Girl in the Arena

by Lise Haines

It’s a fight to the death—on live TV—when a gladiator’s daughter steps into the arena.

Lyn is a neo-gladiator’s daughter, through and through.  Her mother has made a career out of marrying into the high-profile world of televised blood sport, and the rules of the Gladiator Sports Association are second nature to their family. 

Always lend ineffable confidence to the gladiator. Remind him constantly of his victories. And most importantly: Never leave the stadium when your father is dying.

The rules help the family survive, but rules—and the GSA—can also turn against you. When a gifted young fighter kills Lyn’s seventh father, he also captures Lyn’s dowry bracelet, which means she must marry him...

For fans of The Hunger Games and Fight Club, Lise Haines’ debut novel is a mesmerizing look at a world addicted to violence—a modern world that’s disturbingly easy to imagine.

Genres: Young Adult, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Teen, Romance

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2009

About the author

LISE HAINES is the author of three novels, Girl in the Arena, Small Acts of Sex and Electricity (a Book Sense Pick in 2006 and one of ten “Best Book Picks for 2006” by the NPR station in San Diego), and In My Sister’s Country,, a finalist for the 2003 Paterson Fiction Prize. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals and she was a finalist for the PEN Nelson Algren Award.

Haines is Writer in Residence at Emerson College. She has been Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard, and her other teaching credits include UCLA, UCSB, and Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She grew up in Chicago, lived in Southern California for many years, and now resides in the Boston area. She holds a B.A. from Syracuse University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Reviews

[Lucy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This view will contain spoilers. All my reviews will probably contain spoilers. I can't be bothered to filter through these things and carefully camoflouge facts from you. This is not the review to read to decide whether or not you want to read the book. This review is a warning that you might wish you'd die if you read the book and it's chock full of spoilers. If you can spoil a plot this craptastic.

Every now and then in the Young Adult genre we have a break out success that spawns one hundred inferior copies. (Although, in Twilight's case I'd say it was an inferior starting point too.) Girl in the Arena is a horrible, muddled attempt at riding on Suzanne Collins' wave.

First and foremost, structurally the book is subpar. I've read several books that didn't use quotation marks to announce dialogue. I found them all difficult to read, but I was willing to get through it if the writing was good enough. The writing was not good enough here. Dialogue is announce with a dash as in

-Hey, I shouted. -What are you doing?

As you can see by my example. There is no close to the quotation 'dash.' The entire book is written in this, and oh how I loathe to use this word, style. It was a novice writer's move and a lazy editor thinking it might be seen as edgy and futuristic. It was just lazy, just hard to read, and it added nothing to the book. Also, the character's thoughts are written all italics, perfectly normal, and in lowercase. AGH.

The book only goes down here from there. Haines did some very, very lazy world building. There is a long winded and rather stupid explanation in the front of the book to justify 'gladiators' existing. This prologue was a whiny, justification someone clearly forced the author to put in because the book didn't stand on its own unsupported. You didn't find out about the world through a gradual exploration. It was one long information dump, quite similar to a dump a person might take after bad Mexican food. All you could do was groan and wonder why you bought this poison in the first place.

Next, and this one is directly for the author. At one point a character has to shave her head. She's compared to Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. This was to let us know that she was still regal and attractive, but all it served to do was take me completely out of the 'story' (because I can't call it that without some sort of irony) and thrust me into memories of a much more compelling film. The time-line of the story was weird and it made these pop-culture references seem totally out of place. Supposedly this was all happening now on an alternate sort of time-line, but all the merging did was annoy me. I just couldn't buy people were frolicking around making movies I liked and books I've read and all this Gladiator crap was wedged in. It was convoluted.

As for the story portion of the book. Sweet Jesus. I'm going to need some alcohol and a few charts and diagrams to bring you through this mother. No, that's not because it's intricate and entertaining. I don't know what would've given you that idea. It's because it's convoluted, tired, and constantly propelled forward by arbitrary rules to cover gaping plot holes.

Imagine you're going to sign a contract to be a gladiator who might die in the arena? What's your motivation? If you're a normal person your answers are money, fame, glory, many naked women/men of amazing beauty, and if you're the pragmatic sort -- They'll kill me otherwise, that's the only way I'm doing it. Well, you're shit out of luck here. The main character's father is a gladiator. They're home doesn't seem to be anything too impressive, nor are their lifestyles lavish. After the father dies in the arena the 'association' he fights for strips the family of everything they own, house and all. Um wtf. Who is going to join to be a gladiator if you leave your widowed wife and orphaned children with nothing more than two pennies to rub together? Stupid people. That's who this world is occupied by.

You can have a perfectly normal job, there's no pain of death motivation here. The main character works in a freaking fast food place, Haines really strained her creativity there.

So the main character gives her father, her seventh father (sixth step), her dowry bracelet to wear for luck. It's very clearly foreshadowed he's going to die. A psychic character runs around predicting his death, a character the main character KNOWS TO BE PSYCHIC. So Dummy, as we will henceforth call the main character, has given her dowry bracelet off to her dad for luck. Dummy, unless your bracelet is magic it's not going to protect him from jackshit and it's just going to get you in a lot of trouble. He dies and his bracelet is taken by the victor because the victor is entitled to spoils of battle. Dummy never considered this possibility, even though if any man except her father ever touches it she'll have to marry him. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing you send off into a crowded arena or really ever take out of a safety deposit box. Dummy is very dumb.

Also, ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE SAME UNIVERSE AND TIMELINE WHERE V FOR VENDETTA WAS FILMED. Are you beginning to get how much that annoyed me?

Dummy runs off!!! to request it back. Bloody, as we will henceforth call Dummy's love interest, takes it off to give to her so that we will understand he's caring and respected Dummy's father. At the last moment -- and this is where the author really shines -- he says he can't give it to her because if he doesn't keep the spoils for at least a year they can add another year to his contract. That's right. We're about to experience a plot hole because the author wants the guy to be lovable but at the same time she needs to propel the story ever forward. Enter rule from the cooperation responsible for Glad Culture.

Dummy cries and hits him and then wanders off. I actually can't remember what happened after? His agent/coach showed up? I blocked this crap out. Later a reporter discovers the bracelet is her dowry bracelet and Dummy gets upset again. Dummy is still determined not to marry him and they can't make her! She's got free will and even if they disqualified her father from the match he died in then they've still got the house... but no they haven't because Haines needs to properly motivate Dummy. The cooperation is taking the house back!!! Because there are no laws to stop something like that. They're also taking all their personal possessions! You're out on the street neekid. Yes, you are. Shiver, Dummy, shiver.

Even after this Dummy's mom, Mrs. Marries-A-Lot, brings the guy who slaughtered her last husband over in the hopes of tossing Dummy at him. Blah blah blah

Dummy only gets properly motivated when her brother might be put into a home because she can be selfish and stupid about everything except that.

This book was a really awful experience for me. All the justification gets annoying without ever really getting believable. Save yourself some money. If you HAVE to read it, get it from the library. Maybe you'll spare some other poor soul who might've taken it out by accident.

