running the world
Reviews, reviews, reviews. I feel so full of reviews today, I might burst. I have spent the past two days NOT writing and have accumulated enough thoughts about the fictional world of the books I've been reading that they slosh in my head. Maybe that is not the right way to use a literary device, but I am too tired right now, and since I can't do anymore writing, I might as well give my opinions.
First, New Moon by Stephenie Meyer. Boy, that book is big. I started rereading it Sunday night after watching Twilight again and coming up with newer opinions on Twilight, which I had to reinforce by reading the next book in the series.
Maybe I never really noticed it before Twilight came out in theatres and everyone started being so down about Stephenie Meyer's writing; when reading Twilight I had become so enraptured by the heroine's qualities that I hardly noticed the writing, and I suppose that's the point. I didn't exactly feel like I was at the dentist's like when I had been reading Dan Brown, but I wasn't completely comfortable when I started becoming aware of the quality of the writing.
Perhaps people will disagree with me, but it's mainly plot-based, as well as voice, that gives me the jitters. It reads like a pre-teen novel, which I guess is what it is supposed to be. Everything is right there on the surface, everything is repeated, and I suppose everything is cliche. We get so much unnecessary information. The use of dreams and Bella's thought patterns when around Edward are all very teen-esque. Settings are vague, yet some details stick out so randomly (though I suppose that would be more an author quirk than anything).
So much of Stephenie's voice is infused in her style of writing that in many areas of the writing, especially during action, it seems like an adult is thinking about things, rather than a teenager. Details are more adult-oriented. For instance, why would a teenager compare herself to a house in renovation? And a lot of the teenager's personality is infused with adult qualities. She worries too much. She's quite a mother hen, and she hasn't even become a mother yet.
On the other hand, I understand Bella's tendency to take care of people, and the fact that she takes care of her parents when she is still a teenager. I went through it myself, so who I am to say that it doesn't exist? Bella takes care of her father physically, and she takes care of her mother emotionally and physically. I had to do both for my own mother... but that didn't mean I liked it. I was still a teenager. I couldn't handle taking care of someone else who should have been able to take care of themselves. Right now, my instincts tend more towards taking care of other people's feelings rather than my own.
But what irks me about this familial arrangement is a) her parents are capable of taking care of themselves and don't need her coddling them, b) they need to teach her how to be her own woman and to take care of her own emotions, and c) Edward has no right to tell her to keep herself out of danger for her parents sake so that she can continue cleaning up and feeding her father. I can expect a teenager to tell Bella that because they don't have the life experience to understand what taking care of your parents at such an early age means. But Edward is nearly a 100 yrs old.
A lot of the logic surrounding the vampires and the werewolves are things that I have trouble with. These issues are part of the plot mainly, and my biggest example would be the timing of the werewolf changes. According to the Quileute treaty with the vampires and to their legends, whenever there are vampires around, the men (or boys/children) of the tribe become werewolves.
So how is it that, during the first book when it was obvious that Jacob would be headed to being a werewolf and there were seven vampires around, only one werewolf was made?
And why is it that when all of the vampires left, save for the evil ones, the werewolf pack tripled? And all close together too. Jacob, Embry, and Quil became werewolves within a few months of each other, yet there had only been two vampires in their area.
And what the hell was with the hallucinations? And seriously, cliff diving? It's all good and fun until Bella starts committing suicide. It felt to me like Meyer was trying to push the book forward, and that the only way she found to do that was to have Bella's hallucinate Edward's voice in her head.
What I did like about this book is how quite close to true Meyer came to writing depression. While Bella's depression when Edward leaves her is exaggerated and the reason for it is exaggerated, it is a stark example of what depression can be. I wondered while reading the book if Stephenie had any periods of depression after giving birth to her sons.
I did like the zombie reference because for me, personally, that is what it feels like sometimes. Not that I can remember much of my depression before I started taking anti-depressants. But since being on the ADs I've noticed zombie-like behaviour. Sometimes I feel numb, sometimes I'm so angry or annoyed, but I try not to take it out on other people... too much.
Some of Bella's life and personal experiences feel relevant to me. Her depression, her instinctual ways of taking care of her parents, her loneliness. Thus, I have to defend the Twilight books to some extent. I really like the werewolves, and I think Jacob is an impressive character, but only during the first part of the book before he begins his changes. Like Bella, I am wary of the new Jacob, which is why I will never be able to side myself on Team Jacob. Though, I'm not very fond of Team Edward either. Both men have flaws and I can understand the reason for that. But it's really annoying when Jacob is being so pissy about the vampires all the time. For God's sakes, they're only vampires. Can't you see you're hurting your best friend?
