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- Author: Scott Westerfeld
- Title: Peeps / Parasite Positive
- Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Welcome to very first (of many) co-reviews featuring me, YA Fabulous! proprietor and one of my book-loving, endlessly-peer-pressured-into-doing-book-discussions-and-co-reviews friends. Today I’m sharing my book discussion of Peeps (also known as Parasite Positive) by Scott Westerfeld with Susan. I trust her taste implicitly—and I’m blackmailing her with promises of steamy fanfiction to be here. But who needs pesky facts? Onward!
Scott Westerfeld is a household name in the kidlitosphere. I see his books reviewed consistently throughout various blogs and his accomplishments in the field of YA science fiction are no small feat. I know him best for his trilogy that begins with Uglies but it’s safe to say his other work is just as well-loved. When John Scalzi, Hugo award winning and genre criticism/commentary writer says you’re the bomb, it’s pretty much a done deal.
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: The most significant SF writer right now is Scott Westerfeld, whom it seems most adult science fiction fans still have not read and indeed barely know exists. In a sane world, Westerfeld would be a hero to adult science fiction readers, because he’s pretty much single-handedly flown the flag for science fiction to teenagers, thus saving the genre’s bacon for another 20 years.
Because I have never been steered wrong by John Scalzi, it pains me to admit that before Susan suggested this book to me, I hadn’t read a single word Scott Westerfeld had written which probably kicks my YA credentials right in the balls. Shameful.
If you haven’t read Peeps/Parasite Positive and plan to in the future as part of your completion fantasy of reading every YA vampire novel available, turn back now! This co-review is full of spoilers. Otherwise, follow the jump for our discussion.
Renay: Can I admit right off the bat I wasn’t sure about this book? My luck with vampire fiction in 2008 has been nonexistent, as you well know; you read my Eclipse review and know all my thoughts about the train wreck that was Breaking Dawn. I had never planned to read Westerfeld’s foray into sexy blood-sucking young adult fiction. Looking back, I’m glad I did, which ties into my problems with the story but it’s way too early to get critique happy, so instead let’s list five things we loved about the novel and why we loved them. You’re going first, because you’re the guest and I’m a big meanie! #1 on the Five Fabulous Things about Peeps, go!
Susan: Hm… Is “Scott Westerfeld can ACTUALLY WRITE” too broad to count as the first FABULOUS THING about Parasite Positive? I mean, really, my luck with vampire fiction is possibly as bad as yours so finding someone who could actually write (and who could take an idea like “Vampirism is an STD” and make it completely serious and logical and also NOT an OMGMESSAGE! like some authors would instead of the complete pile of rubbish I expected when I was cracking up on the floor in the library) was amazing. I mean! His world building is FANTASTIC (After reading Cities in Flight by James Blish, anyone who is willing to use science in a way that WON’T blind me gets a gold star — Scott Westerfeld uses science and it ALL MAKES SENSE) and he can write a decent action scene. Just for that, I’m glad I picked it up. Then, compared to most of the vampire-fiction writers I’ve read, his writing SPARKLES and his characterisation is—reasonably distinct and recognisable and basically everything Twilight wasn’t?
Renay, thoughts or the second step. Your choice.
Renay: I choose both!
I totally agree on the writing. I went in a little wary but the farther I read the more I was downright 
charmed by Westerfeld’s skill with words. Not to sit here and make a review of his writing John Scalzi variety hour, but while I was reading I couldn’t help but make comparisons. Their prose strikes me the same way. The flow and rhythm and plain readability that Scalzi has, that made me a card carrying member of the John Scalzi Fan Club, is present here in Westerfeld’s writing. It’s approachable story-telling, made all the better by the fact he’s unloading so much scientific knowledge onto the reader. I am definitely down with your choice there!
For second of the five fabulous things, I am going to toss out the extremely predictable, written-in-neon-letters romance. For a romance that the reader knew was somehow going to end in hot make outs the second Cal walked into an elevator with Lace, it totally pinged for me. I knew it was coming and I rooted for their miscommunication and missteps and Cal’s sexual frustration and Lace’s frustration that Cal totally misses. It was pulled off successfully. My only complaint was the odd fade-to-black scene that is most likely hot and dirty sex in an abandoned train terminal (but maybe that should be a plus?).
Let me also throw out that I agree with you about how Westerfeld didn’t turn the book into a The More You Know TV spot in prose form and that he discussed sexuality in such frank and open terms. I love when books do that and not just because I’m a fan of, well, thinking about hot sex scenes between characters I like. It actually demystifies the process!
