Streams of Babel, by Carol Plum-Ucci

Hm.

I just finished this, am not sure why I'm as upset about it as I am. Teen trash, why should it bug me? Ok, well it's been recommended by people whose opinions I often share, so this is about something.

Ok, on the one hand, it's terror-thriller YA, so that... what, diminishes expectations of a solid plot? I guess it does- YA fiction kind of has to 'star' teenagers, and so that makes for instant plot holes.

I just didn't like it. I didn't like the hidden rah-rah American thing, so carefully concealed behind a veneer of showing 'the other side'- all that talk about Mogadishu and the Kurdish asylum issue just clouded everything and anyway, the terrorists who took down the World Trade Center were from freaking Saudi Arabia, which is never mentioned once in the book. If the terrorists had been Kurds, maybe I could see bringing all that into the book, but they weren't.

Pakistan-raised Shahzad's character seemed strained, as if Plum-Ucci had really had to work to get a guy with his motivations, and the ending really bothered me.

SPOILER SPACE

Ok, I really have to work out what felt so wrong here. Tyler Ping's mother was a spy. Tyler Ping was some kind of uber-hacker who helped Shahzad track down the terror cell meeting place and time- interestingly, a college "Panel to Discuss The True Nature of American Foreign Policy". Yup- that's suspicious, ain't it. People questioning what was going on in 2002? Wicked suspicious.

Anyway, after much Clancy-type absurdity, we reach a point where we are treated to the following lecture:
"A terrorist is a person who holds principles above people...They have replaced people with principles. Principles become their best friends. It sounds very high and mighty. However, we live in a world still too influenced by intelligence over instinct. Thank you, the Enlightenment. But terroristic behavior is not high and mighty. It's sad, and and sad is simple."

Ok, that makes no sense at all, even if one is inclined to diss the Enlightenment (which for the record, I am decidedly a fan of). But there's a contradiction even in this daft little speech- He's saying that instinct is better than intelligence, but then saying that emotion is simple, and bad. And all of this from an intelligence agent!

Anyway, the next awful thing is that (of course) Tyler Ping promptly betrays his mother- if that's not a clear example of 'principle over people', I don't know what is.

Aye yah.

And then of course the end was sickening, when Shahzad visits the World Trade Center site and realizes that to honor his father's life, he'd better get shopping.

"Where is the nearest Kentucky Fry?" I ask in English..."And I want a Yankees baseball cap"..."And then we should make to the Gap. I need the blue jeans."

Yeah. Welcome to America, kid.