In this episode, we'll be taking a look at Michael Vey and the Hunt for Jade Dragon, the fourth book in the Michael Vey series.
First up, the pros.
I was pleasantly surprised by this installment in the Michael Vey series because the last one left me extremely underwhelmed. So underwhelmed that I almost didn't finish reading it because I was so bored. Maybe it was just because I went in with very low expectations, but I liked this book much better than the last. It was engaging enough that I read it all yesterday in an attempt to combat jet lag.
I think what the last book lacked for me was any kind of suspense. It was getting too predictable in its repetition--the kids are evading Elgen, Elgen catches up, Elgen catches the kids, the kids escape Elgen, repeat.
In this book, the kids still save the day and manage to escape relatively unscathed, but there were some twists to the story that generally surprised me.
(I'm going to include some spoilers for the sake of those who have read it, but I'm going to write them in white so that you have to highlight the spoiler sections in order to see them.)
For example, I saw the ( "Tara takes the place of Taylor" ) thing a mile away. But I didn't realize that ( Nichelle "betraying" the others ) was actually a ruse to trick Tara and Hatch and ultimately save the others. I just thought ( she was going back to her villainous ways), and I was sad that it was so cliched. Luckily it didn't turn out that way at all. I was happy with that.
Evans did a good job in this book of using obvious twists in the plot to disguise surprising ones. Another example was when ( Michael's father was alive and working for Elgen. I thought "Great, his dad's been alive all this time and now he's going to trick Michael into thinking that Elgen is actually the good guys." ) What I didn't see coming at all was that it was actually ( Hatch using Tara's abilities to pretend to be Michael's father). I was just as shocked and disturbed by that as Michael was.
Now for the cons.
These are pretty nitpicky probably, but I am an editor. I did ultimately like this book (I'll give it a 4 out of 5), but there are some things that could be done better, and so I'm gonna give some tips from an editor to any writers out there who may be reading this.
1) Jade Dragon is the most cliched "cool" Chinese name I've ever heard of. I think they could have still called it "Operation Jade Dragon," but they should have kept using the girl's Chinese name, Lin Julung. Since, you know, she's Chinese and her name is actually Chinese. Anyone who speaks Chinese would still think it's the most contrived name ever, but at least it wouldn't be so blatant.
It's like taking a Mexican guy named Jorge Santa Cruz and calling him George Holy Cross the whole book. If you're gonna give a character a cool name in some other language, you can acknowledge that it's a "cool" name, but don't shove it down our throats like that.
2) Evans has obviously either been to Taiwan or just done tons of research on it. He put in tons of details to make it seem as authentic as possible. Unfortunately, this really bogged down the story for me.
The characters had like a week in Taiwan before their super secret mission to rescue Jade Dragon, but I didn't need to hear about every single meal they ate in excruciating detail to understand that they were experiencing culture shock and that Evans did his homework. A few comments about the unfamiliar food would have sufficed. Knowing exactly everything they did during that week just made me think "Are these guys covert ops or tourists?" They didn't seem all that worried about their situation. They just pigged out on Taiwanese food and visited markets the whole time.
In fact, all four books have been blow-by-blow accounts of what's happened to Michael since he discovered the other electric kids. Not a day gets passed up as unimportant.
Now, I like a book that has its days numbered, but I like it better when we get a sense of urgency because those days are numbered and they have limited time. I don't feel urgency when every single day of months of Michael's life are spelled out, including mundane details like every food they ate and what every single member of the Electroclan was up to.
Bravo for putting in details to make the story seem more authentic--it was definitely believable that they were in Taiwan--but don't bog down the story with unnecessary facts for the sake of authenticity.
3) Limit how many main characters you have. Obviously Michael, Taylor, and Ostin are the MAIN main characters, but there are six other kids they hang out with all the time who are supposed to be equally as important. SIX. And there's almost nothing setting them apart for me, except the occasional use of their respective powers. But even those I can't keep straight.
You know you have too many unmemorable characters when I read this book and everyone was mourning (Wade's) death from the last book and I thought, "Who was (Wade) again...?" When I finally did remember, I still didn't feel sad because he'd served the exact same purpose as another main character, (Jack). Evans could have easily combined (Jack and Wade) to make one character who's ( not electric and who used to pick on Michael but changed his ways to help them out). Having two was so redundant that I didn't even miss one of them when he died.
