Khanh the Killjoy

A poor-little-rich-girl Mary Sue turned vigilante of a heroine in a watered down imitation of Gotham City.

There was little about this book that didn't make me cringe; it was insufferably terrible, the plot deviated in a nonsensical way. The heroine is an insipid, overly imaginative idiot of a girl. She takes her life for granted, she makes irrational choices. She is a terrible daughter, a terrible friend, a terrible vigilante. She lies to her family. She lies to her friends. Anthem steals from her family (to be fair, she couldn't access her trust fund until she's 18, no, really). She is a vigilante without just cause. She is judge, jury, executioner, but reading about her is pretty ridiculous, because her bad-assery isn't very bad-ass. Not when she executes a fucking pirouette during her escape.

Anthem is more Kick-Ass than the Dark Knight. The plot is plagued by the overuse of a fucking literary device known and despised by many, known as deus ex machina, to make up for the lack of creativity in creating a plausible plot.

The blatant parallels between this book's Bedlam City and Batman's Gotham was the least of my complaints; it was a tolerable, if wholly uncreative copy. Regardless, there is no question that Bedlam City can't hold a candle to the original Gotham, it is the weakest of replicas, the way a Seurat painting would look after it has been scanned by a scanner on the lowest setting.

Anthem Fleet is the daughter of two real estate moguls in the city of Bedlam. Besides having the advantage of one of the most Mary Sue names I have ever encountered in a novel, she lives a blessed life, and yet doesn't see it that way. Anthem suffers tremendously from a devastating plight known as "poor little rich girl" syndrome. Honestly, I don't really know why she has this feeling of discontent in her life. She has hardworking, distant, yet caring parents, yet she constantly imagines that she is merely a replacement for her older sister who died of drowning before Anthem was even born. Her mother suffers from severe, constant, debilitating depression---and who can blame her? Yet Anthem sees nothing but neglect in her parents, she feels ignored, she feels unloved---which might have worked if there had been any evidence of it within the book---there is none. I can think of far, far worse parents than these.

Anthem is the soon-to-be valedictorian of her high school. She is a brilliant ballerina---primed to dance the lead in her ballet school's production of Giselle. She has a suspiciously too-good-to-be-true politician's son, charming, bright, intelligent Will, as her boyfriend. Her parents are incredibly wealthy; they literally own half of Bedlam City. Anthem is set to be their heir.

The future looks bright. And Anthem is set to throw it all away. On insta-love.

I hesitate to claim that Anthem is the dumbest chick I've ever encountered in YA literature, because, let's be honest...there are some dumb-as-fuck heroines out there. Still, Anthem would rank quite high upon my list. Enough to elbow the way into my Holy Trinity of Idiocy, that's for sure.

She goes slumming. She meets a boy from the bad side of town while slumming. He is...*cue eye rolling in 3, 2, 1*...a dark, brooding, artistic type, who tracks her down in the wealthy side of town where she lives, despite not knowing her real name, despite not knowing anything besides her besides the fact that she's a ballet dancer. They meet at a club in the highly dangerous, good-girls-would-never "South Side" of Bedlam. They almost get caught and gassed during a police raid.

Anthem wasn't even supposed to be there. On that night, she was supposed to be at a society party, the Orphan's Ball. After which, she will lose her virginity to her long-time boyfriend, Will. She hesitates against that...understandable. Losing your virginity isn't something to be taken lightly, after all. But then she does something completely fucking stupid. She loses her virginity to New Boy (AKA Gavin) within a week of knowing him. While still dating Will. Cheating: cute. Completely not suspicious at all. Background check? What background check? Let's just fall in love with the bad boy from the EastSouth Side despite not knowing anything about him.

Anthem then slowly, carefully, deliberately throws away everything she has been working hard her entire life, in order to be with One Week Wonder Boy. She neglects school. She ditches ballet practice. She lies to her best friend. She lies to her parents. And then she loses her life.

All this happens within the first 25% or so of the book, and my dislike of Anthem only goes down from there. She gets revived from death only to discover that she has new, superhero powers. Events happen, in which she slowly, nonsensically becomes the city's vigilante. Her newfound sense of justice stems from one act of revenge, which, in the span of 2 minutes, Anthem changes to suit her own needs. She is out for one thing, revenge against some people who wronged someone she thinks she loved. She twists the truth around to justify her own revenge. It makes sense for a 17-year old, maybe, but it doesn't change the fact that the reasoning behind it completely lacks any true justification.

Bedlam is, without a doubt, a Gotham City wannabe. It is as if the rest of the world doesn't exist. Bedlam is a world cut off from the rest of the United States, if that's, indeed, where we are. For all intent and purposes within this book, Bedlam is the center of the universe. It is overwhelmed with social instability. The economic divide is vast. The rich live in a completely different world than the overwhelming number of poor, beaten, dejected. It is like Detroit on steroids. It is the most depressing fucking city in the world, and it makes me wonder why anyone would choose to live in a place with depressing-as-fuck names like Lake Morass and Arsenic Street, etc. It seems like the sun has never risen on Bedlam City, there is nary a light, a ray of hope to be found any-fucking-where.



We have police raids. We have feargas, we have gigglegas. We have an organized crime gang known as the Syndicate. We have a former superhero who has since disappeared, with the bright, brilliant, amazing name of....DUN DUN DUN..."The Hope." We have signs of protests all around the city, protesting the economic and social disparity. "EAT THE RICH," "THE REAL BEDLAM WILL RISE UP AGAIN," "THE REAL BEDLAM WILL RISE UP AGAIN."

We have drugs with alternate names, like Zenithin. We have chopshops for body parts, we have BodMods, designed to enhance the human body...which doesn't really make any sense in the scheme of this book, because given Anthem's "enhancements" which make her so Speshul could be just as easily given to ANYONE ELSE. Why Anthem alone? With all these available resources, there should have been 100,000 fucking superheroes wandering the streets, providing vigilante justice against the Big, Bad, Evil Rich Guys.

Everything just comes so fucking easily to Anthem. She's got money, she's got resources, she's got special fucking powers thanks to a so-very-convenient escape from death. She's got her very own Alfred in the form of her family's chauffeur, a black, ex-military man with a French-African accent who drives her around everywhere and helps her in her escapades without question (because Poor Little Rich Princess Anthem can't be bothered to fucking walk or run to her destination of the day, despite her enhanced speed). And gives her a gun to use, despite the fact that Anthem doesn't even know how to shoot it.

It's like a messed-up version of Driving Miss Daisy. Which would be funny if it this entire book wasn't so laughably bad.

Go watch the Batman series if you need your superhero fix, the Dark Knight is really good. Hell, I'd even take the crappy Batman movies with Jim Carrey as the Joker and the Governator as the Iceman over this book. At least that shit was entertaining.