[Tamora Pierce · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one was a big disappointment for me, since I was expecting--well, a girl gladiator. In this alternate history U.S., back yard gladiator games developed as an adjunct to the Vietnam War. As the popularity and complexity of the games rose, they were bought by Caesar's (the gambling franchise) and given the polish given to professional wrestling, including televised matches, toy and clothing franchises, and even a college at which women can learn to be good gladiator wives. (There is no mention I can recall of women's liberation; women hold down jobs in the book, but the gladiators' wives association seems like a 50's women's club, taught to remind their men of where they put their swords, and how to present themselves when their man has been killed in the arena.)

Lyn has been raised as a gladiator's daughter--her mother actually married seven of them, the first six having been killed in the ring. The rules require her mother to never marry again if her seventh husband dies in the ring. It is this event that puts the title notion into play: Lyn gives stepfather Tommy her Japanese dowry bracelet for luck, and when his opponent, known only as "Uber," kills him, Uber takes the bracelet and wears it. According to the rules, Lyn must then marry him. Unwilling to marry, Lyn decides to fight Uber in the ring.

This is where the whole story breaks down. Lyn has had some training in the past, but it's been sporadic, and Haines doesn't seem to realize that ANY athletic excellence has to be maintained by hard, constant work. Lyn trains for the fight only for a couple of months. She is a girl of 17 or a little more, going up against the very muscular gladiator who killed her stepfather, one of the best. It's said at a couple of points that the few groups of female gladiators are not well-respected and don't compete on this level, yet Lyn gets Caesar's to agree to a binding contract based on the results of this fight.

And during all this she is shopping with her mother because she is supposed to be dating her future husband, Uber; talking to her best friend Mark, who wants to be more but she doesn't want to deal; watching out for her special needs brother who gives unnerving, prophetic statements, and going out with Uber to explain why she won't marry him. She also constantly informs the reader she is a pacifist, partly due to having been raised by gladiators.

I won't go into the way the writer deals with the final fight, but I think it is a cop-out. Yes, there are many interesting parallels in the book with our time, quite a few cautionary notes, but it feels more messagey than anything else, and the ending was not satisfying for me.

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to give Girl in the Arena four--possibly even five--stars, because it has something few other books I've had the pleasure of reading has. Something I've been looking for, desperately, within YA fiction. Something that just...I don't know... Just speaks to me, I guess; feels true. I can relate to it, to the protagonist, how she feels. I understand her because, in a way, I was her. Maybe, from time to time, I still am her.

To help you understand where I'm coming from I need to go back. Way back. Back to August 3, 2008, when I finished reading the flaming garbage pile that is called Breaking Dawn. As I closed the book, I sat back and contemplated what I'd just read. I was speechless at first, trying to pinpoint why Bella's picture perfect Happily Ever After made me angry beyond all reason.

The next morning I called my friends, asked them what they thought of the book. And you know what? I was shocked--shocked!--to discover none of my friends were dissatisfied. So I ran to the internet--to GoodReads, as it turns out--and sought out others who felt the way I did. I discovered a little group of disillusioned Twilight fans and together we ripped Breaking Dawn to shreds. Upon doing so, I saw what it was that bugged me so much: EVERYTHING. The entire book.

I especially hated how everyone was eating that piece of creeptastic wish-fulfillment up and begging for more. Listening to people refer to it as 'beautiful literature' was enough to stoke my fiery rage. I was embarrassed for every grown woman who referred to stalkerific Edward as the perfect man. I felt bad for the teens who thought Edward and Bella were the epitome of twu wuv--The ideal.

So stupid, the lot of them, I thought to myself. I'm glad my girls are too young to read the Twilight series. It was then a bunch of horrible and very-much insane thoughts popped into my head.

Oh, holy crap! My girls--my babies!--will grow up and they might read this garbage and think it's romantic. What if they start wishing to be just like Bella? What if they allow their lives to revolve around "beautiful" and mysterious boys? What if they lose the best parts of themselves in pursuit of an unrealistic, bastardized version of romantic love? They'll become pathetic losers. Weaklings with no identities, no goals to call their own. No one will respect them! They'll die alone! In vomit-filled gutters! Oh, the humanity!

Clearly I was being crazy, but can you blame me? Twilight mania had just set in--worldwide might I add. It was an ugly time in history.

I was upset Twilight was this Really Big Deal, had such a massive following. I hated that no one could shut up about it--not even me! I kept wondering what I could do to insure my girls wouldn't grow up to be useless human beings like Bella Swan. And then it came to me: keep teaching them. Encourage them to be themselves, to be proud of who they are. Teach about setting goals and what steps to take in order to accomplish them. Encourage them to think for themselves, teach them self-reliance.

There was a bunch of other things I resolved to do, but I couldn't figure out how to solve the pesky problem of the Twilight series and books that were similar. I was never going to forbid my girls from reading them, but I wanted them to be smart enough to see past all the glitter and not get too caught up in the fantasy.

I came up with the idea of building a little library, a collection made up of the best books. I wanted it to be something my girls could enjoy, so of course it needed a killer YA selection. But what books would I put there? It would have to contain more than just the classics, that I was sure, but was there any contemporary YA literature that was worthwhile? At that time I just didn't know.

And that, my fellow GoodReaders, is when I started reading everything YA in pursuit of awesome books with really great protagonists. Over the years I've read some heinous stuff, but I've also had the opportunity to read some truly beautiful literature. This book, Girl in the Arena, is, in some ways, among the best of the best. It contains a pretty solid message without being preachy. It brings up some legitimate questions, questions teenage girls should be asking themselves if they aren't already doing so. Questions I once asked myself, about who I was, what I stood for, how strongly I stood for it, what lengths I'd go in order to be true to my identity, and whether or not I cared how my actions might affect family members and other loved ones. This book? Asks all those questions and more. It introduces some interesting ideas, too. Honestly, I got lost within the pages of Girl in the Arena. In some ways it was a really great, near ideal, reading experience.

All of that said, this book is riddled with flaws. Errors of every sort, big and little. Glaring ones that made me want to give up on this book early on. The world-building is pretty weak in some places, non-existent in others. This book assumes I know exactly what's going on in the protagonists world. But see, I don't. I don't even know what year it's su
L pposed to be. I was never sold on the Gladiator culture, why they all did what they did. I didn't understand why anyone would adhere to such stringent rules, rules that interfered/controlled their personal lives so thoroughly. Especially when religion was in no way part of the equation. Was the government involved? What happened to the government, exactly? Where were the protestors, the people who opposed gladiatorial battles to the death? Where was PITA? Why weren't they throwing buckets of red paint at the gladiators who fought and killed animals in the arena?

The writing style was enough to make me want to poke my eyes out (until I got used to it). Instead of using quotation marks to indicate dialogue, the author used em dashes. At first I wasn't always sure who was saying what. It looks like this:

—Maybe we should stop eating meat.

—You better talk with Allison, I said. —The freezer is half cow.

—We could give it away.

—Before she gets home? I joked.

He got another knife out of the drawer and began to cut up the tomatoes.

—Sure, why not? he said earnestly.

See what I mean? Really annoying. And really, who writes like that?

There are other things that bothered me, but I don't care to go into all that, especially since I pretty much love this book despite all the flaws. I know it doesn't quite make sense considering how picky I can be. I can't say I completely understand why I feel the overwhelming need to overlook the glaring technical imperfections and give this book three stars, but I do.

