The Australia trilogy : book 1
There's one truth on Australia: You fight or you die. Usually both.
Seventeen-year-old Chan's ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one.
The only life that Chan's ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive.
I'd come across mentions of this book for weeks before I actually bought it. No one review made me pick it up, but there were mentions here there and everywhere. I guess marketing works because I bought it, and as I was waiting for the last book in The Raven Cycle to arrive I started reading it.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but for Part One I really didn't get what all the fuss was about. The 'verse of Australia was just so bleak and futile and depressing. And I really didn't understand why the whole aim of everything was to "be selfish" and stay alive by running and hiding and avoiding conflict. In that environment! when conflict is expanding into every nook and cranny! that just made no sense to me.
Some of it certainly felt bleak for bleakness's sake as opposed to part of the world building, but then we got to Part Two and there were some changes. Not enough to make me any less irritated at the characters who felt that they could survive by doing nothing and hiding, but still, there was a sense of movement and change.
I'm still not sure why it's gotten such huge positive feedback, it is a solidly entertaining read, and I will read book two at some point, but it is far from "extraordinary". ( )

4.5 stars ( )

This was a surprisingly compelling book though the storyline itself is one of the least pleasant stories I've read for quite a while.

Chan was born aboard the Australia, supposed to be an ark ship leaving a devastated Earth behind but as we learn more about the societies aboard this vessel the more we grow to doubt this tale for Australia is a fractious, not to mention fractured, place, with the White Women hiding in the top levels of the vessel, the Lows right at the bottom of the pile, with no thought but to kill or be killed. The free people and the Shop Keepers lie in between but when the Lows go on a spree of destruction whole of Australia is thrown into turmoil.

Chan and Agatha find their way under the charnel pit where the dead are dumped into a world where there is food, hot water and clean clothing. Chan finds she can't just ignore the plight of her free neighbours but her fight back puts her secret at risk and with it the survival of Australia itself. And what of Earth? ( )

I am not in the slightest bit interested in YA – although I do like Smythe’s non-YA novels, and think they’re very good – but Way Down Dark was shortlisted for the Clarke Award this year, so I picked up a copy and read it and… I’m frankly mystified why it was shortlisted. It may well be better-written than the average YA, but it’s just one long litany of death and violence in a science-fictional setting which doesn’t hold up to a moment’s scrutiny. For a book to be on a major genre award shortlist, I expect more than just a nice turn of phrase. I’ve seen some of the commentary about Way Down Dark, and I am I admit not in the slightest bit familiar with the YA market… So perhaps it’s a YA thing that the background doesn’t make sense. It’s supposed to be a generation ship, but turns out to be a prison. In orbit. So where does the gravity come from? Not acceleration, since it’s not moving. And the decks are made of grating, so where is the artificial gravity hidden? There are “over ninety” of these open decks, and people live in cubicles they’ve made from salvaged sheets of metal and curtains. Chan, the protagonist, tells us that her mother moved them from higher up the stack to halfway down because it was nice and warm – yet the very bottom of the stack is apparently not too hot to live in. Because that’s where the Lows, who are straight out of Mad Max Central Casting, live. Then there’s the Pit, which is the floor of the well around which the decks are arranged. It’s a festering pool of dead bodies and rubbish…because people throw bodies and garbage there. As you would. The book doesn’t say how long the ship/prison has been occupied, but at least three generations are mentioned in the book, and since no one seems to remember they’re actually prisoners that suggests at least a century. In the centre of the Pit, under the rotting flesh and blood and trash, is a secret entrance to the guards’ quarters. Ignoring the fact that no sane person would go wading into a stinking soup of decomposing corpses, or even put their head under it, masked or not… there’s also the fact that initially the entrance would not have been hidden, and could not have been intended to be hidden, as who would design a prison with the expectation that inmates would throw bodies down into the Pit? The ship/prison is also called Australia… I hope there’s an explanation in a later book to explain the name (Way Down Dark is very much incomplete and the first part of a trilogy), but even so, in light of the book’s setting there’s a lot of… baggage there. This is, I believe, the third time a YA novel has made the shortlist – the other two were Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness in 2011 and The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter in 2008. Tellingly, only one of the three is by an actual YA author. Personally, I don’t think YA should be considered by the Clarke Award, and there’s nothing in this novel to cause me to reconsider that. ( )

Way Down Dark is published in July, but I’d been begging the publishers for an early copy for a long time. I’d read The Machine by the same author, and I was interested to see what James would do with a YA book.

Chan lives on a large spaceship, which was sent away from a dying Earth hundreds of years ago. The ship is now not fairing much better, not only is it physically falling apart, but the society within has become dangerous and violent, with various gangs.

Chan has learnt to take care of herself, she knows her way around most of the ship, and knows which parts to avoid. As a particularity violent gang attempts to take over more of the ship, things start to change.

Just as I thought I had a grasp on the book, something unexpected happens, and everything changes drastically. I’m not going to go into that, and I hope other reviewers stay clear too.. it’s s turning point in the book which I want everyone to discover for themselves!

Personally, I found the final part of the book to be a little rushed, and I struggled with some of the information being given. This is part of a trilogy, and I wonder if this part could have finished at a slightly different, earlier part. It is rather a cliffhanger ending, but that can’t really be avoided.

Despite these slight negatives, the strength of this book is in it’s fast paced storyline, and the darkness of life on the ship. It’s a cliché, but it’s a book which you literally won’t want to put down, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where James is going to take the story in part two.

Highly recommended!