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Revealing Eden Save the Pearls Part One Victoria Foyt Books

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Revealing Eden Save the Pearls Part One Victoria Foyt Books

I'm aware that the prime time to make fun of this book is years in the past, but... I have to say my piece. I'm not just making a pat statement about an infamous book -- I actually bought this and read it cover to cover. And it's every bit as awful as everyone says -- not just the awful subject matter, but the writing, the plot, the characters, the badly done research, and everything else. In just about every aspect, this is truly the worst book I have ever read.

First of all, the concept of the novel is awful. I'm aware that the "persecution flip" idea has been done before, and better, by other works (most notably "Naughts and Crosses" by Malorie Blackman), but here it's so clumsily handled that it becomes horribly offensive. The author has stated elsewhere that her intention with this novel was to show white people what racism and persecution were like for people of color, but her handling of this sensitive material was so inept that the entire book comes across instead as a racist scare tactic. Having your innocent white protagonist living in constant fear of being assaulted by monstrous black men is NOT progressive -- it's horrifically racist in and of itself. It doesn't help that this book not only uses blackface as a plot point (the author even encouraged white people to go out in public in blackface to promote the book!), but gives black and white people the ludicrous names of Coal (for blacks) and Pearl (for whites). I'll let you work out for yourself why that just might be a problem.

Much has been said about the racist implications of this book, however, so let me just say that even with racism aside, this book is awful on its own merits. The writing is horrible -- the author uses way too many commas, her attempts at description and metaphor are laughably awkward, and she abuses the thesaurus like nobody's business. If I had to take a drink every time I quoted Inigo Montoya and said aloud "You keep using that word..." I'd be dead of liver failure by now. Not to mention the worldbuilding is clumsy and illogical, full of elements that make no sense; the pacing is incredibly uneven, glacial in some places and rushed in others; and the plot wanders around without any sort of driving force for a good chunk of the book.

The characters are just as awful as the writing. Eden Newman, our precious white protagonist (*gag*), is the worst female character I've ever encountered in a novel, bar none. The author tries to hammer home just how smart and kind and good-natured she's supposed to be, but the text presents the truth -- she's a stupid, narcissistic, selfish, and nasty-tempered brat who throws fits when she doesn't get her way and is constantly making things worse for every other character with her dumb decisions. It's so awful I'm almost willing to forgive Bella Swan of "Twilight" and Anastasia Steel of "Fifty Shades of Gray" of their many flaws because at least they're not as bad as Eden. Almost. Bramford, Eden's rival/love interest, is likewise set up by the text to be a selfish egomaniac, but the text ends up showing him to be the most reasonable character in the book (at least until he unwisely falls for Eden). Every other character is pretty much a living prop -- even Emily Dickinson (yes, THAT Emily Dickinson), who serves as a surrogate aunt for Eden in some weird way that I'm still not sure of. Don't ask...

What more, this book is horribly researched. The novel's race-flipped dystopian future hinges on the fact that apparently having dark skin makes you magically immune to solar radiation. While having large amounts of melanin can grant you SOME protection, it's not a blanket immunity, and certainly wouldn't give anyone enough protection to matter in a future where the ozone was depleted so dangerously. And that's only the most glaring of Foyt's failures in research -- she has a completely cartoonish and ridiculous view of how genetic engineering works, she mangles Aztec mythology, she has no understanding of how certain animal species function and seems to have not been willing to do the research... the list goes on.

This book is horrible. The author may have intended to make it a screed against racism, but the final product is brimming with racism itself, and is badly written and badly researched to boot. Four dollars was way too much to pay for this awful, awful book, and I strongly encourage anyone who thinks it looks entertaining to stay far, far away from it and pick up something much better -- "Hunger Games," "Ready Player One," "Brave New World," or even "Naughts and Crosses" if you MUST have a story dealing with reversed race relations. Anything BUT this book.


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Revealing Eden Save the Pearls Part One Victoria Foyt Books Reviews

In six months, by her eighteenth birthday, Eden must choose a mate or be cast out of society. Though as a fair-skinned “Pearl” her choices are slim, she wants to mate with one of the powerful, cruel, dark-skinned “Coals” to give her offspring a chance to live longer on the post-apocalyptic superheated Earth. Unfortunately, because the Pearls are the lowest social class, she is unlikely to find a match unless her secret Coal boyfriend Jamal offers to mate with her. Eden, smitten with Jamal, shares the details of her scientist father’s secret genetic project with him. When Jamal betrays her trust and attempts to seize her father and the project for the Federation for Free People (FFP, ostensibly a reverse version of the KKK), Eden must escape with her father and Ronson Bramford, a Coal man undergoing an experimental DNA-cross surgery at the very moment of the siege. They flee to the rainforest, taking refuge in a tiny village populated by the last indigenous tribe on Earth, where Eden finds herself battling her own urges to mate with Bramford, who is now half jaguar.