This book just speaks to me on multiple levels. And no, it's not because of some convoluted love story (although, yeah, there is the beginnings of a love story but that isn't a major element of the book). It's just about a girl trying to do the "right" thing, whatever that may be, and not lose herself in the process. She wants more than what her upbringing says she's allowed to have. She wants to be more. In the end she is and I can't imagine a more beautiful Happily Ever After than that. After all, that's what I want for myself and it's what I want for my girls.

Officially 3-stars. Unofficially 5-stars.

[Anne Osterlund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyn is a pacifist—she thinks. Though avoiding violence is quite a challenge when one is the daughter of seven gladiators (six dead, one alive) and—even worse—a Gladiator’s Wife. But nothing in Lynn’s life has ever been easy. Not watching her former fathers die in their matches, or protecting her oracle of a brother from being placed in a facility, or worrying about her mother’s next faux death.

But when Lyn’s bracelet is picked up in the arena by her father’s killer and she has to choose between marrying the guy and fighting him, the whole pacifism thing just might be on its way out.

Girl in the Arena is full of surprising twists and turns, an original setting (intriguing with its variances between the future, past, and present), and characters featuring more than one shocking entrance. And exit.

[jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is like nothing and everything i expected it to be.

born into a world of violence, 18-year-old lyn, the daughter of 7 neo-gladiators decides to fight uber, the guy who killed her 7th father and took her dowry bracelet, so she can claim her now threatened independence and prevent being a glad-wife like her mother, who represents everything she doesn't want to be. but there's also thad, her unusual 8-year-old brother, seemingly able to predict the future, who she wants to take care of.

before i started reading, i had this idea about a lot of fighting and action in this book. and i couldn't haven been more wrong about this aspect, since it's focus lies on relationships. both broken and mended. not on the romance, which the book's blurb leads to believe. i'd like to reference to a neat, short review here < click >. nearly half the book consists of flashbacks, illustrating lyn’s life from year zero, bit by bit. her tense relationship with a depressive mother. then, her quirky brother and of course her friends, but also the way lyn handles her grief when the unthinkable happens and must decide on what she wants and stick to it.

haines’ uses dashes instead of quotation marks, which irritated me and her writing style confused me at some occasions. definitely took me some time to getting used to it.

if you expect an action-packed hunger games-like book. go elsewhere. this book’s not for you. but if you are willing to try something new. go for it. you’ll like it.

the ending leaves space for making up your own ending or the author writing a sequel. i’m happy with both options.

[book_nymph_bex · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't say I liked this book. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't wonderful either. My main problem was that I couldn't buy into the world that Haines created to tell her story. It supposedly takes place in contemporary time though it never gives exact dates that I noticed (unless referencing the past). There is this huge Gladiator culture that people love and live. And I couldn't wrap my mind around Americans in 2010 embracing murder. And that is the whole basis of this plot. If it was a different continent or a different time period or there were huge uprisings everywhere and there was no government or stability, I might have bought it. But mother's raising sons to be gladiators? And being disappointed when they aren't? Not any mothers I know.

Also, the cover is very misleading. She doesn't even decide to train to be a gladiator until half way through the book and doesn't make it into the stadium until the last fifteen pages.

There are only three gladiator fights in the novel and they are extremely short. Would people really pay money and take the time to go to the arena to watch a 30 second fight? to the death? I don't think so.

The most annoying thing of all was that instead of quotation marks when people speak, it's dashes. Drove me Bonkers. Really, why?

the cover is cool. The concept is cool. The execution not so much

[Dana · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm just marking this off so I can remember the title of possibly the worst gladiator YA novels ever. And there are a lot of YA gladiator novels.

Bad writing, info dumps, and whiny characters, oh my! I thought this would be my cup of tea.... it certainly wasn't.

[Morgan F · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have really conflicted feelings about this book. I was expecting some cheap Hunger Games rip-off, but it wasn't like that at all.

This book is about Lyn, who has had seven gladiator fathers, due to her mothers career as a Glad wife. As a substitute to war, an entire Glad culture has arisen, blood sport being just as common as football. Lyn's life is ruled by bylaws put forth by the Gladiator Sports Association. It is these bylaws that say she is required, through a chain of unfortunate events, to marry Uber, the warrior who defeated her seventh father in the arena. Rather than give in to these demands, she proposes an alternative: fighting him in the arena.

Initially, I thought I wasn't going to like this. At first it was because I thought it was a rip-off. Then it was because the writing and formatting was odd and distracting. And then it was because I realized that the action would be slow-coming. But then, about half-way through the book, I realized I kinda liked it. Lyn, the narrator was endearing, and the writing was starting to grow on me. I stopped with the expectations and just went with the flow. By the end, I didn't hate it as much as I did to start with.

The writing is not typical of a young-adult book, and that threw me off for a while. I appreciated that the author was doing something different. And I shall warn everyone right now, this book has no quotation marks. This drove me insane to begin with, and I was frustrated with the author. I mean, why couldn't she use quotation marks like a normal author? But in no time, I didn't even realize the difference.

I liked Lyn. She was endearing. She wasn't a Mary Sue, yet she wasn't a stereotypical bad-ass robot. I understood her motives. But I did not understand her brother. Her little brother, who is autistic, is also supposedly a prophet/oracle. I thought this book was set in an alternative now. I don't get the whole mysticism thing. And I also didn't get how they had things like You Tube still, but also virtual living machines that can create a functioning virtual being. But I did like the whole history of GSA. That does seem odd enough to be true.

Don't expect a hardcore thrilling action novel. Despite being about violence, this book had very little action. Lyn wasn't even in the arena until the final pages. I think this is misleading on the marketer's part. This book is way more contemplative than it sounds. I got bored in some places, but I was overall absorbed.

I am still confused about my feeling for this book, so I apologize for the possible wishy-washiness of this review. I can see how some people hate it, some people love it. It's an odd little book, and here's an odd little book trailer to match.

[oliviasbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

***Read and reviewed in 2010 ***
Girl in the Arena is a futuristic novel. Yet it does not tell a future story; it is firmly anchored in a – only slightly altered – ‘now’ by using plenty of pop-culture references to today’s society (Youtube, Second Life, Sofia Copolla ...).

Closing one eye, the fictional turns of the past decades and the imagined outcome for the present even seem almost likely. But the likelihood of the exact setting does not strike me as so important. If you peel away the alterations, you basically find the engaging story of a young woman who grew up inside a very constrictive and conservative sub-culture - comparable to a religious sect minus a deity – whose present leader cunningly makes tons of money by selling his congregation’s members as both admired and dreaded celebrities to the media (fan merchandising included), by feeding the masses delight in violence and death and by having a tight grip on the members’ private fortunes.

The heroine has started having doubts about her community’s harsh set of 128 rules and wonders if the founder’s original ideas are misinterpreted by the leader. The reader wishes for her to be able to break herself free, but she is – quite realistically – aware of the effects her refusal to comply would have familywise and moneywise: Not fulfilling her family’s expectations would mean abandoning her emotionally disabled (maybe autistic) younger brother she fiercely loves, upsetting her manic-depressive mother, who has a couple of unsuccessful suicide attempts behind her, and could result in losing the house. In spite of her resolution not to become a replica of her fanatic, unhappy and heavily dependent mother, her beliefs and her behaviour show that her childhood spent inside the community has rooted deeply and the only friends she can turn to for advice and support are members as well who offer only limited comprehension or none.

