Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. They had been best friends since they were six, spending hot Minneapolis summers and cold Minneapolis winters together, dreaming of Hogwarts and Oz, superheroes and baseball. Now that they were eleven, it was weird for a boy and a girl to be best friends. But they couldn't help it -- Hazel and Jack fit, in that way you only read about in books. And they didn't fit anywhere else.
And then, one day, Jack just stopped talking to Hazel. And while her mom tried to tell her that this sometimes happens to friends at this age, Hazel had read enough stories to know that it's never that simple. And it turns out she was right. Jack's heart had been frozen, and he had been taken into the woods by a woman dressed in white to live in a palace made of ice. Now it's up to Hazel to venture into the woods after him.
Anne Ursu, acclaimed author of the Cronus Chronicles, has written a stunningly original fairy tale of modern-day America. Inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson story "The Snow Queen," Breadcrumbs is in turn a remarkable middle-grade adventure, a dazzling ode to the power of fantasy, and a heartbreaking meditation on how growing up is as much a choice as it is something that happens to us.

~Print copy, 312 pages
Published: 2011 by Walden Pond Press

Well, darn. I should know better by now that I get restless over books about growing up.

I loved the writing of this book. Beautiful voice, kind of American-ish and reference-y. Hazel is a lovely character; very creative, and misunderstood, an outsider in fifth grade, but she never gave up being creative. She daydreams, reads stories, and thinks in story terms. Exactly how I was. And still am.

But she was always a little dependent on Jack. And while I have little experience in friendships, I didn't really see... why. They had adventures, she could always count on him to not judge her, but she seemed very focused on him. She looked into his classroom and made faces at him while his teacher's back was turned, she met him outside... at one point, she remembers how they were pretending to face down a dragon, and when she suggested that she rescued him, he refused.

Gender played a rather nuanced role in this, I think. It's not just growing up. Yes, she changes over the course of the story, as she sees things that are real, not fairy tales, that are horrible and somewhat depressing. She walks into a woods wanting to bring her friend back, and she finds that anyone who is looking for something goes in there, and not all of them remain sane. But some of the things dropped in there, it had a way of... I don't know. Looking at things nuanced.

Hazel was always there to comfort Jack, through his mother's fall into depression, but she's not enough. It's stated that he willingly goes with the white witch, over and over again. She's always trying to bring him up, she's always looking at his drawings and smiling at him and trying to remind him who he really is. And the only mention of Jack reciprocating this is when he gives her a baseball signed by a famous player, right after Hazel's dad leaves.

So there's that. And, while we're mentioning stuff like this, everyone around her keeps telling her it's weird that she and Jack are still friends, even her mother. That a boy and a girl can't be friends. And even I can see that in real life, and it makes me a little sick to my stomach to think about that. That things get separated in real life, and in books, and I know it's being realistic, but... along with what I mentioned above, it sort of curbed my taste for it. I think it is a thoughtful commentary on gender, except with perhaps a bit of bias towards the male side. (Not that I blame Miss Ursu. We all grew up in patriarchy, as much as it turns my stomach.)

But the setting was amazing, as well as plenty of the characters she meets in the lost woods. A forest, where people looking for something end up? And it does strange things to their minds? And they almost never find their way out, because they almost never find what they're looking for? Pretty cool. And like I said, written pretty well, too.

And, of course, I'm a sucker for fairy tale re-tellings. And the white witch, she wasn't some mustache-twirling evil villain, but neither was she some shades-of-gray villain, either. She's sort of... well, a cold-hearted woman, scientific, almost. It's said, in the book, she "lives in a palace of ice with a heart to match."

So, overall, I... don't even know what I would give this. I would recommend it to most people, I suppose, though only if asked. Mostly, these sorts of books I just keep in my head and ponder over, never specifically recommending or un-recommending to people. Kind of literary-ish and fantasy-ish at the same time, like a myth or a fable. And I am not entirely sure what I pull out of it.

I guess I give it a 3.25 stars. I did like it, but it doesn't rate as high as a 4 stars, an actual "I loved it."

    

Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams

Just a year apart, the Chapman girls were as close as sisters could be. Hope could always count on Lizzie, and Lizzie could always count on Hope-- always.
But even sisters have secrets. Big secrets. And if Lizzie has her way, she'll take the biggest secret of all to her grave.
With Lizzie in lockdown, can Hope discover the truth and save her sister, or is it already too late?
Carol Lynch Williams's PEN Award-winning first novel in verse will captivate and haunt readers after the final page.

~Print copy, 484 pages
Published: 2010 by Simon and Schuster

Yes, the "novel in verse" part jumped out at me. Main reason I picked it up.

It's described as a thriller, I think, and the part of her sister trying to commit suicide is thrilling. But it's more... I don't know. Literary-ish? Contemporary-ish? I wouldn't really describe it as thriller.

The ending, of course, picks up and seems thriller-ish. But most of the novel is about Hope, told from her view, and how she's comparing the before and after, and trying to figure out after the fact why her sister would want to try and kill herself.

I suppose I expected something faster. Maybe a bit... lighter, perhaps even childish, since Hope is 12 years old. But it deals with some heavy stuff.

First of all, her father died -- her mother became a prostitute -- and she's mostly being raised by a neighbor. Her sister, her only true family, has now been locked in a mental hospital. She's clinging to her friend's innocence, her friend Mari, who's mostly concerned with boys and crushes on a celebrity, and trying to forget all but boys and crushes, as well, though it isn't really working.

And, while on the surface it does seem like that -- like a little girl, dealing with everything by going off with her friend -- it really seems more about the denial. She knows her sister kept a diary, that would explain why she tried to kill herself, why her mother's so desperate to find it. But it's only in the last 84 pages that she goes and actually reads it. Most of the almost-500 pages is memories, trips to the psychiatrist who's on Lizzie's case, and trips with Mari.

So, yea, it does seem kind of literary-ish. I saw the ending, how it'll fall out, from a mile away -- or, well, two hundred pages into the book -- after I got the whole prostitute-and-dead-father-and-practically-neglected thing. But I still don't... Well... I can't really say I regretted reading this book, even though it wasn't at all how I expected it to be. I've had a slight inclination to write off most MGs as childish, buying into the whole "mainstream fiction" thing, much as I've tried hard not to.

This opened my eyes to the fact that, yes, "literary" exists in every age group, and yes, while it isn't my favorite genre, I do recognize that it isn't all so... light-hearted and action-y.

And I have put more "-ish"s at the end of words in this post than I have since perhaps middle school. Or perhaps even before. But I don't have a definitive opinion on it. I give it a 3, sort of an okay, not because it is like everything else I usually read, but because I am sort of reserving my opinion. Which is to say, I don't know how I feel about it.

I would recommend it to anyone who actually likes literary, and knows this is literary.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

A vulnerable young girl wins a dream assignment on a big-time New York fashion magazine and finds herself plunged into a nightmare. An autobiographical account of Sylvia Plath's own mental breakdown and suicide attempt, THE BELL JAR is more than a confessional novel, it is a comic but painful statement of what happens to a woman's aspirations in a society that refuses to take them seriously... a society that expects electroshock to cure the despair of a sensitive, questioning young artist whose search for identity becomes a terrifying descent toward madness.

