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lucymonsterIn the throes of a bad breakup, troubled twentysomething Lennon has her suicide attempt interrupted by a mysterious phone call inviting her to an admissions interview for a college she has never heard of. Located on a magically concealed campus in the US Deep South, Drayton College teaches its handpicked students the art of persuasion, or the ability to psychically manipulate reality. Within a short time of accepting her offer, Lennon discovers all of the following:
The single biggest problem is that Lennon is a YA protagonist in a book that's very much not YA. At the start of the book we're given a whole pile of information about her immediate backstory and told what her main character traits are supposed to be, but the backstory is minimally relevant and the character traits are barely apparent in her actual on-screen behaviour. She's bland. Blank slate-ish. Weirdly passive. Other characters are drawn to her for no obvious reason and become deeply attached with little encouragement. The plot mostly just sort of happens to her, and when she does make use of her agency, her motives don't always make a lot of sense.
The second biggest issue is the heavy reliance on coincidences and contrivances to keep the story moving along. The worldbuilding is fun but shallow, and often felt governed by the needs of the plot. None of the supporting characters seem particularly involved in their own lives; they kind of just orbit Lennon, existing only when and how she requires them to. (Here's one non-spoilery example: the school empties out over Christmas break, but when a major incident brings Lennon back to campus early, her friends turn out to have abandoned their own holiday plans for flimsy reasons and are waiting in the dorm to rejoin her adventures.) Multiple cast members become involved in the secret happenings at Drayton in ways that don't make sense and are literally never explained, just so that Lennon can have her big moment of shock and betrayal when she learns what they've been up to. Likewise, there are major plot developments that get dropped as soon as Lennon's done emotionally reacting to them, never to be resolved.
I was also disappointed by the way Lennon's struggle with corruption was handled. This is more a personal taste thing and less a critique of the author's writing skill, but I don't have a lot of patience for stories that sell themselves on a promise of the hero being tempted by the dark side, only to make sure that every dark thing they actually do has a simple reason behind it that absolves them of anything hard to forgive. It's something I come up against quite a lot in my preferred corners of fandom, too, so there's obviously plenty of audience for stories that embrace the aesthetics of evil while side-stepping its ugly realities. I'm just always hoping for something a bit thornier, and it's even more frustrating when a story so particularly rich in opportunities for moral quandary takes the easy way out. This is a book where the system of magic revolves around forcing your will onto others; where students are explicitly groomed for future positions of power, where they can manipulate global events in the interests of the school's donors; where Drayton's whole history is poisoned by a deep, insidious racism to which 'don't worry, our Black heroes one-up the current administration in the end' is only the most partial of antidotes. I don't know. There were a lot of tantalising hints of a genuinely dark and challenging story here, but they didn't amount to much.
I don't know. I feel like I'm ripping this book into far smaller shreds than I actually mean to. Like I said at the start, I enjoyed it. I think if anything it suffers worse for that: if the good parts were less good I'd have moved on without thinking much about the weaknesses, but because there are so many things I really like about it, the flaws are that much more annoying.
- Her power is specialer than everyone else's.
- Her adviser, Dante, is super hot.
- Magic is almost as dangerous to use as it is to have used against you.
- Something deeply sinister is going on with the school, and no one wants her to know the truth about it.
The single biggest problem is that Lennon is a YA protagonist in a book that's very much not YA. At the start of the book we're given a whole pile of information about her immediate backstory and told what her main character traits are supposed to be, but the backstory is minimally relevant and the character traits are barely apparent in her actual on-screen behaviour. She's bland. Blank slate-ish. Weirdly passive. Other characters are drawn to her for no obvious reason and become deeply attached with little encouragement. The plot mostly just sort of happens to her, and when she does make use of her agency, her motives don't always make a lot of sense.
The second biggest issue is the heavy reliance on coincidences and contrivances to keep the story moving along. The worldbuilding is fun but shallow, and often felt governed by the needs of the plot. None of the supporting characters seem particularly involved in their own lives; they kind of just orbit Lennon, existing only when and how she requires them to. (Here's one non-spoilery example: the school empties out over Christmas break, but when a major incident brings Lennon back to campus early, her friends turn out to have abandoned their own holiday plans for flimsy reasons and are waiting in the dorm to rejoin her adventures.) Multiple cast members become involved in the secret happenings at Drayton in ways that don't make sense and are literally never explained, just so that Lennon can have her big moment of shock and betrayal when she learns what they've been up to. Likewise, there are major plot developments that get dropped as soon as Lennon's done emotionally reacting to them, never to be resolved.
I was also disappointed by the way Lennon's struggle with corruption was handled. This is more a personal taste thing and less a critique of the author's writing skill, but I don't have a lot of patience for stories that sell themselves on a promise of the hero being tempted by the dark side, only to make sure that every dark thing they actually do has a simple reason behind it that absolves them of anything hard to forgive. It's something I come up against quite a lot in my preferred corners of fandom, too, so there's obviously plenty of audience for stories that embrace the aesthetics of evil while side-stepping its ugly realities. I'm just always hoping for something a bit thornier, and it's even more frustrating when a story so particularly rich in opportunities for moral quandary takes the easy way out. This is a book where the system of magic revolves around forcing your will onto others; where students are explicitly groomed for future positions of power, where they can manipulate global events in the interests of the school's donors; where Drayton's whole history is poisoned by a deep, insidious racism to which 'don't worry, our Black heroes one-up the current administration in the end' is only the most partial of antidotes. I don't know. There were a lot of tantalising hints of a genuinely dark and challenging story here, but they didn't amount to much.
I don't know. I feel like I'm ripping this book into far smaller shreds than I actually mean to. Like I said at the start, I enjoyed it. I think if anything it suffers worse for that: if the good parts were less good I'd have moved on without thinking much about the weaknesses, but because there are so many things I really like about it, the flaws are that much more annoying.
