Review: Linger
Jul. 21st, 2010 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alanajoliFor all of you readers who remember watching the Star Wars trilogy before you watched the prequels… do you remember what it felt like to watch the end of Empire Strikes Back? I was too young to see it (with any recollection) in the theater, but I remember very vividly getting to the heart-dropping, cliff-hanger ending of Empire Strikes Back and sitting in awe of the people who had to watch the trilogy in the theaters, knowing there was a conclusion coming, but being equally aware that they had to wait for it. The release date of Return of the Jedi probably hadn't even been announced, so they had no idea that it would be three long years before finding out if Han Solo would stay frozen in carbonite forever, if he and Leia would ever get their happy ending, if the Empire would win after all.
Getting to the end of Linger feels exactly what I imagine that must have felt like, with the exception that, thankfully, Forever has both a title and a release date. (July 2011. I may have to start a countdown clock.) My heart has dropped, and I'm hanging from that story cliff, waiting to know if that happy ending will come after all.
In Shiver (reviewed here), we reached that happy ending spot, and I was surprised to learn that more books were planned. Grace and Sam, the girl who had never shifted and the boy who was about to become a wolf forever, had found a way to bring their worlds together. Not all was right with the world: Grace's parents were still absentee and, presumably, uncaring; Sam's father-figure was likely to stay a wolf forever; new wolves, teens who decided willingly to become werewolves, are brought into the pack; and the boy who had started the public outcry against the wolves when he was bitten did not survive the cure. In Linger, those issues come to a head: Grace's parents start to care about their lack of control in Grace's life, but in all the wrong ways. Sam begins to realize what it will take to be the human responsible for a pack of wolves if Beck, his adopted father, doesn't shift back to human. Adding to the storytelling perspectives of Grace and Sam, we add Cole, one of those potentially dangerous new pack members, and Isabel, Jack's sister, who feels that Jack's death is her fault.
Where Grace and Sam are appealing narrators, easy to identify with and easy to root for, Isabel and Cole are both prickly. Grace and Sam both have issues, only some of which they're dealing with, but Isabel and Cole seem to have baggage that requires a bus boy to cart it around for them. But as the stakes get higher in Linger, when Grace gets sick in a way that mimics a sickness in wolves that haven't shifted back to human in years, it's those two prickly perspectives that keep things grounded. Sam and Grace, who edge into co-dependent territory (understandable given their bond, but possibly less healthy than we last saw their relationship), need outsiders to look at the situation and demand action. And Isabel and Cole, both broken, Cole struggling with the idea of living at all, find themselves in positions to be the people to force that action, to keep everything from falling apart. It's my hope that in Forever, the act of keeping everyone else together brings the two of them healing as well.
Linger is definitely a stepping-stone book, the story in the middle that takes what seemed like small conflicts, builds them into momentous obstacles, and sets the bar for what comes after, the goal our heroes have to reach to save the day: a cure, not just temporary, but lasting and survivable. It seems, at the moment, insurmountable, and it could come too late to save them. But Linger is also a book of moments that reveal what is admirable and worth loving about the characters: perfect birthday presents, rejections at just the right moment, resolutions of faith, and coffee shop confessions. The characters are so vulnerable – prickly or not – that you want them to win, and even though the victory doesn't have the scope of saving the galaxy from an evil Empire, its resonance may be even deeper.
Getting to the end of Linger feels exactly what I imagine that must have felt like, with the exception that, thankfully, Forever has both a title and a release date. (July 2011. I may have to start a countdown clock.) My heart has dropped, and I'm hanging from that story cliff, waiting to know if that happy ending will come after all.
In Shiver (reviewed here), we reached that happy ending spot, and I was surprised to learn that more books were planned. Grace and Sam, the girl who had never shifted and the boy who was about to become a wolf forever, had found a way to bring their worlds together. Not all was right with the world: Grace's parents were still absentee and, presumably, uncaring; Sam's father-figure was likely to stay a wolf forever; new wolves, teens who decided willingly to become werewolves, are brought into the pack; and the boy who had started the public outcry against the wolves when he was bitten did not survive the cure. In Linger, those issues come to a head: Grace's parents start to care about their lack of control in Grace's life, but in all the wrong ways. Sam begins to realize what it will take to be the human responsible for a pack of wolves if Beck, his adopted father, doesn't shift back to human. Adding to the storytelling perspectives of Grace and Sam, we add Cole, one of those potentially dangerous new pack members, and Isabel, Jack's sister, who feels that Jack's death is her fault.
Where Grace and Sam are appealing narrators, easy to identify with and easy to root for, Isabel and Cole are both prickly. Grace and Sam both have issues, only some of which they're dealing with, but Isabel and Cole seem to have baggage that requires a bus boy to cart it around for them. But as the stakes get higher in Linger, when Grace gets sick in a way that mimics a sickness in wolves that haven't shifted back to human in years, it's those two prickly perspectives that keep things grounded. Sam and Grace, who edge into co-dependent territory (understandable given their bond, but possibly less healthy than we last saw their relationship), need outsiders to look at the situation and demand action. And Isabel and Cole, both broken, Cole struggling with the idea of living at all, find themselves in positions to be the people to force that action, to keep everything from falling apart. It's my hope that in Forever, the act of keeping everyone else together brings the two of them healing as well.
Linger is definitely a stepping-stone book, the story in the middle that takes what seemed like small conflicts, builds them into momentous obstacles, and sets the bar for what comes after, the goal our heroes have to reach to save the day: a cure, not just temporary, but lasting and survivable. It seems, at the moment, insurmountable, and it could come too late to save them. But Linger is also a book of moments that reveal what is admirable and worth loving about the characters: perfect birthday presents, rejections at just the right moment, resolutions of faith, and coffee shop confessions. The characters are so vulnerable – prickly or not – that you want them to win, and even though the victory doesn't have the scope of saving the galaxy from an evil Empire, its resonance may be even deeper.
