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athomewithbooks's review against another edition
3.0
I checked out XVI from the library after reading a review which compared it to Delirium by Lauren Oliver. I had just read Delirium, so I decided to read them back-to-back, and it was hard not to make comparisons.
Like Delirium, XVI deals with issues of love and sex in a dystopian society. I see these stories as opposite sides of the same coin though. Where Delirium was about seeing love as a disease, XVI is about society’s obsession with sex – where the physical act of sex has been marketed to the point of having no emotional associations with love.
What the two stories have in common are protagonists trying to avoid a process that could possibly cause them harm. In Delirium it’s the operation to cure them of deliria-causing “love,” while in XVI it’s the tattoo that girls get at age sixteen that brands girls as being available to anyone for sex.
XVI is certainly a more intense and dark story in that the girls face potential rape – they are considered fair game to anyone who wants them. Although there are some moments when guys try to cross the line, there aren’t any rape scenes in the book.
In addition to the stress of her impending tattooing, Nina’s life is also complicated by the death of her mother and her violent step-father who follows her every move. Upping her stress load even further – she has a couple of potential romantic interests whom she isn’t sure she wants to encourage, especially when she’ll be tattooed soon.
The only thing I could see annoying some people is the futuristic slang terminology. It can be distracting, but I was drawn into the story enough that it faded into the background of Nina’s world while I rooted for her to beat the odds and become a strong women in her society of passive femininity.
Like Delirium, XVI deals with issues of love and sex in a dystopian society. I see these stories as opposite sides of the same coin though. Where Delirium was about seeing love as a disease, XVI is about society’s obsession with sex – where the physical act of sex has been marketed to the point of having no emotional associations with love.
What the two stories have in common are protagonists trying to avoid a process that could possibly cause them harm. In Delirium it’s the operation to cure them of deliria-causing “love,” while in XVI it’s the tattoo that girls get at age sixteen that brands girls as being available to anyone for sex.
XVI is certainly a more intense and dark story in that the girls face potential rape – they are considered fair game to anyone who wants them. Although there are some moments when guys try to cross the line, there aren’t any rape scenes in the book.
In addition to the stress of her impending tattooing, Nina’s life is also complicated by the death of her mother and her violent step-father who follows her every move. Upping her stress load even further – she has a couple of potential romantic interests whom she isn’t sure she wants to encourage, especially when she’ll be tattooed soon.
The only thing I could see annoying some people is the futuristic slang terminology. It can be distracting, but I was drawn into the story enough that it faded into the background of Nina’s world while I rooted for her to beat the odds and become a strong women in her society of passive femininity.
miraeli's review against another edition
1.0
Oh boy. Where do I even begin with this?
This book was honestly a chore to get through. The writing was nothing special and at times even clunky. At first the world was explained by having characters explain certain parts of their world to each other, otherwise known as the “As you know...” method. It was never introduced naturally; it was all the characters talking about it as if they had just arrived in a new country, instead of having lived in this environment their entire lives. I probably could have put up with this as it does stop after the first thirty or so pages, but there was a whole lotta other stuff in the book that quite frankly pissed me off.
If you’re going to do a novel about sexuality and specifically the media’s influence on female sexuality, you should maybe try to avoid slut shaming while you do so. The main character, Nina, has a best friend, Sandy. Sandy is constantly derided and looked down on by Nina, because she’s a “walking sex-teen advert” because she dresses in “revealing clothing,” and seems to think about nothing but sex and flirting and guys. At one point Nina’s grandmother even says with the way she dresses, Sandy doesn’t even look like a virgin. When Sandy rightfully objects to this bullshit, Nina’s grandmother says, “It’s just that dressing that way makes the boys think you don’t want to be [a virgin.]”
Excuse me while I scream with rage.
