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noveltyreads · 1 year

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A Thousand Heartbeats by Kiera Cass Book Review

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I thought I knew what I was getting myself into when I first requested A Thousand Heartbeats from NetGalley, but I was still subtly surprised by this book and how much I enjoyed it.

A Thousand Heartbeats follows Annika, a princess forced to marry a man she doesn't love for the sake of her country, Kadier. On the other side of the continent lie the Dahrainians, a nation of people living in ruins, awaiting the day they enact their revenge on the throne who drove them out centuries ago. Leading this charge is Kawan and the soldier who does all his dirty work, Lennox, who travels to Kadier to show how easy it is to infiltrate enemy borders. When Lennox brings back Princess Annika, they begin to realise they're more similar than they initially thought. As the two grow closer, so does Kawan's thirst for power and they find themselves together but also on opposing sides of a war years in the making.

When I first started reading, I was surprised by how easily I was absorbed into the world of Kadier. The story immediately set off an almost fairytale-like vibe and the main characters were likeable with dual perspective POV that suited the story really well. Having previously read the first three books in The Selection, I could see just how much Kiera Cass's writing has grown and developed since her debut novel and series. There was a big effort made to create layers and backstory to both Lennox and Annika's characters, focusing on the weight of guilt, loss and grief and how it can weigh heavy on every aspect of life. I liked seeing how the characters bonded over this and found a joint connection through their hardships.

I believe it would be hard to review this book without looking into the romance. It was obvious even from the blurb that this would be an enemies to lovers novel, so I knew from page one that Lennox and Annika would get together. My biggest concern though was whether this romance would be an insta-love sort or if it would be more of a slow burn. It's clear which one I would've preferred. The focus instead was more on developing their personalities, their lives and their characterisation, allowing for a richer romance where you just wanted the best for the both of them and all the side characters.

That being said, I found Annika and Lennox both suited each other well but I wished their chemistry was more developed. Make no mistake, I thought it was good but the romance really happened in one big moment rather than short little bursts. I would've liked for the two to have had smaller moments to build up that romantic tension and chemistry instead of it all occurring at once and then all of a sudden calling each other "the love of their life." That just seemed a little quick if you ask me but then again maybe that's because I'm a little sceptical over the whole concept of true love and soulmates and don't consider myself to be a romantic. While the subtle pining was good, I felt like they should've been with each other a bit more before deciding in a heartbeat they would do anything for one another including giving up entire kingdoms for the pursuit of their love.

Romance aside, I also enjoyed the platonic and familial relationships with the characters. I loved Annika's relationship with her brother, Escalus and how they easily bantered on. I also liked Noemi's character although, I must admit, I was sceptical of her and thought her to be in on the deceit to usurp Annika's position and jeopardise Kadier. I thought that would create a thrilling plot twist which would've changed everything, hence why when the book took a more linear approach, the plot seemed quite predictable at times. I could tell who would betray who from a mile away and I wish the book didn't make it seem so obvious.

The other thing of mention is with the antagonist, Kawan. To me he seemed very two-dimensional as a villain. He didn't have this air of danger to him and he acted more childish than as someone who evoked fear. I felt like he was too easy a villain and that Lennox and his friends could've easily taken him down. If his misdeeds (apart from that one hunting scene) were shown more and we were given glimpses into his scary nature, then I might've seen him as a more menacing figure. I thought the real villain in the story was Nickolas and that's because we saw some of the backstory with him and saw his deviousness, unlike Kawan who's motives weren't as described. That being said, I would've loved to see more from Nickolas and the supposed tension between Annika's and his family. It was mentioned and it obviously played a huge part in his sense of duty and subsequent characterisation, but I wished that avenue was explored more.

All in all, this book is definitely one I'd recommend to any Kiera Cass fan or hopeless romantic, with well written main and side characters with layered backstories, and intriguing dual POV perspectives. The only downsides I found were with the characterisation of the villains/antagonists, the rapidness of the romance post the slow build, and the often predictable plot twists. That being said, I did enjoy reading this book and I managed to breeze through it fairly quickly. It reads in a way that is reminiscent of fairytales or classic fantasy so if you are a reader drawn to those types of stories, especially ones with happily ever afters, A Thousand Heartbeats is a book for you.

ACTUAL RATING: 3.8 STARS

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byamylaurens · 3 years

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On Structuring Plot: A List Of Useful Resources + My Recent Process

I was asked on Instagram last week how I go about structuring my stories, whether there’s a set way I like to do it, or if it’s different for every story, or what. I promised an answer last week, and that didn’t happen, but hey! It is this week and now I can answer! 😀

The truth of the matter is, I feel very self-conscious about plot structure. It’s the area of writing I’m least comfortable with, and so my attempts either end up with me just writing and ignoring structure entirely (A Fox Of Storms And Starlight), or else plotting everything else in meticulous detail, usually with the help of Liana Brooks (How Not To Acquire A Castle, as evidenced in our epic plotting video).

And then there is everything else, which tends to fall in the middle. Honestly, it depends on the book, and the mood, and how much of a concrete, specific handle I need on the story before going in.

Because that varies widely, too. When Worlds Collide, the final book in the Sanctuary trilogy that won Best Children’s Book 2019 in my state? You’re reading the first draft, prettied up with some proofreading for typos. The first book in the series, on the other hand? That’s the …eighth, I think, draft? And again, everything else falls somewhere in the middle, though generally speaking I plan my novels more than my short stories, and things that feel “fast paced” more than things that luxuriate more in the prose. Though even that’s not entirely true. And it overlaps with the length tendencies.

SO. Rather than continuing to ramble about my actual processes (variable), I thought I’d share with you a range of resources that you might find useful (if you’re a writer) or simply interesting (if you’re not, or even if you are I guess).

1. Liana Brooks’ Outlining Sheet

Liana, who you probably know is my writer-buddy and co-conspirator with regards to Inkprint Press, is excellent at plot. She does developmental edits for a really reasonable rate, and is absolutely stellar at what she does. So it’s without shame that I recommend first up her outline sheet, which is a take on the Lester Dent Plot Formula (google it).

2. Beat Sheets.

For when a general outline with key touch points isn’t detailed enough, there are beat sheets. The best ones I’ve found came from Jami Gold, and you can download them here. I’ve also converted them to word docs with scenes numbered for a 40-scene/chapter book and a 20 scene-chapter book, and you can grab those here (word docx download).

3. MICE Structure.

I posted this video on Friday, but Mary Robinette Kowal’s MICE theory has been hands down THE most useful plotting resource I’ve encountered for me personally. I’ll elaborate on this a little more below, where I’ll talk specifically about a project I’m working on right now.

4. Brandon Sanderson’s Plot Lectures.

I listened to these nearly a year ago, then relistened recently and was interested to discover I’d done something similar with Moon Shot, the project I’m currently plotting. Definitely worth a listen. It’s a little more general in scope than the preceding resources, but very necessary for a sound understanding of what your plot should be DOING.

You can also check out the posts I wrote on plot structure years ago, starting here.

Okay, now to the specifics. On Tuesday, I posted the following to Instagram, which is what precipitated the question that resulted in this post:

This is me working on Moon Shot, and it’s the first time I really used the MICE process on a longer work very deliberately, and I LOVED IT.

So I thought I’d quickly delineate for you here exactly what I did. (ETA: Quickly, ha.)

Worldbuilding. I had a giant conversation with Liana about the worldbuilding for the world, and how the main sci fi element works. She took notes and emailed them to me.

Brain Dump. I did a stream-of-consciousness dump into my notes just rambling through things roughly sequentially, and stopping to research the sciencey stuff I needed.

List Of Questions. From this, I listed out on my small whiteboard (A4-ish size) all the questions that would be asked and answered in this book. Will they escape? Why can’t they go to Earth? Who are the kidnappers? Etc.

MICE. I then colour-coded each question according to it’s MICE category: milieu, inquiry, character, event. If that doesn’t make sense, go watch Kowal’s video first (resource 3 above).

