Dangerous

Review first published on fefferbooks.com. A free advanced reader copy of this book was provided by Bloomsbury USA in exchange for an honest review. The review below is in no way influenced by this consideration.

Hey, you know what you’ve never seen from Shannon Hale before? Sci-fi.

I have to fess up: this is the first Hale I’ve ever read. She’s been recommended to me by no fewer than four different friends whose reading taste I trust, and I still hadn’t gotten around to picking up one of her books. Don’t ask me why; Hale is well-known for her Princess Academy and Books of Bayern (The Goose Girl) series. Oh, and then there’s Austenland, a movie version of which was just released on DVD/streaming and I totally have on my queue. show more She’s clearly an author who knows her audience and how to write.

It was Dangerous that piqued my interest, though. The synopsis reads:

Maisie Danger Brown just wanted to get away from home for a bit, see something new. She never intended to fall in love. And she never imagined stumbling into a frightening plot that kills her friends and just might kill her, too. A plot that is already changing life on Earth as we know it. There’s no going back. She is the only thing standing between danger and annihilation.

From NY Times bestselling author Shannon Hale comes a novel that asks, How far would you go to save the ones you love? And how far would you go to save everyone else?

What’s not to like? There’s so much awesome missing from this little blurb, though: a heroine who’s “nerdy,” into science, half-latina, and missing half of her right arm, for starters. A trip to science camp, and some pretty mind-blowing stuff that happens when that trip goes sideways. Oh, and the alien superpowers. (Really! Just trust me.)

Hale’s writing style is entirely enveloping. I was entirely charmed by Dangerous after just a few pages–Hale’s voice is so fresh and bright that it’s impossible not to be drawn in to Maisie’s world. The way Hale writes teenagers and their relationships with friends and family feels so much more authentic to my own experience than a lot of the angst-ridden stuff I sometimes read (I liked my parents, most of the time. Is that so weird?), and I particularly loved the scenes between Maisie and Luther.

The characters, themselves, are all fascinatingly different–there are a few of them I would really have liked to get to know better. I felt like Luther and Maisie’s mom both were fabulous, and I didn’t get quite enough time, there and Dragon fits in that category, too, for different reasons. Wilder was a complicated, emotional high point. Maisie’s dad is just plain lovable. Maisie herself is an optimistic, but no-nonsense kind of girl, and she tells us (cheerily) right up front who she is and what she’s all about. She’s clearly comfortable with who she is, though, and is able to laugh at herself. She’s a fantastic role model.

As for the plot, it’s crazy. C-R-A-Z-Y. There were a couple of times when I had to read in another room so no one would interrupt me. My heart was pounding and I could pretty much feel my eyes bugging out several times–particularly near the end of the book. There is one climactic scene that draws out the dramatic tension for so long and in a way that is so realistic to the situation that there is no way not to just freak the heck out with Maisie. It’s insane, and it’s awesome!

I really don’t know how else to describe the book without giving too much away, and Hale put too much thought and effort into unrolling the story in just the right way for me to ruin it for you. Let me just say that there were a couple of places in the book when I felt like things had shifted, and I wasn’t really sure what was going on. Roll with it. It’ll allll come together in the end, I promise!

4.5 stars. Completely clean, and crazy fun.

Dangerous releases today! Go pick up your copy. Thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the opportunity to read the galley. show less

