The Weekly Wanting (11)

It's time for the Weekly Wanting again! Hooray!

Ravishing the Heiress, by Sherry Thomas 

Genre: Romance, Historical

Cover Snark: She's flashing her ankles! That hussy!

The Story: An aristocrat marries an heiress out of convenience, despite being in love with another woman, unaware that his wife is already deeply in love with him.

Why Do I Want It?  It's Sherry Thomas! Of course I want it! Plus the lovely ladies at Dear Author gave it a fab review.

The Rook: A Novel, by Daniel O'Malley
 Genre: Fantasy, Contemporary
Cover Snark: Keep Calm and Play Chess
The Story: An amnesiac woman learns she used to belong to a secret magical organization in Britain, and she must find out her betrayed her.
Why I Want It: Well, the Book Smugglers wrote a superb review of it that I promptly forgot all about, so when they brought it up again in their Best of the Year So Far article for Kirkus, it reminded me to put it on this list.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone, by Kat Rosenfield
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Cover Snark: Six Feet Under.
The Story: A girl trying to escape from a small town finds her life intersecting with the final days of another girl who's found dead outside the town limits.
Why I Want It? It received a recommendation from a no less esteemed personage than John Green, whom I'm becoming an increasing fan of since The Fault In Our Stars and FINALLY discovering Vlogbrothers.  He said that this is a very literary YA with exquisite language, so that definitely caught my eye.

Thieftaker, by D.B. Jackson
 Genre: Historical, Fantasy
Cover Snark: "And for my next trick, I will saw this woman in half - WITH MY MIND."
The Story: A conjurer in pre-Revolutionary America is tasked with using his powers to solve the murder of a Royalist's daughter.
Why I Want It? Found this one from a great blog review over at A Dribble of Ink. You had me with the idea of magicians in tricorn hats. Also, yeah, the unconventional fantasy setting sounded completely awesome. But mainly - TRICORN HATS, YO.

The Assassin's Curse, by Cassandra Rose Clarke
Genre: Fantasy
Cover Snark: A thousand of one nights of pretty, pretty covers.
The Story: When the daughter of pirate royalty flees an arranged marriage, they send an assassin after her - too bad a curse suddenly forces him to protect her or face terrible pain.
Why I Want It? Chalk this one up to Paranormal Indulgence who had a post on it! Pirates and assassins and unconventional fantasy settings! How can anyone NOT want that?

And that's it for this week! What are your eagerly-waited books?

Who Did It Best? Spider-Man vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, Review and Comparison

Spider-Man is my favourite superhero. Bar none. Full stop. Sure, I love other superheroes and their comics, TV shows, and movies, but Spider-Man is my ultimate favourite.

And I loved Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man movies. They were fun. They were exciting. They were hilarious. Even though the third film crashed and burned, I felt iffy about Sony deciding to reboot the series. It seemed horribly premature - merely five years between movies - and it looked like an overhasty and desperate attempt to pump artificial life into the series before it faded from the cultural zeitgeist. I went in expecting a rushed and subpar attempt.

As a result, I was pleasantly surprised. I'm still very attached to the first films, so for my review, I decided a compare-and-contrast was in order, between the very first Spider-Man and this newer Amazing Spider-Man.

The Peter
SM: Played by Tobey Maguire, Peter Parker is a hapless, bumbling, clumsy, shy nerd who's given enormous power. He's very earnest and determined to do the right thing, but that can often be difficult when he has the world's worst luck.
ASM: Played by Andrew Garfield, Peter Parker is an introverted, scientifically brilliant, but naive teenager who's never quite understood who he is and still deeply misses the presence of his parents in his life.
Similarities: Weird crying (Garfield's "huuoooaughghgh" sound when Uncle Ben dies almost made me snort my Coke), an unfortunate tendency to breakup with one's girlfriend during/directly after a funeral, using wrestlers as costume inspiration, tendency to go "whooooooooo!" after discovering powers.
Advantage: Amazing Spider-Man. Now, I like Tobey Maguire, I really do, and I think he did a great job as Spider-Man. His film called for Peter to be a hapless schmuck and Tobey gives very good schmuck. However, his character is never really deeply explored beyond his immediate origin story. He also graduates from high school and is already working an adult job halfway through the movie! 

What I loved about Spider-Man as a character was that he was a teenager. He wasn't some confident adult with a stable job or trust fund like Superman or Batman. He didn't have years of experience/daddy's alien crystals/a Ph.D in Mutant Child Psychology. SM only kept Peter in high school long enough to make some bullying jokes and then quickly transferred him into an adult environment.

ASM's Peter remains in high school - not only that, but Garfield (despite being more or less the same age as Maguire was when he had the role) plays the role much younger. He's quirky and tongue-tied and emotional and curious. His high school isolation is depicted as being an aspect of his personality - he doesn't know how to act around people because he's still trying to understand who he is - rather than just the fact that He's A Nerd. By the end of the movie, once he has a better hold on his identity, he has more social confidence.

He also has a character arc that's separate from his superhero arc (initially anyway), which I appreciated. SM's Peter never mentions his dead parents and doesn't reflect much on Uncle Ben's death beyond how it motivates his heroics. ASM's Peter misses his parents terribly and doesn't know how to construct his identity without them - he inherited his father's scientific genius while being raised by the blue-collar Ben and May. In the end, he discovers he's a mixture of the two - he has his father's brilliance, but it's wisely tempered by his uncle's strong moral influence.

While the result of this is that we get fewer scenes of actual Spidey, as an origin story of an already-popular and well-known character, I approve.

....and also Andrew Garfield is cute. Like, way cute. Very very cute. And a much more realistic teenager than Tobey Maguire.

The Spider-Man
SM: Bigger, more muscular, with organically-produced webbing.
ASM: Skinnier, more agile, with specially-designed webshooters.
Similarities: Same suit, essentially. Looked down on by authorities but admired by the public. They also take their masks off in front of people ALL THE DAMN TIME, are you serious, Spider-Men? DON'T TAKE YOUR MASKS OFF!
Advantage: Spider-Man. Mainly, because we see way more of Spidey and Spidey's social influence in that film. As well, as much as I liked the web-slinging scenes in ASM - SM did them first, when they were still thrilling and ground-breaking. Yes, there were a few Gumby scenes, but overall, Spider-Man is far more kick-ass with Tobey in the tights.

To be fair, ASM's Spidey is closer to the comic version, with the webbing being an invention of Peter's rather than a natural mutation. But really, if they'd been shooters in the original, we would never have had the gloriously goofy "Go, web, go! Fly! Shazam!" scene.

The Love Interest
SM: Mary-Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), the girl-next-door turned whiny-failed-actress/model.
AMS: Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), genius lab-intern at Oscorp and the first in her class (Peter Parker is second. Yes. Second).
Similarities: They are both very pretty. Peter likes them but has trouble talking to them.
Advantage: OMG AMAZING-SPIDER MAN SO HARD. This isn't even a contest. Gwen Stacy mops the floor with Mary-Jane's bony ass. Firstly - she's awesome and smart in her own right, and yet still dresses gorgeously in the go-go way like Gwen did in the comics. Yes! Nerdy brilliant girls can like wearing cute boots!

Secondly, she's an actual character. Mary Jane was always more of an object to move the plot forward. In the first film, she's there to be kidnapped and produce Suspense and Tension. Even in her narrative high point (Spider-Man 2), where she became a crazy-successful model and actress, she was mainly there to a) be successful enough to hammer home how much of a loser Peter was and b) serve as a goal for Peter to strive towards during his mid-super-hero-life crisis.

However, Gwen actually contributes to the plot - Peter tells her his identity about two-thirds through the movie, which makes her a partner and confidante, not just a Pretty Girl to hide his True Identity from. She even has an arc, albeit a lesser one, as she herself learns that those with the power to do good have the moral obligation to do it. And, my favourite part, SHE IS NEVER HELD HOSTAGE BY THE VILLAIN. She is attacked by the villain, and she defends herself until the villain goes away. She then gets out of harm's way to let Spider-Man do his job instead of hanging around to get killed or kidnapped again.

