Over the week after her Selection, America gets bombarded with official people getting her ready.  Her least favorite person is some woman who wants to double-check all the facts on the application, but…America’s already been announced as the winner.  Since this isn’t a lotto, why not do the fact-checking ahead of time?  That way, if a contestant is lying, you don’t have to come up on the news and say “We made an oopsie.”

My favorite visitor was a lean, goateed man who came to measure me for my new wardrobe.

…

……

Yeah, I’m just going to leave that hanging there.

On a side note, all of America’s least favorite people are female, while all of her favorite people are male.  She’s not even sure if she has any friends, much less any female friends.  We’ve seen two other Selection contestants so far, and one was a living doll while the other was a slut. 

I’m thinking this is yet another book that hates all women, except for the main character of course.

Her last visitor is a man who’s going to go over all the rules with her.

He was incredibly skinny with greasy black hair that was smoothed back, and he kept sweating.

Let me guess: he’s some sort of bad guy?

The man kicks May out of the room so that he can ask America embarrassing, squishy questions about her lady bits.

“Miss Singer, this is going to sound harsh, but as of last Friday, you are now considered property of Illéa.

God damnit, guys, there are ways to phrase this concept without it sounding quite so…disgusting.

There’s an oft-repeated rumor in the armed forces that if a soldier gets a sunburn, they can be punished for ‘damaging government property.’  It’s patently untrue, because  people are not property.  We can be punished for self-harm, because part of signing up means we agree to do our work to the best of our ability, so screwing with our ability to work is the same as not upholding our side of a contract.  You can make a rule that says “Do this, and don’t do anything that makes you unable to do this.”  That’s a hell of a lot different from considering a person to be property.

And this guy is a stuffy official.  I guess he could be exaggerating, but so far he doesn’t seem the type.

If she is literally the property of the country, then is slavery legal in Illea?  I mean, we have that handy 13th Amendment which says owning other people is a no-no, but is that not a thing in this country?

Did this author just accidentally reintroduce slavery to her made-up world?  Which wouldn’t be terrible (as a worldbuilding choice; this is dystopia) if she’d done it on purpose, but by accident…that’s kind of creepy.

I must inform you now that any failure to comply on your part will result in your immediate removal from the Selection.

Boom.  Easy as hell to knock yourself out of the final rounds.  Go, get paid, get fancy dresses, go home.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. These are vitamins. Since you are a Five, I’ll assume that you may not always have access to necessary nutrition.

Vitamins aren’t going to fix that.  No, really, vitamins aren’t going to do jack shit for her.  If she’s been malnourished in the past, then she’s got long-term damage that can be anything from a compromised immune system to mental and social retardation.  That doesn’t get fixed with magic vitamin pills.  Also?  Vitamins don’t have calories.  A lot of the problem with starvation is not vitamins, it’s calories.  Your body literally doesn’t have enough energy to develop, so it skips that development or it robs some other part of your body for the energy.

Vitamins will not fix something that happened in the past.  Very little will fix that, actually, unless they have sci-fi advanced medicine.  Vitamins will only help her going forward, but from here on out she’s going to be at the palace.  So why not just give her food?

(Also, he says “because you are a Five,” not “because you are a crappy artist.”  So I’m guessing that all artists have some sort of max limit on their paychecks.)

“I have with me the physical from your doctor. Not much of a worry there. You seem to be in excellent health

You know, except for all those periods where you didn’t have food.  But, psh, that didn’t do any damage.

When did she go to the doctor?  How can this family afford a doctor?  She didn’t mention it in the chapter opening, which makes it sound like she goes to get regular checkups.  Do they have socialized medicine?  Is this doctor very cheap, with a crayon-degree, and that’s why he didn’t recognize any signs of malnutrition?

