Graceling

So guys, guess what? No, I didn't learn how to roller disco. Stop asking me that. It'll happen when it happens.

Believe it or not, I found another gem!

It’s called Graceling and it’s by Kristin Cashore and it’s awesome andzomgeveryoneshouldreaditbecauseit’sthebest!!!!

ahem.

Ok, so, background: Katsa is a girl living in the Seven Kingdoms. These Seven Kingdoms are constantly shifting alliances and there’s lots of political confusion and all that really fun stuff. (That last bit sounded sarcastic but it’s not. I reeeaaaallly like this book).

There are some people in these seven kingdoms who are known as “Gracelings”. Their eyes have two different colors (like husky dogs!) and they have special abilities. One Graceling might be really good at cooking, another dancing, swimming, building, tic tac toe, whathaveyou.

So the setting of this book is kind of middle-ages-y. It’s got a real Robin Hood vibe to it.

But not this. This has a failing marriage vibe.

THERE WE GO.

Now imagine that’s a teenage girl. And she is graced with the ability to kill people.

She doesn’t just rob the rich. She flippin’ kills them!

Katsa is the king’s niece, and he uses her as his assassin. Katsa doesn’t agree with her uncle’s politics and hates what he forces her to do, so she starts her own secret society of people who put thing’s right behind the kings’ backs.

JUST LIKE THE MERRY MEN!!!

Just like this.

So what is it about this book that makes it a gem? No it’s not the gleaming sheen of its cover or the fact that it formed 400 kilometers below the earth’s surface. (this last part is probably not true but I have not yet confirmed that it isn’t.)

Kristin Cashore in her teen years.

What makes this book wonderful is the plot. It’s kick ass. There’s an evil king, and Katsa has to save his daughter with the help of, wait for it, a totally hot prince! His name is Po and he’s also graced, and Katsa and him have all these awesome fights full of kicks to the face, round-house punches, and a healthy dose of sexual tension. And though a movie has not been made yet, meaning that I can’t show you photographic evidence of this, there is some really weird fan art that I am more than willing to share:

This was a fairly popular Nickelodean children's show in the 1490s.

I also found this:

Just because she’s holding a knife does not prove that she is not a fairy princess. That could be her steak knife. To cut her fairy princess steak.

But I’m not here to talk about fair princess steak. I’m here to talk about how much Graceling rocks. I think that my favorite thing about this book is that the main characters aren’t idiots. I have found all too often in my travels through young adult literature that the main characters usually have shit for brains. Take Percy Jackson for example (I’ll probably right a review for that series pretty soon). Percy is a normal, dumbass, twelve year old kid, who gets attacked one day by a screeching, winged, she-beast that was disguised as his pre algebra teacher, and he also finds out he’s the son of Poseidon. Meaning he’s a freakin’ demigod. THEN he gets his mom get’s carried away by a flippin’ minotaur and he’s like “but wait… minotaur aren’t reeeeaaaaallll.”

COME ON, PERCY. I know you didn’t really get a good education, what with your teacher being a she-beast and all that but use some goddam brain cells! You accept the fact that you’re father is the Greek god of the sea, but you don’t accept that an animal that is alarmingly close in physique to a bull could possibly exist?

That’s why Katsa and Po are such wonderful characters. They aren’t idiots. They figure out what’s going on fairly early in the story, and spend the rest of the book trying to stop it. No crazy plot twists, no life-changing discoveries that the reader had figured out chapters before. Sometimes, devices like that work in young adult literature, but they are always risky. I respect Kristin Cashore for staying on the straightforward path and just telling a really good story.

But anyway I don’t really want to say much more about Graceling because I want everyone to go read it. Trust me. It’s good. It’s completely engrossing, it has a super badass female protagonist, and the plot is really smart. All around gem.

Bob Rankin? Why is my fairy princess steak so dry?

Photo Cred:

http://i2.listal.com/image/55400/936full-robin-hood-photo.jpg

http://www.buycostumes.com/Robin-Hood-Adult/27237/ProductDetail.aspx

http://www.pdplayhouse.com/robin%20hood%20pics.htm

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Cave-troll

http://jeelchristine.tumblr.com/post/7034432551/katsa-and-po-of-graceling-snuggling-fighting

http://jeelchristine.tumblr.com/post/7044519786/katsa-no-fairy-princess-by-jackie-lyn-on

http://askbobrankin.com/gems_and_minerals.html

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Ok, raise your hand if you saw The Village.

Now raise your hand if you liked The Village.

Now raise your hand if you like books that follow the same plot line as M. Night Shyamalan movies.

