YA Guy Reviews... CROSS FIRE by Fonda Lee!

YA Guy's favorite YA science fiction author is Fonda Lee.

There. I said it.

While I like and admire lots of YA science fiction writers--Paolo Bacigalupi, Amie Kaufman, AdriAnne Strickland, Parker Peevyhouse, M. T. Anderson--Lee is at the top of my list. I've loved all of her sci-fi books, starting with ZEROBOXER and moving on to EXO and, now, CROSS FIRE. (I'll confess I didn't get into her fantasy novel JADE CITY, but that's not a reflection on its quality; it just wasn't my type of story.) I love her world-building, character development, eye for action sequences, and--in particular--her willingness to explore moral problems without settling on simple answers. In too much YA sci-fi, the world is neatly divided into nefarious (often adult) villains and virtuous (typically teen) heroes, who might have some superficial character flaws but who always manage to do what's right in the end. In Lee's books, the picture is much more complicated.

Take CROSS FIRE. It's the sequel to EXO, which featured a future Earth colonized by the alien zhree. Unlike most races in alien-invasion narratives, the zhree didn't come to destroy Earth but to colonize it and, to some extent, to share their superior technology with the human race. Thus they've rebuilt Earth's cities, incorporated many of Earth's citizens into their government and trades, and biologically enhanced a select group of human beings, including main character Donovan Reyes, to share the zhree's virtually indestructible battle armor. But there are some people, including the radical group Sapience, who hate the zhree and those humans who work along with them. Sapience wants to take Earth back, and they'll fight and kill to do it.

With this kind of premise, it's hard to draw clean lines between the "good guys" and "bad guys." Sapience is viewed by many in Donovan's world as a terrorist organization, and there's validity to that viewpoint--but at the same time, their admirable desire for human independence complicates the reader's response to them. By the same token, if the zhree seem generally willing to share their technology and their resources with humanity, there's no doubt that humans are second-class citizens in zhree society, and that becomes all the more apparent in CROSS FIRE, where the zhree decide that Earth is too costly to maintain and make plans to evacuate, knowing full well that their departure will leave the planet vulnerable to other alien races bent on the annihilation of humankind. Under that scenario, Donovan is faced with a wrenching choice: to stay behind on a threatened planet in order to defend his own species, or to accept the zhree's offer to take a tiny percentage of the human population, himself included, with them.

It's just at this point in the narrative, though, that I feel Lee adopts a course that reduces some of the moral complexity she's established. I don't want to give anything away, but suffice it to say that the book takes a turn at its approximate midpoint that makes Donovan's choice no less physically demanding but somewhat less ethically challenging. Later in the book, a second turn--one that, like the first, hinges on the sudden appearance of a fresh threat just at the moment of a critical decision on Donovan's part--similarly serves to draw somewhat cleaner lines between heroes and villains. I wonder how Lee would have worked out the issues she set up if these plot twists had not occurred, and whether that resolution would have been more morally murky but intellectually satisfying.

That being said, I loved CROSS FIRE and found it in some ways even better than its predecessor (which is rare for sequels). If you're interested in reading Lee's book, leave a comment on this blog post; I'll be giving the book away to one person chosen at random from the comments.

YA Guy Reviews... EXO by Fonda Lee!

Being YA Guy, I read a lot of YA science fiction. I've always loved sci-fi, and my own novels are in the genre. So I'd say one-third to one-half of the YA titles I read every year are billed as science fiction.

But you know, most of them are really bad.

Derivative plots. Weak or nonexistent science. Magic instead of logic. Zero philosophical complexity. Heavy petting and happy endings where I'm looking for ambiguity and enduring questions.

The problem, it seems to me, is that far too many writers of ostensible YA science fiction aren't really interested in sci-fi. They don't know it; they don't care about it; they don't feel it. They write it, I can only speculate, because it's popular in the wake of titles like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and Divergent (which, whatever strengths it might have, is very weak science fiction). Instead of being lifelong lovers and advocates of the genre, they're dabblers. They write romantic fairy tales set in the future and call it science fiction, and those of us who cherish the genre are, I think, rightfully appalled.

