The Declaration

The Declaration by Gemma Malley

Dystopian novels are an interesting bunch.  They present a bleak vision of the future where some current social problem is magnified to an enormous extent.  While these books a great, and it’s always interesting to see what the world could potentially look like, there tend to be a number of cliches that arise from this genre.  The main character tends to be indoctrinated completely, believing wholly in the system they were brought up.  This is a way for the author to establish how his or her universe works.  Then comes the second main character who can see how things are wrong and together with the main character, they fight the system.

The Declaration follows this formula, but still manages to be a good read.  This strength comes from the nature of the world Gemma Malley has created.  The year is 2140 and pharmaceutical advancements in the form of a drug called Longevity allows humans to live forever.  But if everyone lives forever, we’d run out of space pretty quick.  In order to begin taking the drug, you must sign a declaration stating that you will never have a child.  You are required to make this decision by 16, and you must actively say no, or you have made the declaration by default.  The story follows Anna, who was born illegally and is considered a Surplus.  It is implied that other countries readily kill Surplus children, but England, where the story is set, is more evolved and tries to give Surpluses a purpose, training them for menial jobs like house cleaning and hard labor.

Malley is very good at slowly giving out clues about this future world.  She doesn’t spell it all out on the first page.  We learn slowly that the worlds resources are gone, and there are harsh restrictions on energy, food, and water.  Christianity appears to have been replaced with a more naturalistic religion.   Mother Earth is constantly referred to, and people seem to be afraid to disappoint her.  Surpluses like Anna are indoctrinated into believing that they are a strain on the natural order of things, that their very presence is an affront to Mother Nature.  It basically boils down to old people refusing to let go of their power, and making new generations illegal.  This is ageism taken to the extreme.  There are also hints that poorer countries are not given Longevity as freely as wealthier nations.  There is something very sad about this world.  It reminds me a lot of the movie Children of Men.  The world is just tired and in need of new blood.

The outsider character is Peter who refuses to be indoctrinated and convinces Anna that she can fight too.  Frankly, I didn’t care too much about this aspect of the story.  The world, and how it works, held my interest more than Anna’s discovery that there should be children in the world.  This may be that these are little more than cardboard cutouts of characters.  The villain is genuinely sinister, but when her backstory is given, I didn’t sympathize with her because I had already guessed it.  If Malley had made a more intriguing story set in this amazing world, I would have loved this book even more.

Evil Genius

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks

Imagine what Harry Potter would have been like if he had discovered that instead of being born to loving, though dead, parents, he was instead the son of Voldemort.  Harry would be heir to his entire evil empire, and sent not to Hogwarts, but to a school teaching all aspects of evil.  Essentially, that is Evil Genius.  Cadel Piggott gets into some trouble because he is too smart for his own good.  His adoptive parents are encouraged by the police to take Cadel to a therapist after he breaks into several different websites.  His therapist informs him that his biological father is the nefarious Dr. Darkkon, a supervillain currently in prison.  Cadel’s evil father begins to take an active role in Cadel’s education, teaching him the ways of the Force, as it were.  After graduating high school at 13, he is enrolled in the Axis Institute, a school to train future supervillains founded by Dr. Darkkon.

While the setup is very much like Harry Potter, with a poor little orphan boy with horrible surrogate parents being swept off to a school that embraces everything about him, Evil Genius is a very different beast.  Cadel Piggott/Darkkon is a hard character.  He’s not necessarily evil, he’s just super intelligent with no proper outlet for his ideas and interests.  He’s obsessed with systems, like traffic systems and the more complex system of human social interactions.  He learns about them by experimenting with them, and causing problems so that he can learn more.  If that’s by causing a traffic jam or setting off a chain of events that all of his classmates in his high school fail their final exams, it’s all in the interest of expanding his knowledge.  Again, he’s not evil or malicious, his intent is truly to learn, but it’s hard to empathize with him.  He’s almost so smart, he’s another species.

The True Meaning of Smekday

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Earth has been invaded by aliens.  Under the command of Captain Smek, the aliens called the Boov have taken control of the planet, renamed everything after their great leader, and forced humans to move to remote locations.  In America, humans are given Florida, until the Boov discover they like oranges, so they are relocated to Arizona.  The main character, Gratuity Tucci, decides to drive to Florida and Arizona, and hopes to find her mother who had been abducted by the aliens shortly before the invasion.  Along the way, she gets a flat tire and a Boov by the name of J.Lo helps her by repairing her car, making it hover.  They set out on a cross-country adventure and wackiness ensues.

Essentially, this is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for kids.  It’s a mix of science-fiction, humor, and some light social commentary.  I’m not always the biggest fan of humor in science-fiction, however when it works, it’s great.  This book has moments that are just ludicrous, and it is very funny.  As J.Lo, our main alien character, discovers new things about Earth, and the English language, funny things just tend to happen.  He loves urinal cakes for a snack and thinks armadillos are awesome, and he finds it difficult to use American restrooms because the Boov have seven genders, not just two.  The book is long, over 400 pages, and the humor seems to fizzle out towards the end.  The author may have just run out of steam, or he was trying to make it more serious in the end.

