Home » Posts tagged "Stoker Awards 2018" (Page 10)

Book Links: Stoker Awards 2018 Final Ballot for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel

In our continuing effort to review as many of the books on the final ballot for the Stoker Award, Monster Librarian has hit another landmark we have now reviewed all five of the novels on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. Want to know what we think? Here are links to the reviews. There are many fine books that did not make the final ballot, but of those that did, I think the standout is clear.

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Broken Lands by Jonathan Maberry

The Night Weaver by Monique Snyman

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

 

Book Review: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Balzer + Bray, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0062570604

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, MP3 CD

 

 

Editor’s note: Due to its topic and content, Dread Nation contains racial slurs and outdated language. I’m using “Negro” in this review as it is the term used throughout the book.

 

In this alternate history, the Civil War ended after the dead rose at Gettysburg, forcing the Union and the Confederacy into a truce while they fought off cannibalistic “shamblers.” A law passed shortly after required all Negro and Native children, starting at age 12, to be trained to fight the shamblers in single-sex combat schools, for the protection of white Americans (Ireland writes in an author’s note that she got the idea for the schools after reading about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a boarding school intended to erase Native American culture and language and assimilate the children). Just as before the war, there are opposing movements regarding the treatment of Negroes: the Egalitarians, who believe they should be treated equally, and the Survivalists, who believe they are naturally inferior to white people.

Sixteen-year-old Jane McKeene, the biracial, dark-skinned daughter of a white woman married to an absent Kentucky plantation owner, has been training at an exclusive combat school that trains girls as Attendants, bodyguard companions for wealthy white women and girls who are trained not just in combat but in social skills and etiquette. Intelligent and talented in combat, Jane is rebellious when it comes to conforming to society’s demands and has more interest in helping others survive than in good manners, good looks, and appropriate conduct. Her frenemy, Kate, is not only talented in combat but attractive, well-dressed, well-mannered, and light-skinned enough to pass for white– enough to earn Jane’s enmity– and stubborn enough to eventually earn her respect. Jane’s insistent ex, Jackson, comes to her in secret to ask for help in discovering what happened to his younger sister, Lily, who lives with the Spencers, a prosperous white farming family of Egalitarians, passing for white. The family has disappeared, and he’s afraid they’ve been taken by shamblers. Jane, Kate, and Jackson sneak out to the family’s farm to discover that the family has disappeared, and that the mayor, a Survivalist, is covering it up.

In the meantime, Jane and Kate save the lives of the attendees of a lecture about a vaccine to inoculate people from becoming shamblers when bitten, including the mayor’s wife, and are invited to attend a dinner party at his house. They use the opportunity to sneak Jackson in so he can search for evidence about the mayor’s involvement with the disappearance of his sister and the Spencer family. but are caught and sent to a remote Survivalist utopian communty, Summerland, where white people live in relative luxury, protected from shamblers by cruelly treated and poorly armed Negroes. Jane is able to convince the authority figures of Summerland that Kate is actually white, saving her from the deadly labor of protecting Summerland from shamblers, and giving her a set of opportunities and problems that come along with attempting to pass as an attractive white girl in a community built on unabashed white supremacy.

I suppose what technically qualifies Dread Nation as a horror novel are the “shamblers,” who, while we aren’t certain by the end of the book, are probably carriers of an infectious plague that turns them into mindless, uncoordinated, cannibals with an endless urge to feed. But the zombies merely illuminate the true horrors that take place in the book, those grounded in arrogance and vicious white supremacy. The sheriff and the preacher are truly cruel men who use every opportunity to punish the Negro characters and establish their superiority, but even the overseers are casually brutal, and the white townspeople are willfully blind. Even before the girls are sent to Summerland, it turns out that characters who are supposed to care for them are absolutely horrible under their genteel surfaces. Every time Jane attempts to save lives by stepping in between another person and a shambler, she is punished for overstepping her place.  Ireland demonstrates that even sympathetic white characters are complicit in the preservation of what they know is an unfair and cruel system.  Mr. Gideon, a white scientist and engineer who wanted to provide electricity to frontier communities using natural resources, is an ally in many ways, but is trapped in Summerland, forced to use shamblers’ “manpower” to run the town’s generator, which preserves the image that all is going as it should and perpetuates the racist system the town is built on.  Jane and Kate are both aware of how they can use negative stereotypes to manipulate white characters, and Kate is very conscious of how she can use her “whiteness” to her advantage, as well as how vulnerable she is.

