Friday, July 9, 2010

Middle Grade & Young Adult Corner: The Last Survivors, Books 1, 2 &3, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Overall: 5.2

I love a post-apocalyptic story as much as the next person; unfortunately, The Last Survivors is dragged down by the author's intrusive - and sometimes outright insulting - social and political commentary.

AR Grade Level: 4.2-4.7
Suggested Age Rage: 13+

The ethical issues these books raise may go over the heads of younger readers.

Plot Synopses:

In lieu of providing a full summary for each book in this trilogy, I shall direct you to Amazon's trailer, which should give you a general sense of this series' post-apocalyptic premise.



Characterization: 5.0

Characterization in these books runs the range from middling to horrendous. Pfeffer seems to have a particularly difficult time honestly portraying people of faith. The priests we meet in New York City, for example, certainly behave in ways that are contrary to my expectations. For one thing, it strikes me as strange that at no point do these clerics open their church as a shelter for the families in their parish. (I know that's precisely what Fathers P. and M. of Holy Family would do if they were faced with a similar crisis.) And then we have Miranda's young friend, Megan, who appears to adhere to a very stereotypical form of Evangelical Protestant Christianity. Megan piously lectures her peers on the evils of sex before marriage (a view the author obviously thinks is ridiculous) and ends up deliberately starving herself to death because she supposedly values heaven over life. Yeah, that makes sense; after all, we Christians are always so down on fun and living...

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... Sorry about the delay. I accidentally rolled my eyes right out of their sockets and had to pick them up and pop them back in.

Plot/Pacing: 7.5

I must admit, though, that these books are quick, engaging reads. I can see why so many teenagers - and youth librarians - like them. Ever since elementary school, I myself have always been drawn to tales in which children are forced to struggle for survival against seemingly impossible odds. Though I was mentally screaming over the author's politics (more on that below), I still found much of this series' plot compelling.

Concepts/Themes: 3.0

Pfeffer is, on the whole, ill-educated, and it really shows. What first attracts my notice is the shaky science of the premise. As other reviewers on the web have noted, if the moon really were hit by an object with sufficient momentum, its orbit could be altered, but it would take many days - not a matter of minutes - for the change to be noticeable on Earth. Moreover, such an object would have to be very large indeed to cause a shift in the moon's orbit, and an object that large would certainly not slip by our current astronomers. And as for the amount of rock that would be blasted into space upon impact? Let's just say that Earth would likely have a deadly meteor shower on its hands. I can sort of accept Pfeffer's depiction of what would occur geologically if the moon were pushed closer to the Earth (the higher ocean tides certainly make sense, and I understand that tidal stresses do cause volcanism on Io), but the initial event that moves the moon seems pretty fanciful to me.

I must say, though, that the scientific errors Pfeffer commits here are not nearly so glaring as the sociological ones. If I were to ask you, reader, how people would behave in the face of a global environmental catastrophe, you'd probably reply that we would see a wide range of reactions. Some people would be selfish and barbaric. Some people would be self-sacrificing saints. Most would probably fall somewhere in the middle of that continuum with a heavy skew favoring what is moral and decent. The reactions would probably be slightly different depending on the locality, but I have seen nothing in my admittedly brief life that suggests that people wouldn't, on the whole, try to pull together and help each other.

The view of humanity that permeates The Last Survivors, however, is almost uniformly negative. The government guns down innocent university professors to establish "safe towns" for all of the nation's elite. The rich make for these safe towns in droves and leave the poor behind to fend for themselves. The evacuation camps that are set up for poorer residents of the coastal cities are run by guards who like to take advantage of the female refugees. Even the supposed heroes fail to band together with their neighbors to conserve heating oil when the volcanic winter hits - and they are extremely reluctant to help anyone but their immediate family and friends. (Though they are certainly not reluctant to heap opprobrium on the president - a thinly disguised caricature of President George W. Bush - for looking after his own. Hmm. What is that I smell floating off these pages? Could it be the odor of HIGH-pocrisy?)

If you ask me, I think these novels were heavily influenced by the mainstream media's treatment of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The timeline certainly strengthens my argument: the first novel in the series, Life As We Knew It, was published in 2006. If you look past the biased media's distortions in re: Katrina, however, what you'll see is a reality that hardly resembles Pfeffer's grim picture. $700 million in charitable donations was sent to the affected areas following the disaster. Countless families welcomed evacuees into their homes. The city of Houston alone took in thousands of hurricane refugees. According to someone who actually volunteered to help with relief efforts, the George R. Brown Convention Center provided "sleeping quarters, cafeteria serving hot meals, snack bar, coffee bar, laundry, private showers, clean bathrooms, a fully functioning hospital, X-ray, MRI, dialysis, prayer rooms, chapels, phone room with free long-distance, computers, internet, a housing office, a job placement office, a movie theater, child care, counseling, AA meetings, a police station, and the list goes on and on. The people who were staying there were clean, safe, and well-fed." This individual further added, "To Jesse Jackson and any of the others who have cried "racism" from afar – come down to Houston. Put on a vest and take a shift at the dome or the GRB. You will quickly find that 99% of those who are being housed in those facilities are black, and 99% of those who have taken off work and driven across town to volunteer are white... and no one in either of those groups cares one bit. It is one person helping another and nothing more."

Granted, in a scenario like Pfeffer's, very few of the above-mentioned modern amenities would survive, but there would certainly be similar irregularities in the distribution of resources. And I believe that even on a post-apocalyptic Earth, people who have more would be willing to give to those who have less. They'd make able-bodied folks work for food and shelter more than likely, but they wouldn't completely shut their doors.

And speaking of the distribution of resources, it's time for a word on "price gouging": As you might expect, the author treats this practice as if it is the most selfish thing a business owner can do, but that, of course, shows a failure to understand basic economics. Prices are determined by supply and demand. Diamonds are expensive because lots of people want them (high demand) and they are damnably difficult to mine (low supply). Spam is cheap because most people think Spam is disgusting (low demand). If we were to suffer a global environmental disaster on the scale of the disaster in these books, we would certainly find ourselves dealing with shortages of many desirable items - and shortages drive prices up not because business owners are assholes, but because, believe it or not, they are following market forces which, particularly in times of severe deprivation, end up distributing resources more fairly. When the price of gas rises to $20 a gallon, each family uses less - and that means more people get a chance to tap the tank. In a situation in which oil is being refined only sporadically, this kind of natural rationing is absolutely essential. Yes, the poor may be left out entirely, but see my above discussion on charity.

Whew! I've already written a book here, and I haven't even gotten to the disturbing ending of the saga in which Miranda takes it upon herself to euthanize Alex's paralyzed sister. Suffice it to say that I object - STRONGLY - to the anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, and anti-HUMAN messages of these books.

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