Chalk sketch of boy meets girl
By Patrick Ness |
May 12, 2013, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THERE'S always a boy, and there's always a girl. They may not like each other at first, but they find a way to work together. Friendship always blossoms, sometimes romance. There's a society they have to fight against and a secret to uncover that changes the world. They win in the end, though there's heartbreak along the way and more danger ahead.
Sound familiar? That's probably because you've read "The Hunger Games" or "Divergent" or "Beautiful Creatures" or any one of a number of recent young adult blockbusters. Why do so many current young adult novels - including, I must admit, some of my own - hew so closely to this formula?
Perhaps these elements recur so frequently because they capture something essential about what it is to be a teenager: suddenly alone in a society you don't understand, friends who are both passionately devoted and heart-crushingly duplicitous, a new set of rules that you must learn but which no one will explain. Being a teenager is difficult, and when you're 16, a book that takes this fact seriously is water in a desert.
As in every genre, though, it's not the motifs themselves, it's what you do with them. Brandon Sanderson, author of the final three volumes of Robert Jordan's adult fantasy series "The Wheel of Time," is the latest to enter the fray with "The Rithmatist." Joel is a scholarship student at the affluent Armedius Academy on New Britannia in the United Isles, an alternate archipelago version of America. Armedius trains "Rithmatists," wizarding types who duel with chalk.
The training is serious. Wild chalklings - chalk-drawn creatures used in combat but here broken free - are extremely dangerous to humans. Rithmatist graduates serve out 10-year terms on Nebrask, trying to contain the wild chalkling threat. But Rithmatists are chosen by God on their eighth birthday, and no matter how much of an expert Joel has made himself on Rithmatist lore, he was not chosen and never will be.
Melody, meanwhile, has been chosen but is expelled from Armedius because she is unable to draw even the simplest defensive circle competently. She's forced to take remedial summer classes.
But then young Rithmatists are attacked, possibly murdered, and Joel and Melody get caught up in the investigation. There are indeed secrets to be uncovered and the world to be saved, and "The Rithmatist" contains some good surprises on the way to a pleasingly nifty conclusion.
Mostly, though, the fantasy here is very comfortable, and that points to a key weakness. "The Rithmatist" is a little bit soft at the edges, Sanderson never quite succeeds in making two-dimensional chalk drawings move from interesting to scary.
The world never quite feels as if it actually might end, which is what I think young adult readers are looking for, in whatever form. Because that is, after all, what every day feels like when you're a teenager.
Sound familiar? That's probably because you've read "The Hunger Games" or "Divergent" or "Beautiful Creatures" or any one of a number of recent young adult blockbusters. Why do so many current young adult novels - including, I must admit, some of my own - hew so closely to this formula?
Perhaps these elements recur so frequently because they capture something essential about what it is to be a teenager: suddenly alone in a society you don't understand, friends who are both passionately devoted and heart-crushingly duplicitous, a new set of rules that you must learn but which no one will explain. Being a teenager is difficult, and when you're 16, a book that takes this fact seriously is water in a desert.
As in every genre, though, it's not the motifs themselves, it's what you do with them. Brandon Sanderson, author of the final three volumes of Robert Jordan's adult fantasy series "The Wheel of Time," is the latest to enter the fray with "The Rithmatist." Joel is a scholarship student at the affluent Armedius Academy on New Britannia in the United Isles, an alternate archipelago version of America. Armedius trains "Rithmatists," wizarding types who duel with chalk.
The training is serious. Wild chalklings - chalk-drawn creatures used in combat but here broken free - are extremely dangerous to humans. Rithmatist graduates serve out 10-year terms on Nebrask, trying to contain the wild chalkling threat. But Rithmatists are chosen by God on their eighth birthday, and no matter how much of an expert Joel has made himself on Rithmatist lore, he was not chosen and never will be.
Melody, meanwhile, has been chosen but is expelled from Armedius because she is unable to draw even the simplest defensive circle competently. She's forced to take remedial summer classes.
But then young Rithmatists are attacked, possibly murdered, and Joel and Melody get caught up in the investigation. There are indeed secrets to be uncovered and the world to be saved, and "The Rithmatist" contains some good surprises on the way to a pleasingly nifty conclusion.
Mostly, though, the fantasy here is very comfortable, and that points to a key weakness. "The Rithmatist" is a little bit soft at the edges, Sanderson never quite succeeds in making two-dimensional chalk drawings move from interesting to scary.
The world never quite feels as if it actually might end, which is what I think young adult readers are looking for, in whatever form. Because that is, after all, what every day feels like when you're a teenager.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
