AnimeJune Dives Into Downton Abbey

I've always enjoyed watching Downton Abbey, and just finished watching the end of the third season on DVD, and WOW. Downton Abbey, with its highs and its lows, always leaves me with a lot to think about. Its costumes, its dialogue, its "Oh, Snap!" moments - there's always something to enjoy or gripe about.

I've been blathering almost nonstop about the third season (and how it miraculously improved from the hot mess of the second season) and I realized that if I didn't find a way to burn off all that energy on something constructive, I would end up completely alienating my friends and family with my inability to shut up about it.

SO. My solution is a simple - over the next month or so, I plan to rewatch the entire series and recap each episode in my own personal style, highlighting the parts I like and ranting about the parts I didn't. If you've always wanted to watch Downton Abbey but never got around to it, or find you've forgotten parts of earlier seasons, or just want to bitch and moan about it as much as I do - feel free to follow along and let loose in the comments section!

DNF Review: "Never Lie To A Lady," by Liz Carlyle

Liz Carlyle has always been a mixed bag for me - some of her books are simply exquisite, others enraged me, still others frustrated and puzzled me.

But none of them have ever bored me until this one - Never Lie To a Lady.

Lord Nash is a Brooding Angsty Alpha Male, who spends most of his free time moping about how He Doesn't Fit In, reminiscing about his moral corruption, and drinking alone in the dark. One night, at a party, he accosts a lady standing outside in the fresh air. The two share a passionate kiss and a fondle before the woman, horrified, turns and flees.

That same woman is the inexplicably-named Xanthia Neville, an enterprising lass newly settled in London after leaving her brother's plantation in Barbados who, thanks to a complicated backstory replete with Dead Parents, Slavery, Sex Addict Brothers and Evil Uncles, now runs a large and successful shipping company. While her ancestry guarantees her entry into the ton, she really has nothing in common with the aristocracy and is only attending the balls and soirees for the benefit of chaperoning her estranged young cousin Louisa at her come-out. She is embarrassed by how easily she fell for Lord Nash's charms and determines never to see or speak to him again.

Then the Major Plot steps in - two government officials approach Xanthia and her brother with a desperate request. It seems as if someone in Britain's aristocracy has been smuggling guns into Greece to support their revolution against the Turks, and the Home Office strongly suspects Lord Nash, who has maternal ties to Russia and Greece and an inherited enmity of the Turks. He also has an absurdly large fortune that comes from seemingly nowhere - normally this wouldn't bother the characters in a thinly-drawn historical but in this case it seems suspicious. They ask Xanthia to approach Nash as a representative of Neville Shipping and see if she can tempt him into asking to use her company to smuggle his guns.

Xanthia agrees - partly because it gives her a chance to see if she can do other things with Nash's guns (wink wink), and partly because she wants to get the intriguing man out of her system and uncovering his penchant for treason could be just the ticket.

I was actually quite surprised to find myself bored with this novel. On the surface, it had everything going for it - an extremely competent and unorthodox heroine, protagonists with incredibly detailed personal lives and connections, a fascinatingly detailed setting and a complex spy plot. Normally, I love these things, and actively seek them in historicals. Many lesser historicals eschew the finer details of the history because all they really want is a nice, nonspecific, but idealized romantic setting for a story that could really work in any time period.

However, in this case I thought the details hampered the story. Yes, there were details - pages and pages of them - until I found myself getting hopelessly confused by the family connections and step-family connections and secret backstories.

However, romances still do need an emotional core. A meticulously-described setting won't mean anything if I'm not invested enough in the characters to care about the story. For instance, I've never felt that Julia Quinn's historicals were very particular about setting or detail, but the characters' emotional journey kept me reading.  I didn't feel invested in the protagonists of this novel. Xanthia had promise (despite her tendency towards judginess), but Lord Nash just seemed like a blank slate with a lot of Angsty Characteristics tacked on. I couldn't figure out why he felt like such a loner or had to do such mopey sad things.

To the author's credit, I did make it about 200 pages in - because she does create a very detailed and well-realized setting and uses beautiful language and those deserve credit. But by the time I was halfway in, I kept daydreaming instead of reading, and kept thinking of reading something else, and I realized it was time to move on.

DNF

Joint Review:"Seraphina," by Rachel Hartman

As I've blogged about before - I read numerous positive reviews for Rachel Hartman's debut novel, Seraphina, before I found the one that finally bonked me on the head and shouted, "Hey! You Want to Read This!"

As it turns out, another blogger whom I really respect and admire, Foz Meadows, came to the same conclusion and we found ourselves on the same metaphorical elevator destined to take us, extremely late, to the Seraphina party. Naturally, we decided to make a Joint Review of it, taking turns and passing the baton back and forth as we discussed our reactions to the various facets of this engaging and original book.

The Synopsis:

AnimeJune: The story takes place in the nation of Goredd - a place (modelled on medieval Europe), in which humans and dragons coexist. Thanks to a treaty drafted forty years ago by the human Queen Lavonda and the dragon leader Ardmagar Comonot, this coexistence has been peaceful, but only barely. Most humans continue to hate and fear dragons, thanks in large part to the dominant religion that depicts them as soulless animals at best, and an unholy scourge on the earth at worst.

Meanwhile, most dragons, despite their ability to take human form and study among humankind, remain baffled by human sentiment and interaction. Inherently logical and mathematical, dragons rigidly police their own emotions, and so often come across as tactless and awkward in their dealings with humans.

Into this conflicted world comes Seraphina. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, Seraphina is a child of both worlds, born of a human father and a dragon mother. However, her father raised her to despise and hide her true parentage since both sides consider half-breeds to be anathema - or they would, if they weren't convinced human-dragon interbreeding was impossible. Despite Seraphina's fierce desire to avoid attention and fly under the radar, she has an equally fierce passion for music and, against her father's wishes, she takes a position as assistant to Viridius, official musician to the Goreddi royal family.

When the Goreddi crown prince is murdered in a visibly draconian way two weeks before the Ardmagar is set to visit, Seraphina finds her anonymity threatened by bumbling dragons, bigoted humans, sinister politics, a disturbingly astute and investigative Prince, and her own uncanny talents.