Lise Haines has found a clever way to make us wonder about restrictive communities, about good intentions / idealistic theories turned fundamentalistic without (mis)using the concept of an existing church or association to demonstrate. I admire that. Also she points out how only slight changes in the law or even one-time exceptions can result in a chain of unforeseen consequences that alter society and for instance its view on the matter of life and death. A third, sociocritical, impulse deals with the power of the media and how a single powerful person can play the media. An incident noted casually that shocked me, for instance, was the promise of free-parking for all spectators who left the arena within 20 minutes after a show: The arena management speculated on the “good trampling” to occur, recorded as a body count on the margin of the TV coverage, which guaranteed the undivided interest of the viewership.

Last but not least it remains to say that all this would not have sufficed for a four star rating. The family problems and how Lyn dealt with them, the tender relationship to her brother, her slow personal growth, her strength and also her surprise, when she recognized she liked her enemy in a way, were well done in my opinion. Even the unusual use of hyphens for direct speech added to the quiet melody of the enfolding drama.

A comment about the cover: I love it, but it is not correct. Lyn has a shorn head at the time she enters the arena as a gladiator.

[Karlyflower *The Vampire Ninja, Luminescent Monster & Wendigo Nerd Goddess of Canada (according to The Hulk)* · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read pre-goodreads. I refuse to write a review.....

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I'm working my way through all the Cybils YA Fantasy/Science Fiction nominees, when GIRL IN THE ARENA shows up on my doorstep (thank you, Bloomsbury!). Truthfully, I'm a little supernatural creatured out just about now and so this dystopian, neo-gladiator, fight to the death novel seemed made to order. I remember seeing it at BEA and somehow not snagging a copy. I'd read a few reviews here and there, some favorable, some middling, and I knew I loved the cover. I mean, look at that. It's awesome. Admittedly, I could do without the cheesy tagline and the "Fight to the Death!" sign in the background. And, having read the book, a certain aspect of the cover is sort of glaringly inaccurate. But somehow I was able to overlook these minor quibbles, because that's simply one sweet cover. In retrospect, I think it's a good choice as that particular inaccuracy should be part of the reading experience and not ruined by the cover art.

Lyn is known as the Daughter of Seven Gladiators. Her mother, Allison, has made a career of marrying gladiators and perfecting the persona of the perfect Glad wife. The seventh (and current) husband, Tommy G., is Lyn's favorite by far. He actually spends time with her and her little brother Thad. He's stuck by her manic mother, when no one else can stand her. He even supports Lyn's growing interest in nonviolence and listens to her read from the book she is writing--A History of the Gladiator Sports Association. But their time together is growing short as Tommy stares down the bullet of what he fears will be his last match. His next opponent, Uber, is said to be the real deal. And Thad's eerie, erratic predictions don't bode well for Tommy surviving his next episode in the arena. But when Uber stands over Tommy's body and scoops up the bracelet her stepfather wore for good luck, Lyn's world unexpectedly fragments into more pieces than she can piece together again. For it's her bracelet Uber scoops up. And Lyn knows the GSA bylaws better than anyone. The only gladiator allowed to wear that bracelet is her father . . . or her husband.

I could not put this book down. I mean it was physically difficult to tear my eyes away from the page. Yes, it's a dystopian novel about gladiators fighting to the death while thousands, millions of desensitized viewers watch live and on TV. And, yes, it features a young woman who is determined to protect her family at all cost. But there the similarities to The Hunger Games end. Where Suzanne Collins' book takes place in a futuristic post-apocalyptic chunk of North America, Lise Haines' novel is set in an all-too-familiar present-day America. I spent the entire time feeling like this kind of ultra-violent, death-as-entertainment society could be just around the corner, that today's reality shows are one step away from the bizarre rituals Lyn is privy to. Interestingly, growing up in the military, I felt a surprising kinship with Lyn, Mark, and Uber's experiences growing up in the Glad culture. I've had countless conversations over the years with other military brats who echoed my thoughts. It's simply a culture of its own, separate and unique from others and only those who are "born in," as Lyn would say, can fully understand what it's like and what it means. The writing was abrupt and choppy in just the right way, dashes in place of quotes, etc. It reminded me at times of Robin McKinley's Sunshine. A favorite passage:

--Lyn, how did you get injured?
This from a tall male reporter with chopped blond hair.
--People were cheering wildly for Tommy at the stadium, I say. --I think a bottle flew out of someone's hands in the excitement.
--Do you think it's possible that someone aimed it at your head intentionally?
I look up at the house again. Thad is pacing back and forth in front of his bedroom window now. He waves. I wave back. He motions frantically for me to come into the house.
--Glad fans everywhere have shown enormous respect for my family and thought Tommy G. fought heroically. Their loyalty is helping my family through this loss. It is, however, a rough sport. People do get killed. Though I should add that Caesar's Inc. works very hard to ensure maximum safety to those who attend the competitions.
Mark whispers in my ear, --You're good.
--Have you met with Uber? another reporter asks.
--No. Not yet.
--So you plan to?
--There are no plans at this time, I say.
--Do you dream of becoming a Glad wife?
Up in the house, Thad pleads with me to come inside. Cameramen and photographers push their equipment as close as possible now, closer. The soggy summer air presses in. And I realize that I'm right there, at the end of a perfect media moment. All I have to do is come up with something that rings with warmth, something that conveys hope to a million girls about the life of the GSA wife. Then I'll be out of here, released into our home, into Allison's mind, my brother's predictions. But there's something about this particular question. I think of the number of times Allison has been asked about any plans to become a Glad wife again. And suddenly my mind is thrown into reverse and I just toss off an answer, the first thing that comes to mind.
--Sometimes I dream of becoming a gladiator.

And that's Lyn. Completely and firmly incapable of spouting crap to the media, to her family, or to herself. It's so much of why I loved her. She doesn't prevaricate, she doesn't hedge, she tells the truth. She takes her responsibilities and her heritage beyond seriously, yet she is true to herself and her growing understanding of the horrors of the society she has grown up in. She refuses to perpetuate the system that has entrapped her mother and held their lives hostage for so many years. I had waffled back and forth on whether or not to read this one, going from eager excitement to fearing it was merely a cheap Hunger Games knockoff and not wanting to risk the disappointment. I'm so glad I did because, like its protagonist, GIRL IN THE ARENA stands completely on its own feet. It's dystopian storytelling at its most honest, urgent, and very best. It's bleakness tempered by true friendships and honest interactions between human beings shoved into conditions they were never meant to withstand. The few quiet scenes between Lyn and her brother Thad, her best friend Mark, and particularly her opponent/intended Uber rang with authenticity. I freaking loved this book and it has instantly earned a spot on my Best Books of 2009 list.

[Clare · Rating 1 out of 5]

A vague, poorly written book trying to capitalize on the rush, brutality and teen sexual tension that the Hunger Games offered. Oh, and there's a useless mother and needy sibling as well. Same dissatisfying ending as Mockingjay, too. Lise Haines is not an author whose writing style I enjoy. Lots of dashes instead of quotes. It's hard to understand where the conversation starts and the sarcastic inner remark begins. Part of the reason why grammar nerds get so upset is that a message is clearer when it follows simple grammatical rules. I was angry at myself for finishing this book.

[Ari Reavis]

This is officially the first book I've marked as dnf. I'm sorry, I really tried.

