Alaya Dawn Johnson

I really liked Freida, how vulnerable and emotional she was, how intelligent and conflicted she was, and her capacity for love. I genuinely cared about her, I just wish I’d better understood all that went on so that I might have been more engaged with the overall story.

I got the gist of this (to a degree) but so many of the intricacies of the story went over my head due to painfully little explanation for anything.

I wouldn’t want an author to feel like they’re compromising their artistic vision and this book was undoubtedly artistic, but at the same time, I kept feeling like surely the integrity of the storytelling could have been maintained while meeting readers part way, not dumbing it down, not turning this into an easy, simplistic read but just by adding the occasional clarifying sentence here and there and maybe a glossary of some sort that might have allowed this to be a tiny bit more accessible.… (més)

In The Library of Broken Worlds, Alaya Dawn Johnson creates a complex science fiction-fantasy world that often overwhelms its first-person YA plot. The story is set in a far-future world in which humans, aliens, AIs, and humans—both cloned and natural—prowl the tunnels of a vast library that governs three systems. Freida is a human girl who aspires to become a librarian, one of the highest positions in her society. Dozens of tales from various subcultures break up the straight path of the adventure romance story. At times, Freida seems to be a future version of Scheherazade. I am sure this novel has a large, appreciative audience, but it does not include me.… (més)

June lives in one of the few cities left in the world after nuclear war wiped out nearly everything, but the city she lives in is a beautiful, towering thing, run well and efficiently by a council of women, headed by a queen. As they rebuilt the city, they decided that men, who were largely responsible for the mass destruction of the war, should not be trusted with power, and so while the women rule for years and years (advances in medicine have made very long life a reality for those who want it) but kings have only one year in the 'office' and are then executed after making a mostly token gesture that marks the existing queen as the one to remain queen for the next year. But when a young, handsome, and dangerously charismatic young man from the poor depths of the city becomes the Summer King, he and June (the best artist in all of Palmares Tres) join forces to turn the establishment on its head. Can they accomplish their goals before Enki will die, and can June keep from falling for her king?

This is a great post-apocalyptic YA story. Original plot, excellent characters, and a pleasantly unpredictable ending.… (més)

After adoring Trouble the Saints and really becoming immersed in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s writing style, I had high hopes for Love is the Drug. I think these two books are good examples of how intended audience and experience in the field makes a difference in quality. While Trouble the Saints was a beautifully written book with intriguing characters and settings, Love is the Drug (published several years earlier) fumbles for balance and fails to hold the reader. It’s not all bad, but it did not meet expectations.

Love is the Drug succeeds in concept. While I’m still not sure if this book is about love, conspiracy, or personal growth, the external emergency is interesting. Love is the Drug‘s shows us a world where a pandemic has broken out but Washington is quarantined and only the important government people and their children have been vaccinated. All of this happens in a very shady way that is generally unknown to the students, like our protagonist Emily Bird, and hidden from the rest of the country. This storyline is especially interesting because of the recent pandemic, it’s a glimpse of how things might have been in a parallel universe. Fortunately, we know the American government didn’t secretly vaccinate because at the onset it refused to take the pandemic seriously and all sorts of government officials from the top down have had COVID. It’s still an interesting story, part dystopia-potential, part conspiracy theory.

That’s where the good stuff ends. Early on, we meet a man named Roosevelt who is convinced Bird knows something she shouldn’t, and we spend the entire book dancing around what that may be. The question persistently does not get answered through the novel… to the point where, as I reader, I stopped caring and really just wanted to move on to something else. We’d often step off the path and dive into a love story that… didn’t make sense. The romantic moments were written well, but the progression of the relationship was clunky. They went from friendly acquaintances to “I’ll cook your Thanksgiving turkey” real fast. Literal turkey, not innuendo! … All these things together and the deflated ending left me underwhelmed about Love is the Drug.

We won’t talk about the incredibly tacky title. Just calling it out.

From a technical perspective, the thing that bothered me the most was the excess of dialogue. We learned most about external forces and our setting through conversations Bird has with others. Often times, these scenes are as awkward as her just walking into a room to have a conversation that provides information and no other purpose. It’s information dropping, sure, but it also created a lack of atmosphere. This is a particular pet peeve for me in book, and it ruined my experience as much as the directionlessness.

Overall… I don’t recommend Love is the Drug. I appreciate that it was a good idea, but the execution didn’t work for me. I would like to think that this is not representative of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s work, as her novel Trouble the Saints was very good.… (més)