Category: Vampires

Book Review: Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles #1)

8/19/2018

Book Review:

Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles #1)

Intisar Khanani

Purple Monkey Press, 2013

Grade: A

The Basics:

As an illegal Rogue Promise, Hitomi must conceal her magical aptitude, for fear of being forced to devote her abilities to exacting the will of the rich and powerful. By day, she hides among the struggling merchants of Karolene, but by night, she works with an outlaw legend known only as the Ghost, to protect the few dissenters who remain. When she’s captured by their enemies, she’ll have to cooperate with a Breather, a life-draining creature she once thought of as nothing but a nightmare monster, to survive. And even if they manage to escape, she might never make it back to the life she remembers.

The Downside:

Sunbolt is the first book of its series, but it feels structurally like the transitional middle of a trilogy. We meet Hitomi as an established member of the Shadow League, with its own internal personality conflicts and its work already in progress. All too soon, she’s separated from her allies and sent instead on a buddy road trip adventure, spending much of it unconscious or weakened from magic use.

I often found myself wishing I could go back and read a nonexistent previous book about her time in the Shadow League. Not because such a book is necessary to understand or appreciate this one, but because the taste we get of that story was my favorite part. I’m crossing my fingers that we get more of the League in future installments.

The Upside:

I read Khanani’s debut, Thorn, about a year ago and liked it a lot, so The Sunbolt Chronicles have been on my radar for a while, and I’m wishing I hadn’t dragged my feet so long. Sunbolt is the first series opener in quite a while that’s made me need to buy the next book right now.

Hitomi is an instant favorite, charmingly bumbling and resourceful at once. Nothing ever goes quite the way she plans, but she keeps on adapting on the fly until something works. She’s heroic and confident in her worthiness to be the one to tackle any given problem, but self-preservation still kicks in often enough to saddle her with some weighty moral grayness.

As was the case in Thorn, the fantasy world is drawn with efficient but vivid lines. The details are right where they need to be to make the story come alive, and invisible where they would get in the way. Scenes of magic are surprisingly dynamic. There are only so many ways authors can describe swirling patterns of light and psychic exhaustion, but Khanani manages to make even Hitomi’s spellcraft challenges interesting and different, especially when they involve conversations with birds.

There’s no love story in Sunbolt, and while I won’t be disappointed if there turns out to be one later in the series (Hitomi left a few interesting men back in Karolene that I’m hoping to meet again), it’s always refreshing to watch a heroine, especially of a YA fantasy, focus entirely on other things for a change.

All in all, though I’m hoping to get back to what the Shadow League’s up to eventually, I expect I’ll gladly follow Hitomi wherever she goes.

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Book Review: Carry On

8/15/2016

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Book Review:

Carry On

By Rainbow Rowell

St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015

A+

The Basics:

Simon Snow is the Chosen One, destined to save the World of Mages from the Insidious Humdrum and the brewing war between the elitist old families and the Mage who runs Watford school. If only Simon could get his explosive level of power under control. And maybe figure out how to make his girlfriend happy. And uncover what's up with Baz, his vampire roommate, the rival with whom he’s been nursing an obsessive mutual enmity since they were eleven.

The Downside:

The world of Carry On started as the subject of fanfiction in another Rainbow Rowell book, Fangirl, and the vestigially fanfic-y quality of the setup makes the characters a little difficult to connect with in their own right at first (what's with Harry Potter analogue characters always being named Simon, anyway?). Rowling doesn’t have a monopoly on stories about learning magic, of course, but some of the details here are distractingly specific.

The Upside:

Both the characters and world do eventually assert their uniqueness, and it's a beautiful thing when they do. Every conflict, personal or political, is explored on all sides with extraordinary finesse. The status-quo of the World of Mages is prejudicial and wrong, yet the loudest and therefore most influential revolutionary is half-mad and quick to jump to tactics that do more harm than good. There are good people and good intentions to be found on all sides of the fence, including in the camp that simply wants to run far away.

We get to hear what it’s like to be a chosen one waiting to die, trying to minimize the collateral damage, and yet privately clinging to the hope of a happily ever after he can’t even think about starting to build yet. We hear from the love interest who’d rather be at home away from magic and looming war, living her own story in the now, rather than continuing to be used in evil plot after evil plot as hostage or incentive for the Chosen One, on the promise of a chance to be his happy ending, if he ever gets there. And yet, she cares for him. We hear from the brilliant sidekick who throws herself into every adventure and never looks back. We hear from the generation past, who thought they were doing the right thing. We hear from the guy born into the elitist old money culture who knows that he’s growing into more than one thing his family hates, but the love of family remains, sweet and complicated and unresolvable.

