Scan barcode
rachaelarsenault's review
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.25
I received an ARC copy for review. I will need some time to organize my thoughts and compose a proper review. For now, two words: breathtakingly bad.
Edit: Alright. Let me try to explain all the problems with this book as clearly as I can with as few spoilers as possible. I currently have a ten page word document with every problem bullet pointed, but I don't want to rant that long. I think the easiest way to do that is to break it down into categories.
Writing:
This book was not well-written. Not in the technical sense, not in terms of narrative flow, not in terms of continuity, and not in terms of sensibility. Some of the technical problems I can take with a grain of salt since this was an advanced copy, but everything else is inexcusable in a near-final draft.
Narrative flow was flawed in a few ways, but the ones that stand out the most are consistency in narrative voice and consistency in mood. When the narrators frequently use words like "zillion" and "conked out", it's jarring when a word like "fuliginous" or "susurrus" is thrown in. This is also a problem of using a million dollar word in a five dollar situation. And in terms of mood, there were just so many situations were something very serious or emotional would be playing out and we'd be given an incredibly childish or asinine metaphor. Grief is literally compared to dropping an ice cream cone at one point! It really jars you out of the moment and distracts from the story.
The continuity was an absolute mess. Fairly late into a book, there's an event with Foster and Tate's powers that is referred to as having happened earlier that day and then as having happened days ago within the same chapter. Said event actually occurred the day before. The book continually forgets what the characters do or don't know, and what they have or have not talked about. This leads to situations like Foster and Tate celebrating the idea of being superheroes like it's a new revelation when they've already had multiple conversations about being superheroes, or Foster arguing with Tate because she doesn't like a plan he's come up with when they exposited the plan to each other in-depth just a few chapters previously. It makes the story equal parts confusing and frustrating to follow because it seems like no one - from the characters to the authors - cares about what's happening.
And last but not least, a lot of things in this story straight up don't make sense. Foster accidentally uses her powers when yelling at Tate while they're pulled over on the highway. It's a very, very obvious display of control over wind - yet not one single person pulls over or reacts or does anything in response to this. A plane knowingly flies into an area with a serious hurricane warning in place. A football game is not called off during a major thunderstorm. A character who dies at the beginning of the book leaves detailed letters for Foster explaining most of what's going on, even though some of the details included are information that this person hadn't confirmed until shortly before their death. Some of it's little things that are just stupid or too convenient to be believable. Others are big holes in the narrative that kind of make the story fall apart.
Characters:
These characters are not well-written or likeable. Foster and Tate are the biggest offenders, given that they take up most of the narration, but there's no character that I particularly like in this book. Maybe Mark, but his dialogue and narration often felt hollow and robotic.
Foster and Tate spend a lot of time arguing in the beginning, which should make sense, given the circumstances. This is within the first five chapters so, while I won't go too into detail, I'm okay giving some very light spoilers. A tornado touches down in the middle of a football game at which Tate is playing and Foster is watching. A lot of people die including Foster and Tate's families. Foster knows about the Core Four and knows that she needs to run, so she forces Tate to come with her as she steals a truck and flees the state to go to a safe house. Foster doesn't 100% know what's going on, but she knows far more than Tate. And yet, in the 20-some hours they spend driving to a safe house, Foster doesn't explain things to him. Worse, she gets angry and indignant when he tries to storm off and accuses her of kidnapping him.
Foster is also incredibly petty. From calling Tate out for using past tense when he says he thought she was pretty when they first met to casually mentioning going to yoga to judge people there, Foster comes off far more strongly as bratty and judgmental than she does as introverted and independent. And, no, these aren't flaws she really learns or grows from.
Then there's Tate. His behaviour is a little more understandable, given the circumstances, but it's still hard to like him when he spends the first half of the book consistently calling Foster a bitch. This includes a painful absence of self-awareness in the narrative where he praises himself for being raised by a woke, feminist mother and then - in literally the next sentence - refers to Foster as a bitch and a pain the ass.
