needs more demons? Literally, perhaps. Metaphorically, no way.

I found too much problematic about Sorta Like a Rock Star to recommend it unreservedly, but a week after I finished reading it I’m still mulling it over and trying to sort out my thoughts about it. That’s clearly a big point in its favor. It definitely engaged me on an emotional as well as an intellectual level — at one point I actually teared up a little. Even if I felt a little manipulated at the same time, I don’t crank up the water works for just any ol’ book. (In my defense, it did push hard on one of my particular weak spots.) And I thought several of the characters were sharply drawn and thoroughly believable.

On the negative side, I had a credibility gap issue. It helped a bit when I started to think that Amber might not be a completely reliable narrator — that maybe she perceived, for instance, her friend Donna to be richer/smarter/better looking than an objective observer might. But while the minor plot points of Sorta Like a Rock Star felt grounded and natural, the two biggest felt stagy and overplayed. The third of the book’s four sections uses a heavy-handed device that I think would have worked better with a little less formalism. I also thought Quick slightly overdid the verbal tics that define Amber’s voice. Really, this is a single complaint manifesting in several aspects: Quick has a tendency to ramp up the volume where I think restraint and subtlety would serve him better.

Of course, the whole reason I read this book was Quick’s Largeheartedboy.com playlist for it, which mixes R&B with heaping helpings of Dinosaur Jr. — and J. Mascis isn’t exactly known for low-volume subtlety either.

needs more demons? (Really not the right metric for this book.)

• When Pierson’s characters talk about bands, the made up names, e.g., The Boy Who Cried Sparrow, sound so believable I had to use Google to make sure they weren’t real.
• This book has the most realistic depiction ever of a high school friendship between two ubernerds. I say this as a “co-author” of a comic apocalyptic “novel” that shamelessly ripped off “Hitchhickers’ Guide” and Tolkein metal and whatever else my ubernerd pal and I were reading/listening to, and which was not utterly unlike Darren and Eric’s TimeBlaze project.
• Darren’s voice, holy crap. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To is the first book I read beginning to end on an e-reader device, and I set bookmarks on pages with passages that made me really want to read them aloud to anyone in range, and there were, like, a dozen. Here’s one:
  

  When I get up to my room I take my shirt off and look into the mirror for a while, not in a vain way, just to see what the fuck is going on with my torso, scrawny and fat at the same time, has to be the worst torso for miles. Then I might turn on MTV, again not because I like what’s going on there but simply to gape in wonder at what the fuck is wrong with everybody, and occasionally there’ll be some stupidly hot girl on, writhing around on the top of a car.

  and here’s another:

  Basically something I think I believed without ever having thought about it is that part of being smart is not being able to start a sentence with a subject and then end that sentence by saying that subject is a good thing and actually mean it.

  Darren usually opts for flat, uncomplicated language like this, but if it’s low on frills, it possesses a distinctive rhythm, and it feels so completely authentic that I sometimes feel as if Pierson must have rooted around in my own high school-era cranium.

• The title of this blog alludes to the fact that strictly naturalistic fiction, with no speculative or fantastic elements, sometimes leaves me feeling like there’s something missing. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To does have speculative/fantastic aspects, but it’s a measure of how resonant that I found it that I almost wished it hadn’t. I was so interested in what was going on between Darren, Eric (and other characters I won’t mention to avoid spoilers) that sometimes the fantasy elements felt almost intrusive. Coming from me this is high, if a bit left-handed, praise. (I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s textual evidence that Darren is delusional and that the novel’s fantastic events didn’t “really” happen, but it’s at least hinted at that fantasy worlds are one of Darren’s coping mechanisms for dealing with the messy emotional business of the real world and real people; once or twice I even had the sense that it might have been a distancing technique for Pierson — that maybe he didn’t think he could make the story compelling without the sci-fi twist. The irony here is that I think would have found it compelling, but I might never have thought to pick it up without that hook to draw me in.)

One thing I didn’t love quite so much — the ending works thematically, but it seemed a bit rushed. It leads into the prologue –but that prologue feels almost like it belongs to a different novel entirely. Maybe a sequel is in the offing. But whether Pierson revisits Darren, Eric, et al in future fiction or not, I eagerly await his next book, no matter what genre labels might apply to it.

needs more demons? Absolutely not.

needs more demons? worked fine for me, despite being not particularly demon-y

I wasn’t a hundred percent wrong, but almost. Jinks quickly downplayed the Potterisms, and Evil Genius became the most suspenseful young adult novel I’ve ever read, bar none. The way the tension kept ratcheting up and the pervasively paranoiac atmosphere reminded me of no one so much as Patricia Highsmith. I could usually tell when something was about to go horribly wrong, but seldom guessed exactly what it was; once it really got cranking, Evil Genius held me riveted right up to the last page.