~Print copy, 216 pages
Published: 1972 by Bantum Books (originally published 1971 by Harper & Row)

I picked this up because... well, I'm not sure why. I knew it was depressing -- it does have the words mental breakdown, suicide attempt, and despair in the summary -- but I checked it from the library and read it, on a whim.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The suicide attempt isn't until farther in, past the halfway mark. It's sensitive and sad, not despairing, or overly gloomy, or angsty.

Where exactly do I start? The main character, Esther Greenwood, comes back from a glamorous New York assignment to her boring, suburban life, and becomes depressed. Not specifically because she came back from a city like New York to a "boring" life, mind you, like the summary suggests. But like real life, her depression doesn't need a reason. It just happens.

Depression, I feel, is a rather sensitive topic in fiction. I read many, many more books of character's angst, or their lovestruck woes, than I do about real mental illness. And it is a relief to see it here, displayed clearly, announcing, yes, this is what depression feels like and this is a way that I don't like it being treated. It shows the real fear and helplessness and lethargy of someone trying to understand this pale, restricted world with her pale, restricted senses, and honestly wanting to get out of it.

Now, I'm not going to say it's perfect. It's not always to my liking. But it's honest. Honest in an emotional way that you don't find often enough in fiction.

For example, her desire to lose her virginity. (This book's been out for 30 years. You can use some spoilers, if you haven't read it by now.) It isn't skipped over, it isn't smoothed over, because she's a girl. It's talked about.

And so is her depression. It's talked about. She tries to kill herself -- it's explained in detail how she tried (and failed) to do it, not just the attempt that landed her in the mental hospitals, but the ones before -- the ones her mother or her doctors didn't find out about, because she couldn't do it. It shows how she feels after the electroshock, both the first time with the guy doctor and the second time with the woman doctor. The feelings are acted out in subtle ways -- how she assumes everyone thinks terribly about her, how she feels "stuck under a bell jar." (I don't think that's a direct quote, but it is something similar.)

I don't like the jumps in topic. Sometimes, it is hard to follow. And I've never understood the whole "getting rid of your virginity" thing. (Obviously, that's not a quote at all.) Esther -- well, sometimes she is hard to connect with. She sort of makes it that way. She pushes everyone away, her neighbors, her family, and sometimes even the reader. But I don't consider that a fault with her, strangely enough, because it makes her that much realer.

In the end, I suppose, I don't mind this book. Not my favorite, maybe not something I'd reread, but certainly is thought-provoking and honest and sad. Sad books aren't thrown out of my books-to-read just because they're sad. But I suppose I would recommend this book to the sort of scholarly person who wants to ruminate on the sadder aspects of life, the ugly aspects like mental illness, that no one else seems to talk about -- especially in a 30-year-old book, about a woman in a very patriarchal world, who sticks out.

3.5 stars. (I'll round that to a 4.)
Have a blessed day.

 

Letters to Life: For the Sake of Diversity!

Dear People of Everywhere:

There's a thing in psychology. A big question. It circles pretty much everything people-related: is it nature or nurture?

I like this question. It's a good question to ask about things. Are you doing this because you are born with it in your veins, or are you doing it because you were raised with it? I don't really see other ways to the why behind any question. After all, nurture is there every time in your life; it's not a question of childhood, it's a question of environment.

For example: I'm a Baptist Christian. Happy to be one, actually. And I would guess that it might have something to do with the fact that the preschool I attended once upon a time also happens to double as my church today. Some of my earliest memories took place there: laughing and running around the playground outside, the stained glass windows of the sanctuary, the Sunday school/preschool classroom on the ground floor with its rug with the alphabet on it... happy times.

As I believe it, God gave us free will, which is why religion can be a nurture question, and not a nature question.

What does this have to do with anything? I assume that you don't visit this blog to listen to my religious views. (Really, though, it's about all my views. Including my religious views.) This example is just a lead-up to my main point.

Which, I suppose, goes along the lines of: why judge people on a matter of nature, when there are things to disagree with about nurture?

Not that I'm advocating prejudice of any kind. But I realize that wariness over differences can almost be counted as nature nowadays. We are nurtured from such a young age over trivial things, that it really can seem like nature. (See toy advertising words and gendered culture.)

When I say "trivial things," I mean by my perspective. The broad things, like gender and sexual orientation and skin color. That prejudice is taught from a very early age indeed. (I mean, have you ever walked down a children's toys aisle? All pink down one side, all blue down the other. It's disturbing. I preferred the gender-neutral libraries as a kid.) Not to say they are trivial to everyone, just that they are not the small, everyday things like how someone's voice is pitched at just that most annoying pitch, and that song that you hate is that person's favorite song. I pay attention to those smaller things. (I don't talk to people often, so really, by "trivial", I mean the things I don't keep an opinion on when I meet you. I keep an opinion only on whether you've annoyed me by interrupting my reading for a reason I don't care about.)

In books, you see things pretty clearly. How many times do we rip on Bella for being a weak, clingy, obsessive girl? And then think that perhaps the story would've been better if it was Edward's. (Or at least, that's what I do. I'm ashamed to say, sexist culture sneaks into my brain sometimes, too.)

I can think of many instances. One time, I was at B&N with my mom (who pays for the books I buy), and she refused to let me buy one about a boy who was gay-bashed. The MC wasn't even the gay boy; it was a female friend of the gay boy. (Of course, that was awhile ago and I can't remember its title or price; but my mother is of the "love the sinner, hate the sin" camp. I do imagine that sexual orientation was a factor.)

Now, gender, sexual orientation, skin color -- these are nature things. Not nurture. The only "nurture" thing about it is the way you look at it. I would hope I am such a tolerant, open-minded person because I have read all sorts of books since kindergarten. I would suspect people who are misogynistic are that way because either: a.) they have been actively taught that; or b.) because they honestly think society is already equal, and therefore misogyny can't exist. 

These things should not matter. It's just the way we're born. It's us who have made this matter.

Keep in mind I'm a teenager and not exactly an expert, but do I have to be? Even toddlers can tell the difference between nature and nurture. How ridiculous would it sound if someone told you that you chose the wrong skin color? (Don't get me started on tanning booths, whitewashing on YA covers, or any other such hogwash.)

So, why is so hard to find these natural things in books? It's not so bad, I gather, here in 2013. I will actively seek out books with a different culture, a woman protagonist, or a LGBTQ protag (I'm pretty sure there are more letters in there somewhere...), so I couldn't tell you about a dearth of them. But I know that the quality of them can be gosh-awful, a lot more than books about straight white guys might be. Particularly when it comes to sex.

Or perhaps it's not bad writing, per se, just harsher judgement from the reader. I don't know. But, as the title of this post implies, I would imagine it's the former, there being some need nowadays to toss in diversity, but seemingly no reason to write it well. Any subtle sexism or racism can be blamed on the character in question -- "It's not that she's a girl, it's her character." Which is a terrible argument, considering that an author (while character's character seems like an imaginary friend who chooses their own personality) does have a small ounce of control over how s/he expresses that character.

Well, so... readers' harsher judgment might be part of that. We will point out anything perceived as weak. Not all of us, not with every character. But it's there.

If the world were up to me, there would be an easy solution: focus on and develop such diverse characters as you do the straight white guy characters. Readers would then love them, because they are good characters. Unfortunately, the world is not up to me, and people will believe whatever they want to about a certain character -- or not believe at all, as the case may be.

