Zia by Scott O'Dell
179 pages
Published 1976
Read from August 12 to August 13
Rating: ★★ out of 5
Man, I need some new juvenile fiction authors to follow. I like to bulk up my reading totals with quick, easy fantasy and historical fiction whenever I can't seem to make any headway with more sophisticated material, which seems to be all the time lately. But I've gone through all but the dregs of Gaiman, and this O'Dell guy, to be quite honest, has never really cut it. His writing is flat, mechanical, lacking even rudimentary emotional resonance. I keep coming back to him because I love the setting of his historical narratives in coastal California and along the Gulf of California, but with each passing book that's becoming less of a draw.
I picked out Zia because I assumed, naturally, that it was a prequel or sequel tracing the adventures of Zia from The King's Fifth. That wasn't my favorite book but I felt the character had potential for an interesting story. Instead, Zia follows a series of disconnected events in the life of the niece of the heroine from Island of the Blue Dolphins, who just happens to be named Zia, I guess because O'Dell super duper liked the name. This Zia lacks real agency, seeming to realize on some level that she's an auxiliary figure in a more popular character's story. Her choices are motivated solely by rumors of her aunt's life. She leaves her hunter-gatherer existence so that she might live on a mission nearer to where her aunt is supposed to live. She leaves the mission again after her aunt comes to the mission and dies of homesickness. The end.
Zia's lack of agency leads to a scattershot story that feels singularly nonessential. The book is dull, directionless, and has no emotional punch, but it's that unnecessary sequel feeling that really diminishes it below my already low standards for an O'Dell novel.
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