Foz: Forty years ago, the human Queen Lavonda of Goredd forged a peace treaty with the dragon leader Ardmagar Comonot, effectively ending a war between the two races. Trust, however, has proved much harder to come by, thanks to both the Goreddi religion of Allsaints, which demonises dragons, and the mixture of contempt and confusion with which dragons, a highly logical species, view human emotions. Further complicating this state of affairs is the fact that dragons possess the ability to shapeshift into human form, in which guise - called a saarantras - they're distinguishable by little more than their alien mannerisms, silver blood and, in the majority of cases, the enforced wearing of distinctive bells. This leads not only to human fears of dragon infiltration (to say nothing of prompting endless, lascivious jokes about the highly taboo prospect of cross-species sex), but to dragon fears of human contamination. The latter charge is a serious one: all saarantrai are monitored by the Censors - a powerful dragon agency with the power to physically excise the brains of emotionally compromised dragons - and must learn to partition their thoughts accordingly.

The story is told from the point of view of Seraphina, a teenage girl with a dangerous secret: her mother, Linn, was a saarantras, a fact she concealed from her human husband and which was only revealed with her death in childbirth. As a result of her mixed heritage, Seraphina not only possesses extraordinary musical talent, but has scales on her arm and stomach and unusual mental powers. Working to control her unique magic with the help of her dragon-uncle, Orma - a music scholar who doesn't wear a bell, and is therefore widely assumed to be human - Seraphina wants only to excel in her new position as assistant music mistress at the Goreddi court. But when the crown prince Rufus is killed in the lead-up to the treaty celebrations - and worse, killed in a manner suggestive of a dragon attack - Seraphina finds herself drawn into the heart of human-dragon politics. Working with the bastard prince Lucian Kiggs to discover the truth behind his uncle's death, Seraphina must confront not only her mother's buried memories, but also the implications of her own abilities - and all while keeping her bloodline secret from those who would deem her a monster.

The Main Character

AnimeJune: When it comes to the heroine, Seraphina, I stand here overjoyed and relieved because she could have been exactly the type of YA heroine I dislike the most - the Mopey Sadsack who doesn't understand how good she has it until someone else (usually a guy) convinces her how awesome she is. Instead, she's a multifaceted, determined, and fiercely intelligent character.

She does harbour a fair amount of self-loathing - after all, both dragons and humans would consider her a monster if they knew what she was, and the dragon scales on her left arm and around her waist never let her forget. She's also visited by visions of the dragon memories her mother bequeathed to her during childbirth, as well as visions of bizarre, often-deformed people with whom she shares a strange connection.

However, what I immediately like about Seraphina is that she could have hidden herself away as a recluse in her father's house, but she didn't. With all her freakish flaws, Seraphina also possesses a wondrous gift for music and she follows that passion to find a position in the royal court, very much in defiance of her father's wishes. Seraphina still avoids social contact, thinks of herself as a freak, and assiduously guards her secret beneath layers of lies and ill-fitting clothing - but she still pursues the passion that makes her happy. She still believes herself worthy of independence, even though it comes at the high cost of loneliness. To me, that says so much about her. She's not a cursed damsel waiting to be rescued or a martyr who believes herself unworthy of joy. She's a little too aware of what makes her strange and frightening, but she's also aware of what gives her power, and I loved that about her.

Foz: I very much agree with AnimeJune's assessment. Though Seraphina does struggle with self-loathing, she's also quick-witted, compassionate, practical and possessed of a sharp, sometimes mischievous sense of humour - and better still, she isn't afraid to laugh at herself. Far too often, SFF stories narrated by troubled heroines with mysterious pasts and outcast baggage default to use of the Broken Bird trope, with only a smattering of black humour to leaven the pervasive mood of hardboiled despair and repression. By contrast, Seraphina is not only inquisitive and cheerful, but determined to succeed on her own merits - not ashamed of her heritage, but rather fearful of its implications.

This means that, despite her (very reasonable) worries about her own monstrousness, Seraphina reads as exquisitely human. As a heroine, she fully inhabits her actions: we always understand exactly why she's said or done a particular thing, because her motives are always in keeping with her personality, rather than being impinged on by the needs of the plot, and in a novel as rich and satisfying as this, that's no mean feat.

The Supporting Cast

Foz: When it comes to characterisation, Hartman is an incredibly skilled practitioner. In the hands of a lesser writer, certain of the recognisable archetypes underpinning her secondary characters would be cartoonish and stereotypical, or else inverted so clumsily as to achieve much the same effect. Instead, her touch is both deft and subtle, leaving us with a gorgeously varied and believable supporting cast. Her employer, the gouty music master Viridius, is a case in point: though pompous and demanding at times, he's also possessed of unexpected depths, guiding Seraphina both politically and musically through her time at the Goreddi court. Princess Glisselda, too, is a lovely surprise: beautiful, blonde and Seraphina's romantic rival, it would've been the work of a moment to render her antagonistic, stupid or both, instead of which her high spirits, flashes of arrogance and occasional naivety are counterbalanced by genuine intelligence, a desire to learn, the ability to listen, and a shrewd (if fledgling) political eye. 

Far and away, though, my favourite secondary character was Orma, Seraphina's dragon uncle. Though ostensibly cold, detached and logical, both his dry humour and respect for Seraphina completely won me over, and his development as the novel goes on is an absolute pleasure to watch. Though technically inhuman, he nonetheless felt completely believable - not just as a dragon, but as a scholar, uncle and friend. 

AnimeJune: Yes! I loved Orma! The worldbuilding depicts dragons as a lot like Vulcans - while capable of emotion, they repress and police it extremely fiercely (especially when they're more vulnerable to it in human form) because they cannot explain it in a logical, scientific manner. Orma demonstrates, in his own subtle, unconventional way, how much he cares for his niece, Seraphina, even as he risks having his mind excised of his memories of her by the dragon Censors. His character is all the more fascinating as he displays his emotions in an extremely atypical way that is, frankly, adorable.

I also quite enjoyed the minor character of the Ardmagar Comonot - the strict dragon leader who takes human form for the first time in forty years to celebrate the treaty and finds human emotion a little more than he can deal with.

That being said, my favourite supporting character is Lars - a foreign visitor invited to the Goreddi court by Viridius because of his ground-breaking (and ear-drum-breaking) musical invention, the megaharmonium (think of a giant organ). As musicians, it's only natural that Lars and Seraphina should meet, and even more natural that they should both discover they share a secret connection. Lars' reaction to this is one of my favourite scenes in the novel because despite the secrets he's forced to keep (such as his heavily-implied homosexuality), he's such an emotionally open, cheerful, friendly person. This takes Seraphina by surprise, since she's spent her life convincing herself that closing herself off from other people is the only way to survive.

