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| 1635574048
| 9781635574043
| 1635574048
| 4.47
| 809,155
| Mar 03, 2020
| Mar 03, 2020
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**spoiler alert** ~WARNING: this is a highly critical salty review. And I will have you know that I have earned the right to my mean opinions, having
**spoiler alert** ~WARNING: this is a highly critical salty review. And I will have you know that I have earned the right to my mean opinions, having been a fan of SJM's since the release of TOG in 2012. This is ten years of dedication and I have read her entire bibliography. So don't come for me with your "well, actually". I've put the time in. I've paid my dues.~ Okay so funny story, actually. I first read this book right after it came out in 2020. In fact, I preordered it. It was 3 March, a hot week and a half before Tiger King dropped, during those early golden days when we were still smearing clown makeup onto our faces and trilling, "A couple of months. This'll all be over in a couple of months." The first time I read this book, I loved it... with caveats. The mystery plot is one of the worst I've ever read, and I acknowledged it even then: it's utterly nonsensical, full of stupid logic gaps and conveniences, and it's glaringly obvious that it wasn't planned beforehand. It's glaringly obvious that, during editing, the author revised the plot only from the protagonists' POVs, because if you look at the mystery from Micah's perspective, it's laughably absurd. The number of contrivances and conveniences he relies on, the slew of bonkers decisions he makes, strips this character of any believability (we'll discuss this in a minute). But SJM has a talent. Nay, a gift. That gift is for building casts of characters whose interpersonal relationships are so engaging, so thrilling, so engrossing, that the shitty world building and the terrible plot and the insufferable personalities of the characters themselves don't matter. That's what keeps me reading. I do think that Throne of Glass is by far her strongest work, likely because it's been thoroughly edited. You can see how, as her work has exploded in popularity, the editing has taken a severe hit. Because who cares if the book is shoddy? People will buy it. I will buy it. It's SJM. But the plot and character relationships across the TOG series are tightly woven, much more concise, and underpinned by logic. This starts to slowly unravel with ACOTAR, which for the sake of transparency, I will admit that I am a HUGE, DISGUSTING, UNHINGED FAN OF. I love ACOTAR. I love the wacky half-baked worldbuilding, the cringey dialogue, the melodramatic inner monologue. I hate several of the main characters (Rhys mostly, but Azriel actually takes the crown as a character who makes me shake with rage) but I love to hate them. I love their messy relationships and frustrating conversations and I love returning to the ACOTAR world because it's so cosy, and so familiar, and their shenanigans as a group are just so much fun. The magic of the world and the complexity of the relationships keeps me coming back for more. And now we arrive at Crescent City. Also known as The Bryce is Always Right! After the first time I read it, I had some qualms. But I was excited for the sequel - for two whole years! I got hyped, I had theories, and I couldn't wait to dive back into the world. So I preordered it for £15 (excuse me while I readjust my red plastic nose), and over the course of the week before it arrived, I started rereading House of Earth and Blood. And that's what's so funny! Because it was very very bad. So bad I could barely get through it. I'm going to have to resort to list format because there's just way too much to unpack here. - Bryce is the #1 reason why I hated House of Earth and Blood so viscerally. She is a rude, belligerent, stuck-up, selfish little bitch and I guarantee you - I fucking guarantee that she would have bullied me in high school. She would have bullied you too. I'm not exaggerating. Reading this book, watching everyone coo over her while she treats them like shit, is like seeing your high school bully on Instagram talking about mental health while everyone in the comments praises her for her "good vibes". Here are some highlights: - She has beef with Ruhn because of an argument they had years ago; fine, but she then goes on to mercilessly mock and belittle his roommates, with whom she has no beef. Once she takes the piss out of one of said roommates because he's good with computers (!), and the reason this came up was because he had offered to use his tech expertise to assist her with her botched Nancy Drew murder investigation. Imagine ever wanting to see someone again after they had treated you that way. - At the beginning of the book, she goes on a date with her human boyfriend Reid. Now, humans are violently oppressed in this world; many of them are slaves. Bryce comments that Reid has been working out, not because he wants to get shredded for Ibiza, but because he needs to be as fast and strong as possible in case he gets randomly, violently, racistly attacked and murdered in the street. Bryce is half human, half Fae, but her Fae heritage shields her from this kind of violent racism. She is never in danger of a random attack when she's out and about. Regardless of this, when some powerful magical creature gives her a dirty look across the restaurant they're in, she's furious with Reid for not going over there and challenging said creature. And I have to ask: how fucking ignorant is she. How fucking entitled and completely blind to your own privilege do you have to be to expect your marginalised, oppressed boyfriend to put his life in danger just because you got stink-eyed? Does she honestly think her hurt feelings take precedent over her boyfriend's life? - Yes! She does. That's Bryce. - Despite this, and despite the fact that she is just as racist against the humans as all the rest of the Vanir, she styles herself as a champion of the downtrodden. Bryce cares! She cares so much that she courts a cop (Connor) who tortures the "lowlifes" of the city. Yes; this book, which came out in the year of our lord 2020, mourns the tragic death of a handsome, funny, gorgeous love interest who is a police officer who uses excessive force. Bryce notes that "to keep this city safe, he'd killed, tortured, maimed, and then gone back out and done it again before the moon had even set." Even better: "He never complained about it. None of them did". Christ on a fucking cracker. - Hunt comes back to her apartment after a long hard day of torturing oppressed people to death to buy his own freedom (imagine the Hollywood sign, but instead it just reads YIKES!) and he's self-harming with scalding water in the shower. Bryce then goes to comfort him, and her entire inner monologue is just "hee hee look at his cock and balls!" - In general, she's self-obsessed, smug, and utterly moronic in that she is constantly putting other people in danger with her own stupid actions. Not once is she ever challenged for it. It's just "well, that's Bryce!" And this is the whole problem: the fact that the other characters just roll over and accept the verbal abuse she heaps onto them, accept that she's putting their lives in danger with her selfish disregard for everyone else's safety, makes the whole thing read like a fever dream. It's ridiculous. It reduces everyone else, even the other POV characters, to lifeless cardboard cutouts who exist only to nod along and praise Bryce even when she's acting like a shithead. Honestly, it wouldn't bother me if she was just a cunt, and the narrative dealt with it appropriately; if it caused strife with the other characters, and we interrogated that. But it's watching her get fawned over, watching a whole horde of men thirst for her (seriously; every single man she comes into contact with, save for those she's related to, are horny for her) while she acts like a total dick that makes this story so unbearable to read. - Just as a side note: when Bryce meets with Phillip Briggs, who claims Danika was assisting the human rebellion to stop the systematic slaughter and oppression of humans, she gets pissed off and says, "Danika wasn't a rebel sympathiser". Which is interesting. Interesting that being a "rebel sympathiser" is seen as an indictment against her character. What was that about Bryce never staying silent in the face of injustice? There's also this: "Horror coiled in her gut. [Phillip Briggs] had wanted to kill people, she reminded herself...to ignite a larger-scale war between the human and Vanier. To overthrow the Asteri. It was why he remained behind bars". Yeah wouldn't it be terrible if someone overthrew the oppressive, violent, slaveowning Asteri. The horror! - Hunt is the #2 reason why I hated this book so much on reread. I loved him the first time I read it! Poor Hunt! But the second time around, I found him intolerable, and I'll tell you for why: he is yet another casualty of SJM's obsession with Hot Heroes Who Torture. This is a bit of trickier situation, because Hunt is enslaved; he joined a rebellion for whatever reason, it's not interesting, and then was punished with decades of servitude to the Asteri. Which is an appalling injustice and a terrible trauma for someone to go through. But then we are introduced to his arrangement with Micah. Micah tells Hunt that if he tortures and kills x number of people (I forget how many, but I'm pretty sure it's in the thousands) then he can go free. A difficult situation, no? Except this is never interrogated. Hunt is sad because hearing humans screaming while he viciously tortures them to death for his own sake hurts his ears. Look at all the blood on his clothes! Laundry day :( That's it. There's no question of how the fuck he's ever going to live with himself when all this is done. There is no pondering on why his life is worth more than thousands of others. Of