All of this is preliminary to announcing that Fonda Lee, author of Zeroboxer (2015) and the brand-new Exo, is an exception to the above. She writes YA, but she's a true science fiction writer: in her heart, in her mind, in her blood. She knows the genre--its history, its traditions--and she pays tribute to it while extending it in exciting ways. That's what makes her so good.

Exo tells the story of Donovan Reyes, a teen soldier on a future Earth that's been colonized by an alien species. After years of war in which humanity suffered greatly at the hands of a technologically superior race, an accommodation has been reached between us and them; though the aliens effectively run the show, they've shared certain aspects of their technology with humankind, incorporated some humans into their kinship networks, and biologically transformed a select group of human beings, including Donovan, to exude an exoskeletal armor covering at will. When Donovan's captured by humans-first terrorists and forced to confront their beliefs head-on, his allegiance to the alien regime is called into question. And when he's required to choose between his father, who's a key figure in the accommodationist government, and an equally important person from his past, who's a central member of the terrorist group, Donovan's conflict comes to a head.

I didn't love everything about Exo; some of the emotional turning-points in the early going felt rushed to me, while the ending felt emotionally but not entirely intellectually satisfying. But what I did love about the book far made up for what I didn't: the imaginative rendering of an alien civilization; the plausible representation of human life under a colonizing power; the probing philosophical questions and moral quandaries; and, quite frankly, the really cool exocel armor system. There's action aplenty in Exo, and some romance too, but I never felt the way I feel about too much YA science fiction: that the futuristic setting is an excuse for lots of poorly executed fighting and smooching scenes. In Exo, the science fiction comes first, and that's the way it should be.

One of these days, I'm going to get around to compiling a list of my favorite YA science fiction books and authors. When I do, I'll share it here. And you can be sure that Fonda Lee and Exo will be on it.

YA Guy Reviews... ZEROBOXER by Fonda Lee!

Zeroboxer kicks butt.

YA Guy doesn't say that very often, mainly because it's become such a cliche in YA. How many YA novels and/or main characters have you heard described as "kick-butt" recently? And how many of those same novels and/or main characters actually merited the description?

Well, Zeroboxer does.

Fonda Lee's debut not only delivers some amazing fight sequences--conducted, as the title indicates, in zero gravity--but constructs an excitingly original science fiction world set on Earth, Mars, and a lunar colony. The story, which concerns the rise of young Terran zeroboxer Carr Luka to the pinnacle of his sport--and the secrets and lies that threaten to tear him down--is told with the directness and visceral energy of a boxing match, while the subplot concerning Terran/Martian tension and prejudice provides a reflective backdrop to the whole. Carr himself, and the cast of characters surrounding him, are all sympathetically rendered--especially Risha Ponn, an expatriate Martian who works as Carr's marketing strategist and who becomes his romantic interest. Lee's writing is clean, her plotting seamless, and her visualization of what sports and sports marketing might look like in the era of space colonization utterly convincing. Here's a sample, from a scene where Carr encounters some diehard fans:

"They all grinned. How childlike they seemed. They were teenagers--one or two of them looked eighteen or nineteen, around Carr's own age--but to him, they all looked like [his fan] Enzo, silly with enthusiasm. This was fun for them, traveling all the way here, sharing in the fandom, getting close to the drama of the [fighting] Cube and the fighters they'd seen in holovid. Zeroboxing defined Carr's life, in every way, good and bad, ecstatic and heartbreaking. He'd given his entire childhood to the sport. It had made him and aged him. But to them, it was all entertainment."

That's pretty good stuff!

Like many reviewers, I usually point out something I didn't like about the books I review. But in the case of Zeroboxer, I'm honestly drawing a blank. Lee's terrific debut should be on the reading list of anyone who enjoys genuinely kick-butt YA sci-fi action stories.