[Corinne · Rating 1 out of 5]

What I expected was a novel about a girl who participates in a roman arena and fights for her life, but what I got was, well, something different. Lyn must basically choose between marriage to the guy who killed her latest beloved step-father. I cannot really understand, why she chooses to fight with him instead for her freedom, because 1. after the suicide of her mom, she and her autistic brother have just each other and 2. the gladiator she's supposed to marry falls in love with her and offers her the chance to flee with him in another country. Why doesn't she take her chances with him? He is trained to fight and she is more portrayed as a natural fighter with little to non real experience in the arena! Also, the trick she's trying to use a computational copy of herself to actually fight for her seems like an easy way out of this story. For me, if she really puts her freedom before anything else and is that idealistic, she should have fought in the arena herself from the beginning and not send in a duple. That shows me, that she's not really willing to risk everything for her freedom and therefore the option to flee the country is at least more honest and shows more willingness to take risks than this cop-out! She simply used a loophole! The only one I felt sympathy for was her computer copy!!!

[Kaylabee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, I wish I could give this book less than a one-star rating. It is so bad it makes me want to throw up a little bit. I feel hollowed out and totally bummed after reading it. I kept reading, even though it was so confusing and stupid and badly executed right from the beginning, because I was hoping it would get better. BUT IT JUST GOT WORSE.

So, FIRST OF ALL, the author just, like, completely ignored all reason and realistic-ness by putting this whole gladiator culture in the middle of the modern world. It could have been cool, like an underground thing, but instead it was just STUPID. Who in their right mind would allow a COMPANY to dictate everything in their lives? Not just one person, but a whole community of people. And they acted like it was totally cool, no problem. Just normal life. No. Just, no. That's ridiculous and stupid.

SECONDLY, rules from this company are made up willy nilly! I mean, if you're going to use this stupid bracelet that apparently means you have to get married as an integral part if the story, at least foreshadow or mention something about it when they're first discussing said bracelet! Don't just be like, "oh! Btw, there's a rule that I have to marry the guy who gets my bracelet! K, bail!" And it didn't just happen once, it happened all throughout the book! I felt like this author just threw everything together sloppily and then used these stupid rules to cover huge, gaping plot holes in the hopes that we readers wouldn't notice. Ugh.
And then, as if that's not bad enough, there are a million things that aren't even remotely important to the story or the world building that are just pasted in there randomly, with no further explanation or development!
"Why is it important that this guys body is being kept preserved in a tank?"
"I dunno! I'm just writin'!"
I want to rip my hair out and then die over how stupid and frustrating this is.

THIRDLY, the main character is so stupid! Like, she really REALLY doesn't want to marry this guy, to the point of being willing to kill herself over it....even though she super likes him and he likes her and then after everything goes down they start dating? And she's supposedly a pacifist, but as soon as things don't go her way she throws that out the window and starts training to kill her fiancee?

WHY IS THIS BOOK PUBLISHED!? I FEEL LIKE IM READING A SIXTH GRADERS ROUGH DRAFT. IF THE PUBLISHING WORLD IS SO HARD TO GET INTO, YOU WOULD THINK THAT THE BOOKS THAT ARE PUBLISHED WOULD BE BETTER QUALITY.

ARE EDITORS NOT CHECKING TO MAKE SURE THAT STORIES ARE GOOD ANYMORE!?!?

WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO!?

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not what I expected. I assumed, and I'm sure a lot of other people did as well, that it would be similar to The Hunger Games, due to the title and the summary on the inside cover. It isn't, not by a long shot.

I feel guilty for comparing it to the Hunger Games, but inevitably, comparisons will be drawn. While the book by Suzanne Collins focuses about Katniss actually being in the arena, Girl in the Arena offers a more introspective view into how war and bloodshed affect the people outside of the action. A lot of the book focused on how Lyn handled her strained relationship with her mother, and how she cared for her younger, autistic brother Thad. It was an engaging read, but not completely engrossing.

I might have given it four stars if not for the disconcerting lack of quotation marks and a couple of grammatical errors.

[Krystle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosh, I was so amped up for this book and then it all came crashing down like twenty huge elephants stomping on my brain.

The beginning of this book started out with a lot of promise with the sudden death of her father in a brutal way, her despair, and how one simple gesture now comes around to bite her in the ass. Specifically, having to marry the killer of her father. I thought it was excellent start and then it just took a steep nose dive from there.

One of the main problems is the guy (I forgot his name, yipes) can't be taken seriously. A killer but his character portrayal was contrary to how he's set up to be. He's a huge figure of a man yet is somehow utterly soft and sweet? What? A total mismatch, I don't know how this romance worked at all.

And the fighting? There isn't much of that either. No, siree. I absolutely hated the excessive and insane amounts of name dropping in here from the brand goods, companies, products. I don't know but it seriously got on my nerves. Secondly, what is the deal with her avoiding the use of quotations? She just uses a dash to mark whenever someone speaks. It's an intriguing method but it felt snotty and pretentious and it was totally jarring in a lot of areas.

I thought the ending was a cop-out and was too neatly wrapped out. Everyone's got their happy ending without any repercussions. Well, except maybe for the guy who was in love with her but other than that, everything was all cheery do and just too easy.

The background and lurking presence of her father and his personality, I thought, was well done and the different ways the mother and the daughter dealt with their grief. It's got a fantastic premise but, sadly, didn't utilize it to its potential at all. I absolutely love the cover, though. It is freaking GORGEOUS. If I had to judge this book just by its cover it would get 10 stars plus. Too bad it isn't.

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard to enjoy a book when you simply can't buy into the premise. When it feels like the plot is forced and the worldbuilding is one question away from crumbling down.

I enjoyed most of the writing and loved the main character though, so I certainly saw some good in it.

[Grace Mycek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where to begin with this book? I thought the idea was phenomenal. I mean a book about gladiators!! I don't even think that's really been done before in the young adult genre...and to be honest I'm getting a little distressed and bored from all these standard vampire/werewolf/zombie teen books. It is basically the same concept and plotline redone by different authors in every novel I pick up. It's an inescapable representation now quite overdone in the juvenile/young adult world. There were endless possibilites that could be explored with a gladiator storyline and I had hope that Haines would branch off into all these different options. However, I ended up being considerably disappointed in the lack of development throughout the plotline and the confusion regarding several of the main characters as well as the back-and-forth philosophical point in the feminist perspective of the story.



First of all, this story is not a dystopian novel as I been led to believe when I picked it up. It actually occurs in the present day time and most of the same historical events that have taken place in the current society today have taken place in the novel but some of the historical time periods have been altered to allow for the rising and structuralization of the GSA, or the Gladiator Sports Association. The Glad- games are kind of like the Ultimate Fighting Championships that take place, although these fights either end in severe mutilation or even death.