General Plotting. I broke out the bigger whiteboard (A2 size?), separated it roughly into quarters across the ‘page’, and added every question to the board. Some questions are asked right at the start of the story, so that’s where their coloured line started, then I estimated roughly when the question would be answered in-plot, and ended their coloured line there. This was hands-down the most useful part of plotting, because it let me see a bunch of things in macro: I’d overloaded the third quarter with too many answers, and there wasn’t enough in the second quarter. Certain questions COULDN’T be asked until other ones were answered, and if I left the answering too late, the next arc would be too squished before the end of the book. And so forth. So I played around, adjusting arcs until I got a fairly even spread of questions and answers across the book, with little clusters at the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. I also looked to make sure that I had enough strong questions asked in the beginning that weren’t answered until the very end.

Specific Plotting. For each arc, I now knew WHEN in the book it had to be. So I grabbed three A3 pages, taped them together in a long line, divided the page into 25 columns (see point 8 for why), and wrote headings with the basic beats of a story. Call to action, midpoint, final puzzle piece, act 2 antagonist, and so forth. See resource 2 above. Then I took my MICE arcs and started filling things in: this scene needs to answer this question and raise the next one. This scene needs to answer this question. That sort of thing. Not the specifics of what the characters are doing, but the underlying bones of what the SCENE needs to be doing.

Conflict! Once the beginnings and ends of each MICE arc were in place, I referred back to the MICE principle to figure out what kinds of conflict I needed to add. For example, one of the opening MICE arcs is a milieu question: How did the kids escape? Knowing that this is a milieu, I know I need to add points throughout the story where they run into dead ends in their attempts to escape, all the way until they actually make it out. Another MICE arc revolves around a mystery, so I knew I needed to throw red herrings and misleading information in there to influence the decisions the characters are making. I used different coloured highlighter to mark the main long-running arcs to make sure I was sprinkling them evenly throughout the book, and not accidentally ignoring one for too long.

Point Of View. I now had a really good idea of what was happening in each scene, so on to POV. Most books wouldn’t need this step necessarily, but part of the POINT of this book is that it has POV scenes from all 25 of my Year 8 students from a couple of years ago (you have not LIVED until you’ve tried this, oy, my head). AND on top of that, every character has one of eight different superpowers. So I wrote out all the character names on sticky notes, colour coded according to superpower. Then I played around. Which superpower would be useful in this scene? Which would lend an interesting lens to the events? Post-its meant I could test things and swap them around easily, until I got an order I was happy with, with the superpowers kind of evenly sprinkled throughout the book (as much as possible; they’re based on Myer-Briggs personality type, which, yes, most of the students were kind enough to do the test for me so I could allocate their powers accurately, HA, but it means some superpowers are more common than others).

Text Type. One of the only ways I could think of making this book hang together cohesively was to tell it via epistolary, which means including a bunch of other text types as well as narration (or instead of). So there are story bits, but also emails, letters, maps, interviews, transcripts and more. So once I had everything else in place, I figured out which scenes were going to be which text types so that again, there was a balance of them throughout.

PHEW. What a process. Still, overall it only took me about three hours, and it was SUPER FUN AND SATISFYING to do. I’ll DEFINITELY be doing at least steps 1 – 7 for a couple of future books, because it was just a really inherently enjoyable process for me, and makes me confident going into the book that the scenes will do what they need to do.

Here’s a sneaky peek at what some of the final outline looks like… 😀

On Structuring Plot: A List Of Useful Resources + My Recent Process was originally published on Amy Laurens

#Amy Laurens #Australian author Amy #beat sheets for writers #before you write #Brandon Sanderson #Canberra writer Amy #how to plot a novel #How to Write #Jami Gold&039;s beat sheets #Mary Robinette Kowal #plot plot plot the book #plotting masterclass #structuring stories with story structure like a well-structured story with structure #writing #writing resource #writing workshop #you too can write a story woo

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readingaccountability · 3 years

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snow crash - neal stephenson

my playlist (because of The Way That I Am)

final thoughts:

okay, im going to be honest right out of the gate- i cant decide whether this is a book id recommend or not. it was really fun for the most part, but personally there was a lot more exposition than id like. the early portions of the novel have exposition which feels completely fair, mostly things relating to worldbuilding. stephenson creates his own vision of future america, and some places online referred to it as cyberpunk, and some as post-cyberpunk. id be more in the latter camp, mostly due to the way he plays with tropes, leaving the reader unsure of which will be subverted and which wont.

the use of language was really fun, and i enjoyed the worldbuilding a lot. his vision of a futuristic capitalistic earth feels surreal in its immediacy and recognizability. the back jacket blurb ends with "a future america so bizarre, so outrageous, you'll recognize it immediately." which, yeah. a texan info-tech magnate? two competing corporations owning the highway system? suburban city-states? this was another enjoyable thing- everything was colorfully named, and names treated totally normally, which kind of poked fun at how we have everyday things named very ludicrously and for the most part we are totally blind to it.

one aspect i really enjoyed was that the author often doesn't make certain things clear to the audience, until he does, and then it becomes necessary to reassess the entire story and setting. this goes to underscore the theme of the importance of information and the ways we take it in and perceive the world based upon it. for example, we don't learn that y.t. is fifteen until maybe 75 pages in, at which point a lot makes sense in retrospect. the same thing occurs in the worldbuilding, as suddenly a detail is given in passing and the reader must incorporate it into the setting, which by default we assume to be similar in many ways to our idea of america. it keeps the reader on their toes as well as furthering the worldbuilding. for the most part, the tech stuff didnt feel outdated to me, despite being a future projected out from '92.

however, aspects of the book are definitely very 1992. id put these into two camps: the first, being that the book does at different times use slurs. the main character is black and asian, the n word is used a few times by racist side-character/antagonist types, as are a few other racial slurs. there was also the occasional usage of the r slur, within the narrative prose itself, rather than usage as an insult within dialogue.

the protagonist, who is named, unfortunately, hiro protagonist, is a great character and felt very fleshed out to me, though at times he reminded me more of dirk strider than normally would be ideal. (its obvious that stephenson and andrew hussie are of a similar type of writer, and play with similar tropes, lmao.) hiro is a man of many worlds. he seems to shift between them easily, though never fully existing in any of them. this is reflected in his background, both in his biracial identity and in having been raised on a myriad of army bases. this is layered further in his fluidity in interacting with both reality and the metaverse, yet remaining slightly, consistently aloof. fascinatingly the first moment i sensed this drop was when we meet juanita- aka where his real and meta realities coincide. the description of them as the adam and eve of the metaverse is both insanely romantic and thematically key (good god i wish we had more than like, two conversations between them). juanita designed the facial component to metaverse avatars, doing the majority of this work when the two were together, and hiro can see echoes of both their facial tics in the face of every avatar in the metaverse. in a way, by having done this work juanita is positioned by the narrative as one of the gods of this digital realm. she is also hiro's call to action, being aware of the coming trouble and alerting him to it, as well as connecting him to the informational database he needs to prepare.

y.t., the secondary protagonist, fucking ruled. i loved that she was just a fifteen year old punkass kid whose mom doesnt know how crazy this part time job is. y.t. being worried about her mom was a great thread throughout, and a really good balance to how obviously independent y.t. is. i do wish there had been a chance to explain more about her background (she has a dad who left who is mentioned in a throwaway sentence, and a boyfriend who is mentioned near the beginning but never again.) i really enjoyed how obviously hyperaware y.t. was at all times about her own place within the insanities of the setting, while also consistently writing her as a teen maybe in way too deep who thinks about things in typically teenage ways. but like, that wasn't ever held against her? the narrative meets her where she is. it was honestly awesome. HOWEVER,

i absolutely hated the raven and y.t. scenes. how creepy!!! he basically statutory rapes her!!! we know hes at least late 20s early 30s, because hes the same age as hiro. if this sort of content is upsetting to read for you, i definitely do NOT recommend this book. (if you want to avoid reading these bits: ch 47 y.t. meets raven, ch 50 they are in a bar eating, ch 52 things happen that result in y.t.'s anti-assault device activating- she did not activate it on purpose, but forgot it was there- and raven is knocked out.)

