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Hey Ashers!

YA recommendations with lists, pictures, and frequent parentheticals.

SPOILER ALERT!
Wild - Meghan O'Brien

Spoiler Rating: High

 

Number One Katie,

 

Yeah, I'd promised to read a self-published book in honor of NaNoWriMo. Didn't happen. Instead, I finally got around to reading Wild, that lesbian paranormal/thriller/romance I had high hopes for.

 

Let me start by saying I appreciate that this book is written for a criminally underrepresented and underserved audience. We need more books like this one.

 

But not too much like this one.

 

Its intentions are good, and it likely serves its purpose for most readers—assuming its purpose is to be a fluffy romantic fantasy/masturbatory aid rather than the plot-driven novel I'd expected it to be. Which is just fine! There's a huge market for fluffy romantic fantasies/masturbatory aids, and it's great to see so many LGBTQ+ offerings in that area. But that's not the kind of book I personally enjoy, and because my expectations for Wild were unmet, my reading experience was pretty painful.

 

I'll be critiquing this book as the paranormal/thriller I thought it'd be, not the romance/erotica that maybe it's supposed to be. This might be unfair to the book, but Wild provides some excellent examples of weak writing that I and every other aspiring writer can learn from, so why not talk about them?

 

 

The only thing that frightens shapeshifter Selene Rhodes more than the full moon is the idea of falling in love.

 

Selene Rhodes has lived her whole life with a terrible secret: not only can she take the form of any animal at will, but once a month the full moon transforms her into a fierce wolf-creature without a human conscience. Managing her condition means living by a strict routine, and more importantly, abstaining from intimate relationships with human beings. Selene is convinced that love and friendship can only bring her pain.

 

Forensic pathologist Eve Thomas is well-acquainted with the pain of romantic love. Swearing off relationships after having her heart broken by a cheating ex, Eve throws herself into her work: catching murderers. When Selene comes to her aid after an attack by a masked man in Golden Gate Park, Eve is shocked by how powerfully she is drawn to her mysterious savior.

 

Shaken by her own feelings for Eve, Selene is even more terrified to realize she isn’t even close to being the scariest monster stalking San Francisco. There is someone out in the city who is killing for pleasure, and his next target is the one woman he thinks might be able to stop him: Eve.

 

This letter'll be a lot more intelligible if I give you a run-down of the plot first.

 

Selene (regular shapeshifter all the time, out-of-control werewolf on full moons) finds a woman's body in the park and calls in an anonymous tip to the cops. After hanging up, she feels/hears—in a magical, empathic way—a woman (Eve) screaming for help. She runs to the rescue in wolf form, chases the ski-mask-wearing attacker off, and returns as a human to help Eve. Thus begins their love.

 

We then switch to murderer Kevin's point of view, and learn Kevin's obsessed with proving that Super Famous Criminal Pathologist Eve isn't as smart as his aspiring-serial-murderer self.

 

Eve and cheating-ex-girlfriend-who-wants-Eve-back, Detective Jac Battle, investigate each of Kevin's subsequent kills. They know the murderer's interested in Eve (so Jac insists on having a 24/7 protective detail guard her), but can't figure out why, nor who he is.

 

After plenty of sex for Selene and Eve, there's some relationship angst when (a) Jac tries to make Eve suspicious of Selene's motives, and (b) Eve finds Selene with another woman. (Selene's not cheating, just having werewolf problems.) They break up, but Selene guards Eve from the shadows and manages to follow Kevin to his apartment, thus discovering his name and address. Selene then reveals her shapeshifterliness to Eve and tells her who the murderer is, and they're once again Very Much In Love.

 

They then make an infuriatingly dumb decision that involves Eve slipping away from her protective detail on the night of the full moon, so of course (a) Kevin attacks them and (b) the werewolfed-out Selene kills him.

 

The end.

 

On to the critique!

 

 

The First Issue: Sense of Place

 

Wild is set in modern-day San Francisco—a city with such a distinct personality, its name conjures vivid images even though I've never visited it (unlike, say, Dallas, which I have spent time in. Sorry, Dallas). I'd expected Wild to give me a more complete and realistic view of the city, as it's told from the perspective of residents.

 

But nope. Wild's focus is so tight on its main characters that it ignores every opportunity to bring San Francisco to life. And I'm not talking about wasting paragraphs describing every building and landmark; I just want the little passing details—sights, smells, sounds, sensations, tastes—that would help ground me in the physical world of the story.

 

Take, for example, when Selene convinces Eve to go for an pre-dawn walk together from Selene's house to the coffee shop two and a half blocks away. Eve used to love morning walks, but gave up that ritual after Serial Murderer Kevin attacked her in the park. Selene wants to give Eve the strength to start taking walks again.

 

 

Eve's observing her surroundings while Selene (whose POV we're temporarily in) is so focused on Eve that she's oblivious to everything else. They discuss Eve's emotional state as they walk, but not a single detail is offered about the setting. As a result, I'm imagining the characters walking down a sidewalk in a predawn-blue void.

 

When they arrive at the coffee shop, Selene does take a moment to point out to Eve that they'd survived the brief walk:

 

 

"The streets were kind of busy and some people were wandering around" is not a compelling image. And that word choice! Writing that "a jogger moved" and "older women waited" is so dull. Sure, it gives the reader a vague idea of what's happening around the protagonists, but vague will set me either yawning or weeping. Possibly both.

 

Equally frustrating was the absence of seasonal descriptions. Wild's plot covers a period of two months, and I have no idea which two months those are. Autumn? Spring leading into summer? Dead of winter? Couldn't tell you.

 

The Second Issue: Characters

 

Don't read Wild expecting to find strong, distinct protagonists.

 

Mary Sues (generic protagonists with few to no distinct personality traits) certainly serve a function: they allow readers to insert themselves into that character's place, so reading can become more a guided fantasy featuring the reader, and less a story about the protagonist.

 

I enjoy my share of Mary Sue stories, but I generally prefer to read about characters who are real people. People with their own distinct hopes, anxieties, goals, flaws, habits, motivations, hobbies, strengths, preferences. The more real a character is, the more immersed I can be in their story.

 

What do we know about Selene as a person?

 

 

That's about it. Does she so much as touch a camera or refer to her photography hobby again over the course of the story? No. Does her job as a graphic designer ever come up again? No. Well, except for this, which actually takes place a few pages before the excerpt above:

 

 

Selene drops everything and devotes herself entirely to Eve; they go on dates, they have a lot of sex, and Selene follows Eve around in animal form just about 24/7. How on earth does Selene pay her bills?

 

Eve is even more of a blank slate than Selene. We're told she's a workaholic and a Super Famous Forensic Pathologist, but we only see her working a couple times, and we never get the sense that she's devoted to or remarkable at her job. We're told she hates liars. Oh, and of course she likes her predawn walks in the park.

 

No, I'm not counting that as character development.

 

As well as lacking personalities, Eve and Selene are aggravatingly inconsistent in their thoughts and behaviors. Inconsistency is an expected outcome of lacking a personality, but I suspect these inconsistencies would've existed even if they were better-developed characters. Why? Because those inconsistencies push the plot from one point to the next.

 

I've already ranted about characters acting out-of-character for the sake of plot/romance, but it bears repeating: writers, don't do this.

 

Eve's concern about her personal safety fluctuates throughout the story, but not in response to Serial Killer Kevin's actions. Nope. Her concern waxes and wanes depending on what the next sexy scene or plot point requires of her.

 

Halfway through the novel, Eve's as safe as she possibly can be from Kevin: she spends every night with Selene, and two detectives (not officers, detectives; I'm frowning in disapproval so hard right now) have been assigned as her 24/7 protection detail. But Selene's going to be werewolfing it up on the full moon, so she insists that Eve spend the night at Jac's place. Eve agrees, because she's in fear for her life:

 

 

If she wasn't fearing for her life at this point, she wouldn't have agreed to spend the night at Jac's place—which means Jac wouldn't have had the opportunity to wine, dine, and kiss Eve in an attempt to win her back. If Jac didn't kiss Eve, Eve wouldn't immediately go running back to Selene and witness a call girl arriving at Selene's house, thus ending Eve and Selene's relationship with a terrible misunderstanding. (The call girl's only there to tie Selene to a steel table before she turns into a werewolf and murders everything in sight, FYI. No, I won't explain why this is ridiculous.)

 

(Actually, yes, I will, and I'll italicize everything to relay the depth of my aggravation: no sex worker, especially one who works for what's described as a reputable agency, would put a client in restraints and leave them unattended—especially not overnight. Especially when the client wants the sex worker to tie the restraints so tightly they restrict breathing and circulation, as Selene requires. Aaaargh.)

 

Eve's fear for her life is totally acceptable, except that the very next day, Eve sneers at Jac's concern about her safety:

 

 

The whole "I'm too afraid to sleep alone at night because I'm marked for death" thing from the night before is conveniently forgotten, because it served its purpose: got Jac to kiss Eve, and Eve to break up with Selene. The next phase of the plot requires Eve to push her protectors as far away as possible, so Eve's fear is tossed out the window.

 

This isn't the only, or even the most infuriating, example of characters being dumb for the sake of the plot, but I won't describe the others because I have better things to do with my time.

 

Like complain about magical empathic bonds.

 

The Third Issue: Magical Empathic Bonds

 

What is the foundation of a strong, healthy relationship? A wealth of shared experiences? Honesty? Established trust? Respect for yourself and each other?

 

No? Then how about an inexplicable empathic bond that allows you and your partner to sense each other's emotions, and also causes you to orgasm when you so much as touch their hand? Sounds legit to me!

 

Selene and Eve's "romance" took all of two seconds to reach maturity, and was the least romantic thing I've read in a while—yes, in spite of their gushing emotions and soul-shattering need for each other.

 

That should actually be need in italics, need with a capital N. They Need each other, and that Need is established even before Eve works up the courage to ask Selene on a date.

 

 

But what fuels that NEED? Certainly not any sense of mutual affection or trust or respect, or whatever. Nope, it's that sparkly magic ability to sense each other's emotions:

 

 

Healthy! But wait, it gets better:

 

 

That's right. Eve is the only thing keeping Selene human. Never mind that Selene's been a fully functional (if self-isolated) human for the past thirty-plus years; without Eve, her life is over.

 

I. I just don't have the words for how damaging, insulting, and infuriating this view of love is. It is absolute bullshit and I hate seeing it paraded around as a romantic ideal.

 

I'd intended to explain how being able to sense each other's emotions reduces the tension during their interactions, but I think it's time to move on.

 

The Fourth Issue: Serial Killer Kevin's POV

 

Some stories benefit from a few (or many!) scenes told from the antagonist's perspective. Not this one.

 

We're treated to five scenes from Kevin's perspective. Each averages two pages long, and they pop up every sixty or so pages. Their purpose is threefold:

 

  1. to inform the reader of his motivation,
  2. to remind the reader that there's more to the story than romance,
  3. to let the reader know when his plan changes, so they know Something Big's About To Happen.

 

Here's a tiny sample:

 

 

That excerpt is actually a little deceiving, because in it Kevin spends almost as much time physically doing something (picking up the book) as he does Villainous Monologue-ing. In reality, scenes written from Kevin's point of view consist almost entirely of his (third-person) obsessing over Eve and pride of his own evil genius.

 

So why is this a problem?

 

First: farewell, mystery

 

We meet Kevin on page 38, mere pages after he kills one woman and attacks Eve. I'd expected this to be a murder mystery, where I'm as in the dark as the protagonists. Nope. No mystery here. He's an open book from the start.

 

Second: farewell, tension

 

The thrilling part of thrillers is usually the great unknown: who is this person, what's driving them, what are they capable of, what will they do next, will they succeed? If the bad guy's explaining to the reader in advance what his next move is—especially when the bad guy's an overconfident idiot like Kevin, and we know he's going to fail—where's the tension? Nowhere.

 

Third: ahaha, "Kevin"

 

Okay, so this ties into both the mystery and the tension thing, but: knowing the murderer's name from the get-go reduces him from the Big Scary Monster Guy to Some Obsessed Murderer Dude Named Kevin.

 

In short: the murder/thriller aspect of the story was poorly handled, and not particularly thrilling.

 

 

There's more I could say (flawed logic, factual errors, no likable characters), but I'll end this letter with this:

 

 

Someone please tell me (a) what cleaning products Selene uses and (b) how she was cutting that cake, because wow.

 

Wild wasn't very good, but I know you and I both thought Battle Scars was decent. This author's capable of writing better stories, and I'm sure her work will improve. In the meantime, I'll look for my supernatural lesbian thrillers elsewhere.

 

Hugs,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/11/07/wild
SPOILER ALERT!
A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J. Maas

Spoiler Rating (First Section): Moderate

Spoiler Rating (Second Section): SUPER HIGH

 

Hey Lizzy,

 

I've found yet another book you would've been obsessed with: A Court of Thorns and Roses, which is several kinds of awesome and two kinds of crushingly disappointing. Let me tell you about it.

 

Because I would recommend you read this, but its flaws are significant enough to discuss in detail despite their being super spoilery, I'm going to divide this letter into the relatively-spoiler-free praise section and then the spoiler-full criticism section. So if you don't want spoilers, uh, only read the first half of this letter.

 

 

A thrilling, seductive new series from New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas, blending Beauty and the Beast with faerie lore.

 

When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a beast-like creature arrives to demand retribution for it. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin—one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled their world.

 

As she dwells on his estate, her feelings for Tamlin transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie and warning she's been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But an ancient, wicked shadow grows over the faerie lands, and Feyre must find a way to stop it...or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

 

 

 

 The First Chapter

 

Oh, Lizzy, the first chapter. It is so good.

 

Nineteen-year-old Feyre's hunting deep in the winter forest, desperate to feed her borderline-starving father and older sisters. She knows to fear wolves and faeries (who can take the shape of wolves), both of which slaughter humans and both of which have been spotted in these woods recently.

 

She gets lucky and spots a doe—then gets super unlucky when a supernaturally stealthy, pony-sized wolf begins stalking the doe, too. If he takes it, Feyre and her family will become worse than borderline starving. She needs to kill the wolf.

 

 

Feyre brings him down with a faerie-killing ash arrow in his side and a regular arrow in his eye, but his death is unnaturally slow.

 

 

Unable to carry both the doe and the wolf home, Feyre skins the wolf (who mustn't have been a faerie after all, she thinks, because he didn't revert to his natural form upon his death) and throws the doe over her shoulder for the long trek home.

 

 

End chapter one.

 

So what's great about this?

 

(a) We see the world Feyre lives in—bleak and starving and flinching from the looming threat of faerie malice.

 

(b) This isn't some scene-setting chapter solely intended to introduce the main character and give some background to the story; Feyre's killing of the wolf is the single event that instigates the rest of the plot. The author doesn't waste a single moment/page, which is good, tight storytelling.

 

(c) But best of all is what we learn about Feyre herself. We see Feyre's general emotional state—grim and desperate and determined, but also numbed by her circumstances to the softer feelings of joy and hope and sympathy for others. However, that sympathy still lurks somewhere deep inside, half-dead and fully ignored by Feyre because she just can't afford to feel it. But it's still there, waiting. And (as you know) one of the themes of Beauty and the Beast stories is the awakening and acknowledgement of sympathy for someone you've previously feared and abhorred. Both Feyre's lack of sympathy for the faeries and the quiet kernel of hope for its blossoming are present from the first chapter. This is A+, four-thumbs-up storytelling.

 

Flashes Of Lovely Writing Style

 

Overall, the writing style was fine with the occasional flashes of glorious:

 

 

Feyre's a painter at heart, and as the first-person narrator she has an interesting way of describing light and color and shape. Those beautiful description didn't come as often as I would've liked, but I loved them when they did pop up.

 

No Love At First Sight, No Love Triangle

 

This being a Beauty and the Beast story, there shouldn't be room for love at first sight—but I was still relieved (and rather surprised) that it didn't rear its ugly head.

 

Unlike Disney's Beast, Tamlin can shift into and out of his beast-form (wolfish and feline and horned and bad-tempered) at will; the only mystery about his appearance is the golden mask permanently obscuring the upper portion of his face. When Feyre first meets Tamlin he's in his beast form, but he quickly shifts back into a man. A sexy man. But Feyre's instinctive reaction to his unexpected hotness isn't drooling or even abject staring:

 

 

Tamlin isn't struck by love at first sight, either. It takes them both a few months to warm up to each other, and their romance isn't derailed or complicated by an unnecessary Young Adult Love Triangle O' Angst (yes, that is the technical term).

 

So hurray for that.

 

An Intriguing Antagonist

 

I know you like charming and engaging antagonists as much as I do. Now, I promised not to spoil anything major in this section, so I won't tell you anything about him, but let me just introduce you to Rhysand:

 

 

Tamlin and Feyre are our primary characters, sure, but oh my goodness I need a book about Rhysand. His story is, to me, significantly more interesting than Feyre and Tamlin's. (I'm seriously trying to restrain myself from obsessing about him all over you right now. Trying so hard.)

 

Feyre's Not A Disney Princess

 

Rhysand might be my pet character, but that's not to say that Feyre didn't speak to me at all. I really liked how grim and bitter she is from the story's first chapter, and that she doesn't transform out of that grimness and bitterness anytime soon.

 

See, she'd made an oath as a child, and this is a world that takes oaths very seriously.

 

 

Feyre considers her oath broken because Tamlin stole her from her ungrateful, useless father and ungrateful, useless sisters, leaving them to beg and starve. Upon hearing this, Tamlin tries to be comforting:

 

 

Is her first reaction relief that her family's not begging in the streets, not starving to death? Nope.

 

 

Her first thought is I worked so hard for them and now they're going to forget me. She thinks My family doesn't have a place for me anymore, because they no longer need me. She fears I and all I've done don't matter.

 

And that is heartbreaking. Heartbreaking and honest and real, much more real than if she'd cheerfully thanked him for sending them money, then settled into a carefree life of painting and romance.

 

Her reactions to other events are similarly not-Disney-princess-esque. No spoilers, but man, her response to trauma is generally pretty great. She gets wounded, emotionally and mentally, and not all of those wounds heal cleanly. Those new scars are scars, altering the topography and sensitivity and pattern of her character like physical scars alter flesh.

 

If the other books in this series continue to follow Feyre, I can't wait to see how she continues to shift and change.

 

 

All right. It's time.

 

I have two major complaints about this book, and in discussing them I'm going to spoil the book's climax and conclusion for you. Stop reading now if you're not cool with that.

 

The Final Third Of The Book Isn't Quite Logical

 

Because this is a Beauty and the Beast story, you won't  be surprised to hear that Tamlin and his people are cursed, and the curse will only be lifted if he can get a human girl to fall in love with him before an arbitrary amount of time (49 years) has passed. Once the girl wholeheartedly tells him she loves him, the curse is lifted.

