Khanh the Killjoy

The key to making a believable dystopian world is giving it some basis in reality. No matter how strange, how new, how incredible this imagined world it, is has to be at the very least, credible, and I felt that the city of Neo-Babel in this book was poorly executed and depicted.

This book was plagued with problems, along with the mess of the a dystopian city that is Neo-Babel, we have an unbelievable system of "Elites" soldiers all of whom are young, ranging from ~10 to a their early 20s, which begs the question of "where the fuck are the adult Elites?", we have two main characters who are completely lacking in any personality. We have a romance that is completely emotionless. We have a plot that is confusing as hell, and actually, we have a book that is more action than plot.

The writing is dry, emotionless, at best. The dialogue is overdramatic, unbelievable, unnatural. The villains are one-dimensional. Side characters have their own plot, and I find myself utterly unintrigued. This was not a long book. It was not a complicated book. The writing is solidly middle grade, and yet it was so difficult for me to read because the book simply did not hold my attention for all the reasons I listed above.

Neo Babel is a city in the future. After some vague catastrophic event called the Great Fall, it somehow survives from the ashes of other destroyed nations, and...that's it. Neo-Babel, yeah! Our main character is Silver, a Chinese girl in Neo-Babel, supposedly discriminated against because of her ethnicity, despite her status as an "Elite," so chosen to be an elite soldier because of her superior DNA. Well, this 15-year old Elite soldier is on the assignment of her life, to be on guard for the president during his speech to the city. Silver fucks up majorly. She drank too much sake at a party the night before, oversleeps, and almost misses her job. And that's not the worst of it.

Silver swung back behind the parapet, stifling a gasp. Oh gods, oh gods! she thought desperately. An assassin, here in my lookout zone, and I was late, and I didn’t find him, and now he’s got a gun pointed at Tanaka!

Right off the bat, the president dies (good fucking job, Silver), and Silver seeks to cover her ass. Out of nowhere, her parents disappear, and instead of waiting for an investigation like any normal person would do, Silver and her best friend, a boy named Butterfly (he's got wings), decide to throw their entire bright, promising, brilliant future as Elites away to go wander off to god knows where in order to search for them. Along the way, they meet some really annoying kids, who in turn get embroiled in their own little side plots, which are of no interest to me whatsoever. It all leads up to some kind of a grand conspiracy which was contrived, largely unintriguing, and left me utterly bored.

The Setting: Vague and nonsensical. Neo-Babel is formed after the Great Fall, after the planes fell from the sky (caused by the Chinese), nuclear wars, sea-level rises. It is a "miracle city" built somewhere in Eastern Europe. Citizens are planted with a chip that tracks them at birth; there are many who rebel against such a practice, they establish anti-birthchip groups. The citizens are Mainlanders (white people?), citizens of the Red Nations (Asians?), and Afrikans (obviously, Africans). There are also Japaneans, New Indians...it's a mishmash of cultures...but for some reason, people really hate the "Reds." "Red" is the derogatory name used to call a person of Chinese ethnic origin, which really makes no sense to me because the Asians seem to be lumped together into the Red nation, so why is "Red" a derogatory term when it depicts an entire mishmash of nationalities?

There's supposedly a lot of discrimination and "racial tension" in Neo-Babel. I don't feel it. I don't see it. If it exists, it exists outside of Silver's radar, since as far as I can see, Silver is the only one that directly suffers from outright racial discrimination. She's called "Red" a lot by some disgruntled colleagues, they try to get her hackles up and insult her based on her race and culture...

‘What are your gods going to do?’ Ember laughed, her bright green eyes flashing. ‘They’re a useless bunch – I don’t know why you Reds bother. Kitchen god going to come at me with some spaghetti? Monkey god getting ready to swing down from the heavens and shove a banana in my face?’

Yes, it's a serious, serious problem. I do not take racial discrimination lightly at all, I'm Asian myself. I'd be fucking pissed at any signs of discrimination of such...but really, there was minimal evidence of any racial tension in the book. There was more of a social and economic disparity in the book than anything else, and the reason given for the supposed hatred of the Chinese people were so vague and nonsensical that I can't buy into it. The Red made the planes fall from the sky? Um, ok, that's really bad. But guess what? The book mentions that other countries used nuclear weapons, bioweapons. In short, every single country did all they could do destroy each other---so why this singleminded supposed hatred towards the Chinese? I don't get it. That fact, along with other aspects of the world-building and what exists outside Neo-Babel, was completely insufficient to give this book's setting any credibility.

Like the fact that DNA was used to prove that Chinese people were inferior in intelligence? Really? It's the future, they've got technology up the yin-yang despite the destruction of the world, I mean, they can engineer wings onto a boy...and DNA is used to prove mental inferiority? Nuh uh. You have to do better than that.

The Plot: Largely nonsensical, moving in irrational and confusing directions, and too filled with action to the detriment of an actual plot. Plagued with interruptions by side characters who are more annoying than intriguing, and helped along by a great deal of coincidences. Meeting your family members (who were supposed to have died 10 years ago) about 5 minutes after you leave the city is not a coincidence, it's nothing short of a miracle, ok? I'd have to be an idiot to buy into that.

The Characters: I don't even have much to say about the characters. Silver and Butterfly are dry to the point of dullness. They have zero personality, they have zero character. I don't know what drives them. I don't know what makes them laugh. They are overdramatic, and I see more of their actions than I feel their emotions and see into their hearts. I would call them robots, but that would be an insult to robots, because with the myriad of technology these days, our robots are increasingly showing signs of intelligence and evolution, and they may eventually evolve to have more complexity and depth than the yawnfest paper dolls that are Butterfly and Silver.

The villains are one-dimensional, without any visible motivation or drive. They're just bad for the sake of being bad. They're bitchy to Silver for the sake of pure bitchiness. Ember (the beautiful nemesis) slaps, punches, threatens to cut Silver, calls her a Red...etc, was pure genericness. Despite a weak attempt at redeeming her and giving her a motive, I don't even know why the main baddies in the book act the way they do.

The Romance: It's supposed to be a friends-turned-lover romance, but it is so out of place and comes so out of nowhere that I just can't see it happening. Their interactions are more of the "I need help!" "I will come save you, my beautiful, brave damsel!" sort than anything hinting of romance until someone comes the fuck out of nowhere and declares their love. There's a somewhat-nude scene in the book that I think was intended to be sexy, but it's a 16 year old guy with butterfly wings with wet drops of water on his body cupping his crotch...and it's about as titillating to me as watching two unicorns frolic in a meadow.

Not recommended.