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[ekrochford]

literature meme: 6/10 series or books

What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms… or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin (1996-)

#a song of ice and fire #game of thrones #George Martin #wind and words

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“’Shouldn’t we help?’ whispered Temple. ‘A good man of business remains neutral.’ ‘Surely there’s a moment to cease being a good man of business, and try to be merely a good man.’ ‘Perhaps.’ Majud heaved the door shut again. ‘But this is not that moment.’”

-Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

I can say with 100% certainty that this is the most western book I’ve ever read.

Louis L’Amour never really did it for me, folks. I’ve never read through an entire western in my life--the closest I came was reading the Kirsten books in the American Girl series as a kid, and she was more frontier than western (yes, there is a difference, thank you).

Of course, with my reading history, it’s not hard to guess why Joe Abercrombie’s First Law world appeals to me: it doesn’t quite take place in our world. The lands of Far Country and Near Country are a wonderful reimagining of the wild west, complete with scavenging tribes, wagon trains, bandits, hangin’s, and lots of goddamn dust. All this, and the eerie echoes of a long-gone world that used to stand out in the desert, one that the people of today thread through without realizing all that used to thrive here.

Red Country is a story, foremost, about a young woman hunting after the men who took her little brother and sister. Shortly after that, it’s about a man who thought he was done with the rough life, feeling the familiar weight of a sword and the joy of violence overtake him again. It’s about a cowardly lawyer who would give anything to be less of a sack of shit--until danger shows up again, and then he’s too eager to retreat. It’s about people seeking new lives and fighting for old ones and doing senseless things and sometimes it’s about people making the right choices for the first time in a long, long time.

I was thoroughly impressed by Abercrombie’s take on the west--I’m still not sure if I can call it a fantasy western, but it’s something else. Something damn good.

Okay, the goods.

I’m not the be-all-end-all of what’s been written and what hasn’t, but I sure haven’t stumbled across anything quite like Red Country. How many incarnations of medieval Europe are there? I can shoot off ten in under a half minute. 

Ok, maybe it takes me a full minute, I’ve got a lot of chatter upstairs.

But my point is, one of the best things about Red Country is a trait it shares with Cinder: it’s a wild, shot-in-the-dark new take on something I thought had been redone to death. When someone does a western, it can really only go a handful of pre-approved directions--the genre itself demands it. But Abercrombie made a new world for a pleasantly dusty old tale and it works. SO well. 

Also, I felt some persistent feelings towards Lamb, feelings that a woman my age probably shouldn’t be feeling for a man past 50. 

*fans self*

Right. Let’s be upfront about the drawbacks, though. 

Eh...

Well...

I’m not trying to be coy, but I’m having a tough time thinking of anything with that picture right up there.

Okay, okay, so what I found most grating about Red Country--again--it has in common with Cinder. This great premise, familiar with the unfamiliar, so on so forth, blah. Then things get predictable. Not long-term predictable, but you can see events coming up the pike with little to no difficultly. 

Does this ruin the story? No. Will this stop me from reading the next books? No. Will this keep me from eyeing older men more than usual? Wish it would, but nope. 

The Breakdown:

9/10 Voice. I couldn’t rate Red Country a dot lower, nor higher. Abercrombie uses an impressively western tone, vocabulary, and attitude not only through dialogue, but throughout narrative passages. Even more impressive (and this really seals the deal for me) he bothered to alter narrative styles after the character he was narrating. Shy’s passages are hardcore drawl, while Temple’s are more refined, and even the short snippets of perspective from the other characters keeps a strong, certain flavor of that individual’s thoughts. At the same time, though... not quite King, nor Rothfuss, nor Zusak. I love it well, but it’s missing that precise little touch of flair that better writers than I have a hard time defining. 

9/10 Characters. Look, I love every character in this book. Even the villains--even the ones I hate the way the reader is supposed to hate them. Even the ones that are vile and small and pathetic. Their vileness is just as well-shaped as the goodness, honor, and stubborn set-of-the-teeth that we love in our heroes. The reason I marked this category down is because this is where we stumble upon that predictability I spoke of earlier. Little things that seem taken from elsewhere--although well-balanced with original quirks and twitches that make each character hop, swagger, and come out of the page swinging. 