Okay, yes, she is a lesser character - more like Pepper Potts in Iron Man. But the key here is that she is a character, not an object, and she is depicted as being desirable for her intelligence and ingenuity as well as her incandescent hotness. Her romantic scenes with Peter are also ADORABLE.


The Supporting Cast
SM: Aunt May (Rosemary Harris), Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson), J. Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons), Betty Brant (Elizabeth Banks!), Flash Thompson (Joe Manganiello).
ASM: Aunt May (Sally Field), Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka), Captain Stacy (Dennis Leary, who cleans up surprisingly well).
Similarities: Well, they're all people who mean a lot to Peter.
Advantage: Spider-Man. Honestly, both Aunt Mays are pretty useless drippy martyrs, but it's more understandable with Rosemary Harris because she plays the role far older. Both Bens are pretty good, and, to ASM's credit, their Flash Thompson is more well-rounded and turns out to be a nicer guy - but mainly I'm wondering if Chris Zylka will eventually go on to play Big Dick Richie in the reboot of Magic Mike ten years down the road.

Ultimately, of course, ASM loses because they simply do not have the utter pinnacle of brilliant dream casting that was JK Simmons as JJ Jameson. JJ Jameson was hilarious and a consistent comedic highlight through ALL THREE Spider-Man films. SM used its secondary characters far better (especially for comedy) than ASM does, primarily because ASM has a very Peter-centric storyline.

The Villain
SM: Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), a brilliant scientist and CEO who tests his serum on himself to save his company and turns into the Green Goblin.
ASM: Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a brilliant scientist who tests his serum on himself to stop his shady partner from illegally testing it on innocent patients at a veterans' hospital, and turns into the Lizard.
Similarities: Both are green, both make the ridiculously short-sighted decision to test their projects on themselves, both are taunted by insane inner voices, both figure out who Peter is pretty easily.
Advantage: Spider-Man. Partly, this is because I feel bad for Dylan Baker (the actor who played pre-Lizard Connors in Spider-Man 2 and 3 only to be jettisoned once the series drove Sam Raimi insane). But mostly it's because the Lizard in ASM is such a been-there, done-that villain. He really offers nothing new in terms of character - a misunderstood but well-intentioned scientist brought low by his own scientific hubris? That's never happened before! Frankly, his character was done before, and performed far better, by Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man 2.

But is he better than Green Goblin? Yes, the Goblin had the Power Ranger suit. And the silly voices. And the split personality. But he edges past the Lizard because his character came first and established the theme of scientific responsibility before it became a cliche, and made him a fun character - sure, he's mostly fun because he's silly and Willem Dafoe can chew scenery like nobody's business, but he's entertaining as hell to watch. Also, unlike the Lizard, his character doesn't look like a knock-off of Batman's Killer Croc.

The Movie Itself
Advantage: Even. Spider-Man was a fun movie - entertaining and joyful on a visceral, instinctive level. I had more fun watching SM the first time in theatres than ASM. However, it's not as consistent or thoughtful as ASM. It's still a pretty close race, though, because both movies have such different tones. To me, SM is an external, plot-driven movie and ASM is an internal, character-driven movie. SM places more focus on the outward heroics, visual jokes, funny quips, dazzling fight scenes and dramatics. In that way, it's a much faster, brighter, happier movie.

ASM, on the other hand, focuses more on the characters' emotions and inner struggles. ASM's Peter is a far more emotional and emotionally conflicted character. Because of this, ASM is a slower, more low-key film, more organic and less structured - which can be refreshing or frustrating, depending on your tastes. In a way, ASM is to SM the way Batman Begins was to Tim Burton's Batman - as in, a deeper and more realistic take on a character whose previous appearance was in a film focused on being visually and narratively stylistic.

To put it simply, SM's focus was on Spider-Man - the bright, flashy, exciting super hero. ASM's focus was on Peter Parker - the complex boy underneath the tights. So both films are equal in my mind, just in different ways. I enjoyed Spider-Man more, but more guiltily, and it hasn't aged well (Spider-Man 2 still kicks both movies' asses).

"The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell," by Chris Colfer

Our Protagonists: Connor and Alex Bailey. After their loving, storytelling father dies in a car accident, they have a hard time seeing the magic in everyday life - until their grandmother's mysterious book of stories sucks them into a world where fairy tales are real.
The Rub: The trouble is, now they can't go back - unless they go to each of the kingdoms and find the ingredients to create the Wishing Spell, the only magic powerful enough to send them home.

Secondary Cast:

Froggy: A frog (surprise surprise!) who's under a curse because of his vanity. Fond of lily pad tea.

Goldilocks: An infamous outlaw who's had to live her life on the run ever since she was unjustly accused of burglary.

Red Riding Hood: Queen of the Red Riding Hood Kingdom (who'd have guessed?) - a queen who'd prefer to wear pretty dresses and pose for portraits than run her kingdom (her granny does most of the work).

The Evil Queen: Snow White's stepmother. Recently escaped from prison, she also seeks the Wishing Spell to further her life's ambition.

The Huntress: The mute daughter of the Evil Queen's Huntsman who's racing to get the pieces of the Wishing Spell before the Bailey twins do. 

Middle Grade Fantasy Convention Checklist

• 1 Saintly Deceased Parent
• 1 Magical-Object-Turned-Interdimensional-Portal
• Several Nasty Wolves
• 1 Awkward Love Triangle
• 1 Kick-Ass Female Bandit
• 1 Physics-Defying Arrow (it bounces of a sword, then off a wall, then hits a villain in the back and kills him)
• 1 Well-Aimed Cannon Ball

LiveTweeted It? Yes - my better reactions are Storify'd here.

The Word: I had to admit I was a little nervous when Chris Colfer (the actor who plays "Kurt" on Glee) announced he was working on a novel - but then he gave the speech at BEA's Children's Book and Author Breakfast (where I coincidentally received an ARC of this book). He made his novel sound like a real labour of love for him, and I love fairy tales, so I was eager to give this novel a shot.

Unfortunately, The Land of Stories did not measure up - mainly because it didn't seem ready. It read like the first draft of a very young, promising, but untutored writer: the book's not missing for creativity or wit, but the writing style is amateurish, the narrative is disorganized and contrived, the tone is patronizing, and the ham-handed messages the story tries to force down the readers' throats are either vague, unhelpful, cliched, or wrongheaded.

Alex and Connor Bailey are twin siblings who are struggling to move on after the death of their father. Their mom has to work double shifts to make ends meet and they're not doing much better at school - Alex is an overachieving know-it-all who is ostracized by her classmates, and Connor is forever failing tests and falling asleep in class.

Things are so stressful they almost forget the arrival of their twelfth birthday, which their mother has to work through, but thankfully their beloved grandmother arrives in the nick of time with her bright blue car and her book full of stories. They have a lovely birthday, and while their grandmother has to leave the next day, she leaves them her copy of The Land of Stories.

As expected in a fantasy middle grade novel, the book starts glowing and humming and a few pages later the twins end up falling into the book and landing in The Land of Stories, where all the famous fairy tale characters are real. However, it's a world of dangers as well as of wonders, and they  discover the only way they can get home is to summon the Wishing Spell - a powerful magic that will require an object from every major fairy tale. Unfortunately, the notorious Evil Queen (Snow White's stepmother) has escaped from prison and is also looking for the Wishing Spell, and she'll stop at nothing to get it.

Now, this is a decent enough set-up, but The Land of Stories is hobbled right out of the gate thanks to an incredibly distracting reliance on passive language. What is passive language, you ask? Passive language is a writing style that over-relies on the verbs "to be" and "to have." Example: "Connor's eyes were bulging out of his head." The primary verb in that sentence is were, a passive verb, when it could have so easily been bulge, an active verb (as in, "Connor's eyes bulged out of his head").

Long story short, passive language is horrible and annoying because it is literally "telling instead of showing." It keeps the reader at a distance instead of placing her in the middle of the action. The whole book is written like this - the reader is simply told "this magical thing was gorgeous" or "the castle was enormous" or "this character looked sad" instead of being shown these things with description.

