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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
I gave up about half-way through. :(
I was fine with the language. I was fine with the post-apocalyptic setting.
But the author lost me at the pseudo-catholic repetition of the Marias and their white Jesuses. My WSOD failed at the thought of a culture of people younger than about 20 maintaining that sort of belief system. It just didn't make any sense to me. And within that societal framework, I honestly didn't care what else happened, because I'd lost my belief in the basis of the book.
So for me, it was half of a good book. Maybe some day I'll try it again.
I was fine with the language. I was fine with the post-apocalyptic setting.
But the author lost me at the pseudo-catholic repetition of the Marias and their white Jesuses. My WSOD failed at the thought of a culture of people younger than about 20 maintaining that sort of belief system. It just didn't make any sense to me. And within that societal framework, I honestly didn't care what else happened, because I'd lost my belief in the basis of the book.
So for me, it was half of a good book. Maybe some day I'll try it again.
This book is so wildly uneven!
I embraced and enjoyed the invented dialect, particularly because it felt so true to the characters in the book-- the way it seemed to draw on French Creole, small bits of Spanish, and AAVE to some extent. It felt like the kind of language that might come about in a community descended from a Haitian-American community in the US. I enjoyed the process of becoming fluent in the dialect as the book went along, and I think the author uses the language to great emotional effect in depicting many scenes. In general, Newman writes some excellent prose.
She also has a good sense of the emotions of the characters. I think a lesser author would have depicted Ice Cream Star has hardened, or hardening against the grief she experiences throughout the book. But in a way that feels real to me, she experiences trauma with every crucial death she is exposed to, and each one is unique, without being completely debilitating. The humanity depicted there is on point.
But that plot! Ugh... I read the acknowledgments at the end of the book in which Newman thanks all her editors, and all I could think from about midway through this book is that her editors did her very wrong. The plot is overstuffed and convoluted, with elements that defy logic. Her initial world of Massa Woods is so perfectly illustrated and so plausible that it renders a sharp contrast to La Ciudad de las Marias and Quantico, two cities that seem utterly impossible given the broader context she's created. Where are these children getting gasoline for their cars? How have the managed to preserve medicine on the order of IUDs?
And how is it that Ice Cream Star ends up being the crucial player in every single event in this war, and in the world?
My best guess is that this book was intended to, or should have been broken up into multiple books. I think one book on Massa Woods, one book on the Marianos, one book on Quantico, and maybe a future book on escapades in Russia/Europe would have better served this. But I suspect publishers didn't think it would sell in that format-- the book tries to straddle genres between literary fiction, classic genre fare, and YA, without being completely comfortable in any of those settings. For SciFi, the prose is too complex, and too slowly, softly descriptive and times, especially in the first "book", so readers of those genres wouldn't have bought in for a series. There's too much blunt sex and violence for YA (and eight-year-olds smoking!) And literary fiction mostly doesn't do sequels and series, so those readers would have been upset at not getting a self-contained story. So this story that should have been given time to spread out, to allow all of the intrigue to occur at a plausible pace, to allow the author just a little more room to at least allude at explanations (so, why is Russia at war with the world?) instead gets crammed into one book that herks and jerks around Northeastern America from plot point to plot point without completely cohering.
In short, I am disappointed, because there's a lot of squandered promise in here.
I embraced and enjoyed the invented dialect, particularly because it felt so true to the characters in the book-- the way it seemed to draw on French Creole, small bits of Spanish, and AAVE to some extent. It felt like the kind of language that might come about in a community descended from a Haitian-American community in the US. I enjoyed the process of becoming fluent in the dialect as the book went along, and I think the author uses the language to great emotional effect in depicting many scenes. In general, Newman writes some excellent prose.
She also has a good sense of the emotions of the characters. I think a lesser author would have depicted Ice Cream Star has hardened, or hardening against the grief she experiences throughout the book. But in a way that feels real to me, she experiences trauma with every crucial death she is exposed to, and each one is unique, without being completely debilitating. The humanity depicted there is on point.