I've read other Shannon Hale books and my reactions have ranged from "pretty good" to "Nope, not going to finish this". So I went in cautiously and not at all sure I'd like it - but it was excellent. Surprisingly complex - I kept thinking I knew where it was going _now_, and it kept going off in a new direction. Maisie is a teenager, and she does lose her head over a boy...sort of. That usually annoys me, but Maisie handled it much the way I wish others would - this is wonderful but I have other concerns right now. And then it got complicated, and then much more complicated, and terrible...and better. The romance is an integral part of the story, not a side-plot or a distraction, but it's not the major or the only focus of the story (by show more a long shot). Funny the way the token-symbols flowed together - I wonder if the token-makers were protoplasmic and could meld? Lots of wondering left, at the end of the story. And all the strange tech more or less dealt with - not much changing in the world (rather to Howell and GT's dismay). Poor Dragon - wish we could have seen more of him. But I definitely want to read more of Maisie. And the handling of her disability, and other "differences", was beautiful - they were facets of her, but not the point. The fact that she had only one arm was important to the story at several points - but she was not "the girl with one arm", she was much more than that. I had seen some of Shannon's discussions of her "half-Latina, home-schooled, one-armed, female protagonist" and how Shannon had worried she'd be too far out for people to accept as the hero of the book - but that's not at all how she appeared in the book, she was Maisie (who had all those aspects, and a good many more). I'd forgotten about the discussions until I read the reviews here, actually. Excellent, and I'm looking forward to the next book. show less

***ETA: Did end up coming back to this one. Shannon Hale is a figure I quite like but as an author we don't seem to click. Decided to give her sf venture a go but we continue to not pair well as writer/reader. On top of that though, I think this book has some genuine pacing and plotting issues that is going to make a reader's enjoyment of it seriously vary depending on whether or not they like the characters. And I have to agree with some of the other reviewers about the romance subplot. Could have done without any of it.***

I'm about halfway through this one and I'm starting to think I won't end up finishing it. I'm bummed because I really enjoy the protagonist (and her parents!) but the world building lacks depth. I'm having such a show more hard time visualizing this world much less getting immersed in it. It's interesting to me that I've come by several YA scifi titles recently that I have this same complaint about. I'm not a sf/f reader that needs my world built in painstaking detail but I do need it built in a way that I can imagine people living there and believe their interactions with that world. Has there been a shift lately to focus more on characters and action while letting world building get a little less attention than what I've previously experienced? Or are these just one-offs I've happened to come by in a row? show less

Maisie Danger Brown! What a fantastic heroine! One handed, super smart Latina with a love of science wins a cereal box trip to space camp. Enter nefarious plot involving a juggling genius, a compelling/disturbing boyfriend, superpowers and alien invasion. Awe-some! And it reads like a pulse-pounding page-turning thriller with excellent best friend and a really great dog.

My favorite one of Maisie's powers? The ability to nickname and have it stick. Read it!

This is a book marketed as YA that seemed more Middle Grade or Tween to me. The protagonist is a young girl named Maisie Danger Brown who has always wanted to be an astronaut in spite of having only one hand because of a congenital disorder. That would never stop Maisie, however, and she enters and wins a contest to attend Howell Astronaut Boot Camp created by billionaire Bonnie Howell “to ignite the love of science in the teenage mind.”

At the camp, Maisie brushes off cruel remarks about her hand, meets a cute boy, and gets her first kiss. All that is great. But the deal breaker for me is the part about the adults who are running the camp. They are not only absurdly eccentric (fine perhaps for being scientists but not for running a show more big successful business) but also they inexplicably and amazingly allow Maisie and five of her camp mates to handle some secret alien artifacts, about which they claim to know nothing. The objects invade the bodies of the kids, endowing them with superpowers (but of course, could have infected them lethally instead). Holy X-Teens! Where is the Hazmat Team? More importantly, where are the lawyers?

Evaluation: The premise of this book is just too absurd in too many parts for me to carry on reading. The adults are stupid in ways often common in Middle Grade books, but not really believable once you get past that level. It hurts to feel let down by Shannon Hale, although she doesn’t disappoint in terms of providing yet another plucky, admirable female heroine. It’s possible the story gets better, but I couldn’t get past the ridiculous, almost campy [pun intended] set-up.

