For starters, I am not the audience for a wilderness survival story. They will never be my thing, and in this book in particular, it's just not very interesting. All of the survival scenarios that could happen do, and in the most predictable ways. But also, the prose is bad, the dialogue is bad, the characterization is bad.
Some things that stuck out in particular:
Roll for Initiative (this is a thing, right? I don't game)
I was very excited about the prologue (is it a prologue? I don't remember), that is Ash and Vale either LARP-ing or playing an RPG (it's D&D, we learn). I thought maybe the whole survival tale would be framed in this way, like, maybe as a way to distance themselves from trauma, or whatever. It's not, but I was hyped up that maybe this book was doing something different.
Bully
Vale is bullied at school, by one boy in particular. It's not ever clear why he bullies her to the extent that he does, and I'm not sure readers need a reason, but we kind of do based on the severity. The bullying goes so far that a picture of Vale changing in the locker room circulates (it's not ever clear who it circulates to, exactly, but it's going around). Is it because Vale is an outsider? We don't know. But why is she an outsider? She's smart and quiet and studious--not exactly a huge target, and those things in themselves don't really make anyone an outsider--so, we still don't know. She's not out as aro/ace at school. She doesn't draw any attention to herself. But we're told over and over that Vale is an outsider and that she's bullied, and it just has no meaning because we never see anything other than her being a pretty average teenager, and the bullying itself ranges across topics. There are so many teen girls just like Vale who fly under the radar (I was one), so what is it about her that makes her any kind of a target? It mostly seems like the author has no idea how or why someone would be bullied in 2019 (when this book came out), so Vale is bullied just because. Maybe it could be connected to her gaming--the bullying started or got bad back then--but there's no follow through with that thought.
Thank You For Being A Friend, I Guess?
The book sort of tries to position Ash as an outsider, as well. Like, they're friends because neither of them really belong. Except that's not true. Ash is a class clown that everyone seems to like, and pointedly chooses to hangout mostly just with Vale because she has no one else. It DOES make more sense that Ash would be an outsider. He's a hardcore gamer, it's referenced that he has bad hygiene (once, that I caught, but it seems like this is forgotten), he's not athletic and kind of whiney (not just when they're lost in the mountains, I'm not a monster).
But also, why are Ash and Vale friends? They have nothing in common-- zero things--and it's for damn sure not that they're both unpopular. Vale used to game until she got bullied away from it, is a diligent student, loves the outdoors and hiking. Ash spends most of his time gaming to the point that everything else in his life suffers. They seem to barely know each other, even though the text says that they've been best friends for years and years. There's a scene where Vale comes out to Ash as aro/ace, but it sort of feels like, if they were such good friends, this would have already happened? And I think that the book would be much better if Ash already knew. What a strong and easy way to show the depth of a friendship, having Vale's narrative sections include something like "Ash is the only person at school who I trust enough to come out to as aro/ace." BOOM, one sentence covers so much more than this book manages to do in three-hundred some pages.
Instead, Vale's coming out to her best friend is shoe-horned into a scene were she's dying of hypothermia, Ash tries to warm her with his body heat, and she fights him thinking he's making a move on her/trying to rape her--a thing he explains isn't happening many times. This scene is frustrating to me for two reasons:(1) Vale is actively dying, Ash is doing the right thing, and explains to her what he's doing and why (2) the fear of rape being used for dramatic tension. It's very clear to readers that Ash is just trying to raise Vale's body temperature so she doesn't die, so her reaction in the moment (yes, fueled be delirium, I think) is weird and also don't use fear of being raped to add drama to a scene, like ever, but especially one that didn't need any more drama.
Are you Telling Me That These Two Teens Get Lost in Canadian Rockies BECAUSE THEY WERE PICKING UP TRASH
The description of this book makes it seem like Vale and Ash get separated from their school group because of a storm, which would be very scary and dramatic and tense. Instead! They get separated because Vale and Ash stay behind to pickup Vale's bully's trash. Obviously, you should not leave trash in a national park for a variety of ecological reasons (and littering is bad everywhere), but what a silly, boring, lazy way for them to get left behind!