 

The curse, by the way, was laid by the evil High Queen of the faeries, Amarantha. She's a vicious figure who (well before Feyre was born) subjugated the seven High Lords of Prythian (the faerie territory that dominates the northern four-fifths of the island Feyre lives on), stealing most of their powers and enslaving most of their people. But Amarantha saved this extra-special curse for sexy Tamlin (High Lord of Spring) as punishment for refusing to become her consort.

 

If Tamlin manages to break his curse, he'll get all of his power as High Lord back, and his people will be freed from eternal slavery. And, more to the point, with his restored powers he'll be able to fight and kill Amarantha, freeing his fellow High Lords and all of Prythian from her destructive evil.

 

Feyre enters the scene within months of Tamlin's 49-year deadline. Do they fall in love? Yes. Do they have a few steamy scenes that don't quite fade to black? Yes. Is Feyre clearly two seconds away from saying the magic words that'll prevent Tamlin and his people from being doomed for eternity? YES.

 

AND THEN. Three days before the deadline, two-thirds of the way into the book, Tamlin decides to send her back to the human lands.

 

 

Aaaargh.

 

(a) Amarantha hates humans and is planning to exterminate the human race after she's solidified her power over the seven High Lords. Sending Feyre back to her family—who lives practically in the shadow of the wall separating the human and faerie lands—will not in any way protect her. 

 

(b) But more importantly: Feyre is about to say she loves him. All Tamlin has to do is hear her say it, instantly regain his super awesome High Lord powers, then send her off to the human lands for the brief time it would take him to hunt down and kill Amarantha. Once that's done, he could summon Feyre back to his estate and they can live happily ever after (or whatever).

 

There's absolutely no reason for him to pull this idiotic stunt; he's an intelligent and brave High Lord, not a dumb and cowardly one. I don't believe for a second that he'd actually think it's a good idea to send her away when she's clearly about to break the curse.

 

The only explanation for his incredibly idiotic move is authorial interference. The author forced her character to do something totally against his nature for the sake of a cool and sexy plot.

 

You see, I think the author wanted to have two things: (a) Feyre and Tamlin to be all lovey-dovey and sexy before they're separated, and (b) Feyre to have to save Tamlin from Amarantha by completing impossible/potentially-fatal tasks to prove her love for him.

 

Wanting both of those things is fine, so long as they fit together logically (and by logically I mean without turning characters into idiot puppets).

 

Here are the top three logical ways I think this book should've played out:

 

(i.) Their relationship could be ambiguous enough that Feyre isn't even ready to confess her love until after she is returned to the human lands.

 

(ii.) Feyre and Tamlin can keep their sexy lovey-dovey romance, Tamlin can do the totally in-character thing and risk waiting those last three days, Feyre would confess her love, then Tamlin could hie off to kill Amarantha with his newly-regained power.

 

(iii.) The best of both worlds: they get sexy and lovey-dovey, but she says the magic words too late. Tamlin sends her back to the human lands in a pitiful attempt to protect her, and everything else proceeds as written.  (Sure, getting Feyre safely out of Prythian would be more tricky in this case, but not impossible. And "tricky" would make for more interesting reading than how she's actually sent off in the book.)

 

But for some reason the author wanted Tamlin to just get weak and weepy and give up, when his salvation is so incredibly close.

 

As a result, I spent the final third of the book—with all its brutality and heartbreak and desperation—thinking This isn't logical. How could the author make Tamlin do that? None of this even needs to happen. It was really difficult for me to ignore this issue and just enjoy the remainder of the book.

 

Aaaargh.

 

The Riddle Is So Dumb

 

When Feyre arrives at the High Queen Amarantha's lair and demands that she free Tamlin, Amarantha's reply is, of course, "Complete three trials to prove your love and sure, I'll free him." Amarantha also gives Feyre a second option, if the trials are too difficult for her:

 

 

The answer to the riddle is so obviously Love that I was flabbergasted that (a) Feyre didn't immediately figure it out, and (b) Amarantha/the author chose it to be the subject of her riddle in the first place.

 

Feyre spends months trying to decide what person or animal or disease the riddle could be about, never once even considering it could be a concept or emotion. She endures incredible hardships for months while I'm bashing a head-size hole in my living room wall, wondering when she's going to figure it out.

 

Of course, she figures it out literally as she's dying:

 

 

How dramatic!

 

It is so very groan-worthy that the answer to the riddle is Love. Yes, it fits the theme, but it fits too well.

 

Why not Hatred? Or Loneliness? How about Anger or Prejudice or Desperation or Responsibility? All of those things (and so many others) would've been pertinent to the story and to Amarantha and to Feyre's character arc, without being so ridiculously obvious. A riddle about any of those things could've been much harder to solve, and I would therefore be able to share Feyre's fear and frustration as she struggles to find the answer, rather than wanting to chunk the book across the room because it's so infuriatingly stupid.

 

What should've been a tragic and triumphant moment—Feyre solving the riddle in the moments before she dies—instead had me throwing my hands up and thinking Jesus Christ, finally, what took you so long. Which is just heartbreaking.

 

(And don't worry yourself about Feyre's death; aside from the pain of a potentially amazing climax falling far short, this book doesn't have a sad ending.)

 

 

Obviously I'm frustrated and disappointed by the failures in the last third of the book, but overall I really did enjoy reading it, and I know I'll be rereading it within the next year or two. And yes, I'll be tapping my fingers impatiently for its sequel to arrive.

 

Sending you all the hugs,

 

Liam

 

P.S.

 

NaNoWriMo is coming, and yes I'm participating, and no that's not going to stop me from reading two books in November. Let's see how this goes?

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/10/24/a-court-of-thorns-and-roses
SPOILER ALERT!
Sanctum - Sarah Fine

Spoiler Rating: Moderate/High-ish

 

Hey Lizzy,

 

Sanctum was high on my To Read list when you died, at which point I chunked it deep into the wastelands of my (internal) This Can Wait list. 

 

I've been strictly avoiding anything that involves (or looks likely to involve) loved ones dying, especially if those loved ones are sisters or best friends. Nope nope nope. Not ready.

 

Well, until a couple days ago, when I hovered a finger over Sanctum's cover on my Kindle app, and thought maybe I could do this.

 

So I opened it, and read the first line of the prologuenot even the first full sentence, just the first line!and said something out loud like, "Of course."

 

 

Of course this novel takes place in Rhode Island. Of course. Because reading about a best friend dying unexpectedly doesn't hit close enough to home.

 

(Andrew heard me and asked what was up; he knows I've been struggling to prepare myself for this book, and recognized the tone of that "Of course." So I told him what was up. "Now you really aren't allowed to read it," he joked.)

 

But I did read it, and didn't collapse into a weepy pile even once.

 

Could my lack of weepiness be in part be because the raw panicky wound of losing you is finally starting to heal? Sure. But it's more likely because the bookwhich promises so much, and has so many neat things to offerwas surprisingly disappointing.

 

“My plan: Get into the city. Get Nadia. Find a way out. Simple.”

 

A week ago, seventeen-year-old Lela Santos’s best friend, Nadia, killed herself. Today, thanks to a farewell ritual gone awry, Lela is standing in paradise, looking upon a vast gated city in the distance—hell. No one willingly walks through the Suicide Gates, into a place smothered in darkness and infested with depraved creatures. But Lela isn’t just anyone—she’s determined to save her best friend’s soul, even if it means sacrificing her eternal afterlife.

 

As Lela struggles to find Nadia, she’s captured by the Guards, enormous, not-quite-human creatures that patrol the dark city’s endless streets. Their all-too-human leader, Malachi, is unlike them in every way except one: his deadly efficiency. When he meets Lela, Malachi forms his own plan: get her out of the city, even if it means she must leave Nadia behind. Malachi knows something Lela doesn’t—the dark city isn’t the worst place Lela could end up, and he will stop at nothing to keep her from that fate.

 

 

 

 Things to enjoy about this book include:

 

a) A heroine who's a person of color!

 

 

b) A love interest who's a person of color!

 

 

c) A bad ass warrior who's a woman of color!

 

 

d) Those three above-listed charactersthe most significant and active characters in the bookare both strong and damaged in serious ways!

 

 

e) A genuinely gross and creepy purgatoryish world!

 

 

f) Honest portrayals of depression, and the struggle to discover one's self-worth!

 

 

g) It's a story about love and self-sacrifice in the face of danger!

 

 

h) It's a story about the friendship of two girls, and how their love for each other has (and will) affect their lives (and deaths)!

 

 

See? A lot of great stuff going on here.

 

However.

 

 

The Totally Fine Stuff

 

The writing style was finenot as imaginative or expressive as I would've liked, but fine.

 

The plot was finenothing that kept me enthralled, but fine.

 

The antagonists were finenot as scary as they were perhaps intended to be, but fine.

 

The conclusion was finenot as deeply moving or surprising as I was hoping, but fine.

 

Maybe I just wasn't really in the mood for this book; maybe I was feeling generally apathetic while reading it. There certainly wasn't anything glaringly wrong with the writing style, the plot, the antagonists, or the conclusion. It was all competently written. But I can't muster up the enthusiasm to say more than It was fine.

 

The Problematic Stuff

 

Instalove

 

While Lela didn't fall all over herself at the first sight of Sexy Dude Malachi, Malachi pretty much dropped everything at the first sight of her. Which, uh, isn't good, because he has things to do.

 

He may look like your average super-muscled high school student (that's almost a direct quote, FYI), but he's the captain of the Guards, with apparently countless inhuman men (and one human woman, Ana) under his command. He oversees the important duties of patrolling the massive-and-ever-growing city, aiding the occasional citizen, and combating the growing horde of Mazikin.

 

(Mazikin: spirit things that escape their own super-hellish realm by possessing the bodies of the human citizens of Malachi's city, thereby banishing those human souls to the super-hellish Mazikin realm.)

 

If there is one person in this novel who shouldn't drop everything the moment they see someone attractive, it's Malachi. And yet.

 

Within hours of meeting her he's tossing himself into near-fatal encounters, he's forsaking his duties, he's creating uncertainty and distrust among his troops. Why? Because Lela's a strong, self-sacrificing girlwhich makes her intriguingand she looks so smoochable.

 

Overall, the romance felt rushed and melodramatic, and I never really bought it.

 

Rape Trauma

 

Trigger warning: discussion of how the after-effects of rape are handled in this book below.

 

Just scroll on down to point number three if you don't want to read this.

 

So Lela's been chunked from one terrible, abusive, neglectful foster home to another, landing eventually in the home of a man who repeatedly beat and raped her. Lela committed suicide to escape him, but he revived her and continued his abuse of her until she (eventually) tries to kill him, which lands her in juvie.

 

She's later taken in by a kind and supportive foster mom, but Lela's horrible life (especially at the hands of that man) have left her seriously scarred. The memories haunt her, and frequently threaten to overwhelm her. She has trouble trusting people, and refuses to let anyoneeven her best friendtouch her. She's never so much as touched a boy (except to beat them up, if they're threatening her).

 

Her trauma is portrayed fairly well in the book, with two glaring exceptions.

 

Exception Number One: Trying To Seduce Malachi

 

Shortly upon arriving in the city, she's captured by the Guards and beaten almost to death. When she wakes up (miraculously healed), she's naked in a small room, lying on a cot, covered in just a sheet. A strange man (Malachi) is in the room with her. She's locked in. He's there to interrogate her. She's seen this man kill before, and knows he can kill her.

 

Oh, and he's checking her out. Awesome. What a stand-up guy!

 

So when it's clear that Malachi won't let her just stroll out into the city unaccompanied to find her lost friend, she decides to do something extreme:

 

 

What does she consider "sneaky," "pathetic," and "manipulative"? Seducing him and stealing the key she knows must be on his body somewhere.

 

Here's my initial problem: she nearly blacks out from fear when she remembers what her foster father did to her. How does she think she can convince this man she wants to have sex with him with no ulterior motive? There's no way she'll be able to convince him that she isn't doing this just to try to escape.

 

Here's my second problem: why does she condemn her own plan as sneaky, pathetic, and manipulative? Those words frame herself as the villain and Malachi as the victim. When he's the one keeping her in a locked room against her will.

 

The seduction attempt is well-written; she's terrified, and her terror is obvious. Malachi's rejection of her is also good; he tells her he knows what she's trying to do, and leaves the room (with her still locked in it).

 

What's horrible is her reaction to his rejection.

 

 

Hold on a moment. I'm getting all red-eyed with anger over here.

 

Okay.

 

a) Humiliation

 

Why on earth is she humiliated? Because Malachi turned her down? Because she was caught using a "sneaky," "pathetic," and "manipulative" tactic to try to escape? Sure, it's okay to feel stupid for not considering that Malachi didn't have the keys on him. What's not okay is (according to my reading of the scene) that the humiliation seems to be tied to both Lela's inability to turn a guy on ("Oh my god, I'm not sexy enough") and the fact that she tried to use sex as a weapon ("Oh my god, I'm so shamefully impure").

 

But Lela had run out of options; the thought of using sex as a way to get out utterly terrified her, but she was so desperate that she used it anyway. Lela's humiliation in this situation is such a clear response to our society's idea of a proper woman (must always be attractive to all men all the time, must not have agency over her own body or sexuality) that I nearly cried. Anger-tears, obviously.

 

I'm 100% okay with Lela experiencing these thoughts and emotions, because yeah, they are (unfortunately) a realistic outcome of our society's views on women and sex. What I have trouble swallowing is heroines of young adult romance-y novels experiencing these thoughts and emotions without it somehow getting through to the reader that Hey, this is the result of misogyny, and girls shouldn't think this way about themselves. I'm horrified to imagine that young women will read books like this (or, for a more extreme example, Twilight) and accept the heroines' ideas about themselves/women/sex as the gospel truth.

 

Ugh.

 

b) Shame

 

Why is she "shamefully relieved" that Malachi didn't take her up on her offer? Why can't she just be "relieved"? There's no shame in a rape victim being relieved that she doesn't have to seduce her captor in order to escape him. To be "shamefully relieved" means to feel relief when you or your society believes that you should be feeling the opposite; in this case, apparently, Lela is supposed to be disappointed that Malachi turns her down. (That sound you're hearing right now is my keyboard splintering under the force of my angry-typing.)

 

The fact that Lela feels shame is (to me) another outcome of our society's view of women and sex: once a woman (willingly or not) makes herself sexually available to a man, she can't withdraw that availability. (If she does, she'll likely face some degree of repercussionsuch as being called a tease, or socially labeled a fickle, cold, manipulative bitch. The man's desire for sex trumps the woman's lack of desire, and the woman is in the wrong for not recognizing/submitting to that "fact.")

 

Lela has clearly internalized this belief, and is consequently ashamed at her own relief that she won't have to have sex with this guy after all. Again, I'm fine with this, because it's (unfortunately) a realistic response for a girl in our society to have. But I really, really don't want readers to internalize this belief themselves because it pops up uncontested in both the society they live in and the books they read. I wish this book had somehow indicated that this way of thinking isn't okay.

 

c) Sex Kitten

 

Setting aside my feminism, let's look at the last sentence in this chapter: "Thus ended my initial foray as a sex kitten." That's it. "Thus ended my initial foray as a sex kitten."

 

Are you kidding me? This one jokey sentence reduces the scene from "rape victim forced to use sex as a tool to escape her captor" to "girl's sexual advances embarrassingly rejected by guy." Totally cripples the scene's significance to Lela and the emotional impact to the reader.

 

Aaaaargh.

 

You know what? I'm not even going to go into my second example.

 

For the most part, Lela instinctively flinches away from being touched, she panics (even to the point of having flashbacks and blacking out) when she's grabbed from behind, she goes cold when men look at her as a sexually available body. All very realistic responses. But during a couple scenes, the trauma of her rape is conveniently forgotten for the sake of (a) making Sexy Awkwardness between Lela and Malachi, and (b) making a jokethereby undermining Lela's character development, and downplaying the very real trauma that victims experience.

 

And I repeat: aaaaargh.

 

Moving on!

 

Consent

 

I'm talking about consent to touch and be touched in romantic but not-explicitly-sexual ways now. This might warrant a trigger warning for abuse, in which case you should skip down to the concluding section of this letter.

 

As a rule, Lela doesn't let people touch her. But then Malachi starts looking pretty attractive, and Lela wonders what would it be like to, say, hold his hand?

 

They do have some excellent conversations about consenting to be touched by each other, which are awesome and I'm 100% in favor ofbut then Lela forces non-consensual touching on him anyway.

 

I'll just use one example again, for the sake of time and my blood pressure.

 

Lela is about to go put herself in extreme danger, and Malachi responds by pulling away from her emotionally, hoping to protect himself from the pain of (what he views as) her almost certainly imminent death. Naturally, she's scared of what's to come, herself.

 

 

He explains in clear terms that he isn't emotionally or mentally prepared to lose her, and that he wants to stop all the cuddling as a self-defense measure.

 

 

That's right. He begs her not to touch him, and she's all, "Oh, but it'll help me to touch you," and she touches him. Over the next couple pages he keeps begging her to stop, and she keeps touching. When she leaves a few minutes later, she glances back at him:

 

 

Yeah, looks like that encounter went well.

 

She later reflects on her actions and realizes she probably did something she shouldn't have. Hurray! And then. And then they discuss it (and by "it" I mean the fact that her forced cuddling got his scent on her clothes, which their sensitive-nosed enemies noticed). Malachi apologizes for, I don't know, having a scent to even get on her clothes, and Lela brushes off his apology.

 

 

That's right. He begged Don't touch me, she touched him anyway, she realized belatedly that maybe that was a jerk moveand then ultimately decides she's not sorry about it, because touching him is so awesome.

 

Lizzy, I could use one of your wrath-soothing hugs right now.

 

 

It perhaps doesn't help this book's rating that I read it so soon after reading An Ember in the Ashes, which does a hugely better job of showing a girl infiltrating a terrifying place in order to save a loved one. I might've rated Sanctum a half-star higher without An Ember in the Ashes lingering behind my eyelids like a delicious, wonderful nightmare. In terms of power and realism, Sanctum just can't compare.

 

But that's okay. Sanctum isn't a bad book. It definitely has great things going for it, and it faces the worthy issues of abuse and depression and self-worth. It's easy to see why so many people love it.

 

And I may not be one of those people, but I will be picking up the sequel at some point.

 

Missing you,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/10/10/sanctum
SPOILER ALERT!
An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir

Spoiler Rating: Moderate

 

Most glorious Ashers,

 

 

Apparently this book was hyped hither and yon before its release, so everyone was anticipating the next Perfect Young Adult Novel—and although it nailed it for a lot of readers, it whiffed for others.