what he expects to do, how he expects to go and put his sunball cap on and sleep at night while the knowledge of the obscene, depraved atrocities he committed lurks inside him. That he is even capable of doing those things is a huge red flag, and the lack of meaningful discourse around it makes him come across as a total weirdo. And there is an uncomfortable lack of ire directed at Micah, who is repeatedly described in luscious detail as the sexiest man who ever sexied, and in fact the deal Hunt strikes with him feels almost abstract. Micah is there, and Hunt is here, and the arrangement hangs nebulously between them. At times it almost feels like the victims of Hunt's torture are the ones he truly blames for his situation - and that he's somehow doing righteous work. In one absolutely ridiculous scene, Hunt is shown butchering a shifter who is sobbing and begging for mercy, and he thinks to himself, "This male had done horrible things. Unspeakable things. He deserved this. Deserved worse". Okay Hunt. Whatever the fuck you need to tell yourself mate. (For the record, this is also why I absolutely despise Azriel. Azcel McNeckbeard. Fucking Albert Fish ass Toy Box Killer ass Texas chainsaw massacre ass Mountain Dew drinking dick creeping after every traumatised woman who's unfortunate enough to cross his sightline. Nasty piece of work, that one.) - There's also Ruhn Danaan. Boring bastard. - A little while ago, I saw a post on r/askreddit that asked, "What could you talk about for an hour without preparing first?" I'll tell you what it is. It's the stupid mystery plot that makes zero sense. Let's examine: - Micah killed Danika, despite the fact that Danika was the only one who knew where the Horn of Luna was. He did this for fuck only knows what stupid ass reason and then it's ham-fistedly explained away that he did it so Bryce could then find the Horn? With the power of love? Bryce, instead of Danika, who fucking knew where it was? - Micah asks Bryce, a random girl who works at an antiques store, to find a murderer at large. And everyone just accepts this? No thoughts, head empty? Is there a single brain cell between them? - Micah sends Bryce after the kristallos demon, instead of fucking telling her that they're looking for Luna's Horn. Don't want her to know why? Lie, you dumb bastard. No, he just banks on her making the connection between the Horn and the demon. Amazing. - Despite needing Bryce for god only knows what reason, he blows up a club while she's inside it. Is this man on crack? - Micah trapped Danika after he saw her doing a drug bust, and he then dumped a bunch of drugs on the streets and threatened to say it was her, claiming that no one would believe that she was trying to get drugs off the streets. For this, I honestly don't know which one of them is stupider. Micah, for thinking that anyone would believe Danika was a drug dealer, or Danika, for giving credence to the threat. They deserve each other. In the end, Micah gives a long dramatic speech that is absolutely hilariously Instagram-lived to the Asteri Council. His whole moustache twirling (too bad you... will DIE!) speech gets live-streamed, and this is especially funny since this technology is partly what the plot hinges on and yet at no point during this entire investigation does anyone Google anything. They're looking for info about the kristallos demon and to do so they go to the library and paw through the dusty old books. The books. You fucking troglodytes. What year is this? Google that shit like a normal person. My god. Couple all of this with the comical overuse of the word "fuck" (it's like every fourth word; we get it, you're edgy, this is adult, now fucking sit the fuck down) and the total lack of chemistry between any of these detestable characters, and you've got a storm in a teacup of disappointment. There is no believable closeness between Danika and Bryce. There is no sibling warmth between Bryce and Ruhn even as they repair their relationship (though I will say that their relationship is the best of a bad lot and did somewhat hold my interest just because it's a brief escape from all the others). Hunt is a reskinned Rowan and Rhysand except without any of the former's quiet, stoic softness, or the latter's compelling playfulness and tendency toward hatching ridiculous yet thoroughly entertaining plans. He's just a big boring lump who brutalises prisoners and sometimes wears a corny baseball cap. (It is worth noting that all three of them have wings and tattoos, have all been in the thrall of an evil queen, and are all the strongest most special warriors in history. I have a huge problem with SJM's power scaling, and the fact that her protagonists are always the best at everything; no one gets to be mediocre, there are 0 underdogs, and ugly people should just go and live under a bridge because beauty = goodness and power. God help you if you happen to be average in this world. God help you if you don't have magic or a giant penis. If you're not hot and rich and exceptionally good at everything without trying, then you deserve what's coming to you, you sack of shit, and everything you've ever done is wrong even if it isn't. Jurian knows what I'm talking about.) I feel like I should comment here on the ludicrous info dumping, which metastasises into another weird phenomenon where, if you tell anyone you thought the book was boring, because it is, they say, "Keep reading! The last 100 pages are worth it!" This book is 800 pages long. So you're telling me that 1/8 of it is worth reading, and that makes it a good book? No. It doesn't. I have read plenty of books that are compelling out of the gate. ACOTAR was. Feyre skinning a faerie wolf, getting her door broken down by a guy who needs therapy yesterday, and then crossing the wall into Prythian all occurs within the first 50 pages of ACOTAR. Even though the first TOG book was the weakest of all of them, there's still a great deal of charm in the opening chapters, and the worldbuilding hits the ground running. I do not expect to have to slog through 500, 600, 700 pages of styrofoam to get to the edible part of the dish. The answer is no. In fact, that's quite a good place to leave this. The answer is no. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 04, 2020
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Mar 25, 2020
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May 16, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1492656623
| 9781492656623
| 1492656623
| 3.79
| 51,406
| Apr 15, 2018
| May 22, 2018
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it was ok
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Ugh. What a waste of potential.
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 30, 2019
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Oct 03, 2019
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Mar 04, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0316134074
| 9780316134071
| 0316134074
| 4.12
| 111,344
| Apr 17, 2014
| Apr 08, 2014
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it was amazing
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This book is utterly unforgettable. It was chilling, heartbreaking, beautiful. Hopeful, joyful, beautiful. Beautiful in so many ways. This book is one o This book is utterly unforgettable. It was chilling, heartbreaking, beautiful. Hopeful, joyful, beautiful. Beautiful in so many ways. This book is one of the best books I have ever read, and this series is so amazing. Everything you've heard about it is so true. You might be unsure of the first book, and you'll probably like the second. But the last instalment will oust any negative feelings you ever had about its predecessors. It is a heavy, heavy book in so many ways, but it is so filled with hope and love and sincerity that you won't just cry tears; you'll cry diamonds. That is how precious this book is. Absolutely phenomenal. I would give it six stars if I could. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 14, 2014
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Aug 10, 2014
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Jun 14, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0316133973
| 9780316133975
| 0316133973
| 4.14
| 166,418
| Nov 06, 2012
| Nov 06, 2012
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really liked it
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**spoiler alert** I come away from this book with a lot of confusing feelings and straddling a very blurred line between love and...not love (hate is
