Amber and Dusk: A Beautifully Written Tale of Romance, Rebellion, and Intrigue

Book Review

 

Title: Amber and Dusk

Author: Lyra Selene

Genre: YA, Fantasy, Romance, Dystopian

Summary

Although she is an abandoned orphan in the Dusklands at the outer edge of the Amber Empire, Sylvie is born with a “legacy”—a gift of magic. She can spin elaborate illusions, fantasies of her own creation. Knowing that only those with noble blood can wield magic, Sylvie treks to the Amber City to claim her rightful spot in Empress Severine’s court. She hopes to find a place to belong. Instead, she’s thrust into a dangerous game of intrigue and politics.

Ragged and poor, no one takes Sylvie seriously, least of all the Empress. But Severine is intrigued by Sylvie’s power. She offers her courtiers a wager: if Sylvie can polish her legacy by Carrousel, her allies will gain favor and Sylvie will receive position in the court. A handsome nobleman named Lord Sunder with the unnerving legacy of causing pain agrees to sponsor Sylvie, but wagers against her. With no allies, no upbringing, and no idea what she’s gotten herself into Sylvie—newly renamed Mirage—will have to use all her powers to outwit her enemies and beat them at their own game.

Review

On the one hand, Amber and Dusk is not a particularly ground-breaking novel. All the major tropes of the YA/ Fantasy/ Romance/ Dystopian genre are here in full force. Determined heroine with more power than she realizes? Check. Mysterious past that becomes important in the third act? Check. Love triangle? Check. Decadent and cruel empire with a rebellion growing in the wings? Check. If you know the genre, you’ll recognize many of the same elements at work here.

And that’s okay, because Amber and Dusk does them well. This a solid, well-crafted, and beautiful story. I felt like the Amber Empire was a real place. Glamorous and ugly all at once, it’s a land I could believe in, a land I could fall in love with, a land I wanted to fight for. The author’s language is lush and vivid. Lyra Selene paints pictures with prose and beautifully captures the emotion of her characters.

I liked Sylvie/ Mirage right from the beginning. She is kind, loyal, and passionate. She risks much in order to follow her dream. But Sylvie’s ambitions have a dark side. She can be impulsive, irresponsible, entitled. Characters question her intentions. Although Sylvie is basically good, the idea that she can be corrupted is enticing to me—especially as her power grows.

Most fantasy stories begin with our hero’s terrible and/ or boring childhood. Amber and Dusk thankfully skips most of this and begins right as Sylvie is about to enter the Amber City. This helps the pacing quite a bit, as it gets Sylvie into the court relatively quickly. Once she’s in court, the plot kicks into gear. Sylvie makes friends and enemies, discovers secrets, and is forced to re-evaluate what she wants in life. There’s also a bit of romance. The romance adds a nice spice to the story, but never takes it over completely.

I started this story while riding on an airplane. I couldn’t put it down and finished the last few pages while waiting for my luggage. The ending was a tad bit muddled, but still satisfying. Although the story hints at a sequel, it is a self-contained book. You can stop right here or continue on for more.

I, personally, want more.

Book Review: The Scorpion Rules

Title: The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace, Book 1)

Author: Erin Bow

Genre: YA, Dystopian Science Fiction

(Note: This is one of two books my friend Rita—the queen of YA fantasy romance—gave me to help me relax after a stressful April. A big shout out to her for the recommendations.)

Summary

“Did you know the man who invented the atomic bomb once said that keeping peace through deterrence was like keeping two scorpions in one bottle?…All I did was invent the bottle.”

—Talis

World peace requires certain sacrifices. Princess Greta Gustafen Stuart of the Pan Polar Confederacy just happens to be one of them. A “Child of Peace,” she’s held hostage by the AI overlord Talis. Should her mother, the ruler of what used to be Canada, go to war, Greta will die. And war is coming. The broken remnants of America are in terrible need of water—water Greta’s mother has, but refuses to give. 

And then Elian arrives. The grandson of the general of the Cumberland Alliance, he ought to be her mortal enemy. But his infectious laugh wins her over and his defiant spirit awakens her to the injustice in their lives. Will Greta continue to accept the Scorpion Rules? Or will she find the courage to smash the bottle?

Review

I began reading with certain assumptions about YA Dystopian fiction in mind. This book blew them out of the water.  

