Yay! I'm so glad you enjoyed The Golem and the Djinni!
I'm also having a reaction that I think is unfair and I'm trying to unpack: the two (thus far) POV characters have a much stronger sense of social justice than I'm used to in a character. In some ways they have worldviews a lot more like my own than what I typically read. And when a character says or thinks something social justicey, my brain immediately goes, "stilted language! Nobody talks like that!". Except, um, I talk like that. Sort of anyway. So, I haven't quite parsed what of it is that I find the prose awkward overall, and what of it is some unpacked baggage I didn't even know I had.
This is the exact reaction I had to the book (right down to internal dialogue running through my head about the social justicey language used by the characters), and I was starting to feel like there was something wrong with me, because nobody else seemed to have the same reaction. Obviously the characters' use of this kind of language is deliberate, and I wonder if it's a choice to make explicit the sorts of callouts, microaggressions and moves from clueless privilege to greater understanding of injustice that are often implicit in YA fiction (which is thus often criticised as not going far enough, not condemning harmful attitudes enough, and so on). I hope that makes sense.
Another thing I found difficult/offputting about the book - and which, again, I think says more about my own baggage than any inherent flaws in Meadows' writing - is the absolutely unrelenting criticism of, and bleakness about, being a teenager in general, and the Australian public high school system in particular. I'll freely admit that I had a pretty blissful adolescence, and generally loved being a teenager in Australian public high schools, and my experience isn't going to be universal, but as a result I find it really hard to relate to any work of fiction that paints secondary school as being unremittingly bleak, stifling of intellectual curiosity, incompatible with the development of a sense of social justice, and so on. For me, that was the time and the environment most encouraging of all those things!
Anyway, I'll be interested to hear what you think about An Accident of Stars when you're done. The Kate Elliott blurb didn't surprise me (the two are friends, or at least friendly), but I have to say I would probably rate An Accident of Stars a solid, but not mindblowing book. I could see what it was trying to do - but the work was shown a bit too obviously, if that makes sense.
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I'm also having a reaction that I think is unfair and I'm trying to unpack: the two (thus far) POV characters have a much stronger sense of social justice than I'm used to in a character. In some ways they have worldviews a lot more like my own than what I typically read. And when a character says or thinks something social justicey, my brain immediately goes, "stilted language! Nobody talks like that!". Except, um, I talk like that. Sort of anyway. So, I haven't quite parsed what of it is that I find the prose awkward overall, and what of it is some unpacked baggage I didn't even know I had.
This is the exact reaction I had to the book (right down to internal dialogue running through my head about the social justicey language used by the characters), and I was starting to feel like there was something wrong with me, because nobody else seemed to have the same reaction. Obviously the characters' use of this kind of language is deliberate, and I wonder if it's a choice to make explicit the sorts of callouts, microaggressions and moves from clueless privilege to greater understanding of injustice that are often implicit in YA fiction (which is thus often criticised as not going far enough, not condemning harmful attitudes enough, and so on). I hope that makes sense.
Another thing I found difficult/offputting about the book - and which, again, I think says more about my own baggage than any inherent flaws in Meadows' writing - is the absolutely unrelenting criticism of, and bleakness about, being a teenager in general, and the Australian public high school system in particular. I'll freely admit that I had a pretty blissful adolescence, and generally loved being a teenager in Australian public high schools, and my experience isn't going to be universal, but as a result I find it really hard to relate to any work of fiction that paints secondary school as being unremittingly bleak, stifling of intellectual curiosity, incompatible with the development of a sense of social justice, and so on. For me, that was the time and the environment most encouraging of all those things!
Anyway, I'll be interested to hear what you think about An Accident of Stars when you're done. The Kate Elliott blurb didn't surprise me (the two are friends, or at least friendly), but I have to say I would probably rate An Accident of Stars a solid, but not mindblowing book. I could see what it was trying to do - but the work was shown a bit too obviously, if that makes sense.