please PLEASE dont take any of the following analysis as like, trying to be apologetic towards this scenes. because again they were awful and hard to get through and really gross. but im also cognizant that the author was obviously trying to convey something by making the choice, like the way it was written is obviously not condoning this sort of thing.

i think maybe what stephenson was trying to get at with that, was that we see hiro internally negate any potential for anything untoward with y.t. basically immediately, since he kind of senses that she might have a small crush on him (though this doesnt last more than a fleeting moment, especially from her perspective). vs raven, whose 'poor impulse control' warning tattoo eventually elicits a sarcastic remark from hiro after he finds out raven and y.t. were "a thing". i really dont think hiro knew how far it went? like it was just suuuper weird, but i figured it was meant narratively to 1. execute the chekovs gun of y.t.'s anti-assault device, 2. contrast hiro and raven (especially considering the bike-racing argument where theyre telling the story together, which is supposed to parallel them, while contrasting the differences in how they ended up?), and 3. just to get raven unconscious, i guess. but good god it was weird and i hated every second of it, why couldnt the device have like, activated way earlier?? gah. fucking upsetting. moving past that!

honestly i was really frustrated by how little screentime juanita got, because the way she was introduced was so fucking interesting and then shes mostly off doing her own thing. the bits of explanation she gives at the end about what she was up to on the raft are so sparse and im like damn, can we get a little bit of her pov in here? please? that would have ruled. additionally, shes supposed to be hiros love interest, but we see so little of them interacting outside her intro scenes. a huge portion of why hiro is getting into the sumerian mythology is literally framed as something that will help him understand juanita, but we dont get to see him talk to her about it barely at all.

the supporting characters were quite fun, i particularly liked the librarian. big surprise, i liked the overly literal ai information-dispensor, lmfao. watching him and hiro interact reminded me SO hard of geordi laforge having honest to god conversations with the computer where he tries to coax information out of it, aka one of my favorite little aspects of tng.

and lastly, the major plot themes themselves. i adore the way stephenson approached action, it was very entertaining. usually i cant really visualize action scenes written out, but his use of language was really really effective and engaging. the plot itself was absolutely fascinating, though i found the premise pretty contrived. which isnt bad in itself, i was fully suspending my disbelief until the last hundred pages or so. which for a 550+ page book, isnt too bad.

i did like the approach of linking the ancient to the modern, that is always really neat. and i think ultimately stephenson did it in an interesting way, not how i would have done it, but definitely interesting! creating these ideas about information infrastructures, and there being words that can access those and be used to control people, was wild. not sure if i agree about the equating of religion to a virus, though he did specifically establish that it was more the approach to religion, than religion itself. (maybe if juanita had been more goddamn present in the narrative that could have been elaborated on a little more. literally her perspective would have been perfect in balancing that out!!)

ultimately what did me in was the very very very long winded MONOLOGUE where hiro re-explained the whole premise, in ways that didnt really neatly organize into a cohesive argument. a lot of the scenes where hiro talks to the librarian, which are interspersed throughout the book, are really exposition heavy, because stephenson is rooting his ideas in historical concepts that need to be explained to both hiro and the audience. and i thought all that was fine, because it was a conversation where hiro was grappling with the information, and he was figuring it out along with the reader, and most importantly it was a conversation between him and the librarian computer program.

howeverrr later on we get a full rehash of all that, where hiro makes clear some stuff that was just implied for the reader, and hes literally just telling these important men whats up in this big long monologue. utterly worthless. i kept reading it and going YEAH, we KNOW, we know this we know this. and the important men barely interjected. it added basically nothing to our understanding of the situation, other than reframing it. but everything added was already an implicit thing, and didnt really need to be said again.

the resolution to the book was stellar, the last 30-40 pages, once hiro is onto the raft, were great. ultimately after reading and giving some time to digest it, i think it was a solidly great book with a few big drawbacks near the end, but which dont carry through and sully the ending.

#bookblr #book tag #snow crash #neal stephenson #reading progress update #book review #cyberpunk #post-cyberpunk #god this is long #kind of ended up being book report esque... elementary school vibes. i fucking love it ngl #original post #playlist series

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mediaevalmusereads · 3 years

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The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics. By Olivia Waite. New York: Avon Impulse, 2019.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Genre: historical romance, wlw romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Feminine Pursuits #1

Summary: As Lucy Muchelney watches her ex-lover’s sham of a wedding, she wishes herself anywhere else. It isn’t until she finds a letter from the Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text, that she knows where to go. Showing up at the Countess’ London home, she hoped to find a challenge, not a woman who takes her breath away.

Catherine St Day looks forward to a quiet widowhood once her late husband’s scientific legacy is fulfilled. She expected to hand off the translation and wash her hands of the project—instead, she is intrigued by the young woman who turns up at her door, begging to be allowed to do the work, and she agrees to let Lucy stay. But as Catherine finds herself longing for Lucy, everything she believes about herself and her life is tested.

While Lucy spends her days interpreting the complicated French text, she spends her nights falling in love with the alluring Catherine. But sabotage and old wounds threaten to sever the threads that bind them. Can Lucy and Catherine find the strength to stay together or are they doomed to be star-crossed lovers?

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: sexism, allusions to homophobia

Overview: I feel like I’m in the minority of not loving this book as much as I wanted to. Based on content alone, it should have been a perfect storm for me: a historical sapphic romance, a lady scientist, debates about the value of art and women’s contributions... but while the romance genre doesn’t have nearly enough wlw stories, representation alone wasn’t enough to sustain my interest in this novel. It had the threads of a good story - something along the lines of The Countess Conspiracy or The Suffragette Scandal - but in my opinion, too much of the focus was on needless interpersonal drama, which left the plot dragging for the bulk of the story. So though the representation is great, and there are a number of feminist themes that I think are valuable, I didn’t enjoy this book enough to give it more than 2 or 3 stars.

Writing: Waite’s prose is about what you’d expect from the romance genre. It’s simple and straightforward, getting to the point without leaving the reader wondering what’s going on. My main criticism would perhaps be that Waite sometimes does a little head-hopping in the middle of a chapter without a section break. One minute, we’ll be seeing things from Lucy’s POV, and the next, we’ll get something from Catherine, then back to Lucy. It was a little jarring, but not too distracting - I could still immerse myself in the story ok.

Plot: The Lady’s Guide follows Lucy Muchelney as she translates, expands, and publishes M. Oleron’s Mechanique celeste (an astronomy text) under the patronage of Lady Catherine St. Day, Countess of Moth. After being rebuffed by the male members of the Polite Science Society, Lucy endeavors to render her own translation in hopes of educating readers who are interested in astronomy, but may not have had access to the range of texts needed to understand Oleron’s work. Catherine, for her part, funds the printing of Lucy’s work, while also discovering her own value as an embroiderer.

On the surface, this plot had all the things I love: women in science, valuing women’s art, a social commentary on patriarchy. But despite the interesting threads, I didn’t feel as if Waite used them to the greatest advantage. Aside from a few scenes, there wasn’t a lot of external pressure from the Polite Society; any drama that arose from their sexism was easily dismissed or avoided with a trip to the country, and I felt as if sexism in this book was more of a nuisance than a threat. This isn’t to say I wanted the characters to be constantly suffering or be miserable from an onslaught of male meddling, but I would like to have seen more of a sustained plotline where the Polite Society attempts to thwart Lucy’s efforts, thereby creating more suspense and giving Lucy and Catherine some external challenges to face together.

