Growing up is hard - even when you're a purebred ninja assassin genius representing both physical and mental perfection. This is the message that Dave Kalstein tries to get across with his novel Prodigy, which has been compared to such legendary coming-of-age tales as The Catcher in the Rye and The Giver. It tells the story of a group of students getting ready to graduate from Stansbury - a high school in the not-too-distant future which trains children in everything from combat philosophy to biological engineering. Most of them have blonde hair and blue eyes, and they all encompass what the world has come to see as the pinnacle of human conditioning - the males are muscle-bound, athletic, agile and deadly; the females are big-breasted, slim, and equally dangerous. They mindlessly go through each day at school, eating food through syringes and taking monumental amounts of medications and vaccinations to keep them awake for days at a time without decreasing their mental or physical readiness. Kind of sounds like my high school, without all the huge breasts.
The main plot of the story involves a murder mystery. Several of the school's graduates have died under mysterious circumstances, and the current year's valedictorian (Goldsmith) is beginning to see a pattern in their deaths. Goldsmith is the subject of great resentment by his peers, as he is the typical suck-up, goody-two-shoes. He has perfect attendance, perfect grades, and has a "holier than thou" aura so thick it practically reeks off him. He has a reputation for always doing right by the school and faculty, by ratting out peers who use drugs (or who refuse to take the drugs the school requires them to), and is generally just a real party-pooper. Herein lies one of the greatest conflicts in the novel, as he tries to gain back the trust and respect of his peers as he unravels more and more of this possible conspiracy.
It's an intriguing concept, and I have to admit that I was floored when I read the book's one-line premise of "students trained to be ninja assassin geniuses". Surely a novel containing this golden concept couldn't possibly be bad. But no, unfortunately this has been one of the most disappointing reads I have experienced in some time. There are no likable characters, it is unclear who the main antagonist really is, and it all just feels very unfocused. There is an anti-hero type character - the "bad ass" of the school, who doesn't take his medication and deals illegal drugs - but he is such a smug jerk that the strongest feeling one may feel towards him is a desire to give him a swift kick in the behind. Similarly, Goldsmith's complete lack of honor or loyalty towards his peers makes him quite loathsome, to the point where his inevitable reformation is not enough to redeem his heartless acts earlier in the novel.
The book's biggest problem is its length - it's about 150 pages too long. Clocking in at 322 pages, it's a story which could have easily been told more concisely (even as a short story of 100 pages or less). So much time is spent on describing the "tower" that is Stansbury, that by the fifth or sixth time we are told how it has no windows and that the atrium is enormous, it becomes infuriating. Okay, perhaps "infuriating" is going a little far, but the repetition of these descriptions seems redundant. Do we really need to be told these things over and over, sometimes once or twice in every chapter, for several chapters in a row? There is also the book's disturbing trend of describing teenage girls with enormous breasts, but that's a whole other can of worms...
Prodigy just isn't as revelatory is it seems to think it is. All of the messages about growing-up have a "been there, done that" feel to them, and the science fiction elements feel no more original. The whole dystopian future element is never fully explored, and while this would have been acceptable had the novel been shorter, too much time is spent on details which are of little-to-no importance, while other more interesting plot points and ideas are left out in the cold.
One of the most disappointing parts of the book is its conclusion, where Kalstein seems to have run out of steam. One of the main antagonists in the story suddenly disappears from the story without notice, before suddenly reappearing and being killed in the space of one paragraph about 10 pages from the end of the book. This just isn't good writing, and it makes it even harder to appreciate the bits of material at the beginning of the book which showed promise.
The science fiction genre is one which is very tricky to write in. It revolves around concepts, philosophies and ideas. Prodigy had the opportunity to be a very strong science fiction story and entry into the Blade Runner-esque sub-genre of bleak futuristic societies, but this part of the story is just not explored to its full potential. Similarly, its attempt at a timeless story of teenage angst and identity crisis feels rehashed and as unsure of itself as some of the characters involved within it. All this being said, though, I look forward to further efforts from Kalstein, and I hope he develops better focus with future work.
