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Book Review: Unchosen by Katharyn Blair

cover art for Unchosen by Katharyn Blair

Unchosen by Katharyn Blair

Katherine Tegen Books, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-0062657640

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Two years ago, the world was cursed with an infection that spread through direct eye contact, turning the infected into bloodthirsty, cannibalistic killers whose personalities and intelligence degrade over time, leaving only the monster behind. An infected person can gain immunity if they look directly into the eyes of three uninfected people, meaning there is a huge market for uninfected people. I thought this was a creative, unusual idea for spreading and controlling the infection.

The infection was caused by the defiling of the remains of Anne de Graaf, a young woman who cursed a pirate captain and jumped to her death rather than allowing her body to be claimed. Her remains were discovered and treasure hunters attempted to rob her body, activating the curse. According to prophecy, only the Chosen One can end the curse (why this infection is the curse is unclear to me, but Blair does such a vivid job creating her apocalyptic world that it didn’t really matter to me).

Harlow, Charlotte, and Vanessa are sisters, living in a survival camp and attempting to avoid the notice of raiders and infected, or Vessels. Harlow, the oldest, is nineteen, attractive, athletic, musical, and a leader in the camp. She’s also the long-term girlfriend of Dean, Charlotte’s crush. Vanessa, the youngest, is a talented gymnast and also the Chosen One, something that’s kept very carefully under wraps. She has night terrors and makes prophecies in her sleep. Charlotte shares a bedroom with her and writes them down. Raiders searching for the Chosen One discover the camp. They know she is there, but not which sister. To protect her sisters, Charlotte claims to be the Chosen One. The other members of the camp, including Dean, Harlow, and Vanessa, are led to a different ship that will take them to the Blood Market to be sold.

Thus begins a series of terrifying adventures mostly based in Charlotte’s memories of Vanessa’s prophecies, some lucky breaks, and a lot of lies. Charlotte uses her status as “Chosen One” to manipulate those who have grown to consider her an ally, including a potential romantic partner, Seth, into her search for Dean rather than aiming straight for the area she will need to get to in order to break the curse.

Charlotte is resourceful and convincing, but she’s also selfish, and her inability to ever follow directions, even when it’s a life-threatening situation for herself or others, is maddening. Her treatment of both Seth and Dean was frustrating to watch, and the message of women claiming their power for themselves was undercut by Charlotte’s continual search for Dean and the back-and-forth with Seth, who clearly respects her much more than she respects him.

There’s also a science fiction aspect to the story. One of the characters, a virologist, is seeking a cure for the infection. The combination of “infection caused by a curse” and “infection cured using science” begs the question of what kind of story is this, really? If science is the cure, why is there a need for a Chosen One?

Despite its flaws, this is an enjoyable colorful, action-packed apocalyptic story with a little romance that teen girls 12 and older will probably enjoy.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on April 15, 2021 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: Book Review: Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

cover art for Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Tales of the Fighting Pumpkins

( Amazon.com  |  Subterranean Press  limited edition hardcover  | Subterranean Press ebook edition )

Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

Subterranean Press, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1596069978

Available: Direct from Subterranean Press (limited edition hardcover, ebook edition), and Kindle edition

 

Into every high school class a cheerleading squad must come to fight against the forces of darkness: aliens, mud monsters, and eldritch creatures.  Squads that don’t survive until graduation are forgotten, and a mysterious force chooses a new cheer captain to recruit a new squad. This tight-knit group of cheerleaders, who may or may not be supernatural themselves, are the Fighting Pumpkins of Johnson’s Crossing, California. These are their stories.

The stories have been published over time, in different places: I first encountered them in the story “Away Game”, a clever, if predictable, story that appears in A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, edited by Jennifer Brozek, and have been seeking out their stories since then. I’m so glad they have now been collected together. Originally a limited edition published by Subterranean Press, the collection is now available as an ebook.

Because there have been many cheerleading squads over a long period of time, the stories can be set in a variety of time periods, with different characters. While the majority of the Fighting Pumpkins stories are linked stories about the same varsity squad, with half-vampire cheer captain Jude, squad historian Colleen, Laurie, who has a command voice, supernaturally strong Marti, and undead Heather, a few take place in other time periods and with other squads, such as the titular “Dying With Her Cheer Pants On”, in which the team dies calling Bloody Mary from a mirror during an alien invasion to exterminate the aliens, and “Switchblade Smile”, which features Jude’s mother Andrea, a vampire, as a cheerleader in the 1930s.

Character development is strong, and there is a lot of humor (how can there not be with a team called the Fighting Pumpkins?). McGuire draws from a kitchen-sink universe where any creature of the imagination can be real,  and remixes tropes to create her stories, but the sisterhood of the girls on the cheer squad is what makes the stories of the Fighting Pumpkins really enjoyable. Although a story might center on a specific character, these stories aren’t about a single individual or chosen one bound to save the world on her own. The girls are a team, and they stick together even when things are scary, or dangerous, or one of them turns out to be a monster. Two related stories that involve cheerleader Heather Monroe stood out as favorites, “Gimme a Z”, in which she rises from the grave and defends her sister Pumpkins from an undead mob, and “Turn the World Around”,  an often poetic story in which she helps a girl who mysteriously shows up in a Fighting Pumpkins uniform make a life-and-death decision that will affect the entire community. “School Colors” covers a cheerleading competition between the Fighting Pumpkins and an alien cheerleading squad that could decide the fate of the planet.

The stories of the Fighting Pumpkins are a little scary, but mostly a lot of fun. Those looking for a break from heavy or intense reading will find a lot to like, as will Buffy lovers.  YA readers may enjoy this collection as well.

