October in Review

October is arguably my favorite month of the year. It holds my favorite holiday, the weather FINALLY starts to become bearable, and I always find the last fourth of the year to be the best of all. It was a mixed batch of eye/brain candy this month. I finished the last of the books on the hype trains, and got back to reading stories I was genuinely interested in. This month was all about NaNoWriMo prep and part of that involved researching whimsical narrative voice and how to best capture it for my own story. Don't think I've quite got it yet, but I'm getting there!

*This is so late. Holy CRAP, this is so late. But I think we can all agree late Oct to early Nov were utter poop because of this election, so I'm writing this post an excused tardy slip because of the orange hate clown.* 

Howl's Moving Castle by Diane Wynne Jones. 7/10

I feel like such a traitor for liking the movie more than the book... Maybe it's because I saw the movie first and have always been so enchanted by Miyazaki's movies that it never stood a chance at the favorites-game. While the book was still magical in all the right ways (superbly unique characters and a subtle humor and snark that is unexpected), there were a few moments that detracted from the story as a whole and one moment in particular that broke down that fourth wall completely and made me wholly and uncomfortably aware that I was just sitting in bed, in the real world, reading a book. And that's NEVER a good thing. I don't believe it's ever a good idea to pull your reader out of an immersive journey.

****SPOILER ALERT*****

For me, this happened when we find out that Howl is actually just a somewhat ordinary man from very ordinary (and kind of bleak) Wales who somehow found his way into other worlds. This horrified me. When we stepped onto that street in Wales, Howl wearing a football jacket and walking into an ordinary house, it pulled me out of the story completely as it lost much of its enchantment. What an odd choice to make in such a vivid, otherworldly story. It seemed totally unnecessary and I can't see what it added to the story AT ALL, other than to undermine all of the magic and beautiful world building the book strove to paint up until that point. WHY DIANA, WHY?

But our beloved characters were still a joy to follow, though they were much more flawed and even slightly anti-hero compared to their movie counterparts. I still laughed out loud at Sophie's old lady-isms and sass and the tantrums Howl throws. And marveled at what incredibly unique and complex and enjoyable characters Howl and Calcifer were. Book Calcifer definitely trumped movie Calcifer (even with Billy Crystal's superb voice acting. Sorry, Billy).

All in all, definitely recommend this story for all ages! I can see myself reading it again someday, and then maybe AGAIN to some little mini-me's if I ever decide to have them!   

A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir. 4/10

Okay, in my review of Ember in September, I said the following: "I have every bit of confidence that the sequel will find its stride..." I was wrong. WHY? WHY DID I HAVE TO BE WRONG?

I had to drag myself to the end of this book. I was skimming left and right. Tahir is a phenomenal
writer. She really is. Her prose is A+. But her world building, plot, and characters are not at the same level. They constantly undermine their own strengths as characters, quite often acting what felt to be OUT of character, and that just made me lose interest in them and their journey.

I think there was something fundamentally wrong with the direction the plot took, and when it started down this path it felt like there was no saving it. Aspects of the story became superficial and obvious. And then there was the gratuitous gore and violence. Sometimes, the absence of those moments in lieu of the sound of it, the smell of it, the aftermath, etc, is more potent. Leaving it up to the imagination can be the greatest thing you can do for morbid moments. As soon as she was sticking daggers into children and slitting throats I lost respect for the story. It was an unnecessary grab for that SHOCK factor to make up for a lack of genuine tension and purposefully constructed moments.

And THEN there were all the obvious questions that NONE of the characters were asking (how about when that efrit asked Laia what SHE was and there was NO discussion of that after the fact). We knew just as much as they did through their POVs and I was sat there, as the reader, yelling HELLO?

This series has been a flop for me so far and I hate it. There was so much hype. So much potential. And it all fell flat.

