangle trope which saves it from cliche…”
“Actually, Joshua, I disagree altogether with you: the love triangle is not a cliched trope in YA dystopia. It has a lot of runway left, and here’s why…”
Any one of these (and others too) would have been a fine launchpad for a response to my comment, and we wouldn’t have tussled like this. Instead, you have made bad assumption after bad assumption about what I meant and what my purpose in writing was.
By the criteria you’re invoking, any intellectual discussion of literature whatsoever is “gatekeeping.” Well, I’m sorry to be blunt, but bollocks! We can and should have debates about the trends in literary genres which amount to more than “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” Such debate is what literary criticism is about! A review is not just cheerleading!
So you liked the book? Well, why? Why should I care if you liked it? The only reason I should care is if I know what your critical standard for the genre is and appreciate it, even if it’s not my standard. That’s a BASIS for me to read the book on your recommendation.
I don’t know, maybe as an English major and an MFAer, I don’t have any business applying traditional definitions of words like “review” to genre fiction or expecting an intellectual discussion about it… You lament that once upon a time it was all dismissed as “trash,” but you don’t seem to want it to be taken as serious literature, either, which in all my experience means it’s subject to critical appraisal.
You spent a lot of words saying that you prefer novels that are inventive and completely new. Fine, that’s your preference. But clearly, many readers and writers prefer novels that are familiar in some way. If this weren’t true, the entire romance genre wouldn’t exist. (Go ahead, make a dig at that genre!) So they read and write what they prefer, and you read and write what you prefer, and we should leave it at that.
Also, I know that in some quarters, tearing down other writers to build your own writing up is the way to get ahead. That’s the way a lot of book review sections have worked. (I always think of Rachel Cusk’s review of Sarah Waters as an example.) But I didn’t think that’s what we do here on Substack. Don’t like something? Move on.
Yes, actually, I do want more of an argument, Larry. And here's why: your post title begins with "Review of..." It doesn't say "recommendation" or "endorsement" or "fan letter." It says "review." That says to me that you're applying CRITICAL STANDARDS to your analysis of the book. Indeed, in the review, you acknowledge love triangles are a well-worn trope in YA dystopia, and you go on to tell your readers why they should read the book anyway. That's all a nod to a critical standard.
And that's all my comment was about: what are the critical standards we're applying in YA dystopia? It's not, for God's sake, about "tearing down other writers to build [my] own writing up." If it were, I wouldn't have cared about being fair to the author, so I wouldn't have bothered to caveat things with "I'm not claiming this book is necessarily guilty of any of that," which was an overt admission that what I was saying had to do with an impression of the book given by the review, not the book itself (which I obviously haven't read). Accusing me of lobbing bombs at another writer just for launching a critical discussion about what's going on in the genre is a cheap shot. This isn't about the writer, and it isn't about me.
"Your mileage may vary." "Don't like something? Move on." -- What these flippant non-responses say to me: "We're not having a critical discussion here, and I won't engage you on your ideas." OK, Larry, if you don't want to have that discussion, fine ... but then don't call what you're doing here a "review." Either engage in criticism or don't. (And no, I don't think "criticism" equates to "rip books to shreds.")
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.
I’ll believe I made it clear in the review what my standards were. They’re just different than yours. It’s all subjective. You don’t like my critical standards, fine. But don’t try to make yours the objective truth.
HA! When did I EVER make my standards "the objective truth"??? Jesus Christ, man, can you really not have an intellectual discussion about differing ideas?!
Sorry if my tone offended you. This is why I usually avoid arguments, which is what I was trying to get at with my first reply.
Appealing to “critical standards” is itself a claim to objectivity and universality. (Maybe I should have said universality rather than objectivity.) These are the standards everyone agrees on, right? Everyone wants originality all the time, right? So tropes are just cliches.
My point is that no, not everyone agrees with that standard. In fact, millions of readers don’t. Standards vary from reader to reader, and each reader might even apply different standards to the different genres they read. Some people want stories with familiar tropes. By giving those tropes the pejorative label of “cliches”, you’re dumping on those writers and readers. I don’t see how you can deny that you’re claiming superior taste here. I view it as a form of gate-keeping.