**spoiler alert** I come away from this book with a lot of confusing feelings and straddling a very blurred line between love and...not love (hate is way too strong a word. I didn't hate anything about this book. I don't hate anything about this series, except maybe Akiva). This book is the Heathcliff to my Cathy. What makes this review very difficult to write is Laini Taylor herself, in that she's this amazing new breed of author who does all these weird and unusual things like being honest and writing well and not milking a cash cow. There are several interviews floating around in which she freely and openly admits that there was wish fulfillment in the creation of Madrigal and Karou and that when she sat down and wrote each of these books, particularly this one, she had no outline. She didn't even know it would be a war book (link to that interview is here). This has the opposite effect on me that it probably should. I hate wish fulfillment, but you know what I hate more? Denying wish fulfillment. I hate this trend of, "Oh, I was just wondering what it would be like for a girl to fall in love with a vampire/angel/werewolf" and while the answer should be that the human girl would probably die or at least be in extreme danger, it's always, "And they got married and had hybrid children". That's because it's wish fulfillment, and it's obvious wish fulfillment, and it's so obvious that when those authors say, "I don't know where I got the idea" it's just an all-out lie. It's a lie. If you create a character for wish fulfillment, don't treat your audience like they're three years old. Don't lie through your teeth about it. Be like the glorious Laini Taylor, and just admit it. The perfection behind everything Karou does in this book is wish fulfillment and it can be annoying, but it's not to the detriment of the love I have for the author. Just like Daughter of Smoke and Bone, there is such intensity and passion and heart baked into this story. It's darker than DoSaB, much darker, but I like that about it. I like that Taylor is willing to push the envelope on what YA is. This book won't make you sleep easily, and it won't warm your heart. It'll make you cry, like it did me (then again, I'm a crybaby, so don't use this as benchmark). And it's that quality of content that makes it difficult for me to pick fault with the things that did grate on me, like Karou's unrealistic perfection and the mere idea of Akiva ever atoning for the genocide he started. This is where the problems I have with this book come in: genocide. Genocide isn't a topic to be taken lightly, and this book doesn't take it lightly at all. What it does, though, is romanticize it, not to the point of sympathy but to the point of the male hero being able to mend his mistakes by saving about 2% of the lives he destroyed, thus wooing his lover, whose family he murdered. It's dangerous territory to tread. On paper and in fantasy form, it's an easier pill to swallow, but if we translate that to real life, then it makes far less sense that Karou is able to think of herself as still in love with Akiva even after he destroyed literally everything she holds dear. If I think about it in the context of my life, it makes me choke: the idea of still being in love with a man, and forgiving him, after he murdered my family. Take a moment and think of it in that sense, and it does shift some things around. Genocide isn't the only heavy topic that this book deals with a little ham-fistedly. Dealing with rape in fiction is like walking on ice thinner than your thumbnail: you've better tread very, very, very carefully or you will make a huge mistake. This book doesn't plunge right through that ice, but it does wet its feet substantially. Here's the problems: firstly, the graphic nature of the scene. And it was graphic. And the thing is that the detailed attack itself was not the main problem, but the very real possibility of triggering. I am a very, very firm believer in trigger warnings for physical and sexual violence, which of course this book and virtually no other carries. Why not? It's not difficult to place a disclaimer page at the beginning of the book warning readers about disturbing scenes. That's not hard. That doesn't sully anyone's enjoyment of the book. What it does is protect people from reliving their experiences through something that they ought to be enjoying, not recoiling from in terror or rage. Like I said, it wasn't the graphic nature itself that was the problem. It was being utterly blindsided by it. It made me want to put the book down, and I'm sure that's not how anyone was supposed to feel about a scene in which a heroine literally cuts down the man attacking her. Shouldn't that have been in some way empowering? Meh. This is the other problem I had, and it was a little more of an insidious one. There's this area of ice that's even more precarious to walk on, and it's the reactionary period. It's that arc after the survivor has been attacked, and is now reacting to it, in whatever way they do. There are authors like CC who smash straight through the ice and into the depths of the frozen lake, here, having used rape as a plot device and then one page later having the heroine and her male love interest crack a silly joke about fishnets. Bookending a rape with jokes of any kind is sick and twisted and no one is fooled by any backpedaling essays that Clare writes on her Tumblr. The words are there on the page, and they are inappropriate. The saving grace with Karou is that her attempted rape is treated very seriously, though there are problematic undertones. And they are undertones: subtleties that won't bother everyone, but that do misstep. Victimhood, for example, holds a stigma of weakness ("She looked like a victim. Raw. Brutalized" (chapter 75)) in this book, around Karou's almost-rape. Karou thinks, "She might look like a victim, but she wasn't. She had stopped him" (Chapter 75). There are two sides to this coin, one being the empowerment of Karou killing her rapist and exacting the revenge he deserves. Yes, kill all rapists. But this is tarnished by the other side, which says that victimhood is not okay, and that by fighting off her attacker, Karou distances herself from the 'weakness' of being a victim. You see how carefully one has to tread? This is how carefully. So carefully, for every single word surrounding the topic of rape must be considered at length. Rape is such a massive problem that stretches right across our world, our whole world, and this is why it needs to be handled like an unexploded bomb. I don't believe for a moment that there was any ill intent with this book portrayal of rape and as I said, it treated it seriously, which is more than can be said for others. But I do feel like it could have been thought out a little more, particularly the concept of victimhood. Killing one's attacker in self defense is absolutely justified...and adding a "but" to the end of that sentence is where it becomes tricky. It's easy to imply that anyone who doesn't fight off their attacker - either if they do not try, or they try but are unsuccessful - is 'weak'. They aren't. A person being raped has absolutely no obligation to stop the rape because they are not the one responsible for the rape. They do not owe it to themselves to try. They do not owe it to anyone to do anything. When we start creeping into "well, why did they just lie there?" territory, we start inviting fingers of blame that do not point at the rapist. And that is garbage. No matter what the circumstances, those fingers should never stop pointing at the rapist. They are responsible. They are responsible for it all. Like I said, this takes a very distant sort of analysis and I don't doubt that the author simply didn't consider it. Everyone has their own view of their own work, and let me reiterate that I don't believe that there was any ill intent in this whatsoever. But these things are worth considering, and people are noticing these problems for a reason. It's for the aforementioned reasons that I can't rate this book with five stars, despite its beautiful writing, riveting plot, and inspired mythology. Other than a few little thematic issues, it was sound in its pro-peace message, too. But it didn't have the same strange and haunting atmosphere as Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which was why I loved the first book. That said, there's plenty to love, so don't be discouraged. I know that some people hated them, but I loved the little interjections from minor characters that we haven't met before, who were embarking upon their own lives that didn't run closely alongside Karou and Akiva and all our main friends. Sarazal and Sveva, and of course Rath, kept me up all night thinking about them. The Breakblades are inspired, and I have high hopes for the Stelians and the shit they're obviously going to stir. Of course, though, there are few things in this book that top the infamous Ziri. Lucky Ziri. He's tragic, and his role in this book is so strange, but he's impossible not to love. I was reduced to tears several times by this book, and most of those times involved Ziri. I had to get up out of bed and go wash my face when it was revealed that Karou had been forced to bury the last true Kirin body, that precious little thing that would be lost forever. The Kirin caves are beautiful, but all of the hands that built them are lost. If there's anything sadder than that then I don't want to know about it. Ziri's fate is strange, but serves the plot. There isn't much to be said in the way of protesting it: it is what it is, and while I find it extremely disturbing that Ziri is inhabiting the body of Karou's attempted rapist, the whole theme of this series is that souls are what matter, not the bodies who hold them. It's a theme occasionally lost to the worship of beauty - every evil character is hideous, every good one lovely - but it's there and it's obvious. Ziri's lost Kirin body doesn't really matter, because he's still Ziri, and that doesn't change because he no longer looks the way he did when he was born. Same goes for Karou. She no longer looks like chimaera, but she is. She is one of them, and that she realizes this towards the end is a beautiful piece of character development. What else can I say? This series is truly inspired. It's what YA should be: real, raw, intelligent and meaningful. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read Dreams of Gods and Monsters. BONUS TIME! You can love or hate her books if you want. That's your call. But there's no hating Laini Taylor. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 30, 2013
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not set
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Dec 30, 2013
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Hardcover
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| 0316134023
| 9780316134026
| 0316134023
| 3.99
| 374,907
| Sep 27, 2011
| Sep 27, 2011
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liked it
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Hmmm. I’ve already started writing a long review for this one, and I’ll post it asap, but I finished this conflicted. Make of that what you will.
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Notes are private!