Wrap all of that in a sincerely believable, Rainbow Rowell-grade forbidden romance, and Carry On is a masterpiece both as genre commentary and as a story to stand alone, in equal measure.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Fi's Five Favorite Fictional Characters (That I Shouldn't Like) #1: Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

2/28/2016

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Before we get into the top entry on this list, let’s review this month’s rules: This is a list of characters who should not be liked, not as people, but as characters, for writing gaffe reasons that are insulting, insensitive, or just plain clumsy, and yet for one reason or another, they find a place in my heart.

(Click the links for Favorite Fictional Character That I Shouldn’t Like #2, #3, #4, and #5)

It’s especially important to note this week that my affection in no way cancels out those gaffes.

This week also gets one of these:

****Spoiler Alert Through Season Seven****

And, jeebus, I guess one of these:

****Trigger/content warning****

Okay. *Warmup stretches.*

If you know the show, it should be pretty obvious where I'm going with this. If not...

Why I shouldn't like him:

This. Right here.

All right, slightly more explanation required, I guess. After all, I've got no qualms liking an unforgivable bastard of a character, as a character, if that's the intent. Fiction needs its great villains. There's nothing wrong with that.

The problem here is that's not what you're seeing above. Or at least, it's not supposed to be.

Here's the short version of Spike's storyline:

We're introduced to him in season two as our new big villain, when he displaces the far more boring vampire boss before him, and he's one hell of a memorable bad guy. As in, scary sadistic son of a bitch.

In season four, he gets abducted by a shady government organization that implants an experimental chip in his brain to make him incapable of physically harming humans. He joins up tenuously with the heroes for protection, and for the opportunity to indulge his lust for violence, since the chip leaves him able to fight other demons, which is pretty much how Buffy's "Scooby Gang" spends a dull Wednesday night. They reluctantly accept him as much-needed backup muscle for when Buffy's hands are full, and as an informant on the demon underworld.

Spike slowly develops a genuine attachment to some of the good guys and earns the trust of most of them, to the degree that he's routinely left on bodyguard duty for Buffy's little sister, the show's go-to McGuffin and damsel in seasons 5-7.

Spike and Buffy have a tempestuous sexual relationship, during which Spike repeatedly professes his love and asks to make them official, while Buffy... well, if a skilled team of writers accepted a million dollar bet that they couldn't create fictional, hypothetical proof of the possibility that a situation could theoretically exist in which it might be remotely fair to call a woman a "tease," the result would look a hell of a lot like season six Buffy.

She says no, then yes, then no, then yes. She uses him, and then refuses to acknowledge him when he tries to talk to her about it, and then uses him, and then calls him worthless, and then uses him again.

And again, and again.

When Buffy tries to break it off for good, Spike tries to rape her. (His brain chip doesn't apply to her, because magic).

That's not open to interpretation, by the way. This isn’t me calling out a scene for being badly presented. It’s not a Jaime-and-Cersei-Lannister case of something coming across onscreen differently from the way it might, possibly, arguably have been intended (not that that isn’t bad enough).

I refuse to spend any longer than I already have sifting through eroticized YouTube music videos looking for an unaltered clip of the scene to share with the strong-stomached, but if you want to hunt it down for yourself, the episode title is “Seeing Red.”

Suffice it to say, it's meticulously unambiguous. A point is even specifically made that Spike only stops because Buffy manages to hurt him enough to make him, not because of any spontaneous epiphany on his part.

Anyway, Buffy fights him off, cries for about a minute, and then gets up and carries on with her life pretty much as if nothing happened, going so far as to suggest keeping him as her sister’s guard, while Spike slinks off to wallow in guilt, embarks on a quest to win his soul back (Buffy vampires lose their souls in their transformation), comes back harrowed and cured of his violent urges, reconnects with Buffy on a purer, more emotional level than their physical affair, pulls himself together inspired by her faith in him, yadda yadda....

Do I need to spend words on what's wrong with this picture?

It's a rape plotline revolving around how goddamn hard this is on the perpetrator. How tragic a victim he is in all this, how sorry we should feel for him, how all he needs is for a good woman to love him, and he can change. One little soul-quest, easy as that.

It's also dripping with the implication that no doesn't really mean no, because in all their encounters before "Seeing Red," when Spike tells Buffy that she doesn't mean what she says, the narrative allows him to be right.

It's a story about a woman we're supposed to admire and respect as a symbol of strength, falling in love (for all intents and purposes, quibble all you want about what qualifies as love) with a man who tried to rape her, and we the audience are asked to agree.

If there's a trope in fiction that can piss me off harder than this, I don't ever want to know what it is.

