The Storybook of Legends by Shannon Hale

On Legacy Day each years, the students at the Ever After High boarding school sign the Storybook of Legends and pledge to fulfill their destinies as the next generation of Snow Whites, Prince Charmings, and Evil Queens. Everyone believes that refusing to sign means both you and your story will vanish forever after. Poof!
Raven Queen, however, is having doubts. As the daughter of the Evil Queen, it is her destiny to give the poisoned apple to Snow White's daughter. But Raven has a spark of rebellion in her heart, and she knows one thing for sure: Evil is so not her style.
On the other hand, the royal Apple White, daughter of the Fairest of Them All, cannot wait for Legacy Day! It will be the day she shuts the book on getting her Happily Ever After. But her destiny is intertwined with Raven's, and if rebel Raven doesn't sign the Storybook of Legends, it could mean a Happily Never After for them both.

~Print copy (from the library), 304 pages
Published: 2013 by Little, Brown and Company

Okay, so this is a princess book. The pages are decorated in pink and purple. Sometimes the narrator has characters with one of the secondary characters in the book (Maddie, the Mad Hatter's daughter). And it alternates between Apple White's point of view and Raven's, and Apple's point of view -- to be frank -- is nauseatingly happy. (What did you expect from the daughter of Snow White?)

But still. It's Shannon Hale. Despite the pink and purple cover, we're talking about Shannon Hale -- who wrote Goose Girl and Book of a Thousand Days and Princess Academy, which all deal with royalty of course, but I LOVED them when I was younger. Princess Academy is still on my greater-favorites bookshelf. And anyways... I'm always a sucker for fairy tales.

I picked this up at my local library, and -- although a little embarrassed to bring it to school with me -- I began reading. It took two days. 150 pages a day, between school and writing, because I just had to make time for it.

This book was just... it was splendid. (Or, as Goldilocks's daughter says, "just right.") In this novel, the daughter of the Evil Queen and the daughter of Snow White are put in a room together at a boarding school where everyone must sign a pledge to follow the scripts of their parents, or else the story -- and them -- will die.

But the Evil Queen's daughter isn't... well, evil. She's a bit more shades of gray. And, despite the pretty, happy appearances she puts on, so is Apple White. The two pledge to be friends despite their story, but Raven's determination to avoid signing the Storybook and Apple's determination to keep her Happily Ever After eventually come into conflict throughout the novel, as Raven finds the name of a girl who didn't sign the Storybook and tries to find out what happened to her.

Let's start with the characters. Apple White is sickeningly a princess. Spoiled, pretty, but still nice. Throughout the whole. Freaking. Book. She helps Raven with her quest, she expects princes to always save her (as they usually do, seemingly unable to help themselves), and has animal critters help her do her work. She wants to be seen as a Queen who can pull her weight and run the kingdom nicely, but all most of them see is her beauty.

Raven, on the other hand, does not have princes saving her, and the woodland creatures avoid her at all costs. She's miserable, with her mother punishing her for being too kind and the group of "happily Ever After" royals at school generally looking down at her. But with this one name -- this girl who didn't sign the Storybook -- she finds a little bit of hope that she can escape her destiny. And, unlike Apple, she doesn't want anyone making this decision for her.

It's a great comment on choice and destiny -- on how, even with a magic book in the way, a person should always have the choice to choose the right destiny for herself. It shows how selfish both sides are, Apple wanting her Happily Ever After at Raven's cost, and Raven wanting to choose her own ending at Apple's cost. The light tone and princess-y subject matter only serve to underscore the conflict of both sides.

And, while we're at it, I actually like the plot and ending. (For once.) It's never slow or boring, and the ending fits just right. If there were any flaws (other than my hatred of Apple's goodness), they were entirely overlooked. As I said, I got through it in two days, when I really should have been focusing on schoolwork and writing.

 This book is part of a series, it seems -- the second book appears to be out on e-book -- and I cannot wait to pick up the second one. (But maybe I'll wait until it's in paper book format.) I would recommend this to anyone who still loves a good fairy tale, and a good twist on the familiar. While yes, it's probably MG and intended for a younger audience, it is still an amazing book.

Five stars. Easily.

An Update on my Life.

Hello. I realize I haven't posted much this month. Life has slammed into me.

Let me start with the bad news. My grandfather died a few weeks ago. We had his funeral -- my mother organized the entire thing, because she's getting her master's degree in religious studies or Christianity or some other such thing in that general area of study, and she wanted to make it personal. My grandfather -- my mother's stepfather -- was married to my grandmother for 42 years. It's been a rather hard blow, to know the laughing, easygoing man I knew as Granddad Richard will now be gone from everywhere but our hearts and memories.