It wouldn’t be bad if it were just Nina’s grandmother who thinks this, but Nina herself does, too. Sandy is at times vilified and pitied because she’s become “brainwashed” by the media to act a certain way. Which would have been fine if at any point we were shown that Sandy doesn’t really like dressing in that particular way, or really flirting with boys, but she does it because she feels it’s expected of her in the society she lives in. But no, every scene Sandy is in, this is never addressed. For all intents and purposes, she’s happy with who she is at the moment and she’s ready to go make something else of her life.
Oh, and then she gets raped and murdered by Nina’s Mother’s boyfriend. Because what YA really needs is more reinforcement of the “in control of her sexuality and proud of it and then she dies” trope.
I probably should have realized how the rest of the novel would go once I saw how the text supported characters slut shaming Sandy and vilified her at the same time. But I stuck with it because I thought, well hey, maybe Karr is setting this up to deconstruct the hell out of it, or subverse the stereotypes and ideas surrounding female sexuality.
I should know better by now.
In contrast to Sandy, Nina is actively fearful of sex and turning sixteen, when it means she becomes fair game. The reasons for her fear of sex are because at some point her mother’s boyfriend forced her to watch some pornographic videos of sixteen year old girls, and though it’s never described, the acts done in the video are horrible enough to give her an intense fear of sex. This might have been more interesting if Nina were, say, asexual in a society that constantly tells her she should be overtly sexual (gee, just like the one we’re living in now!) but nope. And as soon as Sal, Nina’s love interest, arrives on the scene, she starts getting those tingly feelings all over. Then she decides that, yes, she would like sex some day, but not just now!
So remember ladies, if you’re uninterested in sex, just wait for that Magical Cock to show up and you’ll change your mind. I’m sure it was meant to be an empowering, defining moment for Nina--accepting that one day she’ll have sex, and it’s okay, but she’s not ready just yet--but instead I just threw the book across the room. Nina is virginal and pure, she gets to live. Sandy was a whore and got raped and killed.
These are just some of the offensive stereotypes and harmful ideas that XVI reinforces and supports. There was also a casual throwaway line that supported the idea that rapes only happen in dark alleys at night with strangers, but that was never really expanded on. For which I’m grateful, to be frank.
Oh, and Sal, the love interest, was a stalker. In the beginning he just kept turning up coincidentally in the exact same places Nina was, and then after not even knowing her for a day, gets her phone number from her friends and is shown where Nina lives. Because that’s totally a-okay and a good idea. Honestly I felt nothing when it came to Sal and Nina’s relationship; they had very little time together before they began snogging, and I wondered what they saw in each other. We weren’t really shown any reason why these two are attracted to each other, or how they’d be good for each other. If there really is going to be another book in this series, I wish Karr had taken longer to develop their relationship.
Nina herself was too stupid to live. Even though she knows Ed, her mother’s boyfriend, is following her and she gets kidnapped several times, she constantly turns down offers of protection from her friends and walks out on her own. At one point she even leaves Dee, her little sister, who Ed is after, alone in the house while she goes out to spend some quality time with Sal. Because leaving your little sister alone in the house that’s been easily broken into before while her father is actively looking to kidnap her is such a good idea. And then when Nina thinks Dee’s been kidnapped because she’s no longer in the house, she blames herself--or, more specifically, her sexuality. She thinks “if only I hadn’t been a typical sex-teen and gone out with Sal, this never would have happened!” Because we totally need more reinforcement of the idea that a young woman being sexual leads to bad things, don’t we? Dee wasn’t actually kidnapped but Nina continues to blame her sexuality, and we’re given no indication that we should think otherwise.
The world building was shoddy at times, and this may be a little thing to get upset over, but calling cars “trannies/trans”? Really? Does anyone really think it’s a good idea to use modern day slurs against a marginalized group of people as slang for vehicles in the future? I never felt like it was a dystopia--everything regarding sexuality, especially rape, are the views that are being held up in today’s time. In Nina’s world, if a girl gets raped, no one in the Government cares, and they actively say it’s her own fault. Yeah, this is something called “rape culture”, and we’re living in it right now. Because of this it felt more contemporary than it did future dystopia.