Anyway, that is my rant on New Moon. Hope it didn't offend you too much, dear reader. Onto the next!
The Alpha and Omega stories by Patricia Briggs. I happened to be able to get a copy of Hunting Ground the day before it officially came out on the inet. HG is the second of the series after Cry Wolf and stars Anna Latham and Charles Cornick: werewolves. I've gotten deep into a werewolf phase right now.
I came to Alpha and Omega through the Mercy Thompson series, which I absolutely loved. Mercy the mechanic is quite fascinating, and her history with the wolves and disobeying the wolves, along with the way Briggs handles the wolves' personalities, is really good. I love her world of supernaturals, and so I continued reading that world through Anna Latham's story.
I was a little disappointed with the 3rd person narration, and that it didn't stick with just Anna. I remember Kelley Armstrong used the narrations of the victims and the suspects to further our information on the plot in Haunted, which seems to be what Briggs did here. I had been hoping for 1st person because that is what Briggs used for Mercy's books. It was the voice of the character that made me fall in love with those books.
I liked the 3rd person better in the second book, probably because I was more used to it. It is also interesting to read from Charles POV, though I prefer Anna's. We learn a lot about their actions with each other with the double narration, more so than we would have with a single narration, like Mercy's. We also learn more about the people around them, as some of them have narrations too. Though I can't really decide if I'd prefer knowing the extra narratives, or if I'd prefer just Charles and Anna's.
The history is a big draw for me too. Where Twilight's mix of people seem very loosely based in history, most of the wolves and the vampires are really based in history. Anna is still too young to have much of history, but knowing that she was a musician before she was turned into a werewolf was interesting, along with the information that Samuel told Charles stories when Charles was growing up. We learn a lot more about Bran in CW, but his age is so elusive, and that's my biggest question: how old is Bran? Also, knowing that Bran really was a monster when he was still in Wales makes him more real, more than just a politician with a lot of power behind him. A lot of his power comes from somewhere dark, and it's interesting to see how he's turned out.
HG is filled with politics, and it's set outside of Aspen Creek, two things that I don't really like. But what boosts it is the relationship between Charles and Anna. Though they have married, they still don't know each other that well. It's interesting to see how far a man will go in order to protect his mate. And how far a woman will go to protect hers.
What I really love about Briggs is how subtle she is. There are some matters which are explained maybe too much, mainly in Mercy's books. But there are other things that I took for granted until I stepped back to really look at them. The woman saves the man in the end. HG was no exception. Anna goes up against a Gray Lord, who is one of the fae and one of the people of Arthurian legend. Never mind that Anna is really tiny, always overlooked as a disguised powerhouse, and was sent to be destroyed, not do the destroying. But she saved her man in the end. Just as Mercy saves her own men.
Aren't women simply grand? We are so taken for granted, yet we have so much power of our own.
I would have liked more of an ending with HG. We don't know what happens with the conference or with the European wolves. Maybe it's all left hanging on purpose, but I would have liked to have seen more of a reunion between Charles and Anna. And I would have liked Anna to have asked Bran how old he was. Hehehehe
Okay, enough with the reviews. Onto real life.
SNW hasn't come along for awhile, meaning I haven't been writing that particular story for maybe a week or so. I'm at 250pgs, I think, and I've probably got 100+ more to go. There is no way I'll be able to finish this draft in time for school. What chance will I have during school? Not much. I've got two classes this year with ten novels each to be read. Though I did start taking out from the library some of those novels to read before school started, I haven't gotten far with that. I got preoccupied.
I started writing TV scripts, adapting Mercy Thompson's first book, Moon Called, into a TV season. There are only eight episodes, and I have a feeling that that is as much as I'm going to squeeze out of myself before school. I'm trying to go through each episode to add the other POVs that the novel is missing. Since Mercy's books are Mercy's narration solely, we don't see the other characters' lives and experiences except through her. And although werewolves cannot lie to one another, and you cannot lie to a werewolf, it makes things a little interesting in the 'filling out' department. No, that was not a puberty reference.
I'm also having trouble depicting the villain and depicting what the pack would do with their Alpha missing. For the villain, my approach is hampered by the hardwiring in my brain that says that all good villains are completely evil. Nevermind that I've seen the Watchmen. But this villain is not completely evil; in fact his intentions are for the betterment of another person, his father. Even though the villain was killing people, or allowing people to be killed or experimented on, he did these things against his will so that his father would gain some benefit. Although, looking at it through the terms I have just laid out shows the villain to really be evil, I still can't quite cross that threshold to believe that he is evil. I don't know...
The scripts are more in the fun department, though they are consuming all my time and energy. I am quite spent. It is interesting though to take a closer look at another author's choices. Word choices, speech choices, actions, things like that.