The antagonists in the book aren't particularly good at being villains, either. They spend most of the book doing basically nothing, their characterizations are incredibly flat, and their dialogue and interactions with each other feel stiff and robotic. I can at least say that their motivations do make sense and they aren't evil for the sake of evil, but... well, for one, the reason they're "broken" is a subject for another rant entirely, and it doesn't matter how effective their motives are if they never do anything. Even in the final confrontation, they are the most ineffectual villains ever and basically fail to do anything with their supposedly incredible power.
Charlotte is an okay character, I suppose, though she was rapidly progressing in the direction of a one-note stereotype in her few chapters. Bastien, on the other hand, is insufferable. His narration about his home life makes no sense (what the hell does "the slick and the silence" even mean?!) and immediately upon seeing Charlotte, he decides she is an angel who must save his brokenness. Because it is romantic and feminist to say that a pretty woman's job is to fix a dark and broken man, right?
Then there's Tate's granddad, who is insufferably and incessantly referred to as "g-pa". Is that a regional thing? Because I have never in my life used a term like that unironically. In any case, he's constantly bragging about how amazing and clever he is and, despite having a long conversation with Tate about respecting women and women being superior to men, he goes on at length about modern football players all being "pussies". Also, he's an example of elderly characters being written in an incredibly unrealistic fashion, referring to the internet as the "internetathon" and airplanes as "flying machines".
Worldbuilding:
The most important element of the worldbuilding in this book is the science. Too bad the science makes absolutely no sense.
Inserting organic matter into an embryo and irradiating it is not going to create night vision, mind control, and the ability to control matter. Especially not when the matter you're inserting into the cells is O2, which already exists inside cells. Also, it's not organic - organic matter is carbon based. The same holds true for inserting H2O into cells to create water powers.
The different ways the powers work doesn't make sense, either. They don't fully manifest until eighteen. Why? Hoes does that work? What happens at the age of eighteen that triggers that onset and how can you be sure it will happen precisely on the patient's eighteenth birthday? And how does power of air result in mind control or night vision - and why did Foster and Tate have these abilities well before they turned eighteen? How would the member of the Core Four who controls air be at risk of disappearing into his computer because of his powers?
Weather is a super important part of the story, too, especially as it relates to the characters' powers, and it's completely botched. Tornadoes are pretty clearly identified as the storm connected with air, but hurricanes are connected to water. Tornadoes and hurricanes are both cyclones, meaning they're both windstorms. A rainstorm, ice storm, or snow storm would make far more sense as the type of weather most strongly connected to water.
The addiction in the story also makes no sense, since it essentially amounts to an addiction to healing crystals. Moreover, discussion of a possible overdose doesn't seem feasible.
The -isms:
As far as I can confirm, there are five black characters in the book. They can be summarized as follows: the big mama, the washed up addict, the living drug, the help, and the sassy best friend. All of them are also described in increasingly ridiculous ways. They are never just black or brown or dark skinned, nor do they ever just have brown eyes or dark eyes. Instead, they're coloured with umber and deep-henna and leaf brown and Tiger Moth brown and fertile earth brown. The term "Nubian princess" is even used multiple times. Cora presents a particularly egregious example through this description of her voice: "the spicy calmness returning to her voice, creamy and rich with a little kick, like Mexican hot chocolate." (pg4)
The way this book presents gas station or rest stop clerks is... interesting. It only happens twice, but each time the message is the same and is very clear. They're fat, stupid, sexist, and gross. This is very much presented as a package deal.
And then there's the way the book handles mental illness. The Core Four are presented as basically being crazy because their powers are unbalanced. It doesn't seem like any conventional/existing treatments have been attempted. They're crazy and the only way to fix it is to get the other elemental experiments for Doctor Rick so he can do Science(tm). There are also little moments leaning into this same idea. When Foster says something that Tate can't make sense of, he offhandedly comments in the narration that maybe she needs meds and counseling. This is clearly intended as an insult. Later, when Foster is clearly struggling with dark thoughts after seeing another tornado (possibly an indicator of PTSD or a similar trauma response), she instantly has her beauty drain from her. Because mental illness is always, outwardly, and immediately ugly.
