Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard (HarperTeen, February 2016)
Victoria Aveyard burst onto the scene in 2015, with the publication of her first novel, Red Queen. The young adult fantasy novel was praised for filling the void that the completion of both the Hunger Games and Divergent series had left. One part superhero saga, one part dystopian fiction, the series centers around a young girl, Mare Barrow. Mare is a “red,” so named for the color of her blood, a lower-class citizen. The reds are ordinary, their lives only meant for servitude, while the silvers—their aristocratic counterparts—all have superpowers, which make it all-too-easy for them to abuse the reds and stamp down any rebellion.
Glass Sword is the second book in the series. By the time this book begins, Mare has realized she is different: she is red, but she has powers. Mare and Cal, the former Prince who has been framed for murdering his father, are on the run from the new monarchy. It’s Hunger Games meets Game of Thrones meets the Avengers. It’s brilliant. The premise of this book alone makes it impossible to put down; Aveyard keeps the pace clipping along, deftly managing to weave in moments of character growth and loss among intense action scenes. The language is gritty and compelling, overloading the senses. It’s not lit-fic, to be sure, but it still gives the reader plenty of pull quotes, like:
“It isn’t hard to let people die when their deaths give life to something else.”
And:
“We seem weak because we want to.”
The conceit of this book is wonderful unto itself, but what really makes it shine is our heroine, Mare Barrow. At this point in Mare’s journey, she is no longer timid, no longer afraid of either the silvers or her own power. Mare is allowed to be something we rarely see in young adult literature: Mare is ruthless. There are several points in the novel where Mare is given a choice: grand mercy upon those who had previously used or hurt her, or kill them. Mare slaughters them. It’s terrifying. It’s wonderful. Now don’t get me wrong—obviously, I’m not endorsing mass murder. But Mare has the same kind of imperfections that I loved in Katniss. Katniss was allowed to be blunt and unfriendly. Mare is allowed to be merciless, in a way that eventually pushes away those who love her. It’s rare to see a female character who is granted that much power, and whose femininity doesn’t force them into a box of compassion or remorse. There are moments where we see Mare go completely off the deep end, and those are some of the most powerful moments in the book.
Another triumph of Glass Sword is in its romantic development. Aveyard knows her genre. She knows that many young adult series force a love triangle. She uses this to bait the reader into believing not one but multiple love triangles are developing at any point in the series… and then she completely shatters our expectations. Most of Glass Sword felt as if it was building to a romantic relationship between Mare and her best friend (spoiler alert), Kilorn. Throughout the entire build-up, I was irritated, sad that another YA author was forcing a relationship that none of the readers had asked for. And then, the moment arrived: Kilorn confessed his love and… Mare turned him down. Bluntly. Honestly. Beautifully. There’s romance in this novel. There’s so much tension I could scream. And yet I can honestly say that I have no idea who—if anyone—Mare is going to end up with. And I love it.
But of course, not all series are perfect. Though the romance of Glass Sword was unpredictable, I was disheartened by how much of the rest of the novel was. It didn’t just fill the void that Hunger Games left, it emulated the formula it presented almost to a T. Book one: present the circumstances of your dystopia, but keep your character isolated (in Hunger Games, Katniss was in the arena; in Red Queen, Mare spent most of her time trapped in the palace). Book two: break them out of isolation and set up a rebellion. Both series center around bringing down a corrupt government that divides people into a binary of classes. Both series’ heroines become scapegoats of the rebellion—while Katniss is called the Mockingjay, Mare is the Lightning Queen. Both series highlight the faults of the rebellion as well as its triumphs—they warn that victory might not be as clean-cut as it appears.
It’s a formula that works, to be sure. Overall, I did enjoy this book. But by the end, there was a part of me that still felt dissatisfied. I felt as if I had read this book before.
Is dystopia “over”? How do you find newness when your favorite genres seem exhausted?
What We’re Reading: Nothing Bad is Going to Happen
Nothing Bad is Going to Happen by Kathleen Hale (HarperTeen, January 2016)
Meet Kippy Bushman—spunky, awkward, intrepid sixteen-year-old detective. Add in one part murder, one part donuts, and three heaping spoonfuls of camp, and you have Kathleen Hale’s hilarious and brilliantly-executed Nothing Bad is Going to Happen (the sequel to her 2014 hit No One Else Can Have You).
