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A review by jonisbookquest
Show Stopper by Hayley Barker
2.0
My expectations for this book weren’t even that high, but God, was I disappointed!
Show Stopper, written by Hayley Barker, takes place in a very, very racist society. In the near future – a few hundred years from now, maybe less, since we’re never told that – England has decided that immigrants (referred to as Dregs) are bad, not really human after all and that they should be treated with no more respect than your average street rat.
In this dystopian, there is the ‘Cirque’ a circus where all the performers are Dregs and are forced to preform the deadliest show on earth. All of the Dregs in the Cirque eventually die, mostly violent deaths, and all Pures (the original British) love it.
The story itself follows Ben, who is raised in a very racist family. One day he sees one of the performers of the Cirque, Hoshiko. Ben thinks she is very pretty, falls in love with her on first sight, and suddenly stops being racist, ready to make a change in this world if and only if it could impress Hoshiko.
There are a ton of things wrong with this book, so let’s start on a positive note and talk about the things I did like.
I like the concept, I think it had great potential to comment on today’s hateful politics concerning immigrants/refugees. It did not do a very good job at that, which is a shame. Besides that, I do think that this was an easy read and somehow I was sort of curious to know where it would end – a shame the ending wasn’t much of a surprise.
Now… This book really didn’t hit the mark for me. I have two main issues: the worldbuilding (or a lack thereof) and the insta-love.
The insta-love is one of the worst cases of insta-love I have EVER seen. Ben sees Hoshiko ON A SCREEN once, and he is head over heels for her. Falling in love with Hoshiko is also the main reason he realizes that the society he lives in is goddamn racist. Even worse: the insta-love is almost his sole character-trait. Everything he does, he does it for Hoshiko. Every single chapter he repeats to have some deeper connection with Hoshiko, despite not even having had a conversation with her.
It is not much better on Hoshiko’s side either. In the beginning she constantly goes from hating Ben because he’s a Pure, to being kinda charmed by the fact that he saved her once, to hating him again, to loving him again, to screaming to him that he’s a Pure, to feeling kinda sad for him, to hating him, to suddenly falling completely in love with him. And that over a span of three days.
I have to tell you: these two didn’t even have a decent conversation before they decided they were ready to die for each other.
My next big problem was with the worldbuilding. There were a lot of questions left unanswered, like: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THE REST OF THE FREAKING WORLD? ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT EUROPE AND AMERICA ARE JUST LIKE: ‘WELL, SUCKS FOR THOSE PEOPLE, GUESS WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT ENGLAND’S VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. THAT SUCKS.’ It is never touched upon if or if not things are the same in the rest of the world. If they are: I have a hard time believing that all western countries are just going to reject science and torture and kill all immigrants. If not: why is no one ever mentioning an escape plan? Why aren’t they talking about Dregs maybe trying to cross the border in the hopes of a better life? Why is it never touched upon that the government is blocking international media to create this kind of hive-mind?
It is also not really clear who Dregs really are… Are they only people of color? That’s what I assumed in the beginning, but for example Greta is being described as blonde and with blue eyes and she’s a Dreg as well. So are all immigrants Dregs, even if they’re from other Western countries? Cause like… I have never heard anyone mention that immigration of white people to countries with mainly white people is a bad thing - that's not how racists work.
It is briefly mentioned that everyone who causes trouble ends up in the slums, but do they get Dreg-status as well? And what about people of color who have lived in Great Britain for generations and generations? How is it then even possible to know who is a Dreg and who is not? It is never mentioned that they have to make themselves known or anything…
Also, the author never really talks about how things turned out this way. Was England one day like: damn, those fucking immigrants…. Gotta get rid of them. Apparently every not-racist person disappeared, I guess… No opposition or anything…
There’s also a lot of gore in this book and while I usually love gore, it felt really out of place here. I don’t deny that racism can lead to horrible things. We only have to go as far back as the Holocaust: children as well as adults were tortured, used for human experimentation and killed off like animals. But the gore here is very in-your-face. The government doesn’t try to hide everything horrible that they are doing; they proudly show it of in fact. I still have a hard time believing that parents would take their children to a show to watch children die – or to kill a few themselves – even if their hate towards that group of people is very, very deep.
The villains were also very cartoon-like. They were racist - and that was like their only character trait.
My last complaint was that the voices of the characters weren’t distinct enough. When Ben and Hoshiko were together, I sometimes forgot whose perspective it was. The chapters were also very short and switched POV every chapter. I didn’t really mind in the beginning, but in the end it did become quite annoying to read something from Bens POV and then THE EXACT SAME THING from Hoshiko’s POV.
Edit: I missed a small, but important point in this review, that being that Ben is a white savior and that Hoshiko gave up all of her peers (people she has lived with for so long) for a boy she barely knew. It would have been better if Hoshiko herself rebelled and if Ben was her ally.
