OtherEarth
Jason Segal & Kirsten Miller
You thought things were out there in OtherWorld? Well, they just got stranger. Simon’s made it out of the virtual world, and into the real one. Well, some of the time. OK, most of the time he’s still there. But he has Kat! And that means he can save the world. But which world?
I somehow didn’t have as much empathy as I could have for the Children. Real AI, that knows it’s alive and can think for itself? That hasn’t freaked me out for a while, I accept the inevitability of robot overlords eventually! And I’m quite cruisy with the idea from Questionable Content, and I care about the robots there. These Children were creepy, but also cool at the same time. But! How can they really be alive if they die when the servers turn off?
Jeeze, these writers know how to write a good cliffhanger. It’s a good thing I could find OtherLife online, otherwise I would have been really grumpy. It’s a second book, and it shows. The twists and turns seem to be thrown in just for the hell of it, and we don’t see any character development.
Somehow Simon is just as assholish as the first novel, plus we get Elvis who is just as bad. I just can’t believe this novel. Sure, dystopian future, but I’d like to see how it relates back to us now. I can’t relate to two rich kids who are hanging around with a couple of mill’ in cash, complete with mafia grandfather.
Alright, enough of a review from me. I’m going to go read OtherLife, and see if it draws the series to a successful end, or whether it leaves me just as tripped as this one.
Bloomsbury | 31st October 2018 | AU$19.99 | paperback
The opening scene of this novel took me off guard, because I didn’t really want to read about a self-absorbed rich kid who had a giant nose. I couldn’t have cared less about whether he was 6 foot and sunbathing naked on the lawn. I definitely couldn’t have cared less about the fact that his parents didn’t like him, and that his dad took his driving iron to his expensive, fancy gear.
This was almost real-world believable. Apart from the ghosts. But she hadn’t known about the ghosts. It’s fascinating how LaCour is able to step inside a tortured psyche and make it so that her readers are imprinted into the novel themselves. By this I mean that almost any person who has undergone trauma could see how this related to them.
Let’s start off by stating that this is not an easy read. This is a terrifying read. It is not comfortable or comforting. You’re going to want to put trigger warnings on it for suicide, bullying and child sexual abuse. This is an #ownvoices novel from this author, and the authenticity of the writing is heartbreaking in parts. It lead to this being a compulsive read for me.
The set up of these books is that each one of the five dragonets of the Prophecy get a book to themselves. The first two books really only rely on the main characters (Clay and Tsunami) to carry them. Naturally then, I loved Clay the most – he might not be the brightest, but he is certainly the friendliest (plus he likes eating). After that point, we start seeing a bit more variety in the dragonets involved, particularly in book 4 (Starflight – Dark dragon).
Oh dear. I had to look up the main character’s name. I at least remembered Bailey’s name, probably because I used to have a guinea-pig named Baileys (after Bailey’s Irish Cream liquor). Veronica on the other hand is a blank, boring slate with nothing unique about her. I mean, I felt for her having an unexpected pregnancy and having to drive a bloody long way to get an abortion, but it’s not like she was actually a 3D character I could care about.
I liked the new twist on the Cinderella fairytale, but some elements left me feeling disappointed and short changed. I was happy that I had a lesbian protagonist. I was happy that she didn’t instantly fall for her new female friend… but that she lusted over her. Who doesn’t want something that is forbidden? I feel like that love was really just lust, and that’s far more preferable to insta-love.
There’s plenty of orphan and adoption stories out there. Batman is perhaps one of the most famous, but Batman at least has his beloved butler to care for him. Or, there’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, where the children did have parents, and now they are being ?watched? by Lemony Snicket. The original orphan story is Oliver Twist, or maybe Mowgli, and then there’s Anne of Green Gable. All of these stories have white protagonists.
This book is firmly in the business non-fiction category. So, it’s actually a review by my wife (with edits from me for clarity and order). With that being said…
There are dot point summaries at each chapter end to make sure you’ve gotten the main points out of the chapter. This book isn’t going to be a complete reread, but it’s worth having as a reference book for flicking through when I need inspiration.
This book hurt me, because it had so many steriotypical ‘gay male’ behaviours in it. The main character is a normally flamboyant gay male who wears nail polish, sings and dances hilariously and isn’t sporty. Normally I hate steriotypes, but they are usually known for a reason. The fact that Randy’s head space shows his personality regardless of his outside presentation is important. Many gay people act straight to ‘pass’ as normal, and it’s nice to have a protagonist who can show what that’s like, and how hard it is.