 

I won't lie, I was hoping for a four-and-a-half-star reading experience. And I almost got it.

 

Did Andrew have to pry my fingers off it before I'd get some sleep? Yes. Did I flinch away from it (innocuous on my nightstand) the next day, knowing it'd drag me down into dark places and then not let me go until Andrew intervened again? Yes.

 

Did I love it for affecting me so deeply? Yes.

 

And despite its flaws, I think you might love it, too.

 

 

Laia is a slave.

 

Elias is a soldier.

 

Neither is free.

 

Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.

 

It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.

 

But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.

 

There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, man. I'm going to try to keep this list fairly short, because (a) you should just read the book, and (b) the time you spend reading this letter is delaying your reading of the book.

 

The Power of Dual POV

 

Laia and Elias are both first-person-POV narrators, and thank goodness for that.

 

The story's messages about power, desperation, loyalty, family, and perceptions of self are all strengthened by the perspectives of these two characters. I won't offer you proof of all those messages because go read the book already, but here's a smidge on power and desperation:

 

Laia—whose people, the Scholars, have been oppressed, victimized, slaughtered, enslaved by the reigning Martials—enters the military academy Blackcliff as a spy for the Resistance in exchange for their help freeing her brother Darin from his fate of death-by-torture in the Martial prisons. More specifically, Laia enters Blackcliff as the new personal slave to one of the most powerful people in the Empire: the Commandant of Blackcliff.

 

When the leader of the Resistance, Mazen, tells Laia that she's to both serve and spy on the Commandant, neither Laia nor Handsome Resistance Dude Keenan are thrilled.

 

 

Heartening!

 

Laia shows us the Empire and Blackcliff from the perspective of the abused and the powerless—and, more specifically, the abused and powerless who are pushed by desperation to act against their oppressors.

 

 

Elias, meanwhile, is the heir to one of the most powerful families in the Empire, grandson of a nearly legendary general and son of the sadistic Commandant of Blackcliff herself. He's spent fourteen years surviving the rigorous (to put it blandly) Mask training at Blackcliff, and is days away from graduating at the top of his class.

 

And while everyone else is celebrating their graduation, Elias intends to tear off his mask, slip out through the catacombs, and abandon the Empire—and his family—for good.

 

See, he doesn't particularly agree with the Empire's tendency to slaughter and enslave whole populations, or—as we see in stomach-churning detail early in the book—making a ritual of beating little boys to death for disloyalty.

 

 

Laia's desperate to save her brother. Elias is desperate to escape. Both are forced to face the atrocities of the Empire's rule while pursuing their goals, and the result is—for me—an overwhelming sense of how incredibly screwed everyone in this Empire is, no matter who they are.

 

All the thumbs up.

 

A Terrifying (Female!) Antagonist

 

Since I've mentioned the Commandant, let me reiterate that she is terrifying.

 

 

How neat is it that this book provides a female as the powerful, sadistic, horror-inducing antagonist? So neat.

 

Even in those rare moments when she approaches sympathetic, such as when Laia appears to have just been raped (not the case) and the Commandant in a fury tells the man to keep his hands off her slave, she manages to skim through oh she's kind of human after all and bulldoze right back into holy shit this person's insane.

 

 

Seriously, if she's present on the page, time slows to a nightmare crawl. I love it.

 

Complex Relationships

 

Also excellent: almost every relationship is complicated by the characters' fears and desires and ambitions and expectations. You know, like the relationships between real people!

 

There are too many interesting relationships to describe here, so I'll just highlight two: those between the two protagonists and their most illustrious family members.

 

Laia's the secret daughter of famous (and famously martyred) Resistance leaders, and the truth of her birth is a secret she's been happy to keep—until she realizes that the Resistance won't help her free her brother unless she tells them who her parents were.

 

 

Laia's parents were powerful and glorious, and she flinches away from even the thought of being compared to them. She sees herself as cowardly and weak, and the possibility of becoming like them is (in her opinion) nonexistent.

 

The internal conflict going on here is A+.

 

She's also deeply conflicted about her parents' role within the Resistance; yes, the Empire performs unspeakable atrocities against the Scholar people, but what kind of parent abandons their young children to devote themselves to a cause that (a) is hopeless, and (b) will inevitably leave the children orphaned?

 

Her parents are revered as leaders by the surviving members of the Rebellion, but Laia's view of them as parents is too complicated for reverence. Again, A+.

 

Elias does his own share of flinching and internal-conflicting, but not because he assumes he can't compete with his amazing relatives:

 

 

His mother's sadism and his grandfather's bloodthirstiness haunt Elias, because what if those things are a part of him, too?

 

Oh, and Elias also gets to share Laia's why was I abandoned? angst! The Commandant, you may have guessed, is not exactly mother-of-the-year material.

 

 

Elias was taken in and raised by the nomadic Tribesmen until he was six, at which point the immortal, holy, terrifying Augurs plucked him out of the desert and deposited him at Blackcliff to begin Mask training.

 

The Commandant was not pleased to see her abandoned son again, and subsequently made his fourteen years at Blackcliff, uh, memorable. In the coldest and bloodiest ways.

 

Ashers, I can't express how much joy these conflicted relationships (and all the others!) bring me. So much joy. Realistic, conflicted relationships are my favorite.

 

These People Are Human

 

The relationships work so well because of how perfectly (imperfectly?) human the characters are. Their flaws and blind spots and weaknesses and mistakes are believable and understandable, and beautifully painful to read.

 

For example! Laia considers herself a coward and a traitor to her family because she didn't act to protect her grandparents or brother when their house was attacked by the Martial legionnaires (led by a Mask who threatens to rape Laia) in the middle of the night. She watches with horror as her grandparents are murdered and her brother arrested:

 

 

And the memory of her decision to run does haunt her. She spends most of the book dripping with self-loathing.

 

But here's where it gets really good: Laia's horror at her own decision to run doesn't immediately (or even quickly) turn her into a Selfless and Fearless heroine who defeats all her enemies with pure moxie, thereby absolving her of her regretful choice. This book is way too good for that.

 

Nope, Laia struggles throughout the story with both her decision to run and her overwhelming fear of what will happen to her next. Because Laia's a Scholar living in the brutal Martial Empire. Because Laia is a pretty (and powerless) girl in a society that doesn't frown on rape. And also because Laia knows that the Commandant—whom she'll be slave to, and whom she'll spy on—mutilates every slave in her possession, and kills most of them.

 

Laia's reaction to this knowledge isn't a stiff-backed, clenched-jawed "Let them do their worst."

 

 

Laia does endure horrors and abuse, and she comes thisclose to breaking her resolve, and she doubts she can do what's necessary, and—ultimately—doubts her ability to survive.

 

But all the while she's getting stronger, and proving herself heartbreakingly brave. She just can't see this slow change, herself.

 

Trauma Portrayed Well

 

I have an unspeakable amount of respect for authors who portray trauma in unflinching, honest terms, and Tahir definitely does that.

 

This is a world of casual sexual assault and abuse, the ever-present threat of torture, and the glorification of violence. Does Tahir inform the reader of this, then swaddle her vulnerable characters in thick fleece to protect them from harm?

 

Nope.

 

The horrors of this world touch every character, and affect them all deeply—it informs their personalities, their ambitions, their fears. It changes them. Which is what trauma really does.

 

There are books that portray characters as upset or injured after long-term abuse or torture, but completely unaffected after the tears dry and the injuries heal. Those books do a serious disservice to both the horrifying reality of abuse/torture and the characters/people who endured it.

 

This is not one of those books.

 

A Multi-Ethnic Setting And Non-White Characters

 

Leaving all the dark stuff behind: hurrah for a sensible multi-ethnic setting!

 

The Roman Empire (on which the Martial Empire is based) united many diverse ethnic groups, and I loved seeing how cobbled-together the Martial Empire really is.

 

And although I could be wrong, I read both Laia and Elias as people of color within what appeared to be a majority-white Empire. Needless to say, this ratcheted my enthusiasm for the book up a notch or three.

 

Why could I be wrong about them being people of color, you ask? Well.

 

Elias is the Commandant's son, but only the Commandant knows who his father is. However, I suspect that Elias's father was a desert Tribesman, both because of (what I took to be) a hint toward the end of the book, and because Elias really looks like the desert Tribesmen who raised him:

 

 

If his father was in fact a Tribesman, Elias would be a biracial person of color.

 

I'll note that his dark skin and hair are never remarked upon by his fellow Martials, but his unknown heritage and illegitimacy are favorite targets for Elias's rivals to make jabs at.

 

So, yes. He might not be biracial, and perhaps I'm wrong about Martials' skin color staying within the pale spectrum. But I liked reading him that way, and I'm tagging him as a biracial person of color until I learn I'm mistaken.

 

As for Laia: the Scholars generally seem to be pale-ish (red-headed Keenan; Laia's blue-eyed grandmother, her honey-haired mother and brother), but Laia herself is described as being dark-skinned and dark-haired:

 

 

 

She got her looks from her father, who was golden-eyed and black-haired, with high cheekbones and full lips. We don't know much about his background, but his name and appearance leaned me toward viewing him as maybe a Tribesman, or descended from one. Which would make Laia, like Elias, potentially biracial. Maybe.

 

Honestly, although Laia's description (and its contrast to the pale Martials, who dominate her world and dehumanize her people) made it super easy for me to view her as a person of color, I'm possibly/likely wrong. She (and her father) might just happen too be darker than most of the other Scholars.

 

But I imagined her as a person of color, and gladly.

 

I love these two (ambiguously/potentially POC) protagonists. I love this setting. I love the desert and its Tribesmen. I love the history of the Scholars' rise and fall. I love the legends and mythology, the hints of other cultures absorbed into the Empire.

 

Please someone point me to more multi-ethnic empire settings like this for me to get my greedy hands on.

 

 

This book is amazing, but it's not perfect.

 

First let me mention that I looked side-eye at the previously-mentioned Trials or Games (ToG) that certain characters have to participate in; I'm not entirely sold on the logic behind them. But there's also holy men and prophecy and magic involved, so I'm willing to believe that holiness/prophecy/magic legitimately outweighs logic in this world. Hopefully the sequel will set my side-eyeing to rest.

 

Second, I didn't get much of a sense of the Empire outside Blackcliff. We know (a) it's a large swath of land containing multiple ethnic groups, (b) it's ruled by an Emperor, (c) the Emperor's second-hand-man is the Blood Shrike, and (d) the Emperor and Blood Shrike don't live near Blackcliff. Blackcliff and its city are well described, but the Empire surrounding it (not to mention the government running it) are really nebulous.

 

I also had a couple little nitpicks (which, on second thought, I'll not bring up because wow this letter's already pretty long), and two larger complaints that I think are worth discussing in more detail.

 

How Has Elias Survived This Long?

 

Elias graduates from Blackcliff as a full-fledged Mask early in the book. Why are they called Masks, you ask? Because awesome.

 

(Actually, it's because as trainees, they're given liquid-metal masks that sort of melt permanently onto their faces over time. Like I said: awesome.)

 

But Elias's Mask is an anomaly.

 

 

The fact that his Mask hasn't melded with him is  gleefully harped on by Elias's primary rivals, who claims it's proof (alongside Elias's myriad alarmingly nonconformist behaviors) that Elias isn't truly loyal to the Empire—which is (need I remind you) 100% the case.

 

If the Emperor's right-hand man (known as the Blood Shrike) got wind of Elias's Mask issue and behavioral oddities, he'd come tearing down to Blackcliff to determine by any means necessary (torture) where Elias's loyalties lie.

 

This is a society that cheers while beating ten-year-olds to death for disloyalty. Surely someone at some point would have felt the need to call the Blood Shrike down on Elias's head. So why didn't they?

 

Yeah, Elias's mother is the Commandant, but everyone knows she hates him and goes out of her way to make his life hell. Yeah, Elias's grandfather is a famous general, but he's loyal to the Empire; he couldn't stand against the Empire, especially to protect a likely traitor. So I don't think it's fear of his powerful family's wrath that prevents people from sending for the Blood Shrike.

 

I do have a theory: authorial interference for the sake of the plot. Because (a) if the Blood Shrike was called down, the story would have been very different/would not have happened at all, (b) if Elias didn't blatantly exhibit nonconforming behaviors, he'd be much less sympathetic to the reader, and (c) if his Mask wasn't removable, certain important events in the book (and presumably the sequel) wouldn't be possible.

 

So for the sake of the story, Elias needs to be unknown to the Blood Shrike, but exhibit disloyal behaviors and have a removable Mask—even though none of those things really make sense within the logic of this brutal Empire.

 

The ends probably justify the means (the book is awesome!), but I dislike even hints that an author's waving a magic wand to make impossible things possible for the sake of the plot.

 

(But who knows—maybe the sequel will resolve this mystery for me, and the answer will be 100% logical and 0% magic-wand-waving. My fingers are crossed!)

 

An Unconvincing Romance

 

Are you looking for a book with a love polygon? Look no further!

 

Oh, unless you want a love polygon that feels fleshed-out on all four ends, in which case: keep looking.

 

Laia and Elias are each attracted to two people. For Laia, it's Elias and Keenan, the Handsome Resistance Dude who acts are her point of contact while she's spying on the Commandant. For Elias, it's Laia and Helene, fellow Mask and his best friend since age six.

 

The triangle between Elias, Laia, and Helene is fantastic. It's rich and nuanced and complex and all those other good words. If every book featuring a love triangle had one this well-written, I'd die blissful.

 

The relationship between Laia and Keenan, meanwhile, is, uh, lacking.

 

I'd actually assumed that Laia's only real attraction was to Elias, and that she was just aware of Keenan as a handsome guy—you know, the kind of awareness that results in her feeling awkward and blushy around him, but nothing more.

 

And then Keenan gets all gooey about his feelings for her:

 

 

And then an immortal holy man looks deep into Laia's being and tells her what he sees:

 

 

And meanwhile, I'm thinking, What the hell, seriously?

 

Her encounters with Keenan are generally brief and focused on her mission; they don't have an opportunity to build trust or affection or anything. Yeah, they talk about their families a little (both lost their families to the Martials), and they share a moment of understanding through that loss, but I don't buy any kind of deeper attachment between them. Much less her heart yearning for him, or whatever.

 

As a result, all of the Keenan/Laia romance bits felt overdrawn and forced to me, which is a shame. Would've really enjoyed a genuine, well-written love polygon.

 

 

Issues aside, this is, obviously, a beautiful and powerful book, and it didn't make for light reading. I'm not kidding when I say that it was as hard to pick back up each day as it was to put down each night; I'd wake up knowing that more pain and violence and horror awaited, and I had to mentally prepare myself for it before I could continue reading.

 

And, goodness, the writing style is lovely, the chapter breaks are expertly crafted, the tension is kept high, and I am so glad I bought it. Tahir is an amazing writer, and one to keep a close eye an unblinking stare on.

 

Needless to say, I'm going to buy the sequel, A Torch Against the Night, the moment it becomes available.

 

(Also, since I mentioned A Torch Against the Night, you definitely must watch this video, because it's of friends fully  committing to playing book title charades.)

 

Now, Ashers, kindly record some more Let's Plays, and ruffle the cat for me.

 

Love,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/09/26/an-ember-in-the-ashes
SPOILER ALERT!
Ash - Malinda Lo

Spoiler Rating: High

 

Hey Katie,

 

I won't lie; I rushed through Ash years ago, and didn't particularly like it. It was marketed to me as a lesbian Cinderella story, and if there are two things that'll perk my ears up, it's lesbian characters and Cinderella stories. So I settled down with Ash and a cozy blanket and high expectations.

 

But it was so different from what I'd thought it would be that I just couldn't stop thinking, This is wrong. This isn't supposed to happen. This isn't how Cinderella goes. Holy crap what on earth is this.

 

(Maybe I should've actually listened to that "It's not the fairy tale you remember" warning on the cover?)

 

At that time, I recognized that I was so hung up on its nontraditional aspects (read: Sidhean, Ash's fairy dude) that I couldn't accurately rate its merits, so I (mentally) gave it a couple extra stars as an apology for being a bad reader.

 

Well, I've reread it with a much more open mind, and I can tell you that I'm even more disappointed this time around.

 


In the first half of the book (titled "Part I: The Fairy"), Ash grows from age 12 to age 18, and does the standard Cinderella thing: orphaned, then forced to serve her stepmother and stepsisters.

 

The only notable differences from the generic Cinderella story are:

 

  1. Ash's mother was a half-trained greenwitch (in a kingdom that no longer believes in magic)
  2. Ash meets a mysterious fairy dude, who becomes her only...I don't want to say friend. Let's go with companion.

 

The fairies in this book are Lizzy's favorite type: the tricking-mortals-into-eternal-servitude ones—the ones who, say, switch out human babies with wicked changelings, and drive people mad.

 

 

Her first conversation with Sidhean is appropriately frightening:

 

 

Needless to say, I love this.

 

Ash knows that the fairies are creepy as hell, but Sidhean is kind(-ish) to her, and they spend some quality time hanging out together in the Wood. In short order she's dreaming of living with Sidhean in the fairy world, because that'd be approximately 200% better than a life of servitude to her stepmother.

 

In the second half of the book (titled "Part II: The Huntress"), Ash and the king's huntress Kaisa have several unexpected meetings in the Wood, decide Hey this is nice, and begin scheduling times to hang out together—mostly on horseback. Kaisa teaches Ash how to ride a hunter, and I melt into a shining puddle of lesbian-romance-on-horseback contentment.

 

Ash stops meeting Sidhean because she's (a) super busy with work, and (b) experiencing actual human friendship, hurrah.

 

Kaisa eventually invites Ash to two big events (the first royal hunt of the year and the Souls Night masquerade), and both times Ash begs Sidhean for help in attending. He agrees on the condition that she repay this debt with her freedom; she will become his for eternity. Well, she thinks, that's what I'd been planning all along. So she agrees.

 

Meanwhile, we learn that Sidhean had tried to kidnap Ash's mom when she was a girl, and in return she cursed Sidhean:

 

 

But the girl Sidhean was cursed to fall in love with turned out to be Ash. He's not pleased about the whole curse thing:

 

 

So Ash attends the hunt and the ball, realizes very belatedly that she's in love with Kaisa and that disappearing into the fairy world and never seeing her again would be sad, and...well.

 

 

The Climax And Conclusion,
And How They're A Disappointment

 

I guess I should first mention that much earlier in the book, a young Ash (incensed at her new life of servitude) begged her mother's spirit for advice on how to survive. Mother's spirit assured her, "There will come a change, and you will know what to do," which Ash naturally found unhelpful.

