crabbygirl reviewed Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler
Review of 'Rage' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
[guessing at the star rating / mining my old FB notes now that they are almost impossible to find]
the second in a list of YA books singled out in the NY times as too dark for their audience. like it's listmate, Scars, the protagonist is a cutter. but i think this book did a much better job of dramatizing her life and making it slightly easier for me to understand this whole cutting business. first of all, this is more of a fantasy genre, with the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse showing up and offering her the job of War (the other horsemen are Death, Famine and Pestilence). but as War, she gets to see real trauma, real devastation... you know - war - up close and although her character never directly says her problems are minor in comparison to children in refugee camps or boy soldiers forced to …
[guessing at the star rating / mining my old FB notes now that they are almost impossible to find]
the second in a list of YA books singled out in the NY times as too dark for their audience. like it's listmate, Scars, the protagonist is a cutter. but i think this book did a much better job of dramatizing her life and making it slightly easier for me to understand this whole cutting business. first of all, this is more of a fantasy genre, with the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse showing up and offering her the job of War (the other horsemen are Death, Famine and Pestilence). but as War, she gets to see real trauma, real devastation... you know - war - up close and although her character never directly says her problems are minor in comparison to children in refugee camps or boy soldiers forced to kill, it is obvious that the author wants her teen readers to come to that conclusion. after all, it is only in the rich, well-fed, and overly indulged west that teens could use self mutilation as a pastime. in fact, this author's first book was about the Famine horseman and she is/was an anorexic - another unheard of problem in areas that suffer daily for simple survival - so i think she's got an underlining theme here.
as for the violence? yes, there was an awful lot of talking about, and wishing for, cuts to open and blood to spill. it was both repetitive (so sort of boring) and disturbing (that there was still so much rage left unplumbed) and i would definitely NOT allow my daughter to read it. it's too bad because this series wants to turn teen angst and indulgence on it's head