Dreadful Sorry, Ann Aguirre

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while now (bless you, poor souls) know that one of my favorite "whipping books", a baseline for all I do not like about young adult sci-fi/dystopia fiction, is Rick Yancey's 5th Wave. I have ranted about it before ad nauseam, and it has been one of the few books that has evoked in me real, visceral anger in me while I was reading it.

Until recently, that is.

Before we get this slugfest going, though, I do want to make clear that I hate criticizing a book to death. As a writer myself, I know there was someone who--hopefully--put time, effort, and passion into their work, and I would rather write lavish praise for something I've read than put it through the wringer. However, Enclave by Ann Aguirre leaves me no choice in the matter. For pity's sake, the author is a New York Times bestseller! She has a degree in English Literature and is a fan of Doctor Who!

In the immortal words of Treebeard, "A wizard should know better!"

Yes, reading this book makes me angry. It makes me so angry that my fiancee will go on video calls with me just to watch me read it. In this case, I thank Enclave for strengthening our relationship, as my fiancee hasn't broken off our engagement after 1) seeing what happens when I get mad, and 2) hearing my terminal case of potty mouth. It's these kinds of stories that can turn a reasonable, levelheaded guy into the Nostalgia Critic, I swear.

Here's the quick synopsis: it's a YA dystopisa. Blah blah fighting main-character-girl, blah blah world almost ended, blah blah brooding soon-to-be-boyfriend, blah blah cast out of her society, blah blah wandering ruins. The blurb on the cover says this book is for fans of The Hunger Games, but honestly, I'm getting a lot of watered-down Maze Runner--if the main character from Divergent were the lead instead.

What's this dystopian world like? Well, this is where my first major criticism of Enclave comes in: hardly anything gets described. If Aguirre has a grand, breathtaking image in mind for her world, heaven knows she's not telling us. The book has two main settings--underground tunnels and overworld wreckage--but the few-if-any descriptions are all stock footage, bland and hard to visualize. The main character (whose name is Deuce, by the way) does not let herself go when it comes to new and unusual things, often covering them in her first-person narrative in a way that feels almost disinterested. I will give Aguirre credit: the books starts imaginative in the underground society's structure and rituals, but that all gets lost in the second half of the book when Deuce and her boring brooding boyfriend Fade reach the surface of the scorched earth.

Up there, our heroes even run into a gang--and all I know about them is they are 1) male, 2) rapists (sort of--Deuce remains unaffected), 3) they paint themselves somehow, and 4) they carry weapons of some sort. That's it. Their leader, Stalker, has facial scars that Deuce somehow knows are self-inflicted, but that's it. In my mind's eye, I've been picturing a roving band of creepy clowns, pies in one hand and knives in the other, and that image has never been contradicted. Plus, the descriptions often contradict themselves. Deuce can see the moon and stars on page 142 and, with no transition or explanation, it's raining on page 143. There's daylight on page 194, but--without a scene shift or significant passage of time--the sun hasn't come up yet in page 198.

Aguirre never milks a scene for all its worth. Major characters and supposedly surprising plot twists just come and go in the eyes of the tell-don't-show protagonist. This has been the case with nearly all the book's descriptions, especially in the second half; they come either too late or not all. I have a theory that Enclave's editor either gave up halfway through the book or, having been told this was book one of a series, thought he/she was done with the job after editing the first part.

There are a whole host of other issues I have with the book, including:
- Unrealistic combat (mid-combat reflectiveness, dumb banter, a slave becoming a super-soldier when she holds a club, and, I'm not kidding, someone wins a fight with a kick to the crotch);
- Zombies (yes, there are friggin' zombies from the get-go);
- Adverbs are friggin' everywhere;
- Deuce starts the book almost illiterate, and then--for no reason--can read well in the second half (also, in her narration, she does not know what "evacuation" means but does use words like "chagrined");
- Deuce and Fade are literal messiah figures, offering themselves up for friends and such with hardly any motivation or deep thought/conflict;
- Nonsensical character actions (Deuce and Fade are all gung-ho about the zombies getting supposedly smarter, but after their elders dismiss their report for no friggin' reason, the romantic duo seem to forget about the threat too);
- Character conversations, in the middle of which are paragraphs (FULL PARAGRAPHS) of Deuce monologuing for no d*** reason;
- Stupid and short-lived love triangles (Deuce isn't the only one after Fade's organic pogo stick, if you get my drift; she becomes a real b**** if there's a remotely attractive female within 50 yards of her man--but it's OK, because that female is usually dead within a couple chapters!);
- Secondary characters whose personalities and traits are boring and forgettable;
- Primary characters whose personalities and traits are boring and forgettable;
- Authority figures who are royal A-holes for no reason other than the fact they are authority figures;
- A shoehorned-in rich-people-are-evil message dropped on page 189 for no d*** reason.