The way addiction is handled and understood is similarly terrible. A conversation on this subject can basically be summed up as suggesting that if the addict won't quit, the only solution is to kill them so you can be free of them. Yeah.
Art:
I'm not opposed to including art in a book. I think it can add an interesting dimension and could be fun to play and experiment with. This book, however, does not do this well in any regard.
First of all, the art is for the upcoming graphic novel adaptation. That means the art is specific to that graphic novel, not this book, so it has it's own continuity. This leads to things like the in-text description indicating that Foster is wearing a sweater with the name of a high school printed across it and her hair tied back in a high-top ponytail, but the art shows her in a plain zip-up sweater with a hat on.
The art is also inserted into the book terribly. At least half of the images spoil events on the next page. And the formatting problems don't stop there. Handwritten pages are included at one point and they're all split up, so it's one page of text, one picture of text, one page of text, one picture, etc., even though the three pictures represent a set of pages that are supposed to be read together. Moreover, the text on these images doesn't even match the lines drawn on the page. The pages are also smudged by rain, but it's done in such a way as to be laughably unrealistic, so that whole lines are blotted out in the middle of the page while surrounding areas are completely unaffected.
Romance:
Tate likes Foster because she's pretty. Foster likes Tate because he's hot. They have no chemistry. That's the romance. It appears that the same thing is going to happen between Charlotte and Bastien.
Plot:
It started off with a bang and then, once they reached the safe house, ground to a halt. Foster and Tate aren't really doing anything. The villains aren't really doing anything. Everyone sits around and talks for, like, a hundred pages. Half of that is spent on the forced romance between Foster and Tate. Anything that might have resembled a compelling plot is ruined by poorly written characters, terrible pacing, and nonsensical worldbuilding.
I know this doesn't seem like the brief version of my review, but trust me: It is. I could rant for days about everything wrong in this book. I've only just skimmed the surface. Suffice to say, I do not recommend this book to anyone.
Edit: Alright. Let me try to explain all the problems with this book as clearly as I can with as few spoilers as possible. I currently have a ten page word document with every problem bullet pointed, but I don't want to rant that long. I think the easiest way to do that is to break it down into categories.
Writing:
This book was not well-written. Not in the technical sense, not in terms of narrative flow, not in terms of continuity, and not in terms of sensibility. Some of the technical problems I can take with a grain of salt since this was an advanced copy, but everything else is inexcusable in a near-final draft.
Narrative flow was flawed in a few ways, but the ones that stand out the most are consistency in narrative voice and consistency in mood. When the narrators frequently use words like "zillion" and "conked out", it's jarring when a word like "fuliginous" or "susurrus" is thrown in. This is also a problem of using a million dollar word in a five dollar situation. And in terms of mood, there were just so many situations were something very serious or emotional would be playing out and we'd be given an incredibly childish or asinine metaphor. Grief is literally compared to dropping an ice cream cone at one point! It really jars you out of the moment and distracts from the story.
The continuity was an absolute mess. Fairly late into a book, there's an event with Foster and Tate's powers that is referred to as having happened earlier that day and then as having happened days ago within the same chapter. Said event actually occurred the day before. The book continually forgets what the characters do or don't know, and what they have or have not talked about. This leads to situations like Foster and Tate celebrating the idea of being superheroes like it's a new revelation when they've already had multiple conversations about being superheroes, or Foster arguing with Tate because she doesn't like a plan he's come up with when they exposited the plan to each other in-depth just a few chapters previously. It makes the story equal parts confusing and frustrating to follow because it seems like no one - from the characters to the authors - cares about what's happening.