The Romance and Romantic Interest

AnimeJune: But enough about that! Let's talk about the love interest. I'll be honest, I've gotten a little tired of romance in YA lately. I've read too many YA stories in which the main plot is an action-adventure, or a science fiction parable - and this completely unnecessary romance is shoehorned in, greased with Insta-Love to make it fit without stretching the page count with, you know, actual romantic development between the characters.

So I've started seeing the YA Romantic Subplot as that annoying little sister the Real Plot has to babysit, something to tolerate and ignore while I hang out with the cool, funny Real Plot.

That was so not the case with Seraphina. First of all, there is no Insta-Love between Seraphina and Prince Lucian Kiggs, the head of the guard charged with keeping the peace until the Ardmagar arrives. There's no Insta-Hate, either - that tiresome rigamarole where the protagonists automatically hate and snipe at each other until they discover it's Been True Love All Along.

Instead, they start out respecting each other. What a novel concept! Lucian is an extremely intelligent and scrupulously honest investigator who takes notice of Seraphina's sharp observational skills and surprising knowledge of dragon culture and seeks out her assistance in finding out who murdered the crown prince. At first, Seraphina is terrified that it'll only be a matter of time before Lucian puzzles out her own secrets, but as they spend more time together, they discover they share more in common than they thought.

Their relationship builds realistically - with increased proximity and intelligent interaction. Lucian's attraction to Seraphina builds on his admiration of her talents (intellectual and musical) and her bravery.
Despite their relationship not being very physical (and it really can't be - Seraphina has too much to hide and Lucian's engaged to another), it's extremely moving and powerful to read because it fits so completely with the development of their characters.

Foz: Once again, I'm in total agreement with Elizabeth. I cannot even begin to express how refreshing it is to read a first-person YA romance that is neither saccharine nor abusive, and which features more instances of emotional and intellectual compatibility than it does descriptions of the hero's arms and eye colour. The attraction between Seraphina and Lucian is all the sweeter (and, at times, all the sexier) for dispensing with the traditional, cartoonish binaries of Fated Love and Impossible Obstacles, and instead focusing on how and why two such different-yet-similar characters come to love each other. Lucian treats Seraphina with kindness and respect, and she in turn esteems his skill and intelligence long before she ever admits her feelings for him.

It helps enormously that, in developing their relationship, Hartman avoids the cliched pitfalls of what I tend to think of as Sitcom Logic - that is, entendre-laden mishaps, implausibly elaborate lies, wacky coincidences and Idiot Plot devices - which so frequently seem to crop up in YA romance. Instead, their relationship develops organically: both characters are lonely, intelligent and, despite loving their respective careers, prevented from truly fulfilling them by the restrictions of duty (Lucian) and the necessity of secrets (Seraphina). Though their relationship is certainly not without mishaps, its development makes perfect sense: they really do fit together, and I can't wait to see where Hartman leads them in the next volume.

Style and Worldbuilding

Foz: On a technical level, Seraphina is an exquisitely written novel. Hartman's prose style is lyric and flowing without being purple, and though there's no infodumping that I noticed, she nonetheless manages to convey the many complexities of an original world without either skimping on detail or bogging down the narrative. Which isn't to say the worldbuilding is perfect; the fact that the dragons have electricity and advanced technology, for instance, while intriguing, didn't quite seem to fit with the rest of the setting,  while I was never quite clear on how the Goreddi social mores could allow for a bastard prince like Lucian Kiggs to hold such a prominent court position without any apparent pushback or consequence from the other nobles. But the story is so compelling, the politics otherwise so thoughtful and the premise such a pleasing mix of the familiar and the unexpected that, by and large, I really wasn't bothered by such minor slips or omissions: I just wanted to keep on reading.

For me, the only sour note in the whole book was Seraphina's - and, by extension, Hartman's - tendency to repeatedly iterate the skin-colour of POC characters, as though she were worried the audience might forget that Goreddis are white and Porphyrians brown. It really stood out to me as an instance of White Is The Default writing, as no other race or subset of characters received the same treatment; I also flinched at the inclusion of exotic Porphyrian dancing (disparagingly called bum-waggling by at least one character) as a plot point, especially as it coincides with the appearance of a Porphyrian man who, to all intents and purposes, speaks in broken English. Given the sophistication of the rest of the novel, I was disappointed to find such stereotypes included in the story; and though it certainly helps that otherwise, the POC characters were treated respectfully, it's the one aspect where I feel Hartman could stand to improve.

On a more positive note, I absolutely loved the the inclusion of Seraphina's mother's memories. Each one was perfectly timed in terms of narrative placement, helping to enrich our understanding of dragon culture while simultaneously comprising some of the most beautifully written sections in the whole novel. In a story where both the heroine's and the hero's lives are significantly informed by the actions of their disobedient, unconventional - and, as a consequence, dead - mothers (a dual fridging conceit that could have gone badly wrong, and yet somehow works), it goes a long way towards ameliorating the Absent Female Parent factor that Linn, by dint of her first-person memories, ends up feeling much more like a living character in her own right than a distant specter. I'd very much like to see more of her, and am confident that, come Book 2, we will. 

AnimeJune: I'll have to disagree on the depiction of the Porphyrians. I see where you're getting at now that you point it out, but as I was reading Seraphina, I thought the racist and ignorant thoughts directed towards them were intended as a parallel to the bigotry the dragons endured. Many of the Goreddi feel their bigotry towards dragons is justified because dragons are simply "soulless animals," and they believe the Queen should put human concerns first and foremost - but then these same Goreddi turn around and make fun of the Porphyrians. To me, it underscores how their bigotry will simply target anything that is significantly different from them - regardless of species.

What nettled me about the worldbuilding with Seraphina was how, forty years after the truce, the human population was still almost entirely opposed to dragons. If all but a very, very few humans are still violently opposed to dragons, how come the Queen's dragon treaty managed to last four decades without any major incidents? How come there were no uprisings or revolutions until now? It didn't seem realistic that a whole generation of humans would just sit on their hands for this long if their hate was that powerful.

Moreover, human lives and memories are significantly shorter than those of dragons. While there are dozens of dragons depicted as willing to overlook the atrocities the humans committed against their kind (atrocities these dragons still remember thanks to their ability to pass memories down generations), there are almost no human characters willing to see dragons in a positive light. Don't get me wrong - the rampant bigotry is a realistic and understandable obstacle in the novel, but I did expect there to be more humans (at least those of the younger generation born after the treaty) willing to work with dragons.