There are more points I'm probably forgetting, but here's one more I have to mention; it's the reason I can never forgive Enclave even if it explodes into gumdrops or something. I refer to page 153: Deuce gets captured by a gang whose leader, of course, wants to have his way with her. He leaves her to a slave girl who's supposed to clean her up. Deuce sees this girl, bruised and quite obviously abused in every imaginable way.

What does she think? I'll quote the book:

"She left my hands tied. Smart girl. Well, relatively. She couldn't be too smart if she took those bruises without complaining, but as I knew, you got used to anything."

It was at this point I stood up and hurled the book across the room. There you have it folks; our main character, who has already been set up as a strong, confident woman in the vein of Captain Marvel, is shaming an abuse victim while knowing next to nothing about her. This book was written by a woman, people! What the flying f***?

I...just...RRRR.

(*bites book in half and spits out fragments*)

Deep breath...

I could keep ranting, but we're running out of time here. I will admit this book educated me to the proper use of the word "ahold"; I thought Aguire was using it incorrectly on page 193, but I checked a dictionary and was proven wrong. Point goes to Enclave there.

Final thing to bear in mind: I'm only up to page 200 out of 259. It's taking me a while to read this book, especially when I have to wait for my fiancee to be free for a video chat. However, I do believe I am far enough along in this book to give you my too-honest impressions. Who knows, though? Maybe I'll get sold on this book in the last 60 pages; if that's the case, I'll be sure to return and let you know the error of my ways.

I'm not holding my breath, though. Here's all I can say for now: hard pass on this book. After I'm done ranting my way through this first book, I doubt I'll have enough energy or interest to see what happens next.

***

Note added later: Nope, it didn't get better. A forced love triangle, spelled-out lessons meant for infantile readers, and a saccharine ending were but a few nails in the book's casket. To finish it off, even the author's note at the end was messed up. It added details that she should've conveyed in the book if she had any wherewithal, and she spelled the name of William Perry, Arctic explorer, as "William Parry".

So, do I still give a hard pass to this book? No. I say this book needs ripped from the shelves and burned with the supervision of your local exorcist, at least in my semi-professional opinion. Well done, Ann Aguirre. You've finally gotten me off Rick Yancey's case, as Enclave has taken 5th Wave's place as my official Horrible Book of This Generation.

I'm sure Yancey will appreciate your sacrifice.

No post today

Sorry all, but I'm clocking out for this first half of June. Try to guess the reason why:

A) It slipped my mind;
B) I'm slogging through another YA book that requires every once of optimism to continue;
C) I've been working a lot lately;
D) It's finally nice weather outside;
E) All of the above;
F) None of the above.

Hopefully, I'll tell you the answer in mid-June. Have a great summer!

That Was Quick

I don't know what happened, really.

In January, after I got done with my NaNoWriMo project, I re-edited a couple of older manuscripts I had. Boy oh boy did they need editing; for one of them, I basically stripped it down the the bare skeleton, rearranged the skeleton, and put new stuff back on. A time-intensive process, but hot d*** was it worth it! Those books are a million times better (not to mention a little bit longer) than they were when I cracked them open.

With those major projects behind me, I re-opened my NaNo project after its half-year of stagnation, allowing all the speed-written madness to boil over and become apparent in all its hideousness.

...and I'm done with that round of edits already. Didn't even take me a month. Heck, I shotgunned the last few chapters, it was going so smoothly.

What?

It's kind of nice to have a manuscript go past my critical eye so fast, but that doesn't mean I don't find it weird. Maybe that's the way it is on all my second drafts; I remember going through my earlier manuscripts with a similar speed. Maybe I have (believe it or not) grown as a writer, and my speedwritten stuff has more thought behind it than my earlier works.

However, I think the most likely reason of all is I was editing the NaNo manuscript after I'd gotten done reading my new least favorite YA book in history. In my mind, my first draft was friggin' glowing in comparison. That might have been because I didn't have rape-victim-shaming in my work, and I am more than happy to leave it out.

So, there we go. Now I need to find willing reviewers for my manuscript while I go review something else.

One more thing: with all this editing, coupled to my job of newswriting and the fact I keep writing these posts at the last minute, I'm going to be withdrawing my bi-monthly deadline for this blog. I'll keep posting with book reviews and other interesting writing-related stuff, but at the moment, I'm going to give this particular platform a break. Maybe I'll haunt Twitter more often--until the 2020 elections, when I'm not touching that forum with a 100-foot ethernet cable.

Have a great summer!