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2
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Dec 08, 2018
Oct 13, 2013
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Dec 24, 2018
Dec 30, 2013
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Jun 27, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 0062002368
| 9780062002365
| 0062002368
| 4.22
| 14,700
| Jan 31, 2012
| Jan 31, 2012
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** Actual final rating: 4.5 stars. But I rounded up. Because it lost half a star on a technicality only. So the other night I had this d **spoiler alert** Actual final rating: 4.5 stars. But I rounded up. Because it lost half a star on a technicality only. So the other night I had this dream. It was the beginning of the new high school year after graduation. Me and my graduating class were chilling in this weird white room that looked kind of like the lunch rooms in Cellblock 6: Female Lock Up and watching, through a set of Perspex windows looking out into the front hall, as the new Grade 12 kids march in to their uncertain fate. This guy I know (he graduated at the same time as me. Why was he returning in my dream? Dafuq?) was one of those people walking in for the new year. I actually lol'd in my dream because he randomly lost his footing when he was walking down the hall and spontaneously smashed his face off the display case, but he was fine, no harm, no foul. After a while we get bored of this, and head to some kind of weird cafeteria after-party where everyone from my old school in the UK is there too. Across the lunch room I lock eyes with this guy I was totes in love with when I was like fifteen and OMG! It's like a fairytale with Roma Pizza and inappropriate Happy Birthday! napkins. Gaiz, srsly. I have absolutely no idea why this guy appeared in my dream. Sure, when I was fifteen it was deep and it was real. I went there: I really did. I wrote his name in all of my notebooks and tore girls' hair out to get the seat behind him in class so I could talk to him and fuck, I was all on imagining what our wedding would be like. Hopefully, you can all appreciate the growth and change I've thankfully gone through since the days of yore. But I left for Canada, and I've had no contact with the guy for literally years. I haven't thought about him for a long, long time. And then suddenly he pops up in the dreamscape lunchroom. What's a girl to do? So we get all cozy and he kisses my forehead like Edward Cullen. Naturally, I get distracted by the nearby hotdog stand, which is basically a fish tank full of hotdog buns. Where's the meat, I ask? Fifteen Boy points to this steel door behind me and--oh, yeah. We're suddenly outside now, and it's got that dream lighting. You know, like the lighting in Sleepy Hollow? This is when I realize some creepy shit is going on. So he takes two hotdog buns (I also take two) and heads for the steel door seemingly leading to nowhere. I go after him and we head up through this elevator to a weird compound that's round, outdoors but enclosed with a ring of high-rise stores above. Each of the stores is numbered one to thirteen. (I swear to SHIVA. This is not a rickroll.) Suddenly the guy is gone and one of my best friends (in Canada) is with me. She seems largely unimpressed, but she's like that in real life. She's the most calm, chill, easygoing Jamaican person ever. It's such bliss hanging out with her. You don't even need to make conversation. You just have to be. So anyway I figure I'd better get an actual hotdog to put in the bun. (Innuendo not intended.) There are rainforest trees all around this compound and the air is kind of humid--if any of you have ever been to the aviary in Niagara-on-the-Lake and been through that bit with all the waterfalls and the hilarious red birds with pipe cleaner legs, then you'll have a rough idea of the terrain here. So my friend runs off to one of the big doorways in the side of the compound (kind of like the opening into the ruins at the beginning of Tomb Raider: Anniversary except without the flesh-eating wolves) and I stop by the entrance, because there's this little button you need to press to make the elevator inside the walkway, up to the shops above, work. My friend waves me in and I follow her, but she gets into the elevator before I do and then I'm stuck there like a spanner with my empty hotdog buns. I head back out to the button. It sits like a catherine wheel, colored orange and yellow, and you have to spin it to the right number of shop you want to get to, then press the Go! button in the center. (I promise you guys, I am not fucking with you. This is the serious truth.) So I spin it to shop number four, but I'm not fast enough to get into the elevator. I have to go back and press it again, and then I leap into the elevator just in time. Let me explain to you what this elevator was like. The doors opened vertically, and were made of wire and wood. When you jumped inside, you landed at the bottom of this wet, muddy slope, and then you somehow were pushed up that slope at lightning speed, and there were all these trees and rocks and shit and a voice came over the intercom telling you to curl up in the fetal position to avoid hitting any of the crap on the track. Swear it. So I reach the top, and I'm literally thrown off this slope, right into the air. I'm headed for this Super-Marioesque mushroom cap, pink with yellow spots, where my friend is waiting for me. Suddenly my dog is with me, and she's being carried by this weird bug that I swear is one of the monster companions in Final Fantasy XIII-2 and then we're dropped and we land on the mushroom cap, which is all light because it's inside this room with all these windows around it. There are a few other people there, and they all have dogs with them, but my friend is allergic to dogs so she doesn't have one. I say she can share mine. Even in my dreams, I'm a giving soul. (Lol.) So then all of a sudden this GI Joe guy comes blasting out of nowhere and he orders us to do this massive obstacle course before we can get our tiny insignificant fucking hotdog. Like, what the fuck? It's a fucking hotdog, not a Nobel Prize. I just wanted my hotdog, dammit! Anyway, we have to do the obstacle course riding on our dogs' backs like horses. My dog is relatively small (she's a spaniel) but somehow I managed to get upon my steed and we start the obstacle course, which is kind of like those challenges you have to do in Super Mario Sunshine if you go through the green pipe looking for a cheat of a Shine Sprite. So anyway, me and my dog NAIL it and we win. We veer off course a little because it's like playing a video game, with controls like the fucking painful ones you have to grapple with when you're on the hang-glider in Assassin's Creed: Revelations getting pulled along by Sophia. Anyway, we win, and then tra-la-la! The dream is over. And I never got my hotdog. Wings of the Wicked is just like my dream. No, it's not about Ellie's tormented quest for a hotdog, but it is about a whole lot of weird, scary, colorful and bizarre happenings that somehow, for some reason, come together to make sense. Let me explain. Like my dream, Wings leaps into the plot from the very first chapter. I went straight for the hotdogs; Ellie goes straight for the reapers. And it was this that I appreciated. Any of you who know me are probably aware that Angelfire is definitely not my favorite book in the world for two staple reasons: Ellie, and the writing. In Wings, Ellie grows from a little sapling that can be annihilated by one peck from a chicken to a sword-wielding foxglove (foxgloves can stop your heart with their poison. DON'T GO NEAR THEM. DON'T!). Where as the Ellie from the first book would make a joke of her duties, this Ellie is absolutely serious about them. She still takes time out for partying and homework and shit, but a wake-up call is all it takes for her to realize that shit just got real, and you have to stop giggling when something tries to gut you with their fingernail. Will gained a little more favor with me here. I wasn't that chuffed about him in the first book either, but in Wings he gains a little more depth and backstory, enough for him to prism from a piece of cardboard to an actual character. I loved the revelation that he slept with Ava. It gave him this fabulous, human quality, a real weakness and a mistake from the past that negated the whole "perfect love interest" trope that's been sniffing around YA of late. Speaking of Ava: um, hello, Favorite Character! I fucking love this woman. She's amazing. She has so much depth and interest to her, so much so that I was desperate to find out more about her. I wanted to get inside her head and find out a little more about her story (which was heart-breaking, but added to her resilience). A pretty large portion of this book revolves around the deaths of secondary characters, and being aware that people would die before I started reading this book assured me of two things: (a) There is every chance in the world that these deaths will wind up being oddly funny rather than sad. (b) There is every chance in the world that these deaths will make me want to die too. From grief. And lack of hotdogs. It was pretty much a B all round. Seriously, the deaths in this book took it out of me. I do feel like you have to have a certain kind of relationship in your own life to really connect with the deaths in Wings, and I'm one of the lucky ones. Let's look at this: I was reading the portion where Ellie's mom dies when we were driving along the highway, headed for some Swedish fun at IKEA. The horrific torment of reading the death scene haunted me for the rest of the day, so much so that I did the whole tourist thing and held on to my mom's bag strap all the way around the store. I did not want to let go of my mother, ever, because then a reaper would get her, and fuck, that can't happen. That is literally what this book did to me. It made me terrified. And that's awesome. Nathaniel's death was an absolute blindside. I was sobbing, yelling at the book, slapping myself, comfort eating my weight in chocolate muffins... Just why, Courtney? Why'd that have to happen? As if it wasn't enough that I was a blubbering mess, the characters in Wings really mourn with you. Remember Katniss when Finnick died, how she made it all about herself and then forgot about him as if "fuck, it's just a death of my friend, at least it wasn't me, because I'm the most important one!" Well, Wings is nothing like that. NOTHING. It's brutal. Ellie and the gang wear themselves out mourning over the friends they lose. They go crazy, they scream, they cry, they ask God why, because that's what happens when people you love die. This book has this honest, human, emotional aura that I couldn't shake. It was like a coming-of-age story. Trials and tribulations from a group of relatable characters. Awesome. The romance was the romance: sweet, cute and yes, a little sexual. I like that. There is entirely too much no-sex-before-marriage dogma in YA today, and the fact that Ellie was planning to sleep with Will after prom (it's only interrupted by Will getting poisoned and ending up on the brink of death. Shame, dat) is just...honest. It's refreshing and true and warmed me to the characters I'd previously been so detached from. Look. I won't say it was perfect, because it wasn't. As much as I liked the Ellie/Will dynamic in this book, I really wish Ellie had battled as hard as Will did. She didn't. She could have, but she didn't. I don't know why that is. I guess I felt like in battle Will was either in the way and a liability, or leading the charge. Ellie is the one with the angelfire: she is the one who ought to be heading up the war against the reapers. She was far too idle. The Ellie/Will partnership isn't the reason why I dropped the half-star, because it's not really a fair test