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A review by troetschel
The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell by Kate Brauning
4.0
I knew going in it was a near future dystopian, which I'm a complete sucker for. I didn't realize it was queer, and I was totally surprised by the romantic ending.
Readers should know that there is a fair amount of traumatic death as well as several memorable instances of explicit violence. There's also on page sex that is, in my personal opinion, a really good example of how YA sex should be handled when an author chooses to include it. It felt like an earnest exploration of sexual agency that was vulnerable and real, and teens deserve that kind of honesty.
Setting-wise, I really appreciate a slow apocalypse, and that's what you get here. A real apocalypse is most likely going to be this kind of gradual acceptance of inexorably worsening conditions that you don't have any real control over, even as some of the trappings of prosperity persist. Tablets and mesh WiFi networks alongside cold showers because you don't have the fuel to heat water, prescription medicine and bootleg moonshine. And of course, some rich asshole with zero empathy to exploit everyone around.
Dinah's helpless rage is palpable and honestly, it resonates with me. I'm mad every day about the cruelty and callousness that is built in to capitalism, and Charlotte County is that system just shrunk down. I'm also really glad Gates died at the end. There was a moment where it seemed like it would take the high road and try to shoehorn in the sanitized kind of court justice that doesn't really exist, and it would have soured me on the whole book. Even though I think the ending was a little neat and optimistic in a couple ways (at least where it came to the shifting of power in St. George) it was still a pretty satisfying wrap up.
Readers should know that there is a fair amount of traumatic death as well as several memorable instances of explicit violence. There's also on page sex that is, in my personal opinion, a really good example of how YA sex should be handled when an author chooses to include it. It felt like an earnest exploration of sexual agency that was vulnerable and real, and teens deserve that kind of honesty.
Setting-wise, I really appreciate a slow apocalypse, and that's what you get here. A real apocalypse is most likely going to be this kind of gradual acceptance of inexorably worsening conditions that you don't have any real control over, even as some of the trappings of prosperity persist. Tablets and mesh WiFi networks alongside cold showers because you don't have the fuel to heat water, prescription medicine and bootleg moonshine. And of course, some rich asshole with zero empathy to exploit everyone around.
Dinah's helpless rage is palpable and honestly, it resonates with me. I'm mad every day about the cruelty and callousness that is built in to capitalism, and Charlotte County is that system just shrunk down. I'm also really glad Gates died at the end. There was a moment where it seemed like it would take the high road and try to shoehorn in the sanitized kind of court justice that doesn't really exist, and it would have soured me on the whole book. Even though I think the ending was a little neat and optimistic in a couple ways (at least where it came to the shifting of power in St. George) it was still a pretty satisfying wrap up.