Then they ask if she’s a virgin, and much fuss is made over this question.  Part of me wants to say “well, people who practice inheritance laws are kind of particular about that,” but…it’s an artificial holdover.  Virginity was a commodity because 1) it was a religious thing and 2) it ensured that any child a woman had was by her husband.  However, there’s no reason to keep this in something set in the future.  There’s been no sign of religion so far in these books, and they appear to have roughly similar technology to our own, so paternity tests shouldn’t be a problem.  There’s really no reason for this to be a thing, except that the book has decided that having premarital sex makes you a slut and that sluts are bad.

I mean, this really is part of the beauty of making a setting set in the future.  You can make it almost anything.  This author didn’t have to take our sexual attitudes backwards.  This stuff about virginity?  It’s not a holdover from right now, it’s moving backwards.  And the worst part is that we don’t have a good reason for why.

America spends a page assuring everyone that she really is a virgin, because I guess the book wants to disgust me some more and hammer in the point that she’s “good,” and therefore a virgin.

“You cannot leave the palace of your own accord. You have to be dismissed by the prince himself. Even the king and queen cannot force you out.

Leave the palace or leave the contest?  Is this saying that her movements are restricted or that she can’t opt-out?  Those are two very different things.

If she can’t opt out of the Selection, but she’s only just now hearing about the rules…um, does she not have the option of disagreeing?  And if that’s the case, then why weren’t these rules included in the application process?  “Here girls, sign up to be the next Queen!  Yay, you’re in!  By the way, we totally own you now.”  That’s…massively creepy.

“There is no set timeline for the Selection. It can be over in a matter of days or stretch into years.”

They will own you forever.

Also, she can’t invite herself to hang out with the prince, he has to invite her.  This is giving a awful lot of control over to the prince.  I mean, I know he’s supposed to pick and all, but he’s just an idiot teenager, too.  Shouldn’t there be, like, some sort of schedule set up so that they get to show off relevant talents?  Assuming they have any?

She can’t fight with the other 34 contestants, but that’s a normal rule.

“Your only romantic relationship will be with Prince Maxon. If you are found writing love notes to someone here or are caught in a relationship with another person in the palace, that is considered treason and is punishable by death.”

Woah.  Where did this come from?  Writing love notes is considered treason?  Fuck, even Henry VIII would only kill his wives for actual boning.  This is seriously fucked up.  He just throws it out like it’s a normal rule, but nope, I’m not buying that.  This is more like a really hack, heavy-handed way of creating drama and tension.  The author knows that none of those other rules will be plot points, so she doesn’t care.  But this one is directly related to the love triangle, so we have to make it as angst-filled as possible, even though it makes fuck-all sense to kill 16 year old girls for flirting.

Mom rolled her eyes at that one, though that might be the only rule that worried me.

See?  It’s explicitly the only rule she cares about.

It does throw a monkey wrench in my “get kicked out” plans, but he hasn’t mentioned “death” as a result of any other rule, so I guess she could just slap one of the other girls in the face and go home.

She can’t break any of the country’s laws, she can’t accept outside food, clothes, or gifts for security reasons, and she has to show up on the Friday news reports.  For every week she stays in the contest, her family gets a check for ‘compensation.’

Also, if she makes it to the top ten she’s an “Elite.”  What the fuck is that?  Is that a One?  A Two?  A One or a Two?  Something totally outside the caste-numbered system?  (And what is a Two, anyway?)  Even if she doesn’t make it to the top ten, she’ll be a Three, but her family doesn’t get to move up with her.

So…what does that mean?  Are family members in different castes allowed to live together?  Could she buy a nice house and invite the others to move in with her, or would that not be allowed?  Can she gift part of her paycheck to her family so they don’t have to worry about bills?  It’s kind of hard to care about moving up a caste when we’re not even really sure what’s separating them to begin with.  Is it just the paycheck range that’s different, or are there other rules and standards involved?

“Yes. After the Selection, it’s hard for girls to go back to their old lives. Twos and Threes do fine, but Fours and below tend to struggle.