9/10 Story. Couldn’t give a 10/10, much though I wanted to. Most of Red Country is dripping with fresh ideas, crisply brought to life. But some elements were TOO convenient, sorry. That seems to be the tone of this review, in general, but I stand by it again. We lose a point for the almost that could have been. 

9/10 overall is more than enough for me. I drift through imagined worlds, face dangers that only seem real, and fight beside friends that are all the more permanent for being the fantasies of an excellent, excellent weaver of words-- and the dusty Far Country with its dangers and beauties will be another stop on my journey. 

Besides, I have to know what happens to Lamb! I have to know! 

#red country #joe abercrombie #shy south #lamb #northerner #caul shivers #temple #pit #ro #dragon people #crease #dab sweet #crying rock #leef #child stealers #grega cantliss #papa ring #the mayor #western #fantasy western #ghosts #sangeed #the empire #inquisitor lorsen #nicomo cosca #mercenaries #company of the gracious hand

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“He was alive. He was free.

His debts were deeper than ever, but still, a fair result. If there was a God, He was an indulgent father, who always forgave no matter how far His children strayed.”

#red country #joe abercrombie #temple #shy south #lamb

[ekrochford]

Just started watching American Horror Story: Hotel (I know, I know, I proudly operate at my own damn pace). I keep watching this series thinking that they’ve got to run out of steam sooner or later, but season 5 doesn’t seem to be it.

First episode blew my mind! I think my jaw was on the floor five minutes in and I didn’t manage to reattach it until after the closing credits.

#she wants revenge #tear you apart #american horror story #hotel #lady gaga #the countess #kathy bates #sarah paulson #hotel cortez #season 5 #I miss jessica lange

[ekrochford]

"It's been days since I sat down to write the story of the fire at the Black Spot as my father told it to me, and I haven't gotten to it yet.

It's in The Lord of the Rings, I think, where one of the characters says that 'way leads on to way '; that you could start at a path no more fantastic than from your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go... well, anywhere at all. It's the same way with stories. One leads to the next, and to the next; maybe they go in the direction you wanted to go, maybe they don't. Maybe in the end it's the voice that tells the stories more than the stories themselves that matters." -- Stephen King, It

#stephen king #it #derry #maine #fear #creature #beverly marsh #bill denbrough #ben hanscom #mike hanlon #Eddie kasprak #stan uris #georgie #clown #richie tozier

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“All must be known.”

-- Dave Eggers, The Circle

WOW, there is actually no sentence that sums up this freaky, frightening, fictional company more than that.

I picked up The Circle on a layover at the Denver airport (it was between that and Pillars of the Earth, and I already had a medieval-ish series going right then). It is not marketed as a horror novel, but let me tell you. Let me just tell you.

Ok, not THAT horrifying, but absolutely terrifying in a very different way.

(It remake was the bomb, just throwing that out there.)

A rundown, if you’ll read on.

Mae Holland is offered a job at the prestigious, shiny, glittery, wonderful start-up the Circle thanks to a college friend who’s climbed high in the company. Dazed and amazed, she’s the sort of girl who does her best under praise, and believe me, there’s plenty of that at the Circle. Founded by the three wise men (the tech genius Ty, the favorite-uncle-figure Eamon, and the business shark Tom), the Circle is a deceptively utopian, but ultimately vicious new face of everything from software to health insurance. They’ll give you everything you need-- in return, they want to know everything you are, everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever done. As you read The Circle, you slowly begin to realize that there are more things in your life that you prefer to keep private than you first realized.

It’s like your entire life is now on Facebook, and there are no privacy settings. Everyone can look up anything about anyone, everyone, else.

I lost some sleep after finishing this book; readers who are a bit paranoid to begin with may want to abstain.

There are some things I want to poke at--my fear blinded me for a while, but in retrospect, I have some complaints.