In this second book, we find Kippy eagerly heading to her boyfriend’s house, only to find him gasping for breath after what appears to be a suicide attempt. Kippy knows Davey would never kill himself, but she’s the only one in town who suspects foul play. If she wants to bring his almost-killer to justice, she’ll have to do it herself. Though the premise was similar to Hale’s previous book, I still found myself racing through the pages. The twist at the end? I never saw it coming.
If you read this book for no other reason—if young adult isn’t really your groove, or if you get too easily spooked by crime novels—read it for Kippy. Hale’s narrator is so earnest, so unfailingly honest, that you can’t help but root for her as she clumsily navigates adolescence. Don’t believe me? Here’s an excerpt (spoiler-free!) from the beginning of the novel:
I pour over the flash card in my hand, trying to focus. I’m testing myself on sex moves for later. I’ll finally be free of my cast after school, so Davey and I decided that tonight’s the night. (For sex.)
The front of this card says DONUT THINGAMAJIG.
Donut Thingamajig = Eat a donut off your male partner’s penis, or “dick,” as some people like to call it. I read about this move in Cosmopolitan magazine and I was like “Whaaaaa…..?” Cosmo doesn’t exactly say what type of donut to use, but I think it should be the kind with the hole in the middle. That way, the donut hole mimics the vagina, or “cunt,” as McKetta would say. I’ve also decided I’m going to get two donuts in case one doesn’t fit correctly. The bad thing is that I make a lot of crumbs, even when I eat off regular plates, so I will probably make a big mess. Plain donuts will be the easiest to clean up, but they are also, objectively speaking, the worst type of donut.
Kippy is a teenager, plain and simple. She has no idea what she’s doing—both sexually, as in this passage, and in life in general, as in the rest of the book—but gosh dangit if she isn’t going to give it her all. It’s impossible not to love someone who goes after life (and criminals) with such fierce determination… and impossible not to laugh at their blunders along the way.
Aside from Kippy, the key player in this mystery novel-cum-comedy is the setting, the small town of Friendship, Wisconsin. It’s exactly what you would expect from a small town—the midwestern “nice,” the way everyone knows everyone, the regional idiosynchrasies like “dontcha know?” and hotdish potlucks—exaggerated about ten times to make it a character. Here’s something I’ve realized: People from small towns love to read about small towns.
More specifically, people from small towns like to read about small towns done right. We don’t want to be mocked, but at the same time, we love to poke fun at ourselves. Kathleen Hale navigates this territory magnificently. She allows the town to be self-aware of its own ridiculousness, and pokes fun at it only to expose its faults, while still focusing on the heart and community that drives it.
One of my main critiques of this book was going to be, shocker, from a feminist lens. On my first read, this book was disappointingly sexist. At one point, Kippy jokes to her friend Libby that, “We haven’t even passed the Bechdel test!”—and it’s true. Libby has impossibly large breasts, and Kippy looks down on her as the airhead cheerleader. The word “slut” is tossed around without consequence. I was disappointed that a book with such a vibrant, atypical protagonist could disappoint me by barely passing Feminism 101, and then I realized – this book isn’t meant to be a feminist manifesto.
What Kathleen Hale does, and does brilliantly, is represent what feminism and female friendships are like for teenage girls in small towns. They’re not perfect. Not everyone in high school (or anyone, for that matter) has read bell hooks, or knows words like “intersectionality” and “heteronormativity.” The point isn’t that feminism is a binary—either you’re perfect or you’re a misogynist—but that we all start somewhere. (This is also the thesis of the book “Bad Feminist,” by Roxane Gay, if you’re interested.) For a young girl in a small town—picture me, age thirteen, complete with glasses and braces and zits—Kippy Bushman is a misogyny-fighting superhero. And that’s important too.
All in all, I adored this book. I sped through it in a single sitting, alternatively laughing until I cried and hiding beneath the covers at the spine-tingling suspense. Is it perfect? Probably not. But I know one thing:
Kippy Bushman for President, 2036.
What are some of your favorite books with surprising humor?