I didn’t really care about any of the characters, though the one I liked the most was probably Wei. I sort of wish she could have been the main character instead of Nina; she was far less of an asshole and actually a much more noble person than Nina. But if any of the characters had died I probably wouldn’t have bat an eye. The villain was laughable and one dimensional, and I never felt threatened by him, mostly because Nina herself never seemed to take his threats seriously either.
I was not a fan of XVI, as one can probably tell. For a novel that focuses so much on sexuality and, specifically, the media’s influence on female sexuality, it reinforced and upheld far too many offensive ideas for me to have enjoyed. I honestly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they’re looking to get infuriated for a day or two.
This book was honestly a chore to get through. The writing was nothing special and at times even clunky. At first the world was explained by having characters explain certain parts of their world to each other, otherwise known as the “As you know...” method. It was never introduced naturally; it was all the characters talking about it as if they had just arrived in a new country, instead of having lived in this environment their entire lives. I probably could have put up with this as it does stop after the first thirty or so pages, but there was a whole lotta other stuff in the book that quite frankly pissed me off.
If you’re going to do a novel about sexuality and specifically the media’s influence on female sexuality, you should maybe try to avoid slut shaming while you do so. The main character, Nina, has a best friend, Sandy. Sandy is constantly derided and looked down on by Nina, because she’s a “walking sex-teen advert” because she dresses in “revealing clothing,” and seems to think about nothing but sex and flirting and guys. At one point Nina’s grandmother even says with the way she dresses, Sandy doesn’t even look like a virgin. When Sandy rightfully objects to this bullshit, Nina’s grandmother says, “It’s just that dressing that way makes the boys think you don’t want to be [a virgin.]”
Excuse me while I scream with rage.
It wouldn’t be bad if it were just Nina’s grandmother who thinks this, but Nina herself does, too. Sandy is at times vilified and pitied because she’s become “brainwashed” by the media to act a certain way. Which would have been fine if at any point we were shown that Sandy doesn’t really like dressing in that particular way, or really flirting with boys, but she does it because she feels it’s expected of her in the society she lives in. But no, every scene Sandy is in, this is never addressed. For all intents and purposes, she’s happy with who she is at the moment and she’s ready to go make something else of her life.
Oh, and then she gets raped and murdered by Nina’s Mother’s boyfriend. Because what YA really needs is more reinforcement of the “in control of her sexuality and proud of it and then she dies” trope.
I probably should have realized how the rest of the novel would go once I saw how the text supported characters slut shaming Sandy and vilified her at the same time. But I stuck with it because I thought, well hey, maybe Karr is setting this up to deconstruct the hell out of it, or subverse the stereotypes and ideas surrounding female sexuality.
I should know better by now.
In contrast to Sandy, Nina is actively fearful of sex and turning sixteen, when it means she becomes fair game. The reasons for her fear of sex are because at some point her mother’s boyfriend forced her to watch some pornographic videos of sixteen year old girls, and though it’s never described, the acts done in the video are horrible enough to give her an intense fear of sex. This might have been more interesting if Nina were, say, asexual in a society that constantly tells her she should be overtly sexual (gee, just like the one we’re living in now!) but nope. And as soon as Sal, Nina’s love interest, arrives on the scene, she starts getting those tingly feelings all over. Then she decides that, yes, she would like sex some day, but not just now!
So remember ladies, if you’re uninterested in sex, just wait for that Magical Cock to show up and you’ll change your mind. I’m sure it was meant to be an empowering, defining moment for Nina--accepting that one day she’ll have sex, and it’s okay, but she’s not ready just yet--but instead I just threw the book across the room. Nina is virginal and pure, she gets to live. Sandy was a whore and got raped and killed.
