Author Archives: Kevin Singer

Read this book: Unwind

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If you survey the landscape of young adult publishing, it would be easy to assume that the future will be bleak. Take a look at Suzanne Collins’ phenomenal Hunger Games series, or Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy. Well, add another one to the list.

Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, is set in a future America where the abortion battles led to a war, and the negotiated peace is as follows: abortion is illegal, but children can be unwound between the ages of 13 and 18, if their parents or guardians decide. What is unwinding? The body is taken apart, with each part being donated to someone in need (except for a few unusable bits). So, basically, they’re killed but in the name of charity.

With sci-fi/paranormal/supernatural stories, you often cannot look too closely at the logic behind the premise, lest is falls apart. And with Unwind, you have to ignore the fact that a law where abortion is illegal but adolescent children can be “aborted” would only piss off both sides.

So put that aside.

Once you do, what you get is a compelling and emotionally devastating book. It follows Connor, a bit of a wild kid, who discovers that his parents are going to have him unwound. He runs, and in the course of his travels hooks up with an unlikely pair: Risa, an orphan scheduled for unwinding, and Lev, the tenth child of a religious family who has been designated as a tithe (in other words, he will be unwound as well).

Grisly stuff.

I won’t reveal too much of the plot, which is a cracking story that keeps the pages turning. But this book is more than that. Shusterman hits an emotional core with two key scenes that resonated with me long after I put the book down (yes, it was paperback). Connor and company meet CyFy, a teen who’s had part of his brain replaced. The brain matter came from an unwound child, and now CyFy is accessing the “donor’s” memories and emotions. Only the donor has no idea he’s been unwound. Cyfy heads back to the donor’s home, and the scene between CyFy and the parents is gripping and grueling.

Later in the book, Shusterman describes an unwinding through the eyes of a character undergoing the process. Yep, this character is awake during the procedure. All I can say is that I wish I could write like that.

As with much of YA these days, Unwind may be about teens and labeled for teens, but it’s one for all ages.

Music and theme

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I’m not a huge Coldplay fan, but they released Viva la Vida when I was writing The Last Conquistador, and this song lodged itself in my head. In my mind, the character of Rodrigo, a 16th-century Spaniard with big dreams, was in over his head. His motivations were complex, but much of it was a hunger for wealth and status. But his explorations in the Americas didn’t turn out as planned.

Colplay’s song carries a theme of melancholy, the rise and fall of a king or conqueror. And they were inspired by Mexican-born Frida Kahlo. Her work, in turn, fuses the old and new worlds.

Here’s the Coldplay video, an unofficial version with lyrics.

 

Read this book: American Gods

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ImageAmerica, an immigrant country… America, thick with immigrant gods.
 
What is America? And who are the gods who roam this country? Those are the questions raised by Neil Gaiman (himself an immigrant) in his iconic novel American Gods.
 
This is Gaiman’s America: a sprawling landscape, larger than any one set of peoples or beliefs, where the land and nature are more powerful than any of the gods, old or new.
 
This is not a novel about the world’s America, or Hollywood America. It’s not about glamorous/gritty New York City, or the quirky/tragic south, or golden California. Gaiman takes us to the smaller places – the airports and fast food joints, the motels in midwestern towns, the off-road tourist traps, and the second-city walk-ups.
 
The premise: a war is brewing between the old gods and the new. A man named Shadow, an ex-con of mysterious origins with a faithless wife, is conscripted to join the battle by a huckster named Mr. Wednesday. Together they travel through the overlooked places of the country rounding up gods for a final battle to come.
 
So, how did these minor deities (and not just deities, but leprechauns and elves) come to live their decreasingly powerful lives in the new world? As Gaiman deftly describes in chapter-length interludes, immigrants who come to America carry with them their beliefs in their old-world gods. These gods take physical form and live on. Only their power diminishes when people no longer believe in them. They linger, but largely without purpose, living quiet lives performing parlor tricks, a “shadow” of their former selves. 
 
The human Shadow of the book is clueless regarding all of this, almost to a fault. As a battle between the old gods and the new ones (gods of computers, media, etc) is joined, Shadow ambles along, more of a spectator than a vital player. For part of the book, he’s hidden away by Mr. Wednesday in an isolated midwestern town. At this point I was confused by this side trip. In the end we return to the town and we get to the heart of this subplot, but it kept me waiting and wondering why we’d even gone there in the first place. My problem with Shadow, as written, is that he’s often reacting, rather than acting. It’s a problem I  struggle with in my own writing: if you have an ordinary man thrust in extraordinary situations, how do you have that character drive the action? In this way, Shadow is similar to Richard Mayhew, Gaiman’s hero in his novel Neverwhere. Gaiman’s huge talent, though, is his ability to create a sprawling, fantastic universe that captivates the reader regardless.
 
There’s a world full of minor gods packed into these pages. Who are they? How do their personalities translate into their human forms? Would have enjoyed it more or less if I’d known something about these minor deities. There’s no glossary, and I’m unsure whether it would be revealing too much if there was. 
 
Nevertheless, Gaiman presents a thrilling take on America. The land itself is nearly a character in its own right. And as for the people and their fading gods, I wanted to keep reading, even when it ended.

Mutants and other freaks

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Katrina is one tough chick. She’s not going to stand by while the state threatens to take her farm, no matter how crazy the mutations are becoming…

http://www.amazon.com/Left-Among-the-Mutants-ebook/dp/B00D2DFK1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369863345&sr=8-1&keywords=left+among+the+mutantsImage

Music and mood

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“She could be carving me with a knife this minute and I’d still love her. I’d pull her close as she dug the blade deeper.”

Someone asked me about what music I listened to while writing the book. Lots – especially The Mars Volta, Opeth, NIN, and when I was thinking about Randy and Lise’s relationship, it was the Arctic Monkeys, specifically this song, 505. Moody, troubled love that you can’t get yourself to leave by the wayside.

The Book…

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The Book...

An ancient demon hatches a plan to gain human form.

A Spanish conquistador, hungry for wealth and status, sets sail for the New World.

An American soldier in modern-day Germany desperately searches for his runaway girlfriend.

All three stories combine and collide in The Last Conquistador.

So check it out…