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brettmichaelorr 's review for:
Spark
by Rachael Craw
This review was originally posted on http://brettmichaelorr.com
Much like the continually shifting emotions of its main protagonist, Spark by Rachael Crawl feels confused. There are rachael-craw-spark-cover-homemoments of utter brilliance that are buried under stock-standard YA tropes. I firstly have to give compliments to Rachael Craw – whatever my opinions of the book, it’s fantastic to see a New Zealand writer taking the plunge in creating quality commercial fiction. As an Australian, I often feel that we’re down on our quota of world-worthy thrillers and commercial YA, so I have immense respect for Craw in attempting to create something truly unique with Spark.
My greatest issue with Spark, is that it floats between genres without really capitalizing on one or the other. The main science-fiction storyline and backstory is both complex and well thought-out. In fact, for a moment, I almost thought I was reading my own work – when it comes to the SF side of Spark, my inner writer was enraptured, absorbing some of the genius.
In the simplest terms, Spark’s world is set against the Affinity Project, a rogue biotechnology corporation that sought to create genetically engineered human weapons, using something it called Optimal – a synthetic DNA-changing gene that granted a whole roster of powers. This includes everything from super-strength to precognition, from telepathy to frequency monitoring. Affinity created two variants of their supersoldiers – defenders (Shields), and attackers (Strikers). Activating the soldiers was taking too long, so Affinity decided to speed up the process, inventing Sparks - regular civilians with no powers, existing only to ‘Spark’ a Shield or Striker, thus beginning their Priming (a period of rapid growth that slowly unlocks their myriad of supernatural powers).
Following me so far?
It gets better. The Spark program was something of a failure. It triggered a ‘Fixation Effect’, whereby the Shields became bonded to their Sparks, feeling an unshakable bond to protect their Spark, while Strikers feel the complete opposite – an unshakable desire to murder their Spark. Thus the Strikers were exiled from Affinity and branded as Strays.
There’s also a bunch of detailed descriptions about frequency monitoring, empathic links, kinetic memory transfer and something even weirder called Synergists – I’ll get to that in a minute. All of this SF material is excellent, it’s well thought out, explained sufficiently well and ultimately sets the scene for an epic YA thriller of young teenagers with super-powered DNA fighting against an evil mercenary corporation.
Sadly, Spark abandons this potential storyline and instead falls back on a painful, drawn-out romance that’s as predictable as it is insufferable. I understand that most YA features some sort of romance – it’s par for the course, some might say. But after reading Spark, I couldn’t honestly describe it as a YA sci-fi thriller, but instead as a YA romance with some sci-fi stuff floating around.
In the entirety of the novel, we never see Affinity once. There’s a scene where we ‘hear’ one of the agents, but then it’s all over. Perhaps Craw is waiting until the second or third novel to pit our protagonist against Affinity, but as the pages flicked past, I kept hoping that something ‘big’ would happen, that Affinity would swoop with helicopters and supersoldiers…but I was sadly left waiting.
Most of the novel actually plays out as a mystery/crime thriller, focusing on the main character (Evie) as she tries to protect her Spark (Kitty) from an unknown Stray. It’s a reasonable storyline, although I honestly felt it dragged too slowly, and ultimately the revelation of the Stray’s identity is less shocking that it should be. There’s a last minute revelation involving Evie’s parentage, and although initially surprising, it ultimately felt a little too trope-ish for me.
While Evie isn’t fainting (she does that at the end of almost every chapter), she’s flirting/hating/kissing/shouting at/running back to/thinking about/trying to to think about, the novel’s token stud. Jamie is the ultimate gorgeous rich boy with perfect physiology, who spends most of his time brooding, and the other half softly caressing Evie. Honestly, I lost track trying to count how many times his lips, biceps or touch were described. Perhaps in a nod to YA’s obsession with two characters madly falling in love, Rachael Craw introduces the concept of ‘Synergists.’
Synergists are Shields that are attracted to eachother beyond merely a physical attraction – it’s a similar bond to Shields/Sparks, and boosts each Shields’ powers. It provides a plausible reason for Evie and Jamie to fall in love (other than that their names rhyme), but ultimately their whole relationship feels both forced and trope-ish. It’s easy to predict when Evie will swap from madly being in love with Jamie, to hating him and wanting to break up with him.
Evie herself is a reasonably enjoyable First-Person POV, although her habit of fainting became tiresome after a while. She was strong when she needed to be, emotional when she needed to be, and ultimately was rather well-rounded. Her rapidly-changing hormones and body were represented well, and the description of her empathic link with her best-friend and Spark, Kitty, was pitch-perfect. Empathic Links aren’t a commonly-used SF concept, and I was impressed to see an Empath relationship described so well. Kitty herself was my favorite character – she accepted that somebody wanted to kill her, but wasn’t going to let it ruin her life.
This has probably been one of my longest reviews to date – and it’s because I feel so passionately about this novel. I feel it could have been tremendously better; unfortunately, I can’t change somebody’s work, and can only accept the story and make peace with it.
If you’re looking for the next big YA sci-fi/thriller, this probably isn’t it. If you’re looking for a romance/mystery coupled with an underlying SF backstory, then Spark might fit the bill.
I enjoyed the novel, however it wasn’t everything I was hoping for, and took a direction that didn’t live up to my expectations.