Lyn is the daughter of a Gladiator and as such is expected to become a Glad- wife. In the beginning of the story, she seems to want to just forget about Glad- sports altogether and take off in hiding as she morally opposes them and wants to build a life devoid of their controll. The end of the story gets a little confusing with Lyn's character though because all of a sudden she wants to become a Gladiator herself and possibly lead to a revolution overthrowing the Glad- way of life. **Spoiler** Then she takes an easy out when she is thrown into an actual competition herself though and ends up not really even fighting. I mean I expected an all out fight to the death in this book. That's what it claims transpires on the back summary, but that's not how it happens. I felt bewildered and frustrated by Lyn's character throughout the entire book. One moment, she's over-emotional and upset about something, and the next she acts cold and detached from emotion. At one point, she has a dream to become a revolutionary but then decides she only cares about herself and the outcome of her actions in reference to just herself. Then she's also between two guys the entire time. When she meets Uber, the Gladiator who killed her father in battle, she hates him for what he's done but then as the two become increasingly closer, Lyn becomes comfortable with him and starts experiencing feelings for him because she finds out he honestly regrets having to fight her father....but on the other hand, she also has Mark who is a family friend that's in love with her supposedly (but he basically ends up with somebody else at the end...yeah that didn't make sense) and she's confused about who she should choose to be with.


****SPOILER****
I thought that using the avatar at the end to fight in the battle in Lyn's place was completely ridiculous. C'mon and actually fight if it honestly mattered that much to you to petition the GSA to truly allow this spar. Lyn essentially uses her avatar as her scapegoat. I wanted to see her really fight and stand up for her beliefs in a passionate manner but this allowed her an easy out and was disconcerting to say the least.


Also, what was up with her brother's predictions? I didn't understand why that was necessary at all in the story. And how is it even realistic or possible? If there was a reason why he had the predictions or an overall outcome to them that led to the culmination of the book, than that would have been understandable, but frankly this random idea clogged up the story to me and was completely unrelatable and irrelevent to the point that was trying to be made.


The only part of this story I truthfully enjoyed was the existance of the feminist beliefs that some of the characters in the story took up. Lyn was only tolerable at those points in the book when she wanted to take up the symbol of hope for the women in the Glad- society and point them in a new direction away from being submissive and controlled Gladiator wives. I love books that stand up for these kinds of ideals and that was literally one of the only reasons I didn't give this book 2 stars instead of 3.


I expected more than I received from this novel :/

[Abby Zimmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished the book and honestly still could not tell you the genre, like what even happened? Also the forced love triangle between childhood best friend who she never had romantic feels for and her fathers murderer was just ew

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the back of the book, Tom Robbins (!!!) exclaims: "What Lise Haines has wrought is a kind of comic book without pictures, a wild pop novel that--rocking with violent energy and bopping with social satire--can generate suspense, horror, laughter and even twinges of tenderness."

And you know what? It's all true. I started reading this book after work yesterday and couldn't put the damn thing down. Haines crafts a society with mores and a time line based on current day that it is oft indistinguishable from our own world. You forget that this is a work of fiction and start thinking that you're riding along in the main character's head, à la "Being John Malkovich."

Pre-history: gladiator groups are started on a Fight Club level after one man's son attempts a crazy death-by-cats act as a draft-dodge for Vietnam. The gladiator groups get bigger, there's media frenzy over safety & the deaths, then the groups go underground and eventually become commercialized. This commercialized culture of death & dismemberment is where the book starts.

Lyn, the narrator & main character, is the 18-year-old daughter of seven gladiators (six of them step-dads) in a current-day America setting. GLAD culture is ruled by ancient laws applied by corporate lawyers and squirrely contracts--the type of contracts that are so corrupt with loopholes that they put Swiss cheese to shame.

When Lyn's father dies in the arena, he is penalized by a rule made that morning that would enable the Caesar corporation to revoke all of his family's assets. The victor of the match also happens to pick up Lyn's dowry bracelet, which she had given her father for luck; by GLAD law, any man beside a father who touches a gladiator daughter's dowry bracelet must marry her. Yowza.

What makes this book amazing is the rich alterna-universe pop culture that Haines, almost offhandedly, weaves in alongside Lyn's growing-up journey. She has created a different world that the reader identifies with, enabling easy acceptance of cultural phenomenon that doesn't happen in our world--but it's phenomenon that could occur without any modifications to how our world currently operates.

Here's an excerpt from Lyn's post-date kiss narration:
"..if we were in a crowd of reporters they'd ask if he tastes like my father's blood and then I'd probably just go home and maybe I'd cry a little but probably I'd look for Thad and see what he needed, because it's a whole lot easier to think about his needs than anything else.

But we didn't have any witnesses and I said goodnight and flagged down a taxi."

Bam! What a paragraph & chapter ender. I loved Haines' punch so much that I read the last sentence out loud, exclaiming at word crafting and poetic flow and got a "yes dear" look in response. Mainly because I'd been doing that throughout the day with other snippets from the book and was interrupting a rousing reading of "Search Engine Optimization."

The book ends well enough and could be stand-alone, but I'm hoping there'll be a sequel--you don't come across YA writing like this very often.


Other things to note:
- Thad, Lyn's special needs brother, is an autistic oracle. It was an ingenious way to evoke Greek & Roman mythology in a present day form.

- References to Second Life are not the lame attempts at teen appeal that I've found elsewhere. The author was patiently advised by her teen daughter :)

- Lyn is a GREAT role model. She thinks things through most of the time, isn't perfect, and shows how early values can still shape you after you've set them aside for values of your own choosing. I saw my religious past mirrored in her GLAD past and really liked how the author described Lyn's thought process for arriving at her own set of values.

- Teen friendships & dating aren't a main focus but are still covered quite thoughtfully. Haines depicts Lyn as a very true-to-life teen with girl bullies and fair weather friends, boys who fit in the best-friend category but wish they didn't, and vacation romances of the love'em & leave'em variety. I like it when fiction writers remember that their characters are people, too, not just banal plot-moving mechanisms.

[Raina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subtitle of this book (which only shows up on the title page of the book itself) is "A Novel Containing Intense Prolonged Sequences of Disaster and Peril." The cover has "Daughter. Celebrity. Neo-gladiator." under the title. But this is not a book about a female gladiator. Or even a teenage girl who wants to be a gladiator. This is a book about the daughter of 7 gladiators who is being pressured to be a gladiator's wife and join glad culture. It's almost incidental that she ends up fighting in the arena, and it's only one fight. Right from the start, this feels like a mis-sell.

Girl in the Arena starts off with a Prologue which details the history of the Gladiator Sports Association. The way it reads, it feels like Haines is merely overlaying a short-term revival of Gladiator sports on top of our current world. But things are not as close to home as they seem at first. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with gradually introducing alternate world/dystopian elements, theoretically. But something about the way the various elements were introduced (wtf holographics?) seemed disjointed and felt out of the blue and not cohesive. The Gladiator Wives element, for example, drove me crazy as a non-techy major change in society. I can't imagine that kind of subjugation of women being acceptable in any version of our current world. The clash between ripped-from-the-headlines references to pop culture and world events combined with this and other dystopian elements felt strange.

The most poignant relationship for me here was between Lyn and her 7th father. It made me think about adoptive relationships. And I think the poignancy should have been between Lyn and her brother, or maybe Lyn and her mother. I didn't identify very strongly with Lyn herself either, maybe because I didn't get her world.

I also wanted Haines to go further with the military themes. The motivation behind starting the neo-gladiators (according to the history) is a father's grief at his son's death during the Vietnam War. There is a strict ranking system for the glads. And I wanted her to make that a touch more explicit, and discuss violence in society more. Maybe her comment was in the futility of getting over that, because in less than 50 years, there is no connection between the peace movement and the glad commercial machine. But I wanted more there.

