Read This, Not That: The Devil Is in the Details

There's nothing like a good dystopian novel to illustrate just how dysfunctional a society can become when it tries to impose unrealistic expectations on its members.  And there's nothing like a BAD dystopian novel to show us just how dysfunctional a piece of writing can be.  Take for example, The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons.

In a world where females are scarce and are hunted, then bought and sold at market for their breeding rights, 15-year old Aya has learned how to hide. With a ragtag bunch of other women and girls, she has successfully avoided capture and eked out a nomadic but free existence in the mountains. But when Aya’s luck runs out and she’s caught by a group of businessmen on a hunting expedition, fighting to survive takes on a whole new meaning.  - excerpt from Goodreads

Okay.  So I've come across blurbs for books that seem to have a pretty similar concept, but I've never actually read one before so I thought why not give this one a try?  Apparently, I shouldn't have.

Now in defense of the book, I didn't even make it past like, page thirty, so maybe my decision to quit was a bit premature, but I just couldn't make myself read it anymore.

I think there were two main things that turned me off.  The first was the way the concept was presented.  The blurb says it is supposed to be that females are scarce and sold for their breeding rights.  But when you actually start reading the story, it says that females are scarce, and most are infertile, so only men in the  outlying 'backwoods' villages actually have wives.  In the city, most girls are auctioned off and stuck into brothels.  But, even though women are scarce, the men still control the female population, and every once in a while, when the numbers get too high, they do something (I barely read this yesterday and I can't even remember what - that's how not into the story I was) to reduce the population.  What???  It's been more than a few years since I sat in my Anthropology classes, but I distinctly remember learning that whenever women (a.k.a. 'resources') are scarce, there is a hoarding of wives, with the wealthier or more prominent men snatching up as many as they can get their hands on (either by paying a bride price or by simply stealing them).  I didn't understand the contradictory concept the author was presenting at all.  

The other thing I didn't like was all the little details the author chose to throw in.  First, the story is a mix of modern technology and primitive stuff, not just weapons, but also the clothes they wear and living in tents and hunting and singing to mother eagle or something like that.  I didn't care for it.  In fact, it was pretty annoying. Why does the city guy wear a suit and tie but hunt with an electric whip and spear while on horseback?  Why does the girl who has been hiding out in the wilderness for years live in a tent, even though she isn't a nomad?  Why did the Trackers, who were of some lower cast or something, have a mark branded into their cheeks?  And that's another thing - what's with the obsession with castes that some writers have?  I've never read a book that uses that concept that I've actually finished.  Are only the mediocre writers drawn to that concept?  Or is it a hard concept to do well in a book?

I don't know.  I also hated the dynamics between the girls in the place-where-they-were-holding-them-until-the-auction-took-place.  (I didn't really get exactly what this was supposed to be.  Fenced in like a prison, but the purpose was supposed to be to fatten them up, even though the auction was that night and they were all still super skinny because they ate nutrient pills instead of real food.)  So anyway, the girls were all bitchy to the wilderness girl because they all assumed that she was fertile while they had to have fertility treatments and so she would claim a higher price at auction, even though they wouldn't want to be somebody's backwoods wife with responsibilities and it would be better to just be a prostitute I guess.  Again, what???   They would rather be sold to a brothel instead of have a comfy family?  And why are they taking fertility drugs when they are probably just going to a brothel anyway? And what do they even care who fetches a higher price, if they are all going to be sold anyhow and won't keep any of the profits themselves?  Never mind the fact that wilderness girl keeps sabotaging things so that she has already  managed to not be sold at like seven auctions in a row or something.  

Ugh.  I don't even want to talk about this book anymore.  The more I think about it, the more I hate it.

So.  This is where I'm supposed to tell you all about what you should read instead.  After searching long and hard for another dystopian novel that was actually good,  I came across one with a similar concept:

Sixteen years after a deadly virus wiped out most of Earth's population, the world is a perilous place. Eighteen-year-old Eve has never been beyond the heavily guarded perimeter of her school, where she and two hundred other orphaned girls have been promised a future as the teachers and artists of the New America. But the night before graduation, Eve learns the shocking truth about her school's real purpose and the horrifying fate that awaits her.

Fleeing the only home she's ever known, Eve sets off on a long, treacherous journey, searching for a place she can survive. Along the way she encounters Arden, her former rival from school, and Caleb, a rough, rebellious boy living in the wild. Separated from men her whole life, Eve has been taught to fear them, but Caleb slowly wins her trust... and her heart. He promises to protect her, but when soldiers begin hunting them, Eve must choose between true love and her life.