 

Ash spends much of the book hoping to be taken by Sidhean into the fairy world, and then she changes her mind—but the moment of realizing This maybe isn't what I want after all isn't a lightning-crashing, earth-quaking moment. It's not a heart-dropping understanding that she's irreparably screwed herself over. It's just a slow-dawning, This maybe isn't what I want after all. Followed by a touch of the sads.

 

(This seems to be a good moment to mention that the book's writing style doesn't lend itself to accentuated displays of emotion; Ash generally seems rather even-keeled and remote, almost unflappable. I'd rather her be more expressive, more flappable.)

 

Fast-forward a few more pages. It's twelve pages before the end of the book—during the Yule ball—and Ash abruptly understands that she's in love with Kaisa. This happens:

 

 

So Ash leaves to ball to find Sidhean, who's waiting to make her his forever.

 

 

YOU READ THAT RIGHT. She strolls up to the fairy who plans to enslave her, says, "If you love me you'll let me go," and he says, "Oh. Okay."

 

But surely, you plead, the one night she spends with him is, like, over a year in human time, and when she wakes up there's panic about whether Kaisa's (a) still alive and (b) in love with her?

 

No. The answer is no. Ash wakes up a few (human) hours later, returns to the palace, finds Kaisa, and they pledge their love to each other.

 

This is the most anticlimactic climax I can remember reading, and there is at least one book I read recently that face-planted when trying to stick a memorable ending. (Why is it that the only "If you love someone, let them go" books I've read have terrible conclusions?)

 

What I'd Thought The Climax Would Be

 

I'd had a very specific idea of what this story's climax was going to be, in large part because of what I thought was heavy-handed foreshadowing.

 

See, the book is filled with fairy tales (that Ash reads to herself, and that she's told by other people) about how huntresses used to be the human emissaries to the fairies, and how great huntresses of the past would enter the fairy world to perform marvelous deeds—including retrieving innocent humans stolen away by the fairies.

 

So here I was, unable to remember how the book ended and guessing that Kaisa would have to chase Ash into the fairy world and do something awesome to get her back from Sidhean.

 

But no. Ash just ambles over to Sidhean and said, "Let's not do this whole I'm-yours-for-life bargain after all," and he says, "Cool, no prob," and I'm left dying of both boredom and disbelief, and ultimately haunted by unfulfilled visions of Kaisa riding badass into the teeth of a forbidding alien realm.

 

I mean, it's neat that Ash took care of the problem herself—I like it when people save themselves rather than wait for the Love Interest to save them—but there was so much foreshadowing that I felt both cheated and tricked. And have I mentioned bored?

 

What's The Conflict?

 

I'm genuinely uncertain what this book's primary conflict is supposed to be.

 

All signs seem to point to Ash's impending captivity in the fairy world just as she realizes she has a reason to stay in the human world—and by "all signs" I mean (a) the fact that this is one of Ash's two "major" realizations in the final quarter of the book, (b) that her confrontation with Sidhean is the one life-changing event that must occur before she and Kaisa are reunited, and (c) that it's specifically mentioned in the book's blurb:

 

 

However. Ash doesn't even strike this deal with Sidhean until late in the book, and she doesn't start to regret it until quite a bit later. There's barely any time for this conflict to develop before the book ends. And worse, it's resolved in almost no time, with virtually no effort on Ash's part at all.

 

That scarcely qualifies as the primary conflict of the book.

 

So is there even a "main" conflict in this book?

 

Sources Of Potential Conflict That Didn't Provide Much Conflict

 

1. The Stepmother and Stepsisters

 

In, say, the movie Ever After, the stepmother provides a major source of plot-propelling conflict; she forces Danielle/Cinderella into servitude, mocks and torments her, publicly humiliates her, thwarts her plans for happiness, sells her into slavery. Each scene involving the two of them is wrought with emotion, develops their characters, and shoves the plot forward.

 

In Ash, the stepmother is a nuisance. Yeah, she tosses Ash into the cellar a couple times, but for the most part she leaves Ash to her work. Ash adapts quickly to her new role, and lets her stepmother's cruel words slither in one ear and out the other. We're told that Ash despises this life, but it looks like she handles the work easily and doesn't let herself be terribly bothered by anything. And we barely see the stepmother on the page at all; the story focuses heavily on Ash and Sidhean, then Ash and Kaisa.

 

By the time I would've expected some great, explosive scenes between Ash and her stepmother—specifically, when Ash is caught coming home from the Souls Night masquerade wearing her fairy dress and fairy jewels—Ash has already decided she doesn't care what her stepmother does to her, because she's going to be living with Sidhean soon anyway.

 

 

Ash is certainly shocked at what happens, but she's not deeply affected by it. By deciding to no longer care what her stepmother says and does, Ash takes power into her own hands and instantly dissolves the conflict.

 

After this event, we see about as little of the stepmother as we had before. Ash gets Sidhean to cancel their agreement, then returns to the palace to see Kaisa, making a pit-stop along the way to collect her belongings. She has a brief and pleasant encounter with the nicer of the two stepsisters, Clara:

 

 

And that's the last we know of the stepmother. We're told that she shouts after Ash, who ignores her so hard that we don't even know if the sound of the woman's voice had any mental or emotional impact on Ash at all.

 

I rate both this conflict and this resolution underwhelming.

 

As for the stepsisters: their only purpose in the story is to aggravate Ash, who might clench her jaw in response, but that's about it. No fireworks to see here. They affect the plot even less the stepmother.

 

2. Kaisa

 

There's no conflict with Kaisa at all. The two women meet, hang out, get close, fall in love.

 

3. Ash

 

Ash doesn't do much in the way of internal struggles. She appears to like herself just fine. She never doubts her self-worth. She doesn't seem to experience conflicting beliefs or ideas or emotions. We're told that she dislikes her life, but she's not broken by it.

 

And her sexuality is a non-issue. Yeah, her realization that she loves Kaisa is chameleon-slow, moving in short jolts and freezing steps. But she doesn't agonize about it or anything; it just takes a while for her to get to the point of Oh, hey, this is love that I'm feeling.

 

In short, no, I didn't feel that there was even one strong source of conflict in this book.

 

 

Obviously I love the horseback-courtship thing that Ash and Kaisa have going on.

 

I also appreciate how slowly their relationship developed; Ash is intrigued by Kaisa, and then flustered around her, then increasingly comfortable. There's no Suggestive Licking Of Fingers or Uninterrupted Stares Of Longing or whatever.

 

Would've been nice if Kaisa had been a more fleshed-out character, but at least theirs wasn't instalove.

 

 

Despite my complaints, I enjoyed Ash well enough. It didn't insult me with idiot-level puzzles; it didn't frustrate me with a terrible protagonist; it didn't enrage me with terrible portrayals of love. It lacked solid conflict, and as a result its pacing was odd, but its heart was in the right place. I don't think it's overly generous of me to give it two and a half instead of just two stars.

 

I'm really hoping there's a five-star lesbian Cinderella story out there for me somewhere, though. Maybe one day.

 

Love,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/08/29/ash
The Princess and the Pony - Kate Beaton

Spoiler Rating: Moderate

 

Ashers, oh my goodness.

 

I know you know Kate Beaton, because Hark! A Vagrant is a thing we've shared. So I'm assuming you've heard plenty of mutterings around the Internet about her picture book The Princess and the Pony.

 

I'd been sidling my way toward this book since it was first announced, and finally got my hands on a copy. Andrew read it to me the other night (because picture books are best enjoyed when read to you, and because Andrew's a number one dude), and I can assure you that it is great.

 

Princess Pinecone knows exactly what she wants for her birthday this year. A BIG horse. A STRONG horse. A horse fit for a WARRIOR PRINCESS! But when the day arrives, she doesn't quite get the horse of her dreams...

 

 

Diversity!

 

What does this book have to offer?

 

An interracial family!

 

 

Powerful women as role models taped on little girls' walls!

 

 

Warriors of all sizes and shapes and colors!

 

 

I hadn't realized Princess Pinecone was biracial until we started reading the book, and my excitement level immediately went from 95 to 195%. And her family's interracialness is the most non-issue of non-issues, which boosted that number even higher.

 

And of course women warrioring on horseback always get my vote. That could've gone without saying.

 

Nominal Princessing!

 

Princess Pinecone maaaay only be a princess in her own opinion; this story's sole nod toward royalty is the title page's depiction of a walled-and-turreted city (okay, and a reference to this being a kingdom of warriors). Pinecone's parents seem to be as unroyal as anyone else: they stand in line to purchase tickets for the great battle, and cheer with all the other spectators from the stands.

 

 

More importantly (to me), Pinecone doesn't pull a Royal Temper Tantrum when faced with her disappointing birthday present. She's dubious, sure, but she immediately sets to problem-solving (i.e. attempting to teach the pony how to warrior in time for the upcoming great battle). When the training fails abysmally, does Pinecone try to Royal Temper Tantrum her way onto a different steed?

 

Nope. She shrugs and rides her pony into the arena with grim determination.

 

 

This is a princess who's treated just like everyone else—who solves her own problems, and faces her own disappointments. No servants or advisers or lackeys in sight. She's strong because of who she is, not what she is.

 

(And, hey, look—a warrior woman in a hijab! I love this book to death, Ashers.)

 

Depictions of Strength!

 

Sure, this is a warrior society, and Pinecone envisions herself becoming the fiercest warrior of all—but strength isn't just muscle and moxie. Pinecone figures out (to her initial dismay) that strength can come from whatever traits you have to offer.

 

Yes, even if you're an untrainable, wall-eyed sausage of a pony

.

 

If I'd had this book as a kid, Mom would've never been able to pry it out of my fierce warrior grip. It's gorgeous and funny and empowering and inclusive, and I love it.

 

Hope you're not dying of heat and humidity,

 

Liam

 

P.S.

 

This has been a crazy busy month, so don't look for my next letter until Saturday the 29th. I'll at least have started something longer than a picture book by then, I swear.

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/08/15/the-princess-and-the-pony
SPOILER ALERT!
The Kiss of Deception - Mary E. Pearson

Spoiler Rating: Moderate

 

Hello, most favorite Lizzy!

 

A week ago I came across a new fantasy series by the author who wrote The Adoration of Jenna Fox (which, Katie, you need to read asap); it's The Remnant Chronicles, beginning with The Kiss of Deception.

 

Honestly, this book is a mess–but oh my goodness I must get my hands on the sequel. Because even though this book was slow and silly and infuriating by turns, something(s) within it finally clicked into place and dragged me off the floor (where I’d curled into a fetal position of rage) and murmured, There, there. Everything will unravel into darkness, and you’ll love it. Keep reading.

 

So I kept reading, and thank everything I did. Because the book got better, and–as promised–I loved it.

 

Which is why I’m going to tiptoe around spoilers in this letter, in case you decide Yeah, the majority of the book sounds awful, but I can handle awful if it gets me to something good.

 

A princess must find her place in a reborn world.

 

She flees on her wedding day. She steals ancient documents from the Chancellor's secret collection. She is pursued by bounty hunters sent by her own father. She is Princess Lia, seventeen, First Daughter of the House of Morrighan.

 

The Kingdom of Morrighan is steeped in tradition and the stories of a bygone world, but some traditions Lia can't abide. Like having to marry someone she's never met to secure a political alliance.

 

Fed up and ready for a new life, Lia flees to a distant village on the morning of her wedding. She settles in among the common folk, intrigued when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deceptions swirl and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—secrets that may unravel her world—even as she feels herself falling in love.

 

 

No Diversity

 

We aren’t told what Lia looks like, but everyone else on the entire continent who’s afforded a physical description appears to be white. It’s not hugely likely that this one ruling family are the only people of color. No racial diversity points for this book.

 

Also, no LGBTQIA points, either.

 

Conflict and Tension and Stakes for the First 60%

 

Oh, Lizzy. The first 60% of this book was such a slog. The pacing was slow, and a ridiculous amount of time is spent just watching Kaden and Rafe (the sexy guys) compete with each other for Lia’s…attention, I guess?

 

This is a problem because both guys already know they can’t have her; they just want to pretend for a few minutes that “things were different” (i.e. she and the prince had married after all; that the assassin was just a regular guy, and therefore not tasked with killing her). They know their time with her is limited. I as the reader know their time with her is limited.

 

Yet apparently I’m supposed to be enthralled by their dumb little macho-man competition. Am I really supposed to be on the edge of my seat, watching these two guys challenge each other to a several-pages-long wrestling match?

 


There were no other noteworthy conflicts aside from this dumb little rivalry between the guys for the momentary attention of a girl neither one could have a Happily Ever After with.

 

Character Development and Character Arcs for the First 60%

 

Kaden and Rafe both came off as fairly flat. One’s more brooding and one’s more personable, but neither of them were fleshed out enough to make me sit up and take notice.

 

Lia’s better rounded than the guys: she’s earnest and hard-working and wants to do what’s best for her friends; she’s quick-tempered and strong-willed and has dreams of independence; she makes dumb mistakes and takes risks and sometimes I wanted to toss the book across the room because her thoughtless selfishness was so frustrating to read.

 

But I understood (most of) her thoughtless selfishness, and I would have liked her less if she wasn’t flawed. (Also, this would’ve been a totally different story if she didn’t have that flaw.)

 

As for her dumb mistakes: they were sometimes too dumb to believe (yeah, of course the runaway princess with the giant freaking temporary tattoo thing on her back that no one but the runaway princess would have would opt to bathe in the totally-open-to-the-public stream on her first day in the village, rather than, oh I don’t know, bathing in the privacy of her room until she’s scrubbed the totally unmistakable pattern off her back) and I hated them.

 

I guess I’m not lucky enough to be given a heroine who’s both flawed and marginally intelligent.

 

The Tone for the First 60%

 

Although there are some pretty serious scenes, a lot of the first 60% feels like filler, and its tone ranges from cartoonish to melodramatic. Take, for example, Rafe’s reaction to Lia’s flirting over holiday dinner (flirting which consists solely of, I should note, an unblinking stare while fellating her fingers–because that’s totally consistent with her character up to that point, uh huh):

 

 

When I described this scene to Andrew, he thought I was joking. I assured him I wasn’t, and we shared a moment of silence.

 

Messages About Love in the First 60%

 

Lia’s preoccupied with the notion of love, and asks her brother Walther how he figured out he was in love:

 


“Oh, you’ll know you’ve met your One True Love the moment you see him” is not a good answer. It is in fact a terrible answer.

 

(I say this as someone who, upon first laying eyes on their husband, immediately went all English Pointer–you know what I’m talking about–and thought, “Him, I need to know more about himhe looks good, let’s meet him.” And obviously that Pointer instinct worked out well for me.)

 

But love involves trust and affection and respect and understanding and a host of things that don’t spring into existence when two people look at each other for the first time. Curiosity-at-first-sight, definitely. Attraction-at-first-sight, yes. Love-at-first-sight, no no no.

 

Pearson and Her Characters Lied for the First 60%

 

There’s an identity mystery woven into the book, and I totally guessed the wrong answer.

 

So I went back and skimmed carefully through everything to see how I’d arrived at the incorrect conclusion. What did I discover? That yes, hints toward the correct conclusion had been scattered here and there. But I also discovered that the hints I had fallen for–the big, misleading things–were all authorial tricks. She lied; she made the characters lie in order to trick me.

 

I don’t want to give the mystery away, so let me give you a dumb analogy instead: pretend I’m writing a story about Tamika, and Tamika has a pet named Pochi. Pochi’s a recalcitrant cat, but I want the reader to think he’s a goofy dog so that when he’s revealed as a cat, the reader will think No way, seriously? I was so wrong!

 

Now pretend that I have Tamika take Pochi to the park to play fetch, and later teach Pochi how to shake hands.

 

Sure, my reader will be tricked into thinking Pochi is a dog. But I’m lying to my reader, because Pochi the cat would never go to a park, would never play fetch, and would sooner maul you than learn to shake your hand. I’m lying to my reader, and I made both Tamika and Pochi lie by behaving in ways contrary to their natures–ways orchestrated solely to trick the reader.

 

I’m okay with being wrong. I’m not okay with the author making me think an evil cat was a nice dog by taking the cat to a dog park and making it shake hands.

 


Thank the lord, once that 60% mark hits, this becomes a completely different book. Unrecognizable. As if at the last minute the editor realized the book wouldn’t sell unless things started happening, and Pearson only had time to revise the last third of the book before the deadline.

 

Conflict and Tension and Stakes in the Last 40%

 

Is the primary active conflict two dudes trying to out-dude each other? Nope!

 

It’s genuine tension and increasingly dire stakes. It’s complex and evolving and involves multiple people with multiple goals–and people in conflict with themselves as their own conflicting goals threaten to make a mess of things. It’s life and death and horrifying revelations and Lia slowly shattering into fragments then struggling to piece herself together again.

 

Glorious.

 

Character Development and Character Arcs in the Last 40%

 

It’s Lia’s internal shattering and reconstruction that has me clawing for this book’s sequel, but hers isn’t the only character arc to make headway in the final act. Both Kaden and Rafe are plopped into sticky situations that help fill out my perception of their personalities, and gives them freedom to start moving from Character Point A toward Character Point B.

 

The Tone in the Last 40%

 

I won’t say this book ever got as dark as The Kingdom of Little Wounds, but it was straining in that direction. Lia’s arc is a serious one, and the book takes it seriously–thank goodness.

 

Messages About Love in the Last 40%

 

The last 40% of the book has fewer dumb messages about love, perhaps in part because it turns its focus more toward the love and responsibility one feels for one’s family than the Ideal Romantic Love that Lia had been pining after.

 

Overall, we’re given a much healthier view of love that involves empathy and self-sacrifice and honesty. Hurray for that.

 

Some Great Writing

 

Pearson’s writing style makes for a pretty quick and easy read, but there are a few bits here and there that I slowed down to enjoy. Such as this one:

 


Themes

 

I’m kind of in love with this book’s themes, and how they’re reflected in all three of the main characters; the most prominent of them are truth/deception, identity, and the battle between tradition/duty and independence.

 

Let me ramble about that last one.

 

Lia’s princess of a kingdom that’s not so much steeped in tradition as it is boiled-then-burned-to-ashes in tradition. Lia, on the other hand, is not a traditions kind of girl.

 

She grew up with both a sharp tongue and the knowledge that traditions sometimes acted contrary to the good of the people–a combination that (I’m surmising) gave her parents terrible frown-lines, and (also surmising) their advisers chronic ulcers. So obviously she’s going to run away the morning of her wedding, ditching the fiance she’s never met and destroying the tremulous (but crucial) alliance between her kingdom and his.

 

The idea of tradition and duty being (in Lia’s opinion) at odds with personal independence is pretty omnipresent. It begins on the second page, when Lia’s lying face-down and naked on a table while the finest artisans of the kingdom are scraping an elaborate pattern into her back with dull knives.