But that plot! Ugh... I read the acknowledgments at the end of the book in which Newman thanks all her editors, and all I could think from about midway through this book is that her editors did her very wrong. The plot is overstuffed and convoluted, with elements that defy logic. Her initial world of Massa Woods is so perfectly illustrated and so plausible that it renders a sharp contrast to La Ciudad de las Marias and Quantico, two cities that seem utterly impossible given the broader context she's created. Where are these children getting gasoline for their cars? How have the managed to preserve medicine on the order of IUDs?
And how is it that Ice Cream Star ends up being the crucial player in every single event in this war, and in the world?
My best guess is that this book was intended to, or should have been broken up into multiple books. I think one book on Massa Woods, one book on the Marianos, one book on Quantico, and maybe a future book on escapades in Russia/Europe would have better served this. But I suspect publishers didn't think it would sell in that format-- the book tries to straddle genres between literary fiction, classic genre fare, and YA, without being completely comfortable in any of those settings. For SciFi, the prose is too complex, and too slowly, softly descriptive and times, especially in the first "book", so readers of those genres wouldn't have bought in for a series. There's too much blunt sex and violence for YA (and eight-year-olds smoking!) And literary fiction mostly doesn't do sequels and series, so those readers would have been upset at not getting a self-contained story. So this story that should have been given time to spread out, to allow all of the intrigue to occur at a plausible pace, to allow the author just a little more room to at least allude at explanations (so, why is Russia at war with the world?) instead gets crammed into one book that herks and jerks around Northeastern America from plot point to plot point without completely cohering.
In short, I am disappointed, because there's a lot of squandered promise in here.
The made-up vernacular of this first-person narrator is impenetrable.
I did not read the book, I had to stop after 1 and a 1/2 page because of the accent it was written in.
I would give it a 1 star, but it would downplay the work the artist put into it. As far as I could tell the childish accent was internally consistent and probably was a pain to do, but I couldn't read it.
I would give it a 1 star, but it would downplay the work the artist put into it. As far as I could tell the childish accent was internally consistent and probably was a pain to do, but I couldn't read it.
Impossible to read unless you can understand thick Cajun-style pidgin. Attempted this on audiobook and it was utterly incomprehensible. Shame, because the premise is so interesting and I love dystopian fiction. I'd love to read an English translation of this.
I initially picked this up because of the narrator mechanic - a young teenage woman, semi-literate but wise in the ways of the post-Fall world she was in. I found Newman's approach and style interesting but as the story progressed it became harder and harder for me to continue reading. I grew bored of the main character and the main plot and kept wishing the book would pick up the pace and get _somewhere_ instead of wandering in a desert of kind-of-interesting but, ultimately, boring terrain. I did finish it but it was an effort and the only thing I could point to as a flaw was the impression that it could have been half the size and been better.
IMNSHO, I think a better approach to this type of 'unique' narration is Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks. The entire book is written phonetically (e.g. Fearsome Engine as feersum endjinn). It is crazy to get used to but after a few pages that fades away and you become one with the prose and the narrator, a very young boy on a quest. Banks (both of his personas) is one of the few authors I automatically bought their work when it debuts but unfortunately, he passed away recently and I haven't found anyone to fill his shoes.
IMNSHO, I think a better approach to this type of 'unique' narration is Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks. The entire book is written phonetically (e.g. Fearsome Engine as feersum endjinn). It is crazy to get used to but after a few pages that fades away and you become one with the prose and the narrator, a very young boy on a quest. Banks (both of his personas) is one of the few authors I automatically bought their work when it debuts but unfortunately, he passed away recently and I haven't found anyone to fill his shoes.
I couldn't get into the character's voice or dialect.
Full disclosure, I gave up on this one about one-third of the way through. The only thing special about it was the language -- which was well-thought-out and consistent, a feat in itself -- but I got tired of that. This isn't a book that needs to be 600 pages long, I don't think; I would have been more impressed at a shorter length.