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Visitors (Alderney)

por Richard Bowen

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Love, treasure and intrigue awaits Lilly, Usha and Chloe as they battle for good against evil. Their secret powers remain, but for how much longer as they search for more clues on their island home of Alderney. Can the girls keep the Mafia at arms length as they struggle to master the art of Shamanic Journeying in their quest to find the Inca treasure. The world above and the world below are at war as our heroes struggle to prevent the unworldly strife overflowing into this, their world.… (mais)
Adicionado recentemente porDonnaEFrederick

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Visitors is the story of three cousins and their grandfather who find themselves in a perilous situation where they must find and protect the Lima Treasure and do battle with the Peruvian mafia. The cousins must also battle in a supernatural realm to ensure the victory of good over evil by ultimately preventing demons from carrying out a ritualistic murder and blood sacrifice. In the book, there are references to both an Inca Treasure and a Lima Treasure. I assumed that both terms refer to the same items.

The story is set on a small island in the English Channel Islands called Alderney. The narrative tells us very little about this island and its culture beyond that it was used as a German prisoner of war camp during World War II and appears to tolerate and support underaged alcohol consumption. In doing a bit of quick research on this island, I was able to ascertain that it is, indeed very small, with a population of only a couple thousand people. This is small enough for it to be difficult to keep too many secrets.

This book is difficult to review on many levels. Perhaps the source of much of the difficulty is that it is the second book in a series. I found a lot of the story confusing and I suspect that this is because I do not know certain details such as why the cousins have magical powers and why their grandfather seems to be hiding secrets about them from their parents. I also noted that part one of the book has two different versions. One is called Secrets (teenage version) and the other is called Secrets and Lies. I am not sure whether the version I read of this book is a teenage version or was written for adults. As this review will go onto explain, the question of what audience this book was written for could make a significant difference in the review-writing process. A third area that makes the book difficult to review is the presence of certain statements, events, and plotlines that are, let’s say, problematic.

So, let's consider the problematic issues. In a series of events, one of the cousins, Chloe, has unprotected sex after a night of drinking in the pub on the night of her 16th birthday. A pregnancy results from this encounter. It seems that the only adult that she tells about this pregnancy is her grandfather. His main concern seems to be that she actually did a pregnancy test and, thus, knows for sure that she is pregnant. When it is confirmed that the teen did a pregnancy test, the grandfather’s reaction is essential that everything is good then. He also tried to smooth over his role in the situation by saying that he would support Chloe no matter what she decides to do. There is no concern for STDs or the fact that the teen likely conceived at a time when she was known to have been drinking and so on. She is later kicked in the stomach by someone in the mafia and, in addition to suffering serious injuries, loses the pregnancy. Through a supernatural power, Chloe’s injuries can be healed but the baby can’t be saved without losing Chloe. When the grandfather learns of the pregnancy loss, his reaction is essentially is that what happened is for the best. The grandfather’s reaction is not in any way acceptable. Pregnancy loss can be devastating for women. This is particularly true when the loss is due to a violent traumatic injury from which the woman almost lost her own life. The insensitivity of the grandfather in a book that may be intended for teens is shocking and, in the very least, presents a horrible role model for younger people.

The next problematic issue is that of cultural appropriation. The magical powers present in the story originate from the traditional spiritual beliefs of the South American Indigenous peoples, the Quechua. However, after reading a few articles about the contemporary Quechua, it is clear that the Quechuans are a real-life cultural and language group. They are also clearly a visual minority and unquestionably Indigenous. It is problematic to take the religion and culture of a group to which a person does not belong and use it to build a highly fictionalize fantasy story. It is customary for contemporary fantasy novels to create entirely imaginary religions, gods, and magical powers. While they may be inspired by real-life religions and cultures, they are not said to be those religions or cultures. With the growth of movements like Truth and Reconciliation and Indigenous Lives matter, society is becoming increasingly aware of how the dominant culture unfairly treats, misrepresents, expropriates, exploits, and otherwise abuses persons of indigenous ancestry and their culture. With the decision to have such a heavy presence of what the novel describes as Incan or Quechuan gods, Peruvian shaman, and the use of the Quechua language, it is hard to overlook the issue of cultural appropriation. This is especially true when the fantasy world of angels and demons who appear to be equally bloodthirsty seems to pervade the storyline. As we also see with the movement to end practices such as the Tomahawk Chop, renaming teams names such as the Red Skins and Eskimos and removing imagery that portrays indigenous peoples as brutal savages, the violence of both the Peruvian mafia and the Incan spiritual beings seems out of place.

Some of the depictions of sex, sexual attraction, and other sexual situations seem puzzlingly out of place in this book. For example, there are many instances where the clothing and bodies of teen girls are described in highly sexualized, almost lustful terms. Even an elderly librarian is described in this way. The male characters are not treated in the same way. If the book is written for teens, the objectification of the female body in this way is concerning. While teen boys and girls can be described as attractive, when the narrative starts talking in terms of how much of an erection or damped underwear someone’s appearance evokes, the story starts to take on a soft-porn feel. This doesn’t add to the story and because there is so much emphasis on the female body, it comes across as sexist. There is a description of the sex-life of the grandfather and grandmother. Besides, there are multiple references to the long-term affair going on between the grandfather and librarian which includes various lustful encounters and one of the teenage girls walking in on her grandfather and the librarian making out in the woodworking section of the library. While this sort of scene is likely bad enough for teens who are generally turned off by the idea of parents or grandparents having sex, there was also a fair bit of emphasis placed on the fact that the librarian’s panties were left hanging on a book and so on. If the book is written for teens, I can see that events such as this would be a turn-off for most. If the book is written for an adult audience, the emphasis on describing the clothing and bodies of teen girls and discussions of the sexual relations of teens comes across as a bit voyeuristic in addition to having a smidge of pedophilia. Speaking of which, the grandfather drives the teenagers around in a rough-running old van and likes to look at things through his binoculars, including his granddaughters. I’m not sure of the intent of having the grandfather do these things but old guys driving around in vans, giving rides to teens, and using binoculars a lot is often a sign of perverts in youth vernacular. I believe that the terms I’ve heard are perv mobile and pervert vans.

Also, the presence of the Peruvian mafia in the story is somewhat concerning because it has a ring of xenophobia to it. The only cultural and visible minority people described in the novel turn out to be thieves, murders, and otherwise bad people. One of the girl’s boyfriends is one of the Peruvians and he is initially treated with suspicion by the grandfather because his family is from Peru. He essentially had to be proven to be non-evil before it could be believed. Even the title of the book, Visitors, seems to be othering minority persons living on the island.

There are other things that I could mention. However, these issues are the most concerning for me. While I think that the story has some potential to be entertaining for teens, I think that this audience would need to be put front and center in the writing and purge out or rework anything that has any of these problematic elements I previously mentioned. As it stands, I do not recommend this book for teen audiences. ( )
  DonnaEFrederick | Mar 9, 2021 |
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Love, treasure and intrigue awaits Lilly, Usha and Chloe as they battle for good against evil. Their secret powers remain, but for how much longer as they search for more clues on their island home of Alderney. Can the girls keep the Mafia at arms length as they struggle to master the art of Shamanic Journeying in their quest to find the Inca treasure. The world above and the world below are at war as our heroes struggle to prevent the unworldly strife overflowing into this, their world.

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