Back in the day when publishers and review sections and university literature departments were the gate-keepers, they did try to enforce critical standards like novelty and originality. A genre like science fiction, and certainly dystopian sci-fi, was just trash for the masses. It wasn’t what you studied in lit class, or got your MFA in order to write. But that’s all changed.
My solution to this new situation is that reviews really are no more than “this is what I liked about the novel.” That’s what I tried to provide in this review.
P.S. And no, I’m not “dumping on” the genre or its writers and readers! As I took the trouble to say before — and I’ll say it again — I’M ONE OF THEM. I’m voicing an opinion as a frustrated insider, not an outsider contemptuous of it all.
No, Larry, by “critical standards,” I don’t mean “standards everyone agrees on,” i.e. “universal” standards. If I’d meant that, I would have said that. At no point did I even imply, “You must agree with me about this…” I made an argument about my opinion, that’s all, and nothing in it forbade your disagreement. I don’t even know how you got the idea. Because I spoke with conviction?
“My expectations for YA dystopia are quite different than yours, Joshua. So let me explain why the love triangle in this book isn’t a problem for me and other readers…”
“That may be, Joshua, but this book actually has a fresh take on the love triangle trope which saves it from cliche…”
“Actually, Joshua, I disagree altogether with you: the love triangle is not a cliched trope in YA dystopia. It has a lot of runway left, and here’s why…”
Any one of these (and others too) would have been a fine launchpad for a response to my comment, and we wouldn’t have tussled like this. Instead, you have made bad assumption after bad assumption about what I meant and what my purpose in writing was.
By the criteria you’re invoking, any intellectual discussion of literature whatsoever is “gatekeeping.” Well, I’m sorry to be blunt, but bollocks! We can and should have debates about the trends in literary genres which amount to more than “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” Such debate is what literary criticism is about! A review is not just cheerleading!
So you liked the book? Well, why? Why should I care if you liked it? The only reason I should care is if I know what your critical standard for the genre is and appreciate it, even if it’s not my standard. That’s a BASIS for me to read the book on your recommendation.
I don’t know, maybe as an English major and an MFAer, I don’t have any business applying traditional definitions of words like “review” to genre fiction or expecting an intellectual discussion about it… You lament that once upon a time it was all dismissed as “trash,” but you don’t seem to want it to be taken as serious literature, either, which in all my experience means it’s subject to critical appraisal.
As always, YMMV.
Oh. Well, then, never mind.
You want more of an argument? Here goes:
You spent a lot of words saying that you prefer novels that are inventive and completely new. Fine, that’s your preference. But clearly, many readers and writers prefer novels that are familiar in some way. If this weren’t true, the entire romance genre wouldn’t exist. (Go ahead, make a dig at that genre!) So they read and write what they prefer, and you read and write what you prefer, and we should leave it at that.
Also, I know that in some quarters, tearing down other writers to build your own writing up is the way to get ahead. That’s the way a lot of book review sections have worked. (I always think of Rachel Cusk’s review of Sarah Waters as an example.) But I didn’t think that’s what we do here on Substack. Don’t like something? Move on.
Yes, actually, I do want more of an argument, Larry. And here's why: your post title begins with "Review of..." It doesn't say "recommendation" or "endorsement" or "fan letter." It says "review." That says to me that you're applying CRITICAL STANDARDS to your analysis of the book. Indeed, in the review, you acknowledge love triangles are a well-worn trope in YA dystopia, and you go on to tell your readers why they should read the book anyway. That's all a nod to a critical standard.
And that's all my comment was about: what are the critical standards we're applying in YA dystopia? It's not, for God's sake, about "tearing down other writers to build [my] own writing up." If it were, I wouldn't have cared about being fair to the author, so I wouldn't have bothered to caveat things with "I'm not claiming this book is necessarily guilty of any of that," which was an overt admission that what I was saying had to do with an impression of the book given by the review, not the book itself (which I obviously haven't read). Accusing me of lobbing bombs at another writer just for launching a critical discussion about what's going on in the genre is a cheap shot. This isn't about the writer, and it isn't about me.
"Your mileage may vary." "Don't like something? Move on." -- What these flippant non-responses say to me: "We're not having a critical discussion here, and I won't engage you on your ideas." OK, Larry, if you don't want to have that discussion, fine ... but then don't call what you're doing here a "review." Either engage in criticism or don't. (And no, I don't think "criticism" equates to "rip books to shreds.")