Change in Gears: My Critique of The Bone Season (Part 2)

I left off in the last post talking about the two different passages I found in both Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, and Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season. The reason I chose to compare Shannon's book to Hunger Games in the first place, is because the two have already been compared in articles I've read, and also because I found so many similarities between the two books when I read The Bone Season. For example, the setting, the round-up of the clairvoyants in a “reaping” style, and Paige engaging in illegal activities.

What I like so much about HG is precisely passages like the one I shared last week. Even amongst such a fast-paced story, such an action oriented plot, there are little golden nuggets like the one I chose, which alert the reader to the wider scope of the story. There is so much going on underneath the surface, and Collins brilliantly weaves that in to the action of the story. This passage is incredibly significant to the entire story for several reasons:

1. It is the turning point both in plot and character development. Before this, Katniss, while by no means supportive of the way things are in her world, accepts her situation simply as the way things are and chooses to focus her energy on not only her own survival, but also the survival of the people important to her. In this scene, after Rue (a 12-year-old girl with whom Katniss has formed an alliance) dies, Katniss’ attitude changes dramatically. Suddenly survival is no longer enough. This is where her rebellion begins, and her rebellion triggers the larger scale one that follows in the later books.

2. This passage is incredibly focused in the sense that it brings together all the major themes in the book. It touches on the dignity of human life and how appalling it is to have it denied in death. It touches on the illusion of individual powerlessness that oppressive regimes often create in the people they subjugate. On a smaller scale, the scene reveals the reason the Capitol has been so successful in subjugating the Districts: it has them too busy not only competing with each other, but also literally killing each other, to even think about banding together against the Capitol. This is probably my most favourite element of the scene – despite the fact that the boy from District One was the one to kill Rue, Katniss rightfully lays the blame not on him – who is just as much a victim of their ruthless world as Rue – but on the Capitol itself.

3. This scene not only expresses, but also celebrates an individual’s free will and power. This scene brings to life the saying, “one person can change the world,” because this is the moment when Katniss, at this point a very public figure, shows defiance for the first time, thereby making it acceptable for the Districts to do so. As Katniss firmly asserts, no matter how beaten down and powerless an individual becomes, there is something inherent in each person that can never be taken from them, something that cannot be reduced to a “piece” or a pawn in someone else’s plans. Katniss covering Rue in flowers as an impromptu kind of funeral is such a powerful scene precisely because the reader knows everyone in Panem is a witness to what she's done. She refuses to play the role the Capitol gives her by respecting Rue as an individual rather than a "piece in their Games."
 

All of that from a passage that is not even half a page long. I was hard pressed to find even a fraction of that in the second passage.

There are echoes of the same things – that is certainly obvious to me. Paige’s defiance in liking the yellow jacket and the way she takes pride in what is meant to be a symbol of shame within this new community in which she finds herself speaks to her individuality and free will. She refuses to be reduced to one thing or classified in simplistic terms – she stayed true to who she is. Katniss does the exact same thing. Paige further emphasizes this when she rejects the identity she has been given in this strange place: the number 40. She insists on maintaining the name she earned on the streets before she was captured: the Pale Dreamer. This name identifies her as several things in the voyant world, such as one of the Seven Seals (powerful voyants in the service of a mime-leader, which is the equivalent to a gang leader) as well as a rarity even among her own kind: a dreamwalker. I think there is something to be said for that – it is not without meaning. But it doesn’t drive the point home quite like Katniss does. It’s missing a certain urgency, immediacy and relevance with which Katniss’ passage is saturated. Paige’s passage barely alludes to the oppression she and others like her experience throughout the book. It doesn’t shed light on the cruelty the voyants experience at the hands of the Rephaim, who are supposedly saving the humans from the mess they got themselves into (even as I’m writing this, the similarities between the two books continue to blow my mind). What little introspection there is in this passage does not go very deep – she considers an uprising in passing and then discards it easily. Her focus remains on her own individual survival, despite the fact that she has resolved to take a stance against Nashira in a way that is not unlike Katniss’ antagonism towards President Snow in the later books. This passage, and Paige’s character for that matter, lack the impact, resonance, and sheer relevance that a comparable scene from Hunger Games achieves.

