Rebel Genius by Michael Dante DiMartino: I'm sorry, but that's the co-creator of Avatar the Last Airbender

Rebel Genius 

by 

Michael Dante DiMartino

Giacomo is a twelve-year-old kid hiding out in the sewers from an oppressive government that killed his parents. Yeah... It seems a lot darker when you spell it out.  Anyways. In this world a select few people, artists usually but there’s some musicians and writers as well, are so creative and so amazing that they’re chosen by . . .God? Maybe...? At some point in their lives these artists receive some sort of animal that looks weird and has a crown on it’s head. They’re called a Genius and, apparently, they make creativity akin to magic. I've got to admit it, this part was super cool.

Except it’s illegal now. So, Giacomo is understandably upset when he receives his own Genius. A few years ago, it would have been a miracle. Now, it’s more like a death sentence. Luckily for him he’s spirited away by an artist who has been raising other children with geniuses in secret. Unfortunately, Giacomo’s safety lasts only a brief time before an embittered artist begins seeking out some deus ex machina artist tools that can either free the artists from the oppressive government or destroy the world. No big deal, right.

Characters

Giacomo: The bland main character strikes again! I finished this book maybe two or three days ago and I can tell you maybe two things about Giacomo. He likes to draw? He’s got some crazy hair going on? Is this all I can remember about this character?! That’s just depressing. I almost would have preferred hating this kid. Or even mildly disliking him. Anything but complete and utter indifference.

 Aaminah: She was a healer who could make music. Which is impressive to me because I couldn’t play so much as a chord and my idea of healing is slapping on a band-aid and ignoring it until it goes away. I like Aaminah but she was also the mildly cliché super-kind girl. You know, the one whose entire personality could be summed up with ‘nice’.

Milena: I liked her, but she’s kind of just there to be the cliché pretty girl. She’s the only one who wears skirts and the only one who seems to care about her appearance etc. etc. I mean she’s not offensive or anything, but given that Aaminah was already a cliché the cliché uses were becoming pretty annoying.

Savino: He is a jerk... for no reason what so ever. That’s it. That’s all he’s got. Why are you here Savino?

Zanobius: best character in the whole freaking book. Zanobius is a construct, meaning that he ain’t real folks. Mr. Evil McArtist created him from marble then gave him some sort of life/personality/polite-sass. Essentially, he’s Data from Star Trek the Next Generation. Except mildly evil. He’s my favorite. In all honesty Zanobius should have been the main character.

Likes

It’s written by the dude who co-created Avatar the Last Airbender;

 and we all know that I adore Avatar the Last Airbender. Unfortunately, the author also turned out to be a bit of a dislike, but we’ll talk about that later. But you can kind of see Avatar in this book! The map depicts the world as a bunch of islands. There’s magic that changes depending on where your born. The geniuses are different for each land for instance some are birds, some are cats, etc. Heck, maybe there’s a giant goldfish somewhere. The story centers around a bunch of younger kids, there’s even one with no magical powers. He’s not a Sokka, by any means, but he was still reminiscent of Sokka. Dude, even a hint of Sokka is awesome.

Dislikes

There’s a slight problem with the "creativity is magic" idea

 there’s been several books with this kind of magic. For example, Unwanteds, by Brandon Mull, comes to mind first. Now, there’s nothing wrong with magic being tied to creativity, even if it’s pretty cheesy most of the time. The idea in it's essence is good. But, why is the idea only focused on artists or writers or musicians? Do you people think that it doesn’t take creativity to solve math problems? Or create scientific breakthroughs? Personally, I’ve got a foot in both worlds, being both an artist and a mathematically inclined gal, and there’s a good bit of creativity involved on both sides. The definition of "creativity" is too narrow. Math wizards people, it'd be great. Honestly, the more I read this trope the more I feel like it’s just the ‘creative people’ complaining about how little their appreciated. 

I think I maybe had too high expectations. 

And, shouldn't I've had high expectations? One of the co-creators of Avatar the Last Airbender wrote this book! I’m utterly shocked that the book was so . . .meh.

Avatar was one of the best tv shows ever made in my opinion; especially seeing as how it was portrayed as a kid’s show but is totally awesome enough for adults. I barely even read the blurb after seeing the ‘co-creator of Avatar the Last Airbender’ tag. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected so much. After all co-creator doesn’t mean he actually came up with or had anything to do with what I actually liked in Avatar. Heck, maybe he wrote ‘The Great Divide’ episode.

All in all, Rebel Genius isn’t a bad book. In fact, if I’d picked it up when I was a kid I probably would have loved it. This is something that I’m not fond of saying because it feels like I’m giving the book a free pass to be bad, but... there you go. By my standards today it had too many problems to outweigh the sporadic good bits. Still, I might pick up the second book, just to see if he’s fixed any of the kinks.