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''There will come a day, son, when you will need to determine exactly who it is you intend to be.''
I'm old. How do I know I'm old? You don't wake up old. As you exit school, you are gradually introduced to a world where bills, seasonal clearance sales and the housing market have more importance in your life than sports, entertainment and love. When that happens, you develop terrifying perspective on your teenage self and than you suddenly understand that everything you once stood for is kind of stupid and alien to the person you are now. Then, you feel old. Too often, reading young adult fiction, to me, is to hang out with adults that refuse to bridge the gap of perspective. A couple chapters into John Dixon's debut young adult science-fiction novel PHOENIX ISLAND, I thought I was in for a confrontational reading. What I got instead was a story akin to LOST and DAS EXPERIMENT meet DAWSON'S CREEK. PHOENIX ISLAND is a fast-paced, gritty and vaguely self-aware young adult novel. It manages to remain a fun and scrappy novel from cover to cover.
Carl Freeman is a sixteen years old orphan with amazing boxing credentials and temper issues. When a judge condemns him to Phoenix Island, a military-style boot camp, until his eighteenth birthday, Carl is just happy he's not going to prison. He is determined to make it work. Over there, he is confronted to hostile inmates and brutal training regimens. Yet Carl finds a way to make friends. When a confrontation with a drill Sergeant goes south, Carl is taken from the group and exposed to the true purpose of Phoenix Island. It appears it was Carl Freeman's destiny to go to Phoenix Island. What he does from there, the person he will decide to become, will depend on his choices and his choices alone.
If you have read my reviews before, you are aware of my undying love for nuance and moral gray lines. PHOENIX ISLAND doesn't have much to offer, in that regards. There is an interesting moral dilemma in the second half of the book, but it's a straightforward underdog young adult novel that throws the word ''bully'' around with the same perspective than a racial slur. It's not the first offender and probably not the last, but I rather not dwell on it. Author John Dixon take his cues from Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES series and offers a terrific story that sort of makes up for it? Carelessly throwing the word ''bully''around three or four times doesn't matter as much when it's in the midst of a ten page long, brilliantly written fight scene, and John Dixon can write a fight scene and a half.
Stark put down his silveware and tented his fingers. ''I'll tell you, then. You get a few things, you want more. And more. And more. For the common person, owning nice things provides the only sense of power they'll ever know. Ownership is poisonous, Carl. Never accumulate things for the sake of having them, and never confuse posession with power.''
Another aspect of PHOENIX ISLAND that transcended the paragidm of young adult fiction is its sense of self-awareness. See, Carl Freeman is kind of your run-off-the-mill, empowered teenage twat. He feels an unexplainable sense of responsibility towards weaker people since he knows how to kick some ass. But Carl is brutally brought back to Earth over and over again by a wiser, more rational support cast and it is really fun at times. Author John Dixon understands that the teenage years are formative years and it's OK to behave like an entitled jerk, learn from your mistakes and become a better person. It's a slight shift in perspective that makes all the difference. As infuriatingly and irrationally moral Carl Freeman can be at times, he is not a reflection of the infuriating and irrational moral of his author. He becomes a better person on Phoenix Island.
PHOENIX ISLAND was apparently the inspiration for television show INTELLIGENCE, starring the handsome and talented Josh Holloway, better known as Sawyer. Judging from the novel's ending, it will probably have a sequel, too. It'll be interesting to see the future development of Carl Freeman, as a character, but John Dixon has done enough in PHOENIX ISLAND to get me to come back. I could see PHOENIX ISLAND turning into the next big young adult thing. It's a dynamic story that doesn't rely on the pre-fabricated beef between bullies and underdogs (well, maybe a little). It raises the bar for others who are doing so by telling a fun, killer story that transcends genres and audiences. If you tell a great story, everything else matters a little less.