In better news, though, I've applied to 4 colleges and three of them have accepted me. (The fourth hasn't answered back.) All are in-state, all are offering me scholarships over $17,000, and two of them look like viable options for my future. (One is near where my other grandfather, my father's father, lives, while the other is offering a pretty substantial scholarship and entry into their honors program.)

I have been super-busy organizing things with the colleges: I've met with an admissions counselor from the latter (the one offering entry in their honors program), who promised to repeal our financial aid and see if she can't cover more, and asked me to look into scholarships outside of the college. I've scheduled an interview at the college near my grandfather's place, in order to determine if I qualify for a full-tuition scholarship. And I've been desperately researching scholarships online, to see if I can't cover some of the cost.

Good advice for this month, from my perspective.

And, while this sort of pales in comparison with the other two bits of news, and hasn't really affected my posting schedule (seeing as how it occurred only today), I have taken my first field trip since 8th grade. I'm a senior in high school now. I've been a bit anxious about it for the past week, which is why I mention it. The field trip was to Old Town Petersburg, which in case you don't know is actually old. We visited the Blandford Cemetery and the the old part of the city to take pictures, for photography class. I ended up with 4 rolls of black-and-white film (~70-80 pictures), and a curiosity for this city a half-hour's drive from my hometown.

Some cool things Petersburg has to offer:

1. In the Blandford Cemetery, the oldest gravestones dates back to the 1700s! I saw one headstone for a woman born in 1785 and died in the 1820s-1830s.
2. The Blandford Church contains fifteen or sixteen Tiffany Windows, one for each of the Confederate States. Each window depicts a saint and the state's name. The only Confederate state that didn't contribute a window was Kentucky, because it couldn't raise the funds after the Civil War. Tiffany also donated the Jeweled Cross window. I didn't get to see the windows from inside the church, to see the light shine through, but I saw the dull grayness of the windows from outside.
3. The Trapezium House was built either in the late 1700s or really early 1800s. The man who built it was an eccentric man who believed that evil spirits resided in right angles, so he built his house without any right angles whatsoever.
4.  I managed to get a shot of the Hiram Haines' Coffee and Alehouse, which has been around since pre-Civil War (early 1800s -- 1820s, I believe?), where several famous people gathered. Edgar Allen Poe had his honeymoon there, in 1839. It was reopened 2010, I believe, and is in business today. Sadly, grabbing lunch at this historic building was not on our itinerary.

What the Church looks like today (public domain photo)

I wish I had the pictures to show you, but we haven't developed the film yet. We'll be doing that next week. In the meantime, it's nice to let you know the Cockade City is still a historical treasure, one that withstood a siege during the War of 1812 and was nicknamed after its patriotism, so called by James Madison. (A cockade is like a pin they stuck in their hats, and so many people wore them and so many lost their lives during the War of 1812 that President James Madison stopped by to address them.)

So, this has been quite the eventful month. Good things tossed with the bad things, as life often likes to throw at us. For a quiet teenager who leaves her home only to go to school and the library (and occasionally Wal-Mart), the whole blasted thing is like something out of the Lord of the Rings, except my life has no obvious plot or point.

For now, I think I'll just have to take a pain-reliever for my headache, finish up a good book, and draw myself a nice hot bath. And then we'll see about April.

Have a blessed day, and hope you visit a few ancient sites yourself.

In Which I Talk about Romance. Again.

(I would have posted earlier, but, you know. Life. My grandfather died, colleges began accepting me, and I've gotten really snarled up inside, emotionally speaking. It happens, time to time.)

This is not the first time I've talked about romance. Or should I capitalize Romance? Everyone else seems to capitalize on it.

I'm one of those people who sets their book off to the side, on their bed, after they've finished reading. I have a dozen books sitting, scattered, across the side of my bed. 5 are romance. 3 are nonfiction. The rest are MG.

Now, what do I mean by romance? There are different types. There are romance novels and romantic subplots and there are those (horrible) books where romance plays a pretty central role, but for some reason isn't even mentioned in the back-cover summary. This post, I'm talking about all of them.

And, of course, if you visit this blog, I'm sure you read, write, or at least have heard of YA. My favorite age group of books. And more than likely, you have heard how swamped with romance it is. Maybe you've debated about the role of sex in YA Lit. Maybe you've even written a few romantic scenes yourself, if you're a writer.

Don't get me wrong. I am happy that people like writing romance, that women can find even a minimally decent pay writing romance, and that people will read it. But when I say "people" want to read it, I have never been included in it.

