Title: The Dysasters
Author: P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Series: The Dysasters #1
Liked but didn’t love
I would like to thank P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast, and Michelle Cashman at St. Martin’s Press for inviting me to participate in the blog tour. I received a free ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Don’t want to be spoiled? See my non-spoiler review.
Jumping right in, my biggest problem with the book didn’t have anything to do with the narrative. I seriously disliked the illustrations. One, my imagination needs the exercise. Two, they interrupted my reading and pulled me out of scenes—which probably wouldn’t have bothered me as much if the illustrations were good, but—three—they weren’t. The style was not to my taste. I didn’t think the characters were drawn all that attractively, definitely not as I pictured them in my head.
Four, the illustrations weren’t even accurate! For example, Foster’s hair was drawn straight and sleek as a Pantene model’s when it was written as “frizzy,” “curling,” “wild,” and wavy. (Third from the left in the image below.) Another example: Foster and Tate were driving a old Ford pickup, the bad guys were driving a Range Rover, but the illustration was of a Chevy truck. What the fuck? If you’re going to illustrate the narrative, please illustrate it accurately. Otherwise what the hell is the point? You’re just going to confuse people.
God, that really bothered me. Drove. Me. NUTS. Save the graphics for the graphic novel, please.
Here’s an example of the illustrations (image provided by the publisher for the blog tour):
Anyway. I liked the premise, though I’d rather it have skewed toward fantasy and magic than science fiction. Nevertheless, this take was interesting, too, and the Casts didn’t make it complicated. I thought what the protags could do with their powers was cool, if a bit corny: Good feelings made their powers manifest in good, constructive ways, bad feelings made their powers manifest in bad, destructive ways. And how did they make themselves have good feelings so the element would calm? Singing, dancing, and rational thought.
It makes sense, and it’s a good message to send to adolescents, but the execution came across as a bit silly. I think the protags’ goal shouldn’t have been to learn to let positive emotions push away the negative ones so they could achieve positive results; I think there’s merit in allowing yourself to feel negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness, but to keep a rational head so you don’t do things you’ll regret. I think that’s more relatable and achievable, and therefore a more realistic goal. After all, to err is human. While it’s cool to make wind music when you’re happy, it would be even cooler to use your fury to create a wind storm that you control. Like having a guard dog who doesn’t attack until you give the command, and who plays and cuddles with you when there’s no threat. Does that make sense? Either way, it’s a great theme.
I appreciated that the elements were somewhat sentient, and that each of the elemental powers came with a major weakness. Humans aren’t meant to possess them, so it makes sense that they would slowly destroy you. Fire dehydrates you, and the longer you’ve had the powers, the harder it is to keep hydrated, or at least that’s how I understood it. Earth begins to take over your body, i.e. when you use your powers, a crystal forms on your skin and will eventually encapsulate you if you don’t remove it. Air also begins to take over your body, i.e. you begin to disappear.
Water is a bit different; water powers make you hallucinate, or least you think you’re hallucinating, because you can vaguely see creatures in the water, or hear their song—and no one else can. But it still fits; each element will consume the human host in time: Fire will burn out, dry up, and turn to ash; Earth will turn into earth; Air into air; and it seems Water will no longer be able to resist the siren’s call, or in other words, will go mad and join the creatures—thus drowning and being “returned” to water. It’s a great irony—you think you’re harnassing the elements, but the rope’s actually around your neck—and getting tighter by the day.
A lot of reviewers seem to dislike Foster because she’s bitchy. They think she was mean, nasty, and unfair. And sometimes, yes, she was unreasonable and rude. But I totally understood her, because I’m exactly the same way. I’m a sarcastic introvert who generally doesn’t like people or want to be around them, and who’s honest opinions, practical nature, and blunt, straightforward approach to conversation comes across as bitchy when that’s not how it’s meant. Yeah, sometimes she was simply mean to Tate, but you’d probably be kinda snappy and on edge, too, if you’d just watched a natural disaster kill your family along with dozens of other people and found out that you can create tornadoes and that you’re suddenly neck-deep in a conspiracy you don’t understand or know what to do about. I don’t care who you are or how full your glass is—that’s a lot to deal with.