ALL THAT SAID, though, I liked this. It kept me reading. I looked forward to reading the story. I enjoyed picking it apart to find the things above that I didn't enjoy so much. It was readable and made me think. The last scene surprised me, even though I don't think it should have. And broke my heart. And that's always good.

[Nadine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zum Inhalt:
Im Gegensatz zu anderen Dystopien spielt dieses Buch in unserer Zeit, allerdings haben Gladiatorenveranstaltungen auf Leben und Tod Einzug in die Unterhaltungs-"Kultur" genommen. Zunächst reine Untergrundveranstaltungen, wurden sie irgendwann in den USA legalisiert.

Lyns Mutter ist eine Gladiatoren-Ehefrau mit Leib und Seele, 6 Ehemänner sind bereits in der Arena gestorben und es wird ihr gesetzlich verboten sein, ein 8. Mal zu heiraten oder eine Beziehung einzugehen. Ihr jetziger Mann, Tommy, wird also ihr letzer Mann sein. Als er gegen Uber antritt und getötet wird, bricht für die durch Tommy, umjubelter Star der Gladiatoren-Szene, zu Ruhm und Reichtum gekommene Familie eine Welt zusammen. Die Vereinigung, die die Gladiatorenkämpfe veranstaltet, Ceasar's Inc., droht damit, ihnen Haus und alle mit Gladiatoren-Geld erworbenen Wertgegenstände wie eine umfangreiche Bibliothek und eine Helmsammlung zu nehmen, wenn Lyn nicht einwilligt, Uber zu heiraten und sie aus der Hochzeit ein Medienspektakel machen können. Die einzige Chance, die Lyn sieht, um einer Ehe mit dem Mann zu entgehen, der denjenigen der Ehemänner ihrer Mutter gtötet hat, der einem Vater am nächsten kam, ist selbst im Kampf gegen ihn anzutreten.

Meine Meinung:
Als sehr gewöhnungsbedürftig habe ich die Darstellung von wörtlicher Rede empfunden. Statt Anführungszeichen wurde ein langer Gedankenstrich am Anfang des gesprochenen Satzes gesetzt, das Ende bildet in der Regel ein redundantes "he says" oder "she says". Sehr irritierend.
Neben diesem rein formalen Ärgernis empfand ich die Personen als extrem simpel gezeichnet. Die Protagonistin war mir bis zum Schluß fremd. Ihre Handlungsweise ist gerade zum Ende hin auch nicht wirklich logisch.
Uber wird extrem positiv dargestellt, von Anfang an ist klar, dass er ein herzensguter Mensch ist. Außerdem ist er attraktiv und extrem gut gebaut. Um ihm etwas mehr Menschlichkeit zu geben, hat sich die Autorin nun einen besonderen Kniff einfallen lassen: Neben einer allgemeinen Tollpatschigkeit erschuf sie ihn als extrem kurzsichtig und wegen einer Allergie gegen Kontaktlinsen trägt er entweder eine starke Brille mit dicken Gläsern oder ist quasi blind. Wie er in dem Zustand erfolgreich kämpfen und ein Star der Gladiatorenszene werden soll, ist mir rätselhaft. er sagt selbst, dass er nur Schemen beim Kämpfen sehen kann.
Und der Titel? "Girl in the Arena"... vom Medienzirkus abgesehen, den man als Arena bezeichnen könnte, in dem sie ihr ganzes Leben verbracht hat, wartet der Leser bis etwa 15 Seiten vor dem Ende darauf, dass Lyn die Arena betritt.

Fazit:
Interessante Grundidee aber die Ausführung ist einfach unbefriedigend.

[TinaB · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story, set to feel like a graphic novel or comic book with sentence structure and character dialog, clips along at a pretty fast pace. In a dystopian future, blood sport streams live on global TV. Neo-gladiators are celebrities, and Lyn's mother Allison has made a career of marrying into gladiator stardom. But when Allison’s seventh husband Tommy is killed her career as trophy wife is up. Things are looking pretty bleak for Lyn as well, due to the fact that because of gladiator rules, she has to marry her last father's killer.......{poor Lyn...can you say no thank you}

Did I like this…..well, yes and no.

Yes because I loved the concept of the story and it had the potential to be a fierce thrill ride.

No because the story gains no ground- depth isn’t fully reached with Lyn, or any of the characters due to the pace of the novel. I felt Haines never flushed Lyn out as a character or fully connected her to her decisions. The back and forth of her swaying emotions could be due to the fact that she suffers MUCH loss in the book and is trapped in a society she longs to get out of, however even with its pace and build up nothing ever happens and by the end which is so abrupt your left cheated.

The content is violent but not overly done, there’s only a few actual gladiator scenes and the premise would make you think Lyn was an arena (gladiator girl) which she’s not….she’s the child of a gladiator family being the daughter of not one, not two, but yes seven fathers. Lyn’s whole -in the arena -was a big disappointment for me.

I felt the novel seeing on how it was marketed, should have delivered more action and more time in the “Arena”. I mean yes we have a tiger moment and there is violence, just not as much as a gladiator movie or book would normally have. The story focuses much more on the serious elements in the book- which were the family dynamics, Lyn’s irresponsible mother, mental health and an out of control society obsessed with reality TV....oh and I guess the romance which was a non-issue in the book, the stuff with Uber (the gladiator who killed Lyn’s 7th dad) was a tangled mass of not working.

Sadly, this book is proof that sometimes excellent ideas shouldn’t be mixed together. Fight Club society doesn't belong in ancient Rome.

[Lexie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The very first thing to come to my mind after I originally read the synopsis for Girl in the Arena was 'Wow, I thought I had marriage issues!' (the synopsis I read was more detailed then the one above by the by). Lyn decides to go head to head against Uber (the young fighter) in order not to marry him, to the death. Though really its more then that. Very few, if any, of the people of Girl in the Arena are such simple creatures.

Lyn doesn't want to be a Glad-wife like her mother, Allison, but at the same time she is bound by the Gladiator lifestyle. She wants her freedom, she wants to get away from that lifestyle, she wants to be anyone but Lyn-with-the-seven-gladiator-fathers. She doesn't necessarily hate her mother for her choices, but she does find herself upset and angry and lost because of them.

The Gladiator world is very black and white--you either follow the arbitrary (and oft-changed) rules of being a Gladiator (or the wife, son, daughter of one) or you're dishonored. Left with no pension, no house, no means of supporting yourself. The women who become Glad-wives are very much like the housewives of olden days--they are nothing but an extension of their husband's glory. They go to college for this. They live, breathe and (basically) worship this lifestyle. There is no other way. So Allison is understandable. Her motivations, her little rituals, her eventual decision.

The story is told from Lyn's point of view in a very story being told sort of way. We only get her impressions of things, her feelings of those things. This works well for me, it felt more like a conversation we were having together instead of a book. It felt more immersive for me.

The sheer amount of culture references threw me a little. I kept trying to imagine the GSA of the book along side real life and it wasn't completely meshing. It was easier for me to ignore those and imagine this as an alternative time line book that way.

The ending made me tear up, a character who I liked a lot intercepts things and then it all gets out of control. I would have liked to read more about that fall out, instead of the recap we get in the epilogue.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I secretly would like to learn to really fight, with a sword, or martial arts, so you can see the appeal of this book for me: the basic premise is an alternate reality in which gladiator fighting is fast becoming the biggest sport in the world. That hooked me for sure! But could it really deliver beyond that basic premise?

