Post by wordy on Aug 31, 2010 23:49:37 GMT 10
Giantkiller Bookshelf: Gateway
by Lisafer
Gateway is Sharon Shinn’s most recent Young Adult publication. While Shinn is known for her fantasy adult novels, she has written only five in the YA fantasy genre, and this book – among her others – proves that she is just as proficient at this genre as any other.
Adopted from China and raised in St. Louis, Daiyu is a teenage girl who one day steps under the Arch—and finds herself in an alternate version of her familiar city that’s almost more like China, and is populated by predominantly Asian people. She has been brought here by mysterious strangers, Ombri and Aurora, to help them bring down the corrupt ruling government, but to do so, she must play a dangerous part among the elite members of this society. She’s adopted by a single, elderly and wealthy woman who wants to become even more prominent in a society focused on young women’s debuts, and trains secretly to send the prime minister, Chenglei, back to his real world. Like her, he is not native to Shenlang; Aurora and Ombri develop a specific plan to send him back, which requires Daiyu to get close to him in a social setting.
“She has a knack for sensing who might be open to making such a crossing. You have already journeyed a long distance in your short life, from China to the United States.”
“I was a baby!”
He shrugged. “There is a part of your soul, no matter how deeply buried, that responds to the call for more adventure.”
The plot of this book is very straightforward and simple. Except that Daiyu is not. She was raised to believe in liberal causes, she works in a business designed to help people find employment. Her mother and father dedicate their lives to helping others, and she was raised to do the same. Therefore, it’s difficult for her to accept that Chenglei is inherently evil, as Aurora and Ombri tell her. He’s charismatic and powerful, certainly, but she sees no evidence that he’s doing evil because he rationally justifies everything he does.
There’s only one person she trusts and she’s aware of the inexplicable nature of that trust. Aurora and Ombri share their residence with a young man who is the first to meet Daiyu upon her introduction to their world. He helps her throughout, offering encouragement and affection in the most unassuming ways. It is he who teaches her about Chenglei’s opposition, and gives her chances to learn the truth for herself.
I found Daiyu to be an incredibly relatable protagonist – she’s hesitant, at first, to believe that this isn’t just a crazy dream, even though she does have that calling for adventure in her soul. As the days go on, and she commits herself to helping Ombri and Aurora, she begins to forget things about home and it frightens her. She tries to keep an open mind about everything (something I, for one, love in a principal character) and she truly believes in doing what’s right.
I would argue that the second-most important character is that of the antagonist, Chenglei. He’s a dashing older man who has such a powerful voice that Daiyu has to remind herself of all the reasons she politically disagrees with him – if she listens to him speak, she believes what he says. It is this charisma that has made him rise to prominence in Shenlang politics, and Daiyu gets the chance to see a variety of characters respond to him. Instead of being a caricature of evil, Shinn manages to keep Changlei a mystery to the reader. We know only some of his goals, some of his ideas. Like Daiyu, we as the readers never know completely who to trust.
Race plays a large part in this novel. Daiyu goes from living as a minority, in St. Louis and even in her own family, to being a member of the majority in Shenlang. This other world has many races, but the predominant race, Han, correlates to Earth’s Asians, and are culturally close to the Chinese. Because of this, Daiyu is the ideal infiltrator into the upper echelons of society. Meawhile, Kalen is Caucasian (or cangbai, in this world), and is not someone she should even be seen with. Because of this, she has to go to lengths to find ways to meet with him while she’s living with the upper crust.
There were times I stumbled at Shinn’s manner in addressing race. For example, when Daiyu first realizes that she’s not in St. Louis, and gets a good look at the people around her, the first thought in her mind is that they are Chinese. Not Asian, but specifically Chinese. Given that I’m not of Asian descent, I can’t completely relate to this sentiment, so a part of my brain perked up at that, wondering if Shinn was intending to say that the character is that self-centered about her own birth-nationality. This might not have happened to me, as a reader, if I didn’t know that Shinn is not herself an Asian writer. But this is just one tiny aspect of a book that deals beautifully with the differences among people.
Romance is a principal theme in all of Shinn’s works, and usually the resolution of plot is tied into the love shared between characters, making the love story integral to the movement and momentum of the book. This one is no different. It is Daiyu’s affection for Kalen that allows her to understand what she must do for Shenlang, and gives her the strength to do it.
When I first learned that Shinn would be writing a book that’s set in St. Louis I was hesitant. Authors are told to write what they know, but I was far more interested in the worlds she creates magnificently than the world of St. Louis, where she resides. The first chapters are brimming with landmarks that a reader from St. Louis would delight in. But ultimately the reader understands that it’s necessary and interesting, because we have to feel Daiyu’s journey from one iteration to the next, where everything is so different but there are echoes of the familiar; there’s a definite feeling that the real world was emphasized in order to build the iteration and make it feel just as real, from the wide river along both cities to the gateway between the two worlds – a magnificent arch. St. Louis’s most famous landmark is the Gateway Arch, also known as the Gateway to the West. The notion of a monument created to acknowledge the city’s special place in the U.S. being used to represent a gateway to so much more is interesting, and will certainly make me think more about the significance we place on things, and the possibilities they could hold.
Ms. Shinn states that her favorite part of the book to write was the last chapter. It feels like an epilogue, because Daiyu has finished her adventure and has forgotten everything that transpired, as she was told she would. But the story unravels just a little further, so you can know that the adventure isn’t over – it’s just that a new chapter has begun, and Daiyu’s soul will continue on this journey, no matter what world she’s in.
I give this book 8/10.