Thankfully, there are diverse characters we can all love and hope for a better literary future because of: Hermione Granger, Holly Short (who does happen to be a POC, even if she's whitewashed in the graphic novels), Eona... (I'm having trouble coming up with LGBTQ characters. I avoid romance on principle, and I somehow think that LGBTQ ended a rather small niche in mainstream genre fiction, anyways, thanks to culture.)

I am one author. Not even published yet. But I know, quite deeply, that I will never consciously add a character in just for the sake of diversity. And, considering the fact I write epic YA fantasy, I have a feeling that most of my main characters will be diverse, and complex because of their diversity. I strongly believe that differences unite us all the more.

This one author here, will do her best to help diverse characters become real. I can only hope others will follow suit; and that maybe, just maybe -- in some distant future -- my words and worlds will help a change for the better for diversity,without making diversity seem like a cheap character trick that needs to tossed in due to social movements.

Sincerely,
JDM -- daydreamer, fantasy writer, avid reader.
      

Letters to Life: On Female Characters

Dear SFF readers, writers, publishing peoples, and all-around decent folk --

I've recently been reading internet articles, as is my wont, on the representation of females in fiction.

Now, I'm a teenager who reads mostly YA. Don't kid yourselves, if you think this is an expert opinion. In fact, I hope you point out any flaws in my arguments in the comments section, or tell me what you think are the strong points. That is how people learn and grow.

But there is lots of talk about "strong female characters." (From my vantage point, which isn't exactly temporal. Namely, these articles could've been written anytime from last week to years ago.)

Now, why would I take part in such a discussion? Why should I? I am no expert, not even in logic or argument-making. In fact, I am the sort of person who doesn't even think logic rules the world -- I tend to think logic and argument are only one aspect of life, just as music and emotion and image and language are all just another part. And it's your choice to think which is more important. But I need to say something, and have a conversation about it, instead of letting it fester in my soul.

That being said, logic and argument do amount to something. It has weight behind it, like every other human force. And there is a certain logic that defines literature, just as there is emotion in music and structure in art and language in argument. Do you know what that logic is?

That there is no one personality type; there are as many types of people in fiction (and nonfiction) as there is in real life. And that means that yes, there are your typical Strong Female Characters in real life, and yes, there are some in literature. But that doesn't mean your definition should make up the majority.

It's the age-old trope that makes these female characters just that - a trope. You can bring them to life all you want, and people will complain that you're just submitting to a trope. That they are nothing but a stock character. (Remember that term from English class?) And I'm sick of seeing and reading it. But I want them in here, just the same.

Let's examine the typical traits of a Strong Female Character, shall we? Silent, strong, usually career-oriented and usually one of the few women in their field (and, of course, usually a military, scientific, or otherwise male-dominated field). Not weepy, or emotional, or terribly simple-minded. And of course, complex, internally-struggling, angry and happy and world-weary at the same time...

What was that? That last sentence doesn't ring true? Well, it should. Because that's my main point here: the "Strong Female Character" should be more than her typical definition. She should be as real-life as, well, real life.

I mean, what other type of female is there? Everyone is strong in their own way, pardoning my abrupt train of thought. (And jump in argument; bear with me, please.) What I mean is, what is the definition of weakness, when you think of a Strong Female Character? Emotional? Because everyone has emotion. Guys, especially, are prone to anger in fiction. That's an emotion, right? Anger? That hasn't suddenly morphed into a separate category, some extension of thought? Guys can be prone to theatrical heroism. Being melodramatic is a mix of thought and emotion, true, but it's how we exaggerate and how we show emotion. I mean, the typical guy trope -- the hero who has to save the world, and he does it his own way.

Emotion isn't a weakness. Guys, real life and in fiction, can have it. It's not a weakness, for them; in fact, it's usually portrayed in media as an abusive man controlling his wife or family; it's portrayed as the lust and "love" for the forces of good and for, again, their family. Batman is allowed to become a hero after his parents die, out of grief and a want for revenge. All of those crime shows, following childhood trauma to abusive present. (Or to a present of seeking out such dangerous relationships, but that's usually portrayed a "woman" thing.)

So why can't Strong Females have it? Emotions are not exclusively female or "weak." So... what else? Do you mean physical weakness? That's a characteristic of Strong Females and males alike. The whole "Look at me, I can shoot a gun, I can kick your sorry butt to kingdom come, I catch you doing something misogynistic and I will show you how manlike my reflexes are?" No one I know of can manage it, but in Sci-fi/fantasy, go ahead! (Really. No sarcasm. I come from a place where people have inane conversations and do chores, not kick butt.)

Um... do you mean the whole being-the-only-one-of-my-gender-in-this-field? Because... well, that doesn't look strong. Actually, that doesn't even reflect on the character in my opinion -- it just makes a whole system look weak. I mean, no one wants a field where both genders aren't at play. It takes two to make a family, and it takes two to make bombs. Ingenuity comes to both genders, and it's stupid to refuse an entire gender's ingenuity based solely on their gender. I'm all for subjectivity, but that's not a good subjectivity to go by. Go by something like, "They don't like biology, so they can't work in our medical facilities." That's a much more decent subjective measure than "Oh, she's a girl."

So... what is weak? What is the opposite, or indeed anything other than, this Strong Female Character? Which brings me back to my first point -- why are you making this a stock character/trope?

I would guess you mean "as opposed to the lack of other female characters in the novel, this one token girl is a Strong Person, because we don't have any others but vague mentions." I've heard of a few novels like that. I don't read many, thankfully. It's not really a good thing, this trope. There are plenty of strong characters who are not this mental image of military-and-rebellious.

Now, did I write this just to be whiny? No, I have an Easy Positive Solution.    

Perhaps we should take a leaf from my favorite age group's notebook: write many, many books from the POV of girls/women. Adult fiction, you heard me. And I don't mean, simple, flat characters written for the Sake of Diversity. (More on that particular rant some other day.) I mean, real-life characters. The sort of characters we always strive to write about, because no one likes flat, simple-minded "weak" characters. The same ones you seem intent to avoid with the trope in the first place.

In fact, here's an Easy Test to administer and pass -- the Bechdel Test. The questions are simple.
1. Are there at least two women in it?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk about something other than men?
Guys, this isn't a hard test to pass. It's not even asking to make them major or main characters, just that you include them. It does wonders for that audience you're actively pushing away. (Namely, me. Though people like me are included, as well.)

In YA, a lot of novels are published by women, for girls. Predominantly. And there's a reason I prefer that age group -- because, while I hate the romance, I can identify with strong characters who happen to be female. Because, they can't be anything but strong.

Sincerely,
JDM -- a dreamer of impossibly diverse dreams, a thinker of more than logic, and a Girl Who Loves Strength (But Knows There's More than One Type)

P.S. This Lorde quote was originally intended for real-life racism. I kind of consider fictional people to be their own human race, only they inhabit a different world. But all the same, I don't mean this quote to look out-of-context and mean. Diversity, as I said, is a whole 'nother blog post, as is For the Sake of Diversity.

Follow Friday #33

Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee.

Q: Write a letter to your favorite character. Rant, rave, or gush... just pretend like they are real and you just want to let them know a "few things".

Dear Emily Strange,

You. Are. Awesome. 'Nuff said.

You are a genius; you are a weird genius, who knows how to build a golem and an amnesia machine and a duplicator; you are an antisocial genius, who is destined to become a Dark Aunt with magical black rock...

