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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.
Honest: I didn't finish. After a certain point, the weight of a white female writer using her version of ebonics to express the speech of non-white teens in a post apocalyptic world just became ... too much. A lot of the writing was beautiful and arresting. But I wonder if this book got in just under the wire of the current (and welcome) We Need Diverse Books movement. I don't think it would have been published, say, a year later. I started to ask myself why this curious tick of speech was really, really necessary to tell this particular story. And I came up with the conclusion that it wasn't, not really. Compared to books like Station Eleven or The Girl With All the Gifts, this book, in the end, seemed too much an oddity that ended up detracting from, not enhancing, the story she was trying to tell.
I almost gave up on this book after the first 25 pages or so, because it was really slow going at first with the invented dialect, but I'm glad I kept going because it was so worth it. Emotionally rich and action-packed, full of moral complexity and three-dimensional characters. I found a few details of the world-building to be unconvincing, but on the other hand, there's a lot the narrator doesn't know, so it feels okay that everything's not explained. (Also, whaaa? The Russians are the world superpower? Is this 1955?)
Note: There is quite a bit of violence - not told in gratuitous detail, but there's a lot of it.
Note: There is quite a bit of violence - not told in gratuitous detail, but there's a lot of it.
Good heavens yes for the long-game dialect and the tribal beginnings. (Why is this not compared to Riddley Walker more often?) Good heavens no because it turns into yet another young-children-having-a-war dystopia.
The pace of this really picked up in the second half. I'd still say it could have been shorter, but it was an enjoyable and (mostly) fresh read.
Really interesting idea. You do eventually get used to the language. In fact, afterward, you might find yourself calling things "bone" or "bellesse." But it's hard to know a first person narrator when the language is a barrier to her thoughts instead of a way inside. You know what's happening most of the time. Because of the language, it's hard to really feel like you know Ice Cream Star and the people around her. It also seems to be a series of events rather than a coherent narrative arc.
Sometimes you read a book so good everything you've read recently seems crappy by comparison. This is one of those times. The invented post-pandemic dialects were hard to get into at first but it was worth it, especially for the whole Marias segment. Amazing.
This was challenging to read. At best, the way it was written enhanced the world building, and some of the language was both interesting and beautiful. Mostly it just made it difficult to read - I ended up buying it in hard copy because I found I just couldn't get into it at all on kindle. At worst, I missed parts - possibly because I'm used to reading things fast and this was something you needed to take more time to understand than I was willing to offer it.
I missed a death that I knew was supposed to have more impact than I felt on first read, and even when I reread it I wasn't quite sure what had happened.
Even after re-reading the ending a couple times I'm still not sure what was up with that, either.
I did enjoy it - it was new, and it was interesting, but I think if you took the way it was written away it wouldn't have been either. Everyone was in love with Icecream and that got a bit old - I'm not sure I ever managed to properly care about any of the characters or their goals, and bits of it were too predictable.
Probably this is just a 'not for me' review more than anything else. Glad I stuck it out to the end, but not exactly up in my faves.
I missed a death that I knew was supposed to have more impact than I felt on first read, and even when I reread it I wasn't quite sure what had happened.
Even after re-reading the ending a couple times I'm still not sure what was up with that, either.
I did enjoy it - it was new, and it was interesting, but I think if you took the way it was written away it wouldn't have been either. Everyone was in love with Icecream and that got a bit old - I'm not sure I ever managed to properly care about any of the characters or their goals, and bits of it were too predictable.
Probably this is just a 'not for me' review more than anything else. Glad I stuck it out to the end, but not exactly up in my faves.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Some plot twist or other midway through this dystopian story about gang like tribes of black children doomed to die as they enter adulthood - starring a hyper sexual 15 year old - made me curious about the author and I was honestly uncomfortable to learn it was a white woman (as am I). Later plot twists just felt increasingly implausible, like NYC being run by a cynical cult of Catholicism in which our young heroin instantly has a starring role.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Physical abuse, Rape, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Murder, Abandonment, War, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Grief, Abortion, Pregnancy
I started this book, found the language and characters totally engaging if not a little challenging at times to connect with, and read it... and almost 2 months I still hadn't finished. I made it to page 377, but with another 200 pages to go, it became a book I didn't want to pick up. I read a few other books, thought I would come back to it.... I didn't. Oh well.