Also like Highsmith, I thought Jinks did a good job of keep the reader’s sympathy with Piggot, even when he’s undertaking not particularly pleasant pursuits. In fact, some of Piggot’s less lovable behavior struck a little close to the bone, reminding me of how being picked on in my own adolescence sparked some grandiose revenge fantasies. I wonder if many of the people who eventually grow up to be novelists and/or volunteer critics on the Interwebs — not to mention readers drawn to a book where the bad guys are at least nominally the protagonists — might not have had some similar dark thoughts at one point or another.

Evil Genius additionally impressed me because its smart people consistently really sound smart (if twisted). It’s sprinkled with mentions of mathematics, chemistry, and, particularly, computer hacking topics that are much more credible than the usual fictional depiction.

One the negative side, near the end I had trouble keeping track of all the crosses and double-crosses — but then again, many of the characters were in the same bind.

needs more demons? no.

Ryan’s zombies — which come in both the old-school slow shambling and the newer fast-moving varieties — are certainly horrific, but Ryan treats them almost as an elemental force. The antagonists in the story are predominantly human, and despite some gore and emotional trauma, the central horror of both novels is what happens to humanity as a consequence of the zombie plague. Perhaps it’s reading into it too much to suppose that the zombies and the repressive, fear-ruled societies they engender could metaphorically represent terrorists and reduced civil liberties in response to terrorism — but perhaps not.

Despite my general fondness for Ryan’s world-building (or un-building, if you prefer), it took me a while to warm to The Dead-Tossed Waves. Narrator Gabry spends a lot of energy second-guessing her every move. I’m not so old that I can’t remember how, as a teenager, just about everything seemed like a matter of life and death, and of course, a lot of Gabry’s decisions are literally matters of life and death. But I still found some of Gabry’s “I must! But I can’t! But I must!” vacillations a bit wearying, if not melodramatic nearly to the point of parody. That, coupled with a triangular love situation, reminded me not-in-a-good-way of Meyer’s Twilight books. And even after The Dead-Tossed Waves won me over, there was still some heavy-handed life-lesson-larnin’ to plow through. On the whole, I think The Dead-Tossed Waves would be stronger if it were leaner and a bit more subtle.

But I’m glad I stuck with the book, because it does eventually veer in directions it doesn’t initially telegraph. It’s frequently vivid and consistently creepy. And if it revisits some of the territory of the first novel, it does so with a bit of a spin and some interesting twists.

The Dead-Tossed Waves doesn’t — quite — end with a literal cliffhanger, but it does leave a lot of plot elements unresolved. I’d be disappointed if the story skipped another generation before the third act (or screeched to a halt) and my impatience for the next volume might be the best measure of this novel’s success.

needs more demons? Needs just a smidge less of Gabry’s personal demons, actually.

This time around, what impressed me most was the density of repurposing elements from other recent media: the (powerful young) zombie settler/Settler’s Affairs back drop is very Buffy the vampire slayer/Watcher’s Council. The pom squad/cheerleader social conflict is straight out of Glee. In the second book I was more conscious of tiresome Twilight-ish romantic mooning (and I suspect if I had ever read a “Sweet Valley High” book I might have found points of comparison there, as well). Last time I thought it was a bit unfair of me to brand people yelling vaguely Latin-ish spells like “Reverto!” as derivative of Harry Potter, but this book adds a distinctly Potter-y element to the evolving plot thread as well.

Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments books draw on much of the same source material, but far more successfully. Undead Much leans very, very hard on tall coincidence, and its conclusion is far too much like that of You’re So Undead to Me — both feature a late revelation of the villain’s identity that abandons character consistency, and a big improbable fight scene.

As an adult male I’m admittedly way outside the target demographic for this novel. But there are a plenty of young adult books I have no trouble enjoying. This was not one of them.

I was also a bit creeped out by Undead Much’s treatment of adolescent sexuality. Megan Berry spends a lot of time wondering whether she should become sexually active or not — but because there’s black magic afoot and the blood of virgins has ritual uses, in her situation her life would literally become less complicated if she started having sex. I hate to sound like an old prude, but that seems like a misleading message to send teens.

needs more demons? yeah.