These are just some of the offensive stereotypes and harmful ideas that XVI reinforces and supports. There was also a casual throwaway line that supported the idea that rapes only happen in dark alleys at night with strangers, but that was never really expanded on. For which I’m grateful, to be frank.
Oh, and Sal, the love interest, was a stalker. In the beginning he just kept turning up coincidentally in the exact same places Nina was, and then after not even knowing her for a day, gets her phone number from her friends and is shown where Nina lives. Because that’s totally a-okay and a good idea. Honestly I felt nothing when it came to Sal and Nina’s relationship; they had very little time together before they began snogging, and I wondered what they saw in each other. We weren’t really shown any reason why these two are attracted to each other, or how they’d be good for each other. If there really is going to be another book in this series, I wish Karr had taken longer to develop their relationship.
Nina herself was too stupid to live. Even though she knows Ed, her mother’s boyfriend, is following her and she gets kidnapped several times, she constantly turns down offers of protection from her friends and walks out on her own. At one point she even leaves Dee, her little sister, who Ed is after, alone in the house while she goes out to spend some quality time with Sal. Because leaving your little sister alone in the house that’s been easily broken into before while her father is actively looking to kidnap her is such a good idea. And then when Nina thinks Dee’s been kidnapped because she’s no longer in the house, she blames herself--or, more specifically, her sexuality. She thinks “if only I hadn’t been a typical sex-teen and gone out with Sal, this never would have happened!” Because we totally need more reinforcement of the idea that a young woman being sexual leads to bad things, don’t we? Dee wasn’t actually kidnapped but Nina continues to blame her sexuality, and we’re given no indication that we should think otherwise.
The world building was shoddy at times, and this may be a little thing to get upset over, but calling cars “trannies/trans”? Really? Does anyone really think it’s a good idea to use modern day slurs against a marginalized group of people as slang for vehicles in the future? I never felt like it was a dystopia--everything regarding sexuality, especially rape, are the views that are being held up in today’s time. In Nina’s world, if a girl gets raped, no one in the Government cares, and they actively say it’s her own fault. Yeah, this is something called “rape culture”, and we’re living in it right now. Because of this it felt more contemporary than it did future dystopia.
I didn’t really care about any of the characters, though the one I liked the most was probably Wei. I sort of wish she could have been the main character instead of Nina; she was far less of an asshole and actually a much more noble person than Nina. But if any of the characters had died I probably wouldn’t have bat an eye. The villain was laughable and one dimensional, and I never felt threatened by him, mostly because Nina herself never seemed to take his threats seriously either.
I was not a fan of XVI, as one can probably tell. For a novel that focuses so much on sexuality and, specifically, the media’s influence on female sexuality, it reinforced and upheld far too many offensive ideas for me to have enjoyed. I honestly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they’re looking to get infuriated for a day or two.
anyepagan's review against another edition
1.0
I tried and tried to finish this book. I really really did, but it's just too boring! This is a very badly written dystopian world. There is no backstory as to how the Government Council was established. I can't relate to Nina because she can't make up her mind. And, by the middle of the book the most that has happened is that Nina's mom was murdered. It's like it started promising the book to be action packed, but it dissapointed me greatly.
dblearon's review against another edition
3.0
Not real sure how I feel about this one. I started out not liking it so much and it got better as it went but left quite a few unanswered questions for me. Fans of the genre will like it.
allison_green_'s review against another edition
1.0
This book really disappointed me. I didn't like the writing style and felt no empathy for the main character. The society and plot had potential, but in the end its execution was bland. I pretty much predicted everything before it even happened.
kevincatapusan's review against another edition
3.0
This is a dystopian novel. There are no big reveals in this book. The story is straightforward. The story is very dragging yet there are a lot of unanswered questions. Perhaps the sequels will be better. Not sure if I'm reading the next books. This did not excite me.
lucillemeeps's review against another edition
2.0
This book had a lot of potential as a YA distopian novel. I really how the market is swinging into distopias; I find them so much more interesting than regular YA fiction and better quality reads than YA paranormal. That being said, as much as I love the genre, I wasn't crazy about XVI.
