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EDIT: Forgot to add original half-started review at the end. Fixed!

Some time back I postulated on Facebook that all YA PNRs were trying to be the Doctor and Rose, and that they were all failing miserably. I never meant that idea to make it into a review, and yet... well, here we are, aren't we? So welcome to a review in which I use Doctor Who to explain this burgeoning genre in general, and Fallen in particular. Even if you don't know the show, it should be fairly cogent.

Let's start with the 'why'. Like I said, I never meant this idea to make it into a review, so... why did it?
Because there is nothing else I can bring myself to do for this book. It's not quiiiiite horrible enough for a point-by-point refutation, like I did for Hush, Hush. But it's too eye-gouging for me to do chapter by chapter mini-reviews (though I did get through the first four or five like this; the results will be at the end of this final review.) Heaven knows I can't write a coherent/eloquent 'ordinary' review. If I don't make a complete mockery of this book using my current Fandom of Choice, I won't review it at all, and if I don't review it then why the fuck did I read it?

So here goes... YA PNR in terms of the Doctor. Somewhat pic-heavy.



When the Doctor says to Rose in 'School Reunion' that "You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of my life with you," he perfectly captures the essential conflict that (I believe, at least) ought to be at the heart of many of these PNRs. It's not the 'I want to kill you but I love you' conflict: it's the 'I'll go on forever and you will inevitably die and there is nothing I can do about it'. That's what makes the romance poignant. There is a time bomb attached to it, even if the reader never has to watch it go off, and every moment we watch the couple together is more poignant because we know they only have a limited number of moments left. If I had my way and Twilight had never been published this is the kind of story that would fill the subgenre. And your immortal characters, who wouldn't necessarily be male, would be more like the Doctor than they are right now.

Some authors are slightly aware of this, and they try to give us a little more Timelord in our Fallen Angel breakfast cereal.
Most of them got very, very confused and started writing about Daleks as romantic leads.


Sure, it gave you a candy heart, but it still wants to FUCKING KILL YOU. AND ALL OF YOUR GODDAMN RACE.

Daleks are not romantic. When you see a Dalek you either run away screaming and hope it doesn't kill you when your back is turned or you blow it the hell up. Very rarely do you care about its horrible past or its horrible present or how much it claims to love you because underneath all of that it still wants to kill you. There's a reason they've been recurring villains for nearly all of the show's run. What is it, thirty odd seasons now? And these salt-shaker-shaped aliens still inspire fear in small children and cause adults to hide behind couches.
Patch, from Hush, Hush, is a Dalek. Except he's a sneaky one; but he still fulfills the ultimate requirement: namely, wanting to kill people. Actually, he's a Dalek with sex drive.
Daniel is less of a Dalek, but he's still no Doctor. No, he doesn't want to kill Luce. Um, wait, actually? That's not so sure. He does kiss her at one point expecting her to explode into bitty pieces and die. Which is, you know, not a good thing if you actually are in love with the girl.

Anyhow, that's the one point. I expected that. If that had been all that was horrible about this book, I might have finished my chapter-by-chapter review. But there was a breaking point...

From there, it was all downhill.

It's the jump rope scene. After that, I just couldn't take this book seriously. I read this one aloud to my friends at lunch once and couldn't even finish; we were laughing too hard for me to read. Since you out there can't benefit from my dramatic reading, I'll just give you the passage to which I refer...

But Luce's body got the better of her mind when she caught another glimpse of Daniel. His back was to her and he was standing in a corner picking out a jump rope from a tangled pile. She watched as he selected a thin navy rope with wooden handles, then moved to an open space in the center of the room. His golden skin was almost radiant, and every move he made, whether he was rolling out his long neck in a stretch or bending over to scratch his sculpted knee, had Luce completely rapt. She stood pressed against the doorway, unaware that her teeth were chattering and her towel was soaked.
When he brought the rope behind his ankles just before he began to jump, Luce was slammed with a wave of deja vu. It wasn't exactly that she felt like she'd seen Daniel jump rope before, but more that the stance he took seemed entirely familiar. He stood with his feet hip-width apart, unlocked his knees, and pressed his shoulders down as he filled his chest with air. Luce could almost have drawn it.
It was only when Daniel began twirling the rope that Luce snapped out of that trance... and right into another. Never in her life had she seen anyone move like him. It was almost like Daniel was flying. The rope whipped up and over his tall frame so quickly that it disappeared, and his feet- his graceful, narrow feet- were they even touching the ground? He was moving so swiftly, even he must not have been counting.
(P. 134-5)

