{"id":511,"date":"2016-10-18T19:36:58","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T00:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/?p=511"},"modified":"2016-10-18T19:36:58","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T00:36:58","slug":"review-spark-by-atthys-gage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/?p=511","title":{"rendered":"Review: Spark by Atthys Gage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spark\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let me start with a disclaimer \u2013 I\u2019m not all that familiar with recent Young Adult genre fiction.\u00a0 Prior to reading Paolo Bacigalupi\u2019s Ship Breaker<\/em>, and The Drowned Cities<\/em>, the most recently published YA book I\u2019ve read was Spacemen, Go Home<\/em> by Milton Lesser, the last in the Winston Science Fiction YA series, published in 1961.\u00a0 That said, I am passingly familiar, mainly through movie trailers, with the current crop (Hunger Games, Discordant).\u00a0 From my distant point of view, it appears that the main changes in the genre are: a) the main character doing all of the intensely heroic things are female; b) they all take place in dystopian societies; and c) there\u2019s a lot more teenage angst.\u00a0 (If I\u2019m wrong on this, please post a comment telling me so, then forgive me from the kindness of your heart \u2013 please.)<\/p>\n

Spark<\/em>, by Atthys Gage is similar in some ways, but very, very different in others.\u00a0 There is some \"atthysgage\"<\/a>teenage angst, but the main character, Francy, is pretty much a normal young woman.\u00a0 She\u2019s a high school athlete (basketball), a good but not great student, has normal friends (Echo and Brooke) and a normal home life (younger brother who is a pain, father who\u2019s a dentist, and mother who volunteers to help the homeless).<\/p>\n

So what sets the story apart?\u00a0 Well, the main supporting character \u2013 Spark.\u00a0 Who, or I should say, What is Spark?\u00a0 I\u2019m not really sure.\u00a0 He\u2019s (gender is assigned because the other characters refuse to call Spark \u201cit\u201d) kind of a continuously glowing little\u2026ah\u2026spark.\u00a0 Well, at least that\u2019s what he looks like.\u00a0 Apparently extraterrestrial, the glowing little critter adopts Francy at the beginning of the book for no clear reason.\u00a0 He communicates telepathically (one of the joys of Gage\u2019s approach is his description of each communication not just as a thought, but also as a sensation, often a taste), and generally flits around, exploring.\u00a0 We\u2019re never really told where he comes from except that it is filled with light, which leads to the speculation that he is part of a star (although angel, djinn, and a part of God are also suggested).<\/p>\n

At first, the story mainly concerns Francy\u2019s getting comfortable having Spark around.\u00a0 Gage really convinced me that Francy is a teenage girl with all the feelings, fears, etc. you\u2019d expect.\u00a0 There are parts of the book that could have come out of a well written coming of age novel about a young woman in small town America. But gradually we become more involved in the question of some mysterious deaths in town. And then there\u2019s Spark. Does Spark have anything to do with it?\u00a0 Gage does a good job of interleaving scenes of normality with those of fantasy (or science fiction fantasy, if you prefer), and his clear, precise writing carries you along. \u00a0I don\u2019t want to include any spoilers, so I\u2019ll just say that the answer involves travel to a very strange place, and some very strange\u2026ah\u2026folks. The best analogy for reading Spark<\/em> that I can come up with is if you lived in a town where you had to walk a few very normal streets to get home, but at every intersection you had to pass through an amusement park funhouse.\u00a0 Just as you get used to things going along just as they should, you come to the funhouse, and then\u2026oh my!<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re looking for a YA fantasy that\u2019s something different, Spark<\/em> may just be the book for you.<\/p>\n

[ Spark<\/em>, and other books by Atthys Gage are available through Amazon<\/a>.\u00a0 You can read Atthys’ blog at Speak More Light<\/a>, his webpage. ]\u00a0 And coming soon, I interview Atthys Gage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me start with a disclaimer \u2013 I\u2019m not all that familiar with recent Young Adult genre fiction.\u00a0 Prior to reading Paolo Bacigalupi\u2019s Ship Breaker, and The Drowned Cities, the most recently published YA book I\u2019ve read was Spacemen, Go Home by Milton Lesser, the last in the Winston Science Fiction YA series, published in…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,48,60,1],"tags":[62,49,27,8,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-photophoosk100","4":"post-511","6":"format-standard","7":"category-atthys-gage","8":"category-book-review","9":"category-spark","10":"category-uncategorized","11":"post_tag-atthys-gage","12":"post_tag-book-review","13":"post_tag-book-reviews","14":"post_tag-novel","15":"post_tag-spark","16":"post_tag-spark-gage","17":"post_tag-ya-novel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}