Set in 2150, XVI is a world controlled by a government remniscnet of 1984. They're always listening (except for all of those really conveniently placed dead zones.... you would think that the uber-powerful government would be more aware/concerned about those...) and people are under surveillence. Everyone under the age of 16 has a GPS chip implanted in them. Once you turn sixteen, you have the choice to have it removed, which struck me as a little odd. Another huge part of turning sixteen- or sexteen as they call it- is that girls are marked with tattoes on their wrists and are essentially up for grabs in terms of sex, whether they want to or not. Girls are brainwashed and bombarded with overt sexuality and are essentially taught to be airheaded sluts. The society in XVI is extremely mysogonistic.
There is also a hierarchy structure (tiers) to everything. For the most part, the upper tiers don't associate with the lower tiers, and yet they go to same schools? That didn't seem right. I mean, even now when we don't actually have specific labels of tier one to tier ten, there are good schools and bad schools, private school and public schools, rich schools and poor schools. You just don't get a wealthy kid from a high society family going to an underfunded inner-city school. And that is present times. Distopian fiction is always worse than the present situation. That's just how it goes. So realistically, there is no way that a tier-one or tier-two kid like Mike or Nina would be going to the same school as the top-tier Wei.
As I said before, there was a lot of potential, but the story just didn't quite get there. I didn't really feel the intensity and pressure from the government. I didn't get the sense of danger that I've felt in other dystopias. I wasn't afraid of them, and I think that that was because it was just too damn easy for people to thwart the government.
The NonCons were another issue for me. Firstly, was the name ever explained, or was it just given? I think that it might stand for non-conventional, maybe non-conformists, but I really don't know. The same thing goes for B.O.S.S. I have no idea what it stands for, and I would like to know a little more about it. Normally, I love rebel societies. They're secretive and dangerous and they get things done. They don't just go around telling everyone that they are part of the secret rebel society after a week of knowing each other, no matter how much they've bonded. And normally there is a bit more action than a few public announcements over the radio.... Good job, you hacked into the broadcast for fifteen seconds... that's going to make a huge difference...
There was also a disconnect with some of the objects in the book. Some of the futuristic items were named but weren't really explained. We were just supposed to figure out what it was from reading the context, which would have been fine if the description and context was a little stronger. And, this is going to sound really nit-picky, but 140 years in the future, I don't think that you're going to need a Band-Aid if you have a cut lip. I don't think that stitches will still be used in common medical practice. I mean, if you have a society that has levitating cars, then I think that you can figure out an alternative that is a little more advanced than a Band-Aid...
Nina was a decent character, I suppose, but she was a little clueless about some things (like that man that would come to the park and sit with her and her mom when she was young. I wonder who that would have been). One thing that I really did like about her though, was that she actually asked her friends and family for help :) It actually drives me nuts when the hero/heroine has so much on their plate and they decide that they can't tell people what's going on either because they want to handle things themselves or they don't want to put people in danger. Nina just can't keep secrets. I don't think that there is really anything important that happens to her that she doesn't tell at least one other person, which is so refreshing. She wasn't all angsty and holding things in. It was one of the redeeming qualities of the book; I didn't want to slap sense into the main character by the end of it.
I did, however, feel that everything was a little too easy and convenient. Nina didn't really have to work to find answers. She sat down in class one day and hey! what do you know? her parents were friends with the parents of the girl beside her! And that girl knows that other guy that she met by coincidence! Gee wow. I wonder if they have some answers about her family's secret past.
Ok. I need to stop writing. Originally, my rating was 3 stars, but the more that I think about what I didn't really enjoy in this book, the more that I want to give it a lower rating. Now I just fell disappointed.