I'm absolutely not shitting you. That is word-for-word what was in this book. Could you take it seriously after reading that? Really. Either Lauren Kate is trolling and getting paid (in which case good for her) or she has no idea about pacing and scene choice and how to use language properly AT. ALL. This passage is ridiculously purple-prose'd, aside from being unnecessary (did it advance the plot? Nope...) and completely inane. I didn't need to know about Daniel's 'sculpted knee'. I also didn't need to know about his 'graceful, narrow feet'. Frankly, I could care less how much Luce wants to jump his bones when she sees him. What's next? "She felt her heart beating faster with desire as he bounced lightly from one hopscotch square to the next"?
Jumping rope is not sexy. It never will be. End of story. This should have been cut at some point in the editing process and it explains a LOT about the final product that it was not.

The good news is that now I can see the book as just silly. Like Christopher Eccleston dancing in a souped-up phone booth.
Nah, this has nothing to do with the content of the review. I just like the gif.

Let's talk about Daniel and Luce a little more... just briefly. Most of what needs to be said about this 'romance' has already been said, none of it good. About the only thing I can come up with to mention that's positive is that Daniel's not nearly as bad as Patch the Dalek. He's still not good, though. There's one scene worth addressing... and like the jump rope sequence above, I have it here in its entirety.

"You think you're so smart? I spent three years on a full academic scholarship at the best college-prep school in the country. And when they kicked me out, I had to petition- petition!- to keep them from wiping my four-point-oh transcript."
Daniel moved away, but Luce pursued him, taking a step forward for every wide-eyed step he took back. Probably freaking him out, but so what? He'd been asking for it every time he condescended to her.
"I know Latin and French, and in middle school, I won the science fair three times in a row."
She had backed him up against the railing of the boardwalk and was trying to restrain herself from poking him in the chest with her finger. She wasn't finished. "I also do the Sunday crossword puzzle, sometimes in under an hour. I have an unerringly good sense of direction... though not always when it comes to guys."
She swallowed and took a moment to catch her breath.
"And someday, I'm going to be a psychiatrist who actually listens to her patients and helps people. Okay? So don't keep talking to me like I'm stupid and don't tell me I don't understand just because I can't decode your erratic, flaky, hot-one-minute-cold-the-next, frankly" - she looked up at him, letting out her breath - "really hurtful behavior." She brushed a tear away, angry with herself for getting so worked up.
"Shut up," Daniel said, but he said it so softly and so tenderly that Luce surprised both of them by obeying.
(p. 326-7)

I'm going to set aside the fact that none of that is how a teenager would talk. Two things, one brief: SHOW, DON'T FUCKING TELL. If Luce is so smart, why haven't we seen this before? Even something like her sense of direction should have come up in a narrative that's written in third person limited. Because none of it did this is just a massive, pointless infodump.
Number two: It's not romantic to be told to shut up in any circumstances, but particularly in these... first, because Daniel was telling Luce to stop talking about being smart- way to try and quash any expression of intelligence she might be inclined to- and second, because she'd already stopped talking. He had no reason to say it other than to assert dominance over her. "HE MAN IN COMMAND OF PUNY WOMAN, STIFLE STREAM OF STUPID PUNY WOMAN WORDS" is not romantic, and yet that's what Daniel just did.
Basically, when he's around Luce, he's like this:

Except, you know, nowhere near as hot.

Despite the fact that it's Luce who dies once every 17 years, Daniel manages to make it about him. And it's all about him. He's like Rand Al'Thor from the Wheel of Time- what's the word that means someone the Wheel bends its weaving around? That kind of thing. Even Luce 'bends' around him- to the point of character derailment, actually, or it would be if she had established a character from which to derail.

But. Luce was proving day after day that- especially when it came to Daniel- she was incapable of doing anything that fell under the category of "normal" or "smart".

For once, I have to agree with the book.
However, I should take this time to point out that this is a horrible trick. Defining your character by telling the reader how she's changed, not by showing how she was before? EPIC FAIL. Writer cop-out. STOP. DOING. THIS. EVERYONE. Really. It was old the first time I encountered it; that's how bad of an idea this is. Maybe it's harder to actually develop a character and then have it make sense for them to deviate from their personality, but you know what?



There's one more thing which I unfortunately do not have a Doctor Who picture for. Oh yes, and spoilers. Do you care? Thought not.
Somehow, if Luce is killed once and for all (and would someone, please?) it will bring about the End of Days. I think. The plot wasn't really clear. But this couldn't happen before because she was raised in religion. This life, though, she was born to a pair of agnostics and never baptized and... do you see where this is going?
Agnostics will cause Armageddon.
According to Lauren Kate, that is.
I can't get past the first stage of my reaction: WHAT THE FUCK?




