"Yes yes"...no. Just...no: Reviewing Kenneth Oppel's "Every Hidden Thing"

In continuation of my poor fortune in reading, I was recently disappointed again. I finished the book at least, which is more than I can say for many of the volumes I’ve picked up at the library over the past month. 

The book is Kenneth Oppel’s Every Hidden Thing. The selling point? Romeo and Juliet looking for a dinosaur. Sounds awesome, right?

Actually the selling point for me was that it was by Oppel, who in my past experience has been one of the best YA authors I’ve had the pleasure to read. My favorite steampunk novels are the Airborn trilogy. I enjoyed the bat-fantasy series of started by Silverwing. I even enjoyed the creepy prequels to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Yet after the rather grim and dark content of the aforementioned Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein series, I was hoping for a return to the lighter action-filled adventures of a couple of lovestruck teens in the sun-scorched Badlands looking for dinosaurs at the dawn of paleontology. 

Perhaps it’s best I approached Every Hidden Thing with almost zero expectations. Because I am actually rather disappointed in it. Not only because there is too much of the Romeo and Juliet part (including more sensuality than I felt I’d signed up for in a YA novel*), but I felt that this wasn’t the best Style I’ve seen in Oppel’s writing in the past. 

The book starts out with Samuel Bolt and Rachel Cartland meeting at a lecture for paleontology.  They are the teenaged children of rival fossil hunters. The Bolts and the Cartlands are both contacted regarding an interesting fossil find in the Badlands, and so begins a race to discover the rex. Samuel is an arrogant, charismatic, almost con-artist type of young man with a desire to prove himself invaluable to his temperamental father. Rachel is basically Star Trek's Mr. Spock, if Mr. Spock was a scientific and logical young lady intent on going to college in a time when women were meant to be social butterflies and completely reliant on men. 

Things I thought were interesting in the book:

• The dual perspectives. Usually Oppel writes in first person but focuses on one person.  Alternating between Samuel and Rachel was an interesting departure. 
• The aspect of the Bolts being hot-blooded pacifists with Quaker backgrounds
• The paleontology aspect. Forget Jurassic Park, I’ve always been intrigued by the dawn of fossil hunting. What must these scientists have thought as they were discovering these giant bones of mysterious creatures? How did they formulate their techniques of excavation? 

Things I felt could be improved upon:

•        Besides the aforementioned over-sensuality, Samuel and Rachel fall into Insta-Love.  This is particularly jarring with Rachel, for whom such sudden infatuation is out of character for her otherwise unsentimental personality.  What was worse was that the scientific aspects of the story seemed to fade out in favor of this romantic plot.
•          The two fathers are almost exactly alike in their relationships to their children.  Despite Oppel’s use of “Father” for Bolt and “Papa” for Cartland, I still got them mixed up.
•           A nitpick, but I was under the impression that “Quakers” never call themselves by that term, but rather “Friends.”   Samuel calls them “Quakers.”
•           From the beginning of the book the time this story was set in wasn’t very well grounded.  Eventually the atmosphere coalesced into a sort of turn-of-the-century Western setting, particularly as Rachel’s fight for gender equality became more prominent. 

The most aggravating part of this entire book was of Dr. Cartland’s constant use of “yes yes” in sentences where it made no sens e. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Googling “every hidden thing kenneth oppel yes yes” brings up the Google Preview of it. Here is how it’s explained in the book:

But frankly I’ve never heard or read of any verbal tic working the way Cartland’s does. It shows up between words that should never have an audible pause, much less some sort of “yeah, good” agreement or muttering to oneself:

It got to be that I would accidentally stop reading the actual story and start counting how many awkward “yes yes” incidents occurred on a page. 

“We’ve heard yes yes language like this before.” – pg. 176

“The Plains Indians seem to have yes yes a great respect for visions,” pg. 178

“We may be able yes yes to salvage.” Pg. 212

“I suggest yes yes that you observe.” Pg. 230 

It kept me up at night trying to work out a logical meaning for it in my head. It took a stretch of imagination to "hear" how someone would say these phrases. I showed it to my mom for moral support. She thought it might have some bearing on the plot later.  It didn’t. 

One must be careful with characteristic tics when writing. It’s the sort of thing that Strunk and White would look down upon for taking away from true Style. You see, fiction is a delicate balance of artistry of words and self-control. Too much self-control can make the story dull and lifeless. But too little self-control can let the author’s flare for language derail the story. One word—or in this case, one word repeated twice without variation—can unravel the illusion and remind the reader that that is exactly what they are: a reader. And this world the author has otherwise so carefully created reveals itself as mere words on paper. 

In short, good Style allows the audience to forget they are reading at all. Bad Style constantly reminds them they are. 
  

  

*Including a few wedding night scenes. At least they were married, but because of these scenes I feel I can’t recommend these books to their target audience of teenagers.