This, of course, leads me to my second problem with the novel: its tone. I don't know if the author has read very much Middle Grade, but there is a definite sense in this novel of "talking down" to readers. Thanks to oversimplified, passive language as well as the "moral lessons" (more on that in a bit), the novel often comes across as patronizing. I don't know about you, but kids don't like being told what to do, what to think, or what to notice - they like to discover.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to discover here. The world building for The Land of Stories is colourful, but disappointingly undefined and convenient. The minute the twins mope that they'll never find that one thing they're looking for - that one thing or the one person who could produce that one thing miraculously turns up and hands it to them.

My last problem was with the book's "moral lessons." Now, normally I'd let such things lie, because everything about literature is pretty much open to interpretation, but The Land of Stories proves the exception because the use of fairy tales to teach social lessons is a major theme of the novel. And some of those "lessons" that are unsubtly hammered home are so uninformed and naive as to be ridiculous, but because I want this blog post to end at some point, I will focus on one.

Snow White's Evil Stepmother is the central antagonist of the book, but in the prologue, where she's sitting in prison being interrogated by Snow White herself, she quips, "What the world fails to realize is that a villain is simply a victim whose story hasn't been told." Wait, what? For most of the book, as the story keeps dropping hints about the Evil Queen's mysterious past, I hoped that this sentence would simply prove to be a woefully poor choice of words. Unfortunately, the rest of this review require spoilers, so you have been warned.

*****SPOILERS*****

By the end of the book, we learn that the Evil Queen was once an innocent woman in love who was kidnapped by an Enchantress, who then cursed her true love into a magic mirror. The Evil Queen's subsequent actions were all fueled by her desperate search to get her lover out of the mirror before he lost his identity. Now, that's an interesting story and provides a deeper motivation for the Queen's actions than simple vanity - however...

HOWEVER - the novel treats her tragic quest for love as justification for the terrible things she did. As in, the fact that she did it for love (cue singing birds) makes it okay. Her loyal Huntsman calls her a saint. All the other princesses cry when they hear the Queen's story and gush about how it was all for love (cue dancing mice) and how cruel the world was for senselessly hating her, and how nobody would give her compassion and understanding.

Yeah, how dare the world hate her - for neglecting, imprisoning, and MURDERING her subjects (including Snow White's parents!). Couldn't they offer her a little compassion and understanding when she was busy poisoning apples and ordering the Huntsman to cut out a teenage girl's heart, because it was all for LOVE (cue showers of rose petals)? Even Snow Freakin' White says the Evil Queen's "broken heart" was punishment enough for her actions - um, you mean, like HER PREMEDITATED MURDER OF YOUR PARENTS? 

And of course, this all culminates in the twins realizing that most villains are "villainized by circumstance."

How about NO. NO NO NO a million times NO. There is a difference between humanizing a character and justifying their actions. The Evil Queen's backstory does an excellent job of revealing her human motivations and frailty - does it make her a deeper, more interesting character? Sure! Does that make her a morally good character? NO. She was not villainized by circumstance, she became a villain by choice. No one forced her at dagger point to poison Snow White's parents. No one forced her to try to feed a bunch of people to wolves. She made a conscious choice to do those things and I cannot BELIEVE that such a naive, irresponsible message of the ends justifying the means would be one of the MAJOR MORALS OF THE NOVEL.

Especially since, as I recall, quite a few fairy tale heroines were dealt crappy hands by fate but nevertheless managed to avoid MURDERING PEOPLE WITH COMBS. Here endeth the rant!

*****END OF SPOILERS*****

As it is, despite a few poignant scenes and, admittedly, quite a few hilarious lines of dialogue from Connor, The Land of Stories is a profound disappointment. Its worldbuilding is inconsistent and trite, its pacing is all over the map, its writing is clumsy and immature, and it doesn't reveal as many original things about fairy tale characters as the back cover blurb would have you believe. I wish Chris Colfer all kinds of success in his acting and screenwriting career, but I won't be visiting The Land of Stories again.
D+

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell is available for purchase July 17th. You can pre-order it here.

"Crazy For Love," by Victoria Dahl

The Chick: Chloe Turner. An ordinary accountant who just wants to relax at a secluded resort after her fiance took "getting cold feet" to a desperate extreme and turned her into a media laughingstock.
The Rub: There she meets the delicious Max Sullivan, but what will he think when he realizes she's America's Most Infamous Bridezilla?
Dream Casting: Natalie Portman.


The Dude: Max Sullivan. A famous treasure hunter who's more than ready for a little R and R - provided there are no women involved.
The Rub: He runs into Chloe and instantly likes her - but what will happen when his anxiety disorder becomes too much for him?
Dream Casting: Josh Holloway.


The Plot: 


Chloe: Time for a vacation! Without paparazzi!

Max: Time for a vacation! Without ladies! Crap! That totally sexy, desirable woman is lighting an unsafe fire! I MUST RESCUE HER!

Chloe: Excuse me?

Max: WE SHOULD BONE! I mean we should date FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY because you're adorable!

Chloe: Wow, you have a problem...

Max: CURSES! MY MASTERFUL DISGUISE HAS BEEN FOILED!

Chloe: ... but I find that so cute!

Max: Oh. AWESOME!

*super super EXTRA super safe sex ensues*

Paparazzi: Hey look! Chloe! Chloe! What's it like having photographers show up to reveal you're the Bridezilla and provide some much needed romantic conflict?

Max: Oh HELL no. I'm out.

Chloe: Oh no!

Max: Wait, no, I'm back in.

Chloe: I'm not a puppy you know, I don't need to be rescued...

Max: Well then I'm out again! Exit stage right!

Chloe: ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME?!

Jenn, the Pathetic Best Friend Who Cries During: BEE TEE DUBS I KNEW YOUR FIANCE CHEATED AND DIDN'T TELL YOU BECAUSE OF MY PATHETIC MAN ISSUES!

Chloe: Stop the crazy train! I want to get off!

Max: Hey, s'up! I'm back again!

Chloe: Let's make a deal - you stick around for longer than five seconds and I'll give you an HEA.

Max: DEAL!

Chloe: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

• 1 Untreated Anxiety Disorder
• 1 Secretly Guilty Friend
• 1 Really Unsafe Fire
• 1 Evil Ex
• 1 Secondary Romance (between Hero's Brother and Secretly Guilty Friend)
• 1 Instance of Crying During Sex (Unsexy Variety)
• Several Paparazzi
• 1 Bitchy Cousin

The Word: Chloe Turner should have been on her honeymoon. However, instead of helping her with their wedding plans, her spineless old-money fiance tried to fake his own death to get out of marrying her, and when he was caught, he vilified Chloe in front of the press to take the blame off himself.
 
Now Chloe's possessions are crammed into a tiny apartment, she's followed by paparazzi wherever she goes, and her face is plastered across every tabloid and internet gossip site under the caption "psychotic bridezilla." Her best friend Jenn hopes that taking Chloe to a remote island resort off the coast of Virgina will give her enough privacy to relax in the weeks leading up to her fiance's trial for fraud.

While there, she meets Max Sullivan, a marine treasure hunter (for reals) who's on holiday with his recently-divorced brother Elliott. Max has a reputation for wild ways and wild women, and he takes an immediate interest in Chloe as she and Jenn start a bonfire on the beach.

Unbeknownst to Chloe, his brother, or anyone in his life, Max suffers from an undiagnosed and untreated anxiety disorder similar to OCD that compels him to take responsibility for everyone around him. Everyone. Literally everyone - with friends, family, complete strangers, he becomes hyper-aware of every possible thing that could go wrong and is compelled to go in and control the situation to his satisfaction. And because people (for some strange reason) don't like being ordered around by a Stranger Creeper Whom They've Never Met, Max has carefully cultivated a charming personality that allows him to manipulate people into safer situations with no one the wiser.

This also influences his relationships - leading to an unerring tendency to date needy, dramatic girls out of a desire to "fix" them. How lovely.

