Review of Sykosa, by Justin Ordonez

Sykosa is not my kind of book, and Sykosa, the main character, is not my kind of girl. I got sucked in by the title, however, and I'm really glad I went along for that strange, dreamy ride.

Sykosa the character is an Asian-American young woman. She thinks about Prom, about her boyfriend Tom, about Niko (who is Niko3.0 - the new version) her friend.

She doesn't think about what happened to her the year before. It was traumatic, we know that much, and anything that brings her close to remembering it makes her nearly pass out. Ordonez says that we don't know what it is because the characters don't know what happened either.

No, she is not my kind of girl, but it feels fantastic to climb inside the skin of girl who is so different from me. And that is what Ordonez has provided - a sealskin, a different mentality to inhabit during the course of a book that slips and slides and treats the reader to a ride that unfolds like origami.

Each aspect of the book: Prom, the event, Niko3.0, and Sykosa herself, is presented and represented so we get to see them again and again. And yet we never know what they are. The girls, Niko and Sykosa, go shoplifting, they talk about boyfriends and sex, they go to a party - but are they even friends? Niko is now Niko3.0. "And doing this stuff to the Bitches is what Sykosa and Niko did together pre-Tom. They were best friends and they stuck to the group and everything was perfect."

So something has changed, or is in the middle of change, but we can't put our fingers on what it is. Heck, the characters themselves can't say what it is.

Ordonez switches seamlessly between poetic writing and the quasi-sexual obsessions of high-school girls. "The Blackness may not have her today, but she can't deny her Prom dream has affected her." It's as though while creating this character, this girl-suit for us to wear, Ordonez himself has crawled right into the high-school girl psyche to explore it.

Tom himself is a perfect example of the duplicitous nature of the book. He is Sykosa's boyfriend. He is a straightforward young male - he wants sex. Yet, is he her boyfriend? He doesn't talk to her the way he does with Mackenzie, the girl who is his friend. And will he really ask her to Prom? He's a mystery to his own girlfriend.

If you are a bit weary of the stream of self-published 50 Shades wannabe books and are looking for something completely different, I highly recommend Sykosa. Be aware that it is for those who are 18 and older, as the book discusses sex and sexual topics in frank, uncensored language. However, the language and the sex make sense within the theme of the story; therefore, I really enjoyed it, since it wasn't sex for shock value or for titillation.

Did I mention this book costs less than one dollar? All this talent and originality, and it is only 99 cents. Really. You can buy it at the link on the left, or by clicking here.

Sykosa by Justin Ordonez: Social Elements

(I must mention here that the book Sykosa is for those 18 and older. The novel contains explicit sexual content as well as strong language. However, as I read the book I was struck by the beautiful writing and the how the author captured the feelings of a young Asian-American woman who has experienced trauma. I'll be reviewing this book tomorrow.)

Justin will be giving away a fifty dollar gift card to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour, so do leave a comment here. You can also visit the other stops on the tour, seen here (scroll down to see the tour dates, with live links.)

The author has written a very thought-provoking guest post for us here at Fresh Pot of Tea. I hope you enjoy his essay as well as his book.

Social Issues in Sykosa.

In writing Sykosa, I knew I wanted a story that, for lack of a proper way to phrase it, peeled itself like an orange. So that its outside appeared rather ordinary, but upon examination, the reader comes to view the story as being not what s/he first suspected it of being. A review of Sykosa at Libby’s Book Blog, stated it better than I currently am:

I start reading Sykosa, and at first, I just think it's this nice little book about this nice little Japanese-American girl sitting in class at this nice little school thinking about painting her fingernails. Seriously - that is how the book starts,” followed by, “And, then... And, then author Justin Ordonez, starts dropping subtle hints that something is wrong. Something happened to Sykosa - but, what? This book really snuck up on me. Because during the time that I was reading it, I would find myself thinking about it when I was driving or doing other things. I would be mulling it over, trying to put the pieces together.

During Sykosa, we first get the overview of Sykosa, her friends, her parochial school, her parents, her boyfriend Tom, and that they were all involved in a mysterious incident that happened “last year.” As we progress, we come to see that the construction of Sykosa’s world is no incident. It’s been derived by sets of values and the various institutions who propagate those values. In such, the social construct of Sykosa’s life is a driving factor in the novel’s events.

First and foremost is probably race.

Sykosa, by Justin Ordonez

High schools are places of intense racial segregation, and I mean this beyond its obvious manifestations.  Sure, black kids tend to sit with black kids, white kids with white kids, and Asian kids with Asian kids, but the issues of race go far deeper. Legal battles for equal education opportunity in America are part of everyday history classes—from “separate but equal,” to Brown vs Board of Education, to inter-district busing, to white flight, to vouchers, the American education system is a good measure of how racially equal we are as a country. This pertains to Sykosa as she is a Japanese-America women who attends a mostly white school in an affluent part of Washington. At her school, there’re a large amount of white kids, a few packs of Asian kids, and very few black kids. This dynamic has created an unspoken superiority for the white kids. (It’d be hard to create an atmosphere where this wasn’t true—they’re 90+% of the school. It’s almost unnatural for a superiority-complex not to emerge). For years, this balance was uninterrupted, but that changes during Sykosa’s sophomore year when Niko, Sykosa’s best friend, attempts to oust the social establishment, a group of white girls known as the “Bitches.”