To that point, I didn’t like Tate. I tolerated him because I knew he was a protagonist and I was supposed to like him, but I thought he was an airhead and didn’t buy for second that he was into books like he said he was. It felt forced, felt like someone was taunting me, making faces and blowing raspberries in my face. “Thought you had him pegged but ya didn’t, did ya? Shame on you for stereotyping. Jocks can be smart, too! Neener neener!” They just worked a little too hard to make that point when they should have made it a more subtle, organic reveal. He didn’t need to prove his intellectuality to Foster, he just had to be intellectual…which I don’t really think he was. There were a few times he was slow on the uptake, finally understanding things several lines or paragraphs after Foster told him.
Also, he wasn’t serious enough for me to take seriously. He was a good person, sure, and had heaps of good intention, but he played into the glass-half-full thing a little too much. After the initial shock, he didn’t seem to grieve for his parents much, didn’t talk about them or reminisce or seem to truly miss them. He thought of them fondly, but that’s usually a stage you reach months if not years after the death of a very close loved one, not a couple weeks after their tragic and horrifyingly violent deaths. Then he thought Foster was being all angsty and bitchy because she was obviously traumatized and grieving. It was like the gravity of the situation and consequences didn’t weigh on him. All of the above trauma happened to him, too, but he was over it, like, a couple days later. While Foster was trying to figure things out and come to grips, he was off grocery shopping, playing with the horses, and hanging out with Finn.
So yeah, people dislike Foster because she wasn’t perky and friendly and optimistic and like Tate because he was all of that. I feel the opposite.
That said, I resented Foster’s arc a bit. It was nice to see her come out of the fog of grief and start to smile and laugh and make friends, but she kinda seemed to turn into a whole different person. Her arc wasn’t to be mean, bitchy, and crude and become nice, friendly, and feminine. Her arc simply needed to start wary and distrustful and become open to building new relationships and to the idea that she could trust her friends; that she didn’t have to be alone and take this on all by herself. The Casts overdid it to the point that Foster started out as one kind of person and transformed into the kind of girl who would get along more easily with Tate.
Which means the deeper issue here is that she and Tate didn’t make a very natural couple. I could see them coming to appreciate each other and being friends, but I don’t think they’d fall in love with each other. Despite how much they each thought the other was beautiful or handsome, I didn’t feel any chemistry or sexual tension—so I was super relieved that they didn’t have sex. That would have felt wrong on multiple levels.
And that’s a good segue into the adult themes, which I adored. Some readers might get thin-lipped with disapproval with all the swearing and the fact that an apparently unmarried teenage couple got pregnant and had a baby—Finn and Sabine—but I loved it. I think a majority of the YA audience will appreciate that the Casts didn’t hold back or sugercoat reality or try to preach right from wrong. And I just fucking love to swear, so I don’t give a good goddamn if the fucking characters do shit like that.
The Casts made a solid effort to give the antagonists motivations and personalities that didn’t just amount to “bad guy because evil,” but Dr. Stewart is still a cliche in that he ultimately wants to rule the world and make everyone bow before him. Eve, however, was a very well-developed and multi-dimensional character.
But, um…. Am I the only one who felt sexual tension between those two? The father and daughter? They just seemed…very close. And very isolated on their private island.
*clears throat* But anyway—an impossible, damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don’t conflict always gains my sympathy. That applied to Eve but also to Mark, whom I liked a lot. Can’t leave because he’ll go mad or be captured and dissected. Can’t stay because all his family members are selfish and psychotic assholes. But he thinks those assholes are the only people who understand him and can possibly help him resist the siren’s call. Mark my words—pun intended—he’s either going to die or defect and join the teenagers. I hope the latter. He knows Charlotte and Bastien see and hear the water creatures and don’t fear them. Maybe that will give him hope.
Ignore Matthew, he’s just a lemming. Luke’s a hotheaded—literally and emotionally—egotistical prick who can take his fireballs and cram them up his ass.
Hey, I’m curious; if there’s Eve, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where’s Adam and John? And Mary? And Joseph? And Paul? *snorts* Sorry, that was a cheap joke.
I’m super bummed we were introduced to such wonderfully intriguing characters in Charlotte and Bastien but weren’t able to explore them much. And I wish I was more familiar with Cajun accents, because I can’t really imagine-hear what Bastien sounded like. Sometimes it was like he spoke a completely foreign language, and sometimes he spoke plain English. I mean that figuratively; obviously the French he spoke was a foreign language. It was…disorienting. And I got the feeling toward the end there that…he intended to commit suicide? To answer the siren’s call and drown in the ocean? Not sure if I was understanding that right. He was so depressed and sad and lonely and felt that he should make the ocean his home and join the creatures. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he thought he’d been drawn to the ocean that day to commit suicide. Everything about Bastien, in his POV, was dark. I loved it.