That’s what I thought.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, has all the makings of a really captivating story. A girl living in a village surrounded by a forest where zombies live. She needs to find out if there is anyone else alive in the world outside her town. It sounds pretty sweet. Post-apocolyptic. Zombies. Not to mention the reviews on the back said it was sexy. But even with all this going for it I was still weary. Because I saw The Village once. I did not see The Village Twice. There is a reason for that. And the fact that The Village came out in 2004 and this book was published in 2009 is more than a little suspicious.

But I was having a hard time finding something to read so when I saw it at the library I grabbed it.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The story starts out with a town that is very old-fashioned, you know, arranged marriages, doing your own laundry in a babbling brook, no cell-phone service type of old-fashioned. The main character, Mary, is approached by another character, Henry who asks her to marry him. But, what’s this? Mary is in love with Henry’s brother, Travis. But, sacre bleu! Travis has already asked Mary’s best friend, Cass, to marry him. So what does Mary do?

She watches her mother get infected by zombie disease, has her brother kick her out of the house, and becomes a nun. (by the way, don’t google image “zombie nun.” It’s not as fun as it sounds.)

This is where things get cool. The town is basically run by these nuns and boy do they mean business.

But not this type of business. More like, we’re going to keep everyone trapped in this town through a combination of fear and religious devotion kind of business. I’m also pretty sure the nuns in this book don’t wear Teevas.

So it becomes pretty clear pretty soon that the nuns know more about this zombie situation than they’re letting on, and that they want to keep everyone here for a reason. Which, yes, is exactly like The Village, but for some reason I was more intrigued by this because of the strong religious overtones.

Atheist.

So, as Mary is discovering that the Sisterhood is corrupt, Travis hurts his leg and is being treated in a room close to Mary’s. She visits him often and some sexy encounters occur and we soon realize that Travis is totally into her! AHHHHHH!!!! But wait. He’s still engaged to Cass.

But that problem is solved as well! Because while Cass is fretting about Travis’ injury, Henry is comforting her and she totally falls for him!

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!

But wait. Henry is still in love with Mary. But you know what? When three out of the four people being married are upset with the situation, and changing around the pairing just a little will make three out of the four people very happy, then doesn’t it make sense to….

Apparently not, because they all decide to go along with the marriages they had already planned. Because I guess Henry’s feelings matter more than everyone else’s. Maybe he throws really intense tantrums or something.

“IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH!!!!”

So Mary marries Henry so that she can escape from the corrupt Sisterhood, but I’m thinking, ok, there’s definitely gonna be some more info about these nuns ‘cause they’re messed up, man. This could make for a really interesting story of politics, with the zombies as a backdrop, rather than literally the only plot device.

But no. According to Carrie Ryan, the zombie plot device trumps all. The night of the double wedding that could have very easily been a happy day for most, but because Carrie Ryan wanted to make her characters unfulfilled, and the only way that she could think to do that was by putting them in a very fixable situation, most of them were miserable, something awful happens. SPOILER ALERT: The zombies break into the village and kill EVERYONE. Like literally EVERYONE. The only survivors are Henry, Cass, Mary, Travis, Mary’s brother and his wife, a small boy named Jacob, and a dog.

Now, this is awful for a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, their entire town was totally destroyed. That’s pretty bad for the characters. But looking at this from the perspective of someone who knows that this is a book that was written by an author who has total control over what happens in it, that was literally the worst plot twist I’ve ever seen. You had a good thing going, Carrie Ryan! You were creating intrigue! But now that intrigue is gone because not only did you kill off the characters creating it, you demolished the entire village, leaving the subject moot.

This happens pretty early on in the book too, and let me tell you, the rest of the book sucks.

Carrie Ryan got all the good stuff out of the way early; things like dystopian society, crazy nuns, even all the sexy scenes were when Travis was injured. The rest of the book is devoted to the survivors making they’re way through the Forest of Hands and Teeth, protected by a fence that is set up along a path. That is literally ALL THAT HAPPENS. Sure, they find another town, but oh, guess what? Carrie Ryan can’t get over her zombie fetish so that town has also been destroyed by the undead.

LEAVE US SOMETHING TO WORK WITH, CARRIE!

So, I really couldn’t stand this book. It lost me as soon as everyone interesting was killed and we were left with the boring losers who couldn’t figure out how to get married.

There are also two sequels to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but I don’t think that they have the same characters because SPOILER ALERT: everyone except for Mary dies at the end.

...Yeah, this book is awful.

