Karen Bao

DNF @ 38% -- updated review below!

Ahhh, I wish I could love this! I didn't know anything about this when I picked it up at the library other than it was bursting with diverse characters.

Unfortunately, that's all I can say I liked about this. That, and I guess it's really admirable that Karen Bao wrote this as a teen! Lots of talent for someone that age. But I think there should've been more time spent on drafts for Dove Arising before it got published. The pacing is off, often super slow, show more and the plot structure isn't very organized.

There's also some annoyingly strong resemblance to other popular book series, like Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games and Veronica Roth's Divergent. Annoying because there's a love triangle in which the best friend is left at home and the other love interest is met at some dangerous place where fighting is involved. The best friend's love is (of course) one-sided.

Where I stopped, the protagonist was still training in this dangerous fighting place (Militia) on the moon. The book seemed less focused on the actual plot (the protagonist, Phaet, is forced to join the Militia early to keep her family out of the disease-ridden slums of Shelter), and more about the drama of her Milita life. Including the sparks between her and this new love interest, which I just ... I'm done with. Especially since everyone else in Militia keep talking about how young Phaet is! How old is everyone else then? I'm sideyeing this new love interest hard, and I really don't want to read another 68% of love-triangle drama.

So, I'm sorry, Dove Arising.

--

UPDATED REVIEW

If you loved The Hunger Games and Divergent, you’d probably love the first 3/4ths of Dove Arising, especially. Unfortunately, that means this book is not for me.

Content warnings:
- not truly traumatizing, but a heavy reliance on gender stereotypes and norms, like “female” hair must be tied back while working; “even a ponytail doesn’t make him look effeminate;” “hair as short as a man’s;” “fights between girls are skittish, those between boys, ferocious;” “It’ll remind me in the future that a girl had a quicker wrist than I did,” etc.
- an overwhelming air of sexism
- fatphobia
- eugenics (just hinted at: with mindsets of characters involving the dialogue of someone wanting to “rid the Earth of uneducated filth” . I believe this is intentional, however.)
- ableism

Representation:
- the main character and her family are Chinese
- one of the MC’s friends are Chinese as well, and another is Black and biracial

Phaet Theta lives on the moon among a whole colony of scientific elite who left Earth and its climate disasters and its unwillingness to listen to reason about three generations ago to pursue scientific thought. Since her father died when she was six, Phaet has chosen to let her best friend speak for her and lives a relatively quiet life -- until her mother is arrested for allegedly writing something treasonous. To support her siblings and bail her mother out of prison, Phaet has to join the Militia three years early and aim for the first ranking to get a high-paying job. It’s in the Militia where she learns to speak for herself. And where she learns secrets about life on the moon that turn her orderly world into chaos.

So here in Dove Arising we have some of your standard YA dystopian tropes including a controlling government banning things that seem a bit ridiculous (like religion … how do you successfully ban religion in a matter of three generations … ?), a love triangle in which one of the men is the MC’s long-time best friend and the other is seemingly a much cooler guy she meets while in Dauntless (er, the Militia), and the MC having skills way beyond what should be physically possible. I’m not trying to be cruel, but it was a struggle to get through the first 3/4ths of the book, and I only got through it to fulfill one of my reading challenges.

The main character is one of the biggest reasons I struggled with this story. Phaet is very difficult to like, acting like a jerk to all of the people who love her and dissecting their every action so she can judge them. She also constantly compares herself to everyone around her in a way that shows how unique and great she is in comparison, like how most trainees didn’t read the manual but SHE did; some do this or that embarrassing thing but SHE does neither, etc. She’s also written as if maybe … the author wanted her to be autistic? But if so, it’s pretty bad representation. Phaet is described as being “selectively mute” by another character, but simply choosing not to speak isn’t actually what being selectively mute means (being unable to speak in certain situations because of anxiety).

Phaet also analyzes everything and everyone around her, which makes her sound like a robot and the prose sound as if the author couldn’t put the thesaurus down: Phaet refers to everyone as a “female” or “male;” instead of someone speaking it’s “using his vocal chords;” when Phaet doesn’t understand someone flirting it’s “How could anyone laugh so much at a time? His anxiety must be causing him to overcompensate with geniality;” and the worst: in response to “Do you like him?” it’s “When did she start emphasizing random syllables with assertive inflections in her voice?” Phaet doesn’t seem to understand what facial expressions or gestures mean, but that makes even less sense when she communicates through such gestures herself, like, “I question him with my eyebrows: are you coming?” I know this isn’t the author’s writing style, because at one point we see an example of someone’s writing within the novel, and it’s very lovely! The author can actually write very well; I just wish I saw it more!