There are more serious aspects to the book, with social commentary that is never heavy-handed.  My favorite moments were towards the end when Tip (Gratuity’s nickname) finally reaches Arizona and discovers how Americans are rebuilding.  Each city is run differently.  Phoenix is a military dictatorship.  The president is running a small farming community.  There are some fine citizens who think there should be clear lines dividing where each race can live.  “We need to start the new America out right” they say.  Seeing a culture rebuild itself after a major catastrophe always fascinates me.  What I love about this book is that the rebuilding is not the focus, so it never becomes overwrought and complicated.  It’s subtle.

The True Meaning of Smekday is a great, funny sci-fi book in the vein of Douglas Adams’ books.  It is essentially a road trip story involving a girl trying to find her mother.  Helping her along the way is an alien sidekick.  The humor is fun, never vulgar, but seems to run out towards the end, where it is replaced by a compelling vision of America compressed, against its will, into the state of Arizona.  The length could be too much for some younger kids, but the illustrations keep it accessible.  I would recommend it to fans of humor and sci-fi.

Trade Waiting: Sinestro Corps War Volume 1

Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War Volume 1

Writer:  Geoff Johns, Dave Gibbons

Artist: Ethan Van Sciver

I know next to nothing about DC.  I know vaguely each of the major players, but beyond the Superman and Batman movies, I’m ignorant.  I was told by several people to read the Sinestro Corps storyline in Green Lantern.  There were a lot subtleties that I probably didn’t pick up on, but I have to say that I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would.  It was clearly built on a solid history, and there were points that I had no idea what the characters were talking about, but the current story was strong enough to hold my interest, and got me wanting to read more about Green Lantern.

The bad guy Sinestro has found a Yellow Power Ring and is amassing an army of followers, giving them all rings.  This army stands in opposition to the Green Lantern Corps, and they are called, ironically enough, the Sinestro Corps.  Their goal is to spread fear throughout the universe, to bring all worlds under Sinestro’s rule, and impose order on a chaotic universe.  They kill a lot of Green Lanterns, the Lanterns fight back.  That’s basically the story.

Trade Waiting Retrospective: New Avengers

New Avengers Volume 1: Breakout

New Avengers Volume 2: Sentry

New Avengers Volume 3: Secrets and Lies

New Avengers Volume 4: Collective

New Avengers Volume 5: Civil War

New Avengers Volume 6: Revolution

The past weekend I decided to reread all of Brian Michael Bendis’s New Avengers, the six trades that are out.  This was to prepare for the forthcoming seventh trade and to prepare myself for the Secret Invasion.  Clues abound in the series on the extent of the Skrull infiltration.   New Avengers truly is Marvel’s flagship title.  It touches on every major Marvel event in the past three years and ties them all together, leading the universe to the inevitable showdown between Earth’s heroes and the Skrull invaders.

The make-up of the team is interesting.  Marvel clearly gathered some of their most powerful and popular characters and united them in a single book.  Wolverine and Spider-man are both well placed in the public eye because of their highly successful movies.  Iron Man and Captain America are both standards in the Marvel Universe so they get in.  The inclusion of the little known Jessica Drew as Spider-woman was interesting.  I had never heard of her before New Avengers, but her role as a triple agent, lying to everyone about what her true motivations are, make her one of the best characters in the series.

Trade Waiting: Endangered Species

Endangered Species

Written By: Mike Carey, Chris Yost, and Christos Gage

Art By: Scot Eaton, Mark Bagley, Mike Perkins, and Andrea De Vito

Issues:  X-Men: Endangered Species One-Shot, 17 8-page chapters.

Endangered Species is the X-Men event that works to lead into Messiah Complex.  The story follows Beast as he searches for a cure to the depowering of the world’s mutants.  He begins a world tour, meeting with all of Marvel’s top minds, heroic and villainous.  Beast pairs with his corrupt counterpart from the Age of Apocalypse, Dark Beast, and search the world for answers, from the ruins of Genosha to the Neverland mutant containment facility.

The series does some good things and some bad things.  Most of the bad comes from the format.  17 short 8-page stories doesn’t give much time for development.  The characters don’t really go anywhere.  I said the same thing about Illuminati, but I feel this is more from inadequate space to develop the characters more than too many heavy-hitters on the page.  The story is likewise just filler.  While pegged as the lead in to Messiah Complex, I don’t see how this should be required reading.

Hero

Hero by Perry Moore

There’s really nothing the super hero genre hasn’t already done.  It hasn’t really forged any new ground, and has instead continued using the same archetypes of heroes granted godlike powers and all kinds of insecurities.  “I can fly at the speed of sound, can’t be killed, and I just can’t get Lois Lane/Mary Jane/Jean Grey/etc.”  Don’t get me wrong, I love my superhero comics, but the major characters haven’t really evolved.  The same could be said for coming out literature.  Starting with Alex Sanchez’s Rainbow Boys, the number of books involving gay characters coming to grips with their sexuality has grown substantially.  But they are still basically Dawson’s Creek with gay characters.  “Oh, I love you but I can never be with you…Oh woe is me…”  Perry Moore’s Hero manages to merge the two genres into a pretty seamless package.  While it doesn’t forge new ground in either genre, as a combined effort, it’s a great young adult novel.

Thom Creed is not your average kid.  He goes to high school and he plays basketball, but he is far from being a normal teenager.  His father was once a superhero.  He was apprenticed to a character similar to Superman, but was disgraced and driven from the League, a massive group of heroes who protect the Earth and are modeled after DC’s pantheon.  The mystery of Thom’s father’s fall from grace is central to the plot, and is intriguing enough to keep reading.