First, and most important, why in hell is Kaldin interested in Mae to begin with? This plot hole didn’t seem so strange to me, at first, but by the end of the book, when you discover Kaldin’s identity, it really doesn’t make sense. I can see why Kaldin targeted Mae to help him in his ultimate goal, but he seemed to be approaching her in a romantic way from the start. Why? In a book that is otherwise airtight, this is like a pressure leak. I know all young males are supposed to be ultra-horny all the time (sexist that I am), but really. He literally could have had any number of girls, prettier girls, smarter girls, more interesting girls. Mae is very bland and malleable, which offers the unpleasant possibility that Kaldin purposely sought her out because she’d give him what he wanted--not impossible, but not in line with his character. In a symbolic way, their relationship is obvious, but this isn’t a very symbolic book. Most of The Circle is terribly clear (even the Trench discoveries). I’ll let it go, overall, but I’d be interested to hear Eggers explain further.

I’m probably just jealous, because anyone else having sex at work is just a reminder of what I could be spending my time on instead of being a responsible adult.

I’m also a little disbelieving that no one else is seeing Tom Stenton jerking off to the possibilities of world domination at his fingertips while all these dumb millennial kids are dreaming their utopian dreams. Seriously? Guy is almost a caricature of Wolf of Wall Street.

Eamon Bailey knows. He knows...

I’m not going to be able to enjoy Forrest Gump if I watch this movie, I know it...

I tell you, it’s really hard to think about this book and find things I liked. It was a good book, believe me, but it’s all just so... real...

But there are definitely goods to find. Setting aside my personal feelings of horror, the style is clean and efficient, very modern and very compatible with the clean, modern feel of the Circle campus and the premise at hand. Eggers keeps a tight clip throughout, never bogging down on too many details, and the results are a stream-lined psychological thriller.

Maybe he didn’t mean to write a psychological thriller, but it sure kept me on the edge of my seat. *coughs*

The characters were a real kick, too. In a world of cut-and-paste, Eggers brings a deliciously unpredictable cast of relatable kooks, infuriating idiots, and careful planners that mesh like Velcro.

But don’t think I didn’t catch Dr. Villalobos, Dave. Just because Mae notes that she’s too gorgeous to be a doctor, doesn’t mean you get away with it. (justkiddingyou’rehumanliketherestofusyoucanhavethisone)

And that Francis asshole! Ugh! I just want to punch him in the throat!

Preeeeeetty much like that, yeah.

Overall, I would hand The Circle to just about anyone looking for a slow-burning drift into the world of invasive monitoring. Are there people out there looking for that? Because we have it here. Right here.

Let’s put numbers to it.

7/10 Voice. Clear and concise, but not remarkable. I’d put Eggers above average in this read, but not in the ‘great’ category. Nothing masterful or artistic in his form, just exactly what it needs to be, no more.

9/10 Characters. Look, I adore the hell out of Eggers’ cast. Really! True, Ty, Eamon, and Tom are exactly what they look like, but that’s the point of the Circle: transparency. Everyone is what they seem, because you can know everything they are. The real mind-trip with all these characters is the way they react to the stark truth of each other. *shivers* But no, you can’t have 10/10 Eggers because I just don’t freaking buy Kaldin being so attracted to Mae out of literally nowhere. Humans don’t naturally magnetize to the inner beauty of others off the street. It’s not a thing--even if it was, we all get to know Mae pretty well by the end of the book... I’m not buying it.

10/10 Story. I still can’t sleep if I think about this too much before bed. I would have given anything to change the end of the book, but all of it would have been ruined if I’d gotten my wish. The entire book hurtles in terrible, traceable pattern to an inevitable end, and with THAT ONE EXCEPTION, none of it should be altered. Nothing removed. Nothing added. It’s awful and chilling and scary as an oncoming train.

Now, I better go find a princess movie to watch--before I start making designer tin-foil hats. 8.6/10 ain’t nothing to shake a stick at, if I do say so myself. Just don’t read if you’re the sort of person who looks at their laptop camera and wonders who’s looking back.

The Circle, I promise, will take away your peace of mind, my friends, but sometimes we can all use a little unease. Especially when that unease comes from a stabbing shred of truth not so deep beneath the fiction.