Set in 2150, XVI is a world controlled by a government remniscnet of 1984. They're always listening (except for all of those really conveniently placed dead zones.... you would think that the uber-powerful government would be more aware/concerned about those...) and people are under surveillence. Everyone under the age of 16 has a GPS chip implanted in them. Once you turn sixteen, you have the choice to have it removed, which struck me as a little odd. Another huge part of turning sixteen- or sexteen as they call it- is that girls are marked with tattoes on their wrists and are essentially up for grabs in terms of sex, whether they want to or not. Girls are brainwashed and bombarded with overt sexuality and are essentially taught to be airheaded sluts. The society in XVI is extremely mysogonistic.
There is also a hierarchy structure (tiers) to everything. For the most part, the upper tiers don't associate with the lower tiers, and yet they go to same schools? That didn't seem right. I mean, even now when we don't actually have specific labels of tier one to tier ten, there are good schools and bad schools, private school and public schools, rich schools and poor schools. You just don't get a wealthy kid from a high society family going to an underfunded inner-city school. And that is present times. Distopian fiction is always worse than the present situation. That's just how it goes. So realistically, there is no way that a tier-one or tier-two kid like Mike or Nina would be going to the same school as the top-tier Wei.
As I said before, there was a lot of potential, but the story just didn't quite get there. I didn't really feel the intensity and pressure from the government. I didn't get the sense of danger that I've felt in other dystopias. I wasn't afraid of them, and I think that that was because it was just too damn easy for people to thwart the government.
The NonCons were another issue for me. Firstly, was the name ever explained, or was it just given? I think that it might stand for non-conventional, maybe non-conformists, but I really don't know. The same thing goes for B.O.S.S. I have no idea what it stands for, and I would like to know a little more about it. Normally, I love rebel societies. They're secretive and dangerous and they get things done. They don't just go around telling everyone that they are part of the secret rebel society after a week of knowing each other, no matter how much they've bonded. And normally there is a bit more action than a few public announcements over the radio.... Good job, you hacked into the broadcast for fifteen seconds... that's going to make a huge difference...
There was also a disconnect with some of the objects in the book. Some of the futuristic items were named but weren't really explained. We were just supposed to figure out what it was from reading the context, which would have been fine if the description and context was a little stronger. And, this is going to sound really nit-picky, but 140 years in the future, I don't think that you're going to need a Band-Aid if you have a cut lip. I don't think that stitches will still be used in common medical practice. I mean, if you have a society that has levitating cars, then I think that you can figure out an alternative that is a little more advanced than a Band-Aid...
Nina was a decent character, I suppose, but she was a little clueless about some things (like that man that would come to the park and sit with her and her mom when she was young. I wonder who that would have been). One thing that I really did like about her though, was that she actually asked her friends and family for help :) It actually drives me nuts when the hero/heroine has so much on their plate and they decide that they can't tell people what's going on either because they want to handle things themselves or they don't want to put people in danger. Nina just can't keep secrets. I don't think that there is really anything important that happens to her that she doesn't tell at least one other person, which is so refreshing. She wasn't all angsty and holding things in. It was one of the redeeming qualities of the book; I didn't want to slap sense into the main character by the end of it.
I did, however, feel that everything was a little too easy and convenient. Nina didn't really have to work to find answers. She sat down in class one day and hey! what do you know? her parents were friends with the parents of the girl beside her! And that girl knows that other guy that she met by coincidence! Gee wow. I wonder if they have some answers about her family's secret past.
Ok. I need to stop writing. Originally, my rating was 3 stars, but the more that I think about what I didn't really enjoy in this book, the more that I want to give it a lower rating. Now I just fell disappointed.
pussreboots's review against another edition
5.0
Even with an extended family of liberal ex-revolutionaries, it's hard as a teen to fight the system. It's hard to even recognize the system. If you do recognize the way things are stacked against you, it's hard to find a safe way out of the system.
http://pussreboots.com/blog/2017/comments_04/xvi.html
http://pussreboots.com/blog/2017/comments_04/xvi.html