There There

There There

By Tommy Orange

A wondrous and shattering novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Well, it ain't no YA.  I was kind of dreading this, a little, because even though I might be sore sick of YA, I still wasn't really in the mood for a polemic on social justice issues.  I'm worn out.  And there's something a bit voyeuristic about it.   There's a scene in there where Tony dresses up in his regalia and gets on BART to go to the Powwow and people are staring at him and he's thinking, basically, lap it up, sure, let's give the white people a fun story to tell about seeing a real Indian all dressed up.  I get a little bit of that same sense reading this. Basically peering in on someone else's life and making judgments on something I know very little about.  

But the book is generally strong and interesting to read.  Orange switches both POV and style, so we get some essays, but mostly chapters in a multitude of characters, most of whom are semi-loosely related in fashions that will become clearer as we get further into the book.  The finale centers around the Powwow, where everyone has gathered for their own reasons, ranging from initiation into a more Indian lifestyle, job/hobby, finding family, robbery, and the most fourth-wall reason, collecting stories from Indians to get a better sense of the modern "Urban Indian", as opposed to the historical, stereotypical reservation Indian.  One of my favorite scenes is Dene, the historiographer, talking with another character about the project and what it means to be Indian.  

But the book ends basically on a cliff-hanger, with no (at the time) intended resolution.  There's a way to do it that makes the story stronger, but in this case, I feel like it made everything else weaker, by not tying up at least a few of the loose ends.  We end one storyline literally with a boy's de facto grandmother beginning to look up at the doctor who is (we assume) going to tell her whether he lives or not.  Another is with a character bleeding out on the floor.  

These characters are teetering on revelations about family members, life and death, and we don't spend enough time with them during the book to really get a sense of how we can even assume or guess at how they'll handle it. Because we have so many characters, and this isn't a twelve book series, we're only with each character in small chunks.  Orange does a decent job with such a large cast, but I never entirely figured out who all was who in the criminal side of the book. 

I don't know; this one feels tough because yes, it feels completely unfinished, but also, I don't feel any impetus to get back in these people's lives. So I don't think I'd be up for a sequel, and that just kind of encapsulates my review: good, but not compelling.

10: An Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner

Cemetery Boys

Cemetery Boys

By Aiden Thomas

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

 

This one was cute enough, although there isn't anything in it that isn't telegraphed from the first quarter of the book.  Yadriel finds a ghost the same night his cousin mysteriously dies, and neither body can be found; not to mention the jaguar claws of ultra-human sacrifice for ultimate power are missing? It doesn't take a genius to put it together. 

I was a little disappointed it takes place in East LA - for some reason I was thinking it took place in Mexico, and I don't know why that makes such a difference, but honestly LA is oddly flat for me as a setting (it's not specific to Cemetery Boys, I don't really get any entertainment that's set there).  

There's certainly enough Spanish in it (and untranslated too, so monolinguists just get to guess at some of the interplay) and the details about Dia de Muertos are thoroughly and lovingly described. And the romance is cute enough, and the main character isn't dumb for plot reasons, or obnoxious or anything like that.  I just... found myself skimming slightly, to get to the action at the end.  One of those things where, since you know so early how the big reveal and denouement will go, all the pit stops along the way start to feel superfluous.  I did appreciate (if not "enjoy") that the author switches to another POV when the main character is potentially dead.  Every little bit of suspense helps!

Yadriel, the main character, is trans, which I somehow managed to not know until after I started reading it, even though it's right in the description and I swear I read that multiple times before checking the book out.  It does impact the plot, since the whole thing hinges on the idea that Yadriel can use the male brujx powers instead of the female, although I still kind of wished that Yadriel didn't dwell so much on it.  I will give him a pass though, since teenagers the world over care way too much about other people's opinions.  I appreciated that Julian was like, no hangups here, dude.  Man, I think I'm just tired of YA right now.  I'm old, and I don't have time for melodramatic nonsense about accepting yourself and finding love.  Give me more no-nonsense heroines, like what's her name in The Alice Network (no, not the modern day one, the cranky old spy).  

28: A Book Set During a Holiday

Aurora Rising

Aurora Rising

By Aime Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the academy would touch . . .

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass tech whiz with the galaxy's biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger-management issues
A tomboy pilot who's totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty's squad isn't even his biggest problem--that'd be Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley, the girl he's just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler's squad of losers, discipline cases, and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.

NOBODY PANIC.

 I can't tell if I'm getting grumpier as I get older, or if books are just not as good as they used to be (spoiler alert: it's definitely the former).  I wanted to like this one, I swear!  I was very much looking forward to it, and in fact was using it to get a break from two other books I thought I would like, but were moving much too slowly for me to enjoy. 

However.  There are few things more obnoxious than a band of teenagers who talk like they're in a television show written by adults, and manage to save the world because they are so extraordinarily talented but also they're misfits so no one knows how talented they are, and also somehow they're smarter than all the adults.  

I mean, we start promisingly, with the premise that only young folks' minds are malleable enough to endure the space Fold, so there's a school for young people.  But then to say, well, each crew will have one teenager who can engineer anything, and another one will be both medical and science expert, and also there's a teen diplomat, because why not, and apparently there's a fighter too, and each of them is somehow experts even though they've been in school from age 13-18, and frankly teenagers don't know how to do any job, let alone highly skilled, technical job which would be vastly easier with some life experience.  I mean, no knock on teenagers, but they're barely out of puberty, and they simply didn't have enough time to learn anything.  You can do a lot of things in science fiction, but 18 is still 18.