Magnificent Seven: 8/10. Typical Western, so expect revenge, gunfights, and lots of death. I personally love Westerns, and this was true to the genre in every sense while updating it with a kind of superhero movie feel. The A-list cast certainly didn't hurt it either ;) Eye candy for everyone.

Storks: 3/10. NO. BAD, STORKS, BAD! The wolves were literally the only redeemable thing about this movie.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: 6/10. Tim Burton's version of the X-Men. Meh all around. But Ava Green is a Goddess and is phenomenal and fierce as always. *heart eyes*

10 Cloverfield Lane: 8/10. Was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Absolutely fantastic. Not giving any of it away. INTENSE x 100000000 

~Be mindful of the the things that precious time is spent on.~

September in Review

This September marked the 27th anniversary of my Uterus Independence Day. And literally a week later I found two gray hairs. Sunnuva bitc--.... le sigh. 2016 continues to be the dumpster fire of the century, but, on the bright side, I READ SOME BOOKS! I PLAYED SOME GAMES! I SAW SOME MOVIES! Here's my September in review:

Siege and Storm, Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo. 4/10.

I can honestly say I didn't like a single character in this trilogy (except for the one character I wasn't SUPPOSED to like: the Darkling. He was arguably the only character with any kind of depth or complexity)... Alina was, until the very end, a weak and boring protagonist. Most of the characters were very flat and repetitive, serving no real purpose other than to distract us from how much Alina and Mal suck. 

I really don't want to be this harsh, but I felt horribly insulted by these last two books. After such an investment, that I was left with a lackluster ending that felt more like Bardugo had just given up on the series because she must've known wasn't up to par, was like a smack in the face. And how any editor would've let them pass without heavy revisions to give the stories a more solid plot and more dynamic characters, is beyond me, because it had SO. MUCH. POTENTIAL!

I LOVED the world that Bardugo created, I just didn't like the characters she put in or the story we followed within it. It's as simple as that I suppose!  

But I still am astounded by the change in quality from the Grisha Trilogy to Six of Crows. Had I read the Grishas first, I don't know that I would've even given SoC a chance! But I'm so glad I did, and I don't completely regret reading the Grisha Trilogy, just probably won't ever read it again. 

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. 6/10

I've been meaning to read this for AGES! I follow Sabaa on Twitter and she just seems like such an exemplary example of our species, so I really wanted to read her book. Plus, dat hype train. I wanted on.
And while I DID enjoy the book, I had quite a few issues with it (I'M SORRY, I REALLY AM! I have every bit of confidence that the sequel will find its stride much better though!).

But I'll start with the good first.

Tension.
Sabaa did a FANTASTIC job of building tension throughout--of genuinely making you worry about the safety of the characters (both for the characters themselves and then what they might do to others to achieve their goals). You never feel safe with them and that's really a hard feat to achieve.

The Bad Guys. 
I probably enjoyed the baddies most of all. The Commandant especially. She was so horrendously evil, but you really wondered what made her that way. And her job might've been torturing people and training killers, but DAMN, she was good at it. #BossBitch

The writing. 
No one can say this book wasn't well written. It was. Sabaa has a wonderful style of writing that is both concise and fluid. While she does a lot of telling instead of showing, I still found myself making mental notes of some of her narrative habits and tricks.

The ending. 
OH IT REALLY PICKED UP HERE. SO GOOD. I got to that last chunk of the book and flew through. The pacing and stakes were spot-freaking-on. Much intense. So wow.

Okay, now the bad.
The world building. 
Maybe this is my own fault. When I saw "fantasy" I assumed there would be loads of world building and a wonderfully vibrant story world I could sink my teeth into. This was not the case. A more apt description of the book would me Roman-esque Dystopian. I think then I could've let the lackluster world building slide. I had such a hard time visualizing the book. There was really a lot of telling vs showing and I think that really colored the whole story in gray-tones rather then full-color.