 


It’s a marking that’s supposed to fade over the course of a couple weeks, but no matter how often and brutally she scrubs, Lia can’t remove it entirely; a portion of it clings vivid and insistent to her shoulder. Hmmm.

 

But Lia’s not the only tradition- and duty-bound person! Her shunned prince had been willing to go through with the loveless marriage (with the assurance by his father that no one would blame him for taking a mistress), but felt a conflicting sense of relief and envy and anger at Lia’s “courageous” act of desertion. The assassin sent after Lia takes no joy in killing, but accepts it as a necessary duty–until he realizes that hey, Lia’s actually a pretty neat person, and he begins rationalizing reasons not to kill her just yet.

 

I’m kind of in love with the struggle between useless traditions and necessary duties and the personal desire for freedom from both. Am I looking forward to seeing how these conflicts resolve for these three characters over the rest of the series?

 

Yep.

 


In short: this book has so much going wrong. It also ends with some things going really, really well.

 

Please let the sequel be good. That’s all I’m asking.

 

Yours as always,

 

Liam

 

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/07/25/the-kiss-of-deception
Uprooted - Naomi Novik

Spoiler Rating: Low

 

Hey Lizzy,

 

In elementary school you said You need some dragons in your life, and I sort of shuffled my feet and said Sure, maybe, and then I read the book you kept going on about, and suddenly nothing came out of my mouth anymore but dragons.

 

We spent the next two-and-a-bit decades jabbering dragons at each other, and making simultaneous grabby-hands at dragon-related books, and standing on the beach in the middle of the night with our eyes closed, cuffed by the wind and crusted with the salt and thinking dragons.

 

So of course when I heard Naomi Novik was writing a Polish-ish fairy-tale-ish fantasy novel that begins "Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley," my eyes glazed over with need.

 

Lo, my kind husband presented me with a copy, which I buried myself under a blanket with for two days. I've returned to tell you that it was pretty great.

 

(Despite lacking in actual dragons.)

 

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

 

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

 

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

 

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

 

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

Sounds like a quiet little Beauty and the Beast story, with a dash of We-must-neutralize-the-evil-in-the-forest! plot thrown in for spice, doesn't it?

 

HOWEVER.

 

Things This Book Is Full Of

 

Adventure!

 

Does Agnieszka stay trapped in the Dragon's tower for long? NOPE.

 

Can I tell you more without spoiling things that shouldn't be spoiled? NOPE.

 

Horror!

 

Novik's a master of creepy-beautiful descriptions.

 

 

Her talent's put to very good use in Uprooted; lots of creepy things go on, and the Wood is seriously bursting with nightmare fuel. (Have I had Wood-related nightmares since reading this book? Indeed I have.)

 

Politics!

 

Awesomely, when Agnieszka (a woodcutter's daughter in a very isolated valley far from the heart of the kingdom) has the opportunity to peer into the kingdom's political arena, she responds in a totally logical and realistic way: with utter confusion and disbelief at both how politicians/courtiers behave and what the hell is going on. Does she prove to be some political wunderkind who changes the course of politics/the kingdom/the world? Ahaha, nope. She's completely flabbergasted, and it's glorious.

 

War!

 

The less said here the better, I guess. But yeah, the blood doth flow.

 

 

Things I'm A Bit Conflicted About

 

Agnieszka!

 

Her character/personality is awesome, and it's portrayed realistically as she faces a series of increasingly horrifying events. Is she spunky and fearless and always ready for the next challenge? No. No, she isn't. She's human, and scared, and she had a solid grip on my heart from approximately page one.

 

 

Here's the problem (for me): Uprooted's told in the first person from Agnieszka's point of view, and something about her voice created a distance between myself and the events she described--like I was reading a (sometimes long-winded) memoir she wrote in her old age, reflecting on the happenings of her youth.

 

A memoir isn't gripping enough for me; I want to be in the moment with the young Agnieszka, experiencing each surprise and horror as if I'm standing beside her. I love Novik's descriptions of terrifying monsters and creepy places, but I rarely felt the full weight of Agnieszka's fear.

 

Which is incredibly unfortunate, because this story offers a ton of things to fear.

 

The Dragon!

 

Oh, man. The Dragon.

 

 

He's the super-powerful, emotionally distant, immortal(-ish) wizard who's lord of Agnieszka's valley, and he has a lot going on, character-wise. Such as, for example, his fear of becoming emotionally entangled, and how that fear affects his treatment of his people--and, more specifically, Agnieszka.

 

Am I fond of cold, heartless people? Nope. Do I enjoy reading about characters who behave in cold, heartless ways for reasons that are slowly unfurled throughout the course of the story? Oh, 100% yep.

 

I'll admit it was really hard for me to support the growing romantic tension between the Dragon and Agnieszka until fairly late in the book, when we learn the exact reason for his apparent heartlessness. Hurray for him not being a one-dimensional jerk!

 

That said, he's still a horrible jerk for the first portion of the story, and it took a lot of willpower on my end not to chunk him/the book across the room.

 

Kasia!

 

Kasia's kind of perfect, which automatically places her on my Characters To Roll My Eyes At list, but her perfection fits with the fairy-tale quality of the story.

 

 

And hey, we do see at least one (fleeting) glimpse of the bitterness and anger and hatred kept at a slow simmer deep within her. She's not quite as perfect as she appears, and I'm glad of that.

 

 

There are plenty of other things to praise: the realism and significance of Agnieszka's and Kasia's friendship; the complex and faltering development of Agnieszka's relationship with the Dragon; the variety of antagonists; the lovely worldbuilding. Stuff that I would've gone into if I had written this review a couple days ago instead of waiting until the last possible minute.

 

But, uh, I did wait until the last possible minute, so I've got to cut this review short.

 

In sum: although it's not perfect, Uprooted's definitely worth reading (and re-reading, which I'll be doing eventually!), and hopefully the memoir-ish-ness wouldn't bother you like it did me.

 

All the love,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/07/11/uprooted
The Blue Sword  - Robin McKinley

Spoiler Rating: Low

 

Most Honorable of Lizzys,

 

The challenge with these Drop What You're Doing You Must Read This Book letters is explaining what's great about the book without spoiling anything. Plot points and characters' secrets are obviously best left unmentioned--but I'm the type of reader who prefers to go into a new book completely blind. I look at the cover, I read the blurb on the back, maybe (maybe) check how many stars it has on Goodreads, and dive in. If something's not made clear on the cover or in the blurb, I don't want to know about it.

 

(This strategy has only failed me once, with Poison Study; for some reason I was under the impression that the man who turned out to be the young heroine's love interest was in his fifties or sixties--so when the romance subplot blossomed I was completely taken aback. Oops?)

 

So for the sake of not spoiling The Blue Sword, which I love almost more than life itself, this will be a post without excerpts.

 

 

This is the story of Corlath, golden-eyed king of the Free Hillfolk, son of the sons of the Lady Aerin.

 

And this is the story of Harry Crewe, the Homelander orphan girl who became Harimad-sol, King's Rider, and heir to the Blue Sword, Gonturan, that no woman had wielded since the Lady Aerin herself bore it into battle.

 

And this is the song of the kelar of the Hillfolk, the magic of the blood, the weaver of destinies...

 

 

What do I love about it?

 

I love the characters:

 

Harry (a young woman with a boy's name!), with her pride and her sense of detachment from society, her love of horses and books, and her vague itch for adventure; Corlath with his burden of kinghood and his desperation to protect his people; Mathin with his honor, Jack with his humor, Senay with her sword and unflinching loyalty.

 

I love the basis of the plot:

 

The isolated and numb protagonist tossed blind into a completely unfamiliar world, and struggling to find her footing.

 

I love the writing style:

 

Distant and numb at first, like Harry herself, but slowly thawing as Harry does. It's a layered and descriptive sort of style, full of commas and colons and semicolons and em-dashes, carefully manipulating the reader's reading experience. (Robin McKinley: the source of my own comma- and colon- and semicolon- and em-dash-heavy writing style.)

 

I love the conflicts:

 

As layered as the writing style, with as much internal conflict as external.

 

I love the horses:

 

McKinley knows horses. That's the key to my heart, right there.

 

I love the powerful women:

 

Harry is explicitly not beautiful; she's described as having a body and features too strong to be beautiful. This is a significant mark against her in the society she was born into (which is, by the way, roughly the equivalent of Victorian England). Fortunately, she finds herself in a society that measures a woman's worth by her actions, her abilities, her strengths, and her character. This is a society that raises its daughters to be strong. (And, if they want, to wield swords, of which I approve greatly.)

 

I love the diversity:

 

Not to be too specific, but there's a small-and-dark race in conflict with a tall-and-blond race, with the small-and-dark people being the good guys. Also, biracial couples, yes and thanks.

 

I don't think I can continue my list without drifting too far into spoiler territory.

 

Do I think everyone will love The Blue Sword?

 

No. As fantastic as I think the writing style is (it takes me many times longer to read TBS than a similarly-sized novel because I have to read so slowly, savoring it, rereading the best passages before moving on to the next paragraph), some people will find it off-putting, in large part because it's quite different from today's standard YA/new adult/adult fantasy style.

 

The current standard is one of intimacy with the protagonist (often in the form of first-person perspective, or third-person-limited). TBS is third-person-omniscient, with the narrator's focus shifting between characters even within a single paragraph. As a result, you don't feel so tightly bound to/bonded with the protagonist.

 

TBS also strongly favors action over dialogue. Rather than, for example, Harry looking at Corlath and remarking, "That is one angry-looking dude," or Corlath himself saying, "Guys, I feel like dealing out some serious death right now," the narrator describes a silent Corlath standing still within--towering over--a nervous wheel of men who don't dare approach him, then describes how Harry flinches away from him when he comes close to her.

 

Obviously, this is a triumph of Show, Don't Tell. But the result is twofold: (1) amazingly vivid descriptions of scenes, people, action, body language; (2) huge blocks of action/description with only a scattering of dialogue.

 

TBS has a mere fraction of the dialogue that's standard in today's YA/new adult/adult fantasy; the pace of the reading is therefore slower, and there's more of a distance between the reader and the characters. Readers who like fast-paced adventures might be frustrated by TBS's long, descriptive paragraphs. Readers who tend to skim anything that isn't dialogue will positively hate this book because they'll miss the majority of the character/plot development. This is not a book to be rushed or skimmed.

 

Is it flawless?

 

No. I mean, yes, I'm giving it a five-star rating, but there's no such thing as a flawless book. But to me, the flaws are insignificant compared to everything great this book has going on.

 

What raises this book from four and a half to five stars is how deeply it affected (and still affects) me; I can't describe how intensely I related to Harry when I first read this book, nor can I count how many times I've read it since then. TBS feels like me--the same way, maybe, your favorite song feels like it was composed for you, composed about you, and no matter how many times you listen to it you still experience that same rush of surprise and exhilaration and familiarity and rightness that you experienced the first time.

 

I suspect I sound pretty silly at this point, so let's stop before I really go off the deep end.

 

 

The take-away here is that this book owns me, and therefore I'm perhaps not the most objective of reviewers. Oh, well.

 

Missing you,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/05/23/the-blue-sword
SPOILER ALERT!
The Darkangel - Meredith Ann Pierce

Spoiler Rating: Moderate

 

Dear Lizzy,

 

I've lugged veritable carloads of novels home from Half Price Books, most of which have subsequently been lugged back to Half Price Books for reselling. The Darkangel came home with me, oh, five or six years ago, and has sat brooding on my shelf until a few days ago, when I finally decided, Eh, it's time.

 

But The Darkangel was not quite what I thought it was going to be.

 

Aeriel is kidnapped by the darkangel, a black-winged vampyre of astounding beauty and youth, and taken to his castle keep. There, she must serve his thirteen wives, wraiths whose souls he has stolen away. Aeriel knows she must kill the darkangel before he takes his fourteenth bride and comes into full power, but she is captivated by his magnificent beauty and intrigued by the spark of goodness she sees inside him. Will Aeriel risk damning all of humanity to save the darkangel's soul, or can she end his reign of beautiful terror before he finds his final bride?

Ignoring the weirdness of "astounding youth" (what is he, a toddler?) and "beautiful terror" (I don't even know), it sounds promising!

 

 

The Setting

 

The moon. This book takes place on the moon.

 

Something over a thousand years in the future, humans have terraformed the moon and developed (what's presumably) a mutated/modified human species that can survive much harsher conditions--so when the the artificial atmosphere begins to thin, the humans' domed cities start failing, and war (or disease, or something) calls the humans back to Earth, the mutated/modified humans continue to thrive on the moon.

 

By the time the story begins, most of the atmosphere has gone, there is almost no surface water available, and the ancient humans who created them are mostly-forgotten religious-ish figures.

 

Enter Aeriel, a slave girl, and Eoduin, her mistress, climbing into the high peaks to pick rare flowers:

 

 

The desolate landscape, the black sky and white sun, the long day and long night (the sun is up for [I'm guessing; it's never counted out] about 14 earth-days, and down for as long; a single day/night cycle is referred to as a day-month), the danger of cold and airlessness all combine to make a superb backdrop for a slightly creepy fairy tale--which The Darkangel is, in essence.

 

And oh, man, I can't tell you how much I love that the lack of atmosphere on the highest peaks mutes voices to the point that even screams are only slight sounds. That is terrifying and so good.

 

Not Really Romance

 

All that said, I greatly enjoyed the fact that this wasn't really a romance. I don't want to go into spoilers, but this is a very Beauty and the Beast type story, but not a romance. (Aeriel is too busy pursuing her goal to be romanced, and the darkangel is the opposite of a romantic figure anyway.)

 

I understand that their relationship does get romantic over the course of the rest of the trilogy, however--and I find this squicky due to their age difference. Aeriel is prepubescent at the start of this story, entering puberty a few months after she's kidnapped. Obviously I have no idea how these Moon humans mature compared to Earth humans, but I was gauging her age around twelve or thirteen (though she does sometimes sound older). The darkangel, meanwhile, is thirty.

 

 

Confusing: The Intended Audience

 

The Darkangel is published under the teens division of Little Brown, which--coupled with the whole Sexy Vampire With Multiple Brides thing--led me to assume this was a book for teens. If it is, it has a very low opinion teens' intelligence.

 

For example: there's a prophesy in the form of a clumsy poem, and the meaning of a key line is blazingly obvious, but Aeriel can't figure it out--and (worse!) even when another character sits her down and spells the meaning out, she doesn't believe/understand it. She's a sobbing mess, thinking everything's ruined when it clearly isn't, and I just can't believe how dumb she is.

 

The story also skimmed over how Aeriel's experiences changed/affected her, and glossed through the certain stages of Aeriel's adventure much like a story for children: "After a day of walking, the lost duckling found a warren of rabbits, who took him in and presented him with a bed of downy fur and feasts of carrots and celery--but the duckling slept poorly underground and didn't like the taste of carrots and celery, so after a week of politely picking at his plate, he bid his farewells and continued on his way." What did the duckling learn while with the rabbits? How did his time spent with them affect his perspective on life/his adventure/his self?

 

Aeriel spends several months with a certain group of people, but those months last just a few pages, and by the time she leaves them she's gained only a weapon. She doesn't form any real relationships with the people; she doesn't learn anything about herself or life or whatever; she rarely and barely thinks of her time with these people after she's left them.

 

I certainly don't want to bloat her journey with unnecessary stuff, but Aeriel seemed too little changed/affected by her experiences. It's my opinion that teens (should) expect and (definitely) deserve more than that.

 

Problematic: Beauty, Goodness, and Race

 

There's an interesting but problematic relationship between beauty, goodness, and paleness in this book.

 

It first appears on page two, when Aeriel is wistfully admiring Eoduin:

 

 

It's expanded upon when Aeriel goes to meet the darkangel, intent on killing him for having kidnapped Eoduin:

 

 

(Note that his features, his body are not described--only the colors of him. We are constantly reminded of his beautiful paleness, and how captivated Aeriel is by him.)

 

It's reinforced by the darkangel's repeated comments on her ugly darkness:

 

 

And over time, the dark and ugly Aeriel changes:

 

 

The sun has bleached her darkness to beautiful lightness; she is now, the darkangel decides, prettier than Eoduin, whose hair was too dark.

 

It's not necessarily the pale-is-more-beautiful-than-dark thing I have an issue with (though I'd really prefer more diversity, obviously; let's have darker-is-more-beautiful books, and [though less likely] color-doesn't-play-a-role-in-cultural-standards-of-beauty books, please and thanks). What makes squirm in my chair is that Aeriel herself (and the story itself) equates beauty with goodness:

 

 

That whole "spark of goodness" that the synopsis claims Aeriel sees in the darkangel? I never saw it. He's straight-up vicious and cruel, and several other things besides. We're just told that his beauty is evidence of his lingering goodness, and that when that goodness dies, so will his beauty. But he is also beautiful because he is pale.

 

Goodness = beauty = pale. You can see the problem with this.

 

Fortunately, the book doesn't strictly believe its own equation. The world is populated by dark-colored people who are lovely and good. For example:

 

 

There's another example I'd like to give to prove that this book isn't grossly pro-pale/anti-dark, but it goes too far into spoiler territory. Trust me when I say that the equation is fairly well dismissed by the end of the novel, though.

 

Nonetheless, this issue makes me squirm. I wish the equation hadn't been used at all; I wish he had shown true sparks of goodness, and that beauty wasn't used as its stand-in.

 

(Ugh, okay. He has a screaming nightmare once, but I need a lot more than just evidence that he can feel fear. Fear doesn't equal goodness any more than beauty does. This guy tortures animals, for heaven's sake. It'll take a pretty significant spark to make me believe there's goodness buried in there.)

 

Disappointing: Emotional Resonance

 

I never felt much of an emotional connection with Aeriel, perhaps in part because her own emotions were fairly steady and muted. Within minutes of being kidnapped and taken to the darkangel's castle, Aeriel's initial terror has subsided:

 

 

She feels revulsion and fear when she meets the other denizens of the darkangel's castle, but those feelings are also swift to fade. When she faces mortal danger, she just...faces mortal danger and moves on.

 

Really, the one scene that dragged real emotion out of me was the death of a horse-creature, and that only because it reminded me too strongly of watching some of our horses be put down. I was seeing Stormy fall, and his legs kicking, and Mom shading his open eye from the sun while he died, and I had to put the book down and take a lot of very deep breaths. (I'm taking deep breaths now.)

 

And I lied: the other scene that got to me was the whole torturing animals bit. Thank goodness that only lasted a page or two.

 

In any case, this is a story that should keep me white-knuckled and flinching and breathless, and it didn't quite manage that. I was reading to finish the book, not because I was emotionally compelled to read.