I also think the subplots could have been strengthened so that they enhanced the main conflict. The plot involving Eliza, the maid with a talent for sketching, was a good parallel to Catherine’s arc, which involved finding and rewarding women’s talents in art, but Eliza wasn’t a compelling character on her own, nor did I think Catherine reflect enough on the paradox of how she encouraged Eliza but not herself. I also think more could have been done with Lucy’s brother, Stephen, so that his meddling in Lucy’s career paralleled the Polite Society’s - just in a more subtle way, thereby showing different forms of sexism. Granted, there is a little of that, but like the Polite Society, Stephen pops up at convenient times before disappearing a page or two later.

Characters: I hate to say it, but I didn’t feel as if I could connect to the characters. Lucy, one of our heroines, is a mathematician and astronomer who inspires Catherine to see herself as an artist... and that’s mostly it. I guess she’s also bold and headstrong, but honestly, she felt more like an archetype than a fully-fledged character.

Catherine, for her part, is meek on account of being mistreated by her husband, but has brilliant skills as an embroiderer and is generous with her financial support. I did like the depth that Catherine had with regards to her insecurity over whether or not she could call herself an artist, and I liked that she respected Lucy’s feelings and didn’t allow her desires to be too selfish. But I also felt like she had no ambition or desires of her own until maybe 75% of the way through the book, and she mainly existed to support Lucy.

Side characters were hit or miss. I liked the idea of Eliza, the maid who gets to put her drawing skills to use as an engraver, but she wasn’t a fully-fleshed out character and didn’t hold my interest on her own. Stephen, Lucy’s brother, had the potential to be interesting, as he is an artist and acts as a foil to Lucy in many ways, but he flits in and out of the story as needed. Even Lucy’s ex, Pricilla, seems only to exist to make petty drama; there was no pining, no angst, and I didn’t see why Lucy had once loved her. There wasn’t even any commentary on how both Pris and Catherine were blond women who were skilled at embroidery.

Polite Society members had the potential to be good antagonists, but because their appearances were so contained, I don’t think they were used to their full potential. They provided some nice commentary, but I would have liked to see them meddle more often in Lucy’s translation process.

Romance: This is personal preference: I don’t like it when the love interests get together too early in the story. It usually means the rest of the romance is going to revolve around petty drama, and I think that’s what I got here. Lucy and Catherine become a couple some 25% of the way through the book, and for the life of me, I couldn’t see why they wanted to be together other than they were interested in women and happened to be sharing a house. Over time, their reasons for loving one another became a little more clear: Lucy loves that Catherine believes in her and lets her forge her own path, whereas Catherine loves that Lucy values her skills and lifts her up, rather than dismissing her (as Catherine’s deceased husband did). While these are certainly nice, I wanted there to be a little more to their romance. Because they got together so quickly, there was very little pining, very little growth in their affections.

I also think all the angst and relationship drama that happened after they got together was a little tedious. Lucy spends some time pining for her ex, which causes Catherine to be jealous. Catherine also sees the relationship as being incompatible at one point because Lucy likes science and she likes art, so of course that means they’re on different paths that can’t be reconciled. Most of the barriers to the relationship could have been overcome by either talking it out or getting to know one another a little better, so rather than good tension (in the form of suspense), I felt like there was pointless tension. I would have much rather seen Waite dive into the very real concerns, such as the economic inequality between them or the lack of permanence that comes with not being able to marry - I think those are real, life-altering concerns that could have tied in well with the non-romance plot, but unfortunately, those concerns seemed to be resolved a little too neatly.

TL;DR: Despite having some much-needed wlw representation and a number of feminist themes, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics does little to cultivate a compelling plot and relies on misunderstandings to drive the romantic tension.

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italkaboutbooks · 4 years

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An in depth review of Aurora Rising//Part 2

If you haven’t already, read part one here.

So welcome to the second part of my ramblings about this novel. Last time, I talked about how chapters 18-24 were some of the most confusing and infuriating chapters I have ever read, and how I hated that.

I’m actually going to complain about it a little bit more in...

Pacing!

Aurora Rising’s pacing is...questionable at best. Bad at worst.

So the novel is split into three parts. You know how some novels have specific parts like part 1 and part 2? That’s used in Aurora Rising. Immediately, the three act structure comes to mind. I understand that it may be used for movies more but hear me out.

The basics of structure and pacing is that, by the end of the second act, you’re nearing the climax. Basically, the story should be increasing in tension, because the antagonist is usually at its most powerful at this point.

Aurora Rising doesn’t do that. Or maybe it just failed me and not you for some reason. But if you remember the end of part 2 aka chapters 18-24, you would know that the characters succeed. And what that success does, is lower the tension. Because the heroes won the battle and they’re feeling pretty confident. That doesn’t raise the stakes in my opinion. I feel like if Auri actually was taken, then there would be stronger stakes, but the pacing failed in that regard. So it’s another big complaint from me.

There’s nothing really remarkable about plot of pacing for me to comment on. So let’s go to the next part.

Characters

For this section, I am simply going to rank the main cast aka the squad, and tell you my thoughts about them. 7 being my least favourite character and 1 being my favourite. I’ll talk about their relationships which each other in a separate section.

7. Zila

Zila doesn’t have a personality. She is the stereotypical “smart” person in the group that doesn’t express emotion. Or in this case, has none. She’s a robot. She has no interests, no motivations, and we’re not given a backstory. She has nothing. I personally believe that the authors didn’t even care about her. They just added her there to be smart. That is all. She shows a smidgen of an arc near the end, but it’s not even the bare minimum. I wished the authors actually put effort into Zila because it’s obvious that they didn’t.

6. Tyler Jones

Tyler Jones is the definition of the bland white boy. He is one of the worst protagonists I have ever seen in a book. Why does he suck so much in my eyes? Because he’s perfect. He’s handsome, he’s good at everything, everyone likes him, and even if they don’t like him, they at least respect him. He never makes any mistakes, doesn’t have any flaws, and has dimples. He is infuriating.

Personally, I like flawed characters. That’s what makes characters and stories interesting. If you give me a character who essentially wins every battle, I will think that they are the most bland and boring person in existence. Your characters need flaws, especially your protagonist! Remember chapters 18-24? Yeah, another complaint about that part is making them succeed just makes Tyler more of a Mary Sue.

Also there’s a scene in chapter 12 where Tyler says he doesn’t want to kill a Terran because he’s a Terran and acts like killing his own kind is unheard of. ....Aurora has a lot of explaining to do for you buddy.

Tyler gets the second worst ranking because at least he is allowed to experience emotions, and the authors tried to give him an arc. (But does Tyler really have an arc? Because I didn’t see it.)

5. Cat

I have mixed feelings about Cat. I talked before about the arc that I thought she was going to have. And the arc she gets...well it’s kind of disappointing.

Cat’s character seems to be that she’s in love with Tyler (for some reason) but he rejected her and now she’s just trying to cope with it but doesn’t do it well. She dies, but dies knowing that Tyler actually loved her all along and I don’t really like it. But at the same time, I do?

See, when I read the ending of the book, I was sad. Cat died and I was sad because of that. I’ll give the book merit for that, (especially since I’ve been slandering it.) It made me care about a character’s death. But at the same time, I don’t like that Cat’s arc was essentially her getting over a man. It feels cheap to me. My idea for her arc was her learning to listen to others opinions more and make her more loyal, which is not dependent on a man. So I don’t straight up hate Cat, but I would make a lot of changes to her character and arc.

And also she’s kind of annoying. She’s says bloody way too often and I thought the authors did that so she could be “unique.” Apparently Cat’s Aussie...somehow. I’m so sorry to Australians everywhere, I’m sure you all don’t talk like Cat.

4. Scarlet Jones

I don’t really like Scarlet all that much, but I like her more than Cat. Here’s the thing: she’s immediately better than Tyler because she actually has flaws. Which I like. She cares about her friends and the squad members. She’s a sweetheart, and I like that. Her motivations are understandable in a way, but I also relate to them which kind of makes me hate her.