The characters. 
When we first met Laia I kind of assumed she was like, 12. I really struggled throughout the book to believe she was competent or capable enough to do the things she did. There's also a very sudden and rapid growth in her character, but without any real emotional catalyst. In a split second she went from meek and unsure and clumsy to I AIN'T 'FRAID A NO COMMADANT without any REAL trigger for it. There was no "moment." And I really needed that. She felt incredibly out of character by the end of the book without any believable experiences that would've necessitated such a sudden change in her. But she was still okay. I still worried for her life and didn't want her to die, so that's something at least!
Elias started out SO well. This guy genuinely torn between his heart and his duty, something you could REALLY feel at first. But he seemed to quickly lose depth when he started sexualizing every girl he met. His best friend, who he should have had either the utmost respect for or genuine feelings, he instead sexualized and took advantage of.

The romance.
It felt out of place and totally unnecessary. I don't know that it would've changed a damn thing if you scrapped the romance altogether. You could still have every bit of the plot with genuine friendships and moral codes, rather than "Oh he/she's hot, so I'm going to do this."

And, for me, it really undermined Helene's character. And that was the biggest betrayal of all. She started out as this fierce woman, I LOVED HER, but she was very quickly reduced to this sad little girl pining after her best friend. She quickly crumpled emotionally and became much more some pouty teenager and love-struck puppy than the badass soldier she was built up to be by Elias and other characters. As one woman among hundreds of men, she surely would've needed an iron will and ovaries of steel. I was expecting GI Jane and I got sad-sap Sarah. But again, I still held my breath when she was in danger, hopelessly cheering for her.

 All in all, I did enjoy the book. I will absolutely read the sequel. I think it had a potential it didn't quite live up to by being "troped" into the expected formula of YA. But it was a solid read and I think Sabaa will only get better from here.

Far Cry 4: 5/10. Such a solid five. Still fun for about half an hour and then you get to the usual Far Cry humdrum. I'm starting to get sick of the sheer amount of repetitive droll that my 100% completion compulsion is putting me through. Do we really need to pick up all those masks? Do we really need to do all those side quests? YES, DAMN IT, BUT I DON'T WANT TO (but I have to). It's literally just a carbon copy of all the other Far Cry games. When are they going to let me play a female protag?? When do I get to see some man junk instead of lady bits? Hey, Ubisoft, your sexism is really starting to show. 

~Be mindful of the the things that precious time is spent on.~

August in Review

August is gone. AUGUST IS GONE, PEOPLE! How are we already on our 9th month of 2016? And why has this whole year been such a massive dumpster fire? But as we leave the scorching months of summer for the (for Floridians) equally scorching months of Autumn, hope is in the air that this year will STOP IT RIGHT NOW OR I WILL TURN THIS CAR AROUND. 

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. 6/10.When I read SIX OF CROWS by Bardugo a few months ago, I became an instant Bardugo-dite--a fan for life. I was so eager to jump back into the world of Grishas, so I did. With the first book in the Grisha Trilogy, SHADOW AND BONE.

While Bardugo clearly realized more of her full potential in SoC, SaB was okay. I finished it in a day. I'm jumping at the chance to get my hands on SEIGE AND STORM--but I can't figure out why.
Aside from the imaginative setting and refreshingly unique take on Russian folklore and culture, there was nothing about this book that I LOVED. But also nothing I hated.
I didn't particularly like the MC, Alina. In fact, I didn't particularly like anyone in the story. There wasn't really any character that I identified with or felt myself rooting for. None of them really stood out. Maybe because, for a huge chunk of the novel, the story revolved around being beautiful and the vanities of the Little Palace and the Grisha in general. It started to feel a little too... catty. Too typical in it's "plain girl is mean girled, gets makeover, becomes hawt, is still super boring and uncomplicated but everyone falls in love with her anyways because now she iz hawt." The story lost a lot of depth as soon as Alina started admitting how beautiful she was. *eye roll* 

But Bardugo's writing style is so fluid and enjoyable. Even if I wasn't totally buying what she was writing about, I was flying through this book because of how she writes about it. Her style is clear and concise, and she balances exposition and description with action and dialogue VERY well. There's something to be said about a story that is enjoyable to actually READ. As in the syntax and tone and flow, rather than the plot and characters.