3/5 Stars
Much like the continually shifting emotions of its main protagonist, Spark by Rachael Crawl feels confused. There are rachael-craw-spark-cover-homemoments of utter brilliance that are buried under stock-standard YA tropes. I firstly have to give compliments to Rachael Craw – whatever my opinions of the book, it’s fantastic to see a New Zealand writer taking the plunge in creating quality commercial fiction. As an Australian, I often feel that we’re down on our quota of world-worthy thrillers and commercial YA, so I have immense respect for Craw in attempting to create something truly unique with Spark.
My greatest issue with Spark, is that it floats between genres without really capitalizing on one or the other. The main science-fiction storyline and backstory is both complex and well thought-out. In fact, for a moment, I almost thought I was reading my own work – when it comes to the SF side of Spark, my inner writer was enraptured, absorbing some of the genius.
In the simplest terms, Spark’s world is set against the Affinity Project, a rogue biotechnology corporation that sought to create genetically engineered human weapons, using something it called Optimal – a synthetic DNA-changing gene that granted a whole roster of powers. This includes everything from super-strength to precognition, from telepathy to frequency monitoring. Affinity created two variants of their supersoldiers – defenders (Shields), and attackers (Strikers). Activating the soldiers was taking too long, so Affinity decided to speed up the process, inventing Sparks - regular civilians with no powers, existing only to ‘Spark’ a Shield or Striker, thus beginning their Priming (a period of rapid growth that slowly unlocks their myriad of supernatural powers).
Following me so far?
It gets better. The Spark program was something of a failure. It triggered a ‘Fixation Effect’, whereby the Shields became bonded to their Sparks, feeling an unshakable bond to protect their Spark, while Strikers feel the complete opposite – an unshakable desire to murder their Spark. Thus the Strikers were exiled from Affinity and branded as Strays.
There’s also a bunch of detailed descriptions about frequency monitoring, empathic links, kinetic memory transfer and something even weirder called Synergists – I’ll get to that in a minute. All of this SF material is excellent, it’s well thought out, explained sufficiently well and ultimately sets the scene for an epic YA thriller of young teenagers with super-powered DNA fighting against an evil mercenary corporation.
Sadly, Spark abandons this potential storyline and instead falls back on a painful, drawn-out romance that’s as predictable as it is insufferable. I understand that most YA features some sort of romance – it’s par for the course, some might say. But after reading Spark, I couldn’t honestly describe it as a YA sci-fi thriller, but instead as a YA romance with some sci-fi stuff floating around.
In the entirety of the novel, we never see Affinity once. There’s a scene where we ‘hear’ one of the agents, but then it’s all over. Perhaps Craw is waiting until the second or third novel to pit our protagonist against Affinity, but as the pages flicked past, I kept hoping that something ‘big’ would happen, that Affinity would swoop with helicopters and supersoldiers…but I was sadly left waiting.
Most of the novel actually plays out as a mystery/crime thriller, focusing on the main character (Evie) as she tries to protect her Spark (Kitty) from an unknown Stray. It’s a reasonable storyline, although I honestly felt it dragged too slowly, and ultimately the revelation of the Stray’s identity is less shocking that it should be. There’s a last minute revelation involving Evie’s parentage, and although initially surprising, it ultimately felt a little too trope-ish for me.
While Evie isn’t fainting (she does that at the end of almost every chapter), she’s flirting/hating/kissing/shouting at/running back to/thinking about/trying to to think about, the novel’s token stud. Jamie is the ultimate gorgeous rich boy with perfect physiology, who spends most of his time brooding, and the other half softly caressing Evie. Honestly, I lost track trying to count how many times his lips, biceps or touch were described. Perhaps in a nod to YA’s obsession with two characters madly falling in love, Rachael Craw introduces the concept of ‘Synergists.’
Synergists are Shields that are attracted to eachother beyond merely a physical attraction – it’s a similar bond to Shields/Sparks, and boosts each Shields’ powers. It provides a plausible reason for Evie and Jamie to fall in love (other than that their names rhyme), but ultimately their whole relationship feels both forced and trope-ish. It’s easy to predict when Evie will swap from madly being in love with Jamie, to hating him and wanting to break up with him.
Evie herself is a reasonably enjoyable First-Person POV, although her habit of fainting became tiresome after a while. She was strong when she needed to be, emotional when she needed to be, and ultimately was rather well-rounded. Her rapidly-changing hormones and body were represented well, and the description of her empathic link with her best-friend and Spark, Kitty, was pitch-perfect. Empathic Links aren’t a commonly-used SF concept, and I was impressed to see an Empath relationship described so well. Kitty herself was my favorite character – she accepted that somebody wanted to kill her, but wasn’t going to let it ruin her life.
This has probably been one of my longest reviews to date – and it’s because I feel so passionately about this novel. I feel it could have been tremendously better; unfortunately, I can’t change somebody’s work, and can only accept the story and make peace with it.
If you’re looking for the next big YA sci-fi/thriller, this probably isn’t it. If you’re looking for a romance/mystery coupled with an underlying SF backstory, then Spark might fit the bill.
I enjoyed the novel, however it wasn’t everything I was hoping for, and took a direction that didn’t live up to my expectations.
3/5 Stars