Also she does some questionable things that don’t make me hate her, they just confuse me, and creep me out. For starters, she has a list of all her exes. I don’t wanna judge her because I really don’t hate her, but that’s creepy. Also there’s a scene where she drugs two guys for their uniforms, and she takes them to a hotel room, and leaves her bra there, along with some kiss marks, to give to illusion that she had sex with them. She said something along the lines of “Gotta leave some evidence.”

First of all, that’s not how you commit a crime. (For legal reasons, this is a joke.) When you commit a crime, you make sure that there’s no evidence so that you don’t get caught. Second, leaving signs that these guys had sex with you tells them that they had sex with you under the influence. They didn’t give their consent, meaning you’re making them think that you raped them. And when you think about how males usually are the ones to drug and rape females, it just becomes even more questionable.

I also need to point out the fact that her name is Scarlet, and she has red hair. Wow. Amazing. So original. Aside from that though, she’s okay.

3. Kallis 🥉

Kal is a good character. He got the number three spot and I think he deserves it. I liked reading his POV chapters the most. It shows how he’s trying to hold back from his instincts to kill because that’s how he was raised. He’s a tsundere in ways. Cold and harsh on the outside, but deep down, he does care about the greater good. We don’t really get a warm side to him in the first book, but it’s there, I promise.

2. Aurora 🥈

Auri is baby, okay? She’s had to deal with loosing her family and life in one day. Even less than that. She had to deal with visions and hallucinations and new powers of telekinesis in a very short time. Home girl was going through some crap. But through all of that, she still manages to be a sweet girl. She’s never mean to the others, except for irritation at Kal. She tries her best to stay optimistic, and I think she went through the best arc in the group. (Although it’s kind of on the nose.) I love Auri and I think she deserves all the love.

1. Finian 🥇

Finian De Steel? Did you mean, the best character is Aurora Rising?

I love Fin with my entire heart. He is literally the best. He is so funny and snarky and easily has the best lines. But he’s also the most sympathetic in my opinion, along with Auri. You learn about his past and how people tend to treat him differently because he’s disabled, and how he has a hard time connecting with others despite wanting a connection with others so badly.

He’s a great character. I also think they represented his disability pretty well. He has an exosuit which makes him move, but it’s not treated as a cure. The suit gets damaged which affects Fin’s mobility, and he experiences pain because of it. So I think they did a good job with that. And he’s just awesome in general.

I understand that the humour in this book is pretty juvenile. However, some of Fin’s lines actually made me laugh and smile, and I usually don’t laugh or smile much. Humour is subjective and I’m not going to stand here and act like mine is the best. My sense of humour is bad puns and inside jokes between my family so...it was fine for me. Granted, Fin was the only character who actually was good at humour, so there.

Character Relationships

Yes, I think that this needs a section of its own.

Let’s start simple. Tyler and Scarlet. They’re both twins, with Scarlet being the older by like a minute. I think they were written pretty well as siblings, except for the fact that Scarlet calls Tyler her “baby brother” in her internal dialogue/narration including spoken dialogue. Siblings don’t call each other that, I promise you. As someone who has a sibling, reading fictional characters call each other that makes me cringe so much.

Then there’s Kal and Auri, who are essentially “soulmates” in a way by the end of the book. They aren’t canon or anything, it’s just extremely obvious that they’re endgame. Kal told Auri that she was essentially her mate and that they were fated to be together. Some people saw it as some Wolf alpha shiz, I saw it more as soulmates personally. I don’t think that they’re a bad pairing, it’s kind of cute sometimes. But to me, they don’t feel like two people who have feelings for each other. It just feels like a pairing that is usually a popular ship in fandoms.

The best way for me to describe it to you is this. When I see Kal and Auri together, I don’t think, “Oh these two characters have great chemistry. They could be romantic partners.” No, I think, “I feel like fans of this book ship them really hard.”

So in a way, their relationship may be cute, but it doesn’t feel real, because I’ll always see it as something the fans created and not the actual authors, which doesn’t even make sense to me. I’m not even trying to hate on shippers, this pairing just confuses me.

By bigger pet peeve is that the authors seem to want to pair up every other character, because by the end of the book, Fin and Scarlet seem to crush on each other. It’s really annoying when people think that romance is the end game.

I’ve also read reviews where the readers were upset at how heteronormative the couple pairings were. And I agree with them. While reading the book, I always thought Fin was gay. To me, he was coded as gay or bi. Also, there’s a scene where Tyler kisses Kal because a guard was about to catch them. Seeing how the book was released in 2019, I can see how LGBTQ+ readers were disappointed that their identities were used as a really cheap way for the characters to get out of a situation, and not give them actual representation.

(Personally, I wouldn’t mind if Tyler got caught, maybe then he could actually have consequences for his actions.)

But you see, these relationships are okay to me. Not perfect. Definitely room for improvement, but they don’t upset me. But the found family, aka the whole squad, disappointed me. Not enough to make me not want to get the sequel, but enough to make me write about it.

You see, what I was expecting was enemies to friends. Nobody wants to be in this squad, so they constantly argue and mess up their mission because of it. After some near death experiences and real stakes, they start to become friends until they actually see each other as family in a way.

But we don’t get that. At least, I didn’t feel like we got that. Because this found family feels forced to me.

Despite them not liking each other, they don’t argue. They give each other insulting banter, but that doesn’t count as actual differences of opinions. We’re not even shown them disagreeing with each other. We’re told in one of Auri’s chapters, but that’s not enough for me. And it doesn’t correlate with the fact that they didn’t fail a mission. Technically yes, they failed the first one, but because the GIA came to stop it, it didn’t feel like a failure to me. And that was their only failure. They did everything else right, despite them being so different, and hating each other and etc.

The one time we actually got a real disagreement was in chapter 18, and we already know how I feel about chapter 18.

So yeah, their found family is cute and all, but I feel like it could’ve flowed more naturally, so that it would make sense. I remember Kristoff comparing this book to Guardians of the Galaxy on goodreads, which I feel like is insulting to GotG. Because in GotG the characters actually hate each other and go to jail because the first thing they did when they met was fight. So yeah, GotG did it better in my opinion.

And that’s enough for part 2. I can’t believe I have to make a third part, but hopefully it will be the last. If you read this far, thank you. You should consider following me because I might want to do more in-depth reviews like this.

Part 3

#book review #bookworm #book reader #bookish #YA Books #YA Book Review #aurora rising #bookblogger #bookblr

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howtofightwrite · 5 years

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Follow Up: Antagonists

Technically wouldnt the character still be the protagonist not the antagonist? The protagonist is the character you are witing for and the antagonist is their opposition. Its not the same as a hero/villain. The good guys could still be the antagonists of the person you are writing for.

No. Not even technically. The antagonist is the acting force that opposes the narrative, while the protagonist is the acting force that supports it. In almost all circumstances, the protagonist will be the point of view character. This is because it’s their story. Even in stories where the PoV changes from scene to scene, the current PoV is telling their story, this may conflict with other characters, but they will almost always be their own protagonist.

However, the antagonist can be anyone or anything, including that same character. This is why I said, it’s a very different kind of story from what the original query was interested in.

Usually, the acting forces are characters, but that’s not necessary. Personal issues such as addiction or psychological factors can easily be a story’s antagonist. Similarly, amorphous hostile forces, like, “the wild,” or “bureaucracy,” can be a story’s antagonist. You can’t really delve into an approaching winter storm’s motivations or it’s troubled childhood, but it will kill your character if they don’t find shelter and a source of warmth. It’s the antagonist (or, “an antagonistic force,” if you prefer.)

It is easy to come up with situations where the antagonist isn’t a character at all, and there numerous genres that build off that idea as standard. There also numerous sub-genres that play with the idea of the protagonist pulling double-duty as the antagonist.

Again, if your character is struggling with themselves. If they’re fighting addiction, dealing with mental illness, or just trying to find a way forward when their will has been broken, they are their own antagonist. They may not be their only antagonist, but they’re a factor. It really is possible to be your own worst enemy; when that happens in a story, that’s the antagonist.

