Book Journal 2015: 3
Harrison Squared, by Daryl Gregory
Ok, I'll admit that I got sucked into this because the review on NPR was titled "Ia, Ia, YA!" and I wanted to see what that was all about. That rabbit hole lead to this lovely piece of Lovcraftian Young Adult literature which, I'm going to say straight up, I really enjoyed. It is very good at being both of those things, though the word "Cthulhu" is never uttered (I'm sure for copyright purposes). So why did I enjoy it so very much? YA novels are all the same, right? Teens in a dangerous situation filled with mystery, they can't go to the adults or the authorities for some reason, usually some outsider status involved. Yes, yes, that's all here, but what else does it have?
Well, to start with it was really funny at points. I admit that sometimes the humour was because I'm an adult Lovecraft fan getting the pop culture references, but sometimes it was because of bizarre characters and well-written dialogue. The plot was decently interesting for being YA, and I liked how some lazy assumptions I made due to trope familiarity were encouraged and then turned around late in the book. But what really surprised me were the child-molding, good YA aspects that were done without any preaching. The book acknowledged race and racism, and the discomfort of being the only brown kid in a pale white school, without ever being about race (ignore the white kid on the cover - the cover lies). It is told by a teen boy, but has powerful female characters (one of which does Science!). Boy does meet a girl (and another boy), but they don't fall in love and he never has to rescue her. Sex and sexuality are acknowledged: the boy and the girl know darn well that all the adults assume they're in love, and they use it to their advantage, while the adults around have a bit of fornicating, which is acknowledged with a bit of eye-roll as a thing adults do for fun sometimes. So it doesn't help readers deal with their horny teen hormones, but it does deal with blinding teen rage and the mad need to punch things, which I'm guessing is an equally big issue for some young folk. And the best part for me? The hero does not have any sort of magical birthright, nor are there any stupid prophesies involved. I hate hate HATE those tropes.
Also, it encourages wearing life vest while on boats.
To sum: it might just be that I'm in a good mood, but I had a lot of fun with this. Throw it at a teen, or an adult who might be intrigued by the idea of what high school is like in Innsmouth. I'm not going to run out and buy a copy, but I would keep it if I had one.