Photo Cred:

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/modern-nuns-ready-for-business-don-wolf.html

http://www.tiptoptens.com/2011/08/04/10-most-popular-cgi-characters/hulk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite

Twilight Needs Some Re-Vamping

So I saw Breaking Dawn Part 1 and I'm wondering why NO ONE IS MAKING A BIGGER DEAL OUT OF THIS.

COME ON.

This movie deserves to ripped to shreds. It deserves to be publicly humiliated. It deserves to be attacked by squealing middle aged mothers in garish clothing and make-up.

One of those plans has already been set in motion.

As for the other two, the best I can do is this scathing review. Now, I know that this blog is dedicated to young adult BOOKS, but I think that we can make an exception for this movie, because it was so potent that it managed to disgrace the name of young adult literature while not even being literature.

Oh, and sorry for the lack of pictures in this post. It was originally written for a newspaper, which can be read in it's entirety here: http://www.uvm.edu/~watertwr/

Now onto the review:

The word “appalling,” meaning awful, terrible, and horrifying, originates from the Old French word “apalir,” meaning “to grow pale.” It is, therefore, the perfect word to describe The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I, which was appalling in so many ways, the first of which being that every character was so pale that they all looked like a blood-sucking family of mimes.

I saw this movie over break, managing to snag a front row seat right in front of a squealing group of thirteen-year-old fan girls. I did not join in their enthusiasm even though, yes, I admit, I have read Twilight. And yes, unfortunately, this movie followed the book pretty well.

If you are unfamiliar with the story then DON’T SEE THIS MOVIE. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. If you are familiar with the story then you know that the movie starts with Bella the human and Edward the vamp finally tying the knot (I mean, they’re eighteen. Talk about taking your time, eh?). The newlyweds fly off to an island owned by Edward’s filthy rich vampire father and they lose their virginity in a passionate, bed-breaking bout of lovemaking. The first forty-five minutes of the movie views like a feel-good romance, with the central conflict being that Edward refuses to sleep with her after that first night owing to the fact that the bed got just as fucked as they did (meaning they literally broke the bed in half) and his wife walked away from the experience covered in bruises. Edward is nothing if not rational.

But after forty-five minutes this movie takes a turn. You see, Bella and Eddie don’t use condoms because they figure, since Edward is technically dead, he does not have the ability to impregnate her. But oh does he impregnate her. Edward’s undead sperm beats the odds and manages to create a horrifying, terrible, appalling vampire fetus that literally starts eating Bella from the inside. Finally, I thought as I watched from my front row seat. Something awesome is happening.

But, alas, I was mistaken. No, nothing happens. Bella sits on a couch and gets gaunter and more pregnant and more disgusting, Jacob runs around in the woods as a wolf all upset and shit, and Edward is just mad and pale and sparkly, for like literally an hour of the movie. When a film has a running time of 117 minutes, forty-five of those minutes are spent on the vampire sex and another sixty are spent on the woes of vampiric pregnancy, then that only leaves twelve precious minutes for a plot climax. And oh how those twelve minutes were utilized.

I was fortunate enough (in a sense) to have read the book before seeing the movie, meaning that I had a little warning but even so, when you’re sitting in the front row, in a seat nailed to the floor, facing a giant screen with the climax of Breaking Dawn Part I projected onto it, twelve minutes can seem like an eternity.

So the climax of this movie is basically a detailed account of the result of Edward’s climax. Oh, I should mention now, this film is not suitable for women who are pregnant or may become pregnant. We go from feel-good romance, to family drama, to a scene from Saw V with literally no transition. There’s Bella innocently talking about her horrible ideas for baby names, when suddenly her spine snaps, her ribs break and her huge throbbing stomach is chewed open by her devoted husband in the most appalling C-section imaginable.

But, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t the sickening birth or even the rough vampire sex that was most appalling about this movie. No, it was the fact that even though this movie made $61.8 million dollars in one weekend, the special effects still looked like graphics from a cheap video game. It was appalling that even though they could have absolutely fit the entire book into a single movie, (anyone who has read the book knows that absolutely nothing happens in the second half. Or the first, for that matter), they had to stretch it out, doubling their profits by making two incredibly boring atrocities. I can think of at least 5 two and half minute long montages that were obviously only there so that they could drag this sucker out into a full-length feature. Hollywood should think about enforcing a montage cap, because this was just ridiculous.

So, if you’re looking to be appalled, then be my guest. If not, then I do not recommend seeing this. Not even for those “it’s so bad it’s good” lovers. It’s just a rollercoaster ride of bored, disgusted, bored, bored, AHHHHH OH MY GOD WHAT, appalled.