Note: Speaking of puns, this book has some great ones. Maisie’s father is a punster (hence Maisie being named so that she could say “Danger is my middle name….”), and I wished we readers could spend more time with him . . . . show less

Dangerous by Shannon Hale is a YA science fiction book and the first I've read by the author. I picked it up a while ago (I think it was as part of my "let's read all the books with disabled protagonists" thing in the lead up to Defying Doomsday). I finally got around to reading it, partly because I was in the mood for some YA, and partly because of the recent announcement that she'll be writing Captain Marvel and Squirrel Girl tie in novels. I figured I should make sure her writing was all right before getting too excited.

The thing that stood out for me most, reading Dangerous, was how not formulaic it was. For whatever reason, I was expecting a fairly formulaic read set in space about a girl with no arm. It wasn't set in space either, show more except very briefly. It was about a girl with no hand on one of her arms, so that part was right, although note how it's not mentioned in the blurb while the space bit is. No wonder I was surprised. Actually, the only expected element of this book was the part with the world being saved. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

Maisie is a smart teenager whose two scientist parents have decided to home-school her. (And hence she has one friend, a fellow home-school-ee.) She enters a competition on the back of a cereal box to go to astronaut boot camp and wins a spot. I always enjoy female protagonists that are into science and Maisie definitely doesn't disappoint on that front.

In terms of plot, I was surprised that the astronaut boot camp was over pretty quickly and was just a set up for the next phase of the novel. Even more surprising was that the next phase was also fairly transient. (I realise these statements are vague, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers.) The story does not take the most direct route to get to the end, which kept me wondering what would happen next until more than half way through (at which point the saving the world part became more obvious).

I liked the romantic story line in Dangerous for a few reasons. First it was absolutely not the main part of the story, second, it wasn't a love triangle, despite how it first may have appeared. Most importantly, Maisie prioritises saving the world and the safety of her family over any boys she may or may not have feelings for. She's also not too blindly trusting, especially once she has reason to be suspicious, which I appreciated.

Oh and I should mention the science. There was only one physics thing the author got wrong that bothered me (the space elevator trip did not take them high enough to be weightless, they would have felt a diminished gravitational pull the entire time). Which did bother me but didn't make me angry, just disappointed. It's at the level of physics knowledge that the characters themselves should've had, which is the most irritating part. But everything else was fine or at least hand-wavingly explained away by alien magic.

I quite enjoyed Dangerous and I am definitely interested in reading more books by Shannon Hale. I'm not sure all her books are for me — for example, I'll stick with the movie of Austenland and probably won't bother with the books for younger readers, but I am definitely up for Captain Marvel and Squirrel Girl. Marvel tie-ins aside, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for any future books from Hale that align with my interests. I definitely recommend Dangerous to all fans of YA science fiction.

4.5 / 5 stars show less

Oh… what a bleepity-bleep work of astronomical ART!

Part of me love-LOVEs this story, so many, many things about this story.

The other part about me feels like knocking on wood or not saying something too loudly so that it won’t come true. Because this book is horrifyingly real. It doesn’t just feel possible, it feels like it happened in the news and I just didn’t know what to watch for. Like I saw it, but I didn’t really see it. And frankly… that gives me a healthy dose of the eebie jeebies.

Yeah, so if yer lookin’ for “cute” and “fluffy” and “tender”, keep walking.

I suppose the cover hints about that. I mean, Dangerous?! Good title really. Little too innocent.

What I loved for starters:

I love feeling like I have show more the brains of a super-smart brainiac. The science is sooooo insanely cool. It’s not techno-over-the-top-of-my-head… rather it threw me INTO Maisie’s head so that it all made perfect sense, even when she went into hyper-smart modes. The way Hale describes how she is able to look at technological stuff and “speak its language” just took the BIG-SCARY right out of it. I didn’t need to be an engineer to feel like one, which… GENIUS!!! Usually when I read something mega-intelligent, I feel Unintelligent, you know? Like “skim that paragraph ‘cause I’m sooo lost!” The only lost moment is the… uh… very alien preview, which felt more real for being so incomprehensible.