So yeah, I didn't LOVE it... buuuuut... OMGGIMMETHENEXTONEINEEDITANDIDONTUNDERSTANDWHY!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. 6/10

Those playwriting classes I took in college? Totally worth it. If for nothing other than the fact that I could dive into this and not be totally thrown off by the stageplay format. I can absolutely understand why a lot of people struggled with it. Prose fiction and stageplays are two VERY different creatures. And for the poor souls who didn't listen to the millions of people (including Rowling herself) screaming at the top of their lungs, "THIS IS NOT A BOOK, IT'S A PLAY! THIS IS NOT A BOOK, IT'S A PLAY!" they didn't stand a chance.

Formatting aside, you could tell very quickly that Rowling didn't have much to do with this other than lending her name as the headliner on the cover. It felt more like some strange version of Harry Potter fanfiction. And while I appreciated the depth of the story and how realistic the writers tried to make it (Harry not being the wonderful father we all thought he would be, Ron and Hermione in a very normal, uninspired marriage), it had very little of the magic that draws one (that drew millions and millions) to the series.

I must've been cursed this month to read books that had, like, NO likable characters, because, damn it, it happened again. Pretty much every character in this play is a bit of a dick. Aside from Scorpius. He was cute. And his crush on Rose was adorable.

But I'm not convinced Tiffany and Thorne have ever actually spent time around adolescent boys. Their voices were SO random and inauthentic that I was actually laughing out loud sometimes at the absurdity of their dialogue. They were quite obviously young boys written by older men who forgot what it was like to be a kid. EVERYONE felt like a strange caricature of themselves. OOC (out of character) alert!

As a novel, in Rowling's expert hands, this story might've been what we all hoped it would be. But it had only the barest traces of the Potterverse we all know and love, and while it was an interesting addition to the series, it felt wholly unneeded and like a concession on Rowling's part to let someone beat her laid-to-rest series with a stick.

Star Trek: Beyond: 6/10. Holy deja vu, Batman. Haven't we seen this before? Don't get me wrong, two hours of Chris Pine is never a waste, but this felt a bit like a cookie cutter movie. Ship blows up, oh no! Something happens to crew, oh no! Something from the Federation's past comes back to bite them in the ass? OH NO! It was good, I still enjoyed it, but sadly, it brought nothing new to the table.

Suicide Squad: 4/10. I don't wanna talk about it... *shakes fist at Warner Brothers* *curls up into a ball*

Side note** I made bread from scratch. It was a solid 7/10. I AM A DOMESTIC GODDESS! *googles how to boil an egg*

~Be mindful of the the things that precious time is spent on.~

April in Review

So, my favorite thing about April is... EARTH DAY! Though I can't say I enjoy the irony of celebrating the planet that sustains us only one day a year, it's still a wonderful chance to give back to the planet and reflect on the sort of impact you have on it. If you didn't get a chance to give back or want to understand why doing so is important, watch the movie Racing Extinction. It's a serious eye opener. But prepare yourself for some feels.    

This April I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo (see this post for more info) and, HUZZAH, was successful...-ish in meeting my (meager) word goals for my new WIP. Only thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words to go! *cries internally* 

It's also been an okay-decent month for my consumer heart! Finished two games in a week (not bragging, it's a shameful reflection of how much free-time I have, meh), saw some movies, and read some books. Without further ado, here's my April in review: 

Winter (The Lunar Chronicles) by Marissa Meyer. 

So, I have a few issues with Winter. 

1. I couldn't help but shake the feeling that a lot of this book was filler to make it longer. I have NEVER read such a long YA novel before. There was a whole lot of recapping in all the wrong places and I found myself skimming through much of the book (mostly slipping entire pages at times). I NEVER skim. I FROWN upon skimming! How DARE I SKIM? 

