![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Hunger
Author: Jackie Morse Kessler
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: A teenage anorexic finds herself incarnated as Famine, complete with apocalyptic horse.
Thoughts: I had hoped that this book would be about the incarnation of Famine, who happens to be a teenage anorexic girl; it turned out to be a book about a teenaged anorexic girl who happens to be the incarnation of Famine.
It's not bad--the entire anorexia thing is dealt with sensitively and convincingly, Lisabeth is an interesting character, and the author gets major bonus points for not wrapping things up magically and neatly at the end. Lisabeth's issues are too complex for that.
But then they do get wrapped up neatly in the denouement. A number of the fundamental questions--can one be an avatar of the apocalypse and still be a good person? What is the purpose of the Riders? What is Death trying to accomplish and is it a force for good, evil or neutrality? Will Lisabeth's parents ever fix their terribly broken lives and start relating to their daughter in a healthy way?--are swept neatly under the carpet. Lisabeth deals with the antagonistic War and with her own anorexia, but does not deal with the underlying causes of either problem. Given that this is a rather slim volume for something aimed at the teenage market, in this age of doorstoppers, I feel like the author could have easily taken a little more time to tease out some of the ramifications.
Aside from the old-school throwbackiness of this YA book in terms of length, it also feels a bit dated in its preachiness. Given the moral complexity to be found in the last Harry Potter books and the Hunger Games and other wildly popular works from the last few years, this feels remarkably After School Special. It's not leaden, but the author has a Very Important Message about a girl she knew in high school that she wants to tell us. More than she wants to explain why Death looks like Kurt Cobain and what it means to the world for Famine's scales to change hands.
It's a pity--it's a great concept, and a lot of the writing flows well. But it deserved more development than it got.
Author: Jackie Morse Kessler
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: A teenage anorexic finds herself incarnated as Famine, complete with apocalyptic horse.
Thoughts: I had hoped that this book would be about the incarnation of Famine, who happens to be a teenage anorexic girl; it turned out to be a book about a teenaged anorexic girl who happens to be the incarnation of Famine.
It's not bad--the entire anorexia thing is dealt with sensitively and convincingly, Lisabeth is an interesting character, and the author gets major bonus points for not wrapping things up magically and neatly at the end. Lisabeth's issues are too complex for that.
But then they do get wrapped up neatly in the denouement. A number of the fundamental questions--can one be an avatar of the apocalypse and still be a good person? What is the purpose of the Riders? What is Death trying to accomplish and is it a force for good, evil or neutrality? Will Lisabeth's parents ever fix their terribly broken lives and start relating to their daughter in a healthy way?--are swept neatly under the carpet. Lisabeth deals with the antagonistic War and with her own anorexia, but does not deal with the underlying causes of either problem. Given that this is a rather slim volume for something aimed at the teenage market, in this age of doorstoppers, I feel like the author could have easily taken a little more time to tease out some of the ramifications.
Aside from the old-school throwbackiness of this YA book in terms of length, it also feels a bit dated in its preachiness. Given the moral complexity to be found in the last Harry Potter books and the Hunger Games and other wildly popular works from the last few years, this feels remarkably After School Special. It's not leaden, but the author has a Very Important Message about a girl she knew in high school that she wants to tell us. More than she wants to explain why Death looks like Kurt Cobain and what it means to the world for Famine's scales to change hands.
It's a pity--it's a great concept, and a lot of the writing flows well. But it deserved more development than it got.