Anyway, Max is tired. Exhausted. The stress of physically worrying about everyone he comes into contact with is killing him - albeit not enough to seek therapy or medication (more on that later). His solution is simple: isolation and celibacy. That is, until he sees two hot ladies trying to build a fire. A fire that is dangerously close to dry, combustible seagrass. He starts flirting with Chloe in order to maintain fire safety, and is compelled to invite himself on their diving trip when he learns Chloe hired a diving instructor from a grocery store. In the process, he finds he really likes Chloe, but he mentally cannot handle another relationship so he's stuck fighting his attraction and his desire to shield Chloe from drowning and sunburn and shark attacks and the bends.

Chloe, at first, just thinks Max is super-interested, but she figures out his problem quickly enough once he tries to seduce her out of skinny-dipping at night, and she calls him on it. Max is shocked - no one's been able to see through his charming disguise to the controlling nervous wreck he really is - but he's also relieved to find someone he doesn't have to hide from. What will happen, though, once Max finds out that Chloe is America's Most Infamous Bridezilla?

My biggest problem with Crazy For Love was the fact that, for a novel that has the word "Crazy" in its title and a hero who suffers from a severe anxiety disorder, the story never deals with the mental health implications or possible treatments for Max's problem. The author goes to extreme lengths to demonstrate how stressful Max's condition is - he's mentally incapable of relaxing around other people, regardless of the situation. He's continually worrying about fire alarms and how close someone's standing to a railing and the diseases you can get from bugs. The reader gets to see first hand how desperately unhappy he is.

And yet the idea of going to therapy or getting treatment for this problem never comes up. Max never even thinks about it. No one suggests it. Chloe, in fact, treats it like a cute foible, just another wacky part of his personality. This bothered me for three reasons:

1. I dislike the implication that A Good, Understanding Woman is a suitable treatment in and of itself
2. I really dislike the implication that Real Men should just put up with an anxiety disorder (in the hero's case, for more than 30 years!) instead of seeking treatment, and 
3. I don't buy that the heroine would rather live ever after in near-isolation with the hero than encourage him get treatment. That just seems so incredibly irresponsible and short-sighted, a Band-Aid solution.

The third reason really got to me, especially considering Chloe's personality and past. Thanks to her cowardly fiance, she had to spend an entire month cut off from her regular life and the people she cares about because of the scalding media attention. She describes in detail how trapped and alone she feels - so why would she agree to a restrictive, lonely existence in order to sooth Max's issues rather than actually dealing with them?
 
As well, I found the romantic conflict really confusing, especially once Max finds out about Chloe's Bridezilla reputation and Chloe realizes how Max gravitates towards needy women because he feels responsible for them. Max loves her, but he doesn't want her to need him, because then he'll only love her because he needs her to need him? Chloe needs Max, but she doesn't want him to stay because she needs him, she wants him to stay because he needs her? What?   

There's also a rather drippy secondary romance between Chloe's Secretly Guilty best friend Jenn and Max's brother Elliott, some sex scenes that really didn't contribute enough to the story this time around (something that Victoria Dahl's usually really awesome at), and I thought the ending was a little too pat for me (especially considering the paparazzi).

Despite solid writing and some hilarious dialogue ("Holy ass cheeks, Batman!"), I wasn't crazy for Crazy for Love. 
C

You can purchase Crazy for Love here.

The June Round Up!

June was a pretty big month for me. I went to Book Expo, my blog turned eight years old, I posted about the merits (or lack thereof) of happy blogger fairy dust, and I set a deadline for my novel. My writing's actually started to pick up. I've read a lot of advice from different writers and blogs over the years, and for the most part ... I've ignored it. I always seemed convinced that everyone writes differently and that things that apply to other people might not apply to me.

But I finally found a piece of advice that resonated with me - pick small goals. Sounds stupid. What could be a small goal about writing? Well, for me, it's going for a small results-based goal rather than a strict count. Going in and telling myself "write as much as you can" isn't a goal. It's pretty open-ended since I can't really define "as much as you can." It means that more often than not, I feel like I haven't written enough, that I haven't met this goal, and that shoots down my morale.

Moreover, measuring progress by word count (other than during National Novel Writing Month) doesn't really mean anything. I could (and can, and HAVE) written thousands of words that do absolutely nothing to further the plot or get me closer to the end of my book. So instead of word count, I do scene count. I decide on a scene, and I write until I get to the natural conclusion of that scene. It may take a thousand words, it may take three hundred, but when I'm done, it's there, I get a sense of accomplishment, and my book has progressed in a significant way (one more scene means way more than another 500 words).

Anyway! The reviews:

*June Winner*
The Miseducation of Cameron Post, by Emily M. Danforth. YA, Contemporary. A-
Pros: Fantastic, nuanced characterization. Detailed environment. Engaging coming-of-age storyline. Cons: Slow pacing for the first two-thirds. Occasional overabundance of detail. Some narrative loose ends.

The Wild Marquis, by Miranda Neville. Romance, Historical. B+
Pros: Delicious hero, interesting book collecting subplot. Cons: Heroine is a bit of the silly type who sometimes ignores sage safety advice for the plot to go forward.

Throne of Jade, by Naomi Novik. Fantasy, Historical. B+
Pros: Amazing worldbuilding, fantastic bromance between and dragon. Cons: Slow slow slooooow pacing.

Pixar's Brave. Animated Film, Fantasy. B
Pros: Strong female-centric storyline, no tacked-on love interest. Cons: Uneven pacing, narrow scope.

Where It Began, by Ann Redisch Stampler. B
Pros: Interesting mystery, hilarious hilarious voice. Cons: Heroine is completely passive in her own story.

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Fantasy, Contemporary. C
Pros: Original storyline, detailed setting. Cons: Dull characters, scattered and unfocused narrative.

Motherland, by Amy Sohn. Fiction, Contemporary. C-
Pros: Soapy scandals galore! Cons: Unrelatable characters, unresolved storylines, and SURPRISE INCEST.  

*June Dud*
Dark Fever, by Karen Marie Moning. Urban Fantasy. D+
Pros: The brief appearance of a fairy so sexy he literally causes people to spontaneously take their clothes off. Cons: Dickbag hero, TSTL heroine, gratingly annoying future-heroine narrator spoils all the good parts, no conflict resolution at all.

"The Miseducation of Cameron Post," by Emily M. Danforth

The Protagonist: Cameron Post. When her parents die on the same day she kisses a girl, she subconsciously wonders if she somehow caused their deaths, even as she grows to explore what it means to be attracted to girls in small-town 1990s Montana.
Her Angst: Her guardian, her extremely religious Aunt Ruth, believes homosexuality is a sin and a sickness and when Cameron's sexuality comes to light, she feels forced to take drastic measures.

The Secondary Cast:

Grandma Post: Cameron's beloved, diabetic grandmother who helps raise Cameron with Ruth.

Irene Klausen: Cameron's best friend and first kiss - their relationship is dealt a decisive blow after Cameron's parents are killed.

Aunt Ruth: Cameron's well-meaning but evangelically religious aunt. Believes everything she's doing is for Cameron's own good.

Lindsay: A fellow competitor from Cameron's swim meets, and eventual friend-with-benefits, who helps introduce Cameron to lesbian culture.

Jamie: Cameron's stoner friend, who is awesome, but might have a crush on her. I honestly wish we saw more of him.

Coley Taylor: A girl with whom Cameron falls in love, who is nevertheless too restricted by her religious beliefs to enter into an honest same-sex relationship.

Reverend Rick: One of the leaders of God's Promise, a private school dedicated to helping teenagers overcome their unhealthy homosexual desires. A professed "ex-gay" himself, he sincerely believes he's helping teenagers become closer to God.

Lydia: Rick's aunt, and the other leader of God's Promise. A cruel, cold, hateful bigot with no sense of empathy or boundaries. Has a special corner of Hell reserved for her.

Adam Red Eagle: One of Cameron's classmates at God's Promise, forced to go by his homophobic, political-minded father, although his mother, of the Lakota tribe, believes he's a winkte, or "two-souls person."

Jane Fonda: Another rebellious God's Promise classmate, who was raised in a commune, grows her own weed and stores it in a hidden compartment in her prosthetic leg. I couldn't make this stuff up.