Because, of course, I am asexual. And romance is not really my strong suit.

Let me define that term for you (in my own words):

asexual (adj.): to not be interested in sex; to be sexually attracted to neither sex.

That does not mean I am "anti-love" or "innocent-minded;" it does not mean you can tell me that this is just "a phase everyone goes through" and that "I'll find someone someday." And it does not mean that I will be happy reading sex scenes in books, or even mildly romantic scenes.

Unfortunately, I come across it too often. The first kiss. The first relationship. The first sex. They are common themes, in YA Lit. And they are probably common firsts for many teenagers. But I never feel more alone than when I think the phrase, "normal teenagers," because I have never considered myself as part of that category, and for good reason.

To me, YA is not just first love. YA is the exploration of possibilities and the world for the first time. It is first adventures, first griefs, first chance to change the world and not merely observe it. There are many firsts in the world, and I love those much more, connect more with those ideas, than I do with "the feel of his lips on my skin" or "his kiss" or whatever else it is. You don't even have to include an asexual character in your book. I'm just begging you, to just not put romance in it, or put it far to the side in favor of other things.

There is only one book series I've read that features an asexual character: the Emily the Strange series, by Rob Reger. Emily Strange is a role model for me; not only is she asexual, but a genius, a prankster, a skateboarder, and a cat person. Members of her family are "Dark Girls," also called the "Dark Aunts," because they have magical ability and never marry or have children. I have all four books on my greater-favorites bookshelf. You can probably find them in the YA section at your local B&N. It's written in diary form, and can at times look more MG than YA, but still. An asexual character! A main character who actually sticks by her statement that she will never have children!*

As much as I hate to add the disclaimer: yes, I know there are books out there that are not romance, and YA is not "swamped" with romance, there are others out there about family and friendships. But in my local B&N, in my local library, there sure are many books with romance in them. There are those books, like I mentioned above, who do not bother to tell me of the romance that is a central part of the book in the summary.

Haughty Owl wants you to think of ALL sexualities.

The truth is, I walk into my local B&N, and I want to cry. My eyes desperately search the shelves -- those crisp, clean shelves with new, pristine books -- and my heart sinks when I pull down a book. Just wondering whether or not there will be romance in it; picking over the summary, and making assumptions based on that, assuming there will be romance if I don't know.


Perhaps normal people, I think, just pick a book off the shelves, like the summary, the premise, and just purchase it and go. It is entirely lonely, to realize that other people aren't bothered by the romance, because they're normal people who don't mind -- even love -- the heterosexual love in all of these books. And that because I'm just a freak, I have trouble doing the one thing I've done my entire life -- reading.

But luckily, I have a blog. And hopefully, I have a talent for writing, and I will use both of them to ask that more books with more asexual characters are put into my hands. That while you advocate for LGBT romance, remember that little unknown "A" for Asexual, and advocate for some no-romance books, as well.

Because there are other readers out there, like me, who are asexual and feeling just a little lonely not for being underrepresented -- but for not being represented at all. So, if you think yourself an ally to gays and bisexuals, then remember to educate on asexuals, too, because while most everyone has an opinion on LGBTQ, almost no one has heard of asexuality. In fact, when I tell someone I am asexual, I have to explain to the person what it means, and then they just shrug and say, "well, I don't know where that leaves you, then. I'm sure you'll grow into it. Everybody else does."

I know I will be a writer, and most of my main characters will be asexual. I know the themes I'd like to expound on in my works. I know, if I become famous, what it will be for -- a look into diversity, for that little asexual, bookish teenager who bites her lip in the library as her hands hover the shelves and shelves of first kisses and first crushes.

Have a blessed day.

Scabby Zazu says to watch what you read -- there's plenty of romance, when you look!

*Yes, I was ticked off by that in The Hunger Games. And in several other works I've read. Why is it somewhat common to have your narrator say she will never have children/fall in love/fall in love with that man, and then have her turn around and do exactly that?! Is this just a trend in the books I pick up?

It's Wednesday.

This will be a short post. I have calculus homework. And spanish homework. And AP Lit homework. And AP Bio homework.

