Starbreak by Phoebe North
My rating: 4/5 cats
phoebe north is a natural storyteller. and the thing about natural storytellers is that they can write stories about nearly anything, and even if it is outside of the scope of a reader’s interests, it will still be compelling because of their gift.
Starglass was a YA space opera, which is probably the second-to-bottom rung of my reading interests, right above cozy mysteries. there is nothing wrong with cozies, or space operas for that matter; they have their devoted audiences, but those genres have just never stood out to me as something i would ever pick up. and yet, i loved Starglass—partly for the novelty of the reading experience for me, but also because of the characters and the complexity of her world-building. there was danger and intrigue, coming-of-age and family secrets, and many different versions of love and relationships.
for me, i am not big into love stories. and the only reason i liked this one slightly, only slightly less than Starglass is because in this one, the focus is very much on the love story elements. that is not to say there aren’t also elements of danger and larger themes of diaspora and racism (or speciesism) and sociopolitical factors, but it is, at its beating heart, terra’s love story with vadix, the alien boy from her dreamscapes.
and this is where it is so, so important that phoebe north knows how to tell a story. because in anyone else’s hands, this could have gone horribly wrong. terra has basically forsaken everyone she knows, abandoned her people in their time of need, during riots and complete social upheaval to steal a ship to go to a planet to meet…a boy. and at first, it reads very stalker-y. he keeps saying “noooooo” and she keeps saying “yessss!” and making publicly demonstrative assertions of their love for each other and the rightness of their relationship, which has only been a dream-relationship up until then, without comprehending at all the dangers of the situation she has crash-landed into. and time and time again, she makes decisions based on their relationship over what is safe, or appropriate, which is not the norm in “good” YA.
in those Twilight books, which are perfectly entertaining but not particularly well-written, their best feature is the way she manages to convey perfectly the all-consuming whirlwind of teenage love, and how, when you are wrapped up in it, you make completely doltish decisions because you can’t see the big picture and all you can see is your love-interest. and that energy is completely recognizable, but the surrounding story is just popcorn.
then you have books like Divergent, where tris and four have this burning love for each other, but they also have their own agendas, and tris has priorities which frequently tunnel-vision four right out of her path, and teen girls cheer at her independence and strength and get the best of both worlds: a love story that feels genuine and a female lead who doesn’t embarrass them by thinking about boys all the time and wandering into traffic. it is better-written, and the surrounding story is not at all popcorn—it is rich and satisfying stew.
Starbreak is a Twilight scenario in a Divergent stew. terra is definitely making decisions based upon her heart, and some of these decisions are made in the blind-fug of teenage love without considering the consequences. but while vadix is never far from her mind, she still manages to be proactive. she does wander into metaphorical traffic sometimes, but you don’t want to smack her the way you wanna smack bella. you root for her all-encompassing love, and even though she is not a tris-type who can mentally put the relationship on hold to get shit done, she still does get shit done, so you can still respect her at the end of the day.
there is a scene towards the end that i was conflicted about. and i’m glad i have waited so long to write the review for this one because today, in rereading parts of this and sitting down and thinking more broadly about it, it might actually be the best scene in the book to underscore what i am saying about this best-of-both-worlds situation. a spoiler in which i am going to be vague, but is probably still a spoiler so probably best for after-reading. View Spoiler »
so even though i am still the worst audience ever for love stories, i think that this book was able to capture those intense teenage-infatuation feelings vividly and place them in a world whose action was not just a landscape in which the love story occurred.
and that is good storytelling.
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