For me, however, that was a minor quibble. I agree wholeheartedly with Foz - the general worldbuilding strikes the perfect balance in terms of detail - not enough to be a slog, but not so little of it that it feels like a wallpaper fantasy.

All in all, I just plain enjoyed this book. It was a meaty, emotional story with sympathetic and well-drawn characters, a truly swoon-worthy romance, and some fantastic magic and worldbuilding to explore.

Foz: Agreed. Seraphina is a truly excellent novel, and I can't wait to see how the rest of the story unfolds.

AnimeJune: Thank you so much, Foz, for having such a great discussion with me about such a great book!

AnimeJune's Grade: A+


You can purchase Seraphina here.

"Warm Bodies" - Film and Adaptation Review

So, despite some misgivings (such as with the whitewashing of a secondary character), I went and saw Warm Bodies at the theatre on Friday, and found I was pleasantly surprised.

Warm Bodies is the rare instance of a film adaptation being better than the book. It's far more cohesive, establishes the same general plot points quicker and more effectively, and moves along at a faster, funnier pace.

It does softball some of the book's elements and themes and works with a far more optimistic tone, but I found I preferred that. It made the Redemption-With-The-Power-Of-Love solution at least look more probable than it seemed in the novel.

The general story is still the same - R (Nicholas Hoult, borrowing some of Edward Scissorhands' gruesome-cute awkwardness) is a zombie who falls in love with a human girl named Julie (played by Teresa Palmer) after he eats her boyfriends' brain and absorbs some of his memories. He rescues Julie and in the process, awakens a reaction that starts bringing him back to life - and other zombies, too.

And, like in the novel, R and Julie's quest to cure the zombies is opposed by Julie's totalitarian father (John Malkovich) and the Boneys - zombies-skeletons who have atrophied to the point of shedding their skin and their humanity at the same time.

The Main Character
I found I enjoyed the film-R much more than the novel-R. The Film Version of R is skewed more towards a younger, teen audience. He shuffles around in a hoodie and listens to 80s indie rock while his  novel counterpart wears a suit and tie and prefers Frank Sinatra. The Film portrays R as a zombified college student, while the Novel suggests R was a young, successful professional in a former life. Even as a zombie, Novel-R is more of an adult - he even has a "wife" and "kids" in the zombie society.

Film-R is also on his own, epiphany-wise, while the Novel-R is frequently visited by the spirit of Perry, the boy he killed whose brains were full of juicy Julie memories. Novel-R and Perry have a lot of dream-like discussions and Perry even helps him out of a few jams. Perry's role in the film is sadly relegated to flashbacks and was the one element of the story I was genuinely sorry to lose in the adaptation.

Neither of these interpretations is better or worse, but Film-R is funnier. Like Novel-R, Film-R has a running inner monologue that is far more intelligent and articulate than he has the power to convey to others. However, while Novel-R was a dreary, navel-gazing sad-sack who spent a lot of words Thinking Deep Thoughts about the nature of Life, the Universe and Everything, Film-R is way more of a smart-ass. He still considers the same themes, but in a more succinct and entertaining way - but, to be fair, he's also supported by a visual medium that helps impart the themes of aimlessness and mediocrity in a more immediate, symbolic fashion.

The Antagonists
In both the film and the novel, the antagonists are General Grigio (Julie's father) and the Boneys. However, the film humanizes the General and dehumanizes the Boneys.

In the novel, the Boneys were inhuman skeletons who had abandoned their humanity, but they were also capable of higher thought and reasoning - their reasoning was just wholly focused on maintaining the status quo, regardless of the cost. The Boneys in the novel actually functioned as the Elders of the zombie "society" - even going so far as to perform primitive marriage ceremonies. Their opposition towards R and Julie's quest was symbolic: the zombies symbolize tradition, stagnation, and hopelessness, and R's quest threatened that sameness with the power of change.

In the film, the Boneys are just mindless monsters who will attack literally anything with a heartbeat. Therefore, their opposition to R and Julie's quest comes from the fact that zombies who start undergoing a positive change thanks to R and Julie start looking like prey to the Boneys.

Yes, some of the more sophisticated symbolism in the novel was lost in the film adaptation of the Boneys, but they did maintain their basic narrative function - they served as examples of humans who had relinquished their humanity. By reconnecting with humanity, R and his friends are able to regain it. By abandoning their humanity, zombies become gruesome feeding skeletons impervious to change.

However, General Grigio undergoes the biggest change in the adaptation. In the novel, the General is single-minded, emotionless, ruthless, and has dedicated his life to protecting humanity at any cost - even though he doesn't believe humanity is even worth the effort anymore. He isn't just an antagonist, he is a villain. By the climax of the novel, he is revealed to be insane - and threatens to shoot his own daughter after she and R present proof of the zombie cure.

In the novel's most effective use of symbolic imagery, at the end of the novel he's bitten by a zombie and immediately turns into a Boney (a process that normally takes a zombie much longer) - revealing that he was no different from the worst of the zombie horde - he was already living a life without hope or humanity.

In the film, well, he's softened up quite a bit. He's still an antagonist, but it comes from a much more emotional place. He doesn't want to believe in the zombie change - but not because he ultimately doesn't believe in change, but because he's afraid to lose what he loves most by risking it. By the end of the film, his daughter finally convinces him that change and hope are both possible and he stands down, reconciling with his daughter. This is a pretty significant change in character, and I honestly wondered why they went in that direction. It reminded me a lot of the change they put Skeeter's mother through in the film adaptation of The Help - where she went from a racist, unhappy nitpicker to a happy, supportive nitpicker.

I think perhaps this ties in to the film's overall attempt to aim for a younger audience than the book - it portrays R and Julie more as teenagers than as young twentysomethings, and it also promotes the ultimately beneficial support of parents by humanizing the General and jettisoning the original ending where he tries to kill his own daughter.

The Love Interest
Julie, out of all the film's characters, hews the closest to her Novel counterpart. A lot of her dialogue is word-for-word from the novel. However, this works as both a blessing and a curse. For instance, her interactions with her father are very similar to the scenes in the novel - she believes the war to protect humanity has ultimately stripped her father of his essential humanity. However, her father is portrayed as far more reasonable in the movie, so Julie's treatment of him seems overblown and childish.

As well, Julie's darkness (her history of self-harm and prostitution) is never mentioned, but to be honest, I never felt it played a huge role in the ultimate story anyway and would have felt out of place in the film - in fact, I thought it felt out of place in the novel, too. It seemed a rather hokey way to add depth to the love interest.