#the circle #mae holland #kaldin #ty gospodinov #eamon bailey #tom stenton #annie #circlers #all must be known #SeeChange #surveillance #start-up #California #kayak #MS #Mercer #Francis #software #connectivity #frightening tech #invasive monitoring

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“We cannot help how we are born or how our lives fashion our needs, our loves. I regret to say, it does not always direct us wisely, despite our best intentions.”

-Claire Lorrimer, The Chatelaine

Let me preface this review with a confession. I went to Amazon Books, typed in my last name, and picked out a book that came up in the search results. I mean, I read the description first, of course. It sounded perfect--great time period, great premise, great (if predictable) set up. The Amazon reviews weren’t bad, so I went on and bought it.

I definitely don’t regret the purchase. Let me tell you more about it.

The Chatelaine is a decades-long chase after the secrets of the Rochford family (the fictional one, of course). In it, we follow young American heiress Willow as she marries the man she adores as a girl, then begins to find the many skeletons in Rochford Manor’s many, many closets. As Willow’s marriage becomes less and less happy--in direct opposite to the people around her, her new family, who she endlessly works to help and heal--secrets begin to surface. Some of them are terrible, and lurk just out of reach. Maddeningly.

Willow grows up slow, as her brothers-in-law shield her from the truth of her slime husband and Grandmere retains an iron grip as the matriarch of the Rochford family. But time changes everything, some things in ways that even I didn’t see coming.

All right, let me just knock out the wrongs I found in this novel.

I DID NOT ENJOY THE WRITING STYLE.

At first.

Honestly, my bar on writing style is set pretty high. I don’t fawn over anything less than glory, seriously. But Lorrimer has a weird, too-forward style. It reads more like a textbook, at times. Lots of telling. Not enough showing. She gets the point across, but without enough... art.

I adjusted to it, and was able to truly enjoy the story by the middle of the novel, but a more refined technique would have made an entertaining story more enthralling.

The characters weren’t terrible, but there was a certain familiarity. When reading through, you'll recognize some template characters, some almost theatrically silly or villainous or angelic faces. Separately, they’re tropes. Together, they mesh. If you can accept their flaws, it isn’t a deal-breaking issue.

I can’t say with certainty that this is a flaw, but conflicts seem to resolve easily for Willow--all except her own. Is this purposeful? At first glance, this seems like the coincidence of an indulgent author, but maybe it was done on purpose. Maybe.

But there were plenty of things I did like, I promise!

First, it’s a romance historical fiction. I love, love, love historical fiction. Lorrimer takes the time to tack landmark events into the story, like the death of the King of England and flight of the Wright brothers and the Great San Francisco Earthquake. A little campy, but I enjoyed the author’s care to secure her story in our world.

Now, although the style could be improved, the story was a twisty romp across forty+ years that was more intriguing than I first thought. Honestly, at first I thought The Chatelaine might prove to be a washed-out Jane Eyre knock-off, but thankfully I was wrong in this; while sometimes too easily resolved, the conflicts are solidly real, the sort of problems and crisis that arise I real life at times we least need, being fixed by the characters as best they can (much as we all deal with our own issues). I came to appreciate that Lorrimer offers us a contrast between things that break and fix easily and things that take a long time simmering.

Overall, the feeling of this book is colorful, airy, true to the romance style. Every page puts you in mind of sprawling castles and old-world charm. In short, the book takes you away, which exactly what it’s meant to do.

Strangely, it was boring to start, too artless for me almost up until the very end. But then, suddenly, I realized I’d fallen under the familiar spell of a great book and the ending was a gut-punch.

One thing is certain--you know all too well that Willow is in for heartache, and you can’t stop reading for that knowledge. I just had to know how it was going to unfold, and how hard the other shoe was going to drop.

Let’s look at the numerics.

4/10 Voice. I’ve definitely read worse, but there is just something too lack-luster about Lorrimer’s style. This novel would have been damn glittery if the style was just a bit more... well, just more. Everything’s laid out, cut and dry, this happened, that happened. True, there are a few promising inner monologues and some truly genuine dialogue, but a better style is the most that this book is wanting for greatness!