There are so many kids in the Electroclan whose powers I can't remember and whose personalities and stories don't stand apart enough for me to care about them individually. They're not even set apart by appearances, except McKenna whose Chinese appearance was mentioned a lot in this book.
It's okay to have tons of characters in your stories, but they need to stand apart on their own, not just be bunched together as a collective whole with individual powers that are important to the story (sometimes). Nine MAIN characters is just too much, unless they serve very important functions and have vastly different personalities.
Take "Firefly" for example. It also has nine main characters--Mal, Zoe, Wash, Kaylee, Inara, Jayne, Simon, River, and Book. But I was able to list all nine of them after having only seen the series once in high school, and I never EVER mistake Inara for Kaylee. Every one of those nine characters is so memorable and so different in their roles that they stand out in my mind. If I were to try and name the nine main characters of Michael Vey, I'd have to consult the book. And I just read it yesterday.
If the characters don't stand out enough, then usually just three main characters is all a reader can handle. Hence all the trios you find in books. Harry, Ron, Hermione. Edward, Bella, Jacob. Katniss, Peeta, Gale.
4) It's great that Evans made his characters question in this book whether or not Elgen were really evil. It's awesome when you can give the villains grey morality. Unfortunately, Evans fell a bit short in this because while Michael and Ostin may have questioned Elgen's evilness, we readers certainly didn't.
That's because we the readers are treated to the POV of Hatch and other villains, but nothing about them makes us go "Awww, they have a tragic past and are just misunderstood and really think they're doing the right thing!" That's what you need to do in order to make the reader question the villains and sympathize with them. All Evans did when showing us the villain POV was treat us to murder, truly disturbing plots, and the villains' complete lack of sympathy towards anyone else. I never once thought, "Oh, maybe they're actually the good guys."
So if you're a writer and you want the villains to be sympathetic, get into their heads and show us something that we'll connect with. THEN you can make the main characters question, and the readers will also start to wonder. But you can't portray black and white morality and expect us to start seeing grey where there isn't any.
5) Finally, heroes can be heroes, but they need flaws in order to really connect with the readers. Michael Vey is near flawless, and it's starting to make me unafraid of how the story will end. I just know that good is going to triumph, because in these books good can do no wrong.
Evans tries to make Michael "flawed" by giving him Tourette's and constantly pointing out that Taylor is way out of his league. But those aren't the kinds of flaws that make a story a genuine struggle between good and evil.
Michael Vey can apparently do no wrong. His powers keep growing (unlike anyone else's), and he never uses them poorly or in the wrong way. He's so admired that his friends make him the undisputed leader of their group, and he never makes an incorrect decision for them. Even the adults resisting Elgen defer to Michael as the undisputed most clever and most capable person among them. Michael is supposed to be like 15 years old, yet grown adults are sending him and his other 15-year-old friends on deadly missions because they're so perfectly special. He's the one the bad guy hates most, because he always spoils the bad guy's plans.
It's coming to the point where I know exactly how it's going to play out. Michael will always have a great plan, and it will sort of get foiled by Hatch, but then Michael and his friends escape and ultimately win the battle. Every time.
If you want good examples of flawed main characters, here are a few of my favorites:
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| One minute he's being awesome, taking names. The next minute, he's accidentally setting his lab on fire. |
I've seen Dresden make countless mistakes, and I honestly don't know if things are going to turn out all right in the end because things go wrong, his plans have fatal errors to them, and people don't always listen to his advice. Bad things happen. Ultimately he does win, but usually with severe consequences and lots of tragedy to go along with the victory. It wouldn't surprise me if he dies at the end of the series and the world remains a little messed up. I will cry my eyes out if that happens, but Jim Butcher has made his characters so believably imperfect that it won't surprise me if it happens.
Kaladin from Way of Kings and Words of Radiance (which I just read last month) is the underdog in so many ways. He doesn't have great social skills, so people don't generally adore him--not even the people he saves from danger. He loses his powers at one point because he makes selfish decisions and stops using them for noble reasons. He doesn't get the girl. He has legit problems, and those problems come with consequences that leave him afraid and alone on many occasions.
Michael Vey has Tourette's and was considered a dweeb in high school. That's not enough to make him flawed when all his plans go right, he always makes the right choice, and all the good guys love him no matter what.
Wow, this was much longer than I planned for it to be. I hope it was helpful, though--both in finding you a pretty good book to read when you're bored, and in giving you some writing tips if that's your thing.
(I just found all these photos through Google, so I have no idea who they actually belong to. I don't own any of them.)
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