New Book Review: Broken

(Here is the book review that should have appeared on Friday morning, when I was e-mailing back and forth about the paid "literary" version of another book review. Then I spent 24 hours offline, and I'm glad I did. Now...!)

Title: Broken  

Author: Braxton A. Cosby

Date: 2022

Publisher: Cosby Media Productions

Length: 367 e-pages (my copy)

ISBN: none visible (in my copy)

Quote: "The war that spawned the clouds of death that consumed and decimated our planet was finally over."

Within ten years, in this novel, the nuclear World War III has been fought, everybody's lost, the world has become a desert and is starting to recover, and in what's left of Savannah, Georgia, there are now four kinds of people: the Establishment, the Horde, the Ashers, and the slaves. (Ashers are victims of radiation sickness, sort of like zombies, only more plausible.) This time who becomes a slave is not determined by race or nationality. Neither is it a reconstruction of the ancient, ethically tolerable idea of slavery as a voluntary contract by which debtors could sell a few years of their lives to pay their debts. Exactly how slavery works in this fictional world is not clear, though slaves are said to have become the most profitable commodity in the recovering economy. 

Keesa Donovan, the cute little teenager on the front cover, is a slave. Her parents are dead. She still has an uncle, "old" before his time and likely to be beaten to death any day, and a preadolescent brother. She feels old and bitter, ready to leave her sad world any day; she's had suicidal moods, and sometimes she thinks some of the things she does are suicidal. But if she thinks they're the right thing to do, she'll do those things anyway. So far, she tells a friend, she's doing very well at surviving. 

Keesa has had very little religious instruction but she finds herself clinging to every word of advice, Christian or otherwise, her parents gave her. This makes Broken about as much of a Christian novel as the Mandie books were.

The series title is misleading, in a way, for this book. Keesa has been recruited and enlisted in the Hellions, the official goon squad for the Establishment government of Georgia, but before training starts she and some fellow slaves find themselves fleeing through Horde territory in the hope of meeting some fellow revolutionaries who want to end slavery.

Just for those who didn't like the trope from The Hunger Games where the ethnic-minority characters are sympathetic, put up a good show, and are then sacrificed to save the Anglo-American protagonist, in this book Keesa's first sweetheart, who is White, is sacrificed to save her. She thinks another White friend has been sacrificed to save her, and is just about to start feeling really depressed about that when someone rescues the friend.

There are, actually, several obvious things some readers won't like about this book. Some of them are things other readers may love. For those who have not already made up their minds that they are or are not fans of Braxton Cosby, first the list of things they may not like:

1. The slaves' plan to escape is unrealistic and works through a sort of dumb-luck-ex-machina. If you read authentic slave and abolitionist narratives from the 1850s, you see a fair bit of dumb luck operating there too.

2. Keesa is a very credible example of a Christian trying to keep the faith in adverse circumstances. At the beginning of the book she's ready to die rather than euthanize an old lady who was nice to her. (In the ancient world old or disabled slaves were sometimes thrown out to beg. In the United States two hundred years ago it was a status display to keep old slaves as "pets" and give them rocking chairs beside a fire; they were the ones whose role as "surrogate" family members is memorialized by their job title in this novel, and was often marked by calling them "Uncle" or "Auntie." In Keesa's world a major annual holiday observance is having young healthy slaves kill old sick ones.) During her adventures she often thinks about whether she can do more good for her brother and friends by living or dying. She doesn't know when her parents were quoting the Bible and when they were quoting pop culture, but she thinks often about what they taught her, and about her hope of finding them again in Heaven. She doesn't preach, or try to convert anybody. She just draws strength from a religion she's too young to understand. Christian-phobics will hate her.

3. It is regrettably true to life that, whatever other adventures young girls are having and how much their adventures do to take their minds off their hormones, wherever they go they're sure to meet somebody who thinks the most important thing about them (or the only important thing about them) is their sexuality. Keesa's recruitment into the Hellions seems to be grooming her for sexual exploitation by evil Judge Cress; among the Horde she's scheduled for "marriage" to tribal leader Senti; meanwhile she's only started kissing two fellow slaves her own age, both of whom she likes in an age-appropriate way...but the sensuality of the bathing and grooming scenes with gal pal Zibia goes too far to suit me. (It didn't bother me that the protagonist of Hekate's Tea has a girlfriend; I just find it hard to believe that, while having crushes on two boys, Keesa would think that much about getting a ritual pedicure from a slightly older woman.)