Angst Checklist:

• Dead Parents
• Self-Blame for Dead Parents
• Questioning Sexuality
• Bette Midler as Coping Mechanism
• Evangelical Christianity
• Where Do We Find Weed At a Private Christian School?
• Unrequited Love
• Homophobia

The Word: The Miseducation of Cameron Post is an example of a novel I haven't read it quite a while: a bildungsroman - a coming-of-age story.

But AnimeJune, aren't most YA novels coming-of-age?

In a sense, but I've found that most YA novels focus on a particular, narrow period of time in a teenager's life where something life-changing happens - a single summer, or year of school. My favourite bildungsroman, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, follows the main character from miserable childhood to successful adulthood, with all the dramas in between. Instead of spanning a particular period of time or event, The Miseducation of Cameron Post follows Cameron from age twelve to seventeen, with a linear recounting of her interactions and discoveries.

Still, The Miseducation does have a theme - that of Cameron's developing sexual identity in small-town Montana, told in three parts. The novel opens as twelve-year-old Cameron discovers she has feelings for her best friend, Irene. The two kiss at a sleepover while Cameron's parents are on vacation. Later that very night, Cameron learns her mum and dad have been killed in a car accident, and her first reaction is relief, that they didn't find out, that they'd never find out. Her subsequent guilt and horror at this response strongly influences her growing understanding of her own desires and ultimately severs her friendship with Irene.

Cameron then acquires the guardianship of her born-again Christian aunt Ruth, and as she grows into a teenager (the novel's second part), she starts exploring her sexuality as well as its social context. On one end of the spectrum, she's influenced by her aunt's church, Gates of Praise, and the Christian youth group she is forced to join. On the other end, she has her friend and sometimes-girlfriend Lindsay, a city girl from Seattle, who inundates Cameron with ideas about lesbian culture and Gay Pride and gender constructs - subjects that interest but also intimidate Cameron, who only feels ready to explore what being a lesbian means to her personally.

She also falls in love with another girl in her class, named Coley, and as she moves to act on what seems like a reciprocated attraction, the book moves into its third and final part, where Cameron must hold true to her identity against serious and insidious opposition. When Coley confesses to her family that Cameron "seduced" her in a moment of weakness, Aunt Ruth packs Cameron off to God's Promise, a private ultra-Christian school for curing teenagers of their "sexual brokenness."

I like books that make me happy - but I also enjoy books that make me angry. Books that make me feel anything in such a powerful way are always preferable to books that don't touch me at all. I'll admit, I enjoyed the first two parts of this novel, but I never felt truly emotionally invested until the third part. The third part is excruciating to read - the methods used to try and "cure" these kids are infuriating. For instance, the teachers often conclude that behaviours that don't fit outdated and extremely cliched notions of gender are responsible for homosexuality - boys being too close to their mothers, girls liking sports, etc.

It seemed to me that the first two parts of this book were simply an elaborate and detailed lead-in to Cameron's struggles at God's Promise. The first two parts give Cameron the experience and the personal knowledge to understand and combat what's being done at God's Promise, to come fully into an understanding of her identity - and the validity of her identity - during a period of extreme struggle, and this was extremely powerful to read.

Part of what made that powerful was the humanity of the characters - well, most of them. The majority of the characters are given enough angles and layers that we can understand them, even care about and empathize with them, even when they're antagonists. Cameron's Aunt Ruth is never demonized, and after 200 pages of her interactions with Cameron we can understand her decisions and where they come from, even if they're short-sighted and awful.

The character who stood out the most for me was Reverend Rick, the young, handsome pastor who helps run God's Promise. The other leader, Lydia, is a loathsome bigot inside and out, but Rick genuinely cares about the kids and what he's doing and what he thinks he's helping them to do. Emily Danforth skilfully manages to render him sympathetic without rendering his actions sympathetic.

I also enjoyed The Miseducation of Cameron Post because it's a very atmospheric novel. Yes, at times (parts one and two) it's slow-moving, but it pays a lot of attention to Cameron's physical and social environment. I got a real sense of her small town and the types of people in it, the pervasive religious and farming culture, as well as how much Cameron loves her town. Yes, there's a part of her that knows she will eventually have to leave for greener (and more gay-friendly) pastures, but the story also conveys just how much of herself is bound up in this town.

That being said, I had a few niggles. The novel introduces a few plot points as if they are significant (like Cameron's mother's friend Margot, or Ruth's chronic illness), only to drop them without dealing with them. The character of Margot puzzled me, in particular, since her one appearance in the book left such a deep impression on Cameron, but it was never really explained.

Despite these quibbles, and the uneven pacing, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is an involving, thought-provoking novel about the importance of personal identity.
A-

You can purchase The Miseducation Of Cameron Post here.

"The Wild Marquis," by Miranda Neville

The Chick: Juliana Merton. A bookseller whose business tanked once when her husband died and her customers decided a woman couldn't possibly understand enough about rare books.
The Rub: When a devilishly handsome rakehell asks her to represent him in a book auction, she knows she'll earn a serious chunk of change, but can she really put valuable books in the hands of someone society believes is frivolous and selfish?
Dream Casting: A young Reese Witherspoon.

The Dude: John Godfrey, the Marquis of Chase, a.k.a. "Cain." Banished from his fanatically religious family as a teenager, the notorious aristocrat has spent years wearing his coal-black reputation with defiant pride.
The Rub: This pride comes back to bite him in the ass when he sees an opportunity to reconcile with his family, but his peers aren't willing to take his "reformation" seriously - but maybe a shapely book seller could help him win back one of his family's prized heirlooms.
Dream Casting: Matthew Goode.

The Plot:


Cain: I need to buy back my family's favourite book!

Juliana: I need enough money to buy my mother's Shakespeares!

Cain and Juliana: We should team up! It's perfect!

Cain: I may also need to be taken seriously as a gentleman to protect my sister.

Juliana: I need to know who my real father is.

Cain: I seriously need more dude friends.

Juliana: I need to know why my husband was murdered.

Cain: I need a woman who understands that I'm actually NOT a dirty incestuous pervert, but a dude who loves women - in the respectful and non-penis-touching way...

Juliana: I need a man who respects me because I'm AWESOMELY SKILLED and not just because I'm also super hot...

Deranged Villain: Meanwhile I need to murder both of you!

Cain: No thank you!

Deranged Villain: *conveniently dies*

Cain: We need to get married!

Juliana: Agreed!

Cain and Juliana: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:


1 Very Bad Dad (deceased)

2 Inconveniently Dead Parents

1 Unexpectedly Appearing Sister

1 Unexpectedly Supportive Aunt

1 Terrible Guard Dog

Several Contraceptive Sponges

2 Counts of Sequel Baiting (Tarquin and Iverley - whom I initially mistook for a gay couple)

The Word: I've had the very lovely opportunity to have met Miranda Neville in person as well as spoken with her on Twitter. While I felt her first book, Never Resist Temptation, was good but flawed, by the time I'd read that, I'd already bought her second novel, The Wild Marquis, thanks to the beautiful cover as well as the plotline of a wronged rake hero from a puritanical family.

John Godfrey, now the Marquis of Chase (although he prefers to go by his nickname "Cain," after his courtesy title the Earl of Cainfield), is a Very Bad Man. At least, that's what society believes. His father, the previous Marquis, had such a towering reputation for piety and righteousness, that when he tossed his then-sixteen-year-old heir out of the house for "unspeakable acts of debauchery," it was tacitly assumed by everyone in the Ton that Cain was obviously a Pervert among Perverts. When the teenaged Cain found rescue and shelter at a brothel, it only confirmed society's suspicions.

Eight years later, Cain comes across a copy of the Burgundy Hours, an exceedingly rare devotional work that's been a (secret!) Godfrey family heirloom for centuries, at an estate auction for a recently deceased book collector. Cain is curious to know why his late father would have parted with the Hours - and he also believes that purchasing the Hours would go a long way towards dissolving his estrangement from his fanatically religious mother and sister.