In my book, you are one of those few lady characters who was written right. I love how you can invent the best things ever -- like, as I mentioned, a duplicator -- and how you have the wierdest, randomest talents.

I don't know why more people wouldn't want to be friends with a cat-loving, skateboard master, sewer-mural-painting prankster such as yourself. Their loss.

Sincerely,
JDanielleM.

(*Emily the Strange: the Lost Days by Rob Reger. Published: 2009 by HarperTeen. It's worth reading, guys.*)

Follow Friday #26

[I totally forgot to do this last week! It took me until now to realize - my brain is all fuzzy from writing and revising. Oh, and school stuffs, too. Sorry for that!]

Anyways, Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee.

Q: Activity! Who do you want to be? If you could choose any character from a book. What do you think that character looks like and what do you have in common?

Ooh, Saphira!! I would totally love to be a dragon. I have, like, nothing in common, but it still counts, right?

Seriously, though, I think... I don't know. There's so many to choose from. Perhaps Meggie, from Inkheart by Cornelia Funke? We both love books; not to mention, she gets to literally go inside one of her books.

Perhaps Elizabeth from The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman - She gets a job at a sort of library, except instead of trading just books, they trade EVERYTHING. I read this book a couple years or so ago, so I can't remember Elizabeth too well, but... a library. That trades everything. (One of the things they traded, which really stuck out in my mind, was Marie Antoinette's favorite wig. Not exactly your typical library fare.) Also, they have a secret room full of magical items from Grimm fairy tales. Meep!
I'd keep going on (and on) about who I'd like to be, but three's enough, I suppose. I am so tempted to keep going, but I don't want to make this blog post a mile long.

Who did you choose? Have a blessed weekend!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

"How does it feel, anyway?"
"How does what feel?"
"When you take one of those books?"
At that moment, she chose to keep still. If he wanted an answer, he'd have to come back, and he did. "Well?" he asked, but again, it was the boy who replied, before Liesel could even open her motuh. "It feels good, doesn't it? To steal something back."
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War 2, Death relates the story of Liesel -- a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as her neighbors.

~Print copy (from the library), 550 pages
Published: 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf (New York)

How did I feel about this book? ....

It didn't feel worth two weeks of my time. Yes, it was November, and especially in those last two weeks when I was pounding away the words (on the brightside: I did make it past 50,000 words!), but two weeks is a long time for me to spend on a book.

To put that into perspective, it also took me two weeks to read Lord of the Rings: the entire trilogy -- which put together in a one-volume edition is over 1,000 pages. The Book Thief is half that, and took the same amount of time.

This wasn't one of those "I'm savoring it" type of books, either -- it was more sheer stubbornness and loyalty to reading that I stuck through. Let me tell you why:

1. I could not really connect with Liesel. This story is told from Death's POV: an unusual and interesting character to tell a story through, I grant you, but it did not bring me closer to the story. In fact, it jumped perspective to Liesel's foster father Papa or Hans several times, and occassionally to the Jewish man they were hiding, Max.

It didn't seem an organized jump around in POV, either: the whimsical jumps from what Max was doing, to flashbacks of Liesel's friend Rudy, to Hans's time in WW1 and why they were hiding the Jew in the 1st place was too scattered for me to connect (which is an amazing feat - I can connect things randomly better than most people I know).

2. Another reason is the clumsy attempt at romance, especially in the second half of the novel. I don't want to give too much of this part away, since it would give away the ending, but I don't like romance in the best of terms and when you spring it on me at the end of the book, I'm unsettled.

3. The ending. That ending. I wanted... well, not that. And it didn't help that there was like, a chapter or two (literally) seemingly dedicated to bluntly foreshadowing (foretelling?) the ending. I could guess at the ending about halfway in, and I prefer a surprise. Preferably a happy surprise.

4. It was kind of episodic. You know, like the Scarlet Letter? Anotehr book I don't particularly like? She spent a lot of time happy, as well. You expect a certain amount of suffering, which increases throughout the book at a somewhat steady rate, and then they get to Climax and either they're suffering ends or they lose. Well, The Book Thief more tells an event, then she relaxes, then another event occurs, and so on. It's almost a biography, a sort of cataloguing of personal events.

Let me give you an example: there is a chapter on what she does over the summer: reading from a stolen book, playing soccer, and reading on the floor of the mayor's floor of the library, as the mayor's grieving wife sits and watches. There are chapters of Hans's time in WW1, of Max's time getting to their house, and a flashback to an incident of Rudy's past that really only reflects on Rudy's personality/quirks, not really advancing the book.

This wasn't your typical "arc" -- plot wise. You could make a case for character-wise. It was more, something came up, something was dealt with, all the way up to the end, which was (as I've always had a tic about) pretty much a chance ending.


I am not critisizing Zusak's writing capabilities whatsoever, really. I am just not thrilled about it -- it's just not my cup of tea. And I read it at the worst possible time, when I'm trying to write a fantasy novel in a month.

There were good aspects of it. I mean, I already said that Death is an interesting POV. It's not often I come across a "unique" (in my sense of the word) main character. And thought Death isn't an MC per say, you could argue that, since it's a war and he does show up every time someone dies (which is kind of often during this book) so he could be considered, in my opinion, a rather cool MC.

I also like the time period, and some of the quirks of this particular cast of characters. Not the bloodshed of war, mind you: I'm just a bit of a history lover, and wars/cultures/what-is-or-was-going-on in other countries (mostly) interest me.  And Hans played the accordian, and that accordian played an important part in this book, which is kind of amazing. I've never heard an accordian, but it's like the wierdest, coolest-looking instrument ever, next to the guitar.

Liesel herself seemed kind of bland and ordinary to me; her friend, Rudy, was kind of meh, but he had a trouble-making side and he has a big family, which I can relate to. (Not the trouble-making, the big family -- I don't remember a time I've gotten in trouble for anything other than reading a book at inappropriate times).

In all, I would give this book a 2.5. I don't feel like putting a picture on this post, so I'm just going to leave it at that. I might recommend it to other people, if they love WW2 and aren't quite so... like me. It's just overall not my cup of tea.

[Sorry this is so late, too -- I've had homework up to my ears, I've just begun editing my completed nano project, and my throat is killing me. Have you ever tried writing an essay, a blog post, and highlighting what you need to edit in your first draft, all while you have a sore throat, a somewhat stuffed-up nose, and a wierd almost-cough? It's bad.]

Anyways, have a blessed Monday, if there is such a thing! And while I'm at it, have a happy Tuesday! 

On Writing Plays for Writing Exercises

So, this is a short post, because I am super-duper-extra-busy.

Why am I super-duper-extra-busy, you ask? Because my mother said if I get the laundry room sorted out (seriously, it looks like some sort of cloth bomb went off in there), if I take out the trash, do the dishes, and clean the litterboxes... THEN she'll take me to Barnes and Noble and buy me TWO BOOKS.

You know you're an avid reader when you're so psyched to get two books that you'll do that list of chores.

But this was not the point of my post. I meant to talk to you about plays. In my creative writing class today (I have it as a school elective, in-case-you-didn't-know), we're starting plays, to "branch out from regular fiction." That's not even something my teacher said. That's what I percieved from this particular class.

We're supposed to write a one-act play, on anything we so desire to write about. How does this relate to us novel-writers?