Now, is this necessarily a bad thing? No, it’s not. My personal preference for the Hunger Games is more than obvious here. Not all books will be, or should be, like the Hunger Games, even if I would love them to be. My chief frustration with the book lies not so much in the story itself at all, but rather on the hype the marketing of the book created. I feel like marketing staff these days throw around comparisons as it suits them, not caring whether or not they are actually accurate. It achieves the end goal, there is no doubt about that – I bought the book, and the marketing team made money off me. Hooray, good for them. But I find the way they did it despicable. Marketing strategies like these completely kill the value of good books and it transforms art into a commodity rather than art. It no longer matters whether something is good – and all standards to determine this fly out the window in the process – all that matters is that the book sells. And all you really need for that to happen is a cheap thrill (I’m thinking 50 Shades of Grey here) or an old and tired formula (such as a vampire love story).

I also think this is colossally unfair to a new, young writer like Samantha Shannon, whose book hadn’t even been released when she was being compared to J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins - both now firmly classics in the children/young adult genres. Once this comparison is made, her book will never be judged on its own terms, free of the shadows of older and far more experienced writers. She will always have to try her best to match or surpass these preceding stories without the writing or life experience they have behind them. I can’t help but wonder if I would have been as disappointed with the book if I hadn’t been hoping for the next big thing as I read it. Would I have loved it? I doubt it. If I’m being brutally honest, I find it just another book in the string of teenage stories that try and recycle the same things over and over again. But then again I might have enjoyed it a little more – not to mention I would have been less critical - without the indignation of it being held up to the same level as one of my favourite books.

What do I think of Samantha Shannon and her book removed from the context of her debut? I think she has potential. I think that at the heart of the story she has an original concept that gives her a lot of room to work with. Her writing is not the best I’ve ever seen, but experience will change that (hopefully). I would have done many things very differently (and I feel within my rights to critique because she is my age): setting, set-up, and villains just to name a few, but this is only the first of what is supposed to be a seven part series. For all I know what she’s got left up her sleeve will completely blow my mind. And at the end of the day, I can critique and condemn her book all I want, but she has managed to not only finish a novel, which is quite the accomplishment in itself, but also to catch the attention of one of the biggest publishing companies in the world. For the foreseeable future she will be living her dream of writing for a living. That is much more than I can say for myself.

Change in Gears: My Critique of the Bone Season (Part 1)

I’ve been doing a lot of reading over the summer. It was a nice change of pace since during the school year I’m doing so much heavy reading all the time, and I have to worry about remembering and understanding as much of it as I possibly can. Devouring book after book for no other reason than escapism was just what the doctor prescribed. All this reading turned me on to a few books that were interesting enough for me to want to critique. I’m thinking this will be the first in a few series of posts. Brace yourselves, because even I wasn’t anticipating how much I would have to say once I sat down to dissect why I liked or didn’t like certain books.

My dad turned me on to this new book, around which there seems to be a fair amount of hype. It’s called the Bone Season by a breakout author named Samantha Shannon, a 21-year-old Oxford graduate.  Here is the article he sent me: 

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/07/08/move_over_hunger_games_and_50_shades_of_grey_the_bone_season_is_here.html. 

She’s been signed to Bloomsbury Press, the same publishing company that brought us Harry Potter and they're already hailing her and her book as the next big thing. It’s already been compared to Harry Potter and Hunger Games. I’ll let the article fill you in on the rest of the details. Needless to say that after reading this, I was more than a little curious. This book caught my attention for two reasons: 1) J.K. Rowling was one of my heroes when I first decided I wanted to write. I even went so far as to tell my grade 8 teacher that one day I would be more famous (imagine my chagrin 8 years later), and 2) Samantha Shannon is basically in the same circumstances as me. She is the first big author on the book scene with which I actually have something in common.