You say this like I’m supposed to just accept it as true, even though that makes no sense.  If I were to get some weird invitation to Buckingham Palace and spent two weeks sipping tea with the Queen and going out with Prince Harry, it would not damage my ability to come back home and carry on life as always.  I might be sad, because I like fancy things and tea parties as much as the next gal, but it wouldn’t be hard to do.  Saying that the contestants become Threes as some sort of consolation prize would work, but saying it’s because they suddenly can’t do their old work anymore?  That makes no sense.  On top of that, this is a fucked-up government that has a caste for homeless people.  Why do they care if it’s hard for the girls to go back to being Fives?  Doesn’t that just admit that there’s something wrong with their system, which governments usually tend to deny until their dying breath?

Her mom gets the first check and then the official gets ready to go.  Apparently the check is enough to provide for them for a year, so if America stays in the contest for a while and they get more such checks, they could be set for a long time.

And when I got back, everyone would want me to sing. I’d have plenty of work. But would I be allowed to sing as a Three?

I don’t know, can you?  You’re the one that fucking lives in this world; you tell us.  Are people in higher castes able to pick any job they want, or are they limited to higher ‘rated’ jobs?

If I had to pick one of the career paths of a Three, I think I’d teach.

Teachers are rated higher than musicians?  …yeah, I’m okay with that one.  Moving right along.

If there’s specific careers set aside for Threes, my guess is that, no, you can’t sing for your supper anymore. 

America walks the guy to the door, and when they’re alone, he tells her that she shouldn’t refuse the prince anything.  He hints that ‘anything’ includes sex.  It’s not an actual rule, and he says as much, it’s just one of those “highly suggested” things.

America gets rightly offended over this remark, but…okay, yeah, it is offensive.  It’s also not a rule, and America doesn’t want to win the contest regardless of her other boyfriend.  So there doesn’t seem to be anything baring her from refusing him, because it sounds like the only punishment will be that she gets kicked out of the contest.  The contest she doesn’t want to be in.  I’m failing to see any dilemma here.  It’s a sucky thing to say, but it’s not presenting a real hardship or barrier to her actions.

The law, Illéan law, was that you were to wait until marriage. It was an effective way of keeping diseases at bay, and it helped keep the castes intact.

Apparently history, sex ed, and common sense are also illegal in this country.

Making sex against the law doesn’t stop the spread of disease.  It increases it.  People will have sex.  You can’t stop them.  It’s been illegal, or at least considered immoral, throughout much of history, and yet everyone has gone on merrily banging away at each other.  There are places right now where you can get stoned to death for having sex, and people still do it anyway.  But if you make it a dirty, dirty secret thing to do, people will be more concerned with keeping it secret than with doing it properly.  If you make it a taboo subject, then no one learns the truth about safe sex.  Instead you get a country full of people who have a 12 year-old’s understanding of sex ed.  I distinctly remember being told that douching with coca-cola will prevent pregnancy and that you can’t get an STI through anal sex.  That, right there, is the kind of shit that gets spread around when there’s no ability to talk openly and honestly about sex.  Kids will make shit up, tell it to their friends, and then those friends will never ask if it’s true and be corrected.  They’ll just grow up into adults who think it’s true, and then spread nasty ass infections all over the place.

Furthermore, there’s no need for this.  There’s really not.  Like I said above, the author had a whole world of options open to her, and she decided to make a place where sex is illegal.  It’s not a logical extrapolation of the direction our society is headed, and it’s not something necessary to make the rest of the book work. 

Actually, this point in particular strikes me as a really, really watered down version of rape-drama.  That disgusting little trope where a woman gets raped just to show off how ‘evil’ the man is, as if there’s not other ways to do that.  In this version, it sets up for the prince to have ‘bad’ sex with her, though I’m sure the prince will valiantly decline, all to make the government look evil.  As if that’s not easily enough done with the homeless people bared from getting jobs or the fact that they all but ignore their own war.  It’s a law invented to make a big deal about America’s virginity, all so that we can make a big deal about how she might lose her virginity.  It’s a completely artificial situation that falls apart under the barest amount of scrutiny, all for a narrative device that’s ultimately unneeded. 