of Ellie's prowess. In the first half of the book, she kicked so much ass I was cheering, so I suppose her lack of that same prowess in the second half was perhaps due to her losing her mother and Nathaniel and still being in a state of downtrodden grief. The technical reason why I took off half a star is that the Rule of Abeko* was broken by this book. It was broken spectacularly, and no book that breaks the Rule of Abeko can ever be a true five stars for me. That's just the way it has to be, I'm afraid. And no book is an exception. On the plus side, the plot and writing of this book thrilled me. The action scenes were hardcore awesome and the plot, which accelerates at breakneck speed with just enough time in between to sweeten the characters, made me physically tense. I also love Court's mythology. With the exception of the Rule of Abeko, her blending of Eastern religion with rather tired Judeo-Christian lore is really refreshing. What I love about this series is its unpredictability: curveballs come at you like gnats in the summertime. You heard it here, kids. Is there anything else I have to say? I don't think so, but I would definitely recommend this book. Even if you hated Angelfire, you should at least take a stab at this one. It's killer. I swear. *The "Rule of Abeko" states that Lilith is evil only because Biblical patriarchy declares her to be so. It also states that the imagery of Lilith being a baby-eater and a destroyer of virginal maidens is only in place because she must be Biblically demonized for (a) not being a baby-making machine and (b) not being meek. Breaking this rule would be to represent Lilith as evil, a baby-eater or a raging jealous bitch. Examples of Rule breakers include Supernatural, the Fallen series, the latter half of the Mortal Instruments series, and many more than I can't be fucked finding. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 30, 2012
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not set
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Jan 05, 2012
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1406330353
| 9781406330359
| 1406330353
| 4.42
| 562,892
| Dec 06, 2011
| Dec 06, 2011
|
really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 09, 2015
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Dec 14, 2015
|
Apr 01, 2011
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1406330345
| 9781406330342
| 1406330345
| 4.31
| 845,038
| Aug 31, 2010
| Jan 01, 2011
|
liked it
|
What a load of bloody melodrama. This book ought to be sung in operatic fashion by a cast of three in a slightly seedy theatre in Brooklyn. It's the s
What a load of bloody melodrama. This book ought to be sung in operatic fashion by a cast of three in a slightly seedy theatre in Brooklyn. It's the sort of book that's dreadfully self-important but really, when you think about it, nothing happens: a few people appear, some technology gets destroyed, two things kiss and stuff, and between all that is a metric ton of filler. Listen, I'm not going to lie and say I didn't kind of enjoy it. This was my third attempt at reading this, and I guess third time's a charm. I got through it in two and a half days, and two of those days were spent mostly at work and doing other things. It's not something you need to funnel a lot of time into and it's not something that requires a great deal of thought. All of the deep talk about humanity and love and family and quoting from books I never intend to read is just a smokescreen to disguise that this book is thin, its characters are thin, its mythology is particularly thin, and even some obvious fanservice in the form of Magnus Bane couldn't spice it up. It's not a bad book; it's not a good book, either. The problem with Cassandra Clare is that she creates great side characters and shite main characters. Tessa and Will are straight-up shite. They're bad people and absolutely tone deaf to what's going on around them, even when it's endangering the lives of the people they "care about". Those air quotes are for real. Neither of them are particularly interested anything other than each other's smell. They're like dogs at the park; the leaves and the trees and the brisk wind is cool and everything but when there's another dog in a ten-foot radius, oh-ho. Forget comfortable lead walking. Actually, just say goodbye to that dog. Nothing else matters. I love Jem, but that's the problem, isn't it? He's a side character and yet he's so much more more worthy of being a protagonist than Tessa. I want to follow Jem. I want to know Jem. But instead we're trailing along on Tessa's skirts, watching her waffle from room to room of this unnecessarily massive Institute, ruin plans, beg for Will's attention, and generally oscillate around the library while everyone else does the work. I don't expect Tessa to be Xena, because she's not been trained in combat, but if she isn't trained, don't take her on a mission into a vampire nest. Jesus Christ, how have these Shadowhunters survived so long if they're so dense? There's something almost creepy about this fad of asshole love interests; I know it started long ago, with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, experiencing a Renaissance with Bedward, and soaring to unprecedented heights in anything written by Cassandra Clare. I mean it - anything. There's probably an asshole love interest on her shopping list. There's probably one written into the alphabet magnets on her fridge. Will is a nasty piece of shit, and he's rewarded for that by having so many people around him who love him. Someone like Will, who victim-blames, who taunts women, who throws Tessa's confidence and her affection back in her face, doesn't deserve to be surrounded by people who are constantly forgiving him. I know Clare well enough to be certain that there's some sort of "I push people away to protect them" backstory buried under all of this, but that's not enough. Will is simply a nasty bastard with a piss-poor attitude. I think my biggest problem with this book is that it's just sort of limp. The setting felt sort of half-hearted, a kind of par-boiled vision of stereotyped London. At one point Jem says to Tessa, "You're thinking, If they call this damp nastiness summer, what must winter be like? You'd be surprised. Winter's actually much the same." I live on the east coast of Scotland. This summer I got sunburnt three times and lay out in a tank top in the park, sunbathing with the dogs. I am much farther north than London, which is in the south of England, and experiences a warm temperate summer and mild springs and autumns. The rainiest months in the UK are the winter months, and April and July. Every few years the dryness in southern England causes a hosepipe ban. So fine, set your book outside of America. That's cool. I'm sick of books about New York. But for god's sake, ask. Read a few blogs. Ask the people who live there what's it's like. "It rains in Britain". Yeah, it rains in the desert too. Your setting is a sad shoehorn for mean boys and bland girls. This whole Shadowhunter thread just rubs me up the wrong way. I don't like Shadowhunter culture, politics, or mythology. I don't like the way the Shadowhunters mock the Silent Brothers, who are also Shadowhunters but apparently undeserving of respect because they're ugly; I don't like the way the Shadowhunters profess to protect humans but treat them like animals and slap them with a label as demeaning as "mundanes"; I don't like the way they use Downworlders, but how this is excused by the narrative, which tells us that the relationship is edgy between the Clave and Downworlders, but it's fine because the Shadowhunters only hunt the Downworlders whom the narrative dubs "evil" and stroke the ego of those it proclaims "good". No grey area there, then! As long as we only kill the "bad guys" and have sex with the "good guys" (in secret), then it's not about power and control and it's not a privileged few creating a dichotomy out of those they deem less worthy than them. Right? RIGHT? I'm assuming that this is to swiftly avoid the Shadowhunters being labelled problematic, but it's not the way they use Downworlders that makes them so fucked up. It's the small things, like Jessamine being demonized for not wanting to hunt monsters, the othering of the Silent Brothers, the amount of money that is poured into maintaining the absolutely massive Institutes that house about five Shadowhunters each. The Shadowhunters wonder why demons and warlocks and vampires hate them, and maybe it's not because they hunt them, but because they're so corrupt. Even things we're supposed to think of as charitable, like Sophie and Thomas and Agatha being employed at the Institute, is fucked up. The Shadowhunters employing those people is as good as signing their death warrants. How can they possibly justify swanning around and calling humans "mundanes", then inviting them into their home to work for them, then leaving them to die in the name of an exclusive creed that they're not allowed membership of. How dare the Shadowhunters drag human Sophie, Agatha and Thomas into their war? And of course, after the clockwork (fucking steampunk. Ugh) creatures attack the Institute, all of our precious Shadowhunters are alive without a scratch, and only the humans who they looked down upon died. The Shadowhunters have no connection to the outside world - they exist inside a glass case of superiority, supposedly protecting humans that they attack with slurs and have no interactions with. Even in the Mortal Instruments, it was said that Jace, Alec and Isabelle had only met a handful of people their own age, and they never ever mixed with humans. What sort of protectors are they, if the thing they're protecting is looked at with such disgust? Why are the Shadowhunters even doing this job? For their own satisfaction? It's got nothing to do with protecting the world. It's about bloodlust, because they don't care a whit about the everyday "mundane" on the street, unless it's to laugh about their deaths or have sex with them. God, fuck the Shadowhunters. What dicks. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 07, 2011
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Dec 07, 2015
|
Mar 26, 2011
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1481426303
| 9781481426305
| 1481426303
| 4.39
| 394,023
| May 27, 2014
| May 27, 2014
|
did not like it
|
This isn't a review (I can't for the life of me remember a single aspect of this book and I no longer have any feelings towards it, ill or otherwise)
This isn't a review (I can't for the life of me remember a single aspect of this book and I no longer have any feelings towards it, ill or otherwise) but I'm doing my GR spring cleaning and removing or editing reviews that I hate. It's a big task, since I've written a lot of abominable crap over the past decade of being on Goodreads (I'm so OLD), but for fun I decided to go through the comments on this review. Six years' worth of them. With all the fire and brimstone down there, it looks like a gaming subreddit, but at times there was some genuinely interesting conversation. That's it, though. That's all I have to add. For the record, I actually wanted to remove this book from my shelves, because I genuinely cannot remember a single thing that happened in it and I don't even own the book, but GR won't let me. It freezes every time I try to take this book off my shelves. I guess I'm stuck with it. Cool, or whatever. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 27, 2014
|
Jun 29, 2014
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Mar 15, 2011
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1442416866
| 9781442416864
| 1442416866
| 4.21
| 542,691
| May 08, 2012
| May 08, 2012
|
it was ok
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**spoiler alert** This book couldn't make less sense if it were written in elvish.