In this #OwnVoices novel, Ireland portrays shifting vulnerabilities and loyalties as marginalized individuals attempt to navigate the racist system they are forced to function within are evident here in a way they might not have been if a different person had written this book. The Lenape character Daniel Redfern is somewhat of a mystery. One might think he and Jane would be natural allies, but while he saves her life early in the book, he is also responsible for her getting caught and sent to Summerland. Jane’s relationship with her mother, told in flashbacks and in bits and pieces, ends up putting a surprising light on what you think her story actually is. Jane’s relationships with both her mother and Kate contribute to a nuanced portrait of the damage, as well as the advantage, of colorism and “passing.” The other Negroes Jane works with in Summerland are more than a mass of victims– Ireland gives those that Jane interacts with names and personalities, and their agendas and fears sometimes set them against each other. The way the difficulty of being female intersects with the difficulty of surviving as a Negro is amply illustrated, not just through one set of eyes but through the experiences and stories Jane shares with many of the other characters. In addition to race and gender, while it isn’t an emphasis of the story, Jane expresses interest in both women and men, and Kate is pretty solid that she has no interest in romance or a relationship with either sex. As this is the first book in a series, it will be interesting to see how (or if) Ireland develops that further.

Dread Nation is a great read as a YA horror novel, and if that’s all you want from it, you can certainly read it that way. But it’s also a really intelligent, well-plotted book with great characters that has the ability to appeal to a widespread audience (including people who do not traditionally read either YA literature or horror) due to its nuanced exploration of race and white supremacy, character development, world building, approach to the past, relevance to the present, and its just generally fantastic writing. I have sold so many people on trying this book who would never in a million years have picked up a straight zombie novel. It’s not short, so I don’t know that reluctant readers will jump on it, but for the YA reader who likes independent-minded female protagonists, alternate histories, doesn’t mind a little gore, and can handle the racial slurs, this is an outstanding choice that more than deserves its place on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Award. Highly, highly recommended.

Contains: Gore, violence, murder, torture, slavery, racial slurs, references to sexual violence.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: Dread Nation is on the final ballot of the 2018 Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. 

 

 

Book Review: The Devil and the Deep edited by Ellen Datlow

The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea edited by Ellen Datlow

Nightshade Books, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-59780-946-7

Availability: Hardcover, paperback, audiobook, Kindle edition

 

On the surface, it seems like a good idea.  A collection of short horror stories with the ocean as a common theme, written by authors with solid track records.  Unfortunately, it fails to live up to its premise.  In terms of story quality, there are roughly four treasures and a few nice baubles, but you have to dig through a lot of sand to find them.

These stories all come in at around 20 pages, so there isn’t a lot of space for character development or backstory, and things often happen for no reason.  That’s part of what makes writing short stories challenging.   But, you still need to create an interesting plot and make sure that each event ties into another, using limited space.  The stories here that qualify as treasure do that very well.  Christopher Golden’s ‘The Curious Allure of the Sea” is a perfect example.  A young woman finds a necklace bearing a unique symbol on her dead father’s boat.  She has it tattooed on her arm, and soon many different living (and sometimes dead) creatures are flocking from everywhere to be with her, and sometimes attack her.  The weirdness escalates, and she is soon forced to make difficult choices to try to save her own life.  This story is a perfect example of how to write an excellent short story.  You never get an explanation for why her dad had the necklace, or what the symbol means, but who cares?  Details like that can be skipped as long as the story makes sense and moves along, and it does.  Golden keeps in just enough to keep the plot rolling, and anything else is cheerfully tossed over the side.  Seanan McGuire’s “Sister, Dearest Sister, Let Me Show You to the Sea,” and Brian Hodge’s “He Sings of Salt and Wormwood” also do an excellent job of getting in fast, blowing the reader away, and getting out without any unnecessary filler.  Michael Marshall Smith’s “Shit Happens” also deserves praise. It’s an excellent story, and written in an off-kilter, hilarious way that reminds me of how Stephen King used to write for some of his oddball characters.  People don’t have sex, they are interested in “activities that would have a bedstead banging against a cabin wall into the small hours.”  Advice on hot sauce consists of  “some of those local brand bad boys will put you in a world of sphincter pain.”   It’s a great horror story, and the author’s hilarious way of narrating it will have you laughing out loud at times.

As for the other stories, a few are decent, but the rest suffer from the same problem: a lack of coherence in the plot.  They aren’t sleek, fast jetboats: they are more like a collection of parts thrown together to get from one harbor to another.  The authors do have some very original ideas and the tales start well, but then they get too metaphysical and abstract, which drags the story down.  Quite often, you will get to the end of a story and find yourself asking “what just happened?” The stories go in a sensible fashion for a while, then wander off the deep end into nonsensical events.  It’s a shame, because many of the stories had promise, but wound up as unrealized ideas, leaving this reader annoyed.

If you have the money to spare, it may be worth picking this one up for the few gems. Otherwise, the reader would probably be best to pass on this one.

Contains:  violence

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Editor’s note: The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea is on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in an Anthlogy.