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Warchild
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"Warchild" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*
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I wanted to talk about the choice to start the book in second person as I was reading, but I felt like it was too spoilery for the first impressions thread. I've never felt like the author is trying to use second person to make me think I'm in the story, even if they are. It's almost like second person is easiest for me to feel detached from, which may sound illogical. It reminds me of text-based games, kind of setting a scene, and I'm wondering if maybe I'm not the only one who feels this way, and that the decision to write Part 1 in second person wasn't to make it more personal for the reader, but less so for Jos?Especially since the last part moved to first person in present tense. I'm thinking maybe this was the author's way of trying to show some progress in how Jos is dealing with the trauma? The first part described as happening to 'you', someone outside of 'me', then moving to describing things that happened to 'me' in the past, and finally into the present tense. I really wish there'd been some actual progress in Jos's mental state, it's the main reason I had problems with the book. There was just trauma on top of trauma, and all the adults in his life, who knew what had happened to him, and were supposed to be safe, caring adults, just left him to deal with things on his own (the captain) or abused him emotionally (Niko).
I also wish that if the idea was to show that Jos was withdrawing from physical contact because of trauma, which I assume was the point, it would've come across less homophobic. I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure all the people who touched Jos were men, I can't remember a scene where a girl or a woman tried to touch him.
I keep going back and forth between two and three stars. There were things I really liked (the alien culture, which we didn't get to see much of), but also so many problems. Most importantly the fact that we leave Jos still traumatized with no help in sight and a new load of crap dumped on him.
Mod
Yes, dissociation is exactly what I was thinking.
Yeah, I feel like the second person definitely reflected detachment/dissociation on Jos's part, especially when paired with the single line in first person that ends that section. I think I would be less disturbed by the continued re-traumatization of Jos in this book if I didn't know that the other books in the series are about completely different characters, meaning there's never going to be an opportunity for Jos to get better on-page.
There was a lot in the portrayal of post-trauma symptoms that resonated for me, and stylistically/genre-wise I think it was the kind of book that I wanted to read last week, but there were also a lot of things I found really bothersome, the bizarre mix of homoeroticism/homophobia in particular.
Kaa, I also looked at the two other books and that’s why the lack of any kind of processing bothered me. This is where we’re leaving Jos, and it’s not a good place at all.
The structure of the book bothered me a bit. We have the uncomfortable, exceedingly rare second person to open up, and a switch to present tense in the last part. Also, the chapters are exceedingly short and numbered with Roman numerals. (I had forgotten that L was 50, it's been that long since I've seen Roman numerals that high!) All of this feels a little like the author trying to shout out: "Hey, I'm a real author! I can do many different styles and my format is unconventional! Look at meeeeeeeeeeeeee!" I realize there are arguments for each of these choices, but I feel the desire to be different probably trumps all of these.That said, I don't think these choices make this a bad book by any means, and in fact I rather liked it.
I give it 3 out of 5 stars, “I liked it.” (Mildly)1. Tense/POV changes - don’t like 2nd person, but I like the thoughts here that it’s because of Jos’s disassociating from his traumatic childhood. So I will accept! Tense - 2nd person already makes it hard to read and then in Part IV when it changed to present tense... could hardly follow the thread of it. My mind kept wandering and I would have to turn pages back and reread. (These days it seems quite vogue to write in 1st or 2nd person and when I get to a book with 3rd person omniscient narrator or multiple POVs I react Thank God! This is the way — just *tell the story* without crutches. Then I reason with myself in my mind that it is a style, not a crutch.)
2. Subject matter - as @Kaa mentioned, an uncomfortable mix of (sort-of) homophobia and homoeroticism. The child molesting stuff... I don’t think it’s wrong for authors to use real-life issues in fiction so I don’t want to criticize it for that... yet it felt a bit unsavory to me. Like, we’re using this serious trauma as a fictional device for our fun space pirates? I can not articulate a rational reason against it, and yet I felt uncomfortable reading it, like maybe I was participating in secret voyeurism.
3a) Favorite - when Jos was on the alien planet, interesting to see the boy struggling with the language and growing to care for Nikolas. I looked forward to learning if the striviirc-na were as clean as they made out to the boy. Also enjoyed Jos infiltrating the enemy.
3b) Least favorite - the last few chapters. 1) the action thread hard to follow: station name? where are they? what’s this new ship? who’s shooting who? who‘s in the brig? Who’s on which side? 2) The end felt YA in a bad way. Teens participate in world events far beyond what they could in real life for someone their age. Teen with great responsibility gets to break all the rules, according to Emotions instead of Logic or the depressing grind of real world. An alien sympathizer/active traitor would not be let out of his cell, be on the bridge advising the captain, get to dress up in the ship’s uniform, and get told “You can pick a home from either ship!”.