Sure, some parts of the film seemed abbreviated and certain things didn't make sense. But ultimately? I really enjoyed Warm Bodies the film - it was efficient, enjoyable, and thoughtful without being completely bleak or pretentious. As a result, it was a little more shallow, but that's not always a bad thing.
B+

The January Round-Up!

It's time for the monthly round-up again!

I have some nice plans in the works. Firstly, I've been working on my Cinderalla novel. Yes, again. I've kind of lost my fiction writing mojo but I just have to keep at it. It's such a good idea, and the first chapters are just so phenomenal I've been unable to abandon it. So here's to trying again!

Later this month, I'll also be posting my first joint review!

Anyhoo, here's what I read last month:

*January Winner!* Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. Thriller, Contemporary. A
Pros: Phenomenal writing, excellent pay off. Cons: Sluggish pacing in the middle, creeeeepy creepy storyline.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling. Middle Grade, Fantasy, ReRead. A
Pros: Intriguing themes, good characterization, all-round enjoyable story. Cons: Dobby.

The Bridal Season, by Connie Brockway. Romance, Historical. B
Pros: Fluffy and charming - plus a lovely Beta hero. Cons: Unrealistic, a bit shallow.

Speechless, by Hannah Harrington. YA, Contemporary. B-
Pros: Excellent character development, original concept, great themes. Cons: Childish writing style, weak ending.

Warm Bodies, by Isaac Marion. Horror, Contemporary. C
Pros: Lovely writing, interesting themes. Cons: Poorly developed setting and world building, pretentious message.

A Matter of Class, by Mary Balogh. Romance, Historical. D
Pros: Lovely writing. Cons: Completely blank characters, no conflict, DUMB AS HELL plot twist.

*January Dud* Sanctum, by Sarah Fine. YA, Paranormal. D
Pros: Fantastic POC heroine. Cons: Goopy romance, inconsistent and undeveloped worldbuilding, very troubling social commentary on the nature of suicide.

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," by J.K. Rowling

The Protagonist: Harry "Parseltongue-In-Cheek" Potter. The boy. The legend.
His Angst: As Slytherin's Heir stalks the school, Harry worries he may share more in common with the Slytherin Alumnus Who Shall Not Be Named than he originally thought.

New Characters:

Gilderoy Lockhart: A handsome, foppish celebrity wizard who just edged past Snape in the swimsuit competition to become the next Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

Dobby: The Comic Relief Character Who Shall Not Be Named.

Colin Creevey: The first-year student voted Most Likely To Have a Creepy Harry Potter Love Shrine in his basement.

Ginny Weasley: Ron's younger sister. Currently annoying because she's too young to think about in a hot way.

Aragog: A giant granddaddy spider on loan from The Lord of the Rings central casting.

Tom Riddle: An unexpectedly hot teenage memory-ghost hidden in a magical diary he wrote himself. Remind me never to buy any copies of If I Did It from the Knockturn Alley Barnes and Noble.

Angst Checklist:

• Am I allowed to drive a flying car if I don't even have my Learner's Permit yet?
• I'm being stalked by a self-mutilating house slave
• An obsession with snakes in pipes that is exactly what it sounds like and nothing more
• Arachnophobia and why it's an entirely rational fear
• Racism
• Bullying
• The price of fame
• Being an Evil 16-Year-Old Wizard-Memory-Ghost forced to read about Girl Problems twenty-four seven, ugh! 

The Word: This is the second in my seven-part series of re-reading J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. While I'm too close to the series emotionally and psychologically to truly review the books (automatic A, baby!), I will be presenting certain analyses about my reactions to aspects of the books as they continue.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, being an early book in the series, is significantly lighter in tone than later instalments. In the first three novels, the final victory is celebrated with a grand feast, some harmless ribbing and a nice train ride home - compared to later books, where the ending is celebrated with the death of a beloved character while fate rips out Harry's heart and pees in the hole it leaves.

That's not to say that Chamber of Secrets isn't a gripping novel that examines some pretty hefty themes.  Harry learns that society's fascination with the different and unusual can easily turn into resentment and fear. The unusual background that makes him famous in the wizarding world also leaves him a target for suspicion as students start to wonder whether he's the Heir of Slytherin who's sending a Giant Racist Snake against the mudblood students.

The importance of choice is also raised by the discovery that Harry and Voldemort share remarkably similar backstories - both were orphans raised by unloving Muggles until they were invited to Hogwarts. While later books in the series examine their similarities in more depth, Chamber of Secrets poses this interesting question first and it resonates through every following book. Does coming from similar circumstances mean sharing a similar fate?

The novel examines this in a more understated way with the characters of Hagrid and Filch, as both of their backgrounds feature into the history of the Chamber of Secrets. Both Hagrid and Filch were denied a magical education for reasons beyond their control (Hagrid was wrongfully expelled at the age of thirteen, and Filch was inexplicably born without magic), and both were forced to watch everyone else graduate around them as they worked as custodians at Hogwarts. While Filch allowed this to embitter him into a thoroughly unlikeable villain, Hagrid focused on grabbing joy wherever he could find it (and successfully wrestle it into a cage), leaving no room in his life for self-pity or resentment. Similar backgrounds, but entirely dissimilar characters.

Moving on to the concept of the Chamber of Secrets, this plotline always made me wonder - why do they still have a Slytherin house at the end of the novel? I mean, not only does Harry Potter learn that Salazar Slytherin was a crazy wizard-racist, but he intentionally smuggled a deadly creature into the school for the sole purpose of killing students!

If your school was founded by John, Paul, Ringo, and Hitler, and three hundred years later, you found out Hitler had hidden a giant Nazi snake somewhere in the school to hunt down and eat unsuspecting Jewish students - would you really want to keep Hitler's name attached to your institution of learning? Think about it. Why couldn't they rename the house after Nicholas Flamel or Cornelius Fudge or something? Who would object? The Slytherin alumni are all in Azkaban!

Slytherin House represents my biggest beef with the Harry Potter series - the fact that Slytherin has always been blatantly depicted as the "evil" house, with its highest virtue (ambition) muttered as a sly innuendo while the other three houses and their virtues (courage, intelligence, diligence) are depicted as legitimate distinctions. Everyone sorted into Slytherin is a jerk and a racist, the Slytherin Quidditch team is all-boys, literally everyone hates Slytherin except for the Slytherins, and they even have their freaking common room in a dungeon. Who wants to have their common room in a dank, dark old dungeon? Oh, right - ugly, stupid, jerky old-wizard-money racists do.