I want to avoid spoilers, so the general takeaway is that an undercurrent of racism becomes fueled when Niko and another girl named Donna, leader of the Bitches, being to squabble. It leads to a tragic event endangering Sykosa’s life and leaves her permanently affected. During the tragic event, she was saved from danger by a boy named Tom, and he was physically injured in doing so.

For these part, the novel discusses the mental aspects driving Sykosa over the societal aspects. Sykosa was always sort of a moody, introverted personality, which is not the majority personality for a female, and probably explains why certain women don’t like Sykosa as a person. (Though, it explains how Sykosa and Niko, a type-A dominator, have kept such a close friendship). Yet, while Sykosa’s is not the majority personality type for a woman, hers is not uncommon. Where Sykosa is most conventionally female is how, for most of her life, she has experienced bouts of depression. (Women experience depression 50% more frequently than men, and something like 90% of women experience one long bout of it in their lives). Sykosa’s poor management of her moods and her anxiety transforms into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following the events of “last year.” PTSD is characterized by either continually re-imagining the traumatic event or feeling numb to it and, by extension, the totality of life. Either way, the traumatic event is predominate in a victim’s thoughts and actions.

This condition is a source of frustration and shame for Sykosa. Her community, as well her friends and family, wants to move past “last year,” yet she cannot let it go, nor can she stop herself from fearing its second occurrence. In short, she’s lost her trust in the institutions she thought would protect her, and now she is uncertain what to feel or think.

            Sykosa, Part I: Junior Year establishes these two concepts in simultaneity, each working in the background of her life and her decisions. In that way, it’s a very human book. There’re no superheroes to save these characters from themselves. This is because, unfortunately, there’re no innocent characters in Sykosa. Everyone is guilty. That is partially what Libby refers to when she says, “I would be mulling it over, trying to put the pieces together.” In Part I, the reader sees how institutional racism, Niko’s ambition, Sykosa’s mental illness, Tom’s sexism, and the school’s traditional ideology lead to rape, addiction, and assault, yet the reader cannot fully figure out what happened, “last year,” since the characters themselves cannot figure it out. None of the ideological constructs (religious, political or philosophical) are answering the question of “why.” They only offer a refuge, a place to explain away what happened, a mechanism for blame, which allows for the superficial sensation of justice.

For anyone who is interested in these aspects, or you’ve experienced or known someone who suffered of mental illness, Sykosa will probably be a reading experience that rings true. Certainly, for a reader interested in a decisive plot developing alongside the story itself, Sykosa is definitely be a book that meets the mental puzzle you’re seeking out.

Hey! Justin Ordoñez wrote a book called Sykosa. It’s about a sixteen year old girl who’s trying to reclaim her identity after an act of violence destroys her life and the lives of her friends. You can find out more about Justin at his blog. You can also find Sykosa, the novel, on Amazon. 

Black Numbers

The author, Dean Lappi

 I'm lucky enough to have Dean Lappi, author of Black Numbers, writing a column for Fresh Pot of Tea today. Black Numbers is a hybrid, a book that is both fantasy and horror, and it's definitely not for the faint of heart. However, if you like exploring new possibilities and other dimensions, then it is a gripping read. The book takes hold and won't let you go; I still am haunted by some of the scenes in it.

You can buy the  book here. 

Dean's striking cover.

*****

The inspiration for my hybrid dark fantasy/horror novel BLACK NUMBERS hit me one day in a coffee shop. I sat on a comfy overstuffed chair next to a fireplace listening to people chatter all about me, and I had my laptop open in front of me. It is a setting that allows me to let my mind wander freely, and that is when the best ideas come to me. On this particular day, I had come to the coffee shop to do some free-writing, which is something I do just to see if something interesting comes from nothing.

As I let my mind wander, I thought of the fantasy genre, which has been my favorite genre since I was a little boy. I always lost myself in the fantastic stories by Tolkien, Donaldson, Anthony, Robertson, Kurtz; the list is very long of authors who took me to lands I never dreamed could exist. And as I sat in this coffee shop thinking about them, I closed my eyes and asked myself, what is the one thing all Fantasy novels seem to have in common?

Magic!

That one word appeared in my mind.

 

Magic is the binding energy that brings together every fantasy story. But as I sat in that huge overstuffed chair on that day, I suddenly thought, "What if magic could be explained mathematically. Wouldn't that be cool? What if a spell was actually a mathematical equation?"

The idea hit me almost as a physical blow. I sat back and visualized the character of Sid (his name popped into my head immediately) and how he could use advanced mathematics to create true magic.

I immediately started typing, and I wrote 2500 words without stopping once. Those words ultimately turned out to be Chapter 1 in Black Numbers, and those first words have not changed much even after the professional edits the book has received from Fantasy Island Book Publishing before it went to print.

I wrote the novel from that first chapter all the way to the end in just three months, with the story unfolding in my head as I typed. It was an amazing experience.

Now I am writing book two in the series, called Blood Numbers, and the story is growing, the world is expanding in my head, and I can't put the words down on paper quickly enough.

As authors, inspiration strikes us all in different ways, and it is the spark that ignites the flame of a story in our minds.

Mine just happened to be a mathematical flame.

Cheers!
Dean Frank Lappi

(You can find more about the author of Black Numbers here.)

Dean is on Facebook, join him at this link.

Here is the book trailer for  Black Numbers: