674 replies to this topic

[J/C AVA]

You get good at what you practice. Every. Single. Day.

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

Something which takes time to do. Which. I. Do. Not. Have. As. Much. Nor. An. Attention. Span.

[Mara=^.^=]

LOL. And unlike me, you also sleep.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[J/C AVA]

LOL. And unlike me, you also sleep.

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

I'm not a great insomniac. Unless, you're talking about the Green Day album of the same name.

[JimmyxxCindy4EVER]

Neither am I, Pedro... You're not alone there!

[Mara=^.^=]

Hostage Three by Nick Lake, a book about a wealthy British girl who is kidnapped by Somali pirates during a family yacht cruise through the Indian Ocean. Aw, man, this book was just MASTERFULLY written - the pacing, the quality of the first person narration, the use of odd formatting to convey emotion, the unbelievably effective similes - and freaking sad? I bawled my eyes out at the end. Definitely recommend this one.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Just finished Cress, the third book in the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer. Loved it. I think I might like this one better than Scarlet, but not as much as Cinder, which started it all. Captain Carswell Thorne, my favorite character, had a LOT of fantastic dialogue in this book. Reminded me just why he's my favorite

[Katia11]

I loved Cress as well! UGH. Why do we have to wait so long for the next one?

[SweeneyxxTodd]

I think I lol'd a lot more in this one than in the first two. It was just infinitely funnier, despite a lot of the darker turns that some parts got. It makes me want to reread the others, though I should probably read some of the books on my backlog first.

 

 

EDIT:

 

Thought you'd like this, Katie. Found it on DA here.

 

 

 

 

Coulda sworn Thorne had darker hair than that, but maybe that's just me projecting my preferences for male attractiveness on him. I'll have to check.

[Katia11]

I totally pictured him with darker hair too! 

[SweeneyxxTodd]

So last night I finished Dark Eden by Chris Beckett. It was alright.

 

The concept was really interesting: three men stole the only working international spaceship with a working wormhole generator, and two orbit police were charged with the task of apprehending them and taking the ship back to Earth. But when the ship went through the wormhole, both ships were damaged. The five of them decided to land on a planet nearby and attempt to fix the ship enough to return to Earth. The planet they came to was sunless, a rogue planet that didn't really belong to any planetary system. But it was chock full of bioluminescence. The trees glowed. The water glowed. The animals glowed. They named the planet Eden, and three of them (two of the spaceship thieves and one of the orbit police) decided to try their luck at going back to Earth for help, while the other two stayed behind to make a life for themselves and wait for help to come.

 

Fast-forward 160-some-odd years and these people have around 500 descendants, all living in the small valley where the ship landed (called Circle Valley because of the big Circle of Stones marking where the actual landing site was). The society that's grown up is a hunter-gatherer matriarchal democracy. It calls itself Family and it has several different groups within it, sort of like mini families. Family lives by one major law: stay by Circle of Stones so that when Earth comes back for them someday, they'll be able to find them and take them all home, even the bones of their dead so they can be buried on Earth where humans belong. But the problem is that food is running out in Circle Valley. Meat is getting harder to find, they're in danger of overfishing their major lake, and they're eating down the fruit in the trees.

 

So here's where we get out main character: John Redlantern, a "newhair" (teenager) from Redlantern group who starts having ideas about leaving Circle Valley so that they can find a bigger forest to live in with enough food to support their growing Family. But to do that, they'd have to cross Snowy Dark, a pitch-black mountain range that closes off their valley. The people have no way to keep warm in Dark, or to light their way.

 

And that's where the plot is. Shit goes down, John breaks some Family laws and ends up breaking Family apart into a few splinter groups, makes some major discoveries that illuminate the story of their past and their future, etc, etc.

 

I wasn't as pleased with this book as I wanted to be. I would give it a 3 out of 5, because I really like the concept and the worldbuilding was awesome. It was so well done. I really felt like I was in a new world with a believable culture and a believable, unique way of speaking with lingo that was usually easy to pick up on quickly just from context.

 

My main problems with this book were pacing and character development. By that I mean there really wasn't any development. All the characters stayed pretty static throughout, and John stopped being likeable about halfway through. The two main narrators, John and a girl named Tina, were too similar in their narrative voice, so if I wasn't paying attention at the start of the chapters I sometimes got confused about whose viewpoint it was. And the pacing was awful. There was too much slice of life in between the major events of the plot, which made it feel at times like it was dragging along.

 

The passage of time was also difficult to tell. Most of the book took place over the course of a few months, and then it started making leaps by the year but it was unclear because there weren't really any ways to tell how time passed in that way. In one chapter, John's splinter group splintered a second time and found a new location to live, and two chapters later it had apparently been three years since they last saw each other, but this fact was conveyed in a random, easily missed line of dialogue.

 

I think this book would have been much better and more of a page-turner if it was even just 25% shorter. Cut out most of the slice of life, make the time passage clearer earlier on, and you'd have a book that would maybe be a 3.5 out of 5. But the biggest change that needs to be made is in the characters. Give them more distinctive voices and show how they actually freaking change, especially considering what they go through and the ways they need to adapt to life on their journey to find new homes and the discoveries they make.

 

A lot of wasted potential, this book.

[Katia11]

Okay I am going to rant about something here.

 

I've been reading lots of YA fiction lately.. and I love the books with female heroines. There is one small problem, the lead character (at least in the ones I've read recently) is described as being plain but she always has at least two guys fawning over her. Now, I am a sucker for romance, if you know me at all you know that's true.

 

But seriously? This frustrates me to no end. I mean it's really not that hard to make it believable that a man considers you beautiful despite not being drop dead gorgeous? Or that he thinks you are beautiful even when you are quite plain? That is what makes it fun! But no, they all describe themselves as plain but really they are beautiful and have many beautiful men fawning over them. UGH. Does this bother anyone else? Or just me?

 

How come in these books the heroine always has to have a love interest who is deadly handsome? Sometimes you fall in love because they are kind, generous and compassionate. Not because they have muscles that ripple under their shirts. I mean, my husband is gorgeous but it's not his looks that I fell for. It was his heart. How come she has to have a love interest at all? Can't she discover who she is without the aide of a man? 

 

There is a series of books I discovered that isn't like that.. I just about jumped for joy. The Flavia De Luce series by Alan Bradley doesn't have any love interests yet (I've only read three or four). It is wonderful! She's just a young girl who solves mysteries and likes chemistry and death. If only there were more books like that. 

 

Thirdly, how come they always seem to have some mystical untapped power that they do not know about? Can't a character just grow into themselves? Learn how to be a better person without discovering they are a super powerful princess/ wizard/ whatever. I don't mind a good Cinderella story. I love them to death! But can't there be just a story about a girl who finds strength without the aid of magic or some other powerful secret? Does this make any sense at all to anyone else? I love when the heroine has a skill that others don't have, don't get me wrong. I love that it sets her apart. I'm a sucker for an outsider, but stop making it because she is secretly the hero of some prophecy or something. UGH. 

 

Rant over. 

[Pigquet3]

Okay I am going to rant about something here.

 

I've been reading lots of YA fiction lately.. and I love the books with female heroines. There is one small problem, the lead character (at least in the ones I've read recently) is described as being plain but she always has at least two guys fawning over her. Now, I am a sucker for romance, if you know me at all you know that's true.

 

But seriously? This frustrates me to no end. I mean it's really not that hard to make it believable that a man considers you beautiful despite not being drop dead gorgeous? Or that he thinks you are beautiful even when you are quite plain? That is what makes it fun! But no, they all describe themselves as plain but really they are beautiful and have many beautiful men fawning over them. UGH. Does this bother anyone else? Or just me?

 

How come in these books the heroine always has to have a love interest who is deadly handsome? Sometimes you fall in love because they are kind, generous and compassionate. Not because they have muscles that ripple under their shirts. I mean, my husband is gorgeous but it's not his looks that I fell for. It was his heart. How come she has to have a love interest at all? Can't she discover who she is without the aide of a man? 

 

There is a series of books I discovered that isn't like that.. I just about jumped for joy. The Flavia De Luce series by Alan Bradley doesn't have any love interests yet (I've only read three or four). It is wonderful! She's just a young girl who solves mysteries and likes chemistry and death. If only there were more books like that. 

 

Thirdly, how come they always seem to have some mystical untapped power that they do not know about? Can't a character just grow into themselves? Learn how to be a better person without discovering they are a super powerful princess/ wizard/ whatever. I don't mind a good Cinderella story. I love them to death! But can't there be just a story about a girl who finds strength without the aid of magic or some other powerful secret? Does this make any sense at all to anyone else? I love when the heroine has a skill that others don't have, don't get me wrong. I love that it sets her apart. I'm a sucker for an outsider, but stop making it because she is secretly the hero of some prophecy or something. UGH. 

 

Rant over. 

 

It makes perfect sense. Those kinds of cliches frustrate me, too.

 

 

 

 

 

  Pigquet

[Katia11]

Oh good!  

[Mara=^.^=]

I've been reading lots of YA fiction lately.. and I love the books with female heroines. There is one small problem, the lead character (at least in the ones I've read recently) is described as being plain but she always has at least two guys fawning over her. Now, I am a sucker for romance, if you know me at all you know that's true.