I was also troubled that the dubious virtue of the "evil" house is ambition. The drive to get ahead, to excel, to discover, to rise above one's circumstances - at every opportunity the virtue of Slytherin is tied to the corruption of power, to the empty pleasures of money and fame, to the abandonment of morals in the pursuit of superiority.

To me, however, the demonization of ambition with the depiction of Slytherin carries the whiff of the status quo, of the idea that everything and everyone has its proper place and that attempting to rise above one's destined station in life is a breach of some unspoken social contract. It's a very British idea, really. Look at the depiction of the house elves (barring one extremely irritating exception) who are bred to love servitude and duty. Are there honestly no sassy Thomas and O'Brien house elves scheming away in the kitchens of Hogwarts?

Heck, look at the Sorting Hat - a magical object whose entire job is to label people based on certain personality traits and settle them into the "proper" houses, determining their entire future identities in the blink of an eye. And not always fairly - nice job sorting the impoverished Muggle-born Snape into the house full of Old-Wizard-Money Racists, Sorting Hat. Full marks.

To be fair, in Chamber of Secrets Harry Potter represents someone who actively chooses his place in Gryffindor over Slytherin, defying the Hat's attempt to determine his future for him, but Harry also isn't a very ambitious character. He's very much of the Everyman mould - average grades, average intelligence, no real dreams or hopes for the future beyond surviving the shit Voldemort throws at him.

However, these are only my opinions with regards to the wizarding world depicted in the first three or four books - a world that is understandably idealized by Harry as he still has a dreary Muggle childhood to compare it to. As the series matures and Harry sees himself more as a wizard in his natural environment and less as a shy newcomer, he starts to realize that wizard society is just as susceptible to weakness and fear as Muggle society.

Even a slender volume like The Chamber of Secrets can inspire some pretty big thoughts. Next time - Prisoner of Azkaban!

A (a.k.a. 10 Points to Gryffindor!)

Top Ten Tuesday - Top Ten Most Frustrating Characters

Now, I don't always participate in the Top Ten Tuesday memes going around, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. But this week's meme caught my eye - The Top Ten Most Frustrating Characters Ever.

Now that's an interesting discussion - because frustrating could be used to describe characters I hate, but it could also apply to characters I wanted to like more but didn't, or characters I still loved despite how difficult they were at letting me love them. So why not go for it this week?

These are, in no particular order, my Top Ten Most Frustrating Characters

1. Dobby from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels.
I am currently re-reading Chamber of Secrets and good Lord do I hate this annoying little shit. He takes an absurdly long time to get to his point, he's crazy-annoying, and he's perpetually almost-murdering Harry in his bone-headed quest to save him.

And then he tries to play on your sympathy by saying he gets death threats "five times a day" -  maybe the problem isn't them, Dobby. If you're the Taylor Swift of House Elves and every track on your album is about how your masters threatened to kill you because you were ironing your hands instead of the wizarding robes that actually needed to be ironed, maybe the problem is you. Constructive feedback, Dobby - learn how to take it! Then maybe John Meyer won't make you hit yourself with a lamp.

2. Bee Hassi Barahal from Kate Elliot's Cold Magic.
This is the Kate Elliott book that I almost put down after 100 pages. There are a lot of things that annoyed me about this book - the infodumping, the As You Know Bob Dialogue - but most especially the heroine's BFF Bee, who is the human embodiment of Nails on a Chalkboard. And to top it all off, she's a Plot Device character, so she'll likely be in future books, too. An insufferably unrealistic cartoon of a woman, she's basically used as an Emotional Yardstick - always present with FIERY RAGE or FLOODS OF TEARS or UPPITY INDEPENDENT WOMANHOOD to easily telegraph to the dimwitted reader how they are "supposed" to feel. I sincerely hope in the next book she's quickly dropped down a well so that we can focus on the characters who act like actual human beings.

3. Hannah Baker from Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why.
Yes, I know you committed suicide, Hannah Baker, and that's sad, but that doesn't erase the fact that you're a horrible human being who intentionally set out to psychologically scar a bunch of people for life for their petty emotional crimes against you. Sweet Fancy Cheeses, woman, you drew MAPS. You made a SCAVENGER HUNT. Couldn't you have applied that same energy and dedication to, I don't know, NOT KILLING YOURSELF?

Not to mention the fact that you kept the hero's nuts in a vice for three hours' worth of tapes even though he wasn't actually ON your horrifically vindictive list of people to torture. Yes I know your life was sad, but the minute you decided to intentionally blame people FOR YOUR OWN SUICIDE and then blackmail them from beyond the grave, you lost my sympathy. You're horrible and I hope you're burning in the Fictional Hell I read about in Sanctum for being a terrible Fictional Character.

4. Olympia from Laura Kinsale's Seize the Fire. 
"Stupid is as stupid does," my dear, and what this Stupid does is almost get the hero violently murdered approximately 1,449,974 times in this 538-page novel by being a flamboyantly incompetent crybaby moron.

5. Hyacinth Bridgerton from Julia Quinn's It's In His Kiss.
Regency England's Best Argument for Birth Control, the last Bridgerton child proved that the eighth time really isn't the charm. After Lady Bridgerton produced seven fully-fledged romantic protagonists, there weren't really any character traits left in her heroic ovaries except for Rampant Narcissism and Contrived Over The Top Wackiness. The result is a screamingly annoying heroine whose brothers are fanatically eager to marry her off to the first hero stupid enough to confuse her outrageous craziness for "Charming Self-Confidence."

6. Malta from Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders Trilogy.
Okay, so Malta's frustrating because I love her by the end of the trilogy, I do, but she spends a great deal of the first two novels as the most evil little brat in existence. Stealing money, lying, manipulating others to gain more attention for herself, and propositioning on her aunt's 25-year-old boyfriend - and she's only thirteen!

7. Margo Roth Spiegelman from John Green's Paper Towns.
Oh good, a selfish, entitled, pretentious manic pixie dream girl who runs off without any thought for consequences or the people she leaves behind. I'm so glad you emotionally bulldozed over so many people so you could teach us a valuable lesson about how People Are Not How They Seem. You're Holden Caulfield with boobs. GO AWAY.