8/10 Characters. How do I say this? Almost all of the characters were templates. Not a one was really original. They come from all sorts of sources, The Secret Garden, Jane Austen’s writings, and Willow herself is a border-line Mary-Sue. Rowell is a spoiled heir, Toby a shy second-son, Grandmere an iron-fisted matriarch. But together, they create a stew of over-lapping tides and charged emotions that spark and blur in unexpected ways, with wildly unexpected consequences. Characters are the fabric of a novel, and even though they all came from familiar places, I found their combination creating situations I hadn’t expected. I can’t help but admit that there is nothing I would change about any of them.

7/10 Story. Some books I give credit for the depth of their events; they are like a well, small, but very deep. The Chatelaine was like a floodplain--very shallow, but enormous and stretching over decades. Some spots (usually spots you can’t see from the surface) are actually startlingly deep and can swallow you if you aren’t careful. At the end of the day, the events added up and made sense and I enjoyed their sequence. Simple as that; it was enjoyable.

The Chatelaine isn’t going to win any awards any time soon, but don’t let that stop you if you’re looking for a sweet, arcing trip through time with an often dysfunctional, rich family.

Weird that I find myself suggesting it when it was so freaking difficult to get into for the first four hundred pages. But after all, it was freaking difficult to put down for the last two hundred.

#the chatelaine #Claire lorrimer #willow #rowell #rochford #grandmere #clotilde #toby #pelham #francis #nellie #doctor forbes #sophie #the duchess #rochford manor #rupert #adrian

[ekrochford]

*shivers*

This one definitely made me uncomfortable.

More to come, soon...

#ekrochford #the circle #mae holland #eamon bailey #annie #Circlers #tech #surveillance #all must be known #ty #kalden

[ekrochford]

"Sworbreck had come to see the face of heroism and instead had seen evil.

Seen it, spoken with it, been pressed up against it. Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods."

#red country #Joe Abercrombie #Shy South #Temple #Lamb #Savian #Dab Sweet #Crying Rock #Corlin #Inquisitor Lorsen #Nicomo Cosca #Pit #Ro #Crease #The Mayor #Papa Ring #rebels #ghosts

[ekrochford]

“I can’t stand to think my life is going to fast and I’m not really living it.”

-Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Ugh.

Look, I love books. Love, love, love. Please, never think that when I dislike a book, I dislike reading because that is absurd. I’d never hate a book out of ignorant boredom with reading. Never, never.

The Sun Also Rises is the first book I’ve ever read by Ernest Hemingway, one of his “Big Three” classics (the other two being The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls). It’s 251 pages, and I struggled through every one.

Here’s the long and short of it.

A group of past-war expatriates in Europe spend all their time partying and drinking and trying to ignore that life can be made of anything other than glamor and nightlife. While doing this, the reader is introduced (whether we like it or not) to the myriad fissures in the lives of the cast, especially these two winners in the picture above, Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The course of events lead them all to a holiday to the fiesta in Spain, where the bull fighting pits are alive for the season and all manner of shit hits the fan. Jake’s love for Brett, determinedly returned and ignored simultaneously, makes him an unhappy resident of the proverbial friendzone while he watches her flirt and sleep with anyone she feels like.

None of this makes any of them happy, of course, and people end up getting into dumb fights and situations because of the drama.

Hopefully you’re seeing my thoughts on this novel.

The Bad of it all.

I tried to research and detect some deeper meaning beyond the apparent lack of story in The Sun Also Rises. It was written in Hemingway’s own expatriate days, when he lived in Paris. It follows a group of American and European idiots around while they try to drink themselves into numbness, which I guess mirrors Hemingway’s habits as well.

Honestly, beyond the disgustingly foolish characters and vapid plot and sheer nonsense of it all, the worst part of this book was simply that I couldn’t bring myself to care. I didn’t start caring until the bulls showed up, and some real passion came into the scene. And what a crime that is--to have a book with no passion! I might as well have been reading the Old Testament, or an encyclopedia.