I welcome debate, if anyone would like to defend this book. However, if your entire defense comes down to 'DANIEL IS HAWT AND THEIR LOVE IS SO PUUUUURE', well... there's just one thing to say and I'm going to say it now:




And now, to end the review on a positive note, have some cute:


Really, there are better things you can do with your time than read this book. Go watch Doctor Who, for one!






The chapter-by-chapter, before I gave up, spoilertagged so it doesn't screw with my formatting:
(view spoiler)[0. Prologue: “In The Beginning�
Ah, the dramatic entry. Some authors started without a prologue, do you remember? Used to be quite a la mode.
Anyhow, this one introduces us to our doomed lovers; given what I already know, I’m betting this is Daniel and Luce. (Say, why do these reincarnated people never switch genders between lives?) There is tension, and apparently it’s not safe for her to know about their love. He remembers, of course.
There was a moment where he says that ‘there are things more important than love� and I almost liked him then, but then the Fateful Kissing began and I was disgusted again.
This will be an extra-long torture.
Oh, and that title. ‘In The Beginning�? Really? Because if she’s been reincarnated even once before, NEWS FLASH, it’s not the beginning. The beginning would be the first first first time. Not the umpteenth.
1. Perfect Strangers
And here we meet Luce, Cam, and Daniel. As I understand it, these are the three points of our love triangle. We are also introduced to the Sword and Cross boarding school, which is preposterously dingy and unpleasant. (Why, exactly, would a court mandate minors be sent to a place that sounds as if it can’t pass any health inspection, EVER? Oh right, plot convenience. Durr.)
Luce has some angst in her past, joy oh joy, but I’m willing to bet that she’s innocent of the crime that got her sent here. Because a criminal heroine would be boring. Nothing interesting about murderers and arsonists at all.
Oh yes, and the infamous flipping-off scene has occurred. Daniel looks appropriately angelic, but doesn’t act it. This must be him trying to keep Luce away. Won’t work, idiot. You just made yourself more interesting. It’s not ‘oh, hostile dude, will stay away now�; it’s ‘why the fuck is he flipping me the bird? I need to learn more about this�. You would think if the guy was eleventy billion years old he’d know that about human nature.
Also, we now know that the much-vaunted cover is in accurate, at least if it’s supposed to show Luce as she is now. Her hair is actually short- cue difficulty in picturing character. Eh. I never liked that cover anyhow.
2. Fit To Be Tied
Really, what’s with this title? It has nothing to do with the chapter. No one gets tied. It’s just pages of mindless exposition, establishing Cam as a bit of a flirt and Luce as that stereotypical bullied heroine. Are we supposed to be seeing how bad the students at Sword and Cross are? Because someone mashes food into the quote-unquote heroine’s hair?
There’s the longing for Daniel, too. Oh that bugs me. She. Just. Met. Him. Why the hell is he taking over her brain? Riiight, because he’s Mr. Alpha Male of Instant Pheromones and she’ll never be able to resist him.
And the shock collar. Change of subject, but let me digress this way for a moment. How did they ever managed to design a shock collar that responded to Arriane’s motion? That’s kind of impressive� or no, wait, kind of stupid. Sciencefail.
3. Drawing Dark
Creepy shadows, librarian, an attempt to establish Luce as the bookish sort- let’s see how that goes- and the first ‘spark� between her and Daniel. Daniel who is still being an asshole to chase her off. It’s still not working.
Here is something I’m thinking about: why are the reincarnated lovers always teenagers these days? Isn’t there a great story to be told about two people who’ve reached middle age, maybe even married and settled down, realizing that they were destined to be together and drawn apart by something as simple as chance? Yes, these books are targeted at teens. But this has been done and done and done again for teens. Where are the novels that handle this in a logical, adult manner and refuse to get side-tracked by hormones? I guess that’s a large part of what bugs me about YA PNR: the plot gets hijacked by chemical imbalances in the heroine’s brain, essentially, and veers off into Angstyhornyland and never comes back.
4. Graveyard Shift
Oh goodness, did she really use the word ‘spherical� to describe a teacher? She did, she totally did. And then there’s some repetitive sentences that I was re-writing in my head. Writingfail and Editorfail.


...and that's as far as I got. Which is probably good for my sanity. (hide spoiler)]