There’s also the fatphobia and the ableism that’s everywhere in the text. Body sizes are mentioned and judged nearly every page! There’s a stocky boy in the Militia (who also happens to be one of the villains, unfortunately), and every time he appears he’s called awful, fatphobic things, including a “landmass.” The ableism is more casual, but equally as hurtful. The only disabled characters are people in Shelter, where the poorest citizens go to live and die in disease and squalor. At one point when Phaet is being attacked, there’s also this actual line: “If she manages to take off a limb, I’ll be unable to pay for a reattachment operation or a prosthetic. I’ll become a cr*pple, leeching off of society.”

As a disabled person, that hurts like a physical blow. I can’t imagine how disabled young adults reading this would feel.

I will try not to complain about every single thing I didn’t like about this book, because it wasn’t all bad! The last 1/4th of the book was very engaging! The climax involving the trial of Phaet’s mother was very emotional and held my attention so much I stayed up a little to finish it. And I adored the dynamics between Phaet's family, and I adored Phaet's mother in particular. It's unfortunately not enough to make me want to read the sequels, but I might pick up Karen Bao's next book. show less

Ugh, what a disappointment! It started cool with an interesting mc and on the moon with an unexpected plot development. Then everything devolved into Hunger Games in space with a strong anti science, "couldn't have happened by chance" bullshit!

I’ve been in a sci-fi mood lately, and this book happened to be lying in my office, waiting to be reviewed. So, I thought: “What the hell. Two birds, one stone … Let’s do this!” and I got on with reading Dove Arising by Karen Bao. Honestly though, I’ve been putting off reading this book, due to the horrendous cover art. I mean, look at that pathetic, amateurish cover! Some of the cover art I make for independent publishers who can’t afford professional cover artists’ fees show more looks better than this train wreck. What’s worse, this is what an imprint of Penguin Books USA came up with? WTF? Oh, and don’t get me started on the formatting. Note to the editor-in-chief at Viking Books: Y’all better get your shit together and fix this travesty if you want to sell books.

Rant over.

What I could figure out, prior to actually reading the book, was that it was something akin to The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer mixed with James Dashner‘s The Maze Runner. It sounded … interesting. I mean, I love The Lunar Chronicles, but The Maze Runner kind of fell short at some point. Anywho, so I read Dove Arising, and let me just say a LOT happens in a very short time. This isn’t a bad thing. Yes, I’m sure many readers might not enjoy how fast the story is, what with the conflict, the drama, the rush of words, and the inevitable oh crap! moment at the end, but I personally found it quite a ride. At times it was somewhat predictable, though, but for a debut I think it was a rather fun read.

Phaet is a strong protagonist, although I wanted to strangle her at times, but I forgave her because she is only fifteen years old. Wes was … well, I wish he was more than he is, because he was terribly predictable, but I liked him nonetheless. Umbriel, on the other hand, reminds me of a young Christian Gray. He’s way too controlling. Seriously, I hope someone kills him sooner rather than later. And yes, this marks the beginning of a love-triangle. Shocker. Okay, what did you expect, Monique? It’s a young adult read!

All those things aside, I’m looking forward to the next book. I want to see where Karen Bao is taking this story, and if the sci-fi is going to go full-blown dystopian… We’ll see.

This book is perfect for young adult readers in search of a science fiction fix. show less

Mix science fiction, good old desperation detective work, and an enemies to more-than-friends situation. This is what you get. Ver and Aryl are different physically, but inside there's plenty of commonality. Ver is fighting a terrible genetic disease that's going to eat away until she's dead. Aryl is tall, quite graceful, and an accomplished dancer. Both are interns in an advanced lab, working for Cal who is both brilliant and driven. When an emergency warning is activated and the lights go show more out, Cal is injected with a substance that kills him. Both girls are accused of his murder, but neither had reason to off their mentor. How they go about solving his murder makes for a dandy story. show less