I adored Charlotte. I think she’s the first transgender character I’ve ever read, at least in a protag’s role, and I’m so excited to get to know her. But I’m not quite sure what kind of connection she and Bastion are supposed to have. It was mentioned that they have the same eye color—the color of Caribbean waters—and that threw me, because I’d been assuming they would be a romantic couple, but then I wondered if maybe they were supposed to be secret twins separated at birth? Tate and Foster didn’t share any features, much less eye color, and their eyes weren’t air-related, like stormy gray or something. So why would Charlotte and Bastien’s be the same—the color of water? Maybe I’m thinking about it too hard. Maybe it doesn’t matter. It just really threw me off, because having the same eye color is often a trope that foreshadows an unknown biological connection. Personally, I really hope it means nothing and that they’ll get together. I admit, I’m really curious to see how that would…how that would work. I mean, if they’re all living in a house together, someone’s bound to notice her…incongruity. She hasn’t had surgery yet. How will that go? I don’t know anyone who’s transgender, so I’m fascinated.
But I’m not sure we needed to see Charlotte and Bastien in this book. I think the Fucktastic Four (aka Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Eve) could have found G-pa (Tate’s maternal grandfather) sooner and held him hostage for a showdown that didn’t involve water at all. They simply could have kept trying to get Tate and Foster while they waited for the water birthdays to come up.
“But the Fucktastic Four had a hard time finding G-pa.”
You’re telling me that they’ve kept tabs on Tate for 18 years but never gathered intel on his G-pa, with whom he was quite close? *lifts brow* Mmmm, bullshit.
Foster and Tate could have rescued G-pa and run back to safety, and then they would have had time to dink around with horses and dates and crap; they and the baddies all would have started back at square one again to look for the water kids. So yeah, while they were well written, I’m not sure Bastien and Charlotte’s chapters were necessary at all. Book two could have simply started with Bastien working at—whatever that place was—and Charlotte at school. Or if my proposed showdown happened within the first week or so of Tate and Foster’s birthday, the timing would have been perfect to start book two with the chapters in this book as they are.
Side note: I don’t know if verbally addressing a grandparent as “G-pa” (jee-puh) or “G-ma” (jee-muh) is an actual thing. I’ve never heard anyone I know say it like that out loud. I use the shorthand “gpa” and “gma” when I text, but out loud I say “grandpa” and “grandma” like most people do. Well, I suppose my lazy pronunciation actually makes it “grampa” and “gramma.” But it was super distracting to me, because it was always awkward for me to pronounce in my head for some reason. And it always made me think of Jeeps.
Finally, the pace was a bit muddled. The beginning was very exciting and tense and mysterious, but Foster and Tate took forever to start figuring things out and then kinda avoided the situation and played Simple Life for a while, which I got a bit impatient with. They knew they needed to start finding the other kids, but they certainly were in no rush, even though it was very much a time-sensitive issue. All those supposed files that Cora had filched, and the most information Foster and Tate found were birth dates and birth states? C’mon. That’s like the baddies not knowing anything about G-pa. I didn’t feel the urgency I should have, and the only thing that kept the tension up was seeing the baddies make abduction plans. It irritated me to have to sit through that stupid double date; no lie, I was thinking, “Wow, this really lost focus,” when that tornado showed up in the nick of time. And in the plane, it took them waaaay too long to remember they control air. I just sat there shaking my head and saying to my computer, “Dudes, you can prevent a plane crash. Calm the damn wind!”
Final random note: The “hairy dinosaurs” (Percheron horses) never came into play, though it seemed they were being set up to play a role, and we never got an explanation for the tornadoes in Vermont. Maybe those will come later, but I think they’re just details that were given too much attention, not foreshadowing.
Overall, I liked The Dysasters, but I didn’t love it. I’m super excited for book two, though, because I want to see what happens with Bastien and Charlotte. The Casts have a House of Night Otherworlds book coming in October, and they seem to typically publish two books a year, so I don’t expect book two of The Dysasters until early next year. Until then, I think I’ll borrow the House of Night audiobooks from the library and see if they’re any good. I LOVED P. C.’S Goddess Summoning series, so I’m prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
