Were you to exist, you'd also notice that I haven't posted very much recently. Sorry about that as well- I'm a bit busy. So, here's some stuff that I would have turned into full-length posts were I to have the time:
I've been reading:
Odd.
The plot is kind of strange- I didn't altogether get what was so important about the election, but that was really mostly background, so it was okay. Like with Harry Potter (except about one hundred times more extreme), J.K. Rowling created characters I can't imagine liking (kill... Fats... kill), and yet by the end I really cared about them. I didn't like this book when I started it, but now I'm mostly just in shock from the ending.
This isn't really my kind of book. But it was an excellent reminder that J.K. Rowling can write.
Warning: This is not a happy book. At all. It's a book about tragic characters in a snooty and deeply troubled little town, almost all of whom are completely miserable by the end.
This is also nothing like Harry Potter. Which I actually liked- Harry Potter is over, and I enjoy seeing authors branch out. Okay, I never would have read this (or finished it) if it hadn't said J.K. Rowling on the front cover (which, by the way, is ugly and just awful). I felt I owed her something for Harry Potter, and it was well written.
Don't expect a murder mystery, either. Or even an ending (I made the mistake of assuming there would be a final conclusive ending- there isn't. At all).
And then there's the profanity. I kind of see what she was trying to do, but she also used the f-word more times than I have seen since Game of Thrones. Actually, if you added it up, her book just might contain as much swearing as the entire Game of Thrones series, which is pretty impressive.
And all of this swearing and sex and smoking and doing drugs and drinking served no purpose when done by teenagers (view spoiler), or even by Terri. Yeah, they're lower class (speaking of which, what's with the dialect? Okay, they're at the bottom of the social and economical scales, but you're writing a book. Surely you could have gone entire sentences that I didn't need to pause to translate.), but does lower class and drugged= insane amount of profanity? And if so, does it need to be on-screen?
Now I sound stuck-up. I (hope) that I'm not. But the amount of swearing and casual sex between teenagers seemed excessive to me.
So... yeah, not my cup of tea (never understood that saying). Harry Potter fans will probably be disappointed.
The ending is still the same as for the last two books, but it's a ton of fun. :) On to the next book! The writing was a bit choppy- the main character randomly inserted thoughts, often beginning with "hey", something that annoyed me after the first few times. The Jewish part was done very well, and the plot was pretty good. I completely understood Talia's feelings, although all of her money made her kind of look like a spoiled brat (she wasn't.) I liked that the "nemesis", Hannah (I wonder why it's Hannah and not Chana/Channa/Channah... I don't remember any other names being translated like that) was actually just a normal(even nice) person who our narrator happened not to like. Gabrielle was a bit strange, and I felt there was a lot to her story that we never found out, but she also rang very true to me. She reminded me strongly of someone I once knew, and that made the story feel real and had me very interested in whether the outcome would be happy. Which brings me to the ending, which is actually quite realistic (as was the whole book). I've seen that other people were unhappy with it, but I thought it was pretty good.All in all, a fun read, but nothing too deep. This is a pre-teen to early teen book, not really YA fiction.  Hard to get into initially, but fun.  Odd. An interesting take on what would have happened in Guinevere had been able to have children after all. I'm not sure I've seen that before. It was all a bit fast for me; I felt I never really got to know Medraut, and so didn't quite understand his actions. I think the book could have benefited from being a little longer and giving some more background. The names used were also an interesting choice. I wish Goewin had had a different name; I kept confusing her with Gawain (the author uses Gawain's Welsh name, Gwalchmai in the book). Lleu's name I couldn't quite figure out how to pronounce- my knowledge of how to pronounce Welsh names is sketchy at best, and comes mostly from a bad fantasy novel. I'm not sure I've ever seen Medraut for Mordred before. Same for Artos and whatever Guinevere is, I'm blanking right now (she had a very small role). I assume these are the Welsh versions, although I can only be sure of Gawain's. So... it was interesting. I'm not sure if I plan to continue with these. It wasn't a bad book at all, but I'm not sure I liked the style. There wasn't anything really wrong with it that I can pin down, it was just... not me. I hovered between 2 and 3 stars but in the end I didn't like it enough to give it 3. It was a very quick and easy read, although at times it was kind of disturbing (especially for a children's book)  Well... that got ridiculous. Life lessons learned from this book: 1) Becoming all-powerful does not actually help. 2) When in doubt, kill yourself.. 3) Don't learn life lessons from fantasy books  I wavered on the rating for this. But even though it had its issues, as every books does, my overall feeling was "that was a really good book". Ignore the back cover. I don't know who wrote it, but they only read fifty pages of the book (and not even in order). It's disturbing, it's tragic, and it is good. I would like to say I read it all in one day because it was so good, but despite my best efforts, it was 12:03 AM when I finished.  I learned something about 150 pages into this book. Some books are really, really, bad. And when they are, you should just put them down and move on. So I did. So... that's me. What have you guys been reading? |
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