2. And then there was my realization that Wolf and Scarlet were completely useless characters in terms of affecting the plot. Literally NOTHING would change if their characters were removed. 

3. And then there's that moment when it becomes the Hunger Games. Poor people live in districts sectors where they do hard manual labor so the rich and extravagantly dressed people of the Capital Artemesia can live their luxurious lives. Teenage girls arrives, becomes the "face of the revolution," leads poor people in a rebellion against rich people. Love interest is captured, used as an unwilling voice against teen girl's uprising, underdogs triumph anyways, governing ruler is killed. The end. Sound familiar? Suzanne Coll--er, Marissa Meyer tried, unsuccessfully, to throw in some kind of political theme that just did not work against all the deeper themes  so successfully established in the previous books. The revolution became the focus in a Hunger Games-esque move that made me wonder whether this dark turn had been a poor suggestion made by an editor and not Meyer's instinctual course of plot. And I would've much preferred them to use guerrilla tactics, have a face-off at the end, and then have the entirety of Luna's people (poor and court alike) betray the psychotic queen who mistakenly thought she was loved and supported by the people she oppressed.

4. The lack of focus on Winter, the TITLE character of the book. Every book before had been centered around the title character, with a wonderful balance of moments that continued to tie the other characters into the plot and to each other. Not the case in this one. And Winter and Jacin were such deliciously wonderful characters that I feel we were horribly shortchanged by the imbalance of time given to them.

That being said, not once did I consider putting the book down. Which says something I suppose! The series has made me a definite fan of Meyer's writing. I'll await the release of her next book, Heartless, with baited breath!

Vicious by V.E. Schwab. 

This was my first book by Schwab, though she's been on my reading radar for some time. And I'm SO GLAD I finally sat down with one of her stories because it's made me incredibly eager to get ahold of the rest! The way in which Vicious' story was told is very unique, with seamless transitions from past to present throughout the book. The time shifts were never jolting and really added to the pace of the book.
I really enjoyed her fresh take on "superheroes" and "supervillains" (called EOs/Extra-Ordinaries) and how they get their powers. Many summaries and reviews boast the book's "moral ambiguity," the weight of which I never really felt as it seemed obvious who were the bad guys and who were the good (both MCs are sociopaths really, which made for a disturbingly fun read). It had a Frankenstein (though someone else has said X-Men) meets Count of Monte Cristo feel to it and I couldn't put it down. Really looking forward to reading Schwab's other books!

     

Non-books:

Infamous: Second Son (PS4): 6/10. In which a sassy Pete Wentz takes Seattle by storm--er--smoke. Lackluster character and story building. But clever Banksy-ish tags that you get to spray paint around the city.

Shadow of Mordor (PS4): 9/10. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, but have come to realize how little I know about the lore of Middle-earth outside of the books. Shadow of Mordor DEFINITELY filled in many of those gaps in my knowledge and understanding in a very immersive way. While the learning curve had me frustrated at first, once I got the hang of things (and changed the skin to female character and badass, Lithariel) I immensely enjoyed the game! It was also extremely satisfying to see the whole of the Orc army under my wraith-y control. Mwahaha >:)  

Jungle Book: 6/10. TORN. FEELINGS. OPINIONS. TORN IN HALF. On one hand I enjoyed it. Was a little trip down memory lane, but that lane just happened to intersect disappointment avenue. A dark plot, voice casting that missed the mark (Bill/Scar/Walken), and some painfully slow scenes took away from the greater moments. Will now go watch the '67 version to make all right with the world again.

~Be mindful of the things that precious time is spent on.~

March in Review

A quarter of 2016 GONE! This year has packed itself up in a jet plane and is FLYING BY! Most of my March was spent reading, gaming, and timidly working on a new WIP. All of which totally broke the routine of "edit, edit again, smack face against keyboard and berate self in mirror, edit some more, then drown sorrows in bags of potato chips."