However, Cain knows nothing about book collecting or auctions, so he seeks out a reputable bookseller who would be able to lend their expertise to his endeavour. He goes to a shop owned by J.C. Merton, who, to his surprise, turns out to be a woman.

Juliana Merton is herself interested in the upcoming auction - more specifically, she's seeking a collection of Shakespeares that used to belong to her grandfather, himself a fanatical bibliophile. However, ever since her husband's murder, business at her bookshop has been dismal and she can't afford them - not unless she takes on a wealthy client willing to offer a generous commission. Although she's initially disdainful of the frivolous and handsome Marquis of Chase, she can't afford to refuse him and she agrees to represent him in the auctions to ensure he gets the Burgundy Hours.


So on top of an original storyline examining a fascinating and yet rarely-explored aspect of Regency life, we have two thoroughly charming protagonists, vastly different in mindset and upbringing and yet united by the novel's central theme of family and identity.

Cain is a man whose public identity was more or less decided for him by his insane and tyrannical father when he threw him out of his house. He's spent the intervening years living up to (or at least playing into) high society's disgusted opinion of him, when in reality, he uses his black reputation to hide who he really is - a thoughtful, compassionate man with a deep regard and respect for women, especially fallen women and prostitutes. However, life is an exhausting and frustrating business when everyone is determined to think the worst of him, which is why he's drawn to Juliana, the bookseller who looks beyond his bad name and helps him regain some footing in civilized society - at least that part of society that worships books.

Juliana is a woman without a public identity - she had to find out for herself that her book-loving guardian was really her grandfather, and that her mother had died in childbirth, for all appearances unmarried. Her identity as a bastard keeps her from high society, her identity as a woman restricts her to the fringes of the book collector community, and her identity as a wife was taken from her when her husband was violently murdered on the way back from a book sale. With Cain, she finds a man who relies on and appreciates her hard-won skills, regardless of her gender or background, and from there she comes to love the identity she's created for herself with her intellect and her passion.

Honestly, these two people have their angsts but they're just so refreshingly open and rational about how secretive and irrational they sometimes get about their own hangups. If that makes sense. These are characters who are flawed and know they are flawed but refuse to dwell on their flaws. Their burgeoning relationship is honest and witty and blessedly free of many of the cliched tropes I would have expected from a rake and a bluestocking romance.

If you're looking for a story steeped in book culture with a rake hero sans misogyny, The Wild Marquis is the romance novel for you.
B+

You can purchase The Wild Marquis here.

Film Review: Pixar's "Brave"

Pixar's Brave is an excellent example of a movie that improved in my mind as I reviewed it. My first reaction after watching this movie was disappointment. While it was a good movie when compared to other movies in general, as a Pixar film it didn't seem to measure up. It seemed - predictable. Most other Pixar films sweep you along on an exploratory journey of astoundingly original worlds and ideas. Monsters. Bugs. Toys. Rats in Paris.

This story dealt with - princesses with red hair who don't follow society's rules. Didn't I watch this one before?

However, after letting the movie sink in and really analysing the aspects of the plot, I realized it simply had a different focus. While Pixar movies, in general, are idea- or setting-based, Brave is a personal, character- and emotion-based story. This may seem like a Disney Princess movie, and you would be right - but it's a Disney Princess movie as done by Pixar, and the result is a subtly different creature.

The main character, Merida, shares a great deal in common with Disney's first modern princess, The Little Mermaid's Ariel. She's headstrong and good-natured with fantastic hair but also naive, selfish, and politically short-sighted.

In this kingdom, there are four major clans, and tradition dictates that the princess of a clan must marry a prince of one of the others, provided he's able to win her hand through a series of competitions. Merida is NOT happy with this turn of events at all, and her defiance of tradition sparks a terrible argument with her mother, the queen. When she accidentally happens upon a witch's cottage, Merida decides the only way to change her fate is to muck about with someone else's - and she buys an enchanted cake intended to change her mother's mind about marriage.

To absolutely no one's surprise, this plan backfires spectacularly when the spell winds up turning her mother into a bear. With only two days before the spell becomes permanent, Merida and her now-ursine mother must team up and find out how to mend the rift between them.

The movie wins most of my appreciation for the following three points:

1. The story not only has a female protagonist, but a plot that is centered entirely around the relationship between two women. 
A princess with a surviving mother figure is already a rare thing in the Disney canon, but for a princess to have a significant relationship with her mother, and for it to be the main focus of the film, is entirely unheard of. Yes, Mulan, Tatiana, and Rapunzel all had mums - but they were always relegated to the background.

In Brave, the film is all about how Merida and her mother the Queen come to terms with their differences in perspective. Merida is a classic tomboy skilled at horseback riding, archery, and outdoorsmanship, and the queen is an exceedingly proper politician and diplomat who clearly means for Merida to follow in her footsteps, if only she would give up her pointless and unladylike interests. 

Once the spell deprives the queen of her voice and her agency, and she must rely on Merida's aid, the queen comes to learn that her daughter's unorthodox passions and talents are valid and useful aspects of her personality. Meanwhile, Merida must accept how her selfish actions can have repercussions, and just how important her mother is to her life. The film explores both viewpoints equally and gives both sides equal weight - I especially liked how the film takes the time to explain why Merida's betrothal is such a political necessity.

2. The heroine's actions have consequences - and she learns the importance of those consequences.
In this instance, Merida edges out past The Little Mermaid's Ariel. Ariel is also a rebellious princess character who runs afoul of a witch when she tries to change her fate - but she never really grows up or learns her lesson by the end of the movie. She abandons her family and sells her soul for a nice pair of gams and it's all fun and games until Ursula comes to collect. Her powerful daddy and resourceful boyfriend are fortunately on hand to bail her out, and at the end of the movie she's got her gams, her dude, and her father's approval and absolutely no understanding of how her own actions endangered all three. Let's face it, Ariel got lucky.

Merida is a character cut from the same redheaded cloth as Ariel, but in the film she's forced to come face to furry face with the consequences of her actions as she comes perilously close to losing her mother forever. It's a message both good and bad - she learns her words and actions have power, but they also have the power to affect other people's lives in a negative way.

3. There is NO romantic subplot at all. NONE.
You read that right. There is no handsome prince. There is no platonic male friend who becomes something more. The closest thing to a male main character is Merida's father and her three baby brothers. I seriously wish screenwriters would realize the storytelling time they could save if they just stopped trying to wedge a romance into a story that doesn't need one. Brave does not need a romance and I never noticed its absence.

That being said, did the writers use their time wisely? No. I felt the pacing of Brave was off - Merida's mum doesn't turn into a bear until nearly half the movie is gone thanks to filler scenes and overelaborate narrative setup.  I felt the movie would have been more effective if the transformation had come sooner, allowing for more scenes of Merida and her mother bonding.

Also ... well, although the film does inject refreshing elements into the narrative, it's still a familiar narrative (girl doesn't want to marry, constrained by society) in a familiar setting (Medieval Western Kingdom). I don't know - Pixar films usually find a way to offer something new, from an angle or setting or story we've never thought of before, and so Brave felt a little too familiar.

My grade? Good, very good, but not great.
B

The Weekly Wanting (10)

Happy Sunday, everybody! Nothing much happened this week, other than I finally set a deadline to finish the first draft of my YA novel tentatively titled More Than Normal. My first draft needs to be done by September, and if it is, I get to do something ridiculously decadent and expensive. Hooray! I also saw Brave yesterday, and it's a thinker. I may have to review it to get a better grip on how I reacted to it.

Only one book today for the wanting. Still recovering from Book Expo swag overdose!

The Princesses of Iowa, by M. Moley Backes 

Genre: YA, Contemporary

Cover Snark: Personal problems in the side mirror may be larger than they appear.

The Story: A pampered, popular girl returns to her hometown after a drunk driving accident the previous year and discovers that not everyone is willing to welcome her back with open arms.

Why Do I Want It? I've been it positively reviewed all over the internets and was caught by the story of a queen bee who's fallen from grace.

  And that's it! What books are you desperately wanting this week?