Susan: I’m sure there should be a rule saying “Do not recommend MORE AUTHORS when Susan has 63 books awaiting her attentions before they have to go back to the library.” As there isn’t, I’ll have to add John Scalzi to The List. READABLE is the word I was looking for — Parasite Positive isn’t a long book, but it was a remarkably easy read even for something so short! Mmmm. And I have to agree with you on the romance — so obvious you could probably see it coming four miles away with your eyes shut (What is it with writers only giving names to the characters that will either live or get laid?), but — really effective! Especially with Lace — I like that she wasn’t just Some Girl Cal Lusted After, she was someone who wanted for herself, who made the first move and pretty much steamrollered her way into Cal’s life.
Although I’m not convinced they actually had sex during that fade-to-black. I mean, it was obviously a deliberate fade-to-black, but uh. Considering they were STILL all over each other and talking about finding somewhere a little more private? Hmmmmm.
ANYWAY, the third awesome thing! SCIENCE! I love the science in this. The little between-chapter lessons on parasites which are awesome and slightly gross and informative in a FUN way! The fact that there is a logical, scientific reason for all the vampire phenomena — the avoiding sunlight and crosses and the debunking of the mirror thing and — well. I think the anathema as a method for dealing with vampires is a wonderful thing! It’s clever and I’ve not seen it done before and I really, truly love it.
Plus, everything (until a certain point in the book, which I think we are going to have to describe and laugh at, really) is VAGUELY LOGICAL. Why there are vampires, why the vampires have some powers and why they don’t have others (I love that the one of the first thing he says in the second chapter is “The main thing to remember is that there’s no magic involved. No flying.” Actually, that first sentence could pretty much describe a lot of why I like this book.), why they have HORDES OF RATS everywhere (and some of the scenes with the rats and such were genuinely effectively creepy-gross. Hmmm.), all of it until that certain point makes sense! You can tell this is a novelty to me. I’m not used to there being common sense in my books about vampires.
Renay: This lack of logic in the vampire books could be due to my recs, although there’s still Sunshine! You cannot claim Sunshine was without a kind of skewed logic.
Susan: … Okay, I grant you Sunshine. Although considering Sunshine was shiny awesome in many MANY ways, I’m not sure it counts in the “books about vampires” thing — I mean, it DOESN’T SUCK, that has to call for immediate disqualification or something. Shunning by the rest of the vampire-book loving world?
Renay: Well, it doesn’t seem to glorify vampirism as much as other YA vampire novels do (hello, Stephenie Meyer). Peeps does its part with the glory-making over vampires. The unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your perspective) fact is that Peeps has squeaked ahead of Sunshine as my favorite vampire novel, even with the mind-boggling climax (more on that in a second). The writing and the learning was what tipped the scales. It was just such a fun journey to the end, even if Reba McEntire wasn’t waiting for me with gigantic guns and dynamite (but again, more on that soon).
The science was awesome. I still can’t decide which was more enjoyable: parasite chapters or Cal’s chapters where some of parasite information was applied. My favorite para-side (I am SO clever) was the story about the ant. It was, at once, scientific and true and heartbreaking. Westerfeld tugged a little on the heartstrings with the religion bit, but overall it worked. After all, we don’t know what the poor, hapless ant is thinking. It’s a really striking image, though—one lone ant, standing on the grass in the night.
Baco read Peeps, too, and shared some of her favorites with really fascinating informational links and one gross but cool video. We’re not alone in our adoration of it. What was your favorite para-side?
I’m still convinced the fade-to-black was full of hot, sexy action. Even if they were looking for places to be alone, the parasite makes them want to have sex all the time, so it’s not like once is going to be enough (or five or thirty or one hundred times). Isn’t there a statistic somewhere that says the average adult has sex 100 times a year? Dude, vampires are sexing it up twice that just because of a parasite. Cal’s strain might mean you’ll never look at red meat or vegetables in the same light again, but the sexual benefits can not be denied. I might just want to think they had sex in the train station so I can be annoyed it wasn’t all flowers and romance with Cornelius watching on. Now, I know one of my favorite things was going to be the end, but I can’t resist tossing out how much I loved that Cal had a cat. So the fourth favorite is Cal’s relationship with Cornelius, fur and sleeping-on-chests and all and being totally comfortable with it. Can this trend continue? I am so used to men with cats being seen as emasculating! Cal/Cornelius Forever. ♥
Susan: I LOVED the parasite chapters. Educational AND gross, just as science should be! To be honest, they kinda reminded me of the Horrible Science books I used to read when I was a kid for that exact reason, only less with the cartoons and pop quizzes that I always used to cheat at anyway. My favourite (… Yes, Nay, you’re brilliant.) is probably the one with the guinea worm. The ants win for tugging at the heartstrings, sure, but the worm wins for grossness and human vanity. I mean, come on, LEGWORM ON A STICK. That HAS to win a prize for SOMETHING.