The Maze Runner Series

When I was a child, I got lost in a corn maze. And it wasn’t a happy fun corn maze like this:

They’re not even trying to emphasize this pun.

It was a shit-your-pants corn maze like this:

Let me just go change my pants.

So, obviously, I took every opportunity to tell the story of my near-death experience, and my quick thinking in an incredibly dangerous situation. Because bragging about your bravery is how you make friends.

What you’ve never heard of that?

Guess that’s why you don’t have friends.

So until last year I totally thought that I was a living legend surviving that maze unscathed. But then I read The Maze Runner.

Dammit. These guys totally stole my thunder!

So let me give you a rundown of the plot, here. This is kind of that classic storyline. You know the one where a 16 year old boy wakes up in a windowless elevator remembering nothing but his name, and then the elevator opens up into a glade where there are like 50 other boys who only remember their names, and they are in the middle of a giant maze that changes shape everyday and there are giant gooey monsters with metal spikes that like to really slowly and painfully pull apart teenagers?

You know?

There is a fine line between good fantasy and ridiculous fantasy. The very best fantasy is constantly testing that line. But James Dashner totally sprints right over that line, laughing, flinging off his clothes, and giving the finger to all those losers back there too afraid to cross it. He runs, free and ridiculous, like a nudist in an outlet mall, babbling about vegan cookies and hemp. You watch from a distance, may even for a second consider joining him, but then someone calls your iPhone, inviting you to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and you leave James Dashner, running naked in a field, spewing profanities and conspiracy theories, and you go and watch James Franco and some monkeys. Oh, I’m sorry; apes.

That extended metaphor does have a meaning, I swear.

Ok, let me rephrase. A few years back I watched 300. This movie contained a lot of the fantastical, but it was very clear from the beginning what the limits of this were. Though there were monsters and magic, man was still mortal and, though their arms were thicker than my neck, they were bound to the constraints of human physical capacity. Meaning they can’t throw a spear from a mile and a half away and have it go straight through someone’s chest.

Oh...wait...

Did somebody throw that? DAMMIT, 300!

I couldn’t respect the movie anymore. It had crossed the boundary of what I was willing to believe, and had gone into it’s own fantasy world, not bothering to bring the audience along for the ride.

And this is exactly what James Dashner does in The Scorch Trials.

As you can see, this is the sequel to The Maze Runner, and it just sucks. Which actually really shocks me. As you may have noticed, very few young adult books stand alone. They have sequels, prequels, companions, encyclopedias, fan fiction, you name it. And, (excluding fan fiction), every piece of the series is generally just as good as any other. Look at Harry Potter. There isn’t one Harry Potter book that is definitively better than any other.

So the supreme suckiness of The Scorch Trials really surprises me because I loved The Maze Runner. Loved it. It’s a flippin’ gem! And The Scorch Trials is one of the worst young adult books I have ever read.

Lemme go ahead and give you some examples.

I realized pretty early on that I was in for a headache. So, the main character, Thomas, wakes up in a hotel room in a post-apocolyptic city, with a crazed and diseased man trying to break through his window:

“Sores and scars covered his thin, sunburnt face. He had no hair, only diseased splotches of what looked like greenish moss. A vicious slit stretched across his right cheek; Thomas could see teeth through the raw, festering wound. Pink saliva dribbled in swaying lines from the man’s chin.

‘I’m a Crank!’ the horror of a man yelled. ‘I’m a bloody Crank!’”

Come on, James Dashner.

If you really want us to know about a cool (not that cool) word that you’ve decided to call those that are infected with the dumbass disease you’ve invented for this book, there are lot more subtle ways to introduce it than having a character yell it as they try to attack the protagonist. It’s literally the first thing the man says. That would be like if I was trying to rob a bank and I run up to the teller window and yell “I have slight anemia!”

...So that was dumb.

Also, this book was just gratuitously violent. Like, over the top with the teenager killing. In horrible horrible horrible ways. Yes, The Maze Runner is violent but not this violent. This level of violence makes me question Dashner’s sanity. I mean, at one part, a kid gets hit by lightning, his leg is blown clean off, all his clothes are completely burned off him, his eyes have melted out of his head, and the boy is still alive. Still. Freakin. Alive. And conscious. Another time, they were in a completely dark passageway, couldn’t see a thing, and a boy has a boiling blob of metal land on his head, burning his skin off as it drips down around his face, then hardens around his head like a bowling ball, and decapitates him.

Ok so I’m 20 and this gave me nightmares. This book is intended for TWEENS.

Dashner you go too far!

