Dread Locks (Dark Fusion Series #1) Book

I feel as if I'm always saying this in my reviews of Neal Shusterman's books, but I can't think of another contemporary author who hits the mark so resoundingly time after time, coming up with stories that mix powerful philosophy, gripping suspense, painfully real characters and shocking twists to an effect that I have rarely, if ever, seen from anyone else. Neal Shusterman simply won't ever settle for anything less than the very best that he has to offer, and the big winner is his readers, who have been the beneficiaries of a long line of his outstanding novels from Unwind to Full Tilt, The Shadow Club to Bruiser. It seems to me that Neal Shusterman is already deserving of mention among the recent greats in the young-adult field, authors like Robert Cormier, Katherine Paterson, J.D. Salinger and William Golding, and I hope that some day his legacy may even be talked about on the same level as literary demigods from the past such as Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott and Charles Dickens. I see no limit to how high Neal Shusterman can ascend as a writer, to what he can accomplish going forward from this point in his career.

The surprises that build up so masterfully in Dread Locks go beyond what I ever would have guessed, getting behind our normal reactionary defenses to reach our hearts in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Other books do this, too, but Dread Locks carries a message (more than one, really) that is eminently worth being delivered, an indispensable challenge to the misguided rationales that all of us erect around our lives to protect the tenets that we've convinced ourselves are true even if they obviously aren't. It's so easy to wrap ourselves in a cocoon of what we want to pretend is real, and put on our blinders just as the equine handlers do for racing horses, so that we can go straight ahead and not have to worry about being spooked by the truths that jut up around us like unscalable mountains. No one is capable of ripping off our blinders the way that Neal Shusterman does, giving light the chance to stream in and illuminate reality for us even if we'd rather not look; however, souls brave enough to be shown the truth might find that as their comprehension of their own unfathomably deep lack of understanding increases, so does their ability to accept the things they cannot change, and therefore to stay afloat when the swift rivers of life threaten to drag them beneath the turbulent waters' surface.

"If love of money is the root of all evil, then having money is the root of all boredom. When you can have everything, you find there's nothing you really want. When you can do anything, you find there's nothing you really care to do. You become lazy. Life feels like a boulder you don't want to lift."

'Parker Baer, Dread Locks, P. 137

And this is exactly the situation in which Parker Baer finds himself as Dread Locks begins. He's a fifteen-year-old "fat cat" living with wealthy parents in a wealthy neighborhood, never really wanting for anything that his parents can't give him. A common theme in Neal Shusterman's novels is the idea that we humans tend to stagnate if we stop moving forward, even if that halt in movement is a result of our getting everything we think we really want. The idea is that humans can't maintain relevant lives without a continual flow of new challenges and demands'and yes, even troubles'coming our way. When we stop growing we immediately start dying, regardless of our circumstances, and so we always need that push to movement to keep us from growing fatally complacent. Parker has simply been given a life of too much luxury; therefore, when temptation and seduction arrive next door all in the form of one teenage girl, he's halfway done for before he even meets her.

Tara is her name, and she has a style about her that could captivate anyone, and they would never even realize that they had indeed been taken prisoner. But Tara isn't what she seems, not in any way, shape or form, and as Parker dives deeper into the cesspool of secrets that she holds back from the rest of the world, he'll have to find a way to hold out against her strange power over him if he wants to win back control over his own life, or save the lives of his friends and family. Successfully resisting Tara's mesmerizing pull is the only way for Parker to earn a happy ending; if there is, in fact, a happy ending left to salvage.

If you pick up Dread Locks and notice that it's book one of the Dark Fusion series, I implore you not to write it off as a typical "toss-off" beginning book to a new series. If every other author in the world would write a toss-off in this case, I can assure you that Neal Shusterman has done nothing of the kind. Dread Locks packs the punch of some of Neal Shusterman's greatest novels, filled with all of the escalating suspense and powerful philosophy that you'll find in stand-alones such as Downsiders and Bruiser. Dread Locks is an incredibly potent story that kept me riveted until the awesome, stunning conclusion, and I would give it three and a half stars.