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A review by xterminal
Dark Eden by Patrick Carman
4.0
Patrick Carman, Dark Eden (Katherine Tegen Books, 2011)
Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by Amazon Vine.
I have a tendency to flip through books and check number of pages (for the spreadsheet), number of chapters, that sort of thing. This is a mistake with Dark Eden, for the structure of the book changes in the last few chapters, and doing so will give part of the game away as soon as you see them. That said, after catching a few snatches of the text from the back of the book early on, I thought I knew where this book was going, and was very pleasantly surprised to find out I was wrong on that (though the way it DOES end up going is far more conventional in today's teen lit, it's still more satisfying given that way Carman sets it up). But I'm getting ahead of myself. Instead, I should be wailing about the jacket copy, at least the jacket copy on the ARC I got from Vine, which positions the book less as a book to be valued in itself, but as an accessory to go along with online content. I almost threw it against the wall at that point. I'm glad I didn't, but man, that still rankles.
In any case, the plot: seven fifteen-year-old kids, all of whom have been in therapy most of their lives for a deep-seated phobia of some form or other, are recommended by their psychiatrist to go to Fort Eden, a sort of phobia boot-camp out in the middle of nowhere, for a week for more intensive treatment than the psychiatrist can give in the office. (While I don't think it's ever specified, I got the idea that the psychiarist's office is in New York City, and Fort Eden itself is somewhere east of Oneonta, NY. Or maybe southeast.) Fort Eden is run by her mentor, a psychiatrist of great renown but unconventional technique. And if HE can't cure you, she tells her charges, you're not curable. We know all this because Will, one of the seven, has a thing for technology, and a thing for petty thievery, so he lifts all the audio files of the Fort Eden kids from his shrink's computer and knows pretty much everything there is to know about them (save the phobia of one Avery Varone, a quiet girl who refuses in no uncertain terms to discuss what, exactly, she's afraid of). All well and good, you think, but what's Carman going to do to keep the first-person-narrator-with-third-person-omniscience gig going when they get to camp? It's an inventive setup, probably my favorite thing about the book, and when Carman ties it... I'm getting ahead of myself again, AND that would be a major spoiler.
I finished this two weeks ago, give or take, and at the time I gave it three stars (above average, though nothing special). But the longer I let the book sit with me, the more I get where some of the seemingly smaller pieces fit in (and one of them gets automatic points; any YA novelist who even mentions Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes, much less takes some central tenets from it, is probably worth reading), and as a result, the more I like it. I'm not going to argue that there aren't some really cheesy moments, or that Will's voice can get annoying at times, or that there are places where the book seems like a commercial for Clif bars. And I'm still outraged by the whole “this is an accessory” gig; a book should stand on its own, and any “online content” or what have you should be the accessory (and it certainly shouldn't be a major selling point, as the marketing strategy here promises it would be). But it's a good thriller with a few sci-fi elements here and there that don't distract with blinding science (one could almost pass them off as magical-realism elements instead), engaging characters, and a sense of plot that's finely-honed indeed. I liked this one a good deal. *** ½
Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by Amazon Vine.
I have a tendency to flip through books and check number of pages (for the spreadsheet), number of chapters, that sort of thing. This is a mistake with Dark Eden, for the structure of the book changes in the last few chapters, and doing so will give part of the game away as soon as you see them. That said, after catching a few snatches of the text from the back of the book early on, I thought I knew where this book was going, and was very pleasantly surprised to find out I was wrong on that (though the way it DOES end up going is far more conventional in today's teen lit, it's still more satisfying given that way Carman sets it up). But I'm getting ahead of myself. Instead, I should be wailing about the jacket copy, at least the jacket copy on the ARC I got from Vine, which positions the book less as a book to be valued in itself, but as an accessory to go along with online content. I almost threw it against the wall at that point. I'm glad I didn't, but man, that still rankles.
In any case, the plot: seven fifteen-year-old kids, all of whom have been in therapy most of their lives for a deep-seated phobia of some form or other, are recommended by their psychiatrist to go to Fort Eden, a sort of phobia boot-camp out in the middle of nowhere, for a week for more intensive treatment than the psychiatrist can give in the office. (While I don't think it's ever specified, I got the idea that the psychiarist's office is in New York City, and Fort Eden itself is somewhere east of Oneonta, NY. Or maybe southeast.) Fort Eden is run by her mentor, a psychiatrist of great renown but unconventional technique. And if HE can't cure you, she tells her charges, you're not curable. We know all this because Will, one of the seven, has a thing for technology, and a thing for petty thievery, so he lifts all the audio files of the Fort Eden kids from his shrink's computer and knows pretty much everything there is to know about them (save the phobia of one Avery Varone, a quiet girl who refuses in no uncertain terms to discuss what, exactly, she's afraid of). All well and good, you think, but what's Carman going to do to keep the first-person-narrator-with-third-person-omniscience gig going when they get to camp? It's an inventive setup, probably my favorite thing about the book, and when Carman ties it... I'm getting ahead of myself again, AND that would be a major spoiler.
I finished this two weeks ago, give or take, and at the time I gave it three stars (above average, though nothing special). But the longer I let the book sit with me, the more I get where some of the seemingly smaller pieces fit in (and one of them gets automatic points; any YA novelist who even mentions Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes, much less takes some central tenets from it, is probably worth reading), and as a result, the more I like it. I'm not going to argue that there aren't some really cheesy moments, or that Will's voice can get annoying at times, or that there are places where the book seems like a commercial for Clif bars. And I'm still outraged by the whole “this is an accessory” gig; a book should stand on its own, and any “online content” or what have you should be the accessory (and it certainly shouldn't be a major selling point, as the marketing strategy here promises it would be). But it's a good thriller with a few sci-fi elements here and there that don't distract with blinding science (one could almost pass them off as magical-realism elements instead), engaging characters, and a sense of plot that's finely-honed indeed. I liked this one a good deal. *** ½