Just Rambling

It’s mid-May. Where to begin…

I’m still editing like my life depends on it—which it might, really—but I’ve also picked up another YA dystopian novel I plan to read at some point. I’d never heard of this book before I saw it on the library shelf and it’s not in front of me right now, so I can’t remember the title. It was one of those titles that was meant to easily turn up in a Google search: “The E______”, and that’s all that comes to mind. The Enclave? The Excess? The Extravagance? I’m not sure, but I’ve never had the best memory for names in the first place.

There is a review-blurb for the book that caught my eye, though: “Fans of the Hunger Games will love this.” Heaven help us if authors are mandated to provide the whole, contextualized review with their books, because that blurb smelled a little weird. Plus, after reading the synopsis on the inside cover, I think I already know what the book’s twist is (the mutant creatures to be avoided are impoverished humans, right?).

“But Ben,” I hear you saying because that’s how my superpowers work, “why are you picking up a book you’re all but certain you won’t like?” Answer: because I’m still editing. I need to feel a little better about my own haphazard ramblings, much like the ones you’re reading right here.

OK, the reason is a little less shallow than that. The last time I read a book with too many filler words and adverbs, it inspired me to take a look back at my own work—and rediscover all the filler words and adverbs I was using. Now, though, I need to pray my revisions aren’t being clouded by the Associated Press style I have to use for work.

I do also get pleasantly surprised when I find a dystopian YA novel I like—which makes me want to edit my books more. In conclusion, reading makes me want to edit. I’m going to get right back to that.

Happy May!

An Open Letter to Subnautica: Below Zero" Developers

Dear team-behind-Subnautica-Below-Zero,

Ben Sonnek here, longtime Subnautica fan, currently hooked by the in-development Subnautica Below Zero. Here’s a quick summary of this letter: gushing praise, a couple concerns, and an idea.

Let’s start with the praise.

I’ve enjoyed UnknownWorlds’ survival games since the first Subnautica was still in its beta version. There were no alien bases implemented yet, the Seamoth submarine was a recent invention, and my old laptop could hardly keep up with the graphics so the water looked like a wavy blue quilt. However, my love of sci-fi and aquariums convinced me to buy the game soon after I saw the first ad on Steam, and I haven’t regretted it since, especially after I upgraded laptops and can see the water properly (and the framerate doesn’t plummet when a leviathan is around, an occasion that has led to many Seamoth maulings).

Then the beta for Subnautica Below Zero got released.

Needless to say, I have not regretted that purchase either. Now I have the unique privilege of being with this project from more-or-less the beginning, and I like the game’s look and what I’ve seen of the story so far.

FYI, I’m writing this letter between the Seatruck update and whatever update is slated to come next. Here are some cues as to how far I’ve gotten in the story so far:

Now, Part 2: the concerns.

First, I might ask you to pay all gamers’ PTSD therapy bills once you apply the leviathan-class predators to the game. I’ve seen the concept art.

Second (and last), I wonder about your choice to make Robin speak. (To any other readers not familiar with Subnautica Below Zero, Robin is the character whom you play in the game.)

See, I can’t remember the name of the main character in the first Subnautica game unless I look it up—and I consider that a good thing. That poor unfortunate diver never said anything except for grunts of pain, usually because of those friggin’ Crashfish. I liked that a lot as a player; you could project onto the guy more easily if he said nothing and we supplied the voice lines. You felt like you were him, wincing when the edges of the screen went red from an injury. It was like playing an underwater version of Chell from Portal 2, another of my all-time favorite games.

Robin, while an enjoyable character, has conversations with her sister in an overhead space station. Part of the thrill of the first Subnautica was that the character, a crash survivor, was on his own and with minimal backup. You don’t get that when Robin is making cutesy remarks to her unseen sister. Plus, about those remarks—while the first Subnautica protagonist was project-able with his silence, Robin’s dialogue could rub some players a little weird. I know this is very much an early-development concern; hey, I remember a lot of voice logs changing before the final release of Subnautica 1.0. Still, I’d like to address the issue. A lot of games give the first-person character dialogue, I know, but after using a silent protagonist in the first game…is it a wise choice now?

Maybe. I can’t always oppose a fresh take on something. Subnautica itself was a fresh take on survival games.

However, before Below Zero goes deeper into development—minor pun not intended—I wanted to slide this concept past you first, a concept that mostly maintains everything Below Zero has set up so far:

What if we players were Alan, the alien AI?

(Again, for those of you not familiar with Below Zero and didn’t read that PDA screenshot up there, Robin accidentally downloads an alien AI into her head in the game. The AI’s seed code is Al-An, so Robin calls it Alan.)

