Book Review: Wither, Chemical Garden book 1

Short book review first:

Dark Heart Rising, by Lee Monroe
I stumbled upon Dark Heart Rising, sequel to Dark Heart Forever and decided to give the book a try. Dark Heart Forever didn't impress me much, but I don't think it's horrible, though to be honest when I opened Dark Heart Rising I found myself unable to remember most of the events in book 1. I only recalled there's a werewolf boy and a human girl in the story, and the werewolves, vampires, witches and fallen angels all live in a secret dimension of their own; and these supernatural creatures are banned to mix with humans. Hell, I can't remember who is the bad guy. Okay, one hell of forgettable book it is.

Dark Heart Rising is a passable YA novel and it is easy to read, the main character Jane is an okay heroine who isn't a pain in the ass like so many other Paranormal YA book females. Though I found nothing outstanding in Jane and the entire story seems to be lacking when it comes to originality and style.

Still, everything is fine until the new male character, Soren's past is revealed. *plot spoiler warning* I found it problematic for the author to justify mass killing of an entire family. And why would Jane trust Soren and help him locating his younger sister (who was adopted by another werewolves family) after she learnt what he had done? Wouldn't she worry that Soren is only playing nice in order to sever his own agenda? Wouldn't she worry that Soren wants to find his sister only to finish what he had started years ago? I know if I were Jane, I'd be deeply worry.*end of spoiler*

The ending isn't bad, but it has nothing to differ itself from countless other YA paranormal romances in the market, and the author didn't bother to make up her mind on what she wants to do with Raphael, the villain in book 1. (at one part, Raphael is a hatred-ridden psychopath, then he shifts into a deeply troubled young man who plots to start an revolution in his society in the next chapter?)  I suggest you to read the book when you can borrow it in the library.

Book Review: Wither (Chemical Garden book 1), by Lauren Destefano

Book Description from amazon.com:By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males born with a lifespan of 25 years, and females a lifespan of 20 years--leaving the world in a state of panic. Geneticists seek a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.
When Rhine is sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Yet her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can't bring herself to hate him as much as she'd like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband's strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement; her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next; and Rhine has no way to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive.

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

My thoughts:

The story takes place in a futurist dystopian America, in where men can only live 25 years and women for 20 years. Rhine, an orphaned 16 years old girl knew she had exactly four more years to live while her twin brother Rowan would survive her by five more years. One day, Rhine was kidnapped to be the new bride of Linden, a young House Governor of a powerful upper class family. Longing to go back to her brother, Rhine planned for escape while pretending to be Linden's loving wife.

I think the setting above is fresh and filled with potential, the writing is beautiful, I also appreciated the author for not shying away from difficult topics such as polygamous marriage, slavery, sex and prostitution (nothing graphic though, mind you). But as the story unfolded, I found Miss Destefano's fictional world needs a lot more explaining to be made sense.

First we are told that Northern America is the only continent left--the other continents were all destroyed during World War III. Really!???? Okay, let's not mention how unrealistic the concept of continents being destroyed by man-made weapons sounds, just......honestly, Miss Destefano do you know what would happen if most of the continents were...gone? For starters, it'll change the ocean currents, this alone is devastating enough for most of the living creatures. Then the whole climate system would also be changed! Wouldn't it be endangering to the humans left in Northern America?

Secondly, we are told that even though there is still a President who's supposed to be in charge, still there's no policeman to keep law and order anymore, nor any social welfare system. Also there's no national army of any sort in sight. Only well off families can afford bodyguards. I found it to be highly unrealistic. Maybe I can accept that the government can no longer afford social welfare and ordinary people are left to fend for themselves, still how can a nation be left with NO POLICEMAN AND ARMY? Wouldn't there be an uprising if no one is there to keep some form of social control and order?