I did not think that I’d like the idea of Maisie having NO ARM. The idea is announced as a blow. So, naturally, I immediately struggled with the concept. It’s big – it’s the reality of working with one arm in a world that demands at least two (more like four). It’s the feeling of being different and the threat of who cares about it, why and how much. It’s revisiting that perception a second time, wondering if original conclusions were wrong. Like… does my mom really care that I don’t have my arm? Did she not want another kid because she didn’t want to bring another mistake into the world? These questions shouldn’t even be brought up, but they hang there, suspended in consciousness by people who know how to use words like weapons. Yuck. It’s one of the elements of this book that smells of horror. But also one of the most triumphant aspects as I grew to shout “I wish I only had one arm, too!! Fido rocks!” Fido – one of the arms Maisie builds for herself, all of which smack of “super-power awesome” and made me feel so limited with just a plain ol’ arm.

The horror. This is new to Shannon Hale’s collection of books, of which I have read most. None of her books have this much violence or the stark hopelessness that stories with horror thrive on. The other characters in this book are not rosy. Every single one – except maybe Dad & Luther – have some element of secrecy and hidden motives that affect the outcome of everything monumentally. It feels like everyone is a bad guy and even Maisie’s grip on Right is slippery. Not knowing who to trust creates a very insecure foundation for the entire story. My emotions felt bruised as I tried to look up to this person or that person only to uncover something untrustworthy and potentially horrific in each.

The romance. There isn't so much, really, except that there is a bit too much, too, which is weird. The conversation that laid the foundation for the romance is suspect of so many ulterior things. He is just a smooth talker. It sounds like he’s sharing his heart, but maybe he’s just acting. Maisie is so new to being courted, maybe her feelings are just a response to his games. There’s so much physical moments that are so new and fresh and exciting, but don’t necessarily have anything to do with something deeper than “that feels good.” Never mind their age. Getting to that part.

This book did not feel like a Shannon Hale which makes me want to give her a sweeping bow. In fact, the words disappeared. What words? I read the majority of this book on the train commuting to and from work and literally had to force myself to stop reading early so I wouldn't miss my stop. Every time I thought the action was slowing down and I could catch my mental breath, Maisie would literally TRIP into another moment twice as intense as the one we just survived. No exaggeration. So the writing is incredible and new territory for one of my favorite authors.

If you can, do yourself a favor and read this book in one sitting.

And fer cryin' out loud, DON'T SKIM! There are no extra words.

Part of me is interested in re-reading this book simply because I can’t believe how clueless I was at the beginning. It has to be a much different experience the second time ‘round. The other part of me is relieved to have gotten through it, cover to cover, and still be alive – like pat myself down everywhere, all systems ok? Ok. PHEW! And I would never put myself through that again. Except, rereading it would not be putting myself through it again because NOW I KNOW!

(Haven't read it, yet? I'm so sorry!)

Spoilery thoughts

DON’T READ THIS UNLESS YOU READ THE BOOK AND ARE AS UNERVED AS I AM! This book begs to be discussed. Don't spoil it though. Seriously. Don't. Just skip down past the purple type and you'll be... as fine as you can possibly be.

Pink fluffy bad guys? I mean, wow. How did she come up with that?! It’s the idea of a soul or spirit that is not affected by gravity… and an alien race that existed in that form primarily and used bodies like shells. CREEPY. Maisie’s thoughts about life-after-death and what happens to our inner beings is the key to the entire concept. This is the kind of creative thought that, in my mind, comes from thinking about the Bible and taking stuff literally. The Bible separates body from soul and spirit and talks about being re-united with a body or how the Word of God is a sharp sword to separate these invisible innards. What if an alien species was evil and cruel and selfish and thought nothing of borrowing our body shells before we were ready to give ‘em up? CREEPY!!!! Making them fluffy and pink only ruined my skippy opinion of cotton candy – it did not lighten up the threat of these aliens.

On the flip side – I love the concept that there are aliens out there who know about us and wanted to give us a fighting chance against these evil pink fluffies! (Pink?) I love LOVE the concept that they took the essence of the pink fluffy things and created a weapon (or series of weapons) to fight against them with. That the weapons themselves are potentially negative because of where they came from essentially. I love the misunderstanding about how they work.