So I absolutely recommend The Maze Runner. Definitely one of the better young adult science fiction novels I’ve read. But please don’t continue in the series. The third book, The Death Cure, (idiotic title) is coming out next month, but I’m not even gonna bother marking my calendar as I will certainly not be wasting my time with it.

Dashner, you disappoint me.

Oh and his blog is called “The Dashner Dude”.

COME ON.

Photo Cred:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dashner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorch_Trials

http://edencubpack603.org/events.html

http://www.roblox.com/Scary-Corn-Maze-place?id=12109601

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maze_Runner

The Leviathan Trilogy

Do you know that horrible sadness you get when you’ve just finished a really great book? I get that ALL THE TIME. Because I generally really like books. And I am obsessed with a genre that’s really really good at sucking you in, making you think that you’re part of that world, introducing you to characters that you think of as friends. And then it ends and it throws you out into the street alone. And it will never call unless it needs something. Like money. Or crack. And you just have to stand your ground. Don’t let it back into your life because you can’t be hurt like that again. You just can’t.

JK I reread books all the freakin’ time.

Like this one for instance:

I found it in the library when I was in a post-awesome-book slump and I thought it looked pretty promising. I mean, it has a pretty sweet cover, it says “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author” on it, and I’ve always kind of had a weird affinity for whales.

yeeeaeeeaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

And at this point, I just really needed something to pick me out of my slump. So I walked up to the front desk, checked it out, and immediately sat down and started reading it. (Side note: librarians frown upon this).

Now, remember when I listed all the promising things on the cover? I neglected to notice the tiny little words at the bottom. If I had seen them before I started the book, I never would have considered reading it.

The words say “illustrated by Keith Thompson”.

Ruh-roh.

I will gladly accept the fact that I enjoy reading books geared towards people eight years younger than me, but I find it a little hard to admit that I’m reading picture books. That is just a little bit too far below my age level.

Someone who had even an ounce of pride would probably put this book down, claim, “I’m too old for this shit” and storm off to read some Pittacus Lore.

But I’ve never been one for pride so I kept reading it.

And I finished it.

And I forgot absolutely everything about Leviathan.

I don’t mean to say that it is a forgettable book, it’s just that I don’t have the space in my brain to retain the details of every young adult book I read. I read SO MANY. You have NO IDEA. So I don’t even try to remember them because they’re really easy to re-read. And the part of my brain that remembers this sort of thing is already full. With every last detail and minutiae of the Harry Potter series. Do you want to play Harry Potter trivia sometime? I will OWN YOU.

This is me.

So last week I was in a depressed state after finishing the Trickster’s Choice series, and I needed another book to pull me out of it. I saw that Leviathan’s sequel was out and I kind of remembered liking it, so I checked out both Leviathan and its sequel, Behemoth.

It kind of worried me that both of the books’ titles are synonyms for “big”. Is Scott Westerfeld trying to compensate for something?

No, ladies. He isn’t.

This series is all sorts of well-endowed.

Even with the pictures! It took me a long time to come to terms with them but once I accepted the fact that they were there to stay, I actually realized just how useful they are. It’s really kind of hard some times to imagine exactly what Scott Westerfeld is describing, and having a freakin’ awesome picture right there is extraordinarily helpful. Usually I like to have my own interpretation of what characters or places look like, but Westerfeld’s places and characters are so weird that if the pictures weren’t there I would be TOTALLY lost.

Like this, for example.

So let me give you a little background on the story. This series is steampunk to the MAX. It’s a reimagining of World War I except the British and French are using genetically fabricated animals as weapons, and Germany and Austria are using machines that look like the ones from Avatar.

Except about 93% more badass.

The story follows Alek, an Austrian prince who’s parents’ murders start the war. He is being hunted because of his potential claim for the Emperor’s throne. We also follow Deryn, a Scottish girl who is posing as a boy in order to be a soldier aboard the airship Leviathan.

Oh, and one more thing.

Leviathan is a flying whale.

YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

What’s shocking about these books is how accurate they are. A lot of the characters are based on real people, and the timeline of events is pretty much how it happened. And everyone knows that the Austrians rode mechanical horses that shot phosphorescent flares at their pursuees:

Like so.

Scott Westerfield wrote an afterward for both books explaining what in them is based on fact and what is made up. A shocking amount of it is historically sound so I definitely recommend this for parents who are concerned that their children don’t know enough about World War I. I know that that’s a rising concern in our country.

So I read both of these books in one week and then fell into my slump again. Who knows when the third and final book in the series will be released? I’ll have to reread them all again because I definitely won’t remember them by the time the third is out.