Social justice aside, I'm also going to call plain old clumsiness on this whole plotline.

As if using a rape attempt for the purpose of motivating Spike to go get a soul weren't a terrible enough idea, it’s followed up with a season cliffhanger fake-out in which we're supposed to believe that he’s actually questing for a way to get rid of the chip. There’s lots of militantly cryptic wording about making sure "the bitch gets what she deserves," which serves the triple purpose of killing any sympathy Spike might have left at this point, if there were any, making absolutely no sense with the penitent headspace the larger storyline insists that he's in at this point, and failing as a fakeout for anyone with even a Saturday morning cartoon level of attunement to forced-cryptic phrasing.

And then there’s the ill-defined nature of what a “soul” is supposed to be. Buffy's had a vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend before.

There was plenty of drama in the early seasons revolving around Angel losing his soul and getting it back, and it was always played as two people, the soul and the demon, fighting over one body. Angel, the soul, is a white knight through and through and controls the body when present. Angelus, the demon, is a stone cold psycho. It's night and day. It's not a character with issues, but two characters.

Yes, this dynamic was slowly retconned over time so that characters who got vampirized later on could retain some of their personality, something about the demon that inhabits the victim's body latching onto the most evil tendencies already present and unleashing them, but it's never explained in any solid, satisfactory way, so based on the closest thing we have to a defined set of rules, the show spends five seasons letting us get to know and, against all odds, like the demon that inhabits Spike's body, and then it tries to clinch that liking by handing the reins over to the human soul who, according to those rules, should be regarded as a separate person.

Everything about Spike’s plotline and his relationship with Buffy before the rape attempt gives the appearance of building toward the conclusion that Spike already has a soul for all intents and purposes, if not a human one. It hints that the black-and-white view that most of the Scoobies have of demons versus humans is overly simplistic and unfair. It seems to be leading toward some kind of pivotal epiphany on Buffy's part that will snap her out of the rampaging self-pity fest she's been stuck in all through season six and back to some semblance of the noble, fun-loving, irreverent hero we all know and love.

Nope! Instead we're told that Buffy and her less tolerant Scoobies were right about calling Spike inferior all this time, and that he does need this ill-defined magic bullet of a soul in order to be good enough to be one of them, no matter how much he might try and mean well without it.

What?

And no, no great revelations for Buffy, because after what Spike does, the story has the no-win choice between addressing how awful Buffy’s been, at the peril of implying that it could in any way justify Spike's actions, making this plotline even more offensive and insensitive than it already is, or letting her entire arc of unlikeability off the hook with an unsatisfying fizzle. To its very small credit, it goes with the latter.

Why I Love Him Anyway:

This is the part where all the guys in the audience roll their eyes and loudly wonder why women always fall for the obviously bad guys, and no denying, that's totally part of Spike’s appeal. I could put in my two cents on why that appeal exists at all, but, well, I tried going into it, and it nearly doubled the length of this leviathan of an article, so that's going to have to wait for a more general post of its own.

This one's about what's special about Spike, not general, and there’s a lot of special. His story is like an expertly woven, fine silk tapestry that just happens to be a depiction of a giant middle finger. If you can manage to ignore the big picture, the details are breathtaking.

I went into watching Buffy with the spoiler hanging over me that Spike was going to be a main love interest, and I wanted so much for it to be a lie. No matter how much I liked watching him as a villain or how good their chemistry was, there was just no way Buffy could fall for Spike, this predatory monster who terrorizes her friends and makes jokes that aren't jokes about kidnapping and torturing his ex-girlfriend for leaving him, without it being an insult to her character. I was convinced that no amount of progress could ever make me accept them.

And with the downright artful patience of countless tiny moments, the show did what I would have called the impossible. It made me feel for them as a pair.

There's the moment when Spike finds Buffy crying after her mother's brain tumor is found and sits with her, just sits, wordlessly, helplessly, the only way someone who cares can when a hurt is beyond expression.

There’s the perfectly subtle moment when Willow's temporarily insane girlfriend, Tara, accidentally burns Spike by opening a window to the daylight, and instead of lashing out with his usual defensiveness, Spike brushes off Willow's apologies with honest grace, because before Buffy, he spent the better part of his undeath loving an insane person as well and knows exactly what it's like.

There's the slowly unwinding backstory, which unlike the tragic pasts of so many badboy characters that exist solely as love interests, actually feels like a living, continuing part of who he is.