Later that day, Aspen shows up at her house with flowers.  They’re a gift from his twin sisters, who are both happy for her.  In fact, his whole family is happy for her.

How does his family know her?  I mean, they dated but they dated in secret.  Their families are in different castes and different jobs.  So how did they meet?  Why are they friends?  Why do the twins give two flying fucks about America or the fact that she won?  Why do they even know who she is?

“Aspen, I’m glad you’re here.” I tried to sound as removed as he had. “I’ve made a mess trying to pack. Could you help me clean?”

With my mom there, he had to accept. As a general rule, Sixes didn’t turn down work. We were the same in that way.

First, that’s not a job offer.  That’s a request for a favor.  Unless the standard is that they don’t turn down a request from anyone of a higher caste, even a request for free labor, this makes no sense.  Second, America’s family shouldn’t be able to afford hired help ever.  At times when they’ve had extra money, they should have been saving it for the lean months, not spending it.  I think America even said that this has happened in the past, when they’ve hired people to help with the cleaning at times, which just goes to confirm my suspicion that these people are being paid enough to eat.  They’re just shit at managing their money.

True, America actually does have enough to pay him now, thanks to the check that official left her.  But this exchange is treated like something very natural and normal, not as something that’s a new occasion.  It’s not like her mom goes “Oh, yes, and we can pay you this time!”

So, they go back to America’s room, which is a mess because she tore it up looking for stuff to pack.  America tells him her picture was so pretty because she was thinking about him proposing.  Aspen says he’d been thinking about it, but he held off because he was worried he’d be drafted.

Their draft makes no sense.

In Illéa, every nineteen-year-old male was eligible for it. Soldiers were chosen at random twice a year, to catch everyone within six months of their birthday. You served from the time you were nineteen until you were twenty-three. And it was coming soon.

So, you can only be drafted at the age of 19, and if you don’t get picked you’re safe forever?  Even though 20 year-olds are just every bit as capable of going off to boot camp?  And they only serve for four years, but there’s a fucking war on?  Also, if you get drafted, you might be sent to the army or to the police force or to some other civil service job.  Even though there’s a fucking war on.  I’m pretty sure this is not how drafts work. 

This sounds more like a mix-mash of a draft and mandatory service.  In mandatory service, everyone works for the same number of years, unless they have a special reason not to.  It’s done for a variety of reasons, either to build patriotism and work ethic or to get handy, guaranteed civil servants.  But it really is a peacetime thing.  A draft is like saying “holy fuck, we need warm bodies to throw in front of bullets!  Hurry, round up everyone!”  You don’t institute a draft and then only take the 19 year-olds.  You take everyone.

To make things even more fucked up, people who are drafted become Twos. 

The government trained you and paid you for the rest of your life. The drawback was you never knew where you would go.

Um, you live in a country where some people literally exhaust themselves to death trying to get enough money for food.  Getting elevated to the second-to-top caste and being held there for life seems like enough of a good thing to say “who cares” about that moving around thing.

Seriously, that ‘drawback’ is a complaint of our modern, not-deployed army.  And even then, it’s just a minor thing that’s complained about by people who aren’t fucking starving to death.  If I was starving, and someone told me that I could become near-nobility and get paid a steady wage for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t bat an eye at not being able to pick where I live.  Seriously, it’s just not even a consideration.

She does mention that going to the army and off to war is an option, and that not many people make it back from war.  But she mentions it as an option, which means that they’ve got a war going on but they’re still funneling people into not the fucking army.  Why would you do that?

Not very many men sent into battle made it home.