 

Contains : strong language, violence, some gore. The story “Fiber” received some criticism from First Nations people regarding McGuire’s interpretation of the wendigo.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on February 21, 2021 by , Reply

Book List: Chosen Ones: Most Unlikely To Be Chosen

We all know the “Chosen One” trope that is prevalent though all kinds of literature and media from King Arthur to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and its mutated dystopian form that divides families and communities, as in Veronica Roth’s Divergent and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to produce its hero.

But being the “one girl to save the world” or “the Boy who Lived” isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Recently, I’m seeing a number of takes on Chosen Ones that are a little different.

cover for Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth  ( Bookshop.org )

Chosen Ones is Veronica Roth’s newest book, and after her runaway success with Divergent, a series grounded in the “chosen one” trope, it’s interesting to see what she does with it.  In it, the government receives a prophecy that could describe any of a number of children. It’s not clear which one is the Chosen One in the prophecy, so all five of the children are trained together to defeat the Evil One. Roth focuses on what happens when the battle is over and the Chosen Ones grow up. Is the battle really over, though?

 

cover art for Slayer and Chosen by Kiersten White  ( Bookshop.org )

Slayer and Chosen are Kiersten White’s contributions to the Buffyverse. Twins Nina and Artemis live in an Irish castle with what’s left of the Council of Watchers, two months after Buffy shut down all interdimensional portals and destroyed magic, killing off many of the Watchers and potential Slayers, and disappeared. Nina has always felt inferior to Artemis, believing she is only good at being the castle medic, and pretty much everyone around her has shared that belief, but it turns out that she is much more than anyone could have expected.

 

cover art for Un Lun Dun by China Mieville     ( Bookshop.org )

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville is an older title, but one I just encountered myself. It looks like it’s going to be a conventional “Chosen One” story, but plays with the tropes in some surprising ways. Londoners Zanna (the prophesied Chosen One) and her friend Deeba enter UnLondon, a surreal alternate London that gives a new life to the broken and out-of-date things that have been discarded or forgotten by the original Londoners. UnLondon is threatened by a fantastical, sentient version of a very real problem; Smog. Unfortunately for Zanna, the prophecies aren’t exactly right, and Mieville knocks home to the reader that you don’t have to be chosen to save the world. With living words and clothes made from the pages of books, this has a lot in common with The Phantom Tollbooth, but it has some very dark and grim moments among the playfulness, and its urban, underground alternate reality is very reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. 

images for covers of Simon Snow series books by Rainbow Rowell ( Bookshop.org )

Carry On and Wayward Son are the first two books of a trilogy about Simon Snow (the third, As The Way The Wind Blows, comes out in 2021), the hero of a fictional series created in Rainbow Rowell’s standalone novel Fangirl, where the main character writes fanfic about the series, which itself seems to be loosely based on the Harry Potter books. In Carry On, supposedly the last book in a series of eight, we learn that Simon was told by a Dumbledore-type character that he was chosen to defeat the evil Humdrum. While Simon has his good friend Penelope watching his back, he’s basically no good at magic, his girlfriend has dumped him, he isn’t all that excited about being a Chosen One. Fangirl’s Cath mainly focused on a developing romantic relationship between Simon and his vampire nemesis/roommate Baz, and that is pretty essential to the plot. Wayward Son follows Simon after his final battle with the Humdrum, at a loss of what to do with himself or even communicate with the people who care about him. In an attempt to break him out of this state of mind, Penelope and Baz suggest a road trip across America. It’s kind of an interesting idea to explore “what happens next” in this way, but the lack of communication, especially between Simon and Baz, throughout the majority of the book, drove me bonkers. In both books, Baz is the most interesting and shows the most growth. It is interesting to see Rowell play with and critique the Chosen One tropes while shifting the focus, and the overt LGBTQ+ love story.

cover art for Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan box set  ( Bookshop.org )

The Trials of Apollo series by Rick Riordan is the most adult of Riordan’s series in the Percy Jackson universe. Beginning with The Hidden Oracle, the fifth and last book in this series, The Tower of Nero, was just released a few months ago. In this series, the arrogant, selfish, handsome Apollo, god of music, prophecy, the sun, and archery is tossed from Olympus by an angry Zeus in the form of a powerless, pimply teenager and forced to serve a sullen tween girl while making up for the harm he has thoughtlessly caused for others, not just in the past but in the present, which turns out to include not just redeeming himself but saving the world. This series has some great LGBTQ+ representation, not just in Apollo but with other characters.

 

cover art for Unchosen by Katharyn Blair  ( Bookshop.org )

Unchosen by Katharyn Blair, soon to be released, takes place in an apocalyptic dystopian future, where a plague called the Crimson that is spread by eye contact is turning people into ravenous, flesh-eating, intelligent zombies. Charlotte, the narrator, is the unnoticed middle sister to Harlow, who leads a band of survivors, and Vanessa, the Chosen One. Charlotte and Vanessa share a bedroom, and as Vanessa mutters prophecies in her sleep, Charlotte writes them down. When raiders seeking the Chosen One attack their encampment, Charlotte claims to be the Chosen One in order to protect Vanessa.

 

   ( Bookshop.org )

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson has a completely different approach and it is the closest to straight horror on this list. This story takes place in an isolated, patriarchal, oppressive, religious community.  The protagonist, Immanuelle, doesn’t know she was chosen for anything special, and doesn’t want to be. She has not been told or even given a choice in the role she will play in the destruction of her community.

 

Posted on December 27, 2020 by , Reply