Foyt’s attempt to portray a world of reverse racism falls victim to her own privilege (the allusions to pearls and coal, and the idea of Eden being attracted to the dark-skinned Bramford who is portrayed as a sexually heightened beast are a disturbing reenactment of mindset of white slave owners), various inconsistencies (Eden has the emotional maturity to never cry again after the age of five, yet behaves like a petulant child around her lover), blurry-fast action requiring re-reading, and passages so strange the reader takes pause (Eden rides Bramford’s shoulders as though riding a horse, controlling his movement by squeezing her thighs and pressing against his head in an extremely sexual scene). Dystopian literature fans seeking genetically enhanced protagonists would be better served by reading James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series or Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles.
I'm aware that the prime time to make fun of this book is years in the past, but... I have to say my piece. I'm not just making a pat statement about an infamous book -- I actually bought this and read it cover to cover. And it's every bit as awful as everyone says -- not just the awful subject matter, but the writing, the plot, the characters, the badly done research, and everything else. In just about every aspect, this is truly the worst book I have ever read.

First of all, the concept of the novel is awful. I'm aware that the "persecution flip" idea has been done before, and better, by other works (most notably "Naughts and Crosses" by Malorie Blackman), but here it's so clumsily handled that it becomes horribly offensive. The author has stated elsewhere that her intention with this novel was to show white people what racism and persecution were like for people of color, but her handling of this sensitive material was so inept that the entire book comes across instead as a racist scare tactic. Having your innocent white protagonist living in constant fear of being assaulted by monstrous black men is NOT progressive -- it's horrifically racist in and of itself. It doesn't help that this book not only uses blackface as a plot point (the author even encouraged white people to go out in public in blackface to promote the book!), but gives black and white people the ludicrous names of Coal (for blacks) and Pearl (for whites). I'll let you work out for yourself why that just might be a problem.

Much has been said about the racist implications of this book, however, so let me just say that even with racism aside, this book is awful on its own merits. The writing is horrible -- the author uses way too many commas, her attempts at description and metaphor are laughably awkward, and she abuses the thesaurus like nobody's business. If I had to take a drink every time I quoted Inigo Montoya and said aloud "You keep using that word..." I'd be dead of liver failure by now. Not to mention the worldbuilding is clumsy and illogical, full of elements that make no sense; the pacing is incredibly uneven, glacial in some places and rushed in others; and the plot wanders around without any sort of driving force for a good chunk of the book.

The characters are just as awful as the writing. Eden Newman, our precious white protagonist (*gag*), is the worst female character I've ever encountered in a novel, bar none. The author tries to hammer home just how smart and kind and good-natured she's supposed to be, but the text presents the truth -- she's a stupid, narcissistic, selfish, and nasty-tempered brat who throws fits when she doesn't get her way and is constantly making things worse for every other character with her dumb decisions. It's so awful I'm almost willing to forgive Bella Swan of "Twilight" and Anastasia Steel of "Fifty Shades of Gray" of their many flaws because at least they're not as bad as Eden. Almost. Bramford, Eden's rival/love interest, is likewise set up by the text to be a selfish egomaniac, but the text ends up showing him to be the most reasonable character in the book (at least until he unwisely falls for Eden). Every other character is pretty much a living prop -- even Emily Dickinson (yes, THAT Emily Dickinson), who serves as a surrogate aunt for Eden in some weird way that I'm still not sure of. Don't ask...

What more, this book is horribly researched. The novel's race-flipped dystopian future hinges on the fact that apparently having dark skin makes you magically immune to solar radiation. While having large amounts of melanin can grant you SOME protection, it's not a blanket immunity, and certainly wouldn't give anyone enough protection to matter in a future where the ozone was depleted so dangerously. And that's only the most glaring of Foyt's failures in research -- she has a completely cartoonish and ridiculous view of how genetic engineering works, she mangles Aztec mythology, she has no understanding of how certain animal species function and seems to have not been willing to do the research... the list goes on.

This book is horrible. The author may have intended to make it a screed against racism, but the final product is brimming with racism itself, and is badly written and badly researched to boot. Four dollars was way too much to pay for this awful, awful book, and I strongly encourage anyone who thinks it looks entertaining to stay far, far away from it and pick up something much better -- "Hunger Games," "Ready Player One," "Brave New World," or even "Naughts and Crosses" if you MUST have a story dealing with reversed race relations. Anything BUT this book.