Oh, yeah!

There was so much more going on in this book! The "gladiator lifestyle", as dictated by the Gladiatorial Sport Association by-laws, is a rigid code of conduct that affects the gladiators in the arena or out of it, and extends to their entire family. Lyn, the main character, is the daughter of seven gladiators (the first was her father, the other six her stepfathers), and now that #7 is facing the biggest fight of his career, her mother is freaking out. According to the by-laws, a Glad wife can only be married seven times, so if Tommy dies in the ring, Allison will be a widow (unable even to date) for the rest of her life. If Tommy doesn't fight fair, they could lose everything: their house, their possessions, any status in their community. It's a fascinating look at celebrity and society, how it affects our lives and how we allow it to affect us. Lyn is struggling to hold her family together, to decide if she will follow her mother's path and be a Glad wife, or run away from it all. Or should she, too, fight?

The surprise element to the book that I absolutely loved was Thad, Lyn's younger brother. An eight-year-old with mental disabilities, Thad is also an oracle. He can look at anyone on the street and predict their future, when he wants to, and he makes enigmatic pronouncements at random, which Lyn is only just coming to understand are somehow real. Glad culture is modeled on ancient Rome, of course, so there are Roman elements woven throughout, mentions of famous emperors and mythical figures, neo-Roman fashions are coming into vogue, Roman philosophy . . . and Thad, the oracle.

If there's any flaw to this book, it's that I wanted so much more. I wanted more explanations of how the culture truly came to be, more detail about the final fight, more, more, more!

[Rochelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book in the beginning but by the end it was a sinking ship. Lise Haines pastes us in this alternate "now" where Gladiator sport is the norm and watching them fight and maim each other to death is the most popular entertainment in the world. Glads are treated like full blown celebs like Angelina and Brad, they're chased by paparazzi, give tv interviews, are adored by fans, etc. The whole glad culture had a religious feel to it with all its laws and rules that have to be obeyed or you will be shunned by society. What I liked most was the plot. Or should I say, the idea of the plot. Upon the death of her stepfather, Lyn has the choice to either marry the man that murdered him or fight him herself. It's a big deal for her, seeing as a lot is riding on her decision. If she fights him it equals freedom from this backward culture. If she marries him, her family will be taken care of for life. Yes, all very interesting. But the book fell really far from my expectations.

First off, the author decides not to use any quotation marks when characters are speaking, just dashes, which makes it confusing for readers. And the blurb gives off this notion that it will be action packed but Lyn and Uber don't step in the ring together until the last 20 pages. Mostly the book follows her family's life after her stepfather dies and how she watches it destroy her mother. I'll give the book credit for a few absorbing passages but other than that it was definitely short of memorable. Lyn isn't a bad character, I just couldn't stay connected to the story. Especially after scenes where she and her BFF Mark create a simulated "Lyn" to run off a LifeMachine (a popular electronic used to have virtual famous people or relatives walking around your living room). The only place stuff like that works in is movies like Weird Science. I can understand designing a digital twin but how can you code your own personality traits, feelings, judgments, yada yada yada, into a computerized you? Impossible. Maybe in Earth 3055 but not now.

If you have something else you'd rather read, go forth and do so. I wouldn't say don't read it. But don't rush to get to it. You're not missing much.

[Kathy * Bookworm Nation · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I’ll start with what I liked about the book. I really liked the cover, totally drew me to the book from the very begining. I liked Lyn, she was really understanding with her Mom and little brother. Even when they pushed her to her limits she still looked out for them and wanted to take care of them. I liked the overall idea of the book, the gladiators and politics involved. It created an interesting setting, especially the storyline with her Mom and the Wife Rules she had to follow. I thought the storyline with Uber (stupid name) was interesting as well. There is a bit of a love triangle, with Uber, Mark and Lyn. I kept reading to see what would happen, and again really liked the overall idea of the book.

There are just a few things that I didn’t like. I guess I will start with the setting, I really didn’t like that it took place in modern times. I know it’s a fictional book, but it just wasn’t very believable. We definitely live in a violent society, but there is no way they would allow people to kill one another in this fashion, even in the name of “entertainment”. I think the book would have been better if it took place in the distant future or in a fictional place. IMO. I didn’t really care for the writing style and thought it really dragged in certain areas. It would go from being really interesting to really boring. I also hated the absence of quotation marks, this really drove me crazy!

I didn’t really like how Uber was portrayed and how little his character was used, maybe because of that I didn’t really feel any chemistry between them. I thought it was a great angle to the story, but ended up falling a little flat for me. I also expected to see Lyn in action a little more. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say I was a little let down in that respect.


I’ve read some reviews that compare this to The Hunger Games. I guess I can see where they are coming from, but I honestly think the books are totally unique, so I won’t compare the two.

[Chachic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally posted at Chachic's Book Nook.

I can't even remember when I bought my paperback copy of Girl in the Arena. I do know that I picked it up because it came highly recommended by my good friend Angie. It's been sitting in my TBR pile for YEARS and I've carried it from Manila to Singapore when I moved but haven't had a chance to read it until recently. I'm trying to make more of an effort to read the physical copies in my TBR pile instead of always just reading ebooks. So, I don't usually like dystopian novels but Girl in the Arena was a really good one. I read it in a span of one day because it kept me absorbed. I found the neo-Gladiator culture and history interesting - like how it all started and why it has such a strong following. I liked Lyn right from the start and I thought her interactions with all of the other characters - her mom, her brother, her best friend Mark and her enemy / potential husband - were great. I really wish Lyn and Uber had more interaction though. I loved the few scenes that they had together but didn't feel like there was enough of them. There's a lot that happened in this novel and I kind of felt like the story was spread a little too thin. Maybe if it was a little longer, we could have gotten more depth from the story and also more character development. Like I wanted more information on Lyn's previous dads and what were her mom's reasons for marrying them specifically. It wasn't even mentioned which of the gladiator dads was her brother's father. So I did enjoy the book overall but just wanted more from it. Surprisingly, Girl in the Arena lingered in my mind days after I finished reading it so the story must have made more of an impression that I initially thought. Recommended for fans of dystopian YA or those who like fiction featuring reality TV.

[Miki Garrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book that really stands out above the crowd in a lot of ways. I think it would appeal to a wide range of readers, and I have already passed it on or recommended it to many of my friends.

The book is about Lyn, the daughter of a gladiator in a near future world where gladiators not only fight to the death for glory and TV contracts, but also live by a strict social code that governs not only their lives, but also those of their wives and children.

Here are some of the many things I loved about this book:

* The author took some interesting ideas -- Neo-gladiators fight to the death! The lives of gladiators and their families are part WWF, part reality TV, part The O.C.! -- and developed them so well that everything seems real and believable.

* The characters and their relationships are well-developed -- they seem like real people doing real things, rather than just following along because the plot tells them to. In a book about neo-gladiators and their families, it would be so easy to have flat stereotypes running around, but not here! And while it may be no surprise that Lyn comes across as a strong young woman who will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being backed into someone else's corner, the amazing thing for me is how many other characters I truly cared about.

* There are no cheap tricks in this plot, no empty chapters, nowhere did I feel cheated as a reader -- and no way would I have guessed the ending.