Harrison, Kim: Early to Death, Early to Rise
Early to Death, Early to Rise (2010)
Written by: Kim Harrison
Genre: YA/Urban Fantasy
Pages: 228 (Hardcover)
Series: Book Two (ongoing)
Reading Harrison's YA debut, Once Dead, Twice Shy last year left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was a really original story and I really enjoyed seeing a teen heroine who took action. On the other hand, I wasn't thrilled about the hardcover price tag, and the end of the book was nothing if not confusing. So I debated about picking up the sequel. I knew I was stuck with the hardcovers since that's what I started the collection with, and since I read from some reviews that Harrison answers questions raised in the first book, I thought I'd go ahead and give it a shot.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Madison Avery is still trying to come to terms with her death and her role as the dark timekeeper. With dark reaper Nakita and her mostly light counterpart Barnabas at her side, Madison is determined to prove that, given the choice, those who might be doomed in the afterlife due to their bad choices can in fact be convinced to see the error of their ways in time to save their souls. Her test case involves two teen boys and a computer virus that she knows will be responsible for deaths in a hospital. As she races against time and her nemesis, Ron, she develops new, frightening powers. The complexities of Madison's supernatural world are not very well explained here, so readers would do best to start with this book's predecessor. Harrison builds an interesting world rife with politics and tradition, but Madison does a poor job of clarifying the roles she and her co-workers play in moving people from life to the afterlife.
Review style: I'm still trying to figure out how the nature of fate versus free will affects not only the character's actions, but also their motivations and how often that conflicts with their supposed set of beliefs. I'll talk a wee bit about the story itself, but most of the comments deal with character and world-building and where this story leaves me when it's over. Spoilers? Not for the story, though I do talk about what we learn in this book regarding its world-building. If that worries you, just skip to the "My Rating" section at the bottom of the review and you'll be fine. :)
You know how there's some foods that you eat and they're yummy but how they don't leave a lasting impression at all? Cotton candy is one of those foods. It's light and fluffy and sugary and delish, but unless you eat WAY TOO MUCH of it, then you're going to forget you ever had it at all.
Reading this book is kind of like eating cotton candy. It's short, sweet, and enjoyable, but also pretty forgettable.
Part of this is due to the story. You'll notice that this is a SHORT BOOK, and really, the plot is so slim that I couldn't believe that's all there was to it. Don't get me wrong, the plot isn't inflated into novel-length proportions, which has been my complaint with some of Patricia Briggs's work, and the length of this YA novel feels about right for the plot. What baffles me is that I just can't get over how simple the plot is and how I still feel so very confused by time it's all over.
The first book, Once Dead, Twice Shy, was pretty manipulative in terms of its storytelling. And I don't mind manipulative so long as I can make it make sense when it's over, but I couldn't, and I hoped this book would shed some light on things I had questions about.
For starters: dark reapers cut people down before they do the bad things they're fated to do to save their souls. That's pretty powerful. Yes, they're ending a life early on the chance that said person MIGHT do something bad, but on the other hand, they're saving the soul from the taint of what that SOMETHING BAD would do to them. That's pretty fascinating.
The conflict between the light and dark reapers, then, boils down to saving lives versus saving souls. The light side tries to stick a guardian angel on the mark so that the dark side can't kill the mark before the mark's predestined time to die (ironic, considering the light side believes in free will. How would they know what a mark's DESTINED death should be?), and then in turn, the guardian angel--I would imagine, anyway--would try to guide the mark into making better decisions.
Of course, the flip side of the equation is this: how many guardian angels have been assigned to marks who should've died, marks who, because they had a guardian angel, ended up committing terrible atrocities, like, say, Hitler? It's an interesting question, but when it comes to fate versus free will, of course it's an interesting question.
That said, the motivations and reactions of characters drive me absolutely batty. For example, Ron and his apprentice Paul are CONVINCED that because Madison is the dark timekeeper, that she wouldn't want to help the marks targeted for reaping. I get that if you've spent eons of fighting with the dark timekeeper over free will versus fate, it'd be easy to fall back to the same old arguments with a new dark timekeeper (in Ron's case), and it'd be easy if your teacher kept spouting this that you'd believe it (in Paul's case). But none of this makes for a very deep story. Madison's the dark timekeeper (whether she's meant to be or not, we still don't have answers there, just hints that she wasn't), so apparently she's fated to keep the status quo? One redeeming quality of Nakita, who surfaced a couple of times in the book as an annoying little snot who couldn't keep her mouth shut and simply jumped to conclusions, was her understanding that new timekeepers mean CHANGE, and while she's truly struggling with what that change means, she's trying. I suspect that the nature of this series is how reapings will change now that Madison's the new dark timekeeper and Paul's training in the light, but right now, the pace of this series, the way that information is being held back and the way characters act, I'm not sure I'm going to want to follow through to the end, whatever the end may be.
And maybe it's the pacing of the books, because if memory serves, this picks up where the last one left off, but I feel like Madison should be making a greater effort to learn and understand the limits of her amulet. She may very well not have had the time, but in this book, she isn't quite the strong heroine I admired as I did in the last, and that's due in part that she's kind of been thrown into this job that she doesn't want, and she's just doing what she can until she can figure out how to reclaim her body. Like I said, she probably hasn't had TIME to learn the ins and outs of her amulet, but I wish she'd make time. Her lack of desire is frustrating, because not knowing makes her vulnerable, which puts her in the position of needing to be rescued (which, for the record, she doesn't need to be rescued. She's just a weaker character this time around).
In the nitpickery realm, I found Madison's use of profanity alternately funny and annoying. So "son of a dead puppy" is kind of funny, but "puppy presents on the rug" really isn't, and overuse of both starts to get more annoying than cute.
I'm not entirely sure what we accomplish by the end of the book save for more set up. Obviously, Ron will be stepping down soon, but is that going to be a fight? What are we driving towards anyway, save for Madison doing everything she can to get her body back? I'm not sure, but my question and concerns keep me from fully enjoying the series at this point.
My Rating
Buy the Paperback: now that I'm reading the second book in the series and the originality of the series has worn off, I'm left with more questions than answers and not much of a story to support it. Let's be honest, I expect to have some mindfreaks in a series where the underlying conflict is fate versus free will, but it gets frustrating when characters are acting AGAINST their professed belief system and when I still don't know the rules involved for either side, when I don't know what SHOULD have been to begin with. I'll allow that I may have overlooked some details while reading these two books, but there's not much in the way of forward momentum for this series, and there needs to be. I need to know what's been lost, what's been gained, and what we're fighting for before I fully invest myself in the series, and right now, I feel I've got half answers to most of my questions and more speculation than not. Not that I mind questions: but I've got to be invested in what I do get so the questions don't bother me, and right now, this series feels very light, which is a sharp contrast to the themes it's presenting to the reader. We fly through the book, through quite a simply plot and mostly enjoyable characters, but beyond that, I feel like I'm drinking diet instead of the regular soda I ordered. In short: it's like eating cotton candy: light and fluffy and yummy and it'll give you a tummy ache, but ultimately not very fulfilling. At this point, I'm going to think long and hard before continuing this series, because I'm suspicious of the payoff at this point.
Cover Commentary: I like that they're keeping the same style and design from book to book. I love the black and white contrast of the model, and the touch of color is just right. These covers are definitely eye-catching, and I really like the model they're using for Madison.
Next up: The Man Who Turned Into Himself by David Ambrose