The... Good?

I must admit, Hemingway had a way with language. Every scene, every person, was presented in precisely enough words to get the point across, no more, no less. The bone-deep existential emptiness was practically emanating off the page.

As with all classics, I’m not about to break The Sun Also Rises into bits and try to assign numerical value to a time-honored tradition of literature.

But I tell you, it sure didn’t float my boat.

#ernest hemingway #jake #brett #lady ashley #pedro romero #bill cohn #the count #spain #paris #london

[ekrochford]

Finished Penny Dreadful, and I tell you, it's weird to have a great series actually call it quits and leave off on a spectacular note.

And what a gloriously spectacular note it was.

For all those series out there who drag out the end, take a note. Three seasons of real, excellent content was enough. Maybe it didn’t make anyone more money season after season, but to the viewers, to me, an ending to the story was all that was left to give us.

#penny dreadful #vanessa ives #dracula #ethan chandler #sir malcolm murray #victor frankenstein #dr jekyll #mr hyde #lily #bruna croft #dorian gray #justine #wolfman #apache #vampire #psychic #victorian #paranormal

[ekrochford]

It’s so strange, that I should have turned this series back on when I did.

Season 3 of Penny Dreadful opens with Vanessa buried in a lonely depression, isolated in Malcolm’s big, dark house, eating whatever junk is in the kitchen, allowing dust and grime and decay to build up on the floors and in herself.

Not to sound melodramatic, but I was shocked to see exactly how I felt reflected in her, this beautiful and mysterious fictional character from a paranormal-historical horror show.

‘Fictional’ is the important word, because it’s true. Vanessa Ives doesn’t exist. But nonetheless, I saw myself (who I’m pretty sure is real, most of the time) being played out in depressive detail on screen. It’s odd how we really can’t sometimes tell for sure whether art is imitating life, or the other way around.

But Vanessa got some good advice, and so did I, and here we are. Season 3 is still excellent, and to everyone out there struggling through a murky time of your own, don’t forget that sometimes we have to lose ourselves in something make-believe to return to what’s reality.

After all, artists use lies to tell the truth.

Life, for all it’s misery, is ours, and ours alone.

#penny dreadul #vanessa ives #scorpion #dracula

[ekrochford]

“HERE IS A SMALL FACT: You are going to die.”

-Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Well, if a book was ever going to get your attention on the very first page, it’s this one.

The Book Thief, in it’s first page, submitted a promising application to my list of first-favorite books. By the end of the first chapter, it had been accepted.

This novel is a recollection by Death of the Book Thief, a girl who didn’t even know how to read when she stole her first book, or why she did it. The daughter of a Communist in Nazi Germany, Liesel grows up in a foster home while Hitler gathers power around himself. Through a child’s eyes she watches the beginning, middle, and end of the darkest hour of the German people. And Death watches with her.

At least, when he has time. Often, Death notes that he was terribly busy in those years. Terribly, horribly busy. Zusak has a truly lovely way of making Death compassionate and solemn, a respectful conductor of the dead rather than a gleeful reaper. And of course, a hauntingly gentle narrator.

That gif was just too much to pass up!

Now, I really have to search for something to pry at...

All right, I give up. I loved The Book Thief. It was heart-rending. Shattering. Unforgettable. Writing this review, I want to read it all over again in a night. I’m sure there are readers out there who can find plenty to complain about--people can always find something to complain about--but I cannot. I just have nothing to add, nothing to improve.

I guess that makes this section pretty redundant, too.

To list all the wonderful, beloved aspects of The Book Thief would be impractical, least of all because I want you all to go out and read it and therefore don’t want to spoil anything!

*shivers*

Terrifying and breathtaking and soul-chilling and harsh and soft and cruel and love and hatred and love again...

*shivers some more*

These numbers aren’t going to be a surprise.

10/10 Voice. Death is the narrator of my dreams. Death’s childish love of colors, especially, is a peculiarly mundane magic in the midst of the horror and beauty being retold.

