Tagged: dystopian fiction
What Makes a Good Dystopia?
I know, I know. ‘Good dystopia’ is an oxymoron, but I think you know what I mean. Dystopias, ever since the release of The Hunger Games, have exploded in popularity both in the teen and adult markets. There are a lot of good ones out there, but there are a lot of bad ones too. But what makes a dystopia good (read: interesting) for the reader?
1. It has to be believable.
Many of you know my gripe about how the faction system in the Divergent trilogy would never, ever work because people are not like that. If dystopian fiction doesn’t have a dystopia that makes sense or could really happen someday, readers are not going to like it. Authors have to know enough about human nature and world politics in order to create dystopias that could really happen. Sadly, a lot of authors just seem to skip this general knowledge requirement and jump in head first.
Why was Orwell’s 1984 so popular? Because it really could happen. It drew elements from the society of the day and predicted some things that are going on to this day. Compare that to Divergent, where there are 5 factions that you pretty much have to join and fit completely into one category unless you’re Divergent. Most people in Veronica Roth’s world are not Divergent, which tells you how much she really knows about human nature. Continue reading
The Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn
(Cover picture courtesy of Random Buzzers.)
The bar code tattoo. Everybody’s getting it. It will make your life easier, they say. It will hook you in. It will become your identity.
But what if you say no? What if you don’t want to become a code? For Kayla, this one choice changes everything. She becomes an outcast in her high school. Dangerous things happen to her family. There’s no option but to run…for her life.
I’ve heard a lot of great and terrible things about this book in the YA community. Again, this prompts the question: Is it worth the hype?
Well, not really.
Much like Matched, it is an average book, but nothing more. It’s not fantastic and it’s not terrible, but it falls somewhere in between. An interesting dystopian society, a decently paced plot and an okay cast of characters…yet there is nothing really exceptional about The Bar Code Tattoo. Some aspects of it are Orwellian, others remind me of that documentary Food Inc. and still others remind me of The Giver. Suzanne Weyn is a competent enough writer, but she doesn’t really stand out for me.
The Bar Code Tattoo is set in a dystopian future where the fears of right-wringers, left-wingers and centrists come to pass. For the right, it is the scary amount of government overreach and a complete lack of respect for the Constitution. For the left, it is the fact that the poor are pretty much left to fend for themselves while corporations take over America. As for the centrists, all this will scare the crap out of them. This is why I admire Suzanne Weyn’s dystopia in an odd sort of way: it combines the fears of all political spectrums into one decently built future.
Kayla is a decent enough protagonist, but is nothing really special. To me she’s pretty much your stock dystopian protagonist: she sees nothing wrong with the society until something happens (like falling in love or someone close to her dying) to make her into a rebel. Highly predictable. The plot is decently paced, but I could predict every plot ‘twist’.
Overall: meh.
I give this book 3/5 stars.
Is YA Fiction too Dark?
(Picture courtesy of Bottom of the Glass.)
This rant article was prompted by Emma Waverman over at Embrace the Chaos writing an article about how she finds YA fiction too dark. This would be okay as it is her own opinion, but what irks me is that she has condemned the YA genre without having read much of said genre. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
Ms. Waverman has absolutely every right as a parent to be concerned about what her twelve-year-old son is reading. She has said that she thinks the YA genre is generally dark (particularly since it has books like The Hunger Games) without having read any YA books, aside from a little bit of Harry Potter—at least that she mentions. My problem is that she seems to dismiss the whole genre out of hand without even truly sampling it. She proclaims she is an avid reader and a ‘book snob’, but why has she not read these books along with her son if she is so concerned? Despite what people think, YA fiction is not all that different from adult fiction, which brings me to my next point. Continue reading