Assumption #1: I expected shoddy world-building.

Or, not shoddy, per say, but vague. In my experience, Dystopian fiction is an excuse to mash-up advanced technology with a primitive way of life. That initially seemed to be the case with The Scorpion Rules. In a world with robot proctors and advanced healing technology, why do the children spend most of their day weeding gardens and tending goats?

It is perhaps a strange thing that the children of kings and presidents should concern themselves with the sex lives of a herd of milch goats, but come the end of August, it was time to do just that.

There are reasons, though—the same reasons, it turns out, that people are going back to organic farming. This is a world where over-consumption has damaged the earth so much that Talis, the AI overlord, has forced the people into a sustainable lifestyle. The Precepture—the bubble community of hostage children—is meant to be a model of “environmental rationalism,” so it possible that Greta and her friends are expected to live an extreme agrarian lifestyle most people don’t have to deal with.

Plus, I liked the goats. The Goat Wars was one of my favorite parts of the story. 

It turned out the nanny goats had nosed the gate open and were heading for the melon patch. Now, among the children of Peace, melons are almost everyone’s favorite, because of the way they have to be eaten as fast as they come in. …So everyone who was out was keen to protect the patch. …The cohort of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, who’d been waging war against the quackweed in the newly planted kale beds, picked up their hoes and headed over at the quick march, as orderly as a Roman legion.

As the plot progresses, it turns out that both the low-tech farm and the high-tech robots have pivotal roles to play. The world may seem contradictory at times, but it feels genuine and there is a reason for it. Elements of setting, in other words, are not cherry-picked for color. The world functions as a cohesive whole.

Assumption #2: I expected a love triangle.

And yes, this book has one.

“You’re royalty, Greta. A celebrity. Like—like Guinevere.”

 Da-Xie actually laughed aloud. “Guinevere!”

But it didn’t go where I expected. At all.

Elian swung the empty [potato] riddle in one hand and looked from Atta to Grego. “If she’s Guinevere, that makes you two Lancelot and Arthur. Which one’s which?”

It’s not just that I completely mis-guessed who Greta ended up with. The relationship itself was tested in ways I’d never have foreseen, and the future of Greta and her love interest was ambiguous. For those who want a neat little happily-ever-after wrapped in a bow… well, sorry, this isn’t for you. Love is a lot more complicated than that.

Assumption #3: I expected an action-packed ending. 

Don't get me wrong. There is fighting, violence, and high-stakes action that hits about the middle of the book. But the ending—the actual ending—was slow-paced, thoughtful, and character-driven.

We could have talked about any number of things—the work of the garden, the work of the classroom, the recent revolutions in Sidney’s part of the world… We didn’t, though. There are so few moments of quiet. And what is prettier than an apple orchard in summer? The grey and ordered trunks, the sharp-sweet taste of under-ripe apples… We let them conjure a mood of peace and tender-heartedness.

It was also unexpected. Not to say that the ending came out of nowhere or threw out a big twist. About three-fourths of the way through, you know what’s going to happen and it works with what’s been set-up. It’s just that, for me, as a writer, after reading the jacket and the first page, I already have ideas about where the story will go, and this time, I was dead wrong.

On the whole, I found the book to be a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of war and peace and the sacrifices we make. It was deeper and better researched than a lot of other YA I’ve encountered. At the same time, I did enjoy it. I loved the description of the world, I loved the characters, I loved the slow-simmering tension

…and I loved the stupid, stupid goats.

Book Review: Shatter Me

Title: Shatter Me

Author: Tahereh Mafi

Genre: YA, Science Fiction (Dystopian), Romance

  

Summary

Four walls of an asylum and a small notebook make up Juliette Ferrars' entire world until the day a mysterious boy enters her cell. His name is Adam Kent, and he doesn't seem to remember Juliette--but she remembers him. They went to school together, back when the world was normal: before the food shortages and the nuclear bombs and the iron fist rule of The Reestablishment.

Juliette never fit into the normal world. A touch from her can cause a person to convulse in pain; if she holds on too long, they die. Now Warner, a young but ruthless leader, wants to mold her into a weapon for The Reestablishment. He'll use anything in his power to bend her to his will--including her budding feelings for Adam. It seems Juliette will only ever cause pain to those closest to her. Then Adam tells her a secret that will change everything...