And last but not least, a lot of things in this story straight up don't make sense. Foster accidentally uses her powers when yelling at Tate while they're pulled over on the highway. It's a very, very obvious display of control over wind - yet not one single person pulls over or reacts or does anything in response to this. A plane knowingly flies into an area with a serious hurricane warning in place. A football game is not called off during a major thunderstorm. A character who dies at the beginning of the book leaves detailed letters for Foster explaining most of what's going on, even though some of the details included are information that this person hadn't confirmed until shortly before their death. Some of it's little things that are just stupid or too convenient to be believable. Others are big holes in the narrative that kind of make the story fall apart.
Characters:
These characters are not well-written or likeable. Foster and Tate are the biggest offenders, given that they take up most of the narration, but there's no character that I particularly like in this book. Maybe Mark, but his dialogue and narration often felt hollow and robotic.
Foster and Tate spend a lot of time arguing in the beginning, which should make sense, given the circumstances. This is within the first five chapters so, while I won't go too into detail, I'm okay giving some very light spoilers. A tornado touches down in the middle of a football game at which Tate is playing and Foster is watching. A lot of people die including Foster and Tate's families. Foster knows about the Core Four and knows that she needs to run, so she forces Tate to come with her as she steals a truck and flees the state to go to a safe house. Foster doesn't 100% know what's going on, but she knows far more than Tate. And yet, in the 20-some hours they spend driving to a safe house, Foster doesn't explain things to him. Worse, she gets angry and indignant when he tries to storm off and accuses her of kidnapping him.
Foster is also incredibly petty. From calling Tate out for using past tense when he says he thought she was pretty when they first met to casually mentioning going to yoga to judge people there, Foster comes off far more strongly as bratty and judgmental than she does as introverted and independent. And, no, these aren't flaws she really learns or grows from.
Then there's Tate. His behaviour is a little more understandable, given the circumstances, but it's still hard to like him when he spends the first half of the book consistently calling Foster a bitch. This includes a painful absence of self-awareness in the narrative where he praises himself for being raised by a woke, feminist mother and then - in literally the next sentence - refers to Foster as a bitch and a pain the ass.
The antagonists in the book aren't particularly good at being villains, either. They spend most of the book doing basically nothing, their characterizations are incredibly flat, and their dialogue and interactions with each other feel stiff and robotic. I can at least say that their motivations do make sense and they aren't evil for the sake of evil, but... well, for one, the reason they're "broken" is a subject for another rant entirely, and it doesn't matter how effective their motives are if they never do anything. Even in the final confrontation, they are the most ineffectual villains ever and basically fail to do anything with their supposedly incredible power.
Charlotte is an okay character, I suppose, though she was rapidly progressing in the direction of a one-note stereotype in her few chapters. Bastien, on the other hand, is insufferable. His narration about his home life makes no sense (what the hell does "the slick and the silence" even mean?!) and immediately upon seeing Charlotte, he decides she is an angel who must save his brokenness. Because it is romantic and feminist to say that a pretty woman's job is to fix a dark and broken man, right?
Then there's Tate's granddad, who is insufferably and incessantly referred to as "g-pa". Is that a regional thing? Because I have never in my life used a term like that unironically. In any case, he's constantly bragging about how amazing and clever he is and, despite having a long conversation with Tate about respecting women and women being superior to men, he goes on at length about modern football players all being "pussies". Also, he's an example of elderly characters being written in an incredibly unrealistic fashion, referring to the internet as the "internetathon" and airplanes as "flying machines".
Worldbuilding:
The most important element of the worldbuilding in this book is the science. Too bad the science makes absolutely no sense.
Inserting organic matter into an embryo and irradiating it is not going to create night vision, mind control, and the ability to control matter. Especially not when the matter you're inserting into the cells is O2, which already exists inside cells. Also, it's not organic - organic matter is carbon based. The same holds true for inserting H2O into cells to create water powers.
The different ways the powers work doesn't make sense, either. They don't fully manifest until eighteen. Why? Hoes does that work? What happens at the age of eighteen that triggers that onset and how can you be sure it will happen precisely on the patient's eighteenth birthday? And how does power of air result in mind control or night vision - and why did Foster and Tate have these abilities well before they turned eighteen? How would the member of the Core Four who controls air be at risk of disappearing into his computer because of his powers?