Then I remembered that there is such a thing as the internet, so I looked it up.

And guys, the third book came out YESTERDAY!!!!

This is probably the most excited I’ve ever been in my life.

I have been in possession of the new book for only a few hours, and in that time it has received love that would rival the Velveteen Rabbit. It’s called Goliath, which is a lot better than some of the titles I had guessed: Huge, Colossal, Brobdingnagian, Hulk, Huge Throbbing Member, etc.

I’m only a chapter in but I can tell it’s going to be a gem. As were it’s predecessors. GEMS ALL AROUND!!!!

The moral of this story is to never judge a book by it's age-appropriateness. It's also a plea for authors to write more books about whales. I have a serious fetish.

YEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

PHOTO CRED:

http://boingboing.net/2009/10/06/scott-westerfelds-le.html

http://smokeandmirrorsblog.com/2009/10/30/free-willy/

http://sophieplayle.com/the-visual-appeal-of-steampunk-scott-westerfelds-leviathan/

http://themindislimitless.blog.com/2010/11/11/leviathan-by-scott-westerfeld/

http://www.applesofmyeyes.com/page/3/

http://scottwesterfeld.com/books/leviathan/

Trickster's Choice

This book was recommended to me in middle school. You know why? Because the main love interest is "sooooo hawt!".

...calm down.

I’m not saying anything against my friend. She was young, she was excitable, and her hormones were raging.

Puberty lets you get away with all kinds of shit.

But I never trust that a book is worth reading just because a character is attractive. If books were judged by that standard, then Stephanie Meyer would be the most celebrated author of our time.

Literary greatness?

So I never got around to reading it at the time, but it was always at the back of my mind, toying with me, luring me to it, calling me: please, oh please, peruse my pages!

Nah I’m just kidding I totally forgot about it.

Until a few weeks ago when I saw it on my friend’s bookshelf. I asked her if it was good, she said yes, and so I decided to read it. I mean, if the book itself wasn’t good at least I knew that the love interest was cute, right?

But it didn’t matter. Because this book ROCKS!!!

But I do have to warn you, just in case you start reading this and hate it, then curse my name, then voodoo doll me, it starts out slow. It took me a loooooong time for me to become familiar with the world that Tamora Pierce has created. And let me tell you, has she put time into creating it. Tamora Pierce is one of the most prolific young adult writers I have every encountered and, I’m a little ashamed to say, this is the first book of hers that I’ve read. A ton and a half of her books, though, take place in the world of Trickster’s Choice, with different series starring different characters.

We got:

The Song of the Lioness series starring Alanna the Lioness, a girl who wants to be a knight:

The Immortals series starring Daine, a young mage who is discovering her powers:

Don't you wish you could model for things like this? And then find yourself in bookstores doing weird shit with butterflies? That's all I want.

Oh, and if you don't know what mage means, look it up. I'm encountering it more and more in the young adult books I read.

Then there's The Protecter of the Small series starring Kel, another girl who wants to be a knight like her idol, Alanna.

Am I the only one who feels just a little uncomfortable by that third one? I mean, it's literally just a picture of her chest.

Then comes the Trickster series starring Aly, Alanna’s only daughter.

Holy sequel, Batman! There's another one! YES.

And then, finally, the Beka Cooper series, which takes place 200 years before the start of the Alanna series:

This cover makes me want to piss myself a little.

Allllll of these stories take place here:

And the characters from different series interact with each other often. In other words, this has the potential to have an incredibly huge and geeky fanbase. And I’m pretty sure it does.

So, back to why Trickster’s Choice is the shit. Once I got acclimated to this new and very strange world with all it’s magic and immortal creatures and freaking unicorns and all that, I was able to appreciate the character of Aly. Now, she starts out the series as seeming like an unappreciative daughter who only cares about her looks and loves to meaninglessly flirt with local boys. But as the book goes on she surprises you. This girl knows her shit. Like reeeaaallly knows it. She gets kidnapped and turned into a slave and then becomes bodyguard to two of the most hunted girls in the kingdom, and she manages to keep her head, and save everyone’s ass, like, literally all the time. There is rarely a moment where Aly is not saving someone’s ass.

"We owe our asses to you."

She's also super good at persuading people to do whatever she wants. She keeps certain information from some people and then reveals it to others just to her advantage, so that she’s always holding all the cards. She’s scary good at this. Almost too good. There were moments when I was like, does she have flaws??? But, you know what, I got over it, because the plot was amazing, and I actually kind of liked that she was sort of invincible.