And it wasn't even that, which killed my enjoyment, or the fact that all of them employed such finely crafted sarcasm and quips you'd think they'd been to school for that for five years instead of whatever else... diplomacy, I guess, although there wasn't much of it displayed in the book.  

Nor was it that the teachers apparently smuggled this Aurora person on board without telling anyone, because... a team of misfit trainees who have no idea they're carrying a stowaway is the solution to a police investigation? No, not even that!

It was in fact, when (after witnessing a mass genocide almost in passing which is then never referred to again) they wind up on a disreputable "pirate" station which has... a world galactic-class museum!  Yes! With an aquarium and a gala for the public. What public, you may ask? Presumably the other pirates on station.  And why host a gala? I can assume because the rich and powerful gangster who owns all the art pieces wants to be fair and give random teenagers a chance to steal something.  Which they do. Because they're magically talented, in case you didn't know!  They can come up with gala ready clothes and a plan to infiltrate a genetically coded lock on less than 24 hours' notice. 

If you're getting the sense that I was not "along for the ride" you are correct.  I did not get into the spirit of things, I didn't just relax and enjoy the humor, I was not charmed.  It felt obnoxiously cutesy and trite and cliche, in an unironic way.  I felt like I'd read the evil plant story before, too.  It kind of echoed the Big Bad in the Murderbot novel, Network Effect.  

So the pilot is consumed by the plant and the rest of the kids manage to escape and the one decides she might date the elf after all, and I just couldn't bring myself to care.

8: A Book with a Protagonist Who Uses a Mobility Aid

 

The Broken Girls

The Broken Girls

By Simone St. James

Vermont, 1950. There's a place for the girls whom no one wants—the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the ones too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall, and local legend says the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their friendship blossoming—until one of them mysteriously disappears....

Vermont, 2014. Twenty years ago, journalist Fiona Sheridan's elder sister’s body was found in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And although her sister’s boyfriend was tried and convicted of the murder, Fiona can’t stop revisiting the events, unable to shake the feeling that something was never right about the case.

When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during renovations links the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past—and a voice that won’t be silenced....

I really liked this one (as I did the last one of hers I read, The Sun Down Motel) except for one thing.  Well, two things, I guess, since I didn't really like that Sonia died.  Once I realized that Sonia was murdered, I was pretty bummed. I know it would have been duplicative, but couldn't Sonia have just gone into hiding for sixty-four years, like Viv did?

The other, more significant and more spoiler-y issue I have with the book is the crux upon which the murder hangs: how did Rose/Rosa recognize Sonia in the first place? So the first murder is based on the idea that Sonia buys a bus ticket from a former guard at Ravensbrück, where Sonia was, around 1943/44 to 1945 when it was "freed". But Sonia was 9 years old in 1944, and 15 in 1950, and not only that, she was malnourished and tiny during the war, but they mention specifically that before she died, her friends had been sneaking her more food so her hips, etc were filling out and her clothes didn't fit that well anymore. And there were over a hundred thousand prisoners at Ravensbrück.  So while Sonia might have had good reason to recognize Rosa, an adult guard, how on earth did Rosa recognize Sonia, among thousands of other children and prisoners, from the last time she'd seen her as a skinny child to the young woman she was in 1950? I mean, I guess, if we ever heard that Sonia had distinguished herself in some way, or I mean, if we ever got the narrative of the interaction between them, from either Sonia or Rosa's perspectives.  But we don't, because to know what happened sooner would spoil the mystery, and destroy the linear narrative, and as a result, I'm sitting here, spending more time than I really want, trying to figure out how the heck Rosa knew who she was. 

It's also weird that this and another relatively recent book I read, Maureen Johnson's Box in the Woods both involve Nazi war criminals being recognized in Vermont after the war and killing to save :themselves.  Was Vermont particularly attractive to Nazis? 

I do think that the three "mysteries", i.e., Mary Hand the ghost, the death and disappearance of Sonia, and Deb's murder are each well done, but in retrospect it might have been nicer if they had been tied to each other more.  The main connection to each is the location - the Idlewild woods.  Other than that, they have nothing to do with each other or in their storylines, i.e., the clues to Sonia's death don't affect Fiona's discoveries about her sister, and vice versa.  So that, I think, was done better in The Sun Down Motel.  And I think the reveal that chief Creel had tried to cover up Tim Christopher's involvement in Deb's murder could have been removed without much loss.  Think alternatively: if that whole storyline was excised, we'd still have the Sonia and Mary Hand ghost, and Tim Christopher is still in jail. If Fiona just comes to peace with that, that would have been just fine with me. 

But I did like this! I liked the characters, and I like that St. James' novels are mysteries that explore the lives and deaths of women. Men are the most common murderers and women the most common victims.  Although Christie's cerebral detectives are fun to read, and it feels a little weird to say that there should be more realistic murders in your entertaining fiction, coming to St. James is nice, because you know that ultimately the women, and justice, will prevail. 

 

09: A Book about a "Found Family"