(I think I actually liked Sunshine BECAUSE her vampires weren’t gorgeous sexy beings — and because she pokes fun at that very stereotype herself with the vampire fiction books Sunshine used to read. But McKinley was telling a completely different story… Even if the end made only slightly more sense to me as this one.)
And yes, Cornelius (I love Cornelius’ name. Cal gets bonus points from me for naming his cat Cornelius. :D) and his SECRET PLANS. Cornelius is wonderful. And I never heard the theory that men with cats were emasculating! You learn something new and useless every day. :D
Now, the fifth thing is similarly minor and yet endlessly entertaining: THE RECORDS DEPARTMENT. For those wondering why a department that is generally evil deserves pride of place on a list of top-five-shiny-things-in-Parasite-Positive:
Records has two mottos. One is:
The Secrets of the City Are Ours
The other:
NO WE DO NOT HAVE PENS!
Basically, the Records Department makes me laugh whenever they’re mentioned, from their mottos to their running on Almighty Forms (Admit it, you laughed at the form for requisitioning a garbage truck too. It can’t just be me here!) to the fact that the only character in the Night Watch that I actually TRUST apart from Cal is in that department. I swear, I honestly thought that Chip and the Records Department might turn out to be EVEN MORE important and awesome towards the end — until, y’know, the end HAPPENED and I was too busy alternating between horrified lulz and “Oh my god, what happened to story I was reading before that was busy being awesome and suspenseful and full of cats and the possibility of EPIC BETRAYAL?”
Nay, would you like to do the honours, or can we skip to my screaming “TREMORS!” and cracking up laughing on the floor?
Renay: I think we can skip to it by summing up with this image:
Seriously. What happened to the book I was reading? It went from awesome to Tremors in like, two chapters and there was nothing to make up for it, not even a Reba McEntire reference to let me know Westerfeld realized he might be approaching a shark and a ramp.
I honestly have to pass on the resolution to this story. I loved everything before it, but the giant worms from the center of the Earth thing, crawling up through subway tunnels to squish/eat/drown us in wormy slime lost me. I still love this book, but the throwback to a horror concept done over and over again in the sci-fi horror market (ass blasters? Susan? ANYONE?) didn’t jive for me. That’s fine, Scott Westerfeld! I still love you, but I have major problems with this ending!
Here’s my issue: there were two reveals in this book and I think Westerfeld overplayed his hand. I can’t decide if this was necessary because he didn’t know there would be a companion novel to Peeps or if it just seemed like a good idea to jam in a run-in with a Monster Worm for the climax instead of holding off and building buzz for the companion novel where there is drama and the worms are revealed there (assuming that the worms are revealed there)! Worms still present, but at least Peeps remains completely awesome instead of only 93% awesome because it felt like the face to face with them was shoe-horned in and sort of laughable.
During this story, I was on the edge of my seat with nerves. When Cal goes into the pool with the rats, I was so nervous I had to get up and turn on more lights. There was tension and suspense and it carried throughout the entire reveal of the second strain. It was when the worm actually made an appearance that I began to think, “oh brother!” It had no tension, it wasn’t really exciting, and the romantic clinch at the end didn’t do it for me either (as I have outlined).
Sob!
Susan: Forget jumping the shark — he FED that damn shark to the GIANT BLOODY WORMS. Really, what the hell? He had it all set up to end BRILLIANTLY — I had HIGH HOPES of, I don’t know, epic betrayal by the company and showdowns with Morgan and, I don’t know, Lace kicking ass and taking names and if Scott Westerfeld really wanted to make my day Lace would have been secretly been working for Morgan the whole time! I expected something… Well, I expected something in line with the rest of the book, as opposed to sudden bursts of GIANT WORMS. I think when they were attacked on the train line, I had to put the book down and laugh my head off for a while, which is uh, probably not what I was supposed to do.