**spoiler alert** This book couldn't make less sense if it were written in elvish.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
|
May 21, 2012
|
Jun 13, 2012
|
Mar 15, 2011
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1442403543
| 9781442403543
| 1442403543
| 4.07
| 613,760
| Apr 05, 2011
| Apr 05, 2011
|
it was ok
|
Le sigh. Or more like le fuck, am I right? Who the hell is this? Who is she? What happened to her? Alas, I've stopped caring, and my skin looks better
Le sigh. Or more like le fuck, am I right? Who the hell is this? Who is she? What happened to her? Alas, I've stopped caring, and my skin looks better already.
...more
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Notes are private!
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2
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Apr 09, 2011
not set
|
Apr 14, 2011
not set
|
Mar 15, 2011
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1416914307
| 9781416914303
| 1416914307
| 4.28
| 978,726
| Mar 24, 2009
| Mar 24, 2009
|
it was amazing
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Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 02, 2011
|
Apr 07, 2011
|
Mar 15, 2011
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1416914293
| 9781416914297
| 1416914293
| 4.11
| 953,405
| Aug 07, 2008
| Mar 25, 2008
|
it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
|
Mar 30, 2011
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Apr 02, 2011
|
Mar 15, 2011
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1416914285
| 9781416914280
| 1416914285
| 4.07
| 2,045,084
| Mar 27, 2007
| Mar 27, 2007
|
liked it
|
**spoiler alert** Update to come (I'm doing my spring cleaning late this year).
**spoiler alert** Update to come (I'm doing my spring cleaning late this year).
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
|
Mar 18, 2011
|
Mar 23, 2011
|
Mar 14, 2011
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0312656262
| 9780312656263
| 0312656262
| 3.67
| 69,813
| Jan 08, 2010
| Aug 31, 2010
|
did not like it
|
Okay so since Fallen was so much fun, I’ve also done a nostalgia read for this one and will be posting a Red-Hot, 1000 Degree Take within the next cou
Okay so since Fallen was so much fun, I’ve also done a nostalgia read for this one and will be posting a Red-Hot, 1000 Degree Take within the next couple of days. I had intended to drop the review and run, but then I started reading the second book, Hades, and I physically COULD NOT resist posting status updates. So let’s see how far I get with this. Note: we d r a g g e d this book to hell and back 10 years ago but as a community we only scratched the surface. If any of you are hankering for a nostalgia read, I highly recommend this. It’s WILD shit, and I realised I had forgotten all of it, from the weird antisemitism to the 100% white town in the American South (???) to a teenage girl committing suicide by cutthroat like she’s Cardinal fucking Woolsey. I’m shooketh. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 21, 2011
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Mar 05, 2011
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Feb 17, 2011
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385739141
| 9780385739146
| 0385739141
| 3.84
| 238,172
| Sep 28, 2010
| Sep 28, 2010
|
it was ok
|
**spoiler alert** When I picked up this book, it had been about nine months since I read Fallen, and the choking feeling had subsided. I wondered, wha
**spoiler alert** When I picked up this book, it had been about nine months since I read Fallen, and the choking feeling had subsided. I wondered, what if I was wrong? What if the first book was just a false start? Maybe I should give Kate another chance? I'm pathetic. I know this. You don't have to tell me. If I'm being honest, I will hold my hands up and say that Torment is a monumental improvement on Fallen. The writing style is less sticky and doesn't cut itself off. Every. Five. Words. The first two or three chapters were good. And I mean good; not great, but good enough. At that simple stage, I could see the San Francisco setting and the early descriptions of Shoreline were fine. Shelby and Miles were fine too. Quirky. Likable. It kind of went downhill from there. Kate has surely attempted to make Luce and Daniel's relationship 'healthy' by having Luce "question her destiny", but that's not really what's going on here, is it? No. What's going on here is an emotional mud-wrestle between two completely ill-equipped morons with the collective mental capacity of a sesame seed. Guys, healthy relationships are about mutual understanding, respect and consent. Healthy relationships are not about cheating on your partner just to get a rise out of them, dictating what your partner should look like and being disappointed when they decide to change their appearance, or trying to flatten your partner's personality and individuality to such an extent that they are incapable of being apart from you for eighteen days. Come on. That's not even three weeks. Look, 90% of Luce and Daniel's conversations go like this: Daniel: I am mad at you for doing X. Luce: I am mad at you for doing Y. Daniel: But I am infatuated with the idea of you. Luce: I am still mad at you for doing Y. Daniel: *kisses Luce* Luce: Y doesn't matter any more. I like your muscles. Daniel: I'm leaving. Luce (alone): I am angry at Daniel for doing Y. I know. No author is perfect, but let's be real here. This isn't so much a book as really sexual bible fanfiction. And honestly, if it were fanfiction, I'd probably enjoy it. But I paid money for this shit. I paid money for Luce to wonder, "Who was she without [Daniel]?" Nobody should ever be in a relationship wherein a legitimate concern is who you actually are outside of that relationship. Another person's personality is not for sharing, and frankly, you shouldn't want to be one half of a whole. How is that functional in any way, shape or form? How is that healthy? But it's so true of the Luce/Daniel dynamic, though, isn't it? I could write a dissertation on this. It's this constant wonder, of how anyone can possibly write such shallow characters with such an unconvincing liking for each other, and yet somehow be invested in the story. How could you think this was interesting? We are reading this book and picturing two wobbly blobs of nothing slowly revolve around each other. It's like sitting through a ten-hour video of the moon revolving around the earth in real-time. Like, nothing but that. Just one rock moving around the other rock. It seems like it might be mildly interesting and then when you actually experience it, it's just what it says on the tin. One rock going around another rock. (This just got so existential.) And I get it. I get Kate trying to portray that Luce wants her own life and her own independence. But this is not living or being independent. Free thinking is not about bleaching your hair or crying about an eighteen-day relationship hiatus as if the thing that got removed for eighteen days was not your boyfriend but all the skin on your face; it's about seeking out your interests and figuring out what path you want to take in life, not your first-world problems with your pushy, overbearing boyfriend. I mean seriously. This book reads like a pamphlet on white cishet rich people's problems. On the portrayal of healthy relationships: take a look at Steven and Francesca's horrible dynamic. Francesca and Steven apparently do nothing but hatefuck and talk about how they'll kill each other "when the time comes". How is this even a thing? We're served this tale of an angel and a demon (let's put a pin in the total mythology fail for the sake of argument) but all we get is some weird angry Nip/Tuckesque dynamic between two people who apparently hate each other but kind of love each other even though they openly hate one another's species and moral choices (???). And continuity? What is continuity? We have the Announcers which function as deus ex machina and an easy out for exposition but there isn't even a cover story to try to hide that they're a plot device painted the colour of a plot device wearing a sandwich board across which the words "PLOT DEVICE" are written. What are they? Portals? Fortune-tellers? Time warps? WHAT? And what was the conflict here? The Outcasts? The Elders? The demons? Luce and Daniel? PICK ONE! The end is another whole big thing, but simply because I don't know how on earth we managed to reach that conclusion. Is Kate trying to tell us that the best way to resolve the problems right in front of our faces is to run away from them? Luce suddenly jumps inside the Announcer (and no one bothers to stop her) without even the courtesy of an explanation. This is following a battle wherein she demonstrates some good old-fashioned Mary-Sue 'I'm going to battle even if you tell me not to, then pretend like I saved the day when really I did nothing'. The end of the battle scene freaked me out, too. Why was everyone just standing around talking? How did blind angels manage to hook their arrows on to their bows? Why was everyone just waiting