So, when her book came out on August 20^th, I made a point of stopping by the bookstore to pick it up on my way home from work. The next night I was finished the book. What did I think? Did the book live up to everything that has been said about it? Truth is, I had a mixed reaction from start to finish, and here is why. (For those of you who still plan to read it, I give fair warning  - SPOILER ALERT).

The story falls under a category I call, for lack of a better term, a faux original. Strictly speaking, it’s true that no one has ever produced a story quite like this before. It takes a unique spin on clairvoyance. She has divided and categorized clairvoyants into a very well defined hierarchy of abilities, which outlines how powerful they are and exactly how they can affect other people and the world in general. She has also made them into a persecuted minority in her world. Regardless, all the other elements that come into play in the book, I have definitely seen before. The setting is in a future London in the year 2059, and it is in the grips of yet another totalitarian government interested above all in self-promoting propaganda. The writing style is eerily reminiscent of the Hunger Games, which would usually be high praise coming from me but in this case, I don’t mean it as a compliment. A friend once told me that she had a hard time reading the Hunger Games because the short sentences drove her mad. While I didn’t have the same experience reading Collins’ style, I finally understood what she meant when I stared reading the Bone Season. The sentences are too abrupt and they favour action over description or introspection a little too much. In my opinion, Collins’ managed a good balance between artful storytelling and fast paced action. Shannon, well, didn’t. To illustrate my point a little better, take these two passages:

“I can’t stop looking at Rue, smaller than ever, a baby animal curled up in a nest of netting.  I can’t bring myself to leave her like this. Past harm, but seemingly utterly defenceless. To hate the boy from District 1, who also appears so vulnerable in death, seems inadequate. It’s the Capitol I hate, for doing this to all of us….I want to do something right here, right now, to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is a part of every tribute they can’t own. That Rue was more than just a piece in their Games. And so am I.” (Hunger Games 236-37)

                                                              ***********

“I went up to the upper floor and dressed in my new uniform: yellow tunic, yellow anchor on the gilet. A bright, sunshine yellow visible from a mile off. 40 the coward. 40 the quitter. In a way I liked it. It showed I’d gone against Nashira’s orders. I’d never wanted to be red.

            I went back to his chambers – slowly, thinking. I still didn’t know if I wanted to organize a prison break, but I did want to leave. I would need supplies for the journey home. Food, water. Weapons. Hadn’t he said the red flower could hurt them?...There must be guards stationed outside during the day, but I could slip past them. I had my ways. And no matter how Nashira Sargas had classified me, I was no yellow-jacket. I was the Pale Dreamer.

            It was time to show her.” (The Bone Season 330).

I don’t know about anyone else, but reading the second passage for the first time, I immediately saw the parallels. There is the oppressive force trying to break and use the voyants (short for clairvoyants) for their own purposes in a similar way the Capitol treats the tributes. There is the classification of voyants and tributes according to their abilities. Major themes in both are, first, the concern with appearances and, second, a preoccupation with spectacle. The biggest parallel, however, and the reason I chose these two passages to compare, is that both these scenes depict a certain moment in time where both protagonists harden their resolve and choose to make a stand against the forces that are exploiting, oppressing and manipulating them. This is when they decide to assert their individuality and autonomy. However, despite that similarity, the two passages read very differently, at least to me. Collins' passage is focused, precise, and right to the point. It conveys Katniss' anger, desperation and, above all, the cruelty of the circumstances into which she has been forced. Shannon's passage, in comparison, reads as much more disorganized and far less resolute. Paige is still undecided despite having faced similar atrocities as Katniss and, presumably, being pushed to the same kind of breaking point. Shannon gives Paige a world, a situation, and a history that gives her the potential to be every bit the relentless female lead that Katniss is, but - in my opinion - Paige falls short of that every single time.

I have very specific reasons for why Paige does not come close to being the same compelling heroine I find Katniss to be, but in the spirit of avoiding a novel sized post (of which I am not only entirely capable of doing, but also more than willing to do), I'm going to leave it here for today. Stay tuned for an upcoming explanation of why I chose to compare The Bone Season to Hunger Games in particular, and also an depth analysis of what the HG passages achieves and the BS passage does not - in true English nerd style, of course.

To Be Continued...