 

 

So why does it warrant two stars? Despite its (significant) flaws, this story has the potential to be really great. I was editing and plot-tweaking and rewriting (mentally, anyway) as I was reading, and enjoyed that process. I'm giving it two stars kind of in recognition of what it could be.

 

All told, this isn't a bad story. The setting is neat, there were some great descriptions of some pretty horrifying things, and I really liked the fresh take on the vampire/angel mythology. (These vampires are not made by being bitten/fed blood by other vampires.) It's not something I'll reread, though, and I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone over the age of twelve (and even then, there are better books out there).

 

But, hey, this means another book to return to Half Price! I'm trying so hard not to buy more until there's space for them to fit neatly on my shelves. You'd be proud.

 

Love,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/05/09/the-darkangel
SPOILER ALERT!
Magic Flutes - Eva Ibbotson

Spoiler Rating: Low

 

Dear Lizzy,

 

I experienced an interesting combination of enjoyment, boredom, and fury while reading The Reluctant Heiress (also published as Magic Flutes). Let me tell you about it.

 

Being an heiress in 1920s Austria with nothing but a broken-down castle to your name and nary a penny in your purse could be frustrating for anyone but the Princess Theresa-Maria of Pfaffenstein. Tessa, however, is thrilled with her situation, as it allows her to concentrate on her love of the arts--and no one in the Viennese opera company need know that their delightful and charming under-wardrobe mistress is really a princess. But when the dashing self-made millionaire Guy Farne arrives at the opera in search of suitable entertainment for his high society guests, Tessa realizes that there may be more to life--and love--than just music. And while the attraction between them is undeniable, Guy's insufferable snob of a fiancée only solidifies Tessa's determination to keep her true identity a secret. Yet, after a chance meeting with the handsome Englishman, Tessa's reserve begins to melt, and she starts to wonder if it's not too late for a fairy-tale ending.

 

 

  • Tessa is cheerful, passionate, and selfless.
  • Guy is kind, responsible, and powerful without being pretentious.
  • Guy's foster mother, Martha, is a hardworking angel.
  • Tessa and Guy's romance, with all its angst.
  • 1920s Vienna.
  • Some of the humor.
  • Some bits and pieces of the writing style.
  • One particularly powerful scene.

 

Here's one bit in particular I love. Very early in the story, Guy has arrived at Tessa's castle with an eye to buy it. Tessa's not there (she lives in Vienna), so her two elderly great-aunts give Guy a tour, sharing both the castle's history and their grand-niece's (whom they call Putzerl).

 

 

What's not to love in that?

 

The romance between Tessa and Guy is decent, if a little hasty and a little clumsy. The big turning points in their relationship, though (when he discovers she's Princess Putzerl, for example) are great scenes. I found myself skimming a lot of the boring stuff to get back to the romance parts, because I was genuinely interested in their seemingly doomed relationship.

 

 

  • Tessa is perfect in every way, and everyone loves her because of course.
  • Guy's gold-digger fiancée lacks even a single redeeming quality.
  • The writing style gets awkward.
  • An apparent pro-English, pro-Viennese, anti-everyone-else tone.
  • An apparent distaste for any woman not rail thin.
  • Pretty much everyone is a ridiculous caricature of a real person.
  • Prolonged boring bits about a failing opera.

 

What brings this book down to one and a half stars is how boring and infuriating it was.

 

Boring because Tessa's trying to help a failing opera company, and it's failing despite her help, and good god I don't care.

 

Infuriating because to be thin and white is the female ideal, and any woman who isn't thin is mocked by the narrator for her weight.

 

 

 

 

 

Notice that these women excel at losing their reason, they heave rather than catch their breath, they are comically clumsy and emotionally damaged. I can assure you that Tessa (who's repeatedly described as "waiflike," "little," and "fragile") is not described in such insulting terms when she's upset, or out of breath, of clumsy.

 

And those are just a few of the examples I noticed within the first 44 pages of the book. The first 44 pages! No, it doesn't get better from there.

 

There's also the racism.

 

Now, were 1920s England and Vienna racist places? Yes. Would it have been historically accurate to present these societies in any other way? No. Am I bothered that the characters make racist remarks? Not exactly; I appreciate historical accuracy even if I don't appreciate racism.

 

What bothers me is that the narrator participates. The narrator's descriptions of the various ethnic groups are supposed to be charming and funny (I think), but as far as I could tell, every ethnic group except the English (and the people of Vienna) is snickered at. The Romanian-women-are-crazy excerpt above is one example of (approximately) hundreds. Here's another:

 

 

It's not a violent racism, an I-hate-everything-you-are racism, but it's dismissing entire cultures as ridiculous stereotypes for the sake of humor--and I for one didn't find it particularly funny.

 

 

Obviously, I don't really recommend this book. The romance is nice enough, but the pros definitely don't outweigh the cons.

 

Love,

 

Liam

 

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/04/25/the-reluctant-heiress
The Diabolical Miss Hyde: An Electric Empire Novel (Electric Empire Novels) - Viola Carr

Spoiler Rating: Low

 

Why hello, DOCTOR Ashers,

 

Now that you've achieved doctorhood and have absolutely nothing to occupy yourself with (that's how PhDs work, right?), might I suggest that you amble down to your nearest ebook retailer (also how that works, I'm fairly certain) and pick up The Diabolical Miss Hyde by Viola Carr.

 

This is one of those books that had some not insignificant flaws, but the things it did right were right enough to outweigh those problems. 

 

Magic, mystery, and romance mix in this edgy retelling of the classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—in which Dr. Eliza Jekyll is the daughter of the infamous Henry

 

In an electric-powered Victorian London, Dr. Eliza Jekyll is a crime scene investigator, hunting killers with inventive new technological gadgets. Now, a new killer is splattering London with blood, drugging beautiful women and slicing off their limbs. Catching "the Chopper" could make Eliza's career—or get her burned. Because Eliza has a dark secret. A seductive second self, set free by her father's forbidden magical elixir: wild, impulsive Lizzie Hyde.

 

When the Royal Society sends their enforcer, the mercurial Captain Lafayette, to prove she's a sorceress, Eliza must resist the elixir with all her power. But as the Chopper case draws her into London's luminous, magical underworld, Eliza will need all the help she can get. Even if it means getting close to Lafayette, who harbors an evil curse of his own.

 

Even if it means risking everything and setting vengeful Lizzie free . . .

 


Some Of The Technology
I'm Not Steampunk's Target Audience

 

Well, this book is more electropunk (is that a thing?) than steampunk, seeing as how all of the new technology in this Victorian London is powered by electricity. But it's marketed as steampunk, and has all the clockwork gizmos standard in steampunk, so sure, whatever.

 

Being one of those readers who expects fictional societies to develop in a natural and logical manner (for example, you know, a traditionally misogynistic culture would likely take generations to become truly egalitarian), I tend to itch when I notice something either blazingly wrong or weird and unexplained in the society I'm reading about (say, that traditionally misogynistic culture becoming egalitarian after passing a couple of equal rights laws).

 

Steampunk doesn't particularly excite me. Yes, I'm far more interested in magic than technology, but I'm also a grump who's studied historical Victorian England, and can't stop myself thinking, That's not right. That's not right either. Holy crap why is she referring to motherhood as a career choice, I can't even. 

 

The Diabolical Miss Hyde did a fair job of keeping my grumpy historian tendencies at bay, overall. I had several rough moments, but only two are really worth mentioning; while I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for most steam- and electrically-powered doodads, I had a hard time with arc-pistols and Hippocrates.

 

Arc-pistols are, essentially, handheld weapons that shoot electricity.

 

 

After being fired, arc-pistols take a short amount of time (several seconds, maybe a minute or two?) to recharge themselves.

 

know I'm being too picky, but in a world that was otherwise quite averagely steam(electro?)punkish, this was way too Star Trek for me. I'd love to learn a bit about the arc-pistols and how they recharge themselves so I can at least stop imagining Captain Lafayette strolling around with a phaser at his hip.

 

As for Hippocrates:

 

 

He's something like an automaton dog, but capable of recording sounds, transcribing telegraphs, and—now I'm starting to itch—feel emotion:

 

 

Sure, there are automaton servants running their errands, and automaton guards in government buildings, and automaton Enforcers patrolling the streets—but they're all described as emotionless, blank. Hippocrates, meanwhile, exhibits a full range of emotions. The worst part is I have no idea how or why.

 

 

And Hipp has absolutely no impact on the plot at all; his only role seems to be Cute Little Sidekick for the first half of the book (he's mostly absent from the second half).

 

It reminded me—and I'm about to embarrass myself here, talking about this in a public forum—of when I decided that what my vampire novel really needed was a black Great Dane glued to the main character's side, because my Dani was the best dog to walk the earth, and putting her in my dumb novel felt great, never mind that she spent the whole book looking majestic and nothing else. It was self-indulgent of me to write Dani into the story; the story didn't in any way benefit from her presence.

 

Hipp's only contribution is to make me froth at the mouth over the ambiguous, erratic state of technology in this world.

 

Other Blips In Logic
It's Not Just The Technology

 

There were a few other things that struck me as frustratingly illogical, but I'm only going to complain about four of them. The first three are plot-relevant, so I'll be vague.

 

First: the killer does something that makes no sense, and I strongly believe that the author made them do it to throw Eliza/the reader off the killer's trail a bit. I'm cool with killers throwing people off their trail, but this particular act isn't something this particular killer would decide to do. It reeks of authorial interference.

 

Second: Lafayette wants something from Eliza, but he goes about getting it in the absolutely dumbest way possible. His method certainly benefits the plot, but doesn't serve his own interests—so his actions, like the murderer's, feel more like authorial interference than something his character would naturally choose to do.

 

Third (and this will be confusing without context, but bear with me): Eliza needs information that only Lizzie is capable of uncovering—information that could (and she strongly suspects will) condemn Lizzie of a serious crime. So what does Eliza do? She decides to let Lizzie take over and uncover that information. That information that could condemn Lizzie. Eliza's essentially asleep when Lizzie's in control, so Eliza will have to trust Lizzie to (1) actually get the information, and (2) not lie if the information confirms Lizzie committed the crime.

 

Lizzie is, at this point, nothing if not self-serving and contemptuous of the law. Why on earth would Eliza trust Lizzie to do this?

 

(And yes, we're told why Lizzie agrees to go get the information, but her motivation makes barely more sense than Eliza's idiotic decision.)

 

The fourth blip isn't really plot-relevant, so I'll delve right into it.

 

When the book opens, Eliza's inspecting the corpse of a woman whose legs were cut off above the knee, and discussing the murder with Investigator Griffin:

 

 

Can you see the problem here?

 

Here she's talking with Captain Lafayette, who's come to investigate their investigation:

 

 

Three people experienced with murder investigations all look at this legless body, see that it has no gunshot wounds, and decide, Well, either the killer shot at her and missed, or someone else was firing at the murderer.

 

They're looking for a gunshot wound.

 

The corpse's legs are missing.

 

They decide the corpse wasn't shot because there's no gunshot wound.

 

The corpse's legs are missing.

 

I found their stupidity so infuriating that I had to put the book down and corner Andrew, whom I complained to for several minutes before I could muster the strength to continue reading.

 

Sure, perhaps being shot with an arc-pistol damages more than just the body part it's aimed at; maybe if the victim was shot in the leg, the investigators would expect to find telltale marks all over the body. Singed hair, for example—though I wouldn't call that a wound. 

 

It might just be a matter of poor word choice on the author's part. Maybe there really is a legitimate reason for them to agree the legless corpse hadn't been shot in the leg. But I want to know that reason. If I'm not told, I'm going to assume that the author's word choice was deliberate and that these people are idiots who can't fathom that a victim could possibly be shot in the leg.

 

Which is exactly what I did.

 

My Attention Wandered
Yep.

 

It took me approximately a year (i.e. four days) to read the first quarter of the book. The frustrating technology stuff and the these characters are idiots stuff was just too much for me. "Surely there's something else I need to do," I kept saying, when there was absolutely nothing else I needed to do.

 

Also, there are two cases of mysterious identity in this book, neither of which were very mysterious. (1) Eliza's unknown guardian was easy to guess even before his first appearance. (2) I correctly pinned the murderer within a couple pages of their first introduction; their identity was obvious enough to me that I didn't find the murder mystery plot compelling. Sure, I was curious to know why they were killing, but it's the whodunit aspect of murder mysteries that keep me reading past my bedtime. I was never compelled to stay up late while reading this book.

 

 

The Setting
It's Vivid

 

Looking for a book that features the seedy underbelly of Victorian London, without romanticizing it? Well, here you go, the first page of the book:

 

 

The Characters
They're Pretty Much Awesome

 

Sure, the murder mystery wasn't a mystery, and the logic-related issues were burrowing under my skin, but I was totally caught up in the characters. Eliza, Lizzie, Captain Lafayette, and Malachi Todd were all vivid and engaging and wonderful. And they are why I think you'd enjoy this book—a veritable checklist of (well, some of) your favorite character types.

 

We have proper lady Eliza, who struggles with both her desire to be seen as a respectable woman and to prove to a misogynistic culture that women can be doctors, too. She shies away from impropriety, but is viscerally attracted to a man who's the poster boy of antisocial behavior (and whom she just recently helped the police capture and send to the insane asylum, thereby ending his career as a serial killer).

 

 

There's foul-mouthed, sexually-uninhibited Lizzie, who'll use anything at hand—particularly her stiletto and her  body—as a weapon against anyone who looks at her twice. She's desperate for her freedom and for any indication that she's valued.

 


You'll love Captain Lafayette, who's sly and humorous and gentlemanly and fierce.

 

And oh, man, I adore Malachi Todd, who's the Hannibal Lecter to Eliza's Clarice Starling. (You know The Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorite movies, and the Lecter/Starling relationship is why.) Polite, well-educated, an inmate at the Bethlem Asylum for Paupers and Criminal Lunatics, where Eliza (occasionally?) works.

 


Just about every character in this book has a distinct voice, has at least some depth, and they all play off each other in enjoyable ways. None of their relationships are simple, but the relationships between those four I named are particularly interesting.

 

Will I be rereading this book at some point, just to soak in those relationships? Yep.

 

Plots And Subplots
There's Plenty

 

Now, this point could also be listed as a flaw, but I did genuinely enjoy that there are so many plot threads woven throughout the story. You have the murder mystery, the mystery of Eliza's guardian, Eliza's investigation by Captain Lafayette of the Royal Society (an organization that will torture and burn her if they find out about Lizzie), another murder mystery, the struggle between Eliza and Lizzie—the list goes on. There's a lot happening in this book.

 

But I'm glad of it because every plot thread influenced the characters' changing perspectives and relationships, and there was plenty to keep me interested when the identity-related mysteries weren't mysteries.

 

Those threads weren't perfectly balanced—several were barely touched, while others seemed to drag on a bit—and there are readers who'll feel the story was bogged down by it all. But I'm happy to let the less-fleshed-out plot threads pass without comment, because I anticipate they'll be more prominently featured in the sequel, which I will definitely be picking up.

 

 

It's not perfect, but I enjoyed it more than I initially thought I would, and I look forward to seeing where the series goes.

 

Now excuse me, I must away to Netflix; Hannibal Lecter calls.

 

Hugs,

 

Liam

 

Hey Ashers!

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/04/18/the-diabolical-miss-hyde
SPOILER ALERT!
Tantalize - Cynthia Leitich Smith

Spoiler Rating: High

 

Hey Ashers,

 

This is not the book for you.

 

Books have a goal in life, and it's to mercilessly manipulate a reader's emotions. The number of emotions I felt while reading Tantalize: zero.

 

However, it does offer some fine examples of How Not To Write, as well as Things That Will Frustrate Your Readers, so let me spend a bit of time covering those.

 

 

Should probably outline the plot first.

 

The Plot
Or: Things Happen, I Guess

 

Quincie's a high school senior who was orphaned several years ago, and raised by her uncle (who's also managing the family restaurant until Quincie is old enough to take it over). When the restaurant begins failing, Uncle Davidson decides to expand and remodel, giving it a classy-Italian-vampire theme and a new name: Sanguini's.

 

Quincie's passion for the restaurant is really neat, actually. I like teenage characters with more on their minds than report cards and the brunet two seats over.

 

Of course, this book does also have the brunet. She and half-werewolf Kieren have been best friends since infancy, more or less, and she is determined to get things to the next level.

 

 

Kieren always shuts her advances down, and she angsts.

 

Kieren's preparing for an exam that will admit him into a werewolf pack somewhere far away, and when he passes Quincie'll never see him again. This topic comes up a few times as a source of momentary angst, but isn't really developed and seems detached from the rest of the plot--as if it were added as an afterthought when the editor decided Quincie wasn't angsty enough to appeal to the readership.

 

Meanwhile, the restaurant's longtime chef is murdered in a suspiciously werewolfish manner. The police are looking side-eye at Kieren as a murder suspect, causing a bit of anxiety that, like Kieren's impending departure, feels like an afterthought and is frequently forgotten.

 

Uncle Davidson hires Henry Johnson as a replacement chef, which results in chapter after chapter of Quincie and Henry (who adopts the stage name Bradley Sanguini for his role of vampire chef) frowning over his vampire costume and the possible menu for the restaurant's grand reopening. Along with possible dishes, Bradley provides Quincie with gallons of wine which he has (spoiler!) flavored with his own blood because he's really a real vampire with plans to take over Texas. By feeding the restaurant's clientele his blood and turning them into his minions. Because...reasons?

 

Speaking of surprise vampires: Uncle Davidson is also a vampire, and he murdered the old chef so Bradley could swoop in and turn Austin into the new vampire central. Uncle Davidson's motivation: death is tragic and he can't handle it.

 

Quincie learns all this after Bradley has vampified her (without her knowledge or consent). Even more angst-worthy than her new vamp status is Bradley's ultimatum: either she gives herself to him as his wifey-poo or he'll kill Kieren. Quincie confronts Bradley, intending to kill him, resulting in the most anticlimactic ending I've read in ages. (Don't worry, I'll describe it in a minute.)

 

 

The Writing Style
Or: These Words Are Not Effective

 

1. Show, Don't Tell

 

For a book written in the first-person perspective, Quincie was quite emotionally distant. First person is great for saturating the reader in the character's experience, but even Quincie's most emotional moments were bland at best.

 

I put this down primarily to the writing style. After all, "I looked over the edge and felt afraid" will never be as powerful as "I looked over the edge, and my stomach turned to ice." Naming an emotion is a cheap alternative to describing it.