Spike's someone who's spent his whole life being put down and written off. When he was finally offered approval by a vampire woman, he threw himself, quite literally body and soul, into crafting himself into what he had to be in order to keep that approval, which, in her case, was the flashy killing machine he is when we meet him. And when even she rejects him, he clings desperately to the power that persona gave him, which slips, little by little, as he finds himself questioning whether that was ever what he wanted to be.

Nothing about his backstory excuses the inexcusable things he does, of course, but it does make him believable and relatably vulnerable, and more compelling than any quantity of abstract, detached sympathy points could make him, to a degree where he can carry a story independent of his relationship to our heroine, which is an impressive feat for either a villain or a love interest.

After the long, slow build of this, comes their big, defining moment.

Spike gets captured by the villain of season five, an actual evil god, and refuses under torture to give up the location of Buffy's sister. We've seen him do good things and go to crazy lengths in his attempts to impress Buffy before, but this he does with no expectation of surviving to collect any kind of thank you.

Sorry, Angel, you're not special. If that's not proof of a soul, what is?

Once Buffy and Spike’s relationship, such as it is, actually begins, I'm sold. I'm Team Spike. If anything, I'm rooting for him to find the self-respect to stop taking Buffy's abuse and walk out, if she can't snap out of her own issues enough to treat him like an equal.

But Buffy’s got plenty of reason to have issues, and if anyone ever had a lot to atone for, it's Spike, so the fact that she has so much to apologize to him for in their early relationship feels like it might be just enough to put them on even footing. There’s a sense that they might be two very messed up people who might ultimately be able to find some happiness in each other if they’ll just talk out their problems.

And then...

And then. This. Shit.

Right about here is where I hit the five stages of grieving.

Denial: This isn't happening. It's a dream sequence. One of them is about to wake up.

Anger: I defended you, you monster!

Bargaining: Okay, I got suckered. I forgot who he was. I can be annoyed that his redemption plotline went a little too far with demonstrating his capacity for selflessness if this was going to be the ultimate point, but maybe the plotline is salvageable. Maybe I had this smack in the face coming for buying in, and-

Wait, it's not finished? You're going to do it again? You're sending him on another, shorter, clumsier redemption arc after you just pulled off the near-impossible task of redeeming him once? No. Not cool.

Okay, so maybe the whole Buffy and Spike plotline I've gotten invested in is unsalvageable, but I can still keep my overall love and respect for the show, right? I mean, it’s Buffy! It's a female-led superhero show before that was even a hot issue! It’s created by the incomparable Joss Whedon! It's got a groundbreaking lesbian romance! Surely this is an isolated misstep. Right...?

Wait, hold up.

Here are all the Buffy characters I can think of who are known rapists:

Spike: Tries and fails to rape Buffy, sexually threatens Willow on multiple occasions, later confirmed as having been an active serial rapist in his villain days.

Veruca: Takes advantage of Oz in his werewolf form, knowing he’s temporarily incapable of human-level decision-making.

Faith: Tries to rape and nearly kills Xander, successfully rapes Riley by appearing to him in Buffy’s body (rape by fraud).

Jonathan: Alters the universe to make himself universally beloved and admired, has sex with multiple thereby brainwashed women. These events are not undone or even forgotten when the universe is reset.

Willow: Erases Tara’s memory of the fact that they’re having a fight, leading to sex between them that Tara would not have consented to at the time if she’d had access her full mental faculties.

Warren: Mind controls his ex-girlfriend into sex and then kills her when she recovers and tries to escape.

There's every chance I've missed some, and this is only counting literal rape, not any of the sci-fi and supernatural rape allegories that come up on the show all the time without involving literal sex acts.

And now, here's how many of those characters fight on the side of the heroes in the final confrontation with evil:

Yeah, the show's obsession with redemption, to the point of belittling the importance of the victims' experiences and even implying that they owe their attackers forgiveness and understanding, was always a pervasive theme. It just takes that gut-turningly brutal Spike and Buffy scene to take it to a place too real to ignore.

So, have I made it through sadness into acceptance yet?

Well, I accept that I'll never be able to rationalize a defense for this plotline, and I accept that I'll never give up loving the many pieces of the show that are smart, emotionally powerful, and even socially revolutionary. I can't even give up loving the parts of Spike as a character and Spike and Buffy's relationship that are awesomely effective, before and, yes, even occasionally after the episode that makes them indefensible.

Has the cognitive dissonance caused by this contradiction obsessed me to a Poe-esque degree that ultimately drove me to plan an entire month of blogging around working up to cracking it open and poking its insides with a stick?

... Why do you ask?