 

But seriously? This frustrates me to no end. I mean it's really not that hard to make it believable that a man considers you beautiful despite not being drop dead gorgeous? Or that he thinks you are beautiful even when you are quite plain? That is what makes it fun! But no, they all describe themselves as plain but really they are beautiful and have many beautiful men fawning over them. UGH. Does this bother anyone else? Or just me?

 

How come in these books the heroine always has to have a love interest who is deadly handsome? Sometimes you fall in love because they are kind, generous and compassionate. Not because they have muscles that ripple under their shirts. I mean, my husband is gorgeous but it's not his looks that I fell for. It was his heart. How come she has to have a love interest at all? Can't she discover who she is without the aide of a man?

 

I also read a lot of YA fiction, and I've encountered similar frustrations. Of all the books I've read recently, I've only seen ONE love triangle done well...it wasn't even a proper love triangle, since one of the guys was gay, and he just wished that he could be in love with the protagonist so that he wouldn't have to spend the rest of his life hiding his real orientation (the story was set in the 1950s, and being openly gay wasn't exactly an option).

 

The "hotness" thing with the guy can sometimes bother me, but that's only because I've come to realize that descriptors like "handsome" or "gorgeous" or "well-formed" are actually, well, not that descriptive. Those adjectives don't help me picture the character in my head. I prefer it when authors describe a character's mannerisms, body language, and/or defining physical characteristics (i.e. a guy who's always anxiously chewing on his lower lip, or a girl who tilts her head back when she speaks and looks down her nose at people). Unfortunately, I think that YA writers feel a lot of pressure from the industry to design love interests with mass appeal, so they stick to generic descriptions of hotness. This bugs me, because you can definitely write a cute/good-looking character whose attractive features are memorable rather than generic. "He had freckles everywhere, even on his eyelids" sticks with me more than "he had a beautiful, chiseled jaw", for example.

 

Thirdly, how come they always seem to have some mystical untapped power that they do not know about? Can't a character just grow into themselves? Learn how to be a better person without discovering they are a super powerful princess/ wizard/ whatever. I don't mind a good Cinderella story. I love them to death! But can't there be just a story about a girl who finds strength without the aid of magic or some other powerful secret? Does this make any sense at all to anyone else? I love when the heroine has a skill that others don't have, don't get me wrong. I love that it sets her apart. I'm a sucker for an outsider, but stop making it because she is secretly the hero of some prophecy or something. UGH.

 

This actually bothers me a LOT, and I feel like it's even more pervasive than the former problem. The "chosen one" trope is not unique to YA fiction - I see it a lot in children's books, and it's also common in novels with a male lead. I like magic/powers as much as the next person, but I get frustrated during "quest" type stories where the prophecy/various helper characters actually do MORE to further the plot than the protagonist (at least until the end, when the main character "unlocks" their hidden potential or whatever). I've read a few books where a side character was the "chosen one", and the protagonist just got sucked into the journey, and I actually find that setup more interesting. Sometimes, though, the reverse problem rears its head. If the author doesn't make the main girl super-special-awesome, they pull a 180 and make her super-super-ordinary, with few to no outstanding traits. I feel like balance is key - a protagonist who is relatable, but who still has distinct talents, beliefs, and flaws.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Katia11]

"He had a beautiful, chiseled jaw.".

 

 

I have read about 50 variations of that line alone in the past month or two. WHAT THE HECK DOES IT EVEN MEAN? AND WHY IS IT IN EVERY DESCRIPTOR OF THE GUY YOU KNOW IS GOING TO END UP WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER? Seriously, I feel like once the author pulls that out- you just know- oh he's totally going to be the love interest. 

 

 

. I feel like balance is key - a protagonist who is relatable, but who still has distinct talents, beliefs, and flaws.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

 

YES!!! A THOUSAND TIMES YES. 

[Pigquet3]

"He had freckles everywhere, even on his eyelids" sticks with me more than "he had a beautiful, chiseled jaw", for example.

 

And just a hell of a lot more adorable.

 

 

 

 

 

  Pigquet

[Mara=^.^=]

Another thing that bothers me about a lot of YA fiction is the lack of supportive, well-developed relationships between female characters. So often female friendships are given the back seat to romance, if not portrayed as outright competitive/snippy/shallow.

 

We need more girly love!

 

....that didn't come out right

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

 

[Katia11]

*wiggles eyebrows* 

 

We do need more solid relationships between girls though!  

[Pigquet3]

That's very common in a lot of movies, too.

 

It seems that, according to the media, most adult females are in some kind of weird, unspoken, petty competition between each other. As if no women ever have genuine, respectful friendships.

 

 

 

 

 

  Pigquet

[Katia11]

WOMEN HAVING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS? WHAT?