On YA, genre and litratcher

On September 21, 2025September 21, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

I was originally going to write a review of this book and discuss this in the review, but I took a nap this afternoon and still have 60-some pages left. Why did I just say “this book” and not the name of the book? Well, I’m doing that thing where I don’t want this post necessarily showing up in search results for the book, especially since this post is going to be pretty critical and it’s important for you to know that I’m really enjoying the read. I’m going to be a little sneaky about which title I’m talking about, though. Let’s see if you can figure it out.

I am a lifelong genre reader, and for most of that time I’ve been fairly open about my disdain for what people call Literary Fiction. Feel free to blame it on me being too dumb for Literary Fiction. That’s fine. I have an ego but for some reason it doesn’t extend to being bothered by that particular allegation. I don’t get most of the examples of the genre I’ve read; I usually don’t understand why anyone bothered to write the book in the first place and I understand even less what anyone is talking about when they praise them. In particular, use of the word “comic” can be a red flag. One guarantee is that any time a book reviewer I’ve never heard of describes a book as “comic” is that it will not, in any way, be funny. In fact, for the most part, it won’t even be trying to be funny and failing. “Comic” means something else to Literature People. I don’t know what it means and I’m not going to bother finding out.

This particular book has a bunch of pull quotes by people I’ve never heard of who wrote books I’ve never heard of on the back. The sole exception is George Saunders; I’ve heard of him and I know he’s fancy but that’s all I can tell you. The blurbs aren’t as bad as they can get; none of them appear to be random collections of words, and none of them use words that should not be used to describe books (“deliciously turquoise and refreshing prose”– HARPER’S) in them. But this was on the New York Times’ 10 Best Books list, which usually means only ten people read it, and it was a National Book Award finalist. Here is the list of every National Book Award winner. I admit, I have read five of them– interestingly, all but one nonfiction winners– and I have never heard of considerably more than five.

Anyway, this book should have been YA and nothing, nothing will convince me otherwise.

If the exact same book had been written by a woman, it would be shelved with YA. It’s The Hunger Games with a more complicated vocabulary, more swearing, and footnotes about the American carceral system. The premise is the most YA-coded thing I’ve ever seen; the idea is that incarcerated criminals can get their sentences commuted if they agree to engage in gladiator combat to the death every so often; if they make it three years and are still alive, they get to go free. They earn something called, no shit, Blood Points as they work their way through the combats; Blood Points can be cashed in for food, weapons, armor, better accommodations, shit like that. There’s this weird color-coded & scientifically implausible technology built into their wrists so that their captors can torture them for talking.

And partway through the book the main character finds out that she’s going to have to fight her girlfriend in her final fight– the convicts are loosely organized into teams, and a rule change means people on the same team have to fight if they’re at the same rank– and predictable angst occurs.

Come the fuck on.

Now, I’m not done with the book, so I don’t know whether the two characters are actually going to fight or not, but this is one hundred percent a science fiction dystopia that would have been shelved with YA with a different author. That’s not necessarily a bad thing! I’m thoroughly enjoying the book, and I’ll finish it tonight, having burned through its 360 pages in less than a day. Unless it completely blows the ending, it’s gonna be a five-star review. But looking at these blurbs and a couple of other pieces about it, it’s hilariously obvious that most of the people reading it have never touched dystopian literature in their lives and haven’t read any YA at all, because … one thing this book is very much not is especially original. I could have sketched out a broad outline of the plot within ten pages of the start of the book. So could anyone who has read any YA in the last fifteen or so years. I’m not going to look up how long ago Hunger Games came out because I don’t feel like being old. But there are a ton of “blabla has to fight to the death, because Reasons, plus fascism” books out there and while this is an excellent example of one, that’s still exactly what it is.