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Giveaway + Guest Post by Amie Borst, Author of Little Dead Riding Hood

10/25/2014

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Today I get to welcome back Amie Borst, who together with her daughter, Bethanie, writes the Scarily Ever Laughter books. I've asked her before about her personal recipe for combining the dark and the funny. Now she has braved returning to the barely ordered chaos that is my blog and general existence, and she's come prepared! So I'll step aside and let her take it away with my favorite question.

ï»¿ï»¿What scares you, and how does it influence your writing?ï»¿ï»¿

Thanks for inviting me to guest post on your blog today, Fiona! *looks around* Nice place you've got here! *takes note of the cobwebs in the corner*

If you didn't already know, my book, LITTLE DEAD RIDING HOOD, released on October 14th. I can hardly believe that my second baby has been out into the great big world for almost 10 days already! They grow up so fast!

You know things are going to suck when you're the new kid. But when you're the new kid and a vampire... well, it bites!

Unlike most kids, Scarlet Small's problems go far beyond just trying to fit in. She would settle for a normal life, but being twelve years old for an entire century is a real pain in the neck. Plus, her appetite for security guards, house pets and bloody toms (tomato juice) is out of control. So in order to keep their vampire-secret, her parents, Mort and Drac, resort to moving for the hundredth time, despite Scarlet being dead-set against it. Things couldn't be worse at her new school, either. Not only does she have a strange skeleton-girl as a classmate, but a smelly werewolf is intent on revealing her secret. When she meets Granny, who fills her with cookies, goodies, and treats, and seems to understand her more than anyone, she's sure things will be different. But with a fork-stabbing incident, a cherry pie massacre, and a town full of crazy people, Scarlet's O-positive she'll never live to see another undead day.

Not even her Vampire Rule Book can save her from the mess she's in. Why can't she ever just follow the rules?

Add Little Dead Riding Hood to your Goodreads to-read list here. Purchase LDRH at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite Indie bookstore!

***

The Things That Scare Me

As I mentioned on Adrienne's blog yesterday, when I was a teenager, I was big into slasher films. Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth, Fright Night, to name a few. But since I've entered adulthood, I really can't stomach all the gore. But that's not what scares me.

Here's a list of what DOES scare me:

Spiders (um, why yes, I do scream like a girl)
Ghosts (yes, ghosts creep me the HECK out!)
Ebola (I happen to like living and would like to do so until I'm such a ripe old age you'll have to peel me out of my rocking chair)
Dark woods in the Catskill Mountains (hellloooo! Haven't you ever read the tale of Sleepy Hollow?)
If you asked my kids they'd tell you DIRTY HOUSES. (self-professed neat freak here)

There you have it! Oh wait....you wanted more? Oh, you want to know how my fears influence my writing? Uhhh....it doesn't. If I sat around being scared I'd never get any writing done! So what do I do? I avoid those things. Yup. Cleaning house is my greatest procrastination. Errrr....hmmmmm.... I suppose that my fears DO influence my writing a bit....I'm so busy cleaning I have very little time to write! Ha!

About us:

Amie Borst is a PAL member of SCBWI. She believes in Unicorns, uses glitter whenever the opportunity arises, accessories in pink and eats too much chocolate.

Bethanie Borst is a spunky 14 year old who loves archery, long bike rides and studying edible plant-life. She was only 9 when she came up with the idea for Cinderskella!

Little Dead Riding Hood is their second book in the Scarily Ever Laughter series. Their first book, Cinderskella, released in October 2013.

You can find them on facebook. Amie can be found on twitter, pinterest, and her blog. ***

We're having two great giveaways as part of our blog tour! The first is for a copy of LITTLE DEAD RIDING HOOD! So be sure to enter the giveaway by following the steps on the rafflecopter form below. a Rafflecopter giveaway

THEN - as soon as you finish that, be sure to stop by my blog for a second contest! I'm having a SCAVENGER HUNT that you won't want to miss with lots of extra great prizes! All you have to do is make sure you enter the contest below first then hopping over to my blog and filling out the rafflecopter form there! Super easy! Here's the rafflecopter form for my blog just in case you missed it! a Rafflecopter giveaway

See you soon!

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Cover Reveal: Defiance

3/6/2014

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Today's cover reveal is for Defiance, book 2 of The Blood Inheritance Trilogy by Adrienne Monson.

You can read my review of the first book, Dissension, here.

Now let's see the cover!

About Defiance

Leisha and Samantha barely survived the vampires and immortals six months ago. Now, an explosive battle between the vampires and immortals seems imminent.

It's more important than ever before that the prophecy child is found, but there's a problem—Leisha has lost her powers. She seems like nothing more than a human. Her newfound humanity is further complicated when Tafari, her old lover, appears with a desire for reconciliation.