See, I’m with you, Nay — the thing with the rats CREEPED THE HELL OUT OF ME. To the point where I was feeling claustrophobic and more than a little wary about both cats and rats. There was enough intrigue to keep me happy and convinced that something awesome was going to happen. Instead, there’s a clunky and WTF-worthy fight scene, and the second BIG REVEAL was rather… Flat? Anticlimactic? I freely admit I was still going “……………….. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!” about the giant worms, but the scene with Morgan just seemed to be an “Okay, let’s just have Morgan turn out to be EXPOSITION GIRL!” inside of anything that would actually made the story decent.
… Plus I’m blocking out the epilogue. I include the sequel — The Last Days — in that because both of them involve Cal and Lace as NINJAS THAT MAKE OUT A LOT and. Really. Why do people write epilogues that make no sense?! *S-sobs*
Renay: Wouldn’t it have been cool if Morgan had been Exposition Girl plus being able to kick some ass? The more I think about the end, the more it feels like Morgan — a mysterious figure in Cal’s past! holding the answers to all Cal’s questions! — was shunted to the role of fill-in just so Cal and Lacey could be in a dark sewer fighting and then get so turned on they had to have a fade-to-black. I would have much rather seen Morgan’s team in action, followed by the explanations and excuses and revelations about Cal’s part in the entire mess while they all recovered, with a canny leave-taking scene when Cal and Lace figured out that they could have hot sex all the time. It would’ve lent more immediacy to the entire scenario, although I am fairly sure that at no point would I have not been annoyed at the total lack of Tremors references. Really.
Besides the kooky ending and the fact that we were both let down by it even though the rising action was, hands down, awesome, I think it’s time to whip out the final question: which title do you prefer (this is definitely the biggest concern for me; definitely): Parasite Positive or Peeps?
Susan: Oh god yes. I am ALL IN FAVOUR of girl’s kicking ass, so Morgan doing both would have been quite awesome and might have stopped me lawling in horror at the ending (Although that’s certainly up for debate…). I think the closest we ever actually get to seeing them in action is the scene where Cal breaks into her house and they’re SEDUCING PEOPLE TO THE DARK SIDE!!1! but really, is it really too much to ask for Morgan and her groupies to, y’know, take down the giant worms themselves if there MUST be giant worms? (Basically, I am all in favour of someone rewriting the ending the way it could’ve been. As in, AWESOME and full of Tremors jokes. Trufax.)
Hm… I have to say I prefer Parasite Positive! Peeps just seems… Well, not exactly “Bloody stupid” but it lacks the pretentiousness and pseudoscience feel of Parasite Positive! And let’s face it, Parasite Positive/Peeps is ALL ABOUT the science… And the giant worms. Sorry I’ll stop now. Plus, OF COURSE I’m going to pick the title I can actually hold of the book with! Parasite Positive is the title it has here in the UK, so I have to prefer it otherwise I’ll forget and NEVER BE ABLE TO FIND IT AGAIN!
… Wait.
That might be a GOOD thing.
PEEPS IT IS!
Which one did you prefer?
Renay: I understand the renaming. Parasite Positive sounds it could be a particularly scary science workbook, and Peeps has slang going for it over here. Besides the fruity, marshmallow candy, I mean. I can’t speak as to why the publishers there thought it would work better. I like the science-is-awesome sounding name, though, and I honestly spent a long time avoiding Peeps. I said, “Why would anyone name the book that! WHY!” It’s probably that I reject all slang and therefore it kept me away from reading it and also connecting with the title even though it’s really only a superficial part of the story. You want Peeps and I want Parasite Positive; perhaps we should trade. ;)
I know you’ve already torn through The Last Days (I swear, I’m going to read it!) but have you or do you plan to read anything else by Westerfeld? I have Uglies on my list; we’ll see how that goes.
Susan: Hey, I just want Peeps for the sheer joy of confusing the people I talk about books with. I’m happy to trade!
I’ve actually read a couple of Westerfeld’s books since then, and I probably need to read more of his stuff just to decide whether I like him or not. The Last Days you already know about because I tend to laugh hysterically whenever it comes up, but I picked up Uglies too! I can’t decide whether I liked it or not, but I’ll definitely be picking up Pretties when it comes back into the library, if only to see what happens to the characters.
Renay: If I haven’t turned you off reviewing by the massive amounts of tl;dr in this post, maybe we can get together and review the entire Uglies trilogy as a whole. Great idea or GREATEST IDEA?
Susan: I disagree with both options.
I feel it would be GREATEST IDEA EVER!
Renay: Well, even if the end of this novel couldn’t live up to our exacting standards, nevertheless, we’ll always have Tremors. ;)
Susan: And it’s truly A Sign when that’s actually comfort… ;)
Disclaimer: No graboids were harmed in the making of this review. We promise.
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