8. Clayton Westmoreland from Judith McNaught's Whitney, My Love.
A walking cesspool of misogynist fail, this guy sexually assaults the heroine to punish her for insulting him, beats her with a riding crop to punish her for cheating at a horse race, and rapes her to punish her for cheating on him (which, surprise! She didn't do! Because he discovers she's a virgin mid-rape!). The frustration with this character comes from the fact that everyone in the book (and the thousands of readers who inexplicably loved this book) thinks he's such a misunderstood romantic charmer.

9. Ellysetta Baristani from C.L. Wilson's Tairen Soul series.
This just in: drop-dead gorgeous and magically powerful redhead who believes she's ugly, unloveable and worthless accidentally saves the world - while all the beautiful, confident, ambitious women in the book turn out to be conniving, promiscuous, shallow villains. Because apparently, real women aren't allowed to think they're worth more than human garbage unless a man tells them otherwise.

10. Burrich from Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy. 
Oh, Burrich. You are another character I am frustrated with, and yet I love. LOVE. You are kind, and selfless, and a wonderful father-figure to the hero - and yet you are also a stuck-in-your ways bigot whose prejudice against Wit-magic emotionally cripples the hero and drives your own son away! Yes, you frustrate me, because Robin Hobb makes you a wonderful person and yet gives you this BIG GIANT FLAW that does not magically go away!

"Sanctum," by Sarah Fine

The Protagonist: Lela Santos. Despite a horrifically abusive upbringing, she found a friend in Nadia, a popular but troubled girl at her school. Their friendship finally convinced her that life is worth living.
Her Angst: But then Nadia kills herself, and Lela's convinced her spirit was sent to a horrible place known as the Shadowlands where suicides are punished - a place Lela's dreamed out since she attempted suicide years before. Can Lela possibly get Nadia out, or will she fail her best friend a second time?

Secondary Cast:

Malachi: The Captain of the Guard of the Shadowlands. Dedicated to ridding the dark city of the Mazikin - demons who possess the bodies of suicides. He's been at this for more than seventy years, waiting for the time when his service will earn him the place in the Countryside he was denied when he committed suicide back in the 1940s.

Ana: Another suicide who serves on the guard with Malachi. A kick-ass warrior, she helps Malachi and Lela track down Nadia while fighting off the Mazikin.

Nadia: Lela's friend - overcome with depression, she became convinced she was an unloveable fraud and killed herself to escape. Instead, she wound up in a grimy underworld to endure punishment for her act.

Raphael: A mysterious, powerful personage who helps the Guard as their healer and doctor.

Juri: An evil Mazikin who has it in for Malachi - every time Malachi kills his host body, he possesses another one to continue their battle until the bitter end.

Angst Checklist:

• Surviving Sexual Abuse
• Exploring love and sexual desire after surviving sexual abuse
• Depression and mental illness
• How people apparently deserve to be punished for depression and mental illness
• I escaped the Holocaust and all I got for it was Indentured Servitude

The Word: First of all, I owe an apology to the author, Sarah Fine. She was kind enough to send me an ARC of this back in the summer, but when I was moving my bookshelves around, the book got lost in the shuffle. I found it this month and was mortified at how late it was. I am so sorry for the delay.

As part of my apology, I might suggest to Ms. Fine that she not read this review, because not only was I more or less unimpressed with the storytelling, the worldbuilding sent me spiralling into a pretty heavy rant that I'm pretty sure she would not want to read.

The Review

The novel starts strongly - with the fantastic heroine of Lela Santos. A tough, jaded teenager with a thoroughly calloused soul after years of abusive foster care, she manages to befriend Nadia, the Queen Bee of her latest high school. To Lela's surprise, Nadia is kind and welcoming, and the two develop a wonderful bond of friendship that finally convinces Lela that she has a future, that she's worth something, that she's worthy of love.

The two flies in her ointment: one, Lela still has recurring nightmares of the horrifying hell dimension she witnessed when she tried to kill herself as a child; and two, she can't seem to stop Nadia's inexorable slide into depression - which eventually culminates in her suicide.

Lela is devastated. Worse, now her nightmares include Nadia, lost and alone, wandering through that dark city rife with misery and riddled with mysterious predators. Somehow, Lela realizes these visions are real and that her friend didn't obtain the escape she longed for. While trying to figure out how these visions work, Lela falls off a cliff (for reals) and winds up in a heavenly Countryside where she feels warm and loved and at peace - but bordering this land is the same dark city she witnessed in her dreams. Despite the Countryside's loving embrace, she can't rest while she knows her friend is suffering in that horrible afterlife, so she sneaks past the Suicide Gates to try and rescue her friend.

Past the Suicide Gates, Lela emerges in a horrible place called the Shadowlands, where suicides live in helpless torment. The place is also patrolled by guards who keep the suicides from escaping - and also combat the strange demons known as Mazikin who have started infesting the city in ever-greater numbers. It's here that Lela runs into Malachi, a former suicide and captain of the guard. Malachi is first shocked, then fascinated that anyone would willingly give up the Countryside for someone else - after all, he has been working to earn his way out since the 1940s (as indicated by the tell-tale string of numbers tattooed on his arm). As they work together to find Nadia, they develop a passionate bond that, unfortunately, ends up slowing the pace and cluttering the storyline with purple prose as each protagonist tries to out-martyr the other to prove their love.

On top of the story losing steam and devolving into a gooey, angsty teen romance version of the "oh no, after you" "no, no, I insist, after you" joke, I had serious problems with the worldbuilding.

Now we have The Rant (and spoilers)

Now, I knew the setting would be a dark underworld reserved for suicides going in, so I swallowed my repugnance at the idea because I wanted to see what the author would do with it. After all, there is a huge mythological and religious basis for the idea that suicidal people go to a different afterlife. Who knows? Maybe the worldbuilding will be clever enough to explain it in an interesting way.

Except not. We get some basic world building, but the ultimate purpose of the Shadowlands is left in the, well, dark. It's a hellish dimension where everyone walks around in endless cycles of misery. No one helps these people. No one reaches out to them. In fact, some of them even commit suicide again, several times, only to reappear outside the Suicide Gates to start over.