Can Leisha lock up the past to save those she loves? Or will fate tear everything from her once again?

About Adrienne Monson

Monson’s debut novel, Dissension, book one of the Blood Inheritance trilogy, came out in 2013. Defiance (book 2) is slated for release February 24, 2015.

She lives in Utah with her husband and two kids. When she’s not writing, she enjoys Zumba, kickboxing, reading, and trying new recipes.

You can find her on her blog, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

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Fi's Five Favorite Uses of Silence in Fiction #5: New Moon

3/4/2014

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Every author has heard the expression, "Show, don't tell." Every artist has probably heard "Less is more" at least once. This month, I'm going to be counting down my favorites of those instances in fiction where someone says it all by saying nothing.

As important as the "show don't tell" principle is in books, since books are made of words and nothing else, it's difficult to harness the power of the words that aren’t there as dramatically and obviously in books as in other media that allow time to pass for the audience without words to push it along. The effect is subtler in books, so purely for the sake of ease, this list will be mostly movies and TV.

One book did make the cut though, and yes, you read that headline correctly, it's a Twilight book.

Really.

And I will now somehow manage to explain why. (*Deep breaths*)

****Twilight Books 1-2 Spoiler Alert****

Yeah, I probably could have done this with only book 1 spoilers, but then it would be completely snark-free, and... yeah, that wasn't going to happen. That said, this is a serious moment that made this list in a completely sincere and non-ironic capacity, so, well, kudos, Ms. Meyer.

This is near the beginning of New Moon, so let's set the scene. Forget whether you're Team Edward or Team Jacob or Team Screw This Whole Repressed Teen Pseudo Vampire Thing, and suppose that you've just read Twilight and enjoyed it enough, in spite of whichever of its problems trouble you most, to want to read the next book.

In other words, you've just invested 498 pages of your life as a reader in Bella and Edward's love story, because, let's face it, that's pretty much all Twilight is about.

Insert joke about how the entire first movie looks pretty much exactly like this.

Jacob is a nonentity so far. You don't have reason to know or give a damn about him. The worst thing Edward's done so far is sneak into Bella's room and creepily watch her sleep,

…which is pretty bad, but you've already decided to be charitable about that, which is why you're still reading.

Then he leaves her.

You don't know how ridiculously nonexistent his reasons and general plan are (spoiler: the answer is very), you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's being blackmailed or something and is secretly staying close and protecting her from all the bad guys whose attention he's already knowingly brought down on her, and who can only be fought by supernatural beings like himself, until he can get the problem cleared up, instead of doing the exact opposite of that.

All you know for now is that the whole purpose and focus of Bella's story so far has been snatched away, and she's heartbroken. Oh, and she's got incredibly low self-esteem and takes his word that it's because she's not good enough for him without the slightest doubt. But hey, she's eighteen and freshly in love for the first time, so I’m going to go out on a limb and call that almost as relatable and sad as it is twisted and unhealthy.

There has to be more to this, you think. You'll just keep reading until you get one more little hint about the Edward storyline, you think.

That's this many fricken' pages, and an excellent way to fall asleep in class the next day. Yes, this happened to me. I was nineteen, and I've filed this post under "Confessions." Give me a break.

If you've seen the movie, this part, right after Edward leaves, is where the camera rotates around near-catatonic Bella's head while the seasons change in the background, which is effective and all, but the way the book presented this silent void of time was even better.

There are plenty of traditional ways Meyer could have broken it to us that Edward wouldn't be back any time soon. A description of what those months were like, a scene cut to a time we soon realize is much later, even a sentence along the lines of, "Months passed," but instead she found one of the most striking way of simulating a protracted silence I've seen in print, and easily one of my favorite moments of the book series. Plain, stark white pages, each standing in for a full month of emptiness, there to be turned one at a time.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Giveaway and Cover Reveal: Little Dead Riding Hood

3/3/2014

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Our next shiny new cover to share is Little Dead Riding Hood, by Amie and Bethanie Borst, mother/daughter coauthors of Cinderskella. To celebrate their new cover, they're giving away a $25 Amazon giftcard at the bottom of this page, but first, let's have a look!

About Little Dead Riding Hood

You know things are going to suck when you’re the new kid. But when you’re the new kid and a vampire… well, it bites!