Anyway, here’s the picture: the game starts with the black screen and the “Unknown Worlds presents” text, like the first Subnautica. Unlike the first Subnautica, though, the sound you hear with the black screen is not the sound of an exploding spaceship. It’s the sound of an alien computer booting up.

The screen fades in, revealing the inside of an alien facility. The player can’t move, but instead watches Robin enter and activate the console. BAM—and the player can see from Robin’s perspective. We can move around as her. We can also hear her dialogue, freaking out over how she can control her mind and mouth…but not her muscles.

The player, playing as the downloaded alien AI, has taken those over. We become an AI that has control of a human host.

Think about it: the AI could have no memory of itself or its functions, like the player. It would also know nothing of Robin, again like the player. The AI and Robin would have to work together to solve the mystery of this section of Planet 4546B, learning more about each other while not alerting Alterra that one of their own is being controlled by alien tech. This way, Robin can keep her dialogue while not contradicting whatever the players are thinking. As the silent AI, we’re free to roll our eyes, laugh, and/or give the thumbs-up, not jolt out of character because Robin said something quippy when her controlling gamer would rather hide in a snowbank. If the AI has no lines, we players will naturally add our own, like we do in the first Subnautica.

The aliens couldn’t communicate in human language in the first game, and I was a little wary about their technology’s voice lines in Below Zero’s early release. Don’t get me wrong, they sound awesome, but I felt a little of the alien mystique was lost with their first words to humans. If the player were a silent AI, the mystique remains, and part of the story could be Robin figuring out how to converse with the alien being possessing the majority of her motor functions.

As a final point, I think the player-as-Alan angle would add a unique tension to the game. As the AI, players cannot explain themselves to the host and will sympathize with her unique plight. When diving into harm’s way, it will be like driving your best friend’s car through a demolition derby; you don’t want to hurt yourself or your friend. You have to pray that, as the story goes, Robin trusts your actions more, maybe moving into the relationship of grudging friendship—although that won’t stop her from strongly questioning your sanity when you have to dive into deeper, darker regions of the sea. Maybe the gameplay can give the AI-player and Robin a chance to communicate through, I don’t know, computer prompts or something. The twists write themselves: the player learns about Robin through voice lines and data logs—while also learning about the AI host’s history. Maybe the possessing alien program was decommissioned and memory-wiped for mismanaging the disease from the first Subnautica story, or something like that.

Then, the ending! As a semi-reversal of the first Subnautica, in which the player left via rocket, the player-AI in Below Zero could leave Robin and allow her to escape in a rocket on her own, watching the smoke trail leave the planet’s atmosphere.

Anyway, that’s my idea, and I think it has plenty of room for an Unknown Worlds spin that will blow everyone’s mind. Take it or leave it; I won’t be heartbroken if Below Zero’s plans are set in stone already. Looking at Subnautica 1.0, I have no cause to worry about 2.0’s trajectory. To wrap it up here, keep up the good work. To inspire you, here’s one of my most encouraging Subnautica screenshots of all time:

No! Wait! I meant this one. My bad.

Whether or not you read this…thanks for everything!

(Note from a few days later: Forget the thanks. The Snowfox update just came out, and...how many nightmares did you guys have to harvest to make the Chelicerate leviathan? Really???)

A Question of Editing

Happy almost Easter, readers! No book review today; lately, I've been waist-deep in stories with both newswriting and manuscript editing. I'm also trying to invent a sort-of board game with Legos, because why not.

However, I'm not leaving today blank. See, before I go back and edit my NaNoWriMo project, I am determined to work over a completely different manuscript, and boy-oh-boy-oh-yikes-oh-run-for-cover does it need a rework. I already have plans slated for scene reworking, segment rearranging, character working, and other stuff that will probably increase my word count. At least I'm getting rid of those words like "finally", "slowly", "suddenly", and "began" which annoy me like you wouldn't believe.

The manuscript is going through such a rework, though, that I am reminded of the classic writer's advice for first drafts: throw them away and start over. I've never followed this advice; I'm more of a recycling kind of guy because I never throw out something I'm going to use again. I'm too concerned to pitch the million errors along with the one good point in the narrative. Besides, is it really necessary in the age of word processors to start over? Unlike ink on paper, words and paragraphs are modular on the screen. Writing is more like building with Legos than sculpting from marble.

But what do I know? That's why I'm asking you. What's your preferred mode of major draft editing? If you want to share your wisdom, feel free to comment on this post or on its links on my Facebook or Twitter pages. By the way, before you tag your editing style as "Wailing and grinding of teeth", remember that's something ALL writers do when perusing their catalog of errors.

Twilight: A Surprisingly Good Book!

It's April 1st.

Do I really need to spell out what's going on here?