Book Thoughts: This is the Night by Jonah C. Sirott

This is the Night by Jonah C. Sirott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I usually enjoy dystopian fiction, but this book really left me disappointed. From the book's description/summary, we know that the "Homeland" has been in an ongoing 20 year war in a faraway jungle that you men are drafted to fight, and that a series of individuals who are up for the draft ("induction"), are trying to avoid this war. The book promises, that "the only way for any of them to stay free is to uncover the truth about their uncertain world - and the forces seeking to control it."

The book starts by laying the foundation for this dystopian world, with descriptions of certain cities in the Homeland, such as Western City North, and the differing types of groups of people (Homeland Indigenous, Majority Group, Minority Group A through F, etc.) that comes with so much potential because, as a reader, you expect that all those labels, little mysteries unto themselves, will be explained and unraveled as we unravel the mystery of the war and all the politics/government surrounding it. Great stuff, right?

But the book never does any of that. There is no explanation given for the war. No explanation for the group names that appear to be integral to the fabric of the dystopian society. We get some decent character examinations of 3 of the primary 5 characters, but without the broader context, their character development is still lacking. Its almost as if the author wanted a dystopian setting but wanted to write a book exploring characters, and forgot that the beauty of dystopian fiction is the understanding of the setting, of the world in which all the actions takes place. Without understanding that backdrop, its harder to understand why the characters do what they do - its reading about characters action without any understanding of the context in which they act.

As a result, even though it had good pacing, and was generally well-written, it just falls short. This is punctuated in how the book just ends with what I would think is supposed to be a climactic point, but there's no feeling in it for the reader because its impossible to know the significance without the context of the dystopian world. I think the author forgot to let the reader in on his vision for the world he attempted to create.

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