Statistics time!  In the Civil War (which had the highest casualty count in US history), about 620,000 soldiers died, but over 3 million soldiers fought.  That’s a casualty rate of about 19%.  TWO THIRDS of those deaths were due to disease, not to battle.  TWO FUCKING THIRDS.  In WWII, there were about 413,000 US casualties, but over 1.6 million combatants.  That’s a casualty rate of about 25%.

In both these cases, it would be a stretch to say that ‘not many’ men came back.  The great majority of them came back.  Both of those wars had high death counts, and 25% is 25% more than anyone should be happy with, but I’m focusing on word choice right now.  America is making her point from the survivor’s side, not from the casualty’s side.  It would make sense to say that ‘a lot of guys died,’ because 25 percent is a hell of a lot of guys.  But it doesn’t make sense to say that 75% or 81% is ‘not many.’

(In my original edit, I said that the WWII casualty rate was 2% and not 25% because…um, I skipped writing down a number and then my brain decided it was okay to just run with ‘2.’  Terribly sorry about that.)

So for ‘not very many’ people to be returning back from battle, they have to have a casualty rate vastly higher than a war where TWO THIRDS OF THE DEATHS WEREN’T EVEN FROM BATTLE WOUNDS.  They’ve either gone backwards in terms of medical technology and understanding, or they are just trying to lose this war.

And they’re losing that many men, but still ‘drafting’ guys for the police force and palace guards!

Seriously, Illea just needs to fucking implode already.  Why are we supposed to care if this country continues or not?  How bad could it really be for the citizens if they lose the war?  Are they fighting future!Hitler or something?  Because unless it’s a genocidal maniac trying to invade, at this point, I’m pretty much rooting for the other guy.  Illea sucks. 

If a man wasn’t married before the draft, he’d almost always wait. You’d be separated from your wife for four years, at the very best. At the worst, she’d be a very young widow.

Um, no, this seems like a very good reason to get married.  Women marry up, remember?  (Or down.  Or whatever, point is that they’re mobile.)  If a man goes off to war and is probably going to die, he should marry first.  That way his wife becomes a Two along with him, and after he dies, she’s at least up in that higher caste.  Heck, a guy going to battle who doesn’t have a sweetheart should probably just offer up his marriage to whoever is willing to perform the filthiest sex act.  She gets to advance, and he gets a good time before he dies.

Even without dying, there’s no point in not marrying.  So you’re going to be separated?  So what!  People are dying from lack of food.  Marry, then send home your paycheck so your sweetheart doesn’t fall over dead before you get back.

This book just doesn’t give a fuck about anything making sense, does it?

“I just … I didn’t want to do that to you,” he whispered.

“I understand.”

I understand that you didn’t want to give me a life of comfort and wealth based on the fact that we would be separated for four years.  Now we’ll be separated forever!  That works out so much better.

They finish cleaning and then chat about how Aspen is a jerk for dumping her for no god damned reason.

“I’m not allowed to turn him down. Not for anything.”

Aspen looked sick, angry. His hands clenched up into fists. “Even … even if he doesn’t want to marry you … he could …?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He took a few deep breaths. “But if he does pick you … that’ll be good. You deserve to be happy.”

You might get raped, but at least you’ll be happy married to your rapist.  What?

Also, she is allowed to turn him down, she just sort of skipped over that.  Eh, I think I’ll let it go.  She’s sixteen, she’s in a period of unusual life-changing circumstance, and that official was being all official-y, so it’s reasonable to assume that she’d take his ‘not a rule’ as a rule.  Vague threats are still threats.

There’s no excuse for Aspen assuming that she’d be happy with a guy who forced her into sex, though.  That’s just disgusting.

Aspen gets ready to go, but America insists on paying him.  She gives him all the money she saved over the past week, then she also gives him all his pennies.  One penny gets stuck to the jar and she keeps it, so I’m assuming it’ll be her angst token for the rest of the book.