SNOWBALL FIGHT
I know that these are teenagers. I know that they are in a harrowing and traumatic situation (because they stopped to pickup garbage). I know that everyone reacts differently to trauma. And not anywhere inside of myself can I find the patience to understand why they stop to have a FUCKING SNOWBALL FIGHT on the side of the mountain. I mean, pretty much the whole reason has to be because there needs to be an avalanche, so obviously as they fight to survive hunger, the elements, and wildlife, they have to have a snowball fight.
I recognize that I am an adult woman who has a fully formed brain and many more years of experience at being alive, AND STILL I cannot imagine even my teenage self, in this situation, stopping to frolic and play. (Also, obviously, Ash should cause the avalanche when he climbs up the mountain peak alone to get cell service).
Teenagers Scare the Living Shit Outta Me
Okay, serious criticism time. Children's Literature (of which YA is a part) is written by adults for children and teen audiences. Adults, at one time, were children and teens and are now no longer, so there is an immediate disconnect between author and audience. Adult authors of children's lit (so, most of it) write what they want children, in the case of this book specifically teenagers, to know. It's why, for a really really long time, children's books were didactic claptrap; society has a dominant culture and that dominant culture is perpetuated through mainstream publishing, so early YA perpetuated an ideal of no sex, no drugs, no drinking (if a character indulged in any of those things, they would be punished). An example: in Freaks and Geeks, Lindsay and Sam's dad ends all his stories of badly behaving teens with "And then...THEY DIED." One thing that the adult author of YA does is limit the agency and knowledge of their teenage characters (this is not universal to every YA book but is also a thing). It's okay for teenagers to act like adults, to pretend that they have their shit together, but also the text needs to reassert adult dominance to maintain the power structure between adults and teenagers. And so, Vale and Ash get separated and eventually lost for a really silly reason because they are teenagers. They manage to survive the wilderness for several days on their own. But do they do anything at all (purposefully) to aid in their eventual rescue? No, they do not. I said in my opening that wilderness survival stories are not for me, and that's true, but I was excited by the prospect that Vale and Ash were going to make it back to safety through the combination of their wits. Instead, they make a pretty significant mess of the whole thing, doing just enough right to stay alive, and no more. They're pretty much rescued because the evidence of all their mistakes leads right to them. This is so frustrating, limiting, and honestly insulting--teenagers can have survival skills, teens can have limited survival skills and go into survival mode and escape dangerous situations. And that's not to say that they couldn't have gotten caught in/caused an avalanche, gotten hurt, or whatever, but every negative thing that happens in this book seems to happen...because they're dumb teens? We're told that Vale enjoys hiking and camping, owns many books on the outdoors and survival, so why does her knowledge seem so limited in practice? Honestly, this book would have been so awesome if Ash and Vale combined their expertise, Vale as an outdoors person and--what if Ash's favorite video game taught him some real life survival skills that he could apply to this situation?--Ash as a gamer, to actually get themselves out of this situation. Instead, they probably would have died if adults hadn't found them. Because nothing is more terrifying to adults than thinking that teens can survive on their own, even in dangerous and life threatening situations.
She Doesn't Even Go Here
Every chapter begins with a quote, which is a fine concept. The first few are from media popular with the youths (though teens today probably watch Mean Girls like I watched The Breakfast Club) and then we get one from the oft quoted and much beloved film...San Andreas? At which point the quotes start to seem like something culled from a quick Google of "survival movie quotes."
Verdict: I would recommend this book because of the aro/ace rep. There aren't a ton of titles that have aro/ace main characters, so it's pretty great that Vale is one. The rest of this book, though...it's not good. I might recommend it to a teen interested in survival stories, but it wouldn't be the top of my list.
Comments
Post a Comment