Review: Good YA Adventure
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 26, 2013
I'm always heartened when I start a novel where the main idea in the story is something the author knows something about. The Arts in general, and music in particular seem to be fertile areas for good thematic and emotional material. You know that a musician writing about music is going to add a further level of enjoyment to the story.The Art Faculty is no exception. The main character, Marney Young, is a young musician and composer whose life has fallen apart. In a moment of grief, she makes a potentially disastrous decision which drops her onto a space ship on the way to teach music to emotionally challenged aliens on another planet. It is a great twist on the "logical Mr. Spock/Data vs emotional humans" themes of more famous SciFi works.The main story revolves around the conflicts and characters of the group of gifted young people in the "faculty," and the developing mystery of who their alien leader, Ian, really is and what he is really trying to do. The other level, of course, is the frustration of trying to get emotionless people to create art, written with such empathy that one wonders whether perhaps the author once taught music in public school.One of the strengths of the story is the characterization of Marney. Vye does a marvellous job of creating a first-person narrator whose meek self-image becomes more and more obviously inaccurate compared to the reality of her talent and her effect on others. Her gradual realization of her leadership abilities constitutes another thread in the story.Although there are twenty possible characters, Vye does not make the mistake of trying to swamp us with all of them. She concentrates on filling out Marney's two enemies, two friends, and the mysterious leader, sketching in the personalities of the others as much as needed for the plot. This gives us a tight story line and allows us to concentrate on the important elements, chief being the character of Marney herself.Wye was not quite so successful with the conflicts between the other characters, which seem to be a bit stereotyped. The "worst enemies to best friends to worst enemies" conflict between her friend Aby and the prima dona Hannah is a bit too convenient.  The group's reaction to Marney's band is also very useful to the plot but unmotivated, as is their completely juvenile response when Hannah gets her come-uppance in a kindergarten-humour fashion.I also noticed a few other places where the author's intentions show through carelessly. When it is necessary to get Marney alone in a two-seat aircraft with her enemy, Spencer, he conveniently becomes the only earthling qualified to fly one. It would be a spoiler to give the details, but when a strong emotional kick is needed at one point, an atrocity occurs that is far out of character with the tone of the rest of the story.In all, this is a very good story for a Young Adult audience who are not so concerned with the niceties of polished writing.