10/10 Characters. Zusak’s characters are brilliantly rendered, each as singular as a song, painted lovingly and with infinite care by a real master of the medium. There can be only one Liesel, one Rudy, one Hans, one Rosa. The racist woman who runs the convenience store and the grieving wife of the mayor on the hill. There is only one Max. There is only one Death.

10/10 Story. How many times has this few years in the history of all mankind been replayed? How many times do we have to watch it unfold? Knowing, as we do, what comes to pass, how many more times do we have to suffer the recollection? Just once more, please. One more time, for Zusak has a facet of this atrocity you must see.

I can’t bring the feelings and the soul of this book to life in so many words, but if the phrase “You’ve really just got to read it” ever meant anything, now’s the time.

There was once a strange, small man.

But there was a word-shaker, too.

Is it really you? the young man asked.

Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?

No other book has broken me in such perfect efficiency.

#ekrochford #the book thief #Markus Zusak #Liesel Meminger #rudy #papa #mama #hans hubermann #rosa hubermann #himmel street #germany #nazi #book burning #death #jews #concentration camp #max vandenburg #the standover man #colors

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This show will ruin me, I swear.

I was sure that by the third season, it would be getting stale. Surely, they can’t keep up momentum this long.

Then... Dr. Jekyll.

Then... Dracula. Oh my stars, Dracula.

#penny dreadful #season 3 #vanessa ives #ethan chandler #sir malcolm #victor frankenstein #dr jekyll #dorian gray #bruna croft #lily #london #america #witches #werewolves #psychics #vampires #lucifer #dracula #prostitutes

[ekrochford]

For any writers: http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/SFTerms.html

For more facts, follow Ultrafacts

[ekrochford]

‘She was silenced by the blare of recorded trumpets through invisible overhead speakers. She ducked at the sound, eyes widening, as the short melody faded. At the last trill of the horns, a majestic voice boomed through the ball room. ‘Please welcome to the 126th Annual Ball of the Eastern Commonwealth, a personal guest of His Imperial Majesty: Linh Cinder of New Beijing”.’

-Marissa Meyer, Cinder

All right, Marissa Meyer, you have my attention.

Sheesh.

Yes, I did need to use that gif. How could I NOT use that gif?

For those who are not familiar with the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder is the first book in a series of fairy tale retellings set in the distant future of our world. That’s in a nutshell. And in a glimpse, I was intrigued.

A little more information: Linh Cinder is a teenage cyborg in the futuristic New Beijing, a place where being a cyborg is on the same level as being a sex offender or a polygamist. She didn’t have a choice in becoming a cyborg, and she has fewer options still when her adoptive father dies of the dreaded blue fever, the plague that is ravaging Earth, and leaves Cinder in the care of her bitter adoptive mother.

Cinder is a pragmatist and the best mechanic in the district; she has a plan to slip out of her guardian’s noose. But when the handsome Prince Kai comes around seeking her help to restore his personal android, Cinder finds her path to freedom quickly clogging up with complications. Before long, those complications involve the feared and powerful Lunar Queen Levana and the despised Lunar race, beings that can use their energy fields to manipulate perceptions of sight and sound like magic.

I’ve read good YA fiction before, after all. Just because a book is aimed at teenagers doesn’t mean it is, by default, bad.

THAT BEING SAID, CINDER ISN’T QUITE OFF THE HOOK.

I’m not going to condemn the whole series based on a few shortcomings, but these really should be addressed.

My usual shortcoming with modern YA fiction is the typical shallow feeling of its world and characters. This is not a quirk of the genre; I’ve read excellent fantasy YAF with real depth--sci-fi is not a far step to the left. I’ve been a teenager before, guys. I know Meyer, also, has been a teenager. For all that adults like to laugh at teens and their silly problems (”Oh, you’re out of lip gloss? How terrible.” “A two-thousand word essay? *snickers* That’s rough”) young adults do, in fact, possess real emotions. The transition between child and adult often leaves teenagers unprepared to handle the volatile complexities of ‘grown-up feelings’ but to fail to explore the depth of thought and feeling in a teen character is a terrible waste. Reading through, Meyer failed to connect us adequately to a truly, phenomenally unique incarnation of the familiar Cinderella figure, and that’s a damn shame.