4. Surprise - Jos starts sending communications to homebase immediately, instead of waiting it out for years. Childhood buddy Evan gets to wear dress in ship’s uniform even though he hadn’t gone through Boot Camp. Jos throws a knife accurately after three years of no practice; actually those go with 3B.
Does not come close to my favorite space pirates, which i will recommend here: Gap series” by Stephen Donaldson. Starts with The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story and continues for several more books. Has sexual molesting too, but adults (Morn, Angus and Nick) I don’t think children. Also! aliens, secret alien technology, double agents, spies, space battles, terrorism, intra-government agency arguments, blackmail, patriotism, and lots of political intrigue. Oh, also some love, both romantic and parental. :-)
overall I liked the new take on aliens. what if we didn't lose the kind of native American culture on Earth and that's what ended up going to the stars in our future. how would that culture fair with our kind of culture that we are destined for when we go to the stars instead. it definitely reminded me of Western culture coming and taking America from the native Americans. it was a very frustrating story from the sense of Jos with his horrible backstory and then being asked to do what must be done to try to make a treaty. I do agree with those that said that we didn't seem to leave him in a good place at the end of the book. I was interested in reading more possibly but if it's not about him and how he might end up with a better life then I'm probably not interested hahaha. I just couldn't help feeling sorry for him the entire book and it's not necessarily a place that I like to be in my mind during a good read. I generally do like more of a fantasy type sci-fi where it's light on the drama and good-humored and really not like real life at all which is normally full of drama and a lot of what was in this book. the part that I didn't like about this book is the part that was supposed to bring it towards a real life feel. just not my style of sci-fi that I enjoy a ton. it's a 3 out of 5 for me. good story overall, a little unbelievable at times, and too much like real life with personal trauma and dramatization that I just didn't particularly enjoy. Even though I didn't enjoy the drama part of the book I still think the author did a very good job at being subtle about the trauma and what exactly happened but yet you were able to still piece it together without it being kind of traumatic for yourself reading about child molestation. I appreciate that!
I haven’t found this book anywhere so I’m afraid I can’t join. Maybe later!
Holy wall of text.What do you mean by
what if we didn't lose the kind of native American culture on Earth and that's what ended up going to the stars in our future. how would that culture fair with our kind of culture that we are destined for when we go to the stars instead.
That was more emotionally draining than I expected it to be. I actually loved the second person part, and I also agree about the disassociation. I thought the book could have used more building of the world. It seemed something was missing the whole time but I can’t put my finger on what it was.
I loved this book - the story and characters kept me hooked the whole time, with only a little bit of a slowdown during the training section. I thought the author handled the sexual abuse/trauma really well. So much of what we learn about Jos' past is from his body language and nonverbal responses to people, that he is sometimes not even aware of. I thought it was an extremely affecting version of "show don't tell." The alien culture was well thought out, and I loved that she included a lot of alien language as part of the world-building. Someone said they thought the abuse theme seemed incongruous with the space pirate theme, but I totally thought the opposite. Pirates in a lot of media have been turned into this kind of charming rebel persona but the reality is that "pillaging" and etc. is not an ethical gray area. The pirates in this book were realistic and were clearly bad news. It seemed very, sadly believable that there would be sex trafficking in this future world, and that it would be delegated to the vagabond bands in the distant, unregulated regions of space, and leveraged by military opportunists.
In the end, the only thing that bothered me was what others have said - where is the support/counterculture that Jos and others so desperately need? They have a therapist on this ship and they know Jos' background but he is not required to go to sessions? They joke about "whores" and how they want it??? Nikos was a beacon of hope and understanding that Jos needed, but even he thought the answer was "learn to kill". So I had to take a star off for the general feeling at the end that somehow Jos' and other kids' experiences had been normalized or justified in some way by the apathy.
A lot to think about in this one - thanks Jessica for bringing up the parallel with Native American genocide - glad I read this one.
Anna wrote: "I wanted to talk about the choice to start the book in second person as I was reading, but I felt like it was too spoilery for the first impressions thread. I've never felt like the author is tryin..."Hey, Anna, you stated that Niko abused Jos emotionally, did you mean Ash? Or are you talking about Niko manipulating Jos into going back into the war again, and in a way abandoning him? Or something else?
Yes, Niko manipulating Jos in general. (I’m on my phone, not yet gone to sleep at 6AM so sorry for the short reply.)
Mod
A few things to get us started:
1. What did you think of the tense/POV changes?
2. How do you think the subject matters were handled?
3. What was your favorite/least favorite thing about the book?
4.What surprised you?