Book #11: Ultraviolet, by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rj_anderson
Mar. 31st, 2011 06:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityThis review is a bit different, in that it is my very first ARC (advance reading copy) review. This means that you cannot have the book right now, which is too bad for you. But you can order it, and it will be available on September 1, 2011 (or in June, from The Book Depository). The other difference is that I am going to try to make this review more “professional”, which means “less CAPSLOCK abuse”. We’ll see how well that goes. :)
I've read two other books by RJ Anderson, spent quite a bit of time talking Star Trek and Sanctuary with her, and was once even semi-kidnapped at a book launch to attend a family pizza party. All that, and I had NO IDEA what to expect with this book. Which was handy, because it defied absolutely every expectation I could have possibly had, even the part where I expected it to be good, which it defied by being amazing.
Here's the first cool thing about Ultraviolet: it is the most colourful book I have ever read. Going in, I knew exactly three things: 1. it had something to do with purple, 2. it had something to do with a murder, and 3. I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to love this book, because the teaser was brilliant.
Within the first few pages, I learned three more things in quick succession: 1. I should have bought chocolate to accompany me, 2. it was a good thing I didn’t have plans for the rest of the evening, and 3. I was really glad that I got to meet Rebecca last summer, because I was going to need to email her every 10 pages or so to tell her how much I was loving her book.
There are vague plot spoilers in the remainder of this post.
Reading it was like burning, the kind you do intentionally to a marshmallow so you can peel off the carbon, stick it back in the fire and do it again while the gooey sugar builds up on your fingers and the sparks dance when you move the coals. It was like slowly covering a blank page with purple crayon, only to realize that for every stroke on the paper you were painting a matching one on yourself. It’s been awhile since I read a book I felt like I was walking into sideways, and “Ultraviolet” turned me on my head and back right again.
Clear as mud, yes?
What I mean, of course, is that the imagery is stunning. Actually stunning. I read the first paragraph on the opening page and thought “I don’t know if I can handle this much MUCH for an entire book”. I had similar thoughts at the end of chapter 1. I didn’t stop reading, though, because sensory overload was the whole point, and it’s important to Alison that you take the journey with her.
Alison, by the way, is amazing. She is the epitome of the Misunderstood Heroine, literally a prisoner of her own mind, so overwhelmed by what everyone presents at face value that she physically cannot tolerate anything deeper. I fell in love with her when Kirk asked her favourite colour and she gave three totally non-coloured answers in her head before saying the inevitable "Violet". As much as anything, this is the story of how she learns to trust her own mind and her own gifts.
Or does she? Because for a while you think there’s a rational explanation, and then you think maybe this is just her way of coping, and then you start to wonder if she might be crazy after all, and you continue to wonder that right up past the ending of the book. It’s kind of awesome.
The descriptiveness in this book kind of blew my mind, particularly in the early chapters and in the big action sequence at the end. There’s a scene towards the end of Battlestar Galactica that is just horribly overacted, where Dean Stockwell yells insensibly about how bitter he is that he can’t taste dark matter and smell solar flares. “Ultraviolet”, on the other hand manages to convey the most obtuse sensory ideas in a way that you, as the reader, totally understand (even though conveying them to another person would be next to impossible…which is kind of the point, I think).
There were a couple things I wasn’t a huge fan of. One of them was the romance. It was really well written and totally believable…but it also involved a (supposed) mental patient and her (supposed) neuropsychologist. Even though neither of them were exactly what they seemed to be, the initial “patient/doctor” thing was enough to throw me off for the rest of the book (um, except their farewell, which totally made me cry). I think on a second read through, it would bother me less, and it might not bother you at all.
But the important thing is that even with the incredibly insane twist that hits you in the stomach at the start of part III, “Ultraviolet” feels completely real the whole time. I was plagued with doubts as to who was going to betray Alison next (or if she was being betrayed at all), jumping from her mother to her doctors to her fellow patients…only to be totally blindsided by the actual turn the story took. That is an accomplishment in and of itself, I think.
And Alison really was fabulous. Not in the “leap tall buildings in a single bound” kind of way or the “slay dragons with my mighty hammer” kind of way, but in the “become a real person” kind of way. Her growth, as much as her perceptions, was what kept me turning pages.