Cycler ended so abruptly and with so little resolution that I expected (Re)cycler to be basically the second half of a novel too long for one volume. I thought it was going to include an “origin story” for Jill (who turns, physically, into her male alter-ego Jack for 4 days a month). I thought, for example, that it might be revealed that Jill’s mom, who has a more-or-less normal relationship with her daughter but real trouble dealing with her “son,” had conducted some sort of awful gene-splicing experiment on Jill/Jack.

Jill and Jack both self-identify as heterosexual but (slight spoiler here for the first novel) they both wind up involved in relationships where their partner’s bisexuality is either stated explicitly or strongly hinted at. Along with a twist on lycanthropy and/or the Jekyll/Hyde paradigm, one potential reading for Jill/Jack’s hermaphroditic nature would be an attempt to resolve feelings of attraction to both sexes by compartmentalizing them, and I thought one, or even both, of Jill/Jack’s love triangles might resolve themselves with a partner who has a relationship with both Jill and Jack.

But (Re)cycler avoids concretely realizing any of those speculations (although it leaves the door open for some of them to be explored in the future). Instead it introduces several new characters, opens up a lot of other possibilities, and leaves many of them unresolved, too. Maybe it’s book two in a projected long-running series, but maybe McLaughlin is just not that big on closure.

Not wanting to wrap everything up neatly is certainly a valid artistic choice, and part of me likes this book a lot for defying my expectations so thoroughly. McLaughlin certainly had me flipping pages at a breakneck pace. But it still leaves me a bit unsatisfied, partly because I still crave answers to all the questions Cycler and (Re)cycler leave unanswered, but mostly because this book is in many respects much tamer, lacking the dark undercurrent that made the first volume so striking.

needs more demons? maybe.

• 1 part coming-of-age novel (protracted)
• 1 part feminist subtext
• 1 part formalized presentation (every chapter has an “I Confess…” header; text incorporates ordered lists and the occasional chart)
• 1/2 part not utterly reliable narrator
• 1 1/2 parts pseudo-credible gossip/speculation about Skull & Bones
• 1 1/2 parts mystery/suspense
• 5 parts college-age soap opera

I don’t mean the breakdown to be dismissive; if it were straight college soap I wouldn’t be along for the ride, and, as with any cocktail, the trick is in blending the various flavors of the constituents into a cohesive, pleasing whole.

I was way ahead of “confessor” Amy Haskell on most of the plot reveals this time around, but I’m not at all sure that’s not Peterfreund’s intent. It didn’t interfere much with my enjoyment of the novel and I’m looking forward to the concluding volume.

needs more demons? no

The novel unspools in dual, snappy, first-person, present-tense narratives. Jill’s story initially seems like it’s going to follow a standard “who do I go to the prom with?” teen romance line, but gradually veers off the rails. Jack’s story starts pretty far off the rails and only gets weirder. It gradually dawns on the reader that the situation is even more messed up than it at first seems. Jill’s mother, despite being in a nominally heterosexual marriage, seems to think she’s in a Joanna Russ novel. She’s completely unwilling to engage with Jack as a human being, but comfortable purchasing pornography to help him purge his male desires.

I was intrigued by Cycler not only because of the unusual central plot device, but also because discussion of it was so polarized. Some folks whose recommendations I take account of, like author Scott Westerfeld, praised it, but I also saw criticism of it for reinforcing sex role stereotypes.

One possible reading of Jill-Jack’s serial hermaphroditism would be as a metaphor for Jill’s discomfort with her feelings of homosexual desire. If you start from this interpretation, the book is implicitly homophobic: Jill’s gay desires are “normalized” by the fact that she’s physically male when she’s (consciously) experiencing them. I think this interpretation is incorrect (or perhaps partly correct, but insufficient). Jill struggles a bit with non-heterosexual feelings in the book, but the novel affords other opportunities for that struggle besides her own duality; the novel itself doesn’t strike me as homophobic.

Another question is whether Jack is too extreme a characterization of adolescent male desire; I didn’t think so. Jack has four days to undergo a month’s worth of teen hormonal churn and he’s effectively isolated from normal society — it’s not surprising that he’s somewhat unbalanced.

I love that the second part of this novel is titled (Re)Cycler, and definitely look forward to reading it when I get through my current library stack.

* insert the same tired rant about how this really is not a complete standalone novel, and doesn’t adequately label itself as an incomplete work. I realize that this is a sad reality of modern publishing, but it still sucks.

needs more demons? no.