Sulan by Camille Picott

Posted by: Allison Helps Cats on: September 12, 2012

• In: Asian or Asian American | Current (After 1999) | Grades 6-8 | Romance | Sci-Fi | Suspense | Teasers
• 2 Comments

Sulan by Camille Picott is cyberpunk fiction. Although I enjoyed Sulan well enough to mildly recommend it, I found enough of it disengaging to decide that cyperpunk will probably not become a new favorite genre. In case you’re wondering, this genre features advanced science. According to Wikipedia, the main character is usually a hacker, with the central plot focusing on a conflict between techies and a mega-cooperation, and the setting tends to be the near-future Earth rather than distant galaxies. It’s telling that Picott herself tries to distance Sulan from the cyperpunk label, saying that it lacks a hard science edge. Perhaps for that reason, I moderately enjoyed Sulan.

The characters in Sulan are one of its strengths, but not for the reasons you might think. Although the numbers of multicultural characters in fiction are growing, they’re still in short supply especially in genre literature. Picott provides one of the exceptions, providing readers with a strong Asian teenage girl as the lead character. Besides casual references to Sulan’s appearance and her use of chopsticks, there are also references to her Chinese ancestors  and to Chinese history. Then there are the gifted students. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but most fiction is about average people. Well, Sulan and her friends are incredibly smart. In fact, the plot of Sulan goes something like this: The Anti-American League wages a guerrilla war against the United States. Their leader attacks anything he considers a national resource—including schools. Ultimately, this means Sulan and her friends become targets: Sulan is a math prodigy, Henrietta is a champion hacker, and Billie has been responsible for technological advancements. Picott thankfully brings these characters to life within the pages of Sulan by making them multi-dimensional. Sulan is not just Asian and not just a genius. She also argues with her mom about her desire to learn self-defense, turns to Henrietta to help her develop these skills in secret, and along the way she meets a guy whom she likes and even partners with in her quest. Her friends are also fully developed characters with their own idiosyncrasies too.

While the setting in Sulan is another strength, it’s also a double-edged sword. Picott writes on her blog that, “I’m describing the Sulan series as dystopunk. Yeah, I totally made that up. *grins sheepishly* I’ve been mulling over existing genres for quite a while, trying to figure out where my story fits. One beta reader told me it’s dystopia. But it has such a strong element of virtual reality that pigeonholing it as dystopia doesn’t seem right.” I like dystopian fiction, with one of the most popular examples being Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, where the setting is a near-future Earth which has broken down in its social order. In this regard, Sulan works for me. I’m not so sure that I like cyperpunk, with a notable exception being Cinder by Marissa Meyer. There are aspects of the virtual reality world which Picott set up that I enjoyed. It’s intriguing to read about how students can be isolated from society by living exclusively in a virtual world but yet can also interact with the rest of the world through Touch technology. As the plot progressed, like Sulan herself, I found myself wondering about the implications of such a world. Sulan spends hours in the virtual world learning how to fight: Would she take a similar pleasure in real battles when forced to inflict and endure real pain? World War I no doubt raised the same question for soldiers, who for the first time could drop bombs on their enemies from great distance. Then when Sulan and her friends learned that they were once again to be secreted away to a new hiding place, this time one cut off from internet technology, I began thinking about the pros and cons of online dating. When one’s appearance isn’t a factor, one can often develop closer relationships. At the same time, those real-world interactions are ultimately going to determine if a relationship will work. So like Sulan and her friends, I can began wondering what would happen when they met in person for the first time. Unfortunately, these underlying themes received only the scantest attention. The spotlight instead was on the virtual combat world where people scream themselves hoarse, “women rip off their shirts and bare their breasts,” and men hoot their approval. Later, when Sulan and her friends were captured, the emphasis falls on their spectacular fighting skills. While I skimmed through these, which sometimes meant flying through entire chapters, martial arts and fight club fans might fancy them.

Although cyberpunk will probably not become a new favorite genre, I did only recently rave about another example of it: Cinder by Marissa Meyer. What does Cinder have that Sulan lacks? Technology is definitely an integral aspect of Cinder. After all, main character Cinder is part-cyborg. So,  I can’t fault Sulan on that basis. Yet Cinder never felt as if its science was on parade, the way it sometimes in Sulan. Also, I can only remember one “fight” scene in Cinder. It happened when Cinder tried to escape some androids–and she was far from graceful. Whereas Sulan  made me feel as if I’d dropped in on The Matrix. The heroes in it felt too cool, slick, and full of themselves. Thankfully, when not fighting, the characters in Sulan felt human enough that I moderately liked this action-packed book.

My rating? Read it: Borrow from your library or a friend. It’s worth your time.

How would you rate this book?

Related Posts

• Guest Post: YA Books & the Need for Stories that Represent our Ethnically Diverse Society
• Interview with Camille Picott
• Daily Teasers for Sulan
• Teasers for The Heritage Series
• Review of Raggedy Chan
• Review of Nine-Tail Fox

Tags: Allison's Book Bag, Asian science fiction, Camille Picott, reviews of books for young people, Sulan