 

Quincie names pretty much all of her emotions. Take, for example, when she calls 911 for a possible breaking-and-entering at her restaurant (Sanguini's) a few days after the murder of her last chef (Vaggio), and watches from the bushes while the responding Austin Police Department officers seize a man who tells them he was just hired as the new chef:

 

 

She's relieved, surprised, and embarrassed. I'm fighting to keep my eyes open.

 

2. Information Infiltration

 

Let's say background information is the spices in your coconut curry soup. Too little and the soup is bland. Too much and it's inedible slop. Not thoroughly mixed in, and one bite will be flavorless while the next burns your tongue off.

 

Tantalize falls into both the "too little" and "not thoroughly mixed in" categories.

 

Take the whole silver-bullets-kill-werewolves myth. In this book, werecreatures perpetuated that myth because it helped them keep tabs on humans who were actively seeking to kill werecreatures. The weres were the ones selling the silver bullets, and they'd tail and kill anyone who bought them. How do we learn this? Oh, in a two-page-long (yawn-worthy) flashback sparked by, of all things, empty beer cans Quincie spots in Kieren's bedroom.

 

 

Like a single clump of spice in a bowl of coconut milk, the myth is completely unrelated to the situation surrounding it. Before the flashback starts, Kieren steps out to put his little sister Meghan to bed. After the flashback, Kieren returns to his bedroom and Quincie tries to initiate sexytimes. (Sexytimes are a no-go.)

 

Does the reader even need to know about the silver bullets thing? Not really. But even if they did, this isn't the way to go about telling them.

 

Worldbuilding
Or: I'm Going Insane With Unanswered Questions

 

This world contains both werecreatures and vampires, and we learn almost nothing about either of these groups.

 

What is their social structure? What are their abilities and limitations?

 

We're told Kieren's mom's house is as blandly human as possible to avoid detection:

 

 

What would their lives be like and their homes look like if they weren't pretending to be human? Are there places where it's safe to be publicly a were or vampire?

 

 

What kind of laws exist regarding weres and vampires? Are there pro-supernatural lobbyists? How have human/were and human/vampire relations changed over the centuries?

 

Why aren't humans as worried about vampires as they are weres? Why the intense animosity between vampires and weres?

 

The list goes on, and on.

 

No matter how carefully a world is constructed, if the author doesn't show glimpses of that construction (by answering at least the most basic questions), the result will resemble the set of a really cheap Western movie: a bunch of facades that, upon even cursory inspection, prove to be propped up by two-by-fours.

 

Tension
Or: Why Am I Yawning, I Shouldn't Be Yawning

 

1. End Chapters With Tension

 

Few things challenge a reader's dedication to a book more than boring chapter endings.

 

End of the first (dull) chapter:

 

 

Later on, Kieren finally figures out that his dog Brazos's incessant barking signals an intruder (not the smartest werewolf, Kieren), and leaves Quincie in his bedroom while he goes outside to investigate:

 

 

Not only is there no tension here, both Kieren and the dialogue are dumb. (This is, by the way, the first time we hear about Cats, and Cats play only a tiny, confusing, unexplained role in the story. So no, "Dogs and Cats don't get along" doesn't carry quite the dun dun dunnn that I think it's intended to.)

 

Later still, Quincie tries to lure Kieren into her house for sexytimes:

 

 

There's so much potential for awkwardness here! How will Quincie react to knowing Uncle Davidson heard her try to make a move on Kieren? How will Kieren react to almost giving in, only to be caught by Uncle Davidson? I actually did eagerly turn the page this time, to find this:

 

 

Yes. Skipped right over the delicious awkwardness to a boring narration of boring events several days later.

 

This is the worst.

 

2. Maintain Tension In Scary Moments

 

I guess Tantalize is supposed to be comedic rather than dark; it's full of silly puns and "humorous" word choices (scare quotes because I find them frustrating rather than funny).

 

Take, for example, when Quincie wakes up (from being drugged) to find herself wearing an unfamiliar nightgown, strapped to a bare mattress in Bradley's unfinished basement. The basement door opens, and in prance Uncle Davidson's annoying girlfriend Ruby (who sneers at her) and Bradley (who's holding a knife). Also:

 

 

That's right. She vaguely remembers making out with Bradley after he drugged her; she wakes up tied to a bed wearing clothes she's never seen before; her kidnapper has arrived holding a knife; a giant wolf is snarling in her face.

 

And she calls the wolf's teeth choppers.

 

I. I just.

 

If Quincie's fear was more powerfully portrayed, I could enjoy the humor as, say, her attempt to maintain some sense of calm or distance in what is clearly a terrifying situation. But her fear is as muted as every other emotion in this book, and the humor merely reinforces that impression.

 

"Romance"
Or: There Is No Romance In This Story

 

1. Quincie And Kieren Are Not A Thing

 

Despite all of Quincie's enticements, Kieren staunchly refuses to take their friendship to the next level. Honorable, considering he's about to move away.

 

Well, okay. He gives in once, in what has to be one of the least provocative kisses I've ever read:

 

 

"[F]orcing my hipbones to rattle against his"? Really?

 

For some reason--seriously, I don't know why--"rattle" always makes me think of shaking a collection of teeth in a mason jar. But even without the added weirdness of teeth-in-a-jar, "rattle" is an odd word choice for this situation.

 

In any case, the synopsis lied: her first love isn't "threatening to leave her forever." Her best friend is moving away, and he's friend-zoned her with admirable determination since more or less day one because he knew this would happen.

 

2. Quincie and Bradley Are Not A Thing

 

There's supposedly tension between them, but I saw zip.

 

 

You can't just tell me there's a vibe and expect me to buy it. Gotta back those claims up with emotions and, I don't know, tension-filled encounters.

 

Conclusion
Or: This Is Not A Satisfying Ending

 

This story is, ultimately, attempting to say something about loss and the acceptance of loss. Quincie lost her parents, and has accepted that. Uncle Davidson lost his brother and decidedly hasn't accepted that (hence the whole "Let's all become vampires so we'll live together forever" scheme that, uh, ultimately kills him. Oops?). Quincie's losing Kieren, and fights that loss tooth and claw (har har).

 

Quincie does finally realize that she must let Kieren go, which is quite a neat way to conclude a novel. Not many young adult novels end with the protagonist saying farewell to the one she loves.

 

But oh, man, the conclusion is terrible.

 

Freshly-vampified and desperately-in-need-of-blood Quincie and slightly-wolfed-out Kieren have their showdown with Bradley, whom they promptly discover is too powerful to be killed. So Bradley, ever the gentleman, offers a proposal:

 

 

If she doesn't accidentally kill Kieren, Bradley will bow out and relocate to San Antonio.

 

She agrees, and Kieren agrees, and while she's feeding, Bradley natters on about how tasty blood is and how Quincie was just waiting for Bradley to show up and make sure she's never lonely again, etc.

 

And this is the very last page of narration:

 

 

There is no headdesk gif capable of portraying the intensity of my headdesking over here, so let me make a bulleted list of the problems I have with this.

 

  • The villain only wanted Quincie's love, and bows out at the end. And he leaves without any sort of reprimand or punishment for all the horrible things he did. He just gives up on winning Quincie's heart and moseys out of town, setting up house a couple hours south (where he'll continue his Take Over Texas scheme, presumably). I found this ending terribly anticlimactic. I felt cheated.
  • Not only did the villain just shrug and walk away, he wasn't in any way confronted about his wrongdoings--which included, by the way, drugging Quincie, holding her captive, turning her into a vampire without her consent, and sexually assaulting (possibly even raping!) her. In fact, there's no acknowledgement at all that he's done horrible things, caused horrible things. Could she not at least have confronted him about the sexual assault? At the very least?
  • Quincie accepts that she has to lose both Kieren and Bradley, but affirms that she won't lose her restaurant or herself. Let me repeat that: Quincie accepts that she has to lose both Kieren and Bradley. AND BRADLEY. Because she was so incredibly attached to him, right, this homicidal monster who is turning innocent people to vampires and--oh, goodness. Maybe this book did inspire some emotion in me; it's certainly doing something to my blood pressure.
  • She "beats" the villain, accepts she has to let Kieren go--and the end. Well, kind of the end; the next (final) page shows an advertisement in a newspaper seeking a new head chef for the restaurant. We don't see how she fully processes her new vampireness; we don't see their farewell (Kieren still hasn't taken his exam yet, so it's not like he's leaving tomorrow); we don't see the aftermath of Uncle Davidson's murder; we don't see what the cops do about the initial murder that Kieren is still the prime suspect for; we don't see how the police department responds to the murder of the cops who were investigating Kieren; we don't see what happens with all the newly-made vampires (not to mention all the deaths) Bradley leaves behind when he goes to San Antonio; we have absolutely no solid info on why Ruby (a werecat) was in the story, nor do we have any idea what happens to her; we don't see Quincie figure out how to live as a minor without a guardian, much less how she manages to continue running her restaurant. It looks like I'm asking a lot, sure, but those are all important things that could be wrapped up within a few extra pages. Instead, all these threads are left dangling.

 

Ashers, I can't.

 

 

There are a few good things about this book, as I've said: Quincie's passion for her restaurant; her realization that she has to let the boy go; the fact that it's set in Austin. I also love that Kieren (last name Morales) is Latino (and biracial!), and described as a person of color. Interracial couples, yes please.

 

(Although I guess they're never actually a couple. Uh. Interracial lusting, yes please. And his parents are a legit interracial couple, so there's that.)

 

Something else I like: Quincie is ashamed that she chose to trust Brad et al. over Kieren:

 

 

Protagonists making (monumental, dumb) mistakes and owning those mistakes are good.

 

I'd like to find another book that plays with this same idea, but is, you know, well-plotted and well-written.

 

Hope you find some time to relax this weekend!

 

Yours as always,

 

Liam

 

Hey Ashers!

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/04/11/tantalize
The Thief - Megan Whalen Turner

Spoiler Rating: Low

 

My Lizzy,

 

Just shy of five years ago I said This book is made of awesome, and you replied, I think I shall have to look into this. According to your Goodreads account, you never did.

 

I'm not making any accusations here, but you missed out. I just want you to know that.

 

The Thief is one of those books that sounded somewhat interesting and had a good rating on Goodreads (I didn't read any reviews, just saw the number of stars it averaged), and therefore took me totally by surprise with its greatness.

 

Because I don't want to spoil anyone else's surprise--if someone decides to pick up The Thief after reading this letter--I'll return to my roots and, as vaguely as possible, present you with a numbered and bulleted list of a few of the book's finer points.

 

 

"I can steal anything."

 

After Gen's bragging lands him in the king's prison, the chances of escape look slim. Then the king's scholar, the magus, needs the thief's skill for a seemingly impossible task--to steal a hidden treasure from another land.

 

To the magus, Gen is just a tool. But Gen is a trickster and a survivor with a plan of his own.

 

 

1. Gen

 

  • Personality: Mischievous, sharp-witted, arrogant, sarcastic, goodhearted, brazen. I admire and adore him, but completely understand why some (well, all) of the characters want to throttle him. The best combination!

 

  • Voice: 100% realistic, and 100% engaging; he's a person, not a character, and every word of his narration sounds like him.

 

  • Arc: He changes over the course of the story--but this is the first installment in a series, and his change is neither drastic nor complete by the end of this book.

 

I think these three excerpts (about horses, because naturally) do a fair job of portraying how his personality colors the narration:

 

 

 

 

2. The World

 

  • Civilization: Greek-inspired, with a plush history that strongly colors the present-day cities and people. You can feel the weight of its history as you read, and I can't get enough of it.

 

  • Landscape: Pseudo-Greece, succinctly and vividly described. I can see it as clearly as--maybe more clearly than--any place I've actually visited.

 

  • Continuity: This isn't a story that focuses only on the time that passes between its first and last pages; it (and its characters) are concerned about events yet to come--future events sparked by events that take place before the story begins. Not surprising in a fantasy series, but very well executed here.

 

 

 

3. The Story

 

  • Plot: An adventure/journey story, but mostly propelled by (and focused on) character development and interaction. (It takes a while for the action to really start, but the time leading up to it certainly isn't wasted.)

 

  • Tension: Much of the book involves the group traveling, but tension is kept up by grating Gen's personality against those of the people around him, by slowly revealing significant secrets, and with Gen's various, and potentially fatal, tasks.

 

I don't want to spoil any of the tension or plot points, so rather than seeing an excerpt, you'll just have to take my word for it.

 

 

There's a lot of good in this book, but it isn't without its problems. The most egregious: the reader doesn't see one particular (important) scene play out; instead, it's described by another character after the fact. The whole last quarter of the book would have been significantly more powerful if we had seen this one scene from Gen's perspective as it was happening.

 

 

I'm happy to assure you that the book did hold up to rereading, and will fairly soon be joined by the next in its series in my permanent collection. (After I make room for it on the shelf. Um.)

 

All the love,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/04/04/the-thief
SPOILER ALERT!
Written in Red - Anne Bishop

Spoiler Rating: Moderate

 

Lizzykins,

 

I'd originally assumed this letter would be for Ashers, because, well. "Urban fantasy" conjures images of saucy, badass women with weapons, which I instantly correlate with Ashers because of course. But Written in Red was actually so incredibly Lizzy that as I read, my eyes stung with missing you.

 

(Maybe also with the intensity of my reading; I devoured the book over the course of a day and a half, pausing for just a few hours of sleep when my eyelids decided enough was enough.)

 

Let's see how much I can tell you about this book without spoiling anything.

 

Enter a world inhabited by the Others, unearthly entities—vampires and shape-shifters among them—who rule the earth and whose prey are humans.

 

As a cassandra sangue, or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn can see the future when her skin is cut—a gift that feels more like a curse. Meg's Controller keeps her enslaved so he can have full access to her visions. But when she escapes, the only safe place Meg can hide is at the Lakeside Courtyard—a business district operated by the Others.

 

Shape-shifter Simon Wolfgard is reluctant to hire the stranger who inquires about the Human Liaison job. First, he senses she's keeping a secret, and second, she doesn't smell like human prey. Yet a stronger instinct propels him to give Meg the job. And when he learns the truth about Meg and that she's wanted by the government, he'll have to decide whether she's worth the fight between humans and the Others that will surely follow.

 

 

 

 

The Plucky Heroine

 

In generic urban fantasy: Skinny, pretty, leather-pants-clad (usually white) woman with weapons and an attitude.

 

In this book: Skinny, pretty white woman who's defenseless and kind.

 

Why you'd like this: Watching Meg struggle to gain control of her body and her life—first by escaping the Controller who'd enslaved her, then within the tightly-controlled Courtyard of the Others—makes for engrossing and satisfying reading.

 

The Handsome Dude

 

In generic urban fantasy: Powerful, attractive, non-human. Either a leader or a loner. Often a jerk.

 

In this book: Powerful, attractive, non-human. Leader of his Courtyard (the area where the Others live and do business within the city of Lakeside). Sometime a jerk. (Fortunately, we see a good portion of the story from Simon's point of view, and when he does something rude we can at least understand where he's coming from, and his internal struggle regarding his own behavior.)

 

Why you'd like this: You prefer your dudes handsome, powerful, and with strong ties to their community. Also, you like climbing into a character's head to understand why they do what they do, as opposed to just hearing the heroine's internal dialogue as she swoons after a jerk.

 

The Non-Humans

 

In generic urban fantasy: More often than not, humans who can turn into animals, or need to drink blood, or whatever. Sometimes animals that turn into humans, or human-looking creatures from other planes/dimensions that humans (and readers) are vaguely familiar with (such as faeries). Usually either super secret (not public to humans) or some degree of integrated (mingling openly with humanity).

 

In this book: They're the Others, the terra indigene, the earth natives, and . . . well:

 

 

Humans have managed to spread across the globe, but only because the terra indigene realized humans were useful as well as delicious. The moment a human (or a city of them) proves more trouble than it's worth, that human (or city) is destroyed. As Simon makes clear to Meg early on:

 

 

Also, there's a theory that the terra indigene shapeshifters aren't, say, wolves (or crows, or hawks, etc.) that turn into humans, but creatures who took on their version of a wolf (etc.) form because that was the shape of a top predator. Over time, the wolf-shifting terra indigene became increasingly wolf-like in their thought patterns and mannerisms as a result of their choice of shape.

 

So these are not wolves (etc.) who can wear human bodies. These are monsters with wolfish behavior patterns, and wolfish bodies, who can shift into human bodies. And this makes them, honestly, so much more terrifying than wolves-turned-human or humans-turned-wolves, because at least I'm familiar with wolves and wolf behavior, and I don't know anything about the original state/mindset of these monsters.

 

(That said, they aren't completely alien; anyone who's spent time with dogs will recognize some of their behaviors. They respond well to dog treats, for example.)

 

Also, you would absolutely die for the vampires and Elementals, not to mention the mysterious Tess and her mood-ring hair:

 

 

(Oh, man. Tess. I swoon.)

 

Why you'd like this: I guess I already covered it: they're terrifying and intriguing and so incredibly not-human that I can't get enough of them. And, honestly, they (especially Tess and the Elementals) felt like creatures you would have written about. They were the source for most of my eye-stinging; so very Lizzy.

 

The Story

 

In generic urban fantasy: Heroine is faced with a problem (often hunting a monster or criminal), and uses anything at her disposal (magic, weapons, powerful handsome dude) to solve it before she (or someone else) is killed. Falls in love with powerful handsome dude, and engages in some kind of consensual adult interaction with him.

 

In this book: Powerless heroine is hunted, not hunter; she escapes captivity, knowing she'll ultimately die as a result but wanting to live free if only for a little while. Slowly, slowly makes a place for herself among the terra indigene who take her in. Slowly, slowly forms relationships for the first time in her life. Slowly, slowly learns to live, to have strength, to be in control rather than be the property of a Controller. (But, of course, her Controller wants his property back, and will do whatever it takes to retrieve it—even if it means facing the terra indigene. Who are, remember, really, really scary.)

 

Why you'd like this: This isn't an action-packed book. This is a traumatized young woman's first steps toward healing and empowerment—and how her personal journey affects those around her, changing their perspectives and, ultimately, if only slightly, changing their society. And, Lizzy, stories about healing, empowerment, and changing society were your specialty.

 

And you'd be all over the gradual growth of Meg and Simon's relationship.

 

And when the action does come, it comes fierce and bloody—which is also very Lizzy.

 

The Sense of Humor

 

In generic urban fantasy: Urban fantasy provides ample opportunity for humor, and most of the authors I've read have at least a few moments of brilliance.

 

In this book: The humor ranges from dark to silly, and it's all fantastic (though the silliness confuses the story's tone a little, I thought).

 

Take the signs placed beside the doorway connecting Simon's bookstore (Howling Good Reads) and Tess's coffee shop (A Little Bite):

 

 

Why you'd like this: This should be obvious.

