Review Time: Grimpow- First Impressions

I'm actually a pretty nice fellow. I do not spend my evenings coming up with new ways to make children cry, beating up kittens, or stealing from the elderly. I'm not so bad, really. Which is why I'm hesitant to post something negative on the tails of my rather vitriolic response to Mr. Itzkoff's article. I don't want to give you, Dear Reader, the impression that I am a cranky old man on the internet, shriveled black heart pumping lemon juice and battery acid through my withered veins. My veins and actually quite un-withered and I hate lemon juice. Still, I think my intentions here are good: to warn you to avoid Grimpow: The Invisible Road by Rafael Abalos at all costs. This is for your own good. Trust me.

I will occasionally write reviews for a literary magazine that focuses on the YA market. Sometimes, these books are a pleasant surprise and a real delight. Other times, they are a nightmarish shock that lessen my faith in humanity and make me question the existence of a higher power. Grimpow wasn't quite that bad, but it was still a stinker. It may not make me question God's existence, but it does make me wonder just what the hell he was up to the day this book was given the green light.

You'll notice in the title of this post that it says "First Impressions," and you're probably wondering what that means. It means the book was such a dull, frustrating chore that I couldn't finish the bloody thing. So let's get into the dirty, unpleasent specifics.

By about the third page of the book, one of the characters has already made mention of destiny. Ugh. Barely half a chapter in and already I'm getting hit with that old standby. I hate destiny. What I hate more is when authors wield it with all the finesse of a blind man with a sledgehammer. Especially when it's delivered in a truly clumsy and ham-handed manner by one of the other characters. Example:

"'Keep [the stone],' Durlib instructed mysteriously, eyes wide as full moons. 'From now on, this stone will be tied to your destiny.'" (Abalos, 5)

When I read this, I see Durlib, Grimpow's morally questionable older buddy, waving his hands around and making "WHHHOOOOO" noises, with the narration delivered by Mr. Vincent Price. This may be partly due to my innate dislike of adverbs in fiction, but really, the lines just smack of cheese and B-Movies. Especially since we get the "It's tied to your DESTINY" bit just a short while later.

The Destiny in question is between Grimpow, a somewhat forgettable young protagonist, and a stone he finds clutched in the cold, dead hand of a man lying in the snow. The stone is (I believe) the Philosopher's Stone. Double ugh.

In the world of fantasy or pseudo-fantasy writing, there are some things that have been beaten to death and should be avoided. Most notably, these are: Any sort of magical sword, Atlantis, any kind of magic ring, and the Philosopher's Stone. There's lots more and some day in the future I might make a post about it, but let's move on for now. The aforementioned things are pretty well overused to the point of them becoming absurd. There are exceptions of course, though not many. In Grimpow's case, it just doesn't work, mate.

The dialogue doesn't really work either. It's clunky and awkward, and pulled me out of the narrative many times. Characters either sound too stilted, too dramatic, or too philosophical. I don't mind books that wax philosophical, but a good author can get complicated ideas and big questions into the story in a very smooth, natural way. Abalos does not. He chucks them into the story like a child throwing cinder blocks into a pond.

There's lots of historical elements, like the Knights Templar and stuff about ancient castles and inquisitorial guys and so on, but it gets very dull very fast and just makes the book seem like it's a Johnny-Come-Lately to the whole DaVinci Code craze.

I gave Grimpow a fair shot. I didn't read the opening chapter and throw it aside in disgust (though I was tempted). I got 100 pages in before finally giving up. You have defeated me Sr. Abalos. Well-played I suppose. So Grimpow kind of stinks, and while it isn't the worst book ever written by any means, you and any young readers you may know would be better served seeking literary entertainment elsewhere.

It's your destiny.
WHHHHOOOOOO

Hey Jay, why YA?

I found something that's a few weeks old, but prompted this post. It's by DAVE ITZKOFF at the NY Times. Mr. Itzkoff writes:

"As someone whose subway rides tend to resemble scenes from an “Evil Dead” movie, in which I am Bruce Campbell dodging zombies who have had all traces of their humanity sucked out of them by a sinister book — not the “Necronomicon,” but “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” — I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers. I suppose J. K. Rowling could give me 1.12 billion reasons in favor of it: get your formula just right and you can enjoy worldwide sales, film and television options, vibrating-toy-broom licensing fees, Chinese-language bootlegs of your work, a kind of limited immortality (L. Frank Baum who?) and — finally — genuine grown-up readers. But where’s the artistic satisfaction? Where’s the dignity?"

The full article can be found here.

Let's ignore the fact that Mr. Itzkoff is coming off as an ignorant prick for a moment and answer his question:

"Where's the artistic satisfaction?"
The same place artistic satisfaction is for those who write for adults. I do not need my audience to possess BAs or Ph.Ds in order to feel that I am crafting something worthwhile. Good art is good art, no matter who sees it. Satisfaction comes from the completion of a job well done, the realization of talent and idea, and not because the person looking at my art has been around the sun a designated number of times. To imply that there is no artistic satisfaction to be had simply because of the age of the audience said art is being presented to is really bloody stupid.

I write YA Lit because I find it satisfying. When I was a Young Adult, I craved good fiction. I often found the books aimed at my age bracket to be either condescending or out and out moronic (Goosebumps, I am looking at you). That wasn't always the case, but it felt like it most of the time. Today, there are many quality books for the YA and MG (Middle Grade) market, but there's still a lot of shit. That's true for the world of adult fiction as well (Hey James Patterson!), but I digress. I find satisfaction in writing a good, interesting book for kids that treats them with the respect and intelligence they deserve. But most of all, and perhaps most importantly, I find satisfaction in the art alone. Writing is an art, even if it's just for yourself.

So what about dignity?
Well, I would debate this point too, but I lost all my dignity back when I vomited in the cafeteria in front of everybody while I was in primary school.

Out Here in the Fields

Let's begin at the beginning. That's where the Chess King told Alice to start, and it's good enough for me.

As much as any blog can have a purpose other than shouting into the wind, this blog is for all things Young Adult Literature, and a few that are not. Young Adult Literature (or simply YA as I will usually be referring to it from here on out) is very near and dear to my heart. I write it, I study it, I enjoy it. Getting into the published world of YA isn't easy though: there's the quest for an agent, a publishing house, sales, promotion, the whole nine, so that will pop up from time to time as well.

But I'm telling instead of showing, and that's a no-no, so let's begin.