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Roger Waters wrote in the classic Pink Floyd song Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2 the now widely known and esteemed lyrics: We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. Isamu Fukui seemingly agrees with these sentiments in his latest novel Truancy Origins, a book that stokes rebellion in the instructional system, frees minds, and makes sure students aren’t just another brick in the wall. Or at least, it believes itself rebellious. But like most teenage rebellion, it’s a bit unconvincing. More posturing than substance. A remake of Rebel Without a Cause with Muppets playing the lead parts. Still the book’s guaranteed to appeal to it is intended audience, disinterested, rebellious teenagers. And the straight-A students who want to be disinterested, rebellious teenagers. Some kids don’t want to go to school-some even hate school-viewing it as galore kind of exquisite torture formulated by adults to impose a penalty on them. (So close to the truth.) Going to school may appear to be a waste of time and inefficacious. Good for the social event, but not much else. An authoritarian scheme run by power-hungry fools, centered more on stats than students. And these impressions are right. The instructional system is broken-at the very worse requiring a finish overhaul. It needs to be almost monitored and not followed blindly. Because when schools fail to educate, they’ve failed in their crucial responsibility. And a good deal of schools fail to educate. The real question is who deserves the blame for this problem. Twin brothers Zen and Umasi have grown up privileged. Silver spoons and Nintendo Wiis aplenty. Adopted by the Mayor of the City-a sort of neo-fascist educator-when they were six months old, Zen and Umasi have conflicting views on school. Umasi values education and gets good grades. Zen-incredibly smart but bored-despises the time he spends in school and acts out. Soon the brothers uncover the truth regarding the City’s instructional system. A truth that shatters their world, causing them both to run away from home. For Zen, the injustices within the City’s instructional system are horrible. Evil, in fact. An evil that will have to be violently overthrown. Malcolm X style. And he strives to accomplish this, gathering an army of Truants to battle the City’s law enforcement. While Umasi harbors a lot of of the same complex mental states as his brother, violence is not his answer. It is not any kind of answer. So he stands versus his brother. Against his twin. Vowing to stop Zen before it’s too late. Truancy Origins is a book attempting to be a lot of things. There are the stimulating action-oriented set pieces as the two brothers battle versus each other, many times described in highly visual, cinematic detail. These fights are well-done and engaging, and Fukui displays a real flair in writing them. The fights themselves resemble science-fu, the bastard love-child of science fiction and kung fu extrapolated by The Matrix. And then there’s the other percentage of the book which strives to be a social commentary on education. Fukui genuinely misses his probability to say something substantive in these moments. And the book suffers because of this. His exploration of the ills of the instructional scheme is shallow. He identifies the problems, but is not as convincing with the answers, often substituting fortune-cookie mysticism for real wisdom. Think Caine in Kung Fu. The author’s young age-Fukui’s eighteen-and the intended young adult audience needs to be taken into account. Still by writing in regards to social issues, Fukui is expected to have a sure depth and quality to his arguments, a maturity of thought. This is lacking, which is disappointing since the probability for a vast social statement is there. Fukui just misses it. Zen and Umasi are both outstanding characters, each possessing a real charisma. Umasi’s reputation arc all around the novel, though, is less believable. His transformation from book nerd to uber-badass seems forced. Most of the minor characters are plot devices, their presence in the narrative only encouraging other distinct features of the story. The chief antagonist of the novel, Rothenberg, is one-dimensional to the point of caricature, only motivated by his uttermost hatred of children. He’s over-the-top evil, displaying perfectly no redeeming qualities. No gray area, not one thing of interest. The dialog is most times awkward and stilted. I couldn’t imagine teenagers speaking like this. Unless they watched a lot of BBC. It was too proper, less like spoken word and more like written word conversations. Like reading Middlemarch. But with kung-fu. Last Word: As a high-octane-kung-fu-science-fiction-multi-hyphenated-action extravaganza, Truancy Origins works. Really well. It’s only when the novel veers into the realm of social activism does it suffer, engaged in a struggle to say something both substantive and relevant. Still Truancy Origins will have to resonate with it is young adult audience, with it is snarky, rebellious attitude towards authority and education. Like literary wish feeling of satisfaction for wanna-be rebels. A middle finger to the man. Graffiti on the Wall. Most helpful customer reviews 0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. |
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