"American Gods," by Neil Gaiman

The Protagonist: Shadow. When he's released from prison mere days after his wife's sudden death, he impulsively accepts a job from a mysterious personage named Wednesday.
The Rub: He soon departs on the adventure of a lifetime when he learns that Wednesday is actually a god, adrift in a nation bereft of worshipers, who wants to find other abandoned gods in America and band together.

Secondary Cast:

Wednesday: The American incarnation of the Norse god Odin. Believes that the Internet, the Media, and Television (the new gods that Americans believe in) are trying to eradicate the rest of his kind, so he needs to convince his brethren to stand up and defend themselves.

Laura: Shadow's dead wife, who is inconveniently resurrected by a magic coin. She wants to help Shadow as well as make up for her mistakes during their marriage, but being undead has its disadvantages.

Mr. Nancy: An ally of Wednesday's, and the American incarnation of the African trickster god Anansi.

Jacquel and Mr. Ibis: Two small-town morticians who are the American incarnations of the Egyptian gods of the dead, Thoth and Anubis.

Czernobog: An elderly Slavic god who beats Shadow at a game of checkers, thereby winning the right to smack him over the head with his sledgehammer - but he'll wait for the right time to do it.

Fantasy Convention Checklist:

1 Surprise! Father


Several Rambling Literary Digressions

3 Years In Prison

1 Sexy Gay Ifrit Cab Driver

Several Coin Tricks

2 Games of Checkers

1 Dead Wife

1 Man-Eating Vagina

The Word: In the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy Nerdery, Neil Gaiman is Kind Of A Big Deal.

Me, I've kind of rested on the very far fringes of Neil Gaiman fandom. I enjoyed Coraline and Stardust and most especially 1602 (where all the Marvel superheroes were transported to Elizabethan England). I've got a couple of his story collections on my TBR. But I never read Sandman, or saw his episodes of Doctor Who. He's been an author I've enjoyed, but not enough to seek out his works.

I had to be nudged by my bookclub to read American Gods, and it kind of cemented for me why I've never really become a huge fan.

For me, American Gods was pleasant - but more because the act of reading is pleasant than because I wholly enjoyed the book itself. Kind of like how I enjoy going to movies even when the movie is blah because I like the seats and the people and the popcorn.

Our hero, Shadow, is only days away from being released from a three-year prison sentence when he's informed by the warden that his beloved wife, Laura, has died in a car crash. Numb and empty, he leaves prison with no home to return to, so when he's offered a job by a mysterious stranger named Wednesday, he accepts because, well, why the hell not? What else does he have going on?

Wednesday then reveals he is a god (Odin, to be exact), and spends the rest of the book dragging Shadow all over America on his quest to find the other famous gods and monsters of myth and bind them to his cause. In this book, gods are creatures who derive their power from the belief of their worshipers, but the gods Shadow and Wednesday encounter are weak, aging, and petty. Carried across the sea to America in the minds of devout immigrants and explorers, only to be abandoned by their disbelieving descendants, the majority of these incarnations live a shabby existence, scavenging and conning to survive.

Worse, there are new gods now, shiny and powerful gods, the gods of TV and Internet and Automobiles, and they don't like sharing the stage with the over-the-hill old-school deities that remain. In fact, according to Wednesday, these new gods of computers and consumerism have already started hunting down and eradicating the old gods one by one. Wednesday thinks it's time the old gods banded together to defend themselves, but he has an uphill battle - few of his compatriots are willing to risk what little comfort they have left to likely die in a suicidal war.

It's an interesting concept, even if I felt thoroughly beaten over the head with the repetitive "humans brought us here and then they forgot about us, those ungrateful bastards" schtick. The thing is, this novel is more of an experience than a story. At times I often felt like a child strapped into one of those little train rides that are meant to give controlled tours of a certain place - the story leads Shadow on a very linear, daisy-chain, and episodic journey to see random places and people that could fall under the "Gods Abandoned By Selfish Americans" category, with the occasional interlude into past tales of screwed-over gods. Again, by the end of the novel, it all felt repetitive - Shadow meets a watered-down version of a famous deity, we get a little snippet of what modern life is like for them, Wednesday asks for their allegiance, the god says no, and rinse and repeat.

And just like that child stuck on that train ride, I didn't feel involved or particularly invested in anything that I was seeing. It felt overt and manipulative - I felt like I was being shown a world rather than exploring a world.

As a protagonist, Shadow is a very passive character for the majority of the novel, although that does eventually change (very) late in the game. He's incredibly laid back and just accepts everything that comes without any real ambition or motivation - which makes it easier for the story to progress but renders him an incredibly dull and opaque character. And while we meet other characters along the way, they are only briefly present and sketchily drawn. Shadow and Wednesday are really the only solid characters we have, and Wednesday spends a lot of the book being somewhere else, and probably doing more important and interesting things that we never get to see.

And of course, since this is written by The Neil Gaiman, I initially felt like a little bit of a Philistine for "obviously not getting it," and by "it" I mean the brilliant genius of this novel that everyone else seems to see. But the fact of the matter is, to me, this novel was boring and scattered and all over the place and I didn't care about or get anything out of it. For me to enjoy a novel, the protagonist needs to care about something and I need to care about the character, and I got neither of these things from American Gods.
C

Disagree? You can purchase American Gods here.

"Throne of Jade," by Naomi Novik

The Protagonist: Captain William Laurence. He recently helped win a significant victory for Britain and her allies with the help of Temeraire, the dragon whose egg he rightfully won in a naval battle with a French frigate.
The Rub: Too bad the Chinese are now claiming that the English stole Temeraire (an exceedingly rare Celestial dragon) and are now demanding him back.

The Secondary Cast:

Prince Yongxing: The arrogant third son of the Chinese Emperor, he is horrified by the barbaric way the English treat dragons and believes that Temeraire (a rare dragon breed reserved for companionship with royalty) has been taken advantage of by his backwoods peasant of a rider, Laurence.

Hammond: A young diplomat assigned to Temeraire's journey to China who initially believes a peaceful alliance between Britain and China is more important than one dragon's feelings - a mindset that earns him the intense distrust and dislike of Laurence.

Liu Bao: A corpulent companion to the Prince who befriends Laurence on the trip to China, thanks to Laurence's helpful seasickness remedy.

Sun Kai: Another companion of the Prince - albeit one with far more dubious intentions.

Fantasy Convention Checklist:

1 Surprise! Parent

1 Surprise! Adoptive Parent

1 Bid for the Throne

1 Bitchin' Air Battle

1 Giant Sea Serpent

1 Fake Ghost

The Word: It took me a while to get around all my other reads and find my way back to Naomi Novik's Napoleonic dragon series, but I don't regret it. I read His Majesty's Dragon way back in 2010, and quite enjoyed the original take on introducing dragons into the Napoleonic war as well as English culture, and discovering the epic bromance between former Navy Captain William Laurence and his beloved dragon, Temeraire.

At the end of His Majesty's Dragon, experts were finally able to identify Temeraire (whose egg was discovered aboard a French ship as a gift to Napoleon) as a Chinese Celestial - an exceedingly rare breed of dragon that's never been seen outside of China.

And, as it turns out, China is not happy. At the beginning of Throne of Jade, a Chinese delegation, headed by Prince Yongxing, arrives in England and demands Temeraire back. To Laurence's horror, his superiors are too desirous of maintaining positive ties to China to outright refuse the Prince's demands, and Laurence is eventually ordered to give up Temeraire.

Temeraire, however, has a mind of his own, and after he makes his attachment to Laurence violently known, the Chinese very reluctantly allow Laurence to accompany Temeraire back to China - but only to keep Temeraire from an outright mutiny. Laurence hopes their newly-bought time will help him come up with a way to keep his beloved dragon once and for all, but Prince Yongxing appears implacable. He believes English dragons are treated little better than cattle and that Laurence is an upstart peasant.

Once again, I found myself exceedingly entertained by the Novik's marvellous and extremely clever worldbuilding - in this case, exploring everything from the types of ships designed to carry dragons to the different ways in which cultures deal with dragons.