 

 

Stock-ish Characters

 

Written in Red is told from multiple points of view, which provides a richer view of the world—but some of those points of view, I thought, were a little flat. Specifically, do-gooder police lieutenant Crispin Montgomery ("Monty"), and selfish scheming babe Asia Crane. Both are significant characters, but neither of them ever really broke out of their three-word descriptions. (Well, Monty has an internal crisis when we first meet him, but it doesn't reappear in an interesting way later. Asia was definitely flat.)

 

Monty may not have changed over the course of the story, but he's likable, easy to relate to and sympathize with. He was also the only black character; not a very diverse book we're talking here.

 

Too-Familiar Human Civilization

 

I am 100% in favor of a world historically dominated by non-humans. The idea of humans being allowed to carve isolated villages and a few handfuls of cities—and two very large cities—out of the vast landscape of the Americas is intriguing, to say the least. This is a world where the human population is significantly smaller than what we know today, and society has been shaped by and around the largesse (if you could call it that) of the terra indigene.

 

However. Somehow, this human society still looks identical to ours: cars, computers, universities, a booming film industry, publishing houses—not to mention a governmental structure including governors and mayors and police chiefs, and so on.

 

I had a really hard time accepting the idea that human society and technological advancement in this world would be identical (or even nearly identical) to ours.

 

What's Up with the Courtyards

 

I also wasn't clear on the purpose of the Courtyards—or, at least, why they're located inside the human cities rather than at an easy distance outside them.

 

In the explanatory prologue we're told:

 

 

Here's an explanation of Courtyards, provided by Simon to Meg when she first arrives, looking to fill the Courtyard's vacant Human Liaison position:

 

 

The terra indigene have zero interest in mingling with humans. They want two things from humans, period: their nifty inventions and their tasty human meat. They don't interfere with human politics or daily life. They don't "watch over" the humans in any way. The less they deal with humans, the happier they are.

 

To that end, most terra indigene live in the wild lands separating human towns; only a percentage live in Courtyards. (Or maybe I'm wrong? But if I am, why would most terra indigene live in fenced-in areas surrounded by human cities when they "own" all the land of the continent, and most of that land is still wild?)

 

Placing the Courtyard smack inside the cities certainly benefits the plot, but doesn't feel realistic. If the terra indigene need a post office to receive their human-made goods, why not have a post office on the edge of town, or a half mile outside it? If they need an office for their consul, why not have that on the edge of town, too? The consul is really the only one who goes out among humans, ensuring the human government pays the appropriate taxes to the terra indigene—and as far as I saw, the consul goes to the humans' offices, not the other way around. Is that really a sufficient reason for the terra indigene to be living within the city?

 

(If anyone reading this letter has read the book, and better understands why Courtyards are positioned where they are, please let me know! Or perhaps it's revealed in the sequel, Murder of Crows, which I'll be picking up shortly.)

 

Problematic Racial Undercurrent

 

In this North-America-equivalent, the native peoples are literally called the Others (by humans); they are closely attuned to nature, and hold great respect for their shaman-equivalent; their land was colonized by a significantly more "advanced" species, who gave them baubles in exchange for land usage; they have remained significantly less "advanced" than the colonizers to this day (a time when many natives live free on the land, while others live in fenced-in preserves—and humans, meanwhile, seek to take as much control from them as possible).

 

I'm definitely excited to see a world in which the natives maintain dominion over the land, and exploit the colonizers' technology/labor—but I felt distinctly uncomfortable with the Native American vibe I occasionally got from the terra indigene.

 

I don't believe the author intended to suggest that Native Americans are less than human, or to imply that they are inherently less "advanced" than the people who colonized their land. Nevertheless, I perceived a parallel there that gave me the fidgets.

 

(Again, if someone else has read the book and has a better/more informed perspective on this issue, I'd love to hear it!)

 

 

Monster Love Interest

 

There's a line to be drawn between realistic-monster-love-interests (naturally vicious non-humans developing healthy, loving relationships with humans) and dickish-monster-love-interests (naturally vicious non-humans developing dangerous, abusive relationships with humans), and I felt that Meg and Simon's relationship is too young at this point for me to clearly see which way it would fall. I do think Simon's rude behavior was portrayed and explained well enough to make him relatable rather than off-putting, and Meg was quickly developing the strength to stand up to Simon's alpha personality, but there is definitely potential for abuse in their relationship.

 

Cutting

 

As a cassandra sangue, a slice in Meg's skin opens her to prophesy. I won't go into the details (suffice to say each new snippet of information about the cassandra sangues had me incredibly excited), but it shouldn't come as a surprise that Meg does cut herself over the course of the story.

 

The cutting (and Meg's internal conflict regarding it) was portrayed in an unflinching, powerful way that was (I thought) beautiful. Beautiful as in artful, not in any way enticing.

 

I wouldn't label Meg's cutting as self-harm. She doesn't cut because she is depressed, angry, hurt, or numb. She doesn't cut because she enjoys the euphoria a prophesy can bring (although that is a temptation that she resists). She cuts because there is a prophesy that needs to be seen, and that is how she will see it.

 

Blood magic isn't a new concept, in books or out of them. People prick their fingers, cut their arms, slice the throats of children or virgins. Anita Blake kills chickens, or goats if she needs stronger blood. Blood's been a part of magic forever (more or less).

 

The point of cutting in Written in Red is the idea of agency; the cassandra sangue are by law kept by Controllers who oversee when, where, and how the girls are cut so as to, quote unquote, ensure they are not harmed by incautious cutting. The girls are allowed no power over what happens to their bodies, and Meg's memories of being strapped down are sickening. The issue here is abuse, not self-harm. Once free, Meg takes control of her skin and her power, refusing to let anyone else dictate when she will and will not open herself to prophesy.

 

Some people could certainly see this as Meg's insistence on being allowed to self-harm, but I read it as another step in her journey towards empowerment.

 

 

Although there's plenty more I could say, for the sake of word count, if not spoilers, I'll end this letter here.

 

In short: if you're looking for a spitfire heroine smart-talking and shooting her way through a high-intensity plot, this book won't satisfy. Pick it up when you're in the mood for complex character development with a smidge of gore.

 

Hugs,

 

Liam

 

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/03/28/written-in-red
SPOILER ALERT!
Wild Magic - Tamora Pierce

Spoiler Rating: High

 

Best of Lizzys,

 

Oh, lord. This book.

 

It starts off so promising, but it never succeeds in becoming more than a shallow, fluffy story intended to reassure the children who read it that (a) actions don't have consequences, (b) all problems can be instantly and completely fixed by someone else, and (c) everyone in the world will either be an adoring friend or a nameless foe.

 

Sure, there's a market for this sort of child-comfort-read—but I'm very clearly not that market.

 

Thirteen-year-old Daine has always had a knack with animals, but it's not until she's forced to leave home that she realizes it's more than a knack — it's magic. With this wild magic, not only can Daine speak to animals, but also she can make them obey her. Daine takes a job handling horses for the Queen's Riders, where she meets the master mage Numair and becomes his student.

 

Under Numair's guidance, Daine explores the scope of her magic. But she begins to sense other beings too: immortals. These bloodthirsty monsters have been imprisoned in the Divine Realms for the past four hundred years, but now someone has broken the barrier. It's up to Daine and her friends to defend their world from an immortal attack.

 

 

 Inhumanly Positive Character Interactions!

 

The plot: orphaned Daine and her pony Cloud descend from the mountains after a traumatic experience, meeting all kinds of new people and making their way in the world and developing friendships and yes, yes, that's great.

 

Friendship-related themes are fairly common in children's lit, and Wild Magic definitely has something going on there. I'm all for that! What I'm not all for are boring character interactions.

 

Fun (or, at least, interesting) interactions generally involve some kind of friction, right? Tension, in whatever form. But the characters in Wild Magic are all so brain-numbingly friendly.

 

Here, let me show you a few of Daine's first meetings with the other characters:

 

The knight Alanna

 

 

Alanna's group of warriors

 

 

Grumpy-looking Buri and intimidating-looking Sarge

 

 

Super-gorgeous Queen Thayet of Tortall

 

 

Young trainees Miri and Evin

 

 

Ridiculously handsome King Jonathan of Tortall

 

 

Have you ever seen so many smiling/kind/gentle/friendly characters in your life?

 

No. The answer is no, you have not. And there I sat, clenching the book and pleading for someone, anyone, to do or say something, anything, to create interpersonal conflict.

 

And then it happens! An almost-invisible character we were previously told is only happy when she's complaining says something nasty to Daine. That character then leaves the city, never to be seen again. As for the nasty thing she said: Daine's boss Onua (who, by the way, is the horsemistress for the Queen's Riders; Daine is her assistant) tells Daine to ignore it, which Daine does so completely that the whole incident may as well have never happened.

 

Lizzy, this is so boring.

 

Lessons Learned the Easy Way!

 

So, Trust your friends for help with your problems is a big message in this novel, and it's not a subtle one.

 

Daine has a Secret Traumatic Past (which I'll spoil in the next point) that is hinted at early on. The second chapter begins:

 

 

Less than a page later Daine decides:

 

 

Throughout, you see Daine's new friends looking sad about her refusal to disclose her obvious secret, saying things like:

 

 

So what prompts her to finally spill the details? Well, a badger has been visiting her dreams, spouting cryptic messages—culminating in this not-so-cryptic one:

 

 

She promises to tell her boss (Onua) and her magic teacher (Numair) her secret, but only because either (a) the badger mentally/physically/magically forced her to promise, which doesn't count as personal growth on Daine's part, or (b) Daine was so grossed out by his breath she would say anything to get away from it, which doesn't count as personal growth on Daine's part.

 

Maybe I'm being too picky, though, because she does have a moment of growth after Onua and Numair respond to her story with unconcerned affection:

 

 

So maybe it shouldn't matter to me that she's kind of forced into doing what (I feel) she should have chosen to do, since the end result was the same (learning her trust will be rewarded). But it's just so . . . 

 

Well, imagine she's afraid to bungee jump, and she's cringing on the ledge saying, "Nope. Not doing it." Then her instructor, who's been telling her for hours to just trust her bungee cord and jump, loses patience and pushes her off the ledge. Sure, she falls and the bungee cord works, and she learns that she should've trusted the cord all along—but because she was pushed rather than choosing to jump, that moment of falling doesn't represent a change or growth in her character. Or, at least, not the empowered, powerful change/growth I'd like to have seen.

 

Maybe what matters is that she learns to trust, not how she comes about it. Not everyone changes as a result of choosing to jump, after all. I just find I prefer stories about people who do make that choice.

 

But what makes the matter even more frustrating for me is how easily solved her problem is once she confesses her secret.

 

Easily-Solved Problems!

 

The conflict in Wild Magic is approximately 85% internal (Daine's issues with trust, identity, etc.) and 15% external (monsters released from imprisonment in the Divine Realms and now attacking the country of Tortall, presumably sent by a neighboring empire).

 

What seems to be the central conflict is Daine's fear of (SPOILER SPOILER) her magic going wild and making her lose her sense of humanity. It's happened before; she lost herself with a wolf pack for a period of time after her family was slaughtered by bandits.

 

 

The people of her village saw her with the wolves and proceeded with the Kill The Beast routine, and though she both escaped and regained her awareness of her humanity, she's been deeply scarred by the experience (with reason!). So she trusts no one, and tells no one what happened with the wolves.

 

Mr. Wizard Numair recognizes Daine's magic and begins to train her in its use—but the more aware she is of her own magic, the easier it is for her to slip out of her humanity and into what she calls madness. So Daine agonizes for chapters over her fear of her secret being let out, her fear of losing herself again, her fear of losing these new friends she's made.

 

When she does finally tell Numair and Onua about her past and her fears (at the badger's insistence, remember), what does Numair say? 

 

 

That's right. "Well, that's easy enough to fix."

 

After all the agonizing about her secret, after being forced to share it rather than choosing to share it, Numair (essentially) laughs and says, "I can fix silly little problems like that in my sleep."

 

Ughn.

 

Numair tells her to meditate and focus on the magic inside herself.

 

 

It takes Numair maybe a minute to build a magical glass wall between Daine's core self and her wild magic, preventing the magic from tainting/obscuring her self.

 

And here I sit, underwhelmed. Why not have a murder mystery in which the teen protagonist—after a couple hundred pages—finally plucks up the courage to enter the police station and say, "Hey, I think my friend didn't run away. I think he was murdered," and the desk sergeant replies, "Yeah, we already caught the lady who did it"?

 

Yes, the point was that Daine needed to trust her friends enough to tell them what had happened to her, but that doesn't mean that once she tells them her problem will/can/should be magically solved in under two minutes, without any further effort on her part.

 

See, this is one reason why this book feels children's lit rather than YA: "Do the right thing and everything will instantly be okay." Or maybe: "Talk to an adult and all your problems will be miraculously fixed."

 

(And, by the way, I'd hoped that this glass barrier would be shattered at some critical moment near/during the climax, and over the course of the next few books she'll have to learn to manage without it. But no. Of course not. Because this is the world of perfect magical fixes to every problem.)

 

Another Half-Hearted Theme!

 

Trust is not the only theme that I'm having a problem with; there's also the Be yourself without regard to the expectations of others theme.

 

Daine's the only female in her mother's family not to have the Gift (a certain form of magic), much to her mother's consternation and disappointment. Daine is, as a result, very touchy about the subject of the Gift, and her lack of it. (And by "touchy" I mean she fairly explodes with angst whenever she hears the word "Gift.")

 

Yet rather than coming to terms with her lack of Gift and moving on, she broods over it until she finds out she just has a different kind of magic. A super-rare, super-cool magic. So rather than Be yourself without regard to the expectations of others, Daine learns Be yourself without regard to the expectations of others BECAUSE YOU'RE SPECIALER THAN ALL OF THEM AND IF THEY KNEW HOW SPECIAL YOU ARE THEY'D TOTALLY FAINT:

 

 

Obviously it's necessary for the story that she have this magic, and I'm probably being too picky again, but this strikes me as the easy (and dull) use of the Be yourself idea. "Be yourself even when it's difficult" is significantly more powerful and interesting than "Be yourself because you're a special magical snowflake whom everyone will love," don't you think?

 

Another Poorly-Taught Lesson!

 

First, let me explain what happens in the story's final quarter.

 

Daine and company (including Onua, Queen Thayet, the knight Alanna, Mr. Wizard Numair, and all the youngsters training to become Riders, the country's elite mounted troops) arrive at Alanna's home castle (called Pirate's Swoop), where they're surrounded and besieged by troops and mages and immortal monsters sent by the evil neighboring empire. There are maybe 100 warriors inside the castle, and over 600 surrounding them—not counting the immortal monsters, mages, and siege machines.

 

Due to Daine's magic, she's the recipient of every animal's affection and loyalty (basically), so all the animals in the area want to help the besieged Daine by fighting her enemies. She won't hear of it. Like so, when George, the baron of Pirate's Swoop, asks:

 

 

George's response? He pats her arm and smiles and says (to paraphrase), "Well, just have them keep watch and tell us when the enemy's troops are on the move."

 

They're about to be slaughtered to a person. They have no chance of surviving without the animals' assistance. And George smiles and pats her arm and doesn't press the issue.

 

Daine endures a few variations of this conversation with other people, and spends a great deal of time and energy forcing the animals of Pirate's Swoop not to fight:

 

 

She eventually tells Onua why she won't let them join the battle:

 

 

Onua's response:

 

 

Realizing how selfish she's been, Daine directs the wild animals (and the enemy's mounts) in systematic sabotage that gives the good guys an advantage.

 

At this point in the book I'm thinking, Okay. One of the animals Daine is closest to will sacrifice themselves in the course of battle, and Daine will have to deal with the reality of letting her friends choose to fight for her. There will be crying. I'm ready for this.

 

And then . . . nothing happened.

 

Well, okay. A dragon arrives and sacrifices herself, but neither Daine nor I were emotionally attached to the dragon, so her sacrifice didn't move me. And anyway, she was replaced by her newborn daughter, whom Daine adopts; the loss of the adult dragon means nothing when the void is instantly filled by something even better (a baby dragon! to raise and play with! so cute!).

 

Shortly after the dragon's death, Daine's pony Cloud climbs the stairs to where an exhausted Daine stands on an open-air deck, and I'm immediately bracing myself for Cloud's death—especially when the Number One Evil Immortal Monster (a bird/human hybrid with feathers made of knives, more or less) arrives a moment later. Daine's so worn out she can barely move, much less avoid the monster's impending attack. But rather than bravely sacrificing herself to protect Daine, Cloud presses herself against Daine's side and . . . magically transfers energy to Daine, who's then able to lift her bow and kill the monster.

 

Now, I didn't want Cloud to die, but I was rather disappointed when she didn't.

 

The good guys win in short order, and Daine passes out from exhaustion for a couple days.

 

As for the wild animals Daine was so desperate to keep out of the battle? We don't learn about their fate until the epilogue: 

 

 

She was certain she'd be traumatized by any animal's death, but when she's told some did in fact die, she doesn't blink.

 

I can only conclude that the lesson here is: Let others make their own choices, even if you're afraid you'll be hurt as a result—because, ultimately, you won't be hurt, so letting them choose doesn't actually affect you.

 

Really, this book fails spectacularly at delivering/following up on its lessons.

 

Something Squicky!

 

Although there wasn't anything overtly romantic in Wild Magic, I felt a vague concern that Daine and Mr. Wizard Numair's relationship was heading into Dangerously Inappropriate territory. So I read some summaries of the other books in this series, and yep. They definitely fall in love.

 

The problem: Numair is twice Daine's age. In Wild Magic, Daine is thirteen and Numair is in his late twenties (age not specified beyond that). When they finally confess their love during the fourth book, Daine is sixteen and Numair is in his early thirties (age not specified beyond that in the summaries I read).

 

I just.

 

I feel the need to shower.

 

 

Wild Magic's ending is predictably warm and fluffy: the king and queen of Tortall (Jonathan and Thayet), the Lioness Alanna and her husband Baron George, and Mr. Wizard Numair all cheerfully argue over who gets to provide Daine (and her adopted dragon daughter) a home.

 

 

Really, there's nothing wrong with this—but it's all so pat and perfect that I immediately imagined a dumb family sitcom conclusion: all of them laughing together, then freezing in frame while the music plays and credits roll.

 

That's how this book felt to me, a dumb family sitcom where there are no hard lessons, no painful consequences, and everyone is everyone else's buddy. A lot of people love those sitcoms (if any of you are reading this, I'm sorry I called them dumb), and certainly a lot of people love this book. It just . . . wasn't for me.

 

Missing you,

 

Liam

Source: http://heyashers.com/2015/02/15/wild-magic