What makes this book so great is that it’s not a story of luck and chance. It’s a story of strategy. Everything that Aly does has a purpose in the long run and she is incredibly smart about it. Her foresight is freakin’ 20 20. It’s ridic. (that’s short for ridiculous. I like to shorten words. It saves ti).

It’s a mother flippin’ joy to read this book because you just want to know what Aly will do next and how she’s going to save the day. And it’s not like she’s saving the day by charging into huge armies with a lance and some throwing stars. Nooooooo she’s spying. She sneaks around pretending to be an innocent slave when in fact she’s searching through trunks and eavesdropping on important conversations.

It’s so boss!

So, guys, guess what? We have ourselves a GEM!!!

Tamora Pierce created this.

Now we know that young adult fantasy isn’t full of horrible writing, and dumbass characters that no one can relate to. Thank you Tamora Pierce for helping to save the integrity of the genre!!!!

Oh and the main love interest is totally cute. My middle school friend was so right.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation

Whenever I hear the term “mind-blowing” I immediately think of that horrendous period of time after Inception came out in theaters, and it was literally the only adjective used in any conversation ever.

“Aw man, that movie blew my mind” “Wait, it blew your mind? It blew my mind!” “BLOOD BROTHERS!”

Sigh. Remember that?

After that horrific phase, I have tried to replace the hated term with some more creative alternatives whenever I can.

But in the case of this M.T. Anderson novel I cannot.

Because, guys, I’m not kidding around here, this book blew my freakin’ MIND!

(I don't necessarily mean that in a good way).

You see, I opened this expecting to find typical young adult angst, typical young adult characters, and, most of all, typical young adult vernacular. So I opened up the book and I found THIS:

“My mother was surrounded always by admirers: scholars, poets, painters, bucks, and blades. She let them all pay homage; for though she was now in low estate, she had been bred for the court, and was accustomed to the crush of supplicants. She hearkened little to the insinuations of flattery or the curtseys of obsequiousness, but returned all idle, pretty chatter in its own coin.” (page 34).

HOLD THE PHONE.

This is how the entire BOOK is written. And let me tell you, this book is no “oh I’ll just stow it in my purse and carry it around” kinda book. This is a full fledged, “I hope you’ve reinforced your bookshelf, because I will do all that I can to make it collapse” kinda book. And the whole thing is written like that.

This type of writing may not seem so shocking to those not familiar with the genre of young adult fiction, but let me tell you. This is trippy. I am not used to this.

M.T. Anderson…WHO ARE YOU?

"My spectacles do be perched in a marginally askew manor upon my cunning visage, as an inebriated navy man may abandon his practiced upright stature to lean precariously upon his vessel’s mast. I know what obsequiousness means!"

After my initial bafflement by the sheer ridiculousness of the narration (I mean, obsequiousness? Really? That shouldn’t be a word. It sounds like some sort of dancing sequined octopus king and that really should never be given it’s own word. Now what was I saying? I got distracted by the dancing octopus in my mind.) Oh right, the elegant wording of the narration put me immediately on guard.

You see children, (or adults, tweens, humans, pirates, whatever best describes you), in my extensive experience, when it comes to young adult literature, there is a big difference between good writing and good plot. The best young adult books have a healthy balance, (and there are many that fit this bill).

Example:

Or: A very short man gets totally peer pressured into highly dangerous activities for cash.

And, unfortunately, there are many young adult books with both terrible plot and incredibly shitty writing.

Example: I Am Number Bullshit.

Now, in general, I think that good plot is more important than good writing. In fact, I think plot could kick writing’s whiny ass any day of the week. I don’t enjoy books where nothing happens. If someone tells me that a books is “beautifully written” I run for the hills because that is not the way a book should be described. Is it thought-provoking? Is it engaging? Is it entertaining? Those are the three golden questions. If your answer is “no…but the writing is just so lovely” then, I’m sorry, but your book does not have the Shannon Stamp of Approval, a thing that is necessary for respectable existence.

Without this you are nothing.

And so, although my mind was completely blown by the stunning imagery and turns of phrases in this book, I was still left unsatisfied because not that much happened.

"This book is a wild, wild ride."

I also didn’t feel connected to Octavian at all because his speech was always so formal. It kept a distance between him and me. And I don’t like that. I like to be up close and personal with my characters. I like things to get uncomfortable. They try to back away but I persist, and very, very slowly, they learn to accept that I am here to stay, and they quietly succumb to the inevitable.

Oh goodness. You probably think I’m really weird now don’t you.

Needless to say, Octavian and I do not have a bond.