patiently while they loaded their weapons? Why is Luce the price? Why did Cam give up on Luce so quickly? Why do Gabbe's wings smell like Herbal Essences? Why is this a book? What is literature? What is life? And, through this, the only question I was really interested in: How was Luce's parent's walk? Did they have a nice time? Overall, this book was, prose-wise, much better than Fallen, though that isn't an amazing achievement in itself. Because I love you all, here are some examples of dreadful writing: a) "Daniel's beautiful features distorted into a scary expression." b) "Miles pulled away, looking happy and sad at the same time." c) "Roland hovered over to him. Literally. He was flying." d) "I know he would die if you died." e) "Deep chartreuse, glittering gold, marbleized swaths of pink and purple." Note: The Outcasts are blind, but locate Luce by seeing the "burning of her soul" because apparently there is something behind her mask/face that resembles a personality. If they see her by the "burning of her soul", why do they mistake Dawn for Luce? Surely if they are not looking for aesthetics i.e. hair colour and facial features, just the "burning of her fucking soul" then... Look, fuck it. I fucking give up. To conclude: This book is balls. This series is a disaster. Luce and Daniel are like a poor man's Bedward. The only thing that remains to be seen is Daniel eating a baby out of Luce's womb. There's always hope! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 28, 2010
|
Oct 05, 2010
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Jul 28, 2010
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385738935
| 9780385738934
| 0385738935
| 3.72
| 595,689
| Dec 08, 2009
| Dec 08, 2009
|
did not like it
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- Part One: The Leaking Package So a couple of years ago I revisited Twilight—cut to me getting the jump on the COVID Twilight resurgence—and wrote an u - Part One: The Leaking Package So a couple of years ago I revisited Twilight—cut to me getting the jump on the COVID Twilight resurgence—and wrote an ultra-serious high brow review where the only thing missing was a Harvard-style reference list of the 45 Buzzfeed articles and Aminos I scoured to find out what Edward Cullen’s star sign was (spoiler: it’s gemini, and I didn’t even end up putting it in the review. Which makes it not a reference list, but an actual bibliography). I told myself I’d take a short break and then have another go at reviewing some 00’s classic YA, because… Why not? I ended up enjoying Twilight far more than I anticipated. Yes, it was bad, but it wasn’t ‘Shadowhunters TV show’ bad, in that I could get through it without the nagging feeling that I was doing something illegal. But what started as a “short break” turned into three years. Which—happens. Anyway, for my next foray down Memory Lane (which, at this point, feels more like Memory Gauntlet, complete with razor wire, rabid dogs, and Sky TV salespeople) I decided to pick up one of my most formative YA 00’s hits: Fallen by Lauren Kate. Now, when this book came out in December 2009, I was slap-bang in the middle of the target demographic. I had just turned 15; Instagram and Snapchat didn’t exist yet, and I had a slider phone whose keys went clickety-clack. I also thought I was straight, which in retrospect gives meaning to the phrase “one day we’ll look back on this and laugh”. When I originally read this book, I hated it—but that doesn’t mean anything. I was an angry, lonely teen, and back in those days, Twitter was in its relative infancy, so if we wanted to vent our rage we couldn’t simply form an online motorcycle gang and pick a stranger to harass. We had to work to make nuisances of ourselves. Which leads me to my…tumultuous history on Goodreads. But the point is that my loathing for this book (and for Twilight!) was obviously disproportionate, with the hyperbole clearly played for laughs. Did I truly hate this book? Was it really as bad as it seemed? Yes. It was. This book is—I can’t even think of an accurate descriptor for it. It’s laughably awful. When I started reading this, I was in bed at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, having arrived home from an extremely long hike with stabbing pain in my elderly hips; I propped myself up against the pillows and thought, “This’ll be nice. A little wander into the past. To a simpler time.” On page 10, I was crying. They were partly tears of laughter, and tears of pain, but also of this book merely existing. I can’t believe somebody went through the final pass pages of this and said, “Yeah. That’s good stuff. Let’s charge real money for this.” Interestingly, this book was not created in isolation by Lauren Kate—meaning that she shouldn’t take the full blame for it (because “blame” is the only word I can think of to accurately convey how blisteringly crap it is). An announcement here from 2008 introduces Tinderbox books, a book packager whose emblem is on the inside cover of the Fallen hardback. There’s also mention of it on Publishers Weekly here. Intrigued, I did some more digging, but information on this company is scarce. This appears to be the website for it here, but other than that, it’s quiet. Why Tinderbox has faded into obscurity, I don’t know. Despite the dire quality of this book, it did well on submission; the author’s agent arranged an auction between publishing houses, but went on to accept what seems to have been a substantial pre-empt from Random House (now Penguin Random House). For background: a pre-empt is when a publisher makes a single take-or-leave-it offer, rather than bidding in an auction. In the Publishers Weekly article, the agent states that this single offer blew all others out of the water, defeating the need for an auction. In short: this book (and the Twilight craze that raised the tide at the time) made everyone involved with it $$$. Part Two: Write me a Nightmare The profit margin is not an indictment on anyone who worked on this book (nor is the movie, which I can only describe as Unwatchable. Or the horrifying possibility of a TV show. But I don't intend to talk about these cursed motion pictures any further than that. It's done, we've acknowledged it, now let's move on). Money in publishing—namely, income inequality in publishing—is a thorny issue, but that’s not Lauren Kate’s fault. I suppose what keeps me up in the dark of the night is that this book sold more than 10 million copies across 30 countries, meaning that at every corner of the globe, printed more than 10 million times, are these absolute gems: - “Physically, she was fine. It was just that in every other way—emotionally, psychologically, romantically—she couldn’t have felt more broken.” - “A salty, nervous taste filled her mouth, but she couldn’t swallow it away.” “Every time she saw their tongue rings flashing, Luce felt a lonely pinch inside her chest.” (It’s no less ludicrous in context.) - “The Grigoris do not sleep. Seemed possible; Daniel did always look tired.” (At this point, there is no real evidence that Daniel is anything other than a human boy with a bad haircut.) - “He dipped her low and kissed her fiercely, as if he were angry, and each time his lips left hers, even just for half a second, the most parching thirst ran through her, making her cry out. This time, she knew they were wings, and she let them wrap around her body like a blanket.” (What were wings? His lips?) - "Then he started to really kiss her, softly at first, making subtle, lovely pecking noises in her ear." - "She didn't usually get involved with rocker guys—but then again, none of them had ever pulled the desk next to her even closer, plopped down beside her, and stared at her with eyes quite so green." There are also these little nuggets that have aged worse than a dead fish on a hot day: - “She was still trying to figure out…whether this shaven-headed guide standing before them was a man or a woman” - “‘We’re not talking about him,’ Arriane said quickly. ‘I mean she-man in there’. […] ‘Whaddya think—dude or chick?’” - “The gender of most of the faculty here is an ongoing, schoolwide debate.” - “Have you replaced me already with some reform school cutter?” - “She—at least Luce thought she was a she—had a frizzy wad of brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, calves like ham hocks, and yellowing “invisible” braces covering her top teeth.” (Worth noting: these kinds of physical descriptions are only ever used for women.) - “Even at a school full of crazies, Luce was well aware that this instinct was insane.” - “[...] it was clear from her first brief and but genuine smile that she had some coarse affection for the crazy girl.” Do not misunderstand me. This book was published twelve years ago, and it's clearly a small silly story with no bearing on anything, so I’m not seeking any kind of reckoning for this. That would be utterly absurd. But if this book reminded me of anything, it was that “simpler times” never existed. The more you know [shooting star]. Part Three: Kudzu up the Wazoo I could go on and on about the terrible writing and the