I like that Keesa's descriptions of her sexual behavior and feelings is completely age-appropriate, even wholesome; no "aching with need," just a realistic "hugging and kissing felt good." Teenaged boys will probably hate that, too. And, though she lingers over the description of the Horde travesty of the spa routine Zibia is ordered to provide for Keesa as bride-to-be, it is a spa routine. Homosexual activists will probably hate that. You can't please everybody in this world.

4. Keesa's sweet, naive, idealistic vision for her world sounds like global socialism. Keesa is at a stage in life where impossible, misguided idealistic dreams are normal, and the series of which this is book one might lead Keesa through a few experiments with the "government" of her group that teach her that a limited libertarian government has a better chance of working, but even if Keesa is going to outgrow it, it's off-putting when a teen sweetheart makes a noise like a cartoon villain.

5. Then there's a plot motif some Black women writers have been complaining about for a long time: the idea that everybody else would realize that little Black girls are princesses, if the girls only had long smooth hair instead of their existing curls. It's probably not even helpful to remind Black girl readers that different versions of this falsehood have been aimed at little girls of other types, too. Only forty years ago Margaret Mahy had a child character observing that a fictional heroine was offered luxuries "because her hair was curly." Nevertheless. Prepare to cringe: Keesa is just another child, posted as lookout because expendable, until she exposes her luscious locks and everyone, Black or White or even loathsome Judge Cress, suddenly agrees that she's "special."

6, Nevertheless, for most people who read this book, what's not to like will probably be that it is book one of a series. In this book readers meet some nice people whose quest deserves a satisfactory ending, and the scope of their quest and the pace of their story, in the hands of a skillful storyteller, might well force readers to buy forty books to get them to that ending. 

Now for the things readers will like:

1. Within the genre of dystopian science fiction, there's complex world-building that raises questions that aren't even answered in book one.

2. Characters are diverse and well developed. You'll want to know what happens to Kiran, Aris, Lyric, Dobbs, Zibia, and Desiree as well as Keesa. If this novel becomes a movie there'll be small but juicy parts for lots of different actors. If you think movies should offer interesting work to lots of different actors at the expense of elaborate special effects, you'll want to see the movie version of Broken.

3, It would be very hard not to like Keesa. You'll probably disagree with her politics, but you'll want to see her learn, not lose.

4. There is no "race" prejudice in this world. Prejudices among the postwar factions and castes are violent enough to have knocked ethnic prejudice out of everybody.

5. The overtones of current political controversies and their potential contributions to this type of dystopia are actually well balanced. The Establishment, reminiscent of current D Party leadership, and the Horde, reminiscent of "alt-right" groups currently embarrassing the Rs, turn out to be about the same from Keesa's point of view.

6. If you're not prejudiced against Christianity, its role in Keesa's life is an exquisite study of the role Christianity plays in many people's real lives.

7. There's adult content in this book but most of it, apart from the scene where the two sweet teenaged girls have to kill the old nurse, is narrated in a discreet, adult way that seems unlikely to disturb any children who get hold of the book. Even bad language is handled in the classic science fiction style: Several characters swear, but the swearword they use is "frell." 

8. Slaves who make the decision to escape are at war with society-as-a-whole; they have to know and accept this before they try. In real life most of them did want to minimize bloodshed. Keesa and her group are true to life in this way.

9. In 367 pages Keesa has room for several adventures--the story moves briskly--and still, the end of book one is only stage one on her journey. You know she'll see and learn much more, and kick more vasistas, in a multitude of pages yet to come.

In short: Here is a piece of dystopian science fiction with complex world-building, well developed characters, a lovable heroine, a suspenseful plot, an overtone of current political controversy, a realistic view of the role of faith in a teenager's life, and a high probability that, if you read book one, you'll want the whole series. You'll want to know what becomes not only of Kessa, but of Kiran and Aris and Zibia and Dobbs and poor old Uncle Raymond as well. You have been warned.