Tagged: suzanne weyn
Posting for 20four12
Today it’s my turn to guest post for Caleb over at 20four12, so I reviewed Empty by Suzanne Weyn. Have you ever read a book that had an amazing premise and just fell flat on its face? Well, then you’ll be able to sympathize with my reading experience. To see the great premise in question, head on over to 20four12! And while you’re over there, you should check out Caleb’s other reviews and add some more books to your science fiction lists.
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.
Reincarnation by Suzanne Weyn
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
It starts in prehistory. A young man and a young woman fight over a precious jewel. Their time together is short, but the reverberations are lasting.
Years pass. Generations pass. Centuries pass. But fate keeps drawing them together. Whenever their paths cross, there is that strong attraction. That unexplainable affinity. That feeling that they’ve been together before.
Theirs is a love haunted by history. From Egyptian slavery to Greek society. From Massachusetts witch trials to Civil War battlefields. From Paris in the 1930s to the present day. Circumstances will fight them…but a greater force will reunite them. Because some people are meant for each other—no matter how long it takes.
This is not a book you read for historical accuracy, fast pacing or an unpredictable plot. This is a book you read for guilty pleasure. And as long as you keep that in mind, you’ll enjoy Reincarnation.
Suzanne Weyn’s novel is by no means historically accurate. For example, when they are in ancient Egypt—she a singer named Tetisherti and he a Nubian slave called Taharaq—it made me snort aloud when he called Thebes ‘Luxor’, claiming that was its ancient Egyptian name. Bull crap. Thebes was called Weset. And the idea that Taharaq saw the pyramids when he was coming up from Nubia to Weset is enough to make an Egyptologist cry. And for reasons unknown, Suzanne Weyn calls Abu Simbel ‘Abu Simpel’ and Sekhmet ‘Sempkhet’. I have never, ever seen those names translated in such a way (even in the Wikipedia articles I’ve linked to). Utter nonsense. But again, this is not meant to be historically accurate.
One thing that actually made me enjoy Reincarnation was the characterization. All of the different reincarnations are three dimensional and sympathetic. The attraction between them was very real and the romance actually didn’t feel forced. There were certain traits that stayed with the characters in all of their lifetimes, but their circumstances in those different lifetimes were very different.
The plot is predictable, no doubt. Come on, you know how stories like this are going to end. However, because of the nice writing style and interesting characters, I actually enjoyed Reincarnation as a sort of guilty pleasure. It’s never going to win any literary awards (nor should it) but as long as you take it as what it is—light reading—you’ll enjoy it.
I give this book 4/5 stars.