Having someone other than the PoV as a protagonist is unusual. You can write a story where your PoV character is observing and recording the actions of another party. An example of this would be the Sherlock Holmes novels. Holmes is the protagonist, but the books and short stories are “written” by Watson.

Can you have your PoV character as the antagonist? Yeah, it’s possible, but unusual. The first example that comes to mind is A Christmas Carol, (and the endless riffs on it.) Ebeneezer Scrooge is the antagonist at the beginning of the piece. Now, the entire character arc is his transformation from miser to someone with some actual human empathy, so in the long term this might not be the perfect example. There’s also some room for discussion on self-destructive PoV characters.

One, inverted scenario, for protagonist/antagonist, would be a situation where someone was the subject of an intervention. The point of view character would be the antagonist in their own story, while their friends or family, trying to bring them back out, would be the protagonists. Though, this is a strange situation.

Ultimately, the thing about labels like protagonist and antagonist is, “they’re labels.” These are a tool used to analyze a story after the fact. It’s not something you need to worry about when you’re writing. When you are writing, worry about things like character motivation, and action. What they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Think about the opposition they’ll face, and how they will, or won’t, be able to deal with it. Asking, “who’s the antagonist?” comes after you’ve finished the work and handed it off to someone else.

-Starke

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Follow Up: Antagonists was originally published on How to Fight Write.

#writing advice #writing reference

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kbrown78 · 5 years

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My Thoughts: The Call by Peadar O’ Guilin

Yes, it's finally happening. As I promised I have finally written a review for The Call, which I have been talking about non stop. So this is one of the books that I was glad I reread, because most rereads I knew I was going to love and did or I ended up hating the book. This is one that when I first read it I thought it was okay, and almost gave it up in an unhaul. I decided to hold onto it and if I didn't like it with the reread I would than let it go. I'm so glad I did because I liked this book much better than I thought I would, and along with Star Touched Queen, helped pick me up out of the reading slump I had been in since reading The Defiant Heir (highly recommend all mentioned titles). It's a great YA horror novel, but it is a bit more adult due to the graphic violence and sex, and it's perfect for anyone looking for a good Halloween read and a good book featuring fairies (see my T5W for more picks).

Characters: There are multiple POV characters in this book, but because the majority of them only get one chapter (which they are usually killed in), I'm only going to be focusing on 4 of these characters: Nesse, Meghan, Anto, and Conor. Meghan is the best friend of Nessa, and she's a very extroverted character. She likes being a rebel (she literally says this), and that means she has a mischievous and curious personality. She's not afraid to question the adults when they're hiding information from the kids and gives Conor sh*t when he's being a jerk. Her death is the best way to sum up her personality. Before she's called, she's talking about her future with girls, something that's taboo but ends giving them hope. When she's Called she survives as long as she can and when that's no longer an option, she taunts the Sidhe with the one thing that truly breaks them, the beauty of her world. They take away her mouth to silence her, but her body gives the school warning that they're going to be attacked next. She's a loyal, optimistic person that knows how to push people's buttons and fights to the very end. She was a great character and I was sad when she ended up being killed. Next is Anto, and he's Nessa's love interest. He's different than the others because he doesn't like violence for the sake of violence, even in training, and doesn't let any superiors break that belief. This, however, doesn't mean he's weak. He will fight to protect himself and others. When he is Called, his kindness ends up being the thing that saves him because another student sacrifices themselves so that Anto will survive because he helped him earlier. Unfortunately, he gets caught and mutated with a giant arm. After that he is very reclusive, but he comes out to once again protect Nessa. So to sum up, he's a definite good guy how's overall sweet and protective. Then there's Conor, and he's definitely an antagonist in this story. He's a vicious kid who thinks everyone is beneath him. He survives his Call because the Sidhe are impressed by his sheer cruelty. He does have his group of toadies that he refers to as the “Round Table,” and makes it clear that he's a “survival of the fittest” type of person. In short he's cruel, entitled, and has a perfect ending. Finally I arrive at the character that is arguably the protagonist, Nessa. Where Meghan is more about living in the moment, Nessa is more about surviving for the future. She had polio when she was young, and became crippled as a result. I'll talk more about having a crippled character in the Writing section, but in this section I'll make it clear how being a cripple shaped Nessa's characters. Determined to prove everyone wrong and survive her Call, she works hard to become the best student, and it shows. While her legs are very weak, she does everything by the book to best prepare her for her Call, including cutting of her hair. She's also very studious and resourceful, figuring out how to use her surroundings to her advantage and cramming her head with as much knowledge as possible. She's also got a strong upper body to further help compensate for her weak legs. She's also a bit of a romantic, since one of the books she keeps with her is a book of poetry, and is willing to risk getting hurt to protect Meghan and Anto. She's very determined and smart, and while she's generally reserved she does care about those she considers friends. I really liked Nessa characters because she was a well written character but also, again relieving on her smarts to survive, as the kind of protagonist I love to read. All in all, I thought the characters that I discussed were pretty well written.

Relationships: From the beginning it's established that Nessa and Meghan are good friends. They grew up together and share a lot of history. But it isn't all good feelings between them. Nessa, several times, says that Meghan isn't the most productive friend and Meghan even thinks that Nessa is a bit of a spoil sport. Despite the personality traits that each dislikes about the other, they remain very loyal to each other and are always willing to protect each other. In fact Meghan helps Nessa realizes that she has more friends at the school that she originally though. There friendship really reaches it's peak when Meghan really helps Nessa come out of her shell and start talking about their hopes for after they survive their Call. Unfortunately at that exact moment Meghan is Called and doesn't survive. This is what causes Nessa to slip into depression and almost give up the fight, but after reading a poem and realizing Meghan would want her to live, Nessa works even harder to make sure she survives her Call. It was a solid friendship, and while the ending makes sense, it was still sad. From the beginning it's also established that Nessa has a crush on Anto, even though she tells herself that he's a distraction that she needs to forget. This clearly doesn't happen since she goes to the extent of scaling the walls of the boys dormatory to leave him love poetry. It's unclear for a bit if those feelings are returned but during Anto's Call, it's made clear that they are. Thinking about her gives him comfort. Also when she's in danger from Conor and his “knights,” that's what prompts Anto to come out of hiding so that he can protect her. Later she comes to his room and confess their feelings for each other, even though Anto has his giant arm. In the end, when they've both survived their Calls, they kiss and start thinking of having a future together. I liked the girl was interested in a romance with the good guy, cause it easily could have gone in the opposite direction. Nessa tries to avoid Conor because he hates everything she represents. As a cripple she's not likely to survive her Call but the nation insists to treating her like the rest of kids, using up resources that he believes should go to only the fittest children. He constantly ridicules her with his knights, but this is to help cover up his deep dark secret. He has a huge crush on her, and is always thinking of how beautiful she is (even when with other girls). He finally acts on those feelings, trying to force himself onto her. Instead of giving into this, and making a love triangle, Nessa sticks to her belief that he's a jerk (cause he is) and tries to fight him off. So now Conor is doubly pissed because she rejected him, which baffles him. This is his driving motivation, when he makes a deal with the fae, he promises them Ireland if he can kill Nessa, but when she's finally brought before him he starts lusting after her again. She uses this to her advantage and is able to kill him. It's a creepy dynamic that's well done, and again I'm glad Conor was never shown as a love interest at any point.

World Building: This story is set in an alternate Ireland where at some point in the recent past where the Sidhe (who are an ancient race of fairies that lived in Ireland) have managed to isolate Ireland from the rest of the world. So resources are limited and there's no hope of help coming or people being able to leave. Buildings are in shambles and from young age children are taught how to survive their Call. Various schools have been set up to help train students, and it's not just physical training but also records of survivors and the Sidhe's language that is taught. I could really feel just how much this world is holding on by a thread, even though some adults would deny that. There's a general sense of hopelessness and things falling apart. It's also set on an island nation and for some reason island settings always scare me. Something about them being small, surrounded by the ocean, and them being isolated. There's also the Grey Land, which is where the Sidhe live. There is no color in this land, as the name implies, but there are pockets of colors called windows. The Sidhe are the only beautiful thing in this land with everything else being humans that have been manipulated and mutated to the delight of the Sidhe. Much like Australia, everything in this world wants to kill humans, and in fact death might be the better option as opposed to letting the Sidhe get a hold of you. While there wasn't much elaboration of either world, there didn't need to be. The general sense of how things are was all that was needed and that was well illustrated. The human world is bleak and barley holding on and the Grey Lands are a death trap devoid of color. All in all, the atmosphere and descriptions were well done.