That's all I can write right now. I have to work tomorrow, so I should take a shower tonight. But I'm too tired. I don't wanna take a shower!
First, New Moon by Stephenie Meyer. Boy, that book is big. I started rereading it Sunday night after watching Twilight again and coming up with newer opinions on Twilight, which I had to reinforce by reading the next book in the series.
Maybe I never really noticed it before Twilight came out in theatres and everyone started being so down about Stephenie Meyer's writing; when reading Twilight I had become so enraptured by the heroine's qualities that I hardly noticed the writing, and I suppose that's the point. I didn't exactly feel like I was at the dentist's like when I had been reading Dan Brown, but I wasn't completely comfortable when I started becoming aware of the quality of the writing.
Perhaps people will disagree with me, but it's mainly plot-based, as well as voice, that gives me the jitters. It reads like a pre-teen novel, which I guess is what it is supposed to be. Everything is right there on the surface, everything is repeated, and I suppose everything is cliche. We get so much unnecessary information. The use of dreams and Bella's thought patterns when around Edward are all very teen-esque. Settings are vague, yet some details stick out so randomly (though I suppose that would be more an author quirk than anything).
So much of Stephenie's voice is infused in her style of writing that in many areas of the writing, especially during action, it seems like an adult is thinking about things, rather than a teenager. Details are more adult-oriented. For instance, why would a teenager compare herself to a house in renovation? And a lot of the teenager's personality is infused with adult qualities. She worries too much. She's quite a mother hen, and she hasn't even become a mother yet.
On the other hand, I understand Bella's tendency to take care of people, and the fact that she takes care of her parents when she is still a teenager. I went through it myself, so who I am to say that it doesn't exist? Bella takes care of her father physically, and she takes care of her mother emotionally and physically. I had to do both for my own mother... but that didn't mean I liked it. I was still a teenager. I couldn't handle taking care of someone else who should have been able to take care of themselves. Right now, my instincts tend more towards taking care of other people's feelings rather than my own.
But what irks me about this familial arrangement is a) her parents are capable of taking care of themselves and don't need her coddling them, b) they need to teach her how to be her own woman and to take care of her own emotions, and c) Edward has no right to tell her to keep herself out of danger for her parents sake so that she can continue cleaning up and feeding her father. I can expect a teenager to tell Bella that because they don't have the life experience to understand what taking care of your parents at such an early age means. But Edward is nearly a 100 yrs old.
A lot of the logic surrounding the vampires and the werewolves are things that I have trouble with. These issues are part of the plot mainly, and my biggest example would be the timing of the werewolf changes. According to the Quileute treaty with the vampires and to their legends, whenever there are vampires around, the men (or boys/children) of the tribe become werewolves.
So how is it that, during the first book when it was obvious that Jacob would be headed to being a werewolf and there were seven vampires around, only one werewolf was made?
And why is it that when all of the vampires left, save for the evil ones, the werewolf pack tripled? And all close together too. Jacob, Embry, and Quil became werewolves within a few months of each other, yet there had only been two vampires in their area.
And what the hell was with the hallucinations? And seriously, cliff diving? It's all good and fun until Bella starts committing suicide. It felt to me like Meyer was trying to push the book forward, and that the only way she found to do that was to have Bella's hallucinate Edward's voice in her head.
What I did like about this book is how quite close to true Meyer came to writing depression. While Bella's depression when Edward leaves her is exaggerated and the reason for it is exaggerated, it is a stark example of what depression can be. I wondered while reading the book if Stephenie had any periods of depression after giving birth to her sons.
I did like the zombie reference because for me, personally, that is what it feels like sometimes. Not that I can remember much of my depression before I started taking anti-depressants. But since being on the ADs I've noticed zombie-like behaviour. Sometimes I feel numb, sometimes I'm so angry or annoyed, but I try not to take it out on other people... too much.
Some of Bella's life and personal experiences feel relevant to me. Her depression, her instinctual ways of taking care of her parents, her loneliness. Thus, I have to defend the Twilight books to some extent. I really like the werewolves, and I think Jacob is an impressive character, but only during the first part of the book before he begins his changes. Like Bella, I am wary of the new Jacob, which is why I will never be able to side myself on Team Jacob. Though, I'm not very fond of Team Edward either. Both men have flaws and I can understand the reason for that. But it's really annoying when Jacob is being so pissy about the vampires all the time. For God's sakes, they're only vampires. Can't you see you're hurting your best friend?
Anyway, that is my rant on New Moon. Hope it didn't offend you too much, dear reader. Onto the next!