Weather is a super important part of the story, too, especially as it relates to the characters' powers, and it's completely botched. Tornadoes are pretty clearly identified as the storm connected with air, but hurricanes are connected to water. Tornadoes and hurricanes are both cyclones, meaning they're both windstorms. A rainstorm, ice storm, or snow storm would make far more sense as the type of weather most strongly connected to water.
The addiction in the story also makes no sense, since it essentially amounts to an addiction to healing crystals. Moreover, discussion of a possible overdose doesn't seem feasible.
The -isms:
As far as I can confirm, there are five black characters in the book. They can be summarized as follows: the big mama, the washed up addict, the living drug, the help, and the sassy best friend. All of them are also described in increasingly ridiculous ways. They are never just black or brown or dark skinned, nor do they ever just have brown eyes or dark eyes. Instead, they're coloured with umber and deep-henna and leaf brown and Tiger Moth brown and fertile earth brown. The term "Nubian princess" is even used multiple times. Cora presents a particularly egregious example through this description of her voice: "the spicy calmness returning to her voice, creamy and rich with a little kick, like Mexican hot chocolate." (pg4)
The way this book presents gas station or rest stop clerks is... interesting. It only happens twice, but each time the message is the same and is very clear. They're fat, stupid, sexist, and gross. This is very much presented as a package deal.
And then there's the way the book handles mental illness. The Core Four are presented as basically being crazy because their powers are unbalanced. It doesn't seem like any conventional/existing treatments have been attempted. They're crazy and the only way to fix it is to get the other elemental experiments for Doctor Rick so he can do Science(tm). There are also little moments leaning into this same idea. When Foster says something that Tate can't make sense of, he offhandedly comments in the narration that maybe she needs meds and counseling. This is clearly intended as an insult. Later, when Foster is clearly struggling with dark thoughts after seeing another tornado (possibly an indicator of PTSD or a similar trauma response), she instantly has her beauty drain from her. Because mental illness is always, outwardly, and immediately ugly.
The way addiction is handled and understood is similarly terrible. A conversation on this subject can basically be summed up as suggesting that if the addict won't quit, the only solution is to kill them so you can be free of them. Yeah.
Art:
I'm not opposed to including art in a book. I think it can add an interesting dimension and could be fun to play and experiment with. This book, however, does not do this well in any regard.
First of all, the art is for the upcoming graphic novel adaptation. That means the art is specific to that graphic novel, not this book, so it has it's own continuity. This leads to things like the in-text description indicating that Foster is wearing a sweater with the name of a high school printed across it and her hair tied back in a high-top ponytail, but the art shows her in a plain zip-up sweater with a hat on.
The art is also inserted into the book terribly. At least half of the images spoil events on the next page. And the formatting problems don't stop there. Handwritten pages are included at one point and they're all split up, so it's one page of text, one picture of text, one page of text, one picture, etc., even though the three pictures represent a set of pages that are supposed to be read together. Moreover, the text on these images doesn't even match the lines drawn on the page. The pages are also smudged by rain, but it's done in such a way as to be laughably unrealistic, so that whole lines are blotted out in the middle of the page while surrounding areas are completely unaffected.
Romance:
Tate likes Foster because she's pretty. Foster likes Tate because he's hot. They have no chemistry. That's the romance. It appears that the same thing is going to happen between Charlotte and Bastien.
Plot:
It started off with a bang and then, once they reached the safe house, ground to a halt. Foster and Tate aren't really doing anything. The villains aren't really doing anything. Everyone sits around and talks for, like, a hundred pages. Half of that is spent on the forced romance between Foster and Tate. Anything that might have resembled a compelling plot is ruined by poorly written characters, terrible pacing, and nonsensical worldbuilding.
I know this doesn't seem like the brief version of my review, but trust me: It is. I could rant for days about everything wrong in this book. I've only just skimmed the surface. Suffice to say, I do not recommend this book to anyone.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Deadnaming, Death, Mental illness, and Transphobia
Minor: Miscarriage and Misogyny
More...