Perfect

by D. M. Quintano

[clementine]

In the summer of 2006, my friend was reading this book while we were at the cottage. Because she was two years older than me and I had to do everything she did, I ended up buying it as soon as I returned to the city. My copy is beat up after being read numerous times, though none as an adult.

So, this book has a lot of flaws:

- It has poor worldbuilding with little regard to the history of the society it portrays, no explanation of how they got there, and no explanation of the structure of the governing body.
- It relies on tired tropes re: capitalism and technology taking over without adding anything fresh.
- There is no character development.
- The characters are cardboard cutouts and the female characters are pretty sexist. The majority of them are portrayed as shallow girls who only care about pop culture, fashion, and makeup, and the one girl who understands what's going on obviously doesn't care about any of that. The male characters aren't well-developed but they're portrayed as smarter and more rational and are quicker to grasp the severity of their situation.
- The main female character is clearly racist, thinking that the main male character (who is black or biracial) is dangerous and likes guns. Though he isn't portrayed in a negative or stereotypical way, there doesn't really seem to be any condemnation of her for thinking this way, and she's supposed to be one of the sympathetic characters.

But there are also some plus sides:

- The pacing is spot-on: it's really fast, and there's no downtime. It's a quick read and that makes it exciting.
- The scope is really interesting. Usually in dystopian-adjacent novels like this the plot is very high-stakes. Though this is a life or death situation for the characters, there's no indication that this is about any greater purpose than the characters surviving. I don't know that I've read another novel of a similar genre where ultimately the goal wasn't to change society completely, restore democracy, etc. I think that makes this one very interesting.
- I really enjoy the omniscient narrator's sardonic tone.
- The ending is suitably ambiguous and matches the tone of the book perfectly.

I wouldn't call this speculative fiction because it's not developed well enough (and barely speculates...) and I wouldn't call it science fiction because there isn't really much science in it. I guess dystopian is the best way to categorize it, but I'm more apt to go with "black comedy set in space". Or something. It's decent YA, in any event, despite its glaring flaws. Not a disaster, in my opinion, but not spectacular by any means.

(By the way - it appears that D.M. Quintano is Dyan Sheldon, author of Confessions of A Teenage Drama Queen, which to my recollection is a rollicking good YA novel.)