So March was a nice reprieve from fretting over the State of Affairs of my MS headed to NoWhere Land. Instead of milking my own creative juices from the tap (that's a gross analogy, sorry), I got to indulge in the fruits of someone else's labor (cliche analogy>gross analogy). 

So here are a few reviews of  things I enjoyed (and didn't enjoy) in March:

Cinder, Scarlet, Fairest, and Cress of The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.

So I'm a bit of a bah-hum bug when it comes to retellings and stories based on true events. To me, half the work is already done for you: the characters, the morals, the major conflicts, they all already exist! So I'm quick to dismiss retellings of any kind and call it cheating. But I'd heard so much of the series and my FOMO was wracking up some serious guilt over avoiding it. So I dove in. And I'm SO glad I did!

Meyer did an amazing job of taking fairy tales that have been beaten over the head again and again and again, pulling them out of that subsequent genre coma, and giving them new life in the form of shiny android parts, spaceships, thoughtful cultural references, and enjoyable character dynamics. While I didn't realize just HOW GOOD Meyer could make this series until Cress (which I enjoyed much more than the first two), the series has been so delightful as a whole that I'm very much looking forward to reading Winter. 

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. 

LOVED! It took some time to get around the odd and archaic language (which was only used in the main character Maia's thoughts to himself and in some dialogue) and the glossary of terms in the back of the book proved invaluable, but overall it was a fantastic read! Both tone and narrative style were refreshingly different from many epic fantasies and though I'd hardly characterize it as being "steampunk," though many do, I loved the little nuances that provided a much needed freshness in the genre. For a book that was relatively devoid of action or any impending doom, it read quickly and the pace was very comfortable, letting (and encouraging) me to really sink into things.

Maia, the exiled, half-goblin prince turned reluctant Emperor, was unique and endearing and, as is rare as far as fantasy emperors go, KIND. In every sense of the word. At times he was a bit too meek and mousy for my tastes, but his goodheartedness and compassion made up for it entirely. One of my favorite things about the book was Addison's usage of ears to convey emotion. In the same way a cat's and dog's ears give us hints, Addison used the twitch, angle, and movement of goblin's and elves' pointed ears to convey emotion, which was cleverly used in deducing a person's true feelings. 

All-in-all, this was a fantastically fresh book that really paid homage to the fantasy novels of the 80's and I hope the genre will see more of a return to this style in the future. While Addison has not mentioned a sequel to the book, there has been talk of a companion piece. Which I will actually be holding my breath for. 

Books by Sarah J. Maas 

After trying, unsuccessfully, to read the first books in two of Maas's fantasy series, I have given up hope of this author being the right fit for me. Both A Court of Thorns and Roses (in my opinion a very flat and unsuccessful retelling of Beauty and the Beast with repetitive language and world-building that leaves much to be desired) and Throne of Glass, had inconsistent and, in my opinion of course, unlikeable main characters. I just couldn't identify with either heroine and, despite some compelling minor characters, had to mark them both as DNFs. I was SHOCKED to see the vast number of glowing reviews for both on goodreads and am now worried that my entire world-view might be slightly askew... (google askew, it's fantastic. Seriously, you won't be disappointed!). 

And because I did partake in things other than book variety, though books are, DUH, the most important, here are some other reviews that I'll keep brief:

Far Cry Primal (PS4): 9/10. Get to ride a sabretooth. 'Nuf said. 

Zootopia: 8/10. SUPER CUTE. I wonder what my guinea pig would do in Zootopia..? She can be a serious diva so I imagine she'd be on a reality show called "The Real Housewives of Zootopia."

Batman Vs. Superman: 5/10. Snyder's Batman was seriously "omg, ugh." Superman should've just lasered that strong, manly chin right off. Wonder Woman was WAY too frail looking. But the hints at other Justice Leaguers: sploosh ;)

~Be mindful of the the things that precious time is spent on.~