Goodread Review: The Possessed
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Possessed, the second volume in L. J. Smith’s Dark Visions trilogy, picks up right where the first left off. Precog Kaitlyn Fairchild has fled the mysterious Zetes Institute along with fellow students Anna, Lewis, Sexy Boy #1 (also known as Rob), and Sexy Boy #2 (also known as Gabriel). This is a road trip novel, tracing our band of teen psychics up the west coast in search of a mysterious white house that has been appearing in Kaitlyn’s dreams. The pacing is quick here, effective, and the scene building rich. The teenagers have several surreal, and frankly frightening, encounters with the supernatural on their journey. However, the novel feels even slighter than most sophomore entries in trilogies and the problems with racial stereotyping are even deeper than they were in the first book.
In my review of the first novel, I mentioned Smith’s over reliance on stereotyping in building minor characters. In that volume, Lewis is depicted as essentially asexual and a tech wiz, while Anna Whiteraven speaks to animals and hangs masks on her wall. The depictions of Native Americans become even more generalized here: Anna’s mother is somehow up on Inuit language and culture (despite not being Inuit), and talks about tribal leaders. Meanwhile, we visit the house of a Latino family, which, of course, is decorated by virgin statues. On the one hand, I’m glad to see cultural artifacts present in an otherwise very white world. On the other, Smith’s depictions of these characters never go any deeper than that.
But this is a minor complaint with the first three-quarters of the book. As the psychics make their way up the coast, they encounter menacing ghosts, apparitions, psychic slugs, and telepathically-projected angst. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn is torn between her blossoming feelings towards psychic vampire Gabriel and her familiar affection for healer Rob. I loved these scenes; Smith is a very visually-oriented writer, and I could easily imagine the road trip depicted here–with all of its sexual tension, intrigue, and terror–projected on a big screen. Though the journey is fairly intimate thanks to its limited cast, it’s also quite cinematic.
But Smith rushes the book’s conclusion in order to set us up for the next volume, and in doing so hastily adds several flat minor characters. The tensions all fizzle out by the end, and we’re left feeling aimless. Yes, we’re supposed to just pick up the next book (and I did, of course), but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have some sense of satisfaction by this novel’s conclusion, particularly when the lead-up is so much more engaging.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
2 comments
Gabriel is sexy boy #1
Ha, most people seem to think so. Everyone loves a bad boy.