Also there're organized kidnappers (called the Gatherers in the story) who roamed around and looked for suitable girls to kidnap and sell off. But I found what those Gatherers had done doesn't make much sense. We are told that after Rhine and two other girls were selected to be Linden's brides, the rest of the rejected girls were immediately shot to death. What?
If I were a bad guy who made a living by kidnapping and selling girls, then why would I shoot a bunch of perfectly young, healthy girls to death after they were rejected by one customer, instead of selling them to other customers as unwilling brides, prostitutes or guinea pigs? I mean, why waste those poor girls at all? Don't forget in this story, women can only live to age 20, and every single sold teenage girl can only serve her purpose for probably no more than six or seven years! In a kidnapper's prospective, murdering those girls isn't economical at all, instead the killing of those kidnapped girls seems like a clumsy plot device to create shock value.

After Rhine was sold to Linden's household, the author took her time describing the fascinating make-over of Rhine as a silk-clad, jewels-covered bride. Not only Rhine and her sister wives were well fed and finely bathed, they were issued with personal domestics, and other servants busied themselves dressing them up in expansive gowns and real jewels--all these, are luxuries that Rhine and the other two girls had never ever imagined. Again it doesn't look realistic to me. If Vaughn, Linden's father, the evil Housemaster and the main villain of the story, were willing to shower his captives with all these comfort and luxuries, then why wouldn't it be easier to offer the same luxuries to girls who were willing to sell themselves to be Linden's brides?

I'm not saying if the kidnapper showered his captives with gifts then we can overlook his crime, but why would there be any need for Vaughn to order unwilling girls to be kidnapped if there were so many desperate orphans out there who can be easily bribed to do Vaughn's bidding? Vaughn can easily have his pick of Linden's potential brides when the author had already pointed out there're countless orphans roaming the streets because their parents had died young.

As the story processes, it's revealed that Linden, Rhine's 20 years old husband wasn't the real bad guy and he didn't even know all of his brides were kidnapped. In fact Linden was a mournful widower who hadn't yet gotten over the death of his previous wife, Lady Rose. So in order to gain more freedom, Rhine pretended to be Linden's loving wife to gain his trust and favoritism. But I found there's one major flaw in Rhine's good plan: Why on earth would any man who had once experienced a happy marriage (Linden was happily married to Rose before she died) falls for Rhine's lies and pretending? Just answer me one question, what kind of loving bride would refuse to have sex with her husband for a whole freaking year? I don't care how understanding and gentle Linden was supposed to be, if a bride kept on denying sex for that long, then even the most thick-skulled man would know something is wrong by then! It looks like the author was too chicken to let her heroine have sex, so she sacrificed the realism of her plots instead.

Of course, it also goes without saying that Rhine, like most of the other YA heroines, cannot have sex, or at least not having it with someone who isn't the male lead/her soul mate. I found it quite hypocritical.

But I actually enjoy the relationship Rhine had with Linden, the author did a good job describing the tension between the two and how Rhine was confused by her own feeling toward her husband, while letting us see why it's not right for Rhine to stay with Linden despite how kind and loving he was.

Rhine's relationship with her sister wives, Cecily and Jenna is also endearing and finely written. Jenna's sadness and gentle dignity, Cecily's eagerness to please are believable and the author successfully made me care about these girls. I don't care much for Linden though. He's okay as a character, but as a whole he comes off a bit weak and dull. For example, he never asked Rhine and his other two wives where did they come from, how their lives used to be before they came to live with him. He never tried to know his wives better as people, it keeps Linden from becoming an endearing character to me.

I had mentioned how I like the relationships between Rhine with her husband and her sister wives are developed in the story, but what I found lacking is Rhine's supposed romance with Linden's servant, Gabriel. There're a lot of build-ups for Linden/Rhine through out the book, but sadly there is barely any build-up for Rhine/Gabriel. I have never found out why these two would fall for one another, why Gabriel would risk everything for Rhine in the end.  I can accept Gabriel may come to pity Rhine or maybe even forming an alliance with her, helping her to escape, but there're so little romance-worthy interaction between the two. Plus Gabriel's long absence in the middle of the book is quite damaging to his romance with Rhine, cutting off the space for the romance to grow.

It may sound like I hate this book but actually I don't. I want to like it for the good writing, the beautifully described details and the finely built relationships among characters. Rhine is an okay heroine and I like the backstory about her late parents and her brother. Some of the characters, e.g. Jenna, Cecily, Vaughn stand out better than the rest. Still, the unconvincing romance and the lack of explanation in many aspects of the story keep me from enjoying the book fully.