Epitaph Road

Epitaph Road by David Patneaude
Associate Links: Amazon/IndieBound

• Why I picked it up: Dystopia, gender issues
• Disclosure: Library (no compensation from author or publisher)

 2097 is a transformed world. Thirty years earlier, a mysterious plague wiped out 97 percent of the male population, devastating every world system from governments to sports teams, and causing both universal and unimaginable grief. In the face of such massive despair, women were forced to take over control of the planet--and in doing so they eliminated all of Earth's most pressing issues. Poverty, crime, warfare, hunger . . . all gone.
But there's a price to pay for this new "utopia," which fourteen-year-old Kellen is all too familiar with. Every day, he deals with life as part of a tiny minority that is purposefully kept subservient and small in numbers. His career choices and relationship options are severely limited and controlled. He also lives under the threat of scattered recurrences of the plague, which seem to pop up wherever small pockets of men begin to regroup and grow in numbers.
And then one day, his mother's boss, an iconic political figure, shows up at his home. Kellen overhears something he shouldn't--another outbreak seems to be headed for Afterlight, the rural community where his father and a small group of men live separately from the female-dominated society. Along with a few other suspicious events, like the mysterious disappearances of Kellen's progressive teacher and his Aunt Paige, Kellen is starting to wonder whether the plague recurrences are even accidental. No matter what the truth is, Kellen cares only about one thing--he has to save his father.

What is it with books disappointing me lately?  Maybe I'm letting my expectations get too high.  But seriously.  Is it too much to ask that when an author ends up with a concept like this, they don't mess it up? O_o Fighting words, I know.  And it sounds like this author actually makes a living from his writing, which ALWAYS impresses me.  Clearly he's got a work ethic.

And yet.  Considering the amount of positive reviews I'd read for this book, the writing was shockingly clumsy.  There were vast amounts of cliches, you could see "the big twist" coming from miles away, and the gender roles were handled with all the sensitivity of a stampeding elephant.  It's possible I was spoiled by The Handmaid's Tale, but come on.  This was no dystopia.  In fact, there didn't seem to be anything different from our everyday world.  Yes, we were told 97% of the males were dead, but you wouldn't have known it from the characters.

First off, I don't think a primarily female society would be a utopia.  Trust me, I am a girl.  I have two sisters, as well as best friends that pretty much count as my sisters.  We are all mature, wonderful, lovely human beings, I think, but trying to make us work together is like herding cats.  Yes, perhaps we would have less global warming, etc., but we'd still be messed up as a species.  So when everything was so perfect, I had a problem.  And the whole junkyarddog.bites bloggy thing?  I wasn't buying that.  That's not how real people blog.  The worst offender by far, though, was the fake epitaph thing at the beginning of every chapter.  There wasn't a single one that I felt added anything at all to the story.  All they added was a mega cheese factor, and there is very little I hate more than gratuitous cheese.  Avatar, of course you are exempt from the no-cheese rule, because Pandora rocked.  I wanted to live there.  But this book had no amazing setting to compensate.  (Of course stuff like Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is exempt too, because there the cheese is intentional.)

Going back to The Handmaid's Tale, I really think that the only way to truly tell a gender roles story that's not about little kids (if anyone could actually pull off a gender roles story about little kids I'd like to read it) is to bring sex into it.  Just putting that out there right now.  While certainly delving into *crimes against women* a fair bit, this book didn't cover that.  I'm sorry, but a fourteen-year-old guy as your MC and you don't cover that???  Fourteen-year-old guys are second only to fifteen and sixteen and seventeen-year-old guys as far as that stuff goes.  I'm just not seeing it.  I also highly doubt that women would be willing to swear off heterosexual relationships.  Sorry, but this kind of played into the stereotype that women have no innate sexuality, and that bothered me.

I just realized that I have not said a single positive thing about this book this entire review.  That's because there really wasn't that much good to say.  There were a few things I enjoyed, concept-wise, but writing wise I despised it.  It seems more like a career move cashing in on dystopia than anything else.  Whether that's what's in the author's mind or not, I just wish that he had done a better job with this fantastic idea.

The Final Verdict: Intriguing concept, but the book's not worth your time unless you are a truly hardcore dystopia fan that can't pass it up.  Sloppy writing and poor character development make for a story that's no fun to spend time with.  Two out of five stars.

Waiting on Wednesdays #8

The Waiting on Wednesday meme is hosted  by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, so I suggest you go over there and check it out!  Good stuff.  This Wednesday I'll pick...

Huntress by Malinda Lo.

I enjoyed Ash so much that this is a no-brainer.  There aren't many authors on my must-read-everything list, but Malinda Lo is definitely on it.  There's no cover or anything for this one yet - it releases sometime in 2011 - but it's definitely a companion to Ash.  Yay!

Honestly, Malinda Lo's writing style was beautiful enough to make me cry no matter what was actually happening in the story, so whether it was a companion to Ash or not I'd be happy.  But I'm excited to see where the author is going to take her characters and the story, and whether or not we have the same characters at all!

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?  Leave the titles or links in the comments! =)

Book Blogger Con!