But I’m not totally discounting this book. I do recommend it for people willing to put in the effort of looking up the word “obsequiousness”. It’s a fascinating, and beautiful read. It takes place during the American Revolution, and I can’t know for sure, because I’m not very good at history and I really don’t feel like spending time looking this up, but some of the things that happen in the book are probably historically accurate. Which is pretty flippin’ sweet. And if not, it’s still an interesting look at race relations during that period.

So this is neither gem, nor anthracite. It’s somewhere in between. Howsabout….bronze? I’ma gonna go with bronze.

This is also bronze.

And so my noble quest continues. Oh dear readers do not fret, for I have not tired from my search yet. Continue to have hope and blah blah blah you get the point I'm going to bed.

I Am Number Four

I apologize in advance for letting my hipster side show, but I definitely knew about I am Number 4 before it was popular. I stumbled across this book in a young adult section of a book store (where I spend an embarrassing amount of my time) and I thought it sounded AWESOME!

This was me upon finding this book:

This was me after reading the first HOLYFREAKIN’EPIC chapter:

This was me after discovering that the main character is just a boring whiny teenager:

This was me after finishing the book and realizing that I’ve been taken for a fool:

That’s right people. Pittacus Lore thinks that his readers are idiots. He dumbs down every concept in this book so that what promised to be like this:

Actually turns out like this:

Woah woah woah is the author’s last name really Kirk? That’s like if a frycook’s last name was Lagasse.

Being an intelligent human being, I was pretty insulted by the dumbassness of this book, and I was pretty angry at the author, Pittacus Lore. Except here’s the kicker: Pittacus Lore is a pseudonym. I have no idea who actually wrote this book but it was not Pittacus Lore. How do I know this? Pittacus Lore is a character in his own freakin’ book. Now, this has the potential to be cool (check out Lemony Snicket in A Series of Unfortunate Events) but in this book it fails. It fails with a violent fury. It crashes and it burns. And then it explodes. And then dies of natural causes.

You know why it fails? Because this book is written from the perspective of the main character, John (oh, by the way, the protaganist’s name is John Smith. The originality astounds me.) How can Pittacus Lore be a character in his own book, claim to have written the book, and then have the book narrated by some shit-for-brains teenager who can’t even recognize that his dog, who’s dumbass name is Bernie Kosar, has unusual powers?

“I leave Bernie Kosar in the dust. I look behind me and he is running as fast as he can, yet I am pulling ahead of him. The wind through my hair, the trees passing in a blur. It all feels great. Then Bernie Kosar bolts into the woods and disappears from sight. I’m not sure if I should stop and wait for him. Then I turn around and Bernie Kosar jumps out of the woods ten feet in front of me.

I look down at him and he looks up at me, tongue to the side, a sense of glee in his eyes.

‘You’re an odd dog, you know that?’”(page 195).

Now that right there just doesn’t make sense.

I also take issue with the name of the planet that they are originally from. It’s called Lorien. This name is sooooo original for a coupla reasons:

1) The author’s last name is Lore. So….what? You thought of a cool word and decided to use it for everything? Get yourself a goddam baby name book and think of some different names. J.K. Rowling practically invented an entire dictionary. You can think of a few good names if you actually put any sort of time into it.

2) Lorien is already a place. And it is not a dying planet billions of lightyears away. It is this:

It will always be this, and stealing from J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the least cool things a writer can do. Yes he was brilliant, but using his material does not make you brilliant.

So as you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy this book. I do not recommend it. Even the battle sequences were predictable and just plain stupid.

You're a fool.

The worst part was that the novel ended with a cliffhanger. His guardian left him a very important letter, explaining why he is on Earth and other really important, intriguing things, and John goes “Oh, I’ll read it later”, pockets it, drives away into the sunset, and the book ENDS. It ENDS.

........

WHAT?!

I understand that for the purposes of writing a sequel, you want at least some sort of cliffhanger but that is just the sleaziest thing I have ever heard. It’s a cliffhanger because he decides not to read a letter? In my definition, the cliffhanger needs to be something completely out of the protaganist’s control. Maybe his girlfriend gets kidnapped? An old man appears and tells him everything will be explained if he follows him to his secret lair? A bad case of heartburn threatens to ruin his day? ANYTHING other than choosing not to read a letter immediately. It’s obvious to me that Pittacus doesn’t give a shit about this story, he just wants to insure that he has a steady income.

That Pittacus. Besmirching the name of Young Adult Literature.

For SHAME!

And so I rate this the lowest of the low.

I Am Number Four is not a gem of the genre. It is ANTHRACITE.

Is there any hope for young adults? Do these gems I am searching for exist? Stay tuned to find out!