I also love how simply effective they are. After all the techno complicated stuff... not to mention the mysterious layers of secrets everywhere, the actual fight was logical. LOVED that!

I enjoyed a lot of things in the end, like how the mad scientist really is a character with her own agenda, but she is consistent and likeable and her love for Dragon is downright beautiful. I loved how Wilder progressed to Wild Card and then Jonathon, someone who Maisie really could/would enjoy spending time with and grow increasingly attracted to.

I did not like being reminded that she is just starting high school and was sleeping with a kid who is also just starting high school. (Sleeping, not “sleeping”.) What is "14 yrs old" coming to these days?! The physical new-ness of their relationship did not feel 14. It felt like ready-to-experience-everything-long-term-and-make-commitments new. So I felt yanked into an older “new” and then yanked back out to a younger “new” that gave me a bit of whiplash. Maisie is at least 16 in my head. Not 14. Please, not 14.

Part of the horror aspect of the story is how real everything is. I can totally see an alien invasion happening that we mistook for something else. The idea that we’d need a 14 yr old to save the world is somewhat akin to the realization that Maisie will be saving the world with one arm. It’s one of those series of things in the book that just made me want to say, “Well, crap. That’s it, then.” Another one was learning that there would be an alien invasion and not quite wrapping my head around the idea of the magnitude… and then realizing that it already happened. We’re invaded and being taken over. There is no stopping it from happening because you didn’t realize it was even going to happen until it was too late to catch it before it happened. “Well, crap. That’s it, then.”

This was a regular theme. The dawning of realization after it was too late to do anything about it. Like Maisie’s mom. Like Wilder’s dad. Like the responses of the fireteam to their super-powers. Like finding out they had super-powers. Like the space compound being run by someone who’s crazy and loaded with her own agendas. Like not being able to shake GT, who is a real life-n-death size irritation when humanity is on the line. Like realizing that Dragon is really, really, really cool. Like realizing that attraction to someone can’t be changed by willpower, it has a life of its own.
END OF SPOILERY STUFF.

This is one of those books that would be AWESOME to start discussion groups about. There is so much scope for the imagination.

To the one who wants to know… the story is complete in itself and wraps up a million loose ends very deliberately, sweetly, completely. For language, "Frac" is used and "Bleepity Bleep" is used a lot and is sometimes easy to fill in the blanks. For romance, there is kissing and some discussion of button placement and some cozy hanging out. And a lip smoosh. For violence... there is some disturbing stuff including a number of deaths, a healthy amount of blood, some zombie-like behavior including a dog gnawing on a human bone. *shudder* There's some torture and at least four fights to-the-death. The bad guys are really, really bad (so when I say the good guys are suspect of being bad, it's BAD!) They're twisted and heartless and intelligent about it. Being a good guy in this book is very painful. There's a lot of PAIN, in general.

If you like Shannon Hale, that’s nice, but be prepared to NOT compare this with any of her other (awesome) works. (Emma Burning had some disturbing moments, I suppose, but not like this.) If you were thinking about reading Shannon Hale for the first time… are you kidding me?! You just happened upon a GOLD MINE of good writing that will astonish long-term. Read all her stuff. I honestly don’t know if this book would top the list for hard sci-fi lovers or horror lovers… but for us fantasy-romance lovers, it’s like jumping into the deep end and getting comfy.

I understand the Love/Hate in the reviews I see on Goodreads. The “love” side of me looks more like “respect”. The “hate” response feels more like… finding myself in the deep end when I expected something else. There’s some “no-no-no-this-can’t-be-happening” that I experienced reading this book. I meant it, too. If I’d’ve stopped reading during one of those moments or skimmed through… I’d’ve given this book a 2. No joke.

But no… I was drug through the mud and came out the other side lickin’ my fingers ‘cause, by golly, that wasn’t mud, it was chocolate all along. show less