It turns out that writing a play is harder than it seems. Especially me, since I've read about one play in the entirity of my life: The Crucible.* There is generally no narrative, no pages-and-pages to spread your creative description and dialogue and character-building (oh my!). In this case, we have 20 pages of a one-act story to fill out. The. Entire. Story.

With plays, most of it is told through dialogue and those little italicized stage directions. The setting, the character-fleshing-out, the tension and conflict and whatever else you want to throw into the mix. This is a pretty excellent way to spread your creative roots.

Think of a tree - it needs to spread its roots over lots of area; in the same way, you need to spread your creativity over a lot of different types of literature. Including plays. And it is a decent way to develop the acquired skill of showing, not telling.

Those stage directions are a lot of work, but they show most of the tension. And not those crazy symbols you place in the setting ("the curtains are blue, indicating his sadness!"), but the actions of the characters. Frowning, leaning forward, that sort of thing.

It also has a small cast of characters. At least the one-act play does. This provides a chance to really know and develop small groups of people. Which is a helpful tool in any writer's toolbox, in my opinion.

Movies are kind of the same thing, but this one-act play doesn't switch scenes so often. In plays, you don't have months and a camera; people are performing it live. So you really need to make it all count.

So, instead of writing short stories or a short spiff for exercising your creative muscle, maybe try a one-act play. Who knows, it might help novel-writing more than you think.

How about you? What do you think of plays? Have a blessed Wednesday!


*I recommend reading the Crucible, if you never have. I thought that play was hilarious. They were all running around screaming, "WITCH!! :O" The paperwork I did on it for English class wasn't so funny, though.

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

Stealing Beauty
You saw me before I saw you.
A girl: Gemma, at the airport, on her way to a family vacation.
You had that look in your eyes.
A guy: Ty, rugged, tan, too old, oddly familiar, eyes blue as ice.
Like you wanted me.
She steps away. For just a second. He pays for her drink. And drugs it.
Wanted me for a long time.
He takes her, before she even knows what's happening.
To sand and heat. To emptiness and isolation. To nowhere.
And expects her to love him.
Written as a letter from a victim to her captor, this is Gemma's desperate story for survival. Ty has stolen her bosy. Against every instinct screaming inside her, will he also steal Gemma's heart?

~Print copy, 299 pages
Published: 2010 by Chicken House

Where do I begin with this novel?

First of all, there's Gemma. She's an ordinary London girl: she feels her parents are too out-of-touch with her. As they're waiting in the airport to go to Vietnam, she steps into a coffee place for a drink, and Ty offers to buy a drink for her. She thinks he's handsome; but he drugs her coffee and smuggles her through the airport, onto a plane to Australia.

Once there, he takes her out into the unmapped desert, where he has a home set up for the two of them.

Ty is referred to as "you" the entire novel. It's a strange way to write a book; I like it. A romance, if I bothered to pick it up, should read like that. It makes things more intimate, more emotional. And even though he's stalked her since she was ten, kidnapped her, and took her miles from home, it still is a little bit romance-ish.

Gemma doesn't know how to feel about him. He's a stranger to her: somewhat familiar, since he's been stalking her since she was ten, but still a stranger. The entire novel, all she thinks about is escape and who this person is.

We learn Ty's backstory this way, through Gemma's questions. In my opinion, Ty was more realistic than Gemma was. A wild man, grown up among Australia's particularly wild wilderness.

What dampened my lovely opinion of this novel was the ending. I don't know: I guess I wanted a somewhat different ending. I can't tell you specifically what disappointed me, as that is what's known as spoilers.

There is a decent amount of swearing in this. And a little bit of nudity. But no sex. It was a bit of a damper as well, but life ain't perfect. There'll be swearing in a lot of books I come across, especially since I read so much YA.

The worldbuilding is amazing. Described in colors and emptiness. I suppose it has to be, being quite a part of the plot (no people around, no hope of rescue).
 
But overall, it's a decent novel. If it's your cup of tea. (Cup of tea. The main character's from London. Ohgoodness, excuse that.) I give it a 3.5 in my humble opinion. So, rounded to 4 by default.

[By the way, I am up to 7900 words on Nano. Whoot!]

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. After a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrongand Chloe discovers a dead body floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away -- away from home, away from Ruby.
But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns home at last, she finds a precarious and deadly balance waiting for her. As Chloe flirts with the truth Chloe has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complicated bonds of sisterhood.
Imaginary Girls is a masterfully distorted vision of family with twists that beg for their secrets to be kept.

~Print copy, 346 pages
Published: 2011 by Penguin Group USA

I didn't particularly enjoy this story, and I didn't hate it especially. It was somewhat... forgettable, in my lonely opinion.

Chloe is completely dependent upon her sister, Ruby. Ruby is the mysterious, beautiful, and manipulative girl who can control the entire town. Enough to make people come back to life.

When Chloe is 14, she swims in the reservoir, fully intending to reach the other side and come back. But halfway there, she finds the dead body of a girl named London. The way the book is written, I believe Chloe was freaked out enough to leave their tiny town to go live with her father, though the summary there says she was forced.

Anyways, two years later Ruby shows up and says Chloe should come back. So Chloe does, and when she arrives in their small town, home again at last, she sees London. Alive.

As the story goes on, Chloe comes to realize just how much control her sister really has over this town.

One thing I disliked about this book was Chloe. She was so dependent. I felt like she had no thoughts of her own, or if she did, they were petty things meant to lash out at her sister's sudden rules. Things like sleeping with a guy Ruby doesn't approve of, smoking in a cemetary, dipping one toe in the water of the reservoir that Ruby specifically told her never to go near.

I have an older sister and two younger sisters. None of us are quite that dependent on each other. True, our mother isn't an absent drunk like Chloe's is. But still, I just cannot connect with such a level of dependence on each other.

I felt this would've been a better book if written from Ruby's point of view. She was a much more... fleshed out character. You know what I mean? More alive. Chloe felt like a weak, diluted version of reality.

I liked the writing style, though. It was... on the border of colloquial and proper English. The incohesive way a person thinks mixed with better grammar.  It made the whole book seems mysterious and incohesive even as it made perfect, linear sense.

There is swearing and vague mentions of sex. Not gory detail or anything, just mentioning that she did have sex. Not my cup of tea, you understand. Yea, it's a part of teenagerhood, thanks to stupid society, but I personally plan to do neither. Ever, or at least not any time soon.

Some of this also felt a little contrived. I put it down two nights ago (as I'm writing this post, on Saturday) and I forget the general places where I found such contrivances, but I remembering thinking, that was pure chance. What would've happened if that hadn't happened? Would this have made the story better than it is now?

I didn't mind the world-building. There are mentions of how the town is laid out, the mountains nearby, it's up North, etc.

The most detailed part of the world is the reservoir, though. Ruby has been telling Chloe of how New Yorkers bought the land from many towns to make the reservoir, but one town refused to leave. This town stayed there, even as the water came rushing in, and now they were all still alive at the bottom of the reservoir, refusing to give up, refusing to leave. This is a major plot point and a pretty decent one at that. Mysterious, undead towns at the bottom of a reservoir? Awesome.

So, I liked Ruby, the world, and the writing. I disliked the swearing, the contrivances in places, and Chloe. This is a sort of so-so book. I give it a three.