awful characterisation and the overuse of the word kudzu, or the fact that Roland is constantly, awkwardly referred to as “the dreadlocked boy” or “the kid with dreadlocks” as if this book is afraid to say that he is Black, but while I was reading I had this weird epiphany: Luce is not the main character of this book. In fact, Luce is not a character in this book. This book—no, this series is about Daniel. Start to finish. Let’s dig in. I have the benefit of hindsight here, in that I’ve read the whole series. So the convoluted explanation for all this is that [spoiler if you care, which I bloody well hope you don’t] Luce is actually also an angel (we’re going to pretend angels aren’t all brothers and sisters here), who was originally in love with Lucifer. He turned into a fuckboy, so she got up in Daniel's business instead. This pissed off both Lucifer, and also God, for whatever reason, and Daniel then begged clemency for Luce which resulted in both of them being banished to Earth for eternity. But the interesting thing is this happened six thousand years ago (we’re also going to pretend that Hubble’s constant and the Higgs mechanism don’t exist in this universe), meaning Daniel has been awake, and alive, for six thousand years while Luce reincarnates over and over again. I did the mathematics here, and based on the short accounts of their various love affairs I estimate they spent an average of about three weeks together every seventeen years over the course of 6000 years. So: 6000/17 = 353 (that’s 353 times they’ve met) Each meeting lasts 3 weeks (on average, given the various anecdotes of their prior lives) 353 x 21 (days) = 7413 days 7413/365 = 20.3 years So over the course of 6000 years, they have spent a very sporadic 20.3 years together. That is considerably less than my current lifetime. But adding to this is that every time they come together, they have to start anew. Luce doesn’t know who Daniel is or why she’s drawn to him; she is a blank slate. On the other hand, Daniel is emotionally old. His lived experience is bottomless; he can’t possibly relate to the 17-year-old Luce, and there’s no reason why he should want to. His relationships with her are formulaic, fleeting, and boring, and as a person she is utterly unremarkable. The most shocking thing she’s ever done is have a shrill, embarrassing lover’s quarrel with her silly boyfriend in front of God and get evicted from her shared living complex (along with the rest of the heavenly host. Even in that, she is not unique.) So it’s not Luce that Daniel is in love with; it’s the idea of her. He is a bored, agitated, ancient immortal, trapped on Earth in a mortal body because of one foolish mistake he made millennia ago. Time means nothing to him, and there is no reason for his affection for Luce to be just as strong after 6000 years as it was during their fanciful fling in Heaven (especially when he has spent a collective 0.34% of that time actually in Luce's company, during which she has no idea who the fuck he is). So what is he looking for with her? Part Four: The Sunk Cost Fallacy So while Luce experiences 6000 years in disjointed chunks, Daniel is waiting. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. What is he waiting for? He’s waiting for something to happen. The hollowness in Daniel’s life is ironically what motivates him—he doesn’t have the same connections with the other angels as they have to each other, despite the fact that their small, broken lives revolve around the astoundingly selfish choice that he and Luce made. But the spectacular thing about this is that Luce, who was complicit in said choice, need not suffer the same way that Daniel does. She’s the one who dies a lot (The One Who Dies A Lot should be her FBI code name) but she lives these charmed, quiet human lives, without the horrendous yoke of immortality around her neck. She doesn’t know what her choice costs everyone—she is unaware that she broke the fucking universe. Daniel is the one who lives with that decision. And at this point, the healthiest decision would be to walk away from this pointless, shallow love affair. So why doesn’t he? The sunk cost fallacy refers to a situation wherein a person continues a project or behaviour (usually despite it showing no or little hope of substantial return) due to the resources that have already been invested in it and can’t be recovered. This, not “love”, is one of the main reasons why Daniel continues to pursue Luce despite the fact that there is nothing to gain out of this romance. Look at it this way: the series ends with both of them turning into mortals and living a small life together. But… What are they going to do now? Go to the movies? Self-isolate at home? Get a cat? Seriously? Their romance is not a romance, but a lifestyle. A desperate, addictive form of self-harm. For 6000 years, Daniel has been compelled to finish what he started—to prove everyone wrong, and to ensure that the sacrifice he and his friends made was worth it. That, as well as the time he has wasted, is the sunk cost. He and Luce have ruined scores of lives with this tomfoolery, but only Daniel is left aware enough to shoulder that burden. It’s torture, but how is he supposed to stop now? Can he ever just throw up his hands and say, “I’m done”? Of course not. It’s not possible for him to do that. So against everything that’s good and right in the world, he continues to pursue Luce despite knowing that each small, pathetic little romantic entanglement between them will result in her being roasty-toasty chargrilled, and the clock resetting to 0. It is a vicious, violent cycle of meeting, kissing, dying, and being alone. Being alone, and meeting, and kissing, and dying. But that’s not to say he gets nothing out of it, no. Daniel has experienced everything: every corner of the globe, every possible human interaction, and I’m assuming every single Cosmo-endorsed sex-pretzel. The only eternally new, inexhaustible thing—the only thing he can always come back to, the same way an addict comes back to a substance—is Luce. She is constant low-cost newness, untainted and uncomplicated; she is soul food. But on top of that, she is reliable. There is no dance required. She is extremely low effort. The high of fresh, new infatuation never goes away with her, and more than anything else, she is a quick, ugly little jolt of adrenaline that breaks up the horrendous monotony of Daniel’s existence. Reliably there, reliably impressed, and never difficult. As a source of fast, cheap excitement, she is a well that never runs dry; a project that's never finished. She is the Wordscapes of girlfriends. Part Five: It's Still Better than Halo Through Luce, Daniel can live vicariously. He can recapture a small kernel of his lost youth, and remind himself of what he once was: young, bound to a master, emotionally whipped for any semblance of individuality. But doesn’t that also sound like a lonely existence? Any way you look at it, Daniel suffers. Heaven or Earth—there is no safe place with him. So he stays still, surrounding himself with friends who medicate with thrill-seeking, who dress themselves up in disingenuous costumes, who struggle—the way Cam does—to foster any meaningful attachment. 1 + 0 is still 1, and so my only conclusion is this: that Lucifer, Cam, and Miss Sophia are not the villains here. The villain is loneliness, from which Daniel has no escape. He watches Luce wander blissfully through her small, stupid little lives, dying the instant she realises what selfish fools she and Daniel were to condemn their friends to this horrendous fate. But he won't let her off too easily: he chases away other suitors (Miles, Cam) lest they spoil her sweetness, her malleability, the role he’s created for her in his theatre of compulsive cruelty. He will go after her to satisfy his need to feel, to exist, to have a purpose, despite the fact that it unfailingly results in her brutal and violent death. It occurred to me along the way that Daniel’s interactions with Cam—which are volatile, hostile, and emotionally charged—echo the fantastic dynamic between Hannibal and Will in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. For them, Alana is a proxy, the same way that Luce is a proxy for Daniel and Cam, and to an extent the other angels too. He is detached from them, cold and bored and distant, but because of Luce, he has a reason to interact with them. To touch them, to shout at them, to fill his day with something other than torturous waiting. To express what is no doubt a bottomless well of ancient hatred inside him. To share space with the only people who truly understand the hell he is living. This is not a love story between Daniel and Luce. It is a long, lonely, wistful romance between Daniel and the youth he threw away. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Jun 2021
Jun 2021
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Jun 09, 2021
Jun 09, 2021
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Jul 28, 2010
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Hardcover
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