Here's a small rundown of my life at the moment:

1. As mentioned, I have a ton load of homework. It must be the upcoming month. Something about March makes teachers pile on the homework.
2. I have been questioning my existence, mortality, and what is important in this world, and have concluded it is nothing like what the world tells me is important to my mortality. I will likely not marry, have children, or try YOLO, which appears to mean doing drugs, partying, and/or having sex. I also will not try traveling, bungee jumping, most sports, or watching said sports. I don't think focusing on school will happen, either, at least not public high school. According to my own calculations, books, cats, music, and God feature very heavily in what is "worth living for."
3. I finished The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and am halfway through The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King. Both feature romance pretty heavily, and in the latter case, a rather detailed scene of a rape. I didn't feel like writing a book review. Needless to say, they will not be put on my greatest-favorite bookshelf.
4. Sudoku puzzles! I have loved them since middle school, but now I would much rather solve another few sudoku puzzles than do my homework. Which is a problem. Technically. As I mentioned, school does not make it to my List of Things Important to Living.

This is shorter than I realized. So, I'll leave you with a quote and just say, have a blessed day. :)

Oh, What a Terrible Week. (On Cats and Life)

This has been a sorry week. It's not just paying $267 in AP fees (for three AP exams). Money problems make me anxious, but I could have gotten over that. It wasn't missing two days of school and feeling guilty for all of that missed time and makeup work.

I suppose I'll have to tell you the actual reason, though I hate to say it: someone ran over my cat.

Now, it sounds like something you grieve over for a few hours, maybe a couple of days. But I love my cats. I love my cats like I love my books. And someone killed him, stole a life. And didn't even care.

It was Wednesday evening. My little brother and his friends are playing outside, riding their bikes along the road -- they're elementary and early middle schoolers, just having a good time. I let my cat, Tenzing, stay outside, because it was nice outside -- warm, blue skies. And a little black car comes speeding along, running over my precious Tenzing, and doesn't even stop to see whether he just drove over a cat or a kid.

What sort of maggot-hearted monster doesn't even say sorry? Doesn't step forward when we drive around looking for him, or when we put flyers up to tell whoever-it-was that he murdered our beloved pet?

(I don't know for sure that this person is a he. I just have to refer to whoever-it-was as something other than it, and saying he puts more of a face to him.)

If there was any faith in humanity left in my heart, it is most certainly gone now. My cat was a strong, healthy, friendly Siamese whom we all loved, even our next door neighbors. If any of my several cats were to die, I had expected it to be Angel, the same age as Tenzing, but who has three teeth and an upper respiratory problem. Or perhaps Zazu, who is older than Tenzing, at somewhere around thirteen years old.

But not Tenzing. Tenzing didn't die from sickness or old age. I can't even really see it as an accident, because if you're in an accident, you stop to express your apologies. This was a tragedy. This was the dark taking of a life without seeming remorse. And perhaps that's spinning it a bit far-fetched, but my cat didn't make it. And it could easily have been my brother. This is cat-slaughter.

I don't understand how this could play out like it has. How no one would come forward and say sorry, sorry they ran over someone near and dear to our hearts. When is a cat's life not worth as much as a human's? Would they have come forward if they accidentally ran over one of those kids playing in the road? I suspect not. I suppose it doesn't pay to have faith in humanity; only faith in your friends, and yourself. But humanity has an evilness at its core, if you could do this to a stranger and not care.

The world, my friends, is looking rather black. The death of my cat may seem like something of a relief, that it wasn't my brother, but it is still a steep price. My cat never hurt anyone. And he's dead. He isn't going to come back. He isn't going to pull some fiction-stunt, where he really wasn't dead and will come back in the end, triumphant; he will stay dead, and buried, and only remembered. He still had a few good years in him; he was strong, for a twelve-year-old cat.

And I still have to trudge through school days, my face blank, pretending like all of this hasn't happened, because there isn't really any way to explain why the death of a pet can rock your entire world off its hinges. There isn't time to let you adjust to your new world. There is only schoolwork, and the teachers' annoyance when I really can't turn my homework in on time.

I hope you have a blessed week yourselves, people. I really do hope you have had a better week.

RIP, blessed Tenzing.

Orleans by Sherri L. Smith

First came the storms. Then came the Fever. And the wall. 
After a string of devastating hurricanes and a severe outbreak of Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined. Years later, the residents of the Outer States are under the assumption that life in the Delta is all but extinct... but in reality, a new, primitive society has been born.
Fen de la Guerre is living with the O-Positive blood tribe in the Delta when they are ambushed. Left with her tribe leader's newborn, Fen is determined to get the baby to a better life over the wall before her blood becomes tainted. Fen meets Daniel, a scientist from the Outer States who has slipped into the Delta illegally. Brought together by chance, kept together by danger, Fen and Daniel navigate the wasteland of Orleans. In the end, they are each other's last hope for survival.
Sherri L. Smith delivers an expertly crafted story about a fierce heroine whose powerful voice and firm determination will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

~Print copy (from library), 324 pages
Published: 2013 by G.P. Putnam's Sons (an imprint of Penguin Group)

I meant to post this Monday -- I know, I know, it's rather late. But snow and school and lack of a proper Internet connection has made it hard.

