Beta

Rachel Cohn's Beta, advertised recently in Entertainment Weekly, is another one of those young adult dystopian novels that are so popular now, but this one has an interesting protagonist: a clone, just days old, in the body of a female teenager.

Elysia might be only a few days old, but she's been programmed to act her age. She's got everything--looks, physique, manners--everything but a soul. Clones do whatever humans tell them to do. They are property. But they can have good lives. For one, they live in a beautiful paradise, only accessible to rich humans, and without souls, they have no wants and desires. As long as they do their jobs, which they are programmed to do, life is bliss for the humans and as good as it needs to be for an emotionless, unfeeling clone. So, when Elysia begins to want things, she knows something terrible is wrong with her, which puts her in grave danger. The clones that don't work are sent to the infirmary, where they are practically tortured in order to discover what went wrong. For a clone who feels things, that is a very undesirable fate. Elysia must hide her big secret, but maybe there are others like her out there. Maybe there is a life she can have. Because the one she has isn't enough. Slavery isn't a life.

This book is not the next best thing in YA fiction, but it's relatively entertaining. The moral question of cloning is tackled head-on. Can a clone have a soul? Is it right to clone? If we did, how would we treat clones? With a clone protagonist, the book obviously favors one side of the issue over the other. In reality, though, we don't know the answers because we haven't yet cloned humans (to my knowledge). But scientists keep trying to find a way to do it. If they succeeded, would God breathe a soul into their creation? Interesting food for thought.

As far as other morality in the book goes, slavery seems to be the author's main concern. Clones become whatever you want them to be, including objects of sexual pleasure (for humans, of course). The book's morals clearly don't agree with that, but as with many young adult books, teenage sex, as long as it is performed by two loving partners with mutual consent, is okay. The book doesn't actually go all the way there (though there is a rape scene), but the implication that it would be acceptable is presented. There is also drug use with a rather mixed message, in my opinion. Obviously, our culture agrees it's bad, and that comes across in the book. But in regards to the clones, it almost seems like a good thing. I won't spoil any more than that. There may be more revealed on that end further on in the series, of which Beta is the first.

It was unique to get inside Elysia's head, not knowing exactly what sort of species she is. She's not human because she was born 16, or so. But she has human emotions. She often expresses things in terms of her programming. In some ways, she seems like a robot. Overall, I wasn't sure what to make of her. I liked her, but I did feel like she wasn't human. And I don't know if she is supposed to be.

Other than Elysia's character and what she knows or discovers, there's not a lot of development of the dystopian world. But I guess that's to be expected when your main character is a teenager; a teen's focus is narrow. There's a lot that could be talked about in future novels. This book takes place in a dystopian paradise, but much of the rest of the world is less idyllic and more post-post-apocalyptic (meaning life has been renewed after Earth's destruction). I'm curious to know if we'll get to see more of this in a broader story.

I give the novel three stars for an intriguing heroine.

The Spindlers

I must confess, I picked up middle-grade novel The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver, more because of the author than interest in the content. That's funny, too, because I didn't love her young adult novel Delirium as much as I do most other dystopian novels. I guess I figured I'd give her another try. In fact, I have another older middle-school novel of hers that's been waiting awhile on my shelf. Maybe it's time to give that one a shot, too.

The Spindlers starts out slow...and a little kiddy, to be honest. I felt like I was reading elementary school fiction, and that's the age group I would recommend this to, having finished it. But it picks up toward the middle and is downright compelling as it nears the end.

Liza is a normal girl who wakes up one day to discover that her brother's soul is missing. He's still there, pretending to be himself, but Liza knows the difference. Her babysitter (and here I'm thinking, really? How can I take this adventure seriously if it's put into the realm of the babysitter's ghost stories?) has told her of the Spindlers, spider-like creatures who rule the Underworld and steal souls. Liza knows they have Patrick, and with the grownups calling her a storyteller and fibber, it's up to her to go down and get him back. But the Spindlers aren't the only danger that awaits her.