What the blurb hints at but doesn't come right out and say, is that the school's real purpose is to keep the girls busy until they graduate, at which time they will turn into breeders, carrying multiple offspring in one pregnancy after another in an attempt to repopulate the earth.  I know, I know, you're probably thinking that I'm a big spoiler.  Well, we are given this information in chapter two of the first book of a three book series, so it's not like it's supposed to be a big surprise or anything.  In fact, the story doesn't even get going until after we are given this little tidbit of information.

So here we have another book with a girl kept behind a fence with a bunch of other girls, who are given vitamins and fattened up in the hopes of making them super fertile.  And I'm thinking to myself at about chapter three, this book is going way better than that other one.  And then I got to chapter five.  And that, my friends, is where things started to fall apart.  Piece by piece.  One detail at a time.

For example:
When we first meet our heroine's future love interest, he is shirtless, riding a horse, and absolutely filthy.  (But, he's a gentlemen nonetheless, of course).  So what? you might be saying.  Well, I'll tell you what.  First, this is the only time in the story that said boy is shirtless.  He is always fully clothed after this.  He lives with a bunch of other boys, none of whom are described as being dirty, much less filthy, probably because they all live right by a lake.  I mean, it is a post-pandemic world and all, but it's not like they don't have water.  Oh, and he has a room with a bed and a nice quilt and he reads novels, so he isn't a savage or anything...  Then, said living accommodations are supposedly only an hour away from where the boy discovers our girl, yet I guess the author forgets this because it ends up taking them two days to get back.  And then there's the horse.  Horses, actually, because at one point all the boys have them.  They live in a dugout hidden under a hill.  Where are the horses?  Nowhere, I guess, until they are actually being ridden.  Annnnndddd, why are the boys hunting with primitive weapons?  98% of the population is dead.  I'm sure they could have found actual weapons at the defunct Walmart or Cabelas or somebody's abandoned house?  No, they make their own stone spears.  And, even though their spears are useless against the kidnapper (I'll mention him again in a minute), they somehow manage to kill deer and wild boar with these things all the time.  Of course, they gut these animals inside the main living quarters of their dugout, instead of say, outside (?) so I guess maybe the author didn't put a lot of thought into this whole hunting thing.

You know what else?  Our heroine is told when she escapes to go two miles until she finds a road that will take her to interstate 80.  She is then to go west until she finds the big red bridge and salvation is on the other side.  So, off she goes.  She informs us later what the gps location of her School was, and I looked it up.  It's Carson City, Nevada.  It only takes 17 hours to walk from Carson City to I-80 (so that's like two days, tops).  Then it's another 6 days to San Francisco from there.  You'd think the author would have started her out a little farther away.  Because, what kind of an adventure story is it if you can get where you're going in less than a week?  (Never mind the fact that she has been walking for eight days already without even reaching the highway before she meets the boy.  She should have been at the bridge by then, I think.) The author decides to deal with this by having her get kidnapped and driven all the way to Sedona, giving her a 159 hour walk back north to interstate 80 before heading west again.  Now we've got a story!

Here's another thing: Carson City only gets about 26 days of precipitation each year.  It has only been 12 years since the plague (I know the blurb says 16, but I swear the book has said twelve on numerous occasions).  Yet all of the houses are covered in mildew and the roofs have fallen in and the floors are all rotted and the cars are all rusted.  It's only been 12 years folks.

And how about we go way back to the beginning:  Why are the girls kept in schools until they are 18 years old before they are shipped to the baby making factory?  If they are so intent on repopulating things, why not send them over there when they are 15?  Or maybe as soon as they can bear children?

To tell, you the truth, the bones of the story are good.  I liked the way our heroine gradually discovers that the girls were fed a bunch of anti-male propaganda in School so that they would be happy and obedient being locked up with a bunch of other girls.  I liked the way she discovers about male-female relationships and love and all that stuff.  I liked the way she formed a bond with her former nemesis (also escaped and on the run), and I even liked the budding romance between her and the boy, even if it did happen really quickly.  It made sense in the context of the story.

It was just all the stupid details getting in the way.  Maybe I think too much.  Maybe I know too much.  Maybe I just care too much when I read something that doesn't make sense (Not true, though, because I can ignore one thing here or there.  But a whole story full of them?)  Or maybe, just maybe, authors shouldn't fill their books with a bunch of baloney.  Because as The QuoteLab says, "more often than not, when something goes screwy it's because we forgot to pay attention to the detail(s)."


By the way, I'll still be on the lookout for a good Dystopian novel.  I'll let you know when I find one.