So, here's a somewhat-more-organized-than-usual list of what I think of this book:

Premise/summary: Yes.

I love the premise, of course. Why else would I decide to read it? I had some doubts when the summary began to mention Daniel, because that smacked of romance to me, but the whole Fever and quarantine sounded interesting enough that I picked it up anyways. I wouldn't have called the Delta society "primitive," but that's because I'm picky and like to think that such paleolithic/early-neolithic-style societies are simply different, perhaps even innovative and worth studying more than they are to be looked down on.

Story/Plot: Meh/Yes.

The baby thing, written this way, made sense. The pacing didn't really flag. There was no romance, which was a relief. I'm not sure what the problem was -- well, I somewhat do. By the end, it was getting more... random. Things looked like they were happening by chance, and the things I would have focused on were mostly mentioned or just barely elaborated. And there were odd blocks of flashbacks that were there mostly to explain in detail Fen's backstory -- and just her backstory. There were mostly explanatory information on Daniel outside of true flashbacks. And I won't mention how out-of-the-blue-in-a-most-unpleasant-way the ending was.

For the randomness, as I won't mention that without some evidence for you, take this example: the growing feud between the O-Positives and the ABs. It looked to be getting steadily worse, but Fen cares nothing about it; neither does Daniel. It's just there, in the background. And the "cure" for the fever Daniel was working on -- I won't mention it, but I was a little disappointed in how that turned out.

Characters: Meh/Yes.

Fen was actually a decent character. She was fierce and smart. Always calculating the odds and means of escape. And she could easily have ditched this newborn girl, who only dragged her down and cried in the worst of moments. But she didn't; even when she had ample opportunity, and it would have facilitated her own escape, she didn't let the baby die. And it's not even hers, just her dead chieftain's.

Daniel, on the other hand, I was less fond of. A bit of a bumbler, and he didn't seem too motivated. Just there. He had his sob story about his brother, dead from the fever, but he's just sort of like, "Hmm, I managed to find my way into the Delta. What am I supposed to do now, with my outdated maps and total ignorance on what goes on around people-wise?" Unfortunately, he was a pretty major character, maybe almost more so than Fen, which I was disappointed about.

Writing: Meh.

A real problem, for me, was the switches in POV. It would randomly switch POVs between Daniel and Fen, but not only is it a total change in style -- Fen had "tribe speak," with very loose, imprecise grammer, and Daniel spoke much more grammatically, like you'd find in any other novel -- it also changed tense and POV style. Fen's was written in first person, present, with the aforementioned unique voice. Daniel's was written in third person, past tense, with a more conventional voice. It was jarring, to be bounced between the two.

I did love the uniqueness of Fen's voice. But instead of writing the book entirely in her voice -- which, I admit, would be a difficult feat -- it was sort of halved by the conventional voice of Daniel, and instead of dividing the chapters between the two, it furthermore would switch in the middle, at the end of a chapter, or after several chapters. I didn't like how this was organized.

Overall: Yes.

I did like this, of a sort. I think it's very original, with the fever and quarantine, the dynamics between the Outer States of America and the quarantined Gulf Coast, and the way they're both depicted. And there was a refreshing avoidance of romance. (I hate romance; the more I see it, the more it upsets me. And I read mostly YA, I am generally in the mood to cry when I pick up a book.)

I would recommend this to most people. I don't like the ending, or the way POV was handled, and Daniel was a bit iffy -- but I think that at points, the premise and Fen made up for it. I'd say a 3.5 stars, which of course can be rounded up to 4 stars.

Happy February.

It's the pink month, guys. Valentine's Day and all of that jazz. It's one of my least favorite months of the year, but I console myself that at least this also happens to be Black History Month. Black History is a very good history to talk about, because there is so much tension and strife that it must be talked about.

(It's really only Valentine's Day that makes this my least favorite month. But in my defense, stores are bursting with hearts and pink and red and candy and those weird little paper valentines that only little kids get to buy with impunity. Walking into Wal-Mart makes me cringe, and this is not a good thing when I barely get out of the house anyways.)

So, instead of writing a very long post today -- it's already 9:30 pm, I've had a ridiculously exhausting school day and homework binge -- here's a nice, relaxing song for your pink-barraged brains. Well, as relaxing as my music gets.

Have a blessed day.

Escala -- Requiem for a Dream