AISLE NINE by Ian X. Cho
Aisle Nine is set in a world where literal portals to hell have opened and periodically spew out demons. A corporate military institution comes to power by convincing everyone that the economy is the most important thing. This leads to a situation where sixteen-year-old Jasper has to continue reporting to a hopeless retail Jon at a supermarket despite the world falling apart around him and he’s never sure what’s worse—the demon portal on aisle nine or the endless flow of customers who are happy to pretend everything is fine and dandy as long as they get a good deal.
Truly, how do authors come up with their ideas.
Subtle the satire is not, but that’s how I like it. Sure, there is power in subtlety that sneaks up on you but I have an affinity for a high concept premise that bludgeons you into submission, like the film Sorry To Bother You or, to keep it in the YA genre, the book Mun Mun.
The book starts with Jasper, our main viewpoint character, doing his best to simply survive but then he starts having visions of the four horsemen ushering in the apocalypse on Black Friday. It’s up to Jasper, his military trainee friend, and a demon cat plushie to close the portal on Aisle Nine before all hell breaks loose. It’s a whirlwind of a romp full of great set pieces and humorous bits. Ultimately though, the book is about trauma, depression, anxiety, and how we cope when the world feels hopeless.
Here are three specific things I liked:
The Teenagers Are Characters Not Caricatures
This is a thing you’ll see me talk about all the time when it comes to young adult novels. The number one thing that kicks me out is when authors try super hard to remind you at every second that these are teenagers remember?! So they work in dumb lingo and have then make mind-bogglingly dumb decisions because apparently teenagers are just dumb adults. When they aren’t doing that, they are doing the literary equivalent of the Steve Buscemi in community meme. I saw a post recently that said teenagers aren’t reading YA because the genre is just millennials cosplaying as teenagers and the results are cringe. Unfortunately, I do see a lot of that. But Aisle Nine doesn’t fall into that trap. In this world, teenagers are graduated early from school and basically treated as adults by society which means the author gets to treat them more like adults and we don’t have to suffer through any “the world is ending but oh no I have a math test” scenes.
The Depiction of Working Retail
I would be shocked, shocked I say, if I found out the author hadn’t spent any time working retail. The portrayal here is dead on and having a hell portal in one of the aisles is perfect satire. Reading this kept giving me flashbacks to the six months I worked at a Family Dollar, which very much felt like an apocalyptic nightmare in its own right.
The Pacing
Right away we get a ticking clock, it’s the beginning of the week of Thanksgiving and everything is going to hell on Black Friday. That sense of urgency permeates the book and keeps it moving. I think there’s a version of this book where it lingers on the worldbuilding and gets in the weeds on the societal implications of this post-apocalyptic world. I’m sure that could also be good, but that lends itself to a more self-serious take. This is meant to be a satire. By moving quickly, the author is able to pack in ridiculous scenarios that work thematically but don’t make the reader get caught up too heavily in the internal logic of the world.