[As a side note, the edges of Hurricane Sandy are about to hit us (today, on Monday). Our power might flicker out for I don't know how long. No school today, though! Meep! :) And my cat had three kittens last week: one of them is a runt, so I'll be busy hand-feeding it some artificial milk, as well. This all amounts to, I don't know if I'll be able to post on Wednesday or not.]

The Book of Names by D. Barkley Briggs

Magic. Ancient portals. What if the legends are true?
Teen brothers Hadyn and Ewan Barlow are forced to adjust to a depressing new life when tragedy strikes their home. Then a secret viking runestone opens the door to a world in peril, and they discover a crisis larger than their own pain.
In the Hidden Lands of Karac Tor, names are stolen from the young and darkness spreads. Hadyn and Barlow become targets of war, forcing them to make a reluctant choice: join the battle or risk losing each other and their home forever.

Print copy, 379 pages
Published: 2008 by NavPress

This story begins with an unhappy city boy, in a miserable new small town, and a regular gray day.

Sounds kind of cliche. I admit, I found this book rather the same way. Now, don't get me wrong - just look at that summary! - there are good, original parts. But it kind of felt like the Lord of the Rings to me. And I should know because it took me two freakin' weeks to read LoTR.

Let me give you my reasons why. First, it felt bogged down with description. There is an entire page devoted to the commerce of a town called Threefork, which was just another destination. It was near the entrance to the secret gnome trail that would leave to the evil sorceress' tower (LoTR also features a dark tower, by the way). But we didn't really need to know what goods come from where - where the furs and metals come from, which country they get wheat from, where does the fish come from. We didn't need to know. There are also other sections, but this is the first that came to mind.

Another, related point is the amount of myth. The amount of legend they tell each other. How often do I get to sit around and tell other people this long story from ancient days about beings they've never heard of? Granted, I wasn't transplanted into some medieval world where they DO believe that stuff, but still.

The main characters both want to go home to the Shire Missouri and pretend this adventure isn't happening.

Finally, it felt a little disorganized. This isn't strictly a LoTR thing, though I see it there, too. Actually, it's a pretty common book thing: it doesn't... tie together neatly. It doesn't flow perfectly. There are bumps and snags in the plot, or the character arc, or wherever. I felt it: it didn't catch my spark. It's something I can't quite name.

So, now I get to the good points.

First of all, there is a witch named Nemesia, who is a pretty decent villain. Still a little stereotypical - wears dark, seductive clothing, has a special magical staff, is prone to monologues - but still, she stole the names and identities of an entire generation. Every teenager in Karac Tor: they all become these empty shells, "walking bombs" as she calls them. Begs the question, "How does a medieval-seeming sorceress know what a bomb is?" But still, a pretty cool, creepy idea.

Second of all, it is chock-full of magic. From making rocks glow like candles to making magic music, it's pretty lovely. I'm a sucker for magic stories.

And, well, that summary. The mysterious runestones. I am quite fascinated with mythology, and there are definitely echoes of it in this story.

I'm sorry to say the characters were not much of a good point. They almost don't deserve a point. Sure, Ewan's magic music and Hadyn being able to feel the true name of stuff were pretty cool, but when I think of this book I think of Nemesia and magic.

Overall, this was a so-so book. Not to be scathing, but I felt it a little cliched - almost LoTR, except it involves Earth. I give it a 3, out of fairness to the points I like, but it felt a little lacking.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with "the deathless man". But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her -- the legend of the tiger's wife.

~Print copy, 338 pages
Published: 2011 by Random House

(Just to inform you, Tea Obreht actually has an accent over the e in Tea, but I don't know how to type such a thing in a blog post.)

Let me tell you first what I THOUGHT this novel would be like. I thought it would be this Natalia actively searching for the clues through the book, where we learn the story of the tiger's wife and the deathless man and her grandfather's death in bits and pieces, as she does.

In actuality, this book reads more as a memoir. At first, I was confused, because I honestly thought this was a memoir when I thought it was fiction, but no. It's fiction.This book annoyed me for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it sounds like a memoir.

The book starts off with a memory of her when she was young, visiting the zoo to look at the tigers. This is innocent enough. The next chapter switches over to her in the "present day", where she is taking medicine to orphans across the border of who-knows-what into who-knows-where. (Names of these countries weren't mentioned.)

What irked me the most, is that while there is plenty of detail into secondary and even tertiary characters' back stories (this actually accounted for a lot if not most of the book), there isn't much about the present day. The city where she lives is just that -- The City. I don't understand what this "war" is about, why it's torn this country into two countries, and quite frankly, I'd have been more interested in the war than in this Natalia.

Also, she doesn't piece together the story of the tiger's wife -- she spoon-feeds us it. It was a sort of, "Let's jump forward in time; now that I've gathered together the pieces, here's how that story played out..." This was confusing, because it was jumbled together with the present-day, the flashback of her own life, and the back story of the characters in the tiger's story.

The present-day actually isn't focused on: not her grandfather's death, which is written off as a misunderstanding, not her grief or her work, not even of her gathering information. This accounts for the least number of pages in the entire book. It's mostly flashbacks and telling us (rather than showing) the stories of the deathless man and the tiger's wife.

With all that said and done, I didn't mind the stories themselves. I preferred the tiger's wife and the deathless man over the main character of the book. The back stories were amusing (to my eye; most people might think of them as touching/tragic), but really, it wasn't necessary to hear the sob story of Luka the abusive butcher. Also, nothing wring with the writing grammar-wise, or physically wrong (as with all those sentence, phrase, setting, etc stuffs). It was more emotionally wrong; invested in the wrong part of the story.

This really only pulled through for me on those stories and the last paragraph on the last page. It's pretty much the reason I didn't set it down and walk away.

Overall, though I hate to say this, I started this with high hopes and was disappointed. It felt only loosely organized, and most of it was spoon-feeding me the stories. I don't know if this was because I'm used to YA and this is an adult novel, or if it's just the way it's written.

Now, let me tell you that this is completely subjective. I am responsible for my opinions, yes, but I am not responsible for your reactions to them. You may love this novel to death, but it's just not my type. As I said, there isn't anything "wrong" with this story, I just felt it was awfully off-course.

I give this 2.5 stars, but I'm nice enough to round up.

    

On Updates and Inspiration

This is just a friendly post, from me (obviously). And again, thank y'all for letting me reach 100 followers! I am quite happy right now.

I've posted a glossary page, so if you don't understand a phrase I use, check there. If it's not there, comment on the post (whichever one I use it in) and I'll add it. You can now follow by email, if you don't have blogger (i.e. you have wordpress or livewritethrive or something else). Also, I put some cute little fish to the side there, because I am like that. But, moving on.

I just came back from Sunday School (which my mother teaches), and I am already feeling better. There's nothing quite like comparing your troubles to Job* to make you feel lucky.


My computer is acting a little wonky today, so this will be short. I can't promise sweet. I'll spend the rest of today doing homework, writing, and listening to Christian music, because Sunday School inspires me that much.




This post isn't meant to advertise my religion, I swear. It leads up to my point.

I've felt out of luck and inspiration for awhile now, and though I have plenty of interest and motive in my writing, I haven't felt motivated or interested to DO it. Putting things in practice tends to be harder than thinking about them.

It took a reminder of Job's sufferings to stoke the ashes of my interest into a fire again. It gave me a serious metaphorical talking-to: Danielle, you need to write this poor girl's story. She needs a chance to be alive, even if you are the only person to read the manuscript.