Review

My friend Rita, who writes YA fantasy romances, ardently recommended this book to me. My reaction wasn't quite as passionate. I liked it okay. And I could see it's appeal. The book is beautifully written in a unique style that milks emotion out of every situation--good for romance readers. But the fantasy elements are unoriginal, the setting is vague, and the plot is thin.

Let's start with the good stuff.

Tahereh Mafi writes in a way I haven't seen before, crossing out lines that are too real, too raw, or too embarrassing, like one would do in a journal. But Juliette isn't writing in a journal, though it appears that way at first. This is happening in real time, and the crossed out words represents her self-editing mind.

     "What are you writing?" Cellmate speaks again.

     These words are vomit.

     This shaky pen is my esophagus.

     This sheet of paper is my porcelain bowl.

     "Why won't you answer me?" He's too close too close too close.

     No one is ever close enough.

I can relate to this. I'm always trying to stomp out weird thoughts that pop into my head. It gives me, the reader, a close connection to Juliette. I'm aware of even her subconscious thoughts. At the same time, Tahereh Mafi's blend of metaphor and hyperbole creates an atmosphere of heightened emotion. Every tiny action is supercharged with meaning.

     There are 15,000 feelings of disbelief hole-punched into my heart.

     His eyes are 2 buckets of rainwater: deep, fresh, clear.

     I step backwards and 10,000 tiny particles shatter between us.

How poetic

This unique style caught my interest from the start and kept me reading.

 

It had to, because for the first 50 pages, nothing happened. Juliette sat in her cell with Adam, feeling strongly, but hardly moving or speaking at all. Even after she gets out of the mental institution, she ends up locked with a boy again, for 150 pages this time.

Thank goodness that this boy is Warner, the green-eyed, gorgeous, 19-year-old psychopathic murderer who is obsessed with power, obsessed with Juliette, and obsessed with getting Juliette to accept her power. When I realized that Warner saw Juliette as more than a weapon--that he was actually sort of in love with her--then I began to flip pages quite quickly.

     "Don't you dare hate me so quickly," [Warner] continues. "You might find yourself enjoying this situation a lot more than you anticipated. Lucky for you, I'm willing to be patient." He grins. Leans back. "Though it certainly doesn't hurt that you're so alarmingly beautiful."

I know I'm not supposed to like Warner. Juliette hates him, is absolutely appalled by everything he does, calls him a monster to his face. And yet I sensed a troubled past and a pitiful desperation oozing from Warner's blackened soul. He needs so badly for Juliette to choose him, and this need makes him vulnerable.

At least I'm not the only one!

Was I crazy? Was this some residue of my adolescent longing for the bad boy? Rita assured me that I was, in fact, an astute reader, and that Warner gets a ton more development in the upcoming books. I'm glad. I'd hate to think I was falling for a creepy stalker for no reason.

I mentioned before that Tahereh Mafi makes good use of figurative language, and while this stirs the blood, it makes it very difficult to see what's going on around the characters. In no place is this more apparent than in the setting. I tried and tried to get a clear idea of the landscape, but the vague words left me with an impressionistic blur.

     The general population has been distributed across what's left of the country. Industrial buildings form the spine of the landscape: tall, rectangular metal boxes stuffed full of machinery. Machinery intended to strengthen the army, to strengthen The Reestablishment, to destroy mass quantities of human civilization.

     Carbon/ Tar/ Steel

     Gray/ Black/ Silver

This is what I know about the society Juliette inhabits. Ten years ago, it was pretty much our world. Then the atmosphere became poisonous, the earth stopped providing food, starvation broke out, and The Reestablishment came to power. Since The Reestablishment is evil, they set off nuclear bombs and created orphans and hoarded all the goodies for themselves. For some reason, there aren't any cars left--except when required by the plot.

Juliette's World

Basically, a generic Dystopia. You might as well ignore the setting altogether.

Shatter Me had hints of X-Men right from the start. It's hard not to compare Juliette to Rogue. Initially, I shrugged it off as coincidence and tried to put that comparison out of my mind. But the ending threw all subtlety out the window. It's X-men + YA Dystopia + Romance. The climax had a good deal of action and drama, but by the end of the book, I felt a little underwhelmed.

Rita tells me that the third book is the best of the bunch, that it ties everything up wonderfully. I'm not entirely sure I'll get to reading the other two books, though. Maybe if I get them for Christmas...