For as long as Tessa can remember, her country has been at war. When local golden boy Gideon Thrall is awarded a medal for courage, it’s a rare bright spot for everyone in Tessa’s town – until Gideon refuses the award, claims he was a coward, and runs away. Tessa is bewildered, and can’t help but follow Gideon to find out the truth. But Tessa is in for more than she bargained for. Before she knows it, she has stowed away on a rogue airplane headed for enemy territory. But all that pales when she discovers a shocking truth that rocks the foundation of everything she’s ever believed – a truth that could change the world. Is Tessa brave enough to bring it into the light?
2/5 stars, Dystopia, Young Adult, AI
I’m having a hard time rating The Always War. My problem with it is that on one element, I can both praise it and hate it. What I mean by this is that I like Tessa not being the hero. She doesn’t know what she is doing, she is not in the lead, she is out of her element, and basically just doesn’t want to get killed the entire time. But then at the same time, it is like, seriously Tessa? How did you even end up in an airplane heading for a war zone? Like, shouldn’t you know something if you ended up there? How did you not know you just crawled into a plane? That’s not my main problem with it though. I like her not being the hero. Most of us wouldn’t be – let’s be honest and admit that if we were thrown into basically any dystopian novel, we’d be a sniveling mess – so we can probably fit ourselves in Tessa’s shoes more than we could someone like Katniss from The Hunger Games. Katniss should have no idea what she is doing. She grew up hunting, not leading people, but that is what she ends up doing. Maybe Katniss had the time to develop the leading skills by the end of the third book, but did Tessa have enough pages to become someone who gives a speech to an entire continent after 197 pages? I think not. Yet in the last couple of pages, she gives a speech like she’d spent three months writing it and several hours practicing.
Give me a hero who has to make a speech and stutters and says ‘um’ and makes run on sentences like I am right now. Give me someone who shakes and doesn’t know where to look. Give me someone who can only look at one face in the crowd, or give me someone who closes their eyes. Give me someone who speaks to quickly or too quietly or giggles nervously in the middle. No dropping papers. No, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” then running off the stage. Originality!
Anyways, my point with that paragraph was that there are elements in The Always War I liked, but then something about what I liked wasn’t right. I liked her not being the hero. I didn’t like that she gave a speech at the end, when she was not someone who gave speeches (and could we get some heroes out here who started giving speeches when they were two and that is why they are good at it now?).
Another element that I liked – Tessa ended up in that plane going into the war zone that got her into this entire mess on accident. She didn’t mean for it to happen. She was literally trying to hide. She did sneak out to follow someone though, which is a hero sort of thing. Let’s ignore that part though. Let’s say she ended up in this predicament on accident. The accident was caused by her following a boy she hardly knew. Normally I’m a sucker for the romance. Maybe if the guy was the one infatuated with the girl, I would feel differently, but because Tessa is pining after a guy who doesn’t much seem to care for her (yet), it just seems unrealistic. If a guy did it, I’d be like, “Oh look he’s so cute trying to protect this girl he is so infatuated with.” But with a girl, I’m like, “Girl, get a hold of yourself. This boy is in the military. You don’t have a weapon. You are not trained in martial arts. What you going to do? Moon him?” She can do better than this guy who is apparently “making all these decisions with her safety in mind.” And also, the little hint of romance in here makes me think possibly YA, but the way the romance is handled also makes me think middle grade.
But then I have major problems with the age!
Gideon is 13, Tessa is 15. Is this YA or Middle Grade?!? Why are there hints of Tessa and Gideon being a couple when she is so much older and – man – 13 and 15? That’s… okay that’s really not that far apart, only two years, but the maturity levels at those ages are insanely different. Also, Gideon feels older than Tessa, like an adult. Thirteen year old war hero? I am thoroughly confused. I was thinking this boy was twenty.
Ages are very important, so authors need to choose very carefully. It signals the age group – mainly because most readers want someone to look up to and someone they could hope to be. Think of Harry Potter. If you read that before you turn eleven, there are a couple months or years of hope that you might get a Hogwarts letter, even if you know it isn’t real. Maybe you are a demigod that hasn’t been claimed by your godly parent yet. Whatever book it is, especially ones for kids, we imagine that we are the characters or have a chance of meeting them. We want to be like them. Yet I can’t wrap my head around the ages of these characters. An eighth grader and a sophomore in high school? Are you kidding me?
All of that said, I do like the concept of this book. Children are the main people fighting in this war that has been going on for as long as anyone can remember. Yet, they aren’t on the ground. They use drones and other cameras to drop bombs on enemy territory, and then later, they can see the footage of the wreckage. This is what Gideon had done. He dropped a bomb somewhere essential and is congratulated as a hero, but he finds the footage of the people – civilians he has killed – and struggles to deal with it. This is why he doesn’t accept his award for courage. This is why he gets on the plane (the ones Tessa hides in after she followed him). And this is why he is confused when he drops the plane at the coordinates he bombed and there is nothing there other than trees and grass and some rubble of long ago abandoned buildings.
What do you get when a computer is meant to find the solution to winning the war?
I can’t give it all away because then there would be no surprise!
So, overall, I could have lived without reading this book. That said, I did like the concept and that Tessa wasn’t the typical dystopian lead character. She is female, yes, but she isn’t insanely strong physically or mentally. I have no problem with strong women, but I do have a problem with nearly every dystopian young adult novel having a female protagonist who is a cookie cutter version of every last one out there.
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