Writing: One of the best pieces of writing, at least I thought so, in this book was the discussion of Nessa being a cripple. I've already talked about how Conor hates what it represents, and he wouldn't be the only one that felt that way. Nessa also hates that she's a cripple, but she doesn't moan about it at every opportunity. Her feelings about it aren't in your face, except for when other people address it with her. She hates being a cripple because there are people that treat her differently. They're don't go as hard on her as they do her friends when she gets in trouble, and she hates it. She hates being pitied or viewed as delicate. So that anger from the disabled person's perspective is good to see, not only how she feels about it but also how that anger shapes her. It's also amazing to have a disabled protagonist in a survival story, since this is about the last place you would expect to read about one. It's also great that in the end, when Nessa is Called than captured by Sidhe, she asks to made fire proof so she can survive her return instead of being healed. So she starts the story disabled and ends the story still disabled. Real quick I'm going to explain what the Call is, just to clear some things up. When a teenager is Called, they are somehow transported to the Grey Land where they must avoid the Sidhe and survive for 24 hours (3 minutes in our world), and rely on only their wits and the surrounding environment. The fact that children don't really get to be children, because they have to quickly learn to survive, is a great way to not only illustrate how desperate and bleak the world is, but it also it really ups the creepy factor of everything. Like all the characters that I discussed are 14 years old. That means that there are 14 year olds being brutally murdered, 14 years olds considering murder, and even attempted rape by a 14 years old. Going back to Conor and his “Round Table” I want to further delve into that. The Round Table is taken from Arthurian Legend and they're supposed to be these chivalrous and noble knights. Conor talks about how they're all there because they are the best of the best. However, the teenagers that make up the Round Table are neither chivalrous nor noble and they get picked off like flies. In fact by the end of the book, 1 or 2 knights are the only ones left alive. So it's ironic that these knights were a complete foil to Arthur's knights and yet both still managed to be wiped out (granted in completely different ways). There's actually a lot source for discussion revolving around Conor and his knights. They see human life as a commodity that should only be given to those they deem deserving. But they aren't the only ones in the book that have essentially given up on the human race. There are a few character that made deals with the Sidhe because the Sidhe value promises (but they will always twist your words) and want to take back the human world while many survivors want to feel whole again or have just turned their backs on humans. Yes, the Sidhe are awful, tricky creatures but humans aren't always great either. There's a brief scene where one the teachers recalls that humans took over the land from the Sidhe and forced them into their grey hell. So there's the duality of wanting people to survive but at the same time acknowledging how flawed humans are. One last thing I want to talk about is Frankenstein, one the teachers at the school. There's rumours that go around of Sidhe spies in human form. No one believes this but Frankenstein leaves many suspicious clues, like how he looks and how he speaks. The real kicker was when he begged the headmistress to stay until a certain time period. Now at this point other schools are being mysteriously wiped out, and the fact that he wants to stick around until this time implies that he has something planned. As it turns out he was a Sidhe spy in human form (because apparently the Sidhe world and human world are getting closer which gives the Sidhe more control and easier access). The hints were subtle enough so that you could miss them if you didn't know what you were looking for, but there was always this building suspicion surrounding him. There are many POV's that switch, which some people may not like, but I was fine with it. Overall, I really liked the writing and I think the world and characters helped build up the suspenseful plot and some of the deeper themes within the book.

Dislike: There wasn't actually a lot that I disliked about the book. There were a few dumb character choices, like how was it not obvious to the headmistress that Conor and Frankenstein were both up to something and why would Nessa, who is so determined to survive, stay at the school and risk getting beat up or worse in the hopes that Anto will come back to the school. There was also that scene in the woods where Nessa maybe found a way to get to the Grey Lands without being called that could turn the tides for humans, but it isn't really discussed again. It may become more relevant in the last book, but I have no intention of reading that and because it wasn't that important to the plot, I'm fine with leaving it as it is. Other than a few out of character moments and some questions about how the Grey Land and human world converge, I didn't really have any issues with this book.

Final Thoughts: As I stated at the beginning I really liked this book and I'm glad that I gave it a second chance. The story is great and the characters are also really good. The entire world and magic feels very traditional but isn't something that I've really seen before in recent literature, which I found refreshing. I first read this thinking it was a standalone and I thought the ending wrapped things up well. Yes there were some loose ends and everything with the Sidhe wasn't magically fixed, but the tide was turning and that was a good place to end the narrative. Then a sequel came out, and if you've read my thoughts on Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle, you will know that the last time I thought a book should be left as a standalone I didn't listen to that voice and regretted it. I also looked at some reviews of the sequel and I did not like what I saw. So I'm definitely leaving this one as a standalone so that I keep my high opinion of it.

#my thoughts #book review #the call #peadar o'guilin

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recentanimenews · 3 years

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Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, Vol. 7

By Keishi Ayasato and Saki Ukai. Released in Japan as “Isekai Goumon Hime” by MF Bunko J. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by Nathaniel Hiroshi Thrasher.

Back in my fanfiction days, I used to have an argument with a friend of mine, who wrote some great stories but tended to end them a little too late. I used to call them the “And they all lived happily ever after till they died, and here’s how they died” stories. Now, I’m not sure I expect Torture Princess to go QUITE that far. But at the end of my last review, I mentioned that I was worried that the series would not be able to justify continuing after a very satisfying 6th book, which wrapped up Kaito’s plot beautifully. I’d say the answer is yes and no. Yes, it’s another Torture Princess book, with some of the most evocative writing in light novels, and I could have easily quoted a dozen passages. And I do enjoy Elisabeth’s character arc here quite a bit. Still… man, this is a downer, and has some of the most graphic horror descriptions since Vol. 1. It is a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat of a light novel.

The book picks up right where the previous one left off, with the introduction of our antagonists, who also grace the cover: A girl who calls herself Alice Carroll, the new Torture Princess, and her minder/father figure Lewis. They have killed off the two beast princesses who worked with Kaito in the previous book, and are basically here to destroy the world AGAIN. To be fair, they do have a pretty good reason they can use to justify it, but that’s not good enough for Elisabeth. Now she has to try to stop them, helped by Lute, whose job is to be the heart of the book; Jeanne, who is a girl in love, and Izabella, who has acknowledged this love but not responded to it; and La Cristoph, who has already been captured by the enemy. Worst of all, as everyone seems to be telling her… Elisabeth is getting SOFT.

This is not a completely grim book. There are lots of attempts at humor, some of which are admittedly as dark as the blackest night, but they’re there. One running gag with Elisabeth and La Cristoph actually made me laugh. But I won’t deny that there’s a lot of depressing goddamn shit here. Alice, like Kaito, is an abused Japanese girl, whose previous life reminded me an awful lot of Satoko from Higurashi, and it’s no surprise that her reincarnated powerful self is a very, very broken girl. And then there is the revenge that Lewis takes on behalf of the mixed-race peoples, which involves using a large number of purebreds as wombs for demon children. The description in this particular scene is so Grand Guignol that it almost crosses over into parody, but it’s also incredibly sickening to read about. There is, briefly, a nice little bit of hope towards the end of the book, but I still am not 100%… or even 50%… confident that this series won’t end with most everyone dead or wishing they were dead.

Still, I admit that’s not much of a change from the previous six books. I think the loss of Kaito’s POV affected the book more than I was expecting. It’s still a great series to read if you like good writing and horrible graphic images. But man… what a bummer.