Yeah, I wasn't too fond of the whole babysitter-tells-stories-that-end-up-being-true idea. It makes you wonder from the start if any of the adventure is real or if it's all just in Liza's head or dreams. Perhaps the author realized this because she makes a point of proving to the reader (and to Liza, actually) that it's all real. But if you really wanted to, you could say it all happened in Liza's head, and it would still fit the book. I don't think that's what the author meant to imply at all, but it could easily be read that way.

That certainly contributed to my dislike of the beginning of this book. It was slow, too, in getting to any real danger. Liza meets some vaguely interesting creatures at the start of her adventure in the Underworld, but I kept hoping for more. And finally, the book gave me more. The Spindlers are the ultimate dangerous goal, but Liza's journey there holds its own dangers and surprises.

I'm not sure how old Liza is, but she seems young, maybe only slightly older than Lucy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The book is targeted toward grades three through seven, but I would recommend it to the younger side of that spectrum. From what I've observed, kids who read usually read above their age level.

I was pleased to see that as in The Chronicles of Narnia, there is real danger (as long as it's not all a dream) for Liza in the Underworld. It's good to expose kids to a healthy amount of danger in books. Notice, I say "healthy," and by that I mean a parent still needs to monitor a child's reading experience. But I would say The Spindlers is a pretty safe bet for most kids.

Three stars for turning out to be an imaginative adventure worth reading.

Stork

My husband playfully chides me for keeping 20 unread books on my shelf, especially when I frequently complain about how I can't find anything to read. How do these books even end up there? Since I get them for free, I'm not always picky. If the premise if remotely interesting, I take the book home. Lately, I've been curbing this tendency in the interest of clearing my shelf a little bit. I recently read two books (see my latest reviews) that I would never have missed if I'd left them alone, but on a rare occasion, a book surprises me, especially if it's low on my reading list. Stork was one of those.

I've been hanging onto Stork, a young adult novel by Wendy Delsol, for awhile. It came out in October 2010, and I got my advance reader's copy quite a bit earlier than that. In all the array of paranormal beings, a girl-Stork who could put souls into just-conceived babies didn't intrigue me like people who could turn into more furry creatures. I've always been more into wolves and least into birds. I like to call myself an animal person, but I think birds are the most boring of all pets. My apologies to all the bird-lovers out there. I know I'm making enemies.

Even the heroine of Stork had a strike against her for being into fashion. I'm not against fashion, but I'm the least fashionable kind of person, comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt, wearing the same shoes every day of my life.

Nonetheless, Stork grabbed me, and in two days, I'd read it from cover to cover. It wasn't so much the plot, which became surprisingly more interesting the more I got invested. Thankfully, Katla never actually turns into a stork, and there's no swaddled babies being delivered in handkerchiefs to people's doorways. But there is magic involved. Katla unexpectedly finds herself the youngest member of a secret group of old women, grannies all, who believe in the old myths and put souls into unborn babies. The souls are revealed to the members of this stork society in dreams, and the only weird physical transformation is an odd, fiery rash on their scalps, which is a physical signal for them to gather together.

But being a Stork is only one of many transformations Katla is undergoing. She's just moved from California to a small town in Minnesota after her parents' divorce, and everyone stares at her strangely in her new school. It doesn't help that the one guy she got to know before school ill-used her and pretends not to know her once school starts. And then there's the guy who keeps popping up wherever Katla goes, but he and Katla can't seem to get along.

Even with all this going on, the plot isn't what makes the book exceptional. It's Katla's voice throughout the story. Her thoughts and her dialog are always witty, packing in word plays and clever imagery in subtle ways you would almost miss if you didn't slow down to absorb them. It's not only Katla who's likeable either. The characters around her are quirky and loveable with their own brands of humorous witticisms. Stork was simply an enjoyable read.

It's hard to categorize this book. It has fantastical elements in it, but it's not fantasy. It has paranormal elements in it, and it certainly has romance, but it's not paranormal romance in the way you normally see. It's magical, but the magic is not domineering. The magical elements are almost a side plot for most of the book, and that's fine. But however you might categorize Stork, the facts remain, it was surprisingly captivating and downright satisfying.

Four bright, beautiful stars.