Unlike most kids, Scarlet Small’s problems go far beyond just trying to fit in. She would settle for a normal life, but being twelve years old for an entire century is a real pain in the neck. Plus, her appetite for security guards, house pets and bloody toms (tomato juice) is out of control. So in order to keep their vampire-secret, her parents, Mort and Drac, resort to moving for the hundredth time, despite Scarlet being dead-set against it. Things couldn’t be worse at her new school, either. Not only does she have a strange skeleton-girl as a classmate, but a smelly werewolf is intent on revealing her secret. When she meets Granny—who fills her with cookies, goodies, and treats, and seems to understand her more than anyone—she’s sure things will be different. But with a fork-stabbing incident, a cherry pie massacre, and a town full of crazy people, Scarlet’s O-positive she’ll never live to see another undead day.

Not even her Vampire Rule Book can save her from the mess she’s in. Why can’t she ever just follow the rules?

(Add Little Dead Riding Hood to your Goodreads to-read list here!)

About Amie and Bethanie Borst

Amie Borst is a PAL member of SCBWI. She believes in Unicorns, uses glitter whenever the opportunity arises, accessories in pink and eats too much chocolate.

Bethanie Borst is a spunky 13 year old who loves archery, long bike rides and studying edible plant-life.

Little Dead Riding Hood is their second book in the Scarily Ever Laughter series. Their first book, Cinderskella, released in October 2013 and has been nominated for three awards.

You can find Amie on Twitter, Pinterest, From the Mixed-Up Files of Middle-Grade Authors, and her blog. Together they can be found on Facebook.

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Fi's Five Favorite Fictional Beginnings #5: Dracula

12/31/2013

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Happy New Year, everyone! To celebrate the beginning of 2014, a very big year for me, with my first two, count ‘em, two novel releases coming up, I’m dedicating the month of January to my favorite beginnings in fiction.

Unfortunately, I had to bar all TV opening credits sequences from this list to keep them from taking it over completely. Sorry X-Files, Pinky and the Brain, and Batman: The Animated Series, you know I love you, but I’m only talking about beginnings that are part of the story here.

That leaves, in the number five spot, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

As is the case more often than not, I’m talking about the book here, in this case, a book that’s spawned a whole lot of interpretations that in no way do it justice. If you haven’t read the original, here’s how it goes:

Jonathan Harker is sent to the Transylvanian castle home of Count Dracula, his first real client as a brand new lawyer, to advise him on English real estate law. Dracula keeps delaying Jonathan’s departure, acting increasingly suspicious until finally abandoning him to his vampire minions.

Sorry, it was either this or a Twilight joke.

Jonathan barely escapes home, marries his fiancée, Mina, and the two of them learn of other vampiric goings-on, including the turning of Mina’s friend, Lucy. They join the small group of humans, led by the vampire hunter, Van Helsing, working to stop Dracula’s plot to invade and infest England.

And as I’ve mentioned before, this is where things go downhill.

Van Helsing monologues endlessly about nothing for most of the rest of the book like the self-insert he is, leads the plot around in long, pointless circles, and does his damndest to keep more likeable characters, like Jonathan and Mina, out of it as much as he possibly can, especially Mina (yes, because she's a woman). Not even Dracula biting her to sow discord in the group and accidentally giving her a psychic window into his head, the only chance they have of tracking him down, is enough to allow any of them to steal any uninsulting time in the spotlight away from Van Helsing ever again.

…Wait, maybe this wasn’t the best example to start the year on.

Sorry, guys, nothing meant by it. I’m sure we’ll all have a fine 2014 from beginning to end, but being a horror geek, most of my favorite beginnings are at least this ominous in one way or another, and there was no way I could do this topic without including this one. The beginning itself really is that cool (probably a large part of why I’m so personally disappointed by the rest), so let’s get back to the good stuff.

Dracula is epistolary, and it begins with Jonathan’s journal entries during his stay in the castle, which are Gothic horror at its very finest. There’s a perfect slow-but-not-too-slow build of dread as Jonathan goes from being in awe of having his first big job in his field, to mildly anxious about the reasonable-seeming delays, to praying that the journal will somehow make it back to Mina if he slips and falls trying to escape out of his window or gets surrounded and drained by the three vampire women who roam the castle by night.

Through all of it, there’s a very strange, sad humor in how Jonathan can’t seem to find a way to accuse Dracula directly of holding him prisoner in a sufficiently polite Victorian English gentlemanly way.

While many of the beginnings on this list are here because of how well they set up their respective stories, I’ll always wish Jonathan Harker’s escape from Dracula’s castle had simply been a story unto itself. To the extent that it is, it’s a great one.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Giveaway + Cover Reveal: Fanged Outcast, by Elisabeth Wheatley

11/15/2013

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Next in this great November of cover reveals, Fanged Outcast, by Elisabeth Wheatley. And yes, she's giving away some cool stuff at the end of this post!

About Fanged Outcast

How much would you sacrifice for a love that wasn’t yours?