By: Sean Gaffney

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alittlebookdust · 7 years

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Book Review: A Darker Shade of Magic

Author: V.E. Schwab Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC Publishing Date: 2015 Pages: 398

I know I’m a little late reading this book, but nonetheless here we go:

This book is essentially about an angsty magician and a cross-dressing pirate forming an unlikely friendship to battle evil and save the world. And it’s pretty dang good.

First off, I want to commend Schwab for introducing a cast of delightfully complex characters. It’s always refreshing to see YA novels come to life in this way, where the characters are unique and sympathetic in their strengths and weaknesses, and riddled by pellicles of visceral imperfections. No character was completely “bad” nor completely “good”—except perhaps our two main antagonists—but even the absolute corruptness of the Dane twins was believable due to Schwab’s excellent world-building. The novel takes place somewhere within the early 19th century across multiple Londons: Grey London, which is considered the normal world in which magic is dormant and scarce; Red London, where is revered and the streets are drenched with the red hue it; White London, “a city drained through a magical war” and home of the treacherous Dane twins; and Black London, a London lost to chaos and ruin.

So Kell is our magician from Red London, with the rare ability to cross the parallel worlds. This makes him an ambassador between the Londons by day, and a smuggling collector by night. This hobby, Schwab cleverly uses to get the plot rolling.

Kell smuggles something quite complicated from White London in to Grey, which is where Delilah Bard, our cross-dressing pirate wannabe, steals from him. Again, we have an excellent manipulation of plot by Schwab, who uses the personalities of her characters to bring the storyline in to full swing through a series of believable choices that they make. It’s a classic and technical move on her part, one that is just flat out wonderful to see in a YA novel nowadays.

Similar to her methodical plot development, Schwab uses some pretty intelligent decisions regarding story structure as well. [Wannabe writers, pay attention] The book is written in a 3rd person limited POV, going back and forth predominantly between Lila and Kell with a few exceptions. However, this decision not only made the pacing of her chapters more fast-paced and enjoyable, but it also gave a nice tonal balance to the book as a whole due to the way Lila and Kell’s personalities complimented each other.

[I’m going to spend sometime on character analysis, so if you haven’t read the book yet of aren’t interest, just skip down until you see the ** for the rest of the review]

Let’s analyze Kell:

At the beginning of the book, our introverted magician came off as an insecure and anxious youth with a sort of inferiority complex with which he always made himself to be less than what he actually was. Despite his familial connection to Red London royalty, his deep bromance with Prince Rhy, and the profound reverence Kell generates from the citizens in Red London, Kell still manages to convince himself that he is just a pawn and a possession of the crown, no more. It’s sort of fascinating, however, the way he hides all of this behind a serene composure built upon his abilities. Kell knows he’s rare, he knows he’s powerful, and he’s always trying to act like he knows this, but also comes off short. Here’s a quote I actually found really interesting regarding this:

The people here believe that magic chooses its path…but by that logic, the magic had chosen Kell, and he did not believe that. Someone else could just have easily woken or been born with the Antari mark, and been brought into the lush red folds of the palace in his stead. (pg 256)

Kell can’t even bring himself to believe that he’s worthy of being chosen in any regards. Even though he puts all of his identity in his abilities, he can’t even manage to believe his abilities chose him. In effect, Kell is so insecure and sometimes even pathetic that Schwab needed to bring in just the right companion to refine our magician, teaching him to be a bold and confident person. So, essentially, Schwab carves out Kell’s opposite.

Enter Delilah Bard.

At first, I have to be honest, I didn’t entirely like Lila. I thought she was reckless, stupid, naively arrogant, and a fake. She’s this cutthroat who thinks she’s a pirate, but has no ship or crew or people skills, and despite all this she one-hundred percent believes she’s capable of such a lifestyle. Impossible.

However, the more Schwab unveiled her character, especially during in interactions with Barron, the owner of Grey London’s Stone’s Throw, I began to sympathize with her on a much deeper level than I had even with Kell. Here’s why: Lila Bard is the kind of person who could never form an emotional attachment to anything or anyone due to this profound fear she has towards settling.

…staying would have meant settling. In the end it’s been easier to hand the place and run. Not away, Lila had told herself. No, Lila had been running towards something. Something better. And even if she hadn’t reached it yet, she would… (pg 139)

Lila has, by far, some of the best quotes in the book:

“I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.” (pg 199) “A life worth having is a life worth taking.” (pg 139)

So here we have quite the determined little thief just trying to make something better out of what she has. It was here that I realized, these dreams of being a pirate and an adventurer, were really all she had to ignite a fire that was so often dulled by the harsh realities of a life full of abandonment and neglect. This made her significantly more believable to me, and I honestly came to realize that Delilah Bard would truly die just for the chance to reach out and seize any beauty from life, because—unlike so many of us—she really had nothing to lose.

Now, put a courageously reckless cutthroat with a powerful and insecure magician, you get the brilliant chemistry found within Kell and Lila’s friendship. I loved them more together than I did each of them apart. It was a fantastic duo, one which Schwab used to teach Kell bravery, to be confident in himself and his power, and to be grateful for the love he possesses. On the opposite end, Lila learns loyalty and friendship. She recognizes that there are things she could never do alone, and places she could never get to without some help. Her development, however, was a bit more subtle. At first, she used Kell to get her adventure, and slowly she began to actually care for him. At the same time, Kell began to care for her. Schwab brings about these affections through snippets of brilliant moments where we see our seemingly opposite protagonists connect with each other upon some very subtle similarities:

A wry smile cut across Lila’s mouth. ‘You’re a smuggler…If you live with royals and you dine with them and you belong to them…Why risk it?’ Kell clenched his jaw…’You wouldn’t understand.’ ‘Crime isn’t that complicated,’ she said…‘If they’re not in it for the money, they’re in it for the control. The act of breaking the rules, makes them feel powerful…Some people steal to stay alive, and some steal to feel alive…’ ‘And which are you?’ asked Kell. ‘I steal for freedom,’ (pg 266)

Kell feels as though he’s a possession being used. He steals in order to feel in control of a life that he feels is not his own. Lila steals not only for money, but for the hope that is constantly inside her; the hope that tells her “I have to be more.”

There are other moments, such as the one were Lila snaps at Kell for pitying himself in regards to his life with the king and queen—for having a family in which he feels more useful than loved. Lila goes on a memorable rant, raging:

‘…I’d wager you have everything you could ever need, and you have the audacity to claim it all forfeit because it is not love...Love doesn’t keep us from freezing to death…Love doesn’t buy us anything, so be glad for what you have and who you have because you may want for things but you need for nothing…’ (pg 235)

And in this moment, Kell saw Lila “not as she wanted to be, but as she was.”

I know this review ran long, but to sum up, buy the book. For aspiring writers, it’s a great way to look at the way a plot and chapters are structured, how the narrative moves from Kell’s more angst-driven tone to Lila’s sarcastic and witty one, and of course it’s a lovely example of wonderful character development. Especially take note of the way Schwab uses character decisions to carry her plot forward, and how she uses dialogue and circumstance to do most of the character revealing as opposed to straight-on just telling the reader. It’s most important to recognize that Schwab’s characters change. This is the key to satisfying any reader, and is the backbone to any good story.

Of course, A Darker Shade of Magic is not perfect. I actually think Rhy was not as present as he should’ve been—most of his character development was second hand from Kell and thus felt impersonal—and I think Holland was so close to being an complex antagonist, though it was clear he was written to garner more empathy.

Another issue was the plot resolution. I thought it was sort of a cop-out that conflict was resolved due to a fault (pride) on the antagonists’ end as opposed to a display of some epiphany of Kell’s part regarding his strength or character. It all came about too quickly, and I actually think Schwab could have spared another fifty pages or so, drawing out the complexity of the conflict.

Nonetheless, the book was absolutely solid with moments of flittering brilliance. I completely recommend it, and am excited to move on to the sequel.

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