Well, somewhat. Danielle's my middle name, so obviously the lesson referred to me by my first. But I like keeping online and offline seperate, and it's irrelevant to the world for now.

But what I mean to say is, I've found my inspiration. I found it through my religion. What do you find yours through?

I pinned up the psalm above to my bedroom wall, and will try and print out a few verses from Job to help keep my candle-flame of passion from becoming ashes again.

You may find yours through sports, family, friends, future-readers, whatever. You may find yours through religion like me, or through more earthly, grounded matters. Whatever it is, I dare you to pull something out to remind you of my lesson: writing is hard, but it's worth it.

I dare you to remind yourself every day, to keep you on track and lucky.

*Job was a rich, happy, dutiful man in the Old Testament. God decides to test his faith by taking everything he owns: his children die, his servants and animals are killed by invaders, he himself becomes covered in boils, all in the space of hours or days. But no matter what, Job never blames God, and God rewards him with twice the animals and servants; another eleven children; and Job lives to be 140 years old. Happy ending.

Have a blessed Sunday and enjoy your week! I have a book review tomorrow and Follow Friday on Friday. I don't know about Wednesday.  

On Writing Advice: Acceptance

For my AP Psychology class, I have to do an assignment that involves reading a non-fiction book called Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell.

Now, admit it. No matter what genre you like, that is a pretty intriguing title. It is all about the "adaptive unconscious", which is the part of your brain that makes snap decisions based on very little experience. It automatically processes all the information in a given situation and makes a decision on how to act. This means that things like predicting if your marriage will end in divorce or whether or not something is a fake can be found out not within months but minutes.

So I started reading it and answering the assigned questions, and I come across this section that would apply to writing incredibly well, in my opinion.

If you know what improv is, then you'll know how hard it would seem. Making up witty dialogue and a play on the spot; I don't know about you, but I'm more inclined to think about that sort of thing for hours, analyzing the options, the outcomes, and pretty much every possible scenario. Improv is the opposite.

There are rules to writing that lead you to be a better writer, no matter your skill level. It is what keeps writing from being a sticky pile of atrociousness. Well, improv also has rules, and one of these is something I don't see very often in books.

Let your characters accept what is happening to them.

 

I read a lot of books that come across as angsty and vapid because the MCs always complain that this can't be real: The Iron King by Julie Kagawa - the MC thinks that there were no such things as fairies; Stoneheart by Charles Fletcher - the MC refuses to believe in the living statues; and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol - Alice believes this is all a wierd dream.

Now, these aren't bad - in fact, I find Alice endearing. But I find that when characters accept things, it opens opportunities. Who cares if your character is real because she can't accept magic? Make her real and inspiring by taking action.

Of course, no one is perfect. Your characters can have a respite; even Harry Potter didn't believe he was a wizard at first. But Harry Potter gets over his denial pretty quick.

Yes, my drawing skills are below average. The question is, though,

which would you rather read about? The one crying, or the one with her

hands raised in victory?

Let me give you an example. Say Mary (the stick figure on the left) is told she is a witch, and an evil magician is plotting to kill her. She denies, denies, denies. "What? That's crazy. I'm not a witch, There's no such thing as magic. I'm not worth killing." Blah blah blah. When the magician shows up at the door with a gun and shouts that he'll kill her, she starts crying, sticks her fingers in her ears, and says, "I can't hear you! You're not real." You can guess the next part.

Mary (the stick figure on the right) is told she is a witch, and an evil magician is plotting to kill her. She denies, denies, denies. But she realizes that if on the off chance this really was happening, then THERE WAS SOMEONE OUT TO KILL HER. She asks the person who told her she was a witch to train her in this so-called magic, and she realizes that not only is magic real, but it is the coolest thing ever. She becomes a pro in no time. The evil magician comes to her door, waving a gun, she laughs and levitates the gun out of his grasp. She twists it into a knot, and the evil magician runs crying to his mommy.

This is an extreme (and somewhat hilarious) example, I know. But do you see my point? Writing about the first Mary sort of stalled. There wasn't really enough opportunity to let her become the heroine she is in the second Mary. The first Mary was vapid. The second Mary was strong.

Now, this entire post may be biased, because I read and have read a lot of fantasy; if I suddenly gained magical powers, or was turned into a cat, I'd be ecstatic. Others might not be so pleased to grow fur. And denial is a natural reaction: he couldn't have died. They can't be killers. She can't be mentally insane.

But I think a character who gets over their denial and takes action is a character we can relate to and look up to. A realistic character who inspires is always better than just a realistic character.

So, to sum up this post: let your character accept his/her circumstances. It provides amazing opportunities for his/her to grow. Also, this book Blink is pretty mind-blowing. It's not a writing book, but you can probably expect more tips on writing from it.

What do y'all think? Acceptance or denial? Can you think of any characters who irked you because of this?

Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher

A city has many lives and layers. London has more than most. But not all the layers are underground, and not all the lives belong to the living. Twelve-year-old George Chapman is about to find this out the hard way.
When, on an otherwise normal day, George breaks the head from a stone dragon outside the Natural History Museum in a tiny act of rebellion, he inadvertently awakens an ancient power. The results are instant and terrifying: a stone pterodactyl unpeels from the wall and starts chasing George. He runs for his life, but the strangest part is, no one around him can see what he's running from. No one except Edie, who is also trapped in this same world.
Now that George has disturbed the fragile truce between the warring statues of London, he is forced into a race for survival, where nothing is what it seems, and it's never clear who to trust.
And this is just the beginning...

Printed copy, 450 pages
Published: 2006 by Hyperion Paperbacks for Children

This is an... interesting story.

The spits are statues with a sentient "soul", where their maker has put a purpose in them. They are at war with taints, who are statues with a "lack" of soul or purpose. Normal people's brains cannot comprehend and therefore reject the sight of this warring, impossible life.

Obviously, this is why I picked up the book. Statues coming to life + war = awesome premise. Even I can understand that basic math.

Nevertheless, I was a little disappointed with this. The main character, George, was a bit... what's the word... tasteless. Selfish. Weak? I didn't really have much patience for him, or at least not until he pulled through in the last 50 pages or so.

Edie, his new friend, was also disappointing. She was supposedly a tough girl with a mysterious past, but the only two roles she seemed to play were George's supporter and the victim. I can recall at least two instances where she was captured and had to be rescued. In fact, she and George were rescued numerous times: bailed out of danger by spits.

The best character, by far, was the Gunner. He is a spit, of a WW1 soldier, who saves the children's lives on more than one occasion. He was decisive and always did what he could, even though there was no reason to. He probably should have left snivelling little George to fight things out, but the Gunner seemed a kind protector, the type of person to give to the unfortunate from the bottom of his (metal) heart.

The Gunner and the premise were pretty much the best things about this book. Oh, and the impressive amount of British jargon - I was narrating this book in my head with a British accent. What a lovely change from the normal my-voice narrative.

What I didn't like, as I mentioned, were the main characters. They spent a disproportionate amount of time running. There were few food breaks - I thought that that much running constituted more than a chocolate bar, a sandwich, and some chips; but what do I know of running? - while there was plenty of confusing, mysterious statues conveniently handing out the information.

Actually, Edie had a horribly fascinating talent that could be added to my list-of-good-things-about-this-book: she was a "glint", a person who could see into the distant past by touching an ancient item. It was usually a painful, nauseous ordeal, but still: pretty epic talent.