Hadassah managed to befriend her kind’s worst enemies and save her brother and the human girl he loves from the Vampiric King—once. After a month spent in quiet hiding under the protection of the Huntsmen, a surprise attack from a band of Kaiju shatters their brief reprieve. Faced with new challenges and new threats, Hadassah and the others must once more fight for her brother and the girl who stole his heart. And this time, the Vampiric King isn’t the only one they need fear…

Action, suspense, humor, and romance collide in this anticipated sequel from teen author, Elisabeth Wheatley.

You can order Fanged Princess here,

Or mark it to-read later on Goodreads here.

And mark Fanged Outcast (Fanged Princess, #2) to-read later here!

About Elisabeth Wheatley

Elisabeth Wheatley is a teen author of the Texas Hill Country. When she’s not daydreaming of elves, vampires, or hot guys in armor, she is wasting time on the internet, fangirling over indie books, and training her Jack Russell Terrier, Schnay.

You can find her on her blog, and on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, Amazon, and Pinterest.

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Movie Review: City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments)

8/24/2013

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Movie Review:

City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments)

August, 2013

D

Note:

Like most of my movie reviews, this one is written for readers of the book. In this case, I’m neither a great fan nor a determined attacker of the source material. I’ve read the first book in the Mortal Instruments series, the one this movie is based on, and enjoyed it, but the way the ending falls apart has prevented me from working up the enthusiasm to read the rest just yet, so forgive me if I misunderstand any bits of later canon this movie brings in early.

You can read my B- review of the book here.

The Basics:

Clary develops the ability to see a hidden magic world of demons and Shadowhunters. When her mother is kidnapped, she has to cooperate with these Shadowhunters to get her back.

The Upside:

The movie starts out as a decent translation of the book with a few improvements. Some backstory is introduced earlier, giving hope that the end exposition might not end up as one long, dragging clump, and Clary gets to witness her first demon slaying across a crowded room instead of following the Shadowhunters she assumes to be murderers away on her own to threaten them.

Lilly Collins’ performance as Clary is a pleasant surprise. The trailers present her as even more bland and irritating than Clary is in the book, but she plays the material she’s given as naturally and convincingly as possible.

There are also a couple of cool action moments (Jace punching Valentine through the portal was a personal favorite).

The Downside:

Everything else that was wrong with the book, and then some.

One of the biggest problems with the book is how generic and derivative it feels. I’ll be the first to agree that there are no truly new ideas, that the value of new art is primarily in the execution, but City of Bones never quite manages to contribute any extra personal flourish to its tropes at all. It executes them well, however, if in a generic sort of way, so that can be allowed to slide somewhat.

The movie, on the other hand, does the exact opposite of executing its tropes well and seems to be actively trying to be as generic and derivative as possible. The sets of the Institute where Shadowhunters operate are glaringly precise reconstructions of the sets of Hogwarts, as if the filmmakers are doing their very best to remind everyone that Cassandra Clare got her start in fanfic.

The two love interests, Jace and Simon, who were only annoyingly archetypal while otherwise likeable in the book, are flat-out annoying for most of the movie, all the competently constructed moments and dialogue between them and Clary lazily reduced to the simplest, most nauseatingly cliché common denominators.

Then there’s the other biggest problem with the book, the long, complicated backstory that ends up being treated as more important than the story itself. The hope that the opening of the movie offers that the backstory might be distributed better than in the book is dashed the moment the big bad guy, Valentine, shows up and starts babbling about things that take much more time and effort to understand than their relevance to the current action can justify.

As in the book, the last thirty percent or so of the movie is spent with the main characters pushed off to the side of battles and monologues of inadequately conveyed importance, burning quickly through the patience stockpiled by, in the case of the movie, camp value rather than competence.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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<<Previous

Book Review: Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles #1)

Book Review: Carry On

Fi's Five Favorite Fictional Characters (That I Shouldn't Like) #1: Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Giveaway + Guest Post by Amie Borst, Author of Little Dead Riding Hood

ï»¿ï»¿What scares you, and how does it influence your writing?ï»¿ï»¿

Cover Reveal: Defiance

About Defiance

About Adrienne Monson

Fi's Five Favorite Uses of Silence in Fiction #5: New Moon

Giveaway and Cover Reveal: Little Dead Riding Hood

About Little Dead Riding Hood

About Amie and Bethanie Borst

Fi's Five Favorite Fictional Beginnings #5: Dracula

Giveaway + Cover Reveal: Fanged Outcast, by Elisabeth Wheatley

About Fanged Outcast

About Elisabeth Wheatley

Movie Review: City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments)

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About Elisabeth Wheatley

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