Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

TL;DR an 18-year-old NaNo-er who is getting her book published moves to NYC / the sole survivor of a terrorist attack ends up as a kind of grim reaper

(finished 2/5/15)

I was really excited for Afterworlds. I never thought I'd get such an inception like getting to read about a (fictional) fellow NaNo writer. I almost bought it last month at Barnes and Noble, even though it seemed kind of expensive at $20. 

And I'm honestly kind of glad I didn't. 

Afterworlds is a huge book, and I can understand why it'd be more expensive than the other YA books I was looking at. It's essentially two stories in one, so honestly, you're kind of getting two books for a little more than the price of one. The only issue with combining two books into one is pages. The book is freaking huge at 599 pages, which only leaves about 300 per story. 

Both stories felt underdeveloped to me. I'm not sure if that's entirely the right word I want to use, but both Darcy and Lizzie's narratives skipped scenes. There was at least once where a problem of Darcy's was mentioned, it flipped to Lizzie's story for a chapter, and when Darcy's story started again, the problem's solution was only mentioned in passing. It was kind of frustrating. And the characters felt kind of flat. It also would've been cool to know beforehand that Lizzie's story was the final copy, because I got halfway through before I noticed Darcy talking about making changes that had apparently already been made. I get why we would be reading the final copy, for continuity / coherency and all that, but it kind of threw me for a loop.

The book also requires a pretty big stretch for suspension of disbelief. The premise of a young writer selling her NaNo story isn't all that unbelievable, but the fact that she got that much money based on one book and an unwritten sequel and moves to NYC all on her own isn't very realistic. Nor is the fact that her parents seem to let her do it without much trouble. I get that she was an adult, but if she never had to do her own laundry before she moved, there's no way she could have survived on her own. 

Both stories also had symptoms of insta-love. I can't even pinpoint the exact time frame between Darcy and Imogen meeting and them hooking up. Lizzie had a really weird relationship with Yamaraj, though I usually don't like paranormal romances anyway. The NaNo characters didn't seem very developed in the sense that they seemed like cardboard characters -- honestly, I feel like you could replace them with any other paranormal romance characters and it wouldn't go much different. 

I can say that Darcy is fairly realistic in the sense of being a writer. I felt her pains. It sucks when you write 50k+ words in a month and then struggle to actually give the story a coherent feel. I've been working on mine for two years. The realistic sense stops at her writing, though. I have no experience in publishing whatsoever, but I find it really unbelievable that she was able to sell her NaNo within a year of writing it. And also the fact that apparently all the adults in the publishing world around her let her get away with underage drinking when they knew her age. I actually asked what the consequences of that would be, and I'm pretty sure someone in publishing wouldn't want that on their public record. (Darcy and Imogen's age gap also seemed kind of icky to me, but it was also a fairly PG relationship, so I'm not entirely sure where I stand.)

Afterworlds gets some points for including a normalized queer relationship (meaning that there's no real drama like "oh no I'm gay, what do"; it's just like "yep she's my girlfriend and I love her, we both struggle with writing"), as well as including Hindu culture / mythology and a writer character, neither of which I've read about before. 

Review TL;DR it's an okay book, but I got less than I was expecting.