Book Review: Dead Rules by R.S. Russell
I really don’t know how to feel about this book. It’s badly written, and I should be in my typical eye twitchy mood. But as I reached the end of the book, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. This confuses me even more than some of the ambiguous writing in this story.
To start with, I thought from the blurb that Dead Rules was some kind of zombie book, and some of the early chapters made me think that. But then it became clear that the characters were ghosts being boarded in some kind of private ghost school for teens. But the ghost kids need to drink water to avoid dehydration. I have no clue why, because like everything else, this was never explained. Why are kids grouped into Risers and Sliders? Why are the rules defining good and bad kids so random and arbitrary? If following the rules is so important, why is the only copy of the rulebook supposedly written in Aramaic? Why do teens in comas end up in this school if they aren’t dead yet? And if this school is meant to give kids a second chance before moving on to heaven or hell, why are they not allowed to do anything except sit in dull classes? It’s like purgatory, but even more painful and dull.
The book also starts off with some seriously messed up objectification of virginity. Jana, the main character, died a virgin, but because she let her boyfriend touch her boob, she isn’t “pure enough” to be a Virgin. Virgins, with the capitalized title, are a special class of ghost who glow and wear white clothes. They’re used at the school to act as the period bells, and they sing everything instead of talking. They don’t interact with the other kids because they’re so Special. Why? I don’t know, the writer never bothers to explain anything in this book. But anyway, within the first chapter, it’s established that Jana is a good girl because she’s a virgin, and another character, Sherry, is really bad because “she’s a whore.” Later on, another ghost student is said to have been expelled because “she slept around.” Right, okay, once again, a YA story places value on characters based on whether they’re good little virgins or skanky hos who can’t keep their slut legs closed. Nothing new here. I’ll move along. (But seriously, I wonder how teens who have had consensual sex before they’re “legal” must feel when almost every YA writer keeps telling them they’re worthless because only virgins can be good people.)
The writing is terrible, and I’m still not sure why an editor didn’t get rid of some of this clunky stuff. You want examples? Okay, here:
Henry made an actor’s face, opening his eyes wide and tossing his pupils from side to side.
She pointed to herself and turned her face into a question mark.
As her eyes moved back and forth, watching each of his watch her…
This is before we even get to the story premise, which is about Jana, a girl who loves her boyfriend Michael so, so much that she wants to kill him to make sure they can stay together forever. Thing is, Michael isn’t so keen on being with her, and never was. Even though most normal people would just break up with an “It’s not you, it’s me” speech, he kills her, and then spends the rest of the book insisting that it was really just an accident, and he totally didn’t mean to kill her, even though he did. He also spends the rest of the book blackmailing his friends to keep them quiet, even though “we didn’t do anything wrong.”
Another scene that’s still “bugging” me is how Jana can’t flick an ant off of her arm because she’s a ghost and can’t affect living things. BUT, if she can’t affect living things, how is the ant even walking on her arm? And this is just one of dozens of questions I have that never get answered. Why do students inside the school seemingly have physical bodies, right down to having pulses and needing to breathe? Why are Sliders warmer than Risers? Why did the council of regents set this system up, and who are the council of regents? If one dude died with his face frozen in his last expression, why doesn’t everyone have their faces stuck in that final pose? I don’t know. None of this stuff makes any sense. I feel like I’ve read a rough draft of some fan-fiction, only no one told me which fandom it was attached to. Like, if I knew what show or comic this came from, all my questions might have answers from writers with better talent. Here, I’m just left asking “huh?” a lot.
A logical, analytical part of my brain keeps insisting that I should be mad like I normally am with a bad book; the head hopping, the muddled world-building, the seeming lack of anything resembling competent editing… I should hate this book with a burning passion. This review should be peppered with my usual dose of f-bombs. But I don’t feel anything, so why not? Obviously the book isn’t working for me, but what’s holding me back from going super seiyan ragin’?
I don’t know. I do know this is a bad book, and not something I’d recommend to anyone. I can give it a low score because it’s not good or worth my time. But where’s my usual outrage? And if the book sucks so badly, why did I finish it in only a few days?
I guess it will be one of those mysteries I can’t solve. In any case, I give Dead Rules two stars. Maybe my lack of emotion is because this book is pretty much standard fare in YA, and I’ve seen some of these things so often, I’m now incapable of reacting. Maybe it’s just that YA writing is so lazy as a rule that my expectations are so greatly lowered, the same mistakes that once pissed me off no longer set me off. It’s a theory, and one I’ll have to wait and see when I dip into another bad YA read.
