Friday, November 16, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Spectacle by Rachel Vincent


Spectacle is the sequel to Rachel Vincent's Menagerie (Review Here), and the second book in a trilogy.  Menagerie set up an interesting dark fantasy setting, where a tragedy in the past caused by mysterious creatures has caused the United States to pass laws in fear removing all rights from Cryptids - creatures out of myth like Minotaurs, Succubi, etc - which had previously lived alongside humanity in peace.  Menagerie was a bit brutal, but had a satisfying ending that left a number of aspects of the setting untouched, making me interested in seeing where Vincent would go in the sequels.

In the case of Spectacle, the answer to where Vincent is taking this world is "nowhere new."  Rather than exploring a new corner of this world, the plot takes us into an area of this world that is just alluded to in Menagerie, but is still very damn similar to the conflicts at heart in the first book - just much more extreme.  This book sets up a change in the characters' situations that should result in a new plotline for the third book which just came out....but there was no reason why the first book's ending couldn't have done something similar.  Essentially Spectacle fails to justify its own existence, which is a major failure of any book.

TRIGGER WARNING:  I mentioned in my review of Menagerie that while occasions of physical abuse occurred on-page in the story and rape in the past was alluded to, no rape was present in the book.  That is NOT the case with Spectacle - while no rape is shown on-page, there is a LOT of it alluded to in this book, as well as other non-consensual activity.  If Menagerie hadn't existed already, I'd have said this book barely manages to walk the line as to justify the inclusions of these horrors, but the presence of the prior book makes me think otherwise here.  Read with caution.

-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Delilah Marlowe and the cryptids of Metzger’s Menagerie have kept the illusion that the Menagerie is still being run by humans for some time now, as Delilah attempts to keep the show financially afloat while still trying to find and save as many of her friends' cryptid family members as possible.

But the illusion can't last forever, and when outside forces close in on the Menagerie, Delilah and her friends find themselves once again captured, this time by a private entity: Willem Vandekamp's "Savage Spectacle."

But what Delilah and her friends could not have anticipated is how different the Spectacle is from the Menagerie - as Vandekamp has gone to no end to find technological ways to suppress Cryptid rebellion by shutting off their abilities - whether those be special abilities or more typical human abilities.  And the Spectacle isn't just a show for common folk, it's a place for private rich individuals to indulge in their fantasies with the Cryptids....whether they like it or not.

Escape from this new captivity will be even harder for Delilah to manage than it was before....and every day she fails to do so, more horrors are being inflicted upon her friends....and on Delilah herself.  Horrors worse than she might have imagined.
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I have a big pet peeve in books that are part of a series, usually in the second volume: when that book wipes away the conclusion of a prior book to restore a status quo just so that the plot can continue along similar lines despite a previously satisfying ending (for an example, see Death's End by Cixin Liu).  Spectacle does just that - in one chapter it voids Menagerie's happy-ish ending and ends the freedom that Delilah and her friends obtained at the end of the first book and restores them back to captivity by people who seek to abuse them.

A book that wipes out the ending of its predecessor can work out if it takes the plot in new directions mind you (again while I didn't love Death's End, the book goes in wildly different directions from its predecessor The Dark Forest, so I could get over that pet peeve easily), but Spectacle doesn't do that at all.  For the second straight book, our plot is for Delilah to find a way for her friends to escape captivity, turn the tides on their abusers, and to survive.  It's the same plot as in the first book, rather than dealing with something new and interesting hinted at previously, like the mysterious "surrogates."

So what's different about Spectacle from its predecessor?  Well, our new antagonists have more vile ways to keep our protagonists in captivity and controlled than simple shock sticks and cruel humans.  Moreover, they want to do more than display the cryptids - but to rent them out for private wealthy and powerful individuals to live out their fantasies.  You can see where this is going at this point, I'm sure, and sure enough the book does go there.  It's never shown on page thankfully, but whereas Menagerie drew the line at more than hinting once at the idea of rape, Spectacle doesn't draw the line at all, or at displaying the consequences of those rapes by what are essentially slavers.  So if Menagerie wasn't brutal enough for you, then I guess this book will be more of your thing.  But none of this really adds anything of value to the story, which remains the same in its structure as in the first book.

Mind you, Vincent writes this story still very well, and Delilah is a compelling heroine, now lost of most of her naivete from the beginning of the first book.  If there's a reason I might STILL read the conclusion of this trilogy despite this book's utter failure, it's because I like Delilah and the other characters and find them easy to care about.  I want them to find a happy ending in this world, which doesn't happen here (yeah this ends on a cliffhanger).  But again, even the ending here is worse than in the prior book, as the ending relies on a silly coincidence occurring that allows the protagonists to escape.

When an author writes a book that people enjoy, that doesn't mean that people want sequels that are basically just more of the same and nothing else.  That's basically all Vincent has done here with Spectacle, and in fact, she made the book worse in the few changes she made.  Yikes.
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