As spring emerges, so also do I emerge with warm feelings. After some mild disappointment with Erin Bowman's book Contagion, I temporarily swore off the hardcover YA novels, searching for stories in the lesser-known paperbacks in the same general vicinity. My goal was to find a hidden gem in these neglected and often less-lauded works.
I think I've hit something.
Without further ado, I give you Surfacing by Mark Magro, published 2015 by Jolly Fish Press. When it comes to unknown paperbacks, this one fit the bill; it seems to only have eight reviews on Goodreads (which I refuse to read until I'm done here), Surfacing is Magro's only book so far, and Jolly Fish Press doesn't exactly look like Penguin Random House, although it does have a nice website by my standards.
Here's my one-sentence synopsis of Surfacing: In a dystopian future, a teenage boy (Balt) and girl (Zoe) decide to escape an underground laboratory where they are test subjects, using an AI head named Smith to navigate an abandoned complex full of dangers and secrets. It was an interesting plot, and I don't say that just because this book and one of my manuscripts are close enough in setting to shake hands. I think it has merit to make a wave in the YA ocean...
...but let's start with the niggles.
Ultimately, my biggest issue was the way it was written, as in the prose and syntax. Having emerged from Contagion brushing filler words and adverbs off my clothing, it hurt a little bit to dive right back in. Surfacing has a tendency to rely too heavily on "suddenly", "slowly", "began", verb-adverb links (as in "said softly", "ran quickly", etc.), and other details that tripped me up. The book inspired me to do a word search through a couple of my manuscripts--where I ended up declaring a purge of the 100-ish "began"-s I found there. I might not have room to throw stones, but the fact that I deleted about 90 percent of those pesky words from my manuscripts and am bent on cold-blooded mayhem in the others should testify to how unnecessary that word can be.
Surfacing also has a tendency to, um, Coda itself--which is to say, it sometimes goes light on the descriptive side. It left me enough where my imagination could fill in the blanks, but I was never sure if I was doing so correctly. There's a chance that whatever is in my mind and whatever is in Magro's mind are worlds apart, and that unsettled me a little. Downplaying description also undermined some of the intended alarm; I know I was supposed to be surprised when a ginormous praying mantis burst onto the scene, but the way it was introduced felt...a little normal. No pace changes or paragraph breaks--just bam, mantis, and stuff happened. I wanted to get to know the mantis, and heaven knows I did so afterward, but first impressions count. Other things also get yadda-yadda-ed past as well, such as Zoe's involuntary past-seeing ability. She gives the mechanics of this expository talent only a passing, unchallenged thought before moving on.
However, I place Surfacing on a higher tier than Contagion, if only for one reason: multiple times, I caught myself thinking, "Just one more chapter."
What tension the story has is enough to keep you flipping pages. Most characters, even the less-explored ones, were interesting enough for the reader to make an investment in them. Balt and Zoe had enough emotion and personality to be intriguing, and while Smith the AI sounded a little un-AI-ish at times, I cared about him too. Balt starts as a Vulcan-like logic and science machine and Zoe starts as a loner against everything she's known, but they both have their arcs toward more rounded people. The arcs weren't today's popular "girl gets stronger" and "boy learns his lesson" cookie-cutter printouts; if anything, they both learned their lessons and gained their own strengths. Genuine balance there.
The bit that sold the book, though, was the fact that Magro put one past me. There are two major plot twists that drop in the book's final act (and, as another point in the book's favor, I like a discernable beginning-middle-end in my stories, and Surfacing had that). One plot twist, I must admit, pertains to Zoe, and it was pretty obvious; I called it the "Well, duh!" reveal. But then, hot on its heels came another, more comprehensive reveal of such grand scope that...well, I'm not revealing it here. When it was revealed, though, I had another "Well, duh!" moment--only this time it was directed at myself. Thinking back on the whole book, I really should have seen it coming. But I didn't. Kudos, Magro.
Looking back on my Contagion review, it might appear that I am a hypocritical hipster in favoring Surfacing, saying that I like both stories but think they need an adverb-and-filler-word cleansing. Here is my defense against such an accusation: Surfacing has legit interesting characters and moments of grand, overarching surprise, something that Contagion didn't manifest in my eyes. Plus, Surfacing is a debut work by a new author; some syntactical errors are forgivable, whereas Contagion's architect has no such excuse. That's why I'm not searching for Contagion's sequel, but if I get wind of a Surfacing: Part 2, I'll probably hunt it down.
Oh, but that's another thing Surfacing has over Contagion: its ending is less cliffhanger-y. It's a solid stand-alone; Contagion also stands, but it's sort of one-legged in its posture. That's why I conclude this review with a recommendation: if you're not a word-picky reader who wants a medium-sized read with a nice surprise and solid ending to reward your reading dedication, give a thought to Surfacing.
If you'll excuse me, I need to enter my works-in-progress to delete 3,400,848 cases of the word "suddenly".
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