The Alpha and Omega stories by Patricia Briggs. I happened to be able to get a copy of Hunting Ground the day before it officially came out on the inet. HG is the second of the series after Cry Wolf and stars Anna Latham and Charles Cornick: werewolves. I've gotten deep into a werewolf phase right now.
I came to Alpha and Omega through the Mercy Thompson series, which I absolutely loved. Mercy the mechanic is quite fascinating, and her history with the wolves and disobeying the wolves, along with the way Briggs handles the wolves' personalities, is really good. I love her world of supernaturals, and so I continued reading that world through Anna Latham's story.
I was a little disappointed with the 3rd person narration, and that it didn't stick with just Anna. I remember Kelley Armstrong used the narrations of the victims and the suspects to further our information on the plot in Haunted, which seems to be what Briggs did here. I had been hoping for 1st person because that is what Briggs used for Mercy's books. It was the voice of the character that made me fall in love with those books.
I liked the 3rd person better in the second book, probably because I was more used to it. It is also interesting to read from Charles POV, though I prefer Anna's. We learn a lot about their actions with each other with the double narration, more so than we would have with a single narration, like Mercy's. We also learn more about the people around them, as some of them have narrations too. Though I can't really decide if I'd prefer knowing the extra narratives, or if I'd prefer just Charles and Anna's.
The history is a big draw for me too. Where Twilight's mix of people seem very loosely based in history, most of the wolves and the vampires are really based in history. Anna is still too young to have much of history, but knowing that she was a musician before she was turned into a werewolf was interesting, along with the information that Samuel told Charles stories when Charles was growing up. We learn a lot more about Bran in CW, but his age is so elusive, and that's my biggest question: how old is Bran? Also, knowing that Bran really was a monster when he was still in Wales makes him more real, more than just a politician with a lot of power behind him. A lot of his power comes from somewhere dark, and it's interesting to see how he's turned out.
HG is filled with politics, and it's set outside of Aspen Creek, two things that I don't really like. But what boosts it is the relationship between Charles and Anna. Though they have married, they still don't know each other that well. It's interesting to see how far a man will go in order to protect his mate. And how far a woman will go to protect hers.
What I really love about Briggs is how subtle she is. There are some matters which are explained maybe too much, mainly in Mercy's books. But there are other things that I took for granted until I stepped back to really look at them. The woman saves the man in the end. HG was no exception. Anna goes up against a Gray Lord, who is one of the fae and one of the people of Arthurian legend. Never mind that Anna is really tiny, always overlooked as a disguised powerhouse, and was sent to be destroyed, not do the destroying. But she saved her man in the end. Just as Mercy saves her own men.
Aren't women simply grand? We are so taken for granted, yet we have so much power of our own.
I would have liked more of an ending with HG. We don't know what happens with the conference or with the European wolves. Maybe it's all left hanging on purpose, but I would have liked to have seen more of a reunion between Charles and Anna. And I would have liked Anna to have asked Bran how old he was. Hehehehe
Okay, enough with the reviews. Onto real life.
SNW hasn't come along for awhile, meaning I haven't been writing that particular story for maybe a week or so. I'm at 250pgs, I think, and I've probably got 100+ more to go. There is no way I'll be able to finish this draft in time for school. What chance will I have during school? Not much. I've got two classes this year with ten novels each to be read. Though I did start taking out from the library some of those novels to read before school started, I haven't gotten far with that. I got preoccupied.
I started writing TV scripts, adapting Mercy Thompson's first book, Moon Called, into a TV season. There are only eight episodes, and I have a feeling that that is as much as I'm going to squeeze out of myself before school. I'm trying to go through each episode to add the other POVs that the novel is missing. Since Mercy's books are Mercy's narration solely, we don't see the other characters' lives and experiences except through her. And although werewolves cannot lie to one another, and you cannot lie to a werewolf, it makes things a little interesting in the 'filling out' department. No, that was not a puberty reference.
I'm also having trouble depicting the villain and depicting what the pack would do with their Alpha missing. For the villain, my approach is hampered by the hardwiring in my brain that says that all good villains are completely evil. Nevermind that I've seen the Watchmen. But this villain is not completely evil; in fact his intentions are for the betterment of another person, his father. Even though the villain was killing people, or allowing people to be killed or experimented on, he did these things against his will so that his father would gain some benefit. Although, looking at it through the terms I have just laid out shows the villain to really be evil, I still can't quite cross that threshold to believe that he is evil. I don't know...
The scripts are more in the fun department, though they are consuming all my time and energy. I am quite spent. It is interesting though to take a closer look at another author's choices. Word choices, speech choices, actions, things like that.
That's all I can write right now. I have to work tomorrow, so I should take a shower tonight. But I'm too tired. I don't wanna take a shower!