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Book Review: Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

Deathless Divide (Dread Nation #2) by Justina Ireland

Balzer + Bray, 2020

ISBN-13: 9780062570635

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

 

Deathless Divide is the sequel to Dread Nation (reviewed here).  The story is told through both Jane and Katherine’s points of view.

After the fall of the Survivalists’ community of Summerland, Jane McKeene thought her journey would be easier—  better somehow– but nothing is ever easy for a Miss Preston’s girl. She prepares to leave the ruins of Summerland behind and head west to California. However, she doesn’t go alone. She is joined by her friend Jackson, his sister Lily, the Duchess and her girls, and Katherine Deveraux.

The first half of the book focuses on the journey to Nicodemus,  a community where Black and Native American peoples are not seen as less than. Before the group arrives in Nicodemus, Jane is faced with a loss that is more than she can bear, and one that will haunt her throughout her new path. Nicodemus also is not what it seems. It appears to have a well-protected wall, with some kind of railgun contraption that runs continuously, and was clearly created by someone scientifically minded. Upon their arrival, the team is met with survivors from Summerland who recognize Jane, and call for her to hang for the murder of a prominent figure in their former community. Jane is taken into custody by Daniel Redfern, now sheriff, and what follows helps Jane determine her next move, for good or ill.

Katherine and Jane have always had a contentious relationship, so when it comes to joining Jane and the others, she strives to do her best to be cordial and ladylike. However, Jane’s decision-making causes Katherine some worry, and their verbal sparring between them takes its toll. At one point, Jane’s mood becomes so unbearable to Katherine that she encourages the wagons to move on ahead while Kate and Jane trade fisticuffs to help Jane work out her emotions. It is clear that the women need each other now more than ever. Their relationship is tested, however, on more than one occasion.

I am loathe to discuss more of the content as it will give away a lot of the twists and turns this novel takes, and there are quite a few. Thankfully, they don’t feel forced or cheap. Ireland weaves a great tale and has a way of writing that keeps the reader’s attention from the first page. This book evoked so many emotions. Jane and Katherine were incredible characters in Dread Nation, but they seem to have so much more depth in this book. Seeing the story from both points of view provided an excellent way to establish them further as their own characters and see how they each handle difficult situations and process emotions and hardships. The development of their friendship throughout the book is beautiful and realistically portrayed. Of course, the scenes where they both put down the shamblers are fantastic.

I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoyed the first book. I would recommend both books for anyone who likes alternative historical fiction and a good zombie story. Anyone looking for #ownvoices stories should pick this one up. We also see LGBTQ+ themes as Jane is involved a loving relationship with another female character, and Katherine is a great depiction of an ace character. Deathless Divide is suitable for young adult audiences.

Contains: blood, gore, murder, racial slurs, slavery, torture, violence

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on May 18, 2020 by , Reply

Musings: The Cruelty Is The Point: The Burning by Laura Bates

The Burning by Laura Bates

Sourcebooks Fire, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1728206738

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

Reading Laura Bates’ The Burning was like a dizzying fall down a rabbit hole to hell.  Anna, the main character, has moved to a new town and a new school to escape a scandal at her old school, only to find that the perpetrator has established social media profiles for her, posting provocative statements and photos that portray her in a very negative light  to classmates who already were incredibly nasty to each other, giving them the excuse they’ve been looking for to bully her (there is a parallel storyline about her visions during a search for information about a woman also unfairly turned on by her community who was burned for witchcraft in the 1650s). After attempts to deal with the cyberbullying on her own,  Anna eventually speaks up and even uses social media to reclaim her image, but  even after the uproar finally dies down, she can’t really escape what’s out there. Once you’re on the Internet, you don’t easily get your privacy back. I don’t know how common it is for cyberbullying to swing that far out of control, but it is terrifying.

Last year’s  The Ghost Hunter’s Daughter  by Caroline Flarity (review here) didn’t go quite as far wirh cyberbullying: the main character (also named Anna) has a reputation for being odd, and she is bullied, but she’s a stronger character and much of  the mockery she faces is due to her reputation as the spooky daughter of an eccentric ghost-hunter (if you have gone to school with the same kids your whole life, you’ll know how hard it is to change the way they look at you). This Anna faces personal and physical threats in a different way (a bully obsessed with her sets her house on fire) as well as ostracism due to social media (a boy she likes tries to convince her to take off her shirt, and later shows video he took to their classmates) but the cyberbullying doesn’t go nearly as far as The Burning in tearing her down. Unlike Anna in The Burning, who is just trying to make it, and reclaim her identity, with her situation central to the story,  Anna in The Ghost Hunter’s Daughter also has to fight a supernatural force and save the day.

Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin (reviewed here), also from last year, is a revenge tale based on Macbeth, where four girls conspire to eliminate the athletes who raped one of them. The girls use the Internet to track down and identify the boys, and erase Elle’s presence in social media (this seems unlikely, but certainly the plot wouldn’t work without this). Changing her name to Jade, and altering her appearance, she transfers to the school the team attends, and manipulates the team members and the girls they’re involved with until one of the boys starts killing off the others. It’s interesting that a lot depends on who has a a cellphone and where it is. Not only is it horrifying to know these boys were either participants or complicit, but the way Elle is able to manipulate them into turning on each other demonstrates vividly the poor judgment, intense emotion, and peer pressure teens experience.

These girls go through some horrific events, and the cruelty and fear of the teens in these stories is what I find really frightening. The Burning caused me to have conversations with both my middle schoolers about their experiences at school. They don’t have much access to social media, so they wouldn’t be exposed to some of the more appalling incidents, but it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.  My daughter, who was bullied in elementary school asked what the motivation is for someone to act as maliciously as some of the kids in The Burning. That’s the real horror for me as a parent: for some, there is no reason, or sometimes the cruelty is the point.

 

A final note:  Laura Bates is an English feminist activist and writer who founded the Everyday Sexism Project. At the end of The Burning she offers a list of websites for organizations who offer information and support to girls dealing with issues that appear in the book, and many others,

The Burning contains: cyberbullying, bullying, descriptions of pornographic images, references to abortion, rape, torture, and death.

 

 

 

Posted on April 25, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Five Midnights by Ann Davila Cardinal

Five Midnights by Ann Cardinal Davila

Tor Teen, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1250296078

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, and audiobook

“When the U.S. gets a cold, Puerto Rico gets pneumonia.” In the United States, the mainland tends to forget that Puerto Rico is part of the country, and many Puerto Ricans have learned that federal government agencies don’t really want to get involved when disaster hits due to this (witness the travesty of the aftermath of Hurricane Maria). Five Midnights takes place before the hurricane hit, but it is easy to see that mainlanders, mostly white and wealthy, are viewed with suspicion due to their contribution to gentrification, which is driving locals out of even middle class neighborhoods to areas where gangs, drugs and crime are profitable and attractive tp teenagers trying to make it in a struggling economy. It’s no surprise when Vico, a successful teenage drug dealer, dies violently while on his way to a deal, but what only the reader knows is that the death is due to a shadowy, clawed, supernatural creature.

Enter Lupe, a half-Puerto Rican, half-white teenager who has traveled from Vermont to Puerto Rico to spend the summer with her aunt and uncle (who is also the chief of police). Lupe is independent and contrary, and fascinated by crime, an interest her uncle has previously encouraged. The case of the drug dealer touches on a family member, her cousin Izzy, who has disappeared, and her uncle does not want her involved, but that only makes Lupe more determined. Lupe is feminist in a very teenage girl “I can do it myself, don’t you dare help me” kind of way,  an attitude that made an otherwise independent young woman seem like she needed to be rescued (for instance, walking into traffic because it was suggested she wait, and having to be pulled out of the street after nearly getting hit by a car). Her character does grow a lot as she meets a variety of people and experiences parts of Puerto Rico she wouldn’t have seen as a tourist and begins to understand the impact the mainland, and especially mainland investors, are having on the country. Cardinal does a great job in describing pre-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico. I almost felt like I was there. I want to give her props, too, for her portrayal of adults in the story. YA fiction frequently depicts adults as clueless and closed-minded, but when these teens really needed them, the majority of adults listened, and stepped up, without taking over.

Because Lupe resembles her white mother instead of her Puerto Rican father, she  also gets a lesson in colorism. Although she sees herself as Puerto Rican, the other teens she encounters call her “gringa”, white girl. It’s confusing to her at first, because she identifies as half-Puerto Rican, and can’t understand why no one else understands that. However, she comes to recognize that she does have white privilege and as a mainland American takes some things for granted that many Puerto Ricans cannot. At the same time, the friends she makes come to recognize that there are parts of her that are very Puerto Rican after all, even if they’re not immediately visible.

Our other major character is Javier, who grew up with Vico and Izzy, but kicked his drug habit and is working hard to stay clean and make up for the damage he did while he was involved with drugs. Despite a rocky beginning, Lupe and Javier decide to team up to find Izzy and solve Vico’s murder. They become more and more convinced that El Cuco, a shadowy supernatural creature bent on retribution is after Javier and his friends. It is refreshing to see a monster  grounded in local folklore, appearing in a contemporary story, instead of the same tired tropes.

I loved seeing Puerto Rico take center stage when so often it’s ignored, and enjoyed watching Lupe and Javier puzzle out the mystery and each other. The climax is an outstanding, terrifying, mystical, and visually evocative piece of writing. This was Cardinal’s debut novel, and I look forward to her next one, Category Five, set in post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico.  This is a truly Stoker-worthy book. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, murder, mild gore, drug abuse

Editor’s note: Five Midnights was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

Posted on April 15, 2020 by , Reply
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