I’ve got lesson planning to do and then I really do want to finish this book tonight, so I’m going to leave this here– I probably will do a second post once I’ve finished the book, though. But come on, guys. Somebody got chocolate in your peanut butter and peanut butter in your chocolate and you’re doing your level damn best to not admit that you’ve got a Reese Cup in front of you. It’s a Reese Cup. We love Reese Cups. Just admit what it is and eat the damn thing.

#REVIEW: Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao

On January 22, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews2 Comments

Typically when I do a book review I will lead with the cover for the book. In this case, the full wraparound is gorgeous enough that I decided to go with that instead. It’s currently my desktop background. I love it that much.

The short version: this book is fucking amazing and you should go buy it right now. Just stop reading and go to Amazon– here, I made it easy for you– or hop in your car and go to your nearest independent bookstore and buy it and get them to order a few more.

The high-concept, “this meets this” elevator pitch for this book is “Pacific Rim meets Handmaid’s Tale,” and for my money that is a tremendously interesting comparison, because I hated Pacific Rim and the absolute last word I would use to describe The Handmaid’s Tale is “awesome,” but it’s still a pretty accurate description. It’s also a very very very loose retelling of the story of the Chinese empress Wu Zetian, only set on an alien planet in a far-flung future and involving giant mechs and a similar sort of mind-meld twin piloting scheme that you saw in Pacific Rim, only it’s necessary that one man and one woman be there to pilot the ship and I really don’t want to spoil a lot on this one because there is a ton of shit in this book that you’re not going to see coming.

I mean, YA is kinda tropey, right? And this starts off feeling a lot like a Chinese-influenced Hunger Games, with our main character being plucked out of poverty and obscurity because of certain Abilities that she happens to have (a thing called “spirit pressure” that may as well be a high midichlorian level, roll with it) and she is sent to pilot a mech with the latest major hotshot.

Oh, I forgot to mention something: piloting mechs frequently leads to the death of the female pilot in the equation, and Zetian’s older sister was previously chosen the same way, and she died while piloting a mech with the same pilot that Zetian schemes to be paired with. So she can kill his ass.

Wu Zetian hates men, guys. She hates men so fucking much. She makes Arya Stark’s obsession with revenge look like a passing fancy. And on top of hating men an awful lot–which, to be clear, is entirely understandable in this world; I haven’t mentioned her bound and shattered feet yet, have I?– she is also kind of an asshole. I have never encountered a character like her in a book before and she is an amazing breath of fresh air even if I think one of the book’s few weaknesses is that she’s kind of inconsistent from time to time about what she wants.

(She’s also, like, seventeen or eighteen, maybe? And a certain inconstancy is not exactly atypical of people that age, so this is a forgivable sin and perhaps simply a reflection of the character’s youth and not a flaw in how she’s written. But I noticed it, so I’m mentioning it.)

Anyway. She’s paired up with this dude who murdered her sister and who she hates, and if you’ve read YA before, you might think this is going to go a certain way, and then it doesn’t, and then something else happens and you think “oh, this is going to be like this,” and then it’s not, and then there’s a love triangle and then you’re absolutely sure it’s going to go like this and it absolutely goddamn does not, and that thought you had earlier where you thought it would be super cool if this happened but no way that will ever happen and then it does.

Okay, that’s kind of obscure. But know this: the worldbuilding is interesting, the characters are awesome, the enemies are evil and personal, the action scenes are great, and the book is entirely fucking unpredictable, and all that adds up to, amazingly, probably not the first book of the year that I think is gonna end up on my top 10 at the end of the year, but certainly the strongest candidate in a while.

In fact, I’ll go this far: the last time I enjoyed the first book in a new series as much as I enjoyed this one? Was Jade City. And I deliberately waited eight hours after finishing the book to let the high wear off before writing this.

Go read it right now.

Anyone watching this?