So, I signed up gratuitously for the Book Blogger Con registration fee giveaway awhile back, which is weird because I live in MINNESOTA, not New York, and have no idea how I was planning on actually getting there if I won.  So guess what happened?  Because fate LAUGHS at me.  I won!  All I can say is it must have been one in the morning when I signed up, and I must have figured it would all work out in the end.

So guess what happened?  Because fate is my friend once in awhile.  It all worked out.  I have plane tickets and a hotel reservation in Times Square.  My dad's accompanying me to the convention for safety/legal reasons, and I'm also planning to do some cool stuff in New York during the 36 hours I'm there.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Not sure if anybody watched events unfold in my Twitter feed, but I was pretty much bouncing off the walls.  Strike that.  I'm still bouncing off the walls!

Anyway, let me direct you to the blogger convention home page, the post where my winning was announced, the agenda and speakers list (Maureen freaking Johnson is the keynote!!!), and the attendees list.  We have some serious celebrity bloggers coming, here!  Kristi from The Story Siren and Sarah (aka Poshdeluxe) from Forever Young Adult, to name two.  I'm thrilled!

Unfortunately I won't make it in time for the BEA, which is kind of the book industry big time, but perhaps I'll be lucky enough to go to that next year.  Honestly, this was so unexpected that I'm not really complaining.  (This is where homeschooling comes in handy - you're flexible!)

So, are any of my followers going?  If so, let me know and I'll see you there! =)

Rapture of the Deep

Rapture of the Deep by L.A. Meyer
Associate Links: Amazon/IndieBound

• Why I picked it up: 7th in a series I enjoy
• Disclosure: Library (no reimbursement from author or publisher)

On the very day that Jacky Faber is to wed her true love, she is kidnapped by British Naval Intelligence and forced to embark on yet another daring mission—this time to search for sunken Spanish gold. But when Jacky is involved, things don't always go as planned. Jacky has survived battles on the high seas, the stifling propriety of a Boston finishing school, and even confinement in a dank French prison. But no adventure has quite matched her opportunistic street-urchin desires—until now. 

I was so incredibly disappointed in this book I rather lack the words to describe it.  I adored the first five books in this series - I thought they were funny, pleasantly raunchy, and well-researched enough to make it not total candy fluff.  Jacky Faber was a memorable protagonist and all in all, the series was just cool.  The last book I'd read in the series (#6, My Bonny Light Horseman) seemed to lack all that, as well as credibility (Jacky meets Napoleon?!), but I decided to give it another chance since I loved the earlier books so much.

Ugh.  So.  This book was even worse than My Bonny Light Horseman!  Is L.A. Meyer ever planning to have Jacky and Jaimy get married (or at least just do "it")?  Because it's now officially pushed WAY beyond the boundaries of reason.  Jacky gets a cold?  Seriously?!  Kidnapped in the church?  Seriously?!?!  Not going to spoil anymore, but come on.  The series should have ended at five books and L.A. Meyer could have brought us a new spunky heroine, letting Jacky get her happy ending.  And bringing a new squeeze or two in for Jacky every book means that by this time the novels are WAY overpopulated and I'm starting to WAY doubt the fact that Jaimy is being patient through all this.  Which brings me to Flaco.  We never even heard of Flaco before!  You can't introduce new characters that Jacky supposedly met in the third book in the SEVENTH BOOK.  Oi.

My other problem was L.A. Meyer's increasingly obvious preachiness through Jacky's values.  Not religious preachiness, you understand, but if Jacky is so grubby in other ways, why is she so politically/socially pretentious?  Buying and freeing every slave you see?  Yes, that would seem like the obviously right thing to do nowadays, but back then I have a hard time believing a girl from Cheapside would do that and go so far to champion the abolitionist cause.  Not to mention her objections to English property laws, pimps, etc., etc.  A little dose of these would be okay, but it's every book now that we meet some characters that exist only to show how prejudiced life was back then.  I'm not buying it.

Lastly, the cover.  I was embarrassed to be seen with this book in public, the cover was so bad.  I was talking to a nice, cute, interesting boy at the mall while I was reading this, and all of the sudden I looked down in horror and noticed that I'd been holding this book, cover out, the whole time.  It was sickening.  Let me blow it up for you so you can see just how much it looks like a third-rate-bodice-ripper-adventure-novel-hybrid:

Do you feel my pain now???

Sorry.  This has turned into a long and horrible rant.  I'll try and stop.  But those of you who have already started the series, stop after book five.  Go no further.  It will be tempting, but just do yourself a favor and STOP.  Jacky will never end up with Jaimy and all you'll get are some fake swoony moments for romance if that's what you're in it for.  The historical research also sucks after that point, so that's not a good reason to read them either.  The only good reason to read them is if you are into self-flagellation.  I might pick up the eighth book (In the Wake of the Lorelei Lee), but it sounds like a second-rate version of the fourth book (In the Belly of the Bloodhound) to me.  All in all, I'm sorry I wasted my time with this one.  It's such a pity that authors don't end a series early enough and end up driving it straight into the ground.  (Are you listening, Vampire Academy?)

The Final Verdict: Don't waste your time.  None of the good qualities of the earlier books and ALL of the bad ones (as well as some truly awful ones new to this book).  One and a half out of five stars.