The notion of dragon culture is an important theme in Throne of Jade and an interesting thorn in Laurence and Temeraire's relationship. A loyal Englishman, Laurence is accustomed to believing that the English are superior in all things, including dragon rearing - until he discovers that in China, dragons are taught to read, are served cooked food, are allowed to choose their companions, can own property, and can live peacefully amidst humans - whereas British dragons eat cow off the hoof and are restricted to isolated coverts to avoid terrifying the populace. Temeraire finds himself enjoying the Chinese way - even as he feels terribly guilty about it, and Laurence is forced to wonder whether trying to keep Temeraire as a British dragon is selfish.

One of the best aspects of these books is how the author never allows the exterior, magical conflict to overpower the internal conflict that her characters undergo. Laurence is a veritable prince of a man, although he is allowed to be more of an ignorant ass in this book than he was in His Majesty's Dragon, which is a relief. Temeraire, of course, is a very young dragon who is always growing and always changing and, more importantly, always thinking - increasingly about how dragons are treated, sometimes unfairly.

On the other hand, the internal conflict does overpower the external conflict on several occasions, resulting in very slow pacing. There isn't a whole lot of action in this book, and I'll admit the story dragged in places. However, the atmosphere and the wording and the worldbuilding and the small details and the dialogue are so very enjoyable that reading Throne of Jade is always pleasant, if not riveting. I highly recommend Throne of Jade, although it would be better to read His Majesty's Dragon first.

B+

You can purchase Throne of Jade here.

Eight Years! Count 'em, eight!

It's true.

My blog is now old enough to enter the second grade (*sniff*). Blogs grow up so fast! During that time, I graduated high school, obtained a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature, got a job, moved out, had a story published, had a novel looked at by agents and publishers (but ultimately not published), and discovered a whole, wide, internet world of friends and fellow readers!  I've started and given up so many projects in my life, but I managed to hold onto this one, and I'm so glad you readers did, too. That being said, it didn't start as a book blog. Oh no. But there are still a few gems. 

Stay awhile, won't you, as we go down memory lane?

Year One
1. My absolute first blog post ever, where I muse about the end of high school and the lameness that is the High School Diploma Exam.

2. My exceedingly verbose attempt to find a summer job. with less-than-stellar results.

Year Two
1. Whoring for Candy, a post wherein I relate the surest way to my heart. Hint: It involves sugar.

2. I am the Butter Queen, wherein I lose four teeth but gain 11 movie passes and a free Madagascar watch.

Year Three
This was the year I started to review books - unfortunately, they were all the books I had to read during university for my English degree. Guy Vanderhaeghe, anyone? I was also very heavily into my short-story phase. Submitted a lot of stuff, got rejected a bunch of times.


1. Five Reasons Why I'll Never Be a Great Writer: thanks a LOT, MUM.

2. Ten Rules for Writing Epic Fantasy. I thought in multiples of five back then. For reals.

Year Four
This is the year I morphed into being a book blogger - starting with romance, thanks to the recommendations of the Smart Bitches.

1. My fiction is published for the first time!

2. My first romance review: "Bet Me," by Jennifer Crusie.

Year Five

1. I review a movie so bad it's good (with an Easy Bake Oven of Nazi DOOM): S.S. Doomtrooper

2. I discover Lost In Austen, one of the best Jane Austen adaptations of ALL TIME. ALL TIME.

Year Six

1. I accept a Guest Dare from The Book Smugglers and review Games of Command, the best romance with a virginal cyborg hero I've ever read!

2. I write a blog post that has seriously never lost its relevance, especially now: The Author's Attitude. Geared especially towards authors who get riled up about negative reviews.

Year Seven

1. AnimeJune's Guide to Exploiting the Dead for Fun and Profit - where I take on the recent glut of Jane Austen and insert-paranormal-creature-here fiction. 


2. A commenter under then name "Miss Manners" tells me how very disappointed she is in me for being a Mean Girl Blogger of Meanie Mean Blog Reviews - and I respond with Miss Manners vs. AnimeJune.

Year Eight 
This brings us to 2011 and the start of 2012. I slowed down somewhat in 2011 due to the circumstances of my moving into my first apartment that was close enough to my workplace to walk. No longer having to take the bus twice a day, every day, five days a week seriously cut into my reading time. But I brought it up again by 2012.


1. Against the warnings of my blogger friends, I read Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught and it seriously hurt my brain.

2. When the Blogger Who Shall Not Be Named Or Linked To was revealed as a plagiarist, I read the comments section in her (non-)Apology Post, which inspired my insanely popular: So Your Favourite Blogger's a Plagiarist.

3. I take umbrage at Jennifer Weiner's BEA Book Blogger con assertion that bloggers should just be shiny happy people and discover the book blogosphere is a small (snarky) world, after all: The Importance of Being Nice.

As you can see it's been quite an interesting eight years, and I have my readers, followers, and awesome blogging buddies to thank for keeping it up for so long! Here's to another eight years!

The Weekly Wanting (9)

Sorry for forgetting to do a Wanting post last week, I was still recovering from my Book Expo America adventure. While I do want all of these books, I have to admit - now that I'm currently swimming (drowning?) in ARCs from the Expo, it will be a while before I walk into a bookstore or a library.

As it is, today is a very special day - because as of today, my precious little blog is eight years old! I started it upon graduating from high school, and who knew it would last this long? I'll be posting some retrospectives throughout the week, with some of the funniest (or most embarrassing) things I posted in the eight years I've been blogging. Yes, I've been blogging for eight years, but I've only been book blogging for about five. Three of those years were spent whining. But there are a few gems! So stay tuned for that.

Days of Blood and Starlight, by Laini Taylor 

 Genre: YA, Fantasy.

Cover Snark: Maybe she's born with it ... maybe she's Maybelline! ...or a resurrected Chimera warrior. Whichever.

The Story: The continuing adventures of Karou, a gifted teenager involved in a centuries-old war between angels and chimera. 

Why Do I Want It? Have you read my review of the prequel, Daughter of Smoke and Bone? It cannot come out soon enough!

 The Boneshaker, by Kate Milford
Genre: YA, Steampunk (ish), Historical(ish)
Cover Snark: This dude looks like an Irish Super-Saiyan.
The Story: A 13-year-old girl with an interest in automatons in 1914 Missouri suspects a travelling medicine show of nefarious deeds.
Why Do I Want It? The Book Smugglers gave it a positive recommendation, and I love me some period pieces.

Shadows Cast by Stars, by Catherine Knuttson
 Genre: Fantasy, Futuristic.
Cover Snark: Painting with all the dark, pretty, colours of the wind.
The Story: In a plague-ridden future, people of aboriginal descent are hunted for their valuable antibodies, so our heroine is forced to flee to a protected island where the native spirits are allowed to roam free.
Why Do I Want It? Again, another book I heard of from The Book Smugglers. On top of it having a bee-yoo-tee-full cover, the story is intriguing, and sounds like a great mixture of fantasy and science fiction.

 Second Chance Summer, by Morgan Matson
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Cover Snark: Man, I would kill to be at that lake right now.
The Story: When her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, our heroine goes with him and the rest of her family to share his final days at their lakeside cottage - where she must also face her past with two of the residents.
Why Do I Want It? The story sounds tragic but also dramatic and interesting, and I've read a lot of excellent reviews of this book.

The Dark Unwinding, by Sharon Cameron
Genre: YA, Steampunk
Cover Snark: Um, pretty dress?
The Story: A girl in Victorian London goes to investigate her uncle for squandering her inheritance, only to discover he's an eccentric but brilliant inventor.
Why Do I Want It? Man, The Booksmugglers are all over my book recs these days. I'm not usually too interested in steampunk, to be honest, but this one (of a mad inventor who's the leader of a secret community of inventors) sounded different. In the good way.

  Teeth, by Hannah Moskowitz
Genre: YA, Fantasy.
Cover Snark: Something smells fishy...
The Story: Two boys in love. One of them is part fish. And may eat people. Sold!
Why Do I Want It? I met Hannah Moskowitz at the Teen Author Carnival in New York last week and she is AMAZEBALLS. She is equally amazeballs on Twitter. But it doesn't come out until 2013! *sad face*