I recently read a decent portion of City of Bones which lots of people loved and was really disappointed. It seemed like the kind of YA urban fantasy that is right up my alley; teenage girl sees something (someones really) no one else can see and thus discovers a parallel world in New York City where a great big honking battle between good and evil (even with angels this time) is being fought. I was looking forward to it big time but had to struggle through the first 100 pages or so and then decided to just put it down. Rather than just donate the book and be done with it though, I've been thinking about why it did not work for me. Here's a few obvious things right off the top (caution - spoilers ahead):

1. There was no explanation as to why the teen heroine suddenly saw the Shadowhunters that night. How come she had never seen any before if they are out hunting in NYC all the time?

2. Clary's mother is a former Shadowhunter that has been in hiding and they happen to get her the same night she happens to see some Shadowhunters on her own? Hmmm. Also - wouldn't Mom have thought to warn Clary about some of this by now?

3. They've never in a jillion years brought an outsider into the building but break the rules for Clary - and then the next night break them for Simon?

4. Clary overhears the big bad guys talking to her Mom's boyfriend about someone with her mother's name, and remembers her mother's unexplained scars which look surprisingly Shadowhunter-like but still can't believe they are talking about her Mom? This one really annoyed me.

But other than small problems and too frequent fantasy cliches (the hidden house smacked of Dr. Strange, the teens all learning on their own was totally Xavier's Academy, the library was right out of "Beauty and the Beast"), it was Clary's response to the call that really struck me as off. She finds out she's caught up in events beyond her control, she battles a demon, she learns she's not human and yet she worries about what she is wearing. All of the teen angst and none of the teen humor from Buffy was here - without any super strength to back it up. I couldn't figure out if she was questioning her new world, denying it or embracing it. And that I think is a problem with books where the call is a big part of the story.

If you don't get the call part solidly down, all the action in the world isn't going to fix the story. (And if you're wondering about "the call", Gwenda had a great post on it last year that explains the whole thing.)

The Black Tattoo was another book that did not work for me because of the call. You have a fairly unremarkable teenage boy who is out walking with his buddy and gets grabbed by a mysterious stranger who sees something in him and tells him he must come to a mysterious building and embrace his destiny. So he goes (ooookay), battles the girl who has been training for this moment all her freaking life and beats her. He is hailed as the new hero and now she has to fight alongside him. I'm not even going to touch the fact that the girl was defeated in two minutes by uberboy who fights purely on instinct and with his "gift", but the boy just decides to go with it and become new warrior dude. The lack of questioning did not ring true for me at all (teenagers question everything) and it ruined the story for me.

Catherine Fisher's Corbenic was one of the only books I've read where the teen refuses the call. Cal exits a train at the wrong station in the dark and wanders down the road ending up at a castle-like building (this is England). He finds himself in the middle of a party where he learns he is on a quest for the Fisher King. He refuses to undertake the quest and goes back to the station and continues on to his uncle's house. But in the weeks that follow he can not forget what he was charged with or the Fisher King himself. His life takes several unexpected turns, he meets many unusual people and while struggling to deal with long running family issues, he realizes that he must accept the charge if he is to stay sane. He can't refuse it - not even if he wants to (and he begins to think he shouldn't anyway). But the whole book is about what he should do which makes for fascinating reading.

It's kind of like all seven seasons of Buffy without the monster killings.

One thing that occurred to me as I set City of Bones aside was that my own YA book is becoming more and more about answering the call - but spread out over the whole text. It's more of a family mystery for most of the book although there is a big bad that must be dodged and avoided. But the mystery is the key and whether or not to fully explore that mystery and accept what she finds at the end is my girl's question. And writing that story, and reading these others, has made me realize in some way we are all engaged in answering the call. What kind of life do we choose to live? What challenges do we choose to face? What battles (at home, at school, at the office, etc.) do we choose to fight? All of this is part of determining what kind of person we choose to be, which at its heart is really what this call business is all about.

And I guess that's the way you have to write about it too; as if you were facing a challenge on the playground or in the cubicle and then decide how would you respond - and thus figure out how you want your characters to respond. I'm still working on this a lot, I know. But I want to get it right for me and hopefully, it will then ring true to other readers as well.