And in case you were wondering, Minties are, in fact, the best chocolates in the world. And they taste exactly as purplish as Alison says they do. ;)
I realize the last book I reviewed also got the 10, but I’m going to have to make it two in a row: 10 out of 10 for originality, delicious prose, musical imagery, and a heroine that smelled so strongly of that colour past purple, I want to know what her song sounds like (except I think I already do).
I've read two other books by RJ Anderson, spent quite a bit of time talking Star Trek and Sanctuary with her, and was once even semi-kidnapped at a book launch to attend a family pizza party. All that, and I had NO IDEA what to expect with this book. Which was handy, because it defied absolutely every expectation I could have possibly had, even the part where I expected it to be good, which it defied by being amazing.
Here's the first cool thing about Ultraviolet: it is the most colourful book I have ever read. Going in, I knew exactly three things: 1. it had something to do with purple, 2. it had something to do with a murder, and 3. I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to love this book, because the teaser was brilliant.
Within the first few pages, I learned three more things in quick succession: 1. I should have bought chocolate to accompany me, 2. it was a good thing I didn’t have plans for the rest of the evening, and 3. I was really glad that I got to meet Rebecca last summer, because I was going to need to email her every 10 pages or so to tell her how much I was loving her book.
There are vague plot spoilers in the remainder of this post.
Reading it was like burning, the kind you do intentionally to a marshmallow so you can peel off the carbon, stick it back in the fire and do it again while the gooey sugar builds up on your fingers and the sparks dance when you move the coals. It was like slowly covering a blank page with purple crayon, only to realize that for every stroke on the paper you were painting a matching one on yourself. It’s been awhile since I read a book I felt like I was walking into sideways, and “Ultraviolet” turned me on my head and back right again.
Clear as mud, yes?
What I mean, of course, is that the imagery is stunning. Actually stunning. I read the first paragraph on the opening page and thought “I don’t know if I can handle this much MUCH for an entire book”. I had similar thoughts at the end of chapter 1. I didn’t stop reading, though, because sensory overload was the whole point, and it’s important to Alison that you take the journey with her.
Alison, by the way, is amazing. She is the epitome of the Misunderstood Heroine, literally a prisoner of her own mind, so overwhelmed by what everyone presents at face value that she physically cannot tolerate anything deeper. I fell in love with her when Kirk asked her favourite colour and she gave three totally non-coloured answers in her head before saying the inevitable "Violet". As much as anything, this is the story of how she learns to trust her own mind and her own gifts.
Or does she? Because for a while you think there’s a rational explanation, and then you think maybe this is just her way of coping, and then you start to wonder if she might be crazy after all, and you continue to wonder that right up past the ending of the book. It’s kind of awesome.
The descriptiveness in this book kind of blew my mind, particularly in the early chapters and in the big action sequence at the end. There’s a scene towards the end of Battlestar Galactica that is just horribly overacted, where Dean Stockwell yells insensibly about how bitter he is that he can’t taste dark matter and smell solar flares. “Ultraviolet”, on the other hand manages to convey the most obtuse sensory ideas in a way that you, as the reader, totally understand (even though conveying them to another person would be next to impossible…which is kind of the point, I think).
There were a couple things I wasn’t a huge fan of. One of them was the romance. It was really well written and totally believable…but it also involved a (supposed) mental patient and her (supposed) neuropsychologist. Even though neither of them were exactly what they seemed to be, the initial “patient/doctor” thing was enough to throw me off for the rest of the book (um, except their farewell, which totally made me cry). I think on a second read through, it would bother me less, and it might not bother you at all.
But the important thing is that even with the incredibly insane twist that hits you in the stomach at the start of part III, “Ultraviolet” feels completely real the whole time. I was plagued with doubts as to who was going to betray Alison next (or if she was being betrayed at all), jumping from her mother to her doctors to her fellow patients…only to be totally blindsided by the actual turn the story took. That is an accomplishment in and of itself, I think.
And Alison really was fabulous. Not in the “leap tall buildings in a single bound” kind of way or the “slay dragons with my mighty hammer” kind of way, but in the “become a real person” kind of way. Her growth, as much as her perceptions, was what kept me turning pages.
And in case you were wondering, Minties are, in fact, the best chocolates in the world. And they taste exactly as purplish as Alison says they do. ;)
I realize the last book I reviewed also got the 10, but I’m going to have to make it two in a row: 10 out of 10 for originality, delicious prose, musical imagery, and a heroine that smelled so strongly of that colour past purple, I want to know what her song sounds like (except I think I already do).