Show Stopper, written by Hayley Barker, takes place in a very, very racist society. In the near future – a few hundred years from now, maybe less, since we’re never told that – England has decided that immigrants (referred to as Dregs) are bad, not really human after all and that they should be treated with no more respect than your average street rat.
In this dystopian, there is the ‘Cirque’ a circus where all the performers are Dregs and are forced to preform the deadliest show on earth. All of the Dregs in the Cirque eventually die, mostly violent deaths, and all Pures (the original British) love it.
The story itself follows Ben, who is raised in a very racist family. One day he sees one of the performers of the Cirque, Hoshiko. Ben thinks she is very pretty, falls in love with her on first sight, and suddenly stops being racist, ready to make a change in this world if and only if it could impress Hoshiko.
There are a ton of things wrong with this book, so let’s start on a positive note and talk about the things I did like.
I like the concept, I think it had great potential to comment on today’s hateful politics concerning immigrants/refugees. It did not do a very good job at that, which is a shame. Besides that, I do think that this was an easy read and somehow I was sort of curious to know where it would end – a shame the ending wasn’t much of a surprise.
Now… This book really didn’t hit the mark for me. I have two main issues: the worldbuilding (or a lack thereof) and the insta-love.
The insta-love is one of the worst cases of insta-love I have EVER seen. Ben sees Hoshiko ON A SCREEN once, and he is head over heels for her. Falling in love with Hoshiko is also the main reason he realizes that the society he lives in is goddamn racist. Even worse: the insta-love is almost his sole character-trait. Everything he does, he does it for Hoshiko. Every single chapter he repeats to have some deeper connection with Hoshiko, despite not even having had a conversation with her.
It is not much better on Hoshiko’s side either. In the beginning she constantly goes from hating Ben because he’s a Pure, to being kinda charmed by the fact that he saved her once, to hating him again, to loving him again, to screaming to him that he’s a Pure, to feeling kinda sad for him, to hating him, to suddenly falling completely in love with him. And that over a span of three days.
I have to tell you: these two didn’t even have a decent conversation before they decided they were ready to die for each other.
My next big problem was with the worldbuilding. There were a lot of questions left unanswered, like: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THE REST OF THE FREAKING WORLD? ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT EUROPE AND AMERICA ARE JUST LIKE: ‘WELL, SUCKS FOR THOSE PEOPLE, GUESS WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT ENGLAND’S VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. THAT SUCKS.’ It is never touched upon if or if not things are the same in the rest of the world. If they are: I have a hard time believing that all western countries are just going to reject science and torture and kill all immigrants. If not: why is no one ever mentioning an escape plan? Why aren’t they talking about Dregs maybe trying to cross the border in the hopes of a better life? Why is it never touched upon that the government is blocking international media to create this kind of hive-mind?
It is also not really clear who Dregs really are… Are they only people of color? That’s what I assumed in the beginning, but for example Greta is being described as blonde and with blue eyes and she’s a Dreg as well. So are all immigrants Dregs, even if they’re from other Western countries? Cause like… I have never heard anyone mention that immigration of white people to countries with mainly white people is a bad thing - that's not how racists work.
It is briefly mentioned that everyone who causes trouble ends up in the slums, but do they get Dreg-status as well? And what about people of color who have lived in Great Britain for generations and generations? How is it then even possible to know who is a Dreg and who is not? It is never mentioned that they have to make themselves known or anything…
Also, the author never really talks about how things turned out this way. Was England one day like: damn, those fucking immigrants…. Gotta get rid of them. Apparently every not-racist person disappeared, I guess… No opposition or anything…
There’s also a lot of gore in this book and while I usually love gore, it felt really out of place here. I don’t deny that racism can lead to horrible things. We only have to go as far back as the Holocaust: children as well as adults were tortured, used for human experimentation and killed off like animals. But the gore here is very in-your-face. The government doesn’t try to hide everything horrible that they are doing; they proudly show it of in fact. I still have a hard time believing that parents would take their children to a show to watch children die – or to kill a few themselves – even if their hate towards that group of people is very, very deep.
The villains were also very cartoon-like. They were racist - and that was like their only character trait.
My last complaint was that the voices of the characters weren’t distinct enough. When Ben and Hoshiko were together, I sometimes forgot whose perspective it was. The chapters were also very short and switched POV every chapter. I didn’t really mind in the beginning, but in the end it did become quite annoying to read something from Bens POV and then THE EXACT SAME THING from Hoshiko’s POV.
Edit: I missed a small, but important point in this review, that being that Ben is a white savior and that Hoshiko gave up all of her peers (people she has lived with for so long) for a boy she barely knew. It would have been better if Hoshiko herself rebelled and if Ben was her ally.