On December 5, 2016December 5, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Television5 Comments

I haven’t heard any buzz about this program at all, and only found out about it because I was scrolling through Netflix menus pretty much at random– any of you Netflix folks watching 3%? We’re only three episodes in, so consider this a conditional recommendation, but so far my lovely wife and I are both finding the show to be pretty compelling science fiction. The disadvantage: it’s dubbed from Portuguese, so when I say things like “the acting is good,” which is a thing I’d say about this show, what I basically mean is that the actors look like they’re acting well, and the English speakers they’ve hired to overdub their voices usually don’t suck that much.

The premise, so far: it is The Future, and The Future appears to really suck for everyone who lives in what I assume is still called Brazil. Each year everyone who turns 20 is eligible to take a series of tests that only the titular 3% will pass. Those who pass are able to go to “the Offshore,” which…

…well, none of them seem to know what the Offshore is, they just really really hope it’s better than the shit dystopia they live in now, and no scenes have been set in the Offshore yet, so the viewers don’t have any idea either. So, really Hunger Gamesy, but done pretty well. Three episodes in, we’re still all testing, and the tests have been varied and interesting enough to keep us watching. If this is what the entire first season is about, it might be a problem, but so far? So good.

Anybody else watching this? If not, anybody want to start so I have someone to talk to about it?

In which shut up I hate you

On May 28, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

This was originally supposed to be a post about how technology has made applying for teaching positions in multiple school districts a surprisingly simple and pain-free process; it’s still partially about that, I guess. Have you guys heard of Applitrack? Is that an education-only thing or has it spread to other HR departments in other fields? Long story short: I’ve applied for jobs in four different districts as of this evening. The first application took me forever to get finished because of all the stuff I had to track down and then enter into their system– like, literally, a couple of weeks in three or four sittings– but because all of these schools share the same architecture I can just import my application from one district to another, with only a few specific things that don’t move over or unique stuff for each district that I have to fill out, which means that while it took weeks to get the application for District 1 done, I finished my apps for both District 3 and District 4 tonight.

District Four, though… mang, fuck District Four. District Four wasn’t satisfied with the questions the other districts had, adding a half-hour goddamn multiple choice personality test that they insisted be completed in one sitting, with timed “just give your first reaction!” types of questions where the answer to every single fucking question is going to begin with the words “it depends on…”

I hate hypothetical teaching questions, guys. There are a million billion kajillion factors that go into even the tiniest goddamn decision that I make at my job, and giving me half-assed hypotheticals and making me choose one of four (when the answer could just as easily be “none of the above” or even fuckin’ “all of the above) answers on a ticking 35-second timer is just making me think I probably don’t want to work for your district after all and you can take your damn fishhooks and shove ’em up your ass.

(Don’t worry about it if you don’t get the reference, but you really should have read Hunger Games by now.)

Anyway.

The personality test wasn’t their worst sin, though. One of the other things I have to do with these applications is upload a bunch of files to each of them– a cover letter, a resume, recommendation letters, transcripts, etc. I’ve already pulled down all of these files for the District One application so I’ve got them all in my “Applying for Stuff” folder in my Dropbox and uploading them is a snap. Except these fuckers want my Praxis scores for some goddamn reason.

You have gotta be fucking kidding me. Because ETS, the company that runs the Praxis test, is the scum of the goddamn Earth and I would rather be living in a cardboard box under a bridge next year than have to give them any more of my money. ($40! For my own fucking scores for a test that cost two hundred fucking dollars! And they think it’s okay to make you wait ten fucking business days to email you a digital file. I hate ETS more than any company on Earth, people. They are vermin.)

The other thing? You know I’ve passed these goddamn tests already. How do you know that? I’m a licensed teacher and I actually have a job right now, all of which are impossible without passing Praxis tests. You don’t need my goddamn Praxis scores, assholes. Luckily, I had some shit on paper lying around that I was able to scan, because seriously: I’m not giving these fuckers any more money to release my own scores to me for a fucking extortionate fee, and between wanting that completely-irrelevant-yet-expensive-and-inconvenient document and the bullshit personality test, I think your district has probably already failed the first interview.

Bah.