So, to clarify this confusing post...

Things I like:
-the Gunner.
-the premise (warring statues of London).
-Edie's Glint talent.
-British jargon.
-the villain was pretty cool. The Walker: a man cursed to walk forever, who's desperately seeking a way to end it, even if it means a certain boy is cursed instead. *hint, hint*

Things I don't like:
-the main characters, George and Edie.
-the handing out of information.
-too much running, not enough food or action.
-This isn't fair, but I don't like cities. Especially popular ones, like London and NYC. They are, in my opinion, way too often the settings for books.

I give this book a three. It's pretty balanced. I might recommend this book to a person wishing for an in-between book (a not-completely-serious book, one to pass the time. Maybe just before a book you've been dying to read arrives on shelves).

  
*By the way, Happy Suicide Awareness Day! Not happy about people wanting to die, but happy that you have the power to help. To show you care. Tell someone suffering they're beautiful! Take them out for ice cream or to do something they love. Or if you're stuck inside, make them something cute, and compliment them. Show them some love. Even a little makes a big difference.*

Wednesday Writings: On Good vs. Bad

It's one of the most basic plot lines: perfectly good hero vs. the perfectly evil villain. Like as not, the hero wins, and there is happily ever after.

I've read a lot of books in my 16 years of life, and this is a recurring theme that starts to grate on my nerve for two reasons. One, it's predictable. I sometimes pick up a book and I know right off the bat that the hero wins, and it sort of spoils the reading (especially if the writing isn't all that good). It's like your fairytale, with the dragon in a different shape. And two, because it shows bad writing to have your MC perfectly good.

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Tips on Avoiding the Cliche:

1. Give your character some flaws. At least one. Don't give me that "Oh, but he's Edward Cullen in disguise!" nonsense.

2. Instead of focusing on good vs. evil, focus on a different pair of opposites. Like, in the Red Pyramid by Rick Riordin, it's order vs. chaos. You see how much more interesting that is?

3. See if you can't make the villain one of the "good" characters. Gradually sneak in his/her evilness. Think Loki from that movie Thor (or The Avengers). He was like, the best villain ever because you could empathisize with him completely, and in the beginning of Thor, you don't realize him as the villain at all.

4. Don't think at all in terms of good vs. evil. Think more on the MC - his/her emotional journey. Perhaps your villain is only the catalyst of a mental reevaluation. Perhaps your villain is there to test your MC's real hero-ness. Not that fake perfection, but their true worth as a human being.


Good and bad in literature is a common debate: you either think it's a classic, or a cliche. I'm leaning towards the latter, and it's cool if you think otherwise. But hey, new blood freshens things up. I see the whole "Perfect" hero less and less, but how about the others? Can you think of a different pair of opposites to focus on?

Have a blessed day and keep writing. :)  

From simpledisneythings's tumblr HERE.

Wednesday Writings: Action/Reaction

Action and reaction, are vital to good storytelling. A good story balances these two forces and creates a realistic effect on even the most outrageous of ideas.

This particular topic is not new, and generally not controversial - to tell a good story, the character acts against something, or the character reacts to something being done to him/her. It is a deep-rooted instinct to do one of those two things. For example:

Queen Suzy went to an art museum (action). An assassin tries to kill her and steal her crown, but she fights back (reaction). The assassin is defeated by her superior ninja skills (action). The Queen does a victory dance, then flees the museum in case of any more potential killers (reaction).

Queen Suzy is the main character, and she acts. When she acts, something comes to stop her, and she reacts. Simple as that.

Maybe your character doesn't know what has tried to stop him/her, and therefore cannot react. Maybe they do know, and can do nothing. Either way, no action/reaction. But by law (scientific, physics, behavioral, whatever) doing nothing is a reaction. So therefore, even when your MC does nothing, the action/reaction cycle continues.

The problem, then, is when the action/reaction is not connected. For example:

Tom walks into the garden (action). He fights a troll (action). The troll enters the garden, and when he spots it, Tom fights it (reaction). Tom was only in the garden in the first place because he wanted some fresh air (action).

This is bad, because there is an unequal amount of action/reaction, and it causes unnecessary redundancy. Also, it's out of order, which confuses the reader. The events are not well-connected, and makes for a poor paragraph.

Although I understand that not all stories are told in chronological order, there has to at least be some coherency and rules to define your frequent flashbacks/etc. Think If I Stay by Gayle Forman.

I'm not sure what else to tell you about this concept - it's simple when you recognize it and manage to coherently manipulate it.

Stay strong and write on.

(Hey, it DOES kind of go along with the topic.)

 

Whoa My Goodness, It's Thursday

I should have posted this yesterday, but I had an orthodontist appointment and my teeth were so sore that I ended up taking a nap. So, sorry, the alliteration of my titles is postponed until tomorrow. :'(

I have eight questions on your Character's Character. Stunningly original, I know. (*cough* that was sarcasm, people).

1. We know your character is the protagonist. But is s/he the hero or the villain? Does your character do good or bad? Is your character Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl? (Not in a plagorism way, of course. Just in terms of personality.)

2. Does your character have a set of morals? This applies to villainy MCs as well. For example, does your kidnapping, murdering thief have an aversion to rape? Does your coldly evil gang leader have an aversion to swearing and beating his own gang members up? Does your aggravatingly good (*ahem* "nice") character hate not helping others in pain?

3. What is your character's main trait? In other words, if a stranger could sum up your character in one word, what would it be? Curious? Whiny? Evil?

4. What is your character's biggest fear? Think bigger than snakes or spiders. Perhaps he is afraid to fail the ones he loves. Perhaps she is scared of spending the rest of her life unloved. Perhaps your could-be-either-gender is scared of falling and taking everyone down with it.

5. Who is the person nearest to your MC's heart? Is it a family member? Perhaps a spouse? Maybe it's even a pet? Perhaps your MC would take a bullet for his daughter. Or she would kill anyone who comes between her and mother. Or the little boy would poison anyone if his aunt asked him to.

6. What would your MC change about him/herself? Would they make themselves more beautiful? Would they make themselves taller? Would they make themselves be incapable of fear or pain?

7. Will your character win in the end? It's such a simple question, but it so important to think about it. Does not winning make your character a loser? Is your character a sore winner? Your character's reaction to this could exacerbate their flaws or display your MC as the brilliant, shining person who is ten times the man the antagonist is? (or ten times the woman.)

8. Is your person a conformist or a nonconformist? Is your 18th century Chinese man against the patriarchal system? Is your modern-day, kick-butt, bad girl really soft and looking for love on the inside? (You'd be surprised how often that shows up in literature. It's getting somewhat cliche.) Would your character do anything to fit into society?


Your character has character; they have their strengths, their flaws, their insecurities, the things they're proud of and the things that seem insignificant. But do you know your character well enough to answer those questions? If not, I suggest you find the answers - whether you take a nap and dream it, you make it up as you go along, or you have imginary chats with them in your head.

However your character thinks and acts, make sure you can anticipate his/her next move. It wouldn't do to panic in the middle of their big scene because you cannot think of a logical way your character would react. Also, your readers might find it a little strange if your quiet, timid little MC suddenly becomes the loudest, most irritating person you know.

That concludes my makeshift topic for the day. Y'all have a good day and don't forget to think before you write!