Taking it further, she created a stunning new world in a techno-retro future of East-meets-West culture, and I actually felt underwhelmed. What the hell? The opportunities to drag me into New Beijing were there, and the best Meyer could do was put up a picture window for her readers to peer through. If this wasn't such an amazing setting and an amazing recreation of these fairy tales, I wouldn’t be so harsh, but I have literally never seen anything like this before. Such a novel concept deserved better presentation.

One last thought--it was all too predictable. Yeah, I knew Cinder was obviously going to end up a princess some way or another, but the hints along the way were so heavy-handed. It was like when your co-worker wouldn’t shut up about Rock Hard in the Park for a month straight and then mysteriously called out sick that weekend. Seriously. We saw that coming.

But please, this series is far from a bust! I enjoyed it, despite my complaining.

Did I mention how jaw-dropping this entire concept is? Holy gods, it’s about future New Beijing, with a whole different race of people living on the freaking moon, and mind-control, and a plague, and looming world war, and... cyborgs! The fact that I bitched about all those other things and picked the style and depth and predictability to pieces and I still really enjoyed this book is a huge indicator of its value.

I, myself, am guilty of not letting my verbs do the heavy lifting. I have committed the high sin of being disgustingly predictable. And yes, I’ve failed to bridge the gap between my readers and my characters in the past. Meyer does these things, and I understand, because I’ve been there. I also forgive her, because the bright shiny gleam of fresh blood in the fairy tale retelling world is soooooo worth it!

Now for the count.

5/10 Voice. Yep I hacked Cinder to pieces on this one. Look, when you have an idea this spectacular, you’ve got to step up your game. The writing in Cinder was pallid and shapeless; there was some magnetism to the sci-fi genre in the use of vocabulary, but too little, too late. I’ll check out Scarlet and Cress and Winter, but Cinder is the first novel and the hook that needs to yank people into the series. Descriptions were cookie-cutter, emotions were cut-and-paste, and dialogue was acceptable at best.

7/10 Characters. Now, if the premise of future-sci-fi fairy-tales is the crowning jewel of the Lunar Chronicles, the characters are the Scepter of Office. I ADORE Prince Kai. The thought of a teenage prince being a social media star was so jarringly close to reality--so, so good.  And grouchy, down-to-earth cyborg Cinder being the city’s best mechanic? OMG. Those things being said, Meyer builds her characters with very predictable templates, and I don’t refer to the fairy tale source material, here. My two commandments of compelling characters are thus: 1) Thou shalt act according to one’s nature, and 2) Thou shalt not be boring while doing so. And there were times were Meyer’s characters were, in fact, boring, not in what they were, but what they were doing.

9/10 Story. With a little more spice, I would have given Cinder a 10/10 for this one! Meyer shines in her glossy retelling of oft-told-tales and stories that have been rewritten so many times, they’re getting creased at the spines. The story is the reason I will go back, spend money on Scarlet and the others, use my time to read through, and give Meyer another shot. I was intrigued by it all, and while her hints got excessive and her characters mechanical (lol I made a joke), Meyer still had a slew of brilliant ideas for this retelling.

All in all, I give Cinder, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles, a 7/10. I have a lot of problems with this book, but I’ll still come back for the rest--if that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.

Young adult fiction is in a tricky place of being in high demand, which means sometimes lesser works make it to the limelight. The Lunar Chronicles are a marvelous concept that I don’t want to see wasted. Come on, Meyer, don’t bring me down.

#ekrochford #cinder #lunar chronicles #marissa meyer #linh cinder #peony #pearl #adri #linh garan #prince kai #emperor #queen levana #lunars #luna #earth #eastern commonweatlh #new beijing #android #cyborg #blue fever #plague #portscreen #fairytale #retelling #future #science fiction

[ekrochford]

A SMALL BUT WORTHY NOTE-- I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

More of Death’s narration. Gods, I love this book.

#ekrochford #markus zusak #the book thief #death