Modelland. It's an amazingly stupid title, but I like it.
Why? Because without the space between "model" and "land", I'm almost certain the word would be pronounced "maudlin". No idea why I find this humorous. Maybe I'm just easily amused.
The promo
makes it seem like there will be some action in the book, so it can't be all bad. Can it?
KRA-KOOM!
Huh. Thunder and lightning on a perfectly clear day. Weird.
Anyway, onto the book. There's a brief introduction where Tyra Banks thanks her mother and father for being "absolutely, positively nothing like Mr. and Mrs. De La Crème." This is a bit weird but sweet, so I'm not going to make fun of it.
Oh, joy. An As You Know speech directed at the reader. What a fun way to get an Infodump.
The narrator informs me that I've wanted to go to the mountain in Metopia for as long as I can remember. Yeah, the only way that's happening is a combination of severe head trauma, amnesia and brainwashing. I'm assuming this is a case of mistaken identity.
These similes are physically painful.
We get more painful purple prose about a glowing eye appearing above the mountain, followed by some dialogue that sounds like it came straight out of lousy erotica.
Butter-pecan? Ick.
I ache to be a convenience store? Oh, sorry. Misread that. I take it that dumb names are going to become a pattern in this novel.* The 7Seven are "the only famous people in the world."
We learn that The Day of Discovery is a day where all girls try to become a 7Seven. It's the bestest holiday EVER and celebrated globally. For some reason, seven talismans known as SMIZEs are sent out a week before this day. The SMIZEs increase your chances of being chosen by 91%.
Math Interlude
A 91% increase is slightly less than doubling the original number. If it was 100:1 odds, it's now ~ 50:1 odds. You're still pretty much screwed. Unless you already had a good chance of being chosen to begin with, the 91% increase isn't going to help you much.Even if you had a 50/50 chance of being chosen originally, finding a SMIZE would not guarantee you were chosen.
A 91% increase also means that someone with a 0% chance of being chosen will have a 0% chance of being chosen even if they have all 7 SMIZEs.
We'll have to wait until later to see if the book screws this simple math up.
Back to the Story
The SMIZEs are the weird eye jewelry from the book cover. In other words, they look like they took the Falcon's Eye from Xiaolin Showdown and made it girlier.They're both magical talismans and they look similar, but their powers are very different. The Falcon's Eye allows its user to see through walls. The SMIZE helps you cheat at a modeling contest. I'll let you decide which one is cooler.
The land puts the 7 SMIZEs - screw it, that name is too stupid to keep using - the 7 Falcon's Eyes into the world's waterways. This means that "bathing, showering, pool use, and even sewer diving increase, threatening a drought."
And this happens every year? Famine must be a pretty common if they're getting droughts every year. Only girls are chosen, so they're the ones looking for the Falcon's Eyes and causing all the problems.
Wait a minute.
This world based around models, and there isn't a single male model?
KILL IT WITH FIRE
The narrator continues where he/she/it left off, telling me that I want the SMIZE Falcon's Eye more than anyone else. That I ignore everyone's advice and the creepy tales from places such as PitterPatter, Shivera and Peppertown.
The tales include the chosen bathing in the "civilian blood" of girls to maintain their beauty. Of girls being tortured and "used as human sacrifices for ungodly experiments and animalistic rituals."
Aren't human sacrifices normally sacrificed to gods? Can a sacrifice to the gods be ungodly?
Hey, that's actually interesting. I hope we focus on this. Blood baths > modeling.
Maybe it will be a metaphor for the harm that modeling can do: the eating disorders, the body image problems, and the scathing rebuke they get for every flaw (real or imagined). Metaphorically eating the models alive.
Or I could be reading way too much into this.
ಠ_ಠ
Our narrator is either a sadist or has a really dark sense of humor.
Then we hear about "Pilgrim Plague", which - unlike the blood baths - is proven to be true. It is:
They wanted to bring their fathers, but Modelland had a "No Boys Allowed" sign posted.
In spite of the suicidally stupid citizens stricken with sickness, girls giddily await the "glitzy, gaudy" glamor of the gorgeous gals of Modelland.
Alliteration =/= good prose.
I'm told that I long for Modelland and that I gather my self-confidence and convince myself that this year I'll be chosen. Every other girl is also convinced that she'll be chosen.
Except for one.
Our protagonist.
Tookie De La Crème.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
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