The only bright spot in the entire city is the Sanctum, where the Judge resides - the omniscient being who can free people from the Dark City and send them to the Countryside. But she only does it for people who are "ready" - or **spoiler** to support her own personal agenda when she frees Nadia to gain Lela's service. So really, the whole "they need to be ready before they leave" is bull crap because she can free people whenever she wants. She just doesn't, because she's horrible and this book is horrible. *spoiler* 

The only message that sends to me is that people who commit suicide - and this includes the mentally ill (depression is brought up) - deserve to be punished. People who die "regular" deaths (like Lela, initially) go immediately to the lovely Countryside. None of them are delayed or asked to "work out their issues" before they reach their heavenly destination. Despite the fact that people who die of natural causes or accidents can have just as many issues as people who wind up taking their own lives.

Meanwhile, the world in this book deems suicides unworthy of a happy afterlife and sends them to a hellish underworld where they are expected to fix themselves (which worked SO well when they were alive) before they can be free to join their families and loved ones in the Countryside. **spoiler** Despite the fact that the Judge can send ANYONE SHE WANTS TO THE COUNTRYSIDE whether they meet her bizarre requirements or not. **spoiler**

No. Just - NO. I can't think of an uglier or less compassionate idea.

I tried to get over this revolting worldbuilding to focus on the story, but the further I got, the worse it got - especially with Malachi's backstory, in which he was told by the Judge that his horrible suffering (in Auschwitz) didn't "earn" him a "free ticket" out of the hellish dimension he apparently deserved because he was "weak" enough to consider death-by-electric-fence preferable to being shot by the Nazis.

Part of the reason for this rant is because the novel is so vague about what the purpose of the Shadowlands is. Why are suicides sent here? How is this supposed to help them? Or if this is punishment - why do they deserve to be punished? For all I know, the Judge and the City could turn out to be villains in the next book - but part of that should at least be reflected in this novel by the characters' attitudes. Lela, initially, does think the city is horrible, but she is slowly convinced by Malachi and the others that this is just the natural order of things, the way things are meant to be, and that the suicides somehow need this for some unexplained metaphysical reason.

Which, I'm sorry to say, is not enough to convince me that the world of this book is anything less than disgusting.

Sanctum has an awesomely strong, developed heroine who is more than capable of taking care of herself - but not much else. Even without the heinous "suicides need to suffer before they can get to heaven" plotline, the story is bogged down by tedious training sequences, overblown InstaLove, underdeveloped villains, and an inconsistently portrayed setting.
D

If you still want to read this, Sanctum is available for Kindle.

"A Matter of Class," by Mary Balogh

The Chick: Lady Annabelle Ashton. When her parents tried to wed her to a wealthy, but ugly marquis, she ran off with a coachman.
The Rub: Unfortunately, she didn't get far, and now she's ruined and her family is bankrupt. The only one willing to marry her now is her lower-class neighbour Reginald Mason.
Dream Casting: Romola Garai.

The Dude: Reginald Mason. When his extravagant ways play on his father's last nerve, he's ordered to marry an Earl's ruined daughter or be cut off from his inheritance.
The Rub: His family's merchant class - and his fiancee's family's as blue blooded as they come. Getting his future father-in-law's approval seems just about impossible.
Dream Casting: Charlie Cox.

The Plot:

Annabelle: Oh crap, my elopement plot failed.

Reginald: Darn, I spent too much money so now I have to get married.

Their Parents: WE ARE INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED WITH BOTH OF YOU ... we just don't feel like expressing that in an interesting way. Let's just all be nice to each other for the next hundred or so pages.

Annabelle and Reginald: Cool. Let's have an adorably bland flashback.

Adorably Bland Flashback:

Baby Annabelle and Reginald: Hey. We have opposite genitalia and our parents hate each other. Let's have sex in a field!

Just as Bland Present:

Annabelle and Reginald: *married*

Annabelle and Reginald: Cool, we totally lied to everyone and faked having personalities so that we could trick people into letting us get married! Surprise! WE HAVE NO PERSONALITIES! HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

• 1 Interclass Romance
• 2 Unhappy Pairs of Parents
• 1 Inordinately Handsome Coachman

The Word: **spoiler warning - there is a "twist" at the end of the novel, and I plan to spoil the hell out of it because it is stupid. You have been warned.**
I knew it had to come eventually. Every author is going to have at least one dud book. Heck, even Laura Kinsale had Seize the Fire.

And while Mary Balogh has had more "Good" than "Great" books with me, her books have always been so consistently Good With a Capital G that I've always loved reading her. I knew I could trust her to bring an excellent story and some nice drama to the table with whichever book she presented me.

Except for this one.

A Matter of Class angered me for several reasons - 1) while I appreciate the narrative risk Balogh took, the twist at the end is ridiculous as hell and ultimately compromises the entire book, 2) I bought this book in hardcover. HARDCOVER. FOR A NOVELLA. I expect quality when I buy hardcovers!

Of course, at the beginning, everything looks interesting. Our hero, Reginald, is a Feckless Spendthrift who fills his closet with expensive boots at the same time he empties his father's metaphorical closet of Paternal Patience.

Meanwhile, our heroine, Annabelle, is an Impulsive Eloper who dashed off with her handsome coachman to escape an arranged marriage to an Ugly Bald Marquis, but was caught at an inn when her servant-class beau jumped out a window. She has since destroyed all chances of marrying any marquises, bald or not, and her Earl father's estate is swimming in debt.

On top of all that, Annabelle's and Reginald's fathers are neighbours who have shared a massive, bubbling cauldron of Hate-orade for each other for years due to Annabelle's father being a Haughty Aristo and Reginald's father being an Upstart Coal Merchant.

However, when Reginald's father hears about Annabelle's plight, a lightbulb goes off in his head - or else the coal-powered Regency equivalent of a lightbulb. With Annabelle ruined and the estate bankrupted, the Earl can't exactly be choosy with regards to her suitors, so Reginald finds himself ordered by his father to propose to and marry Annabelle - or else be cut off without a penny.

Annabelle's father, the Earl, is appalled at the notion of giving his daughter to a commoner to pay for his mistakes, but he doesn't exactly have many options besides putting a bell around Annabelle's neck to keep her from traipsing off with the first handsome wage slave she encounters.

So, despite nearly everyone Secretly Hating the Idea, Reginald and Annabelle find themselves engaged to be married.

Now, all of this sounds interesting doesn't it? It certainly seems as if there are endless opportunities for drama, misery, misunderstandings, acrimony, prejudice, and humour, doesn't it?

Oh, but how Mary Balogh loves fooling with people's expectations!

This novella was as dull as ditchwater, except for when it was Stupidly Ridiculous Beyond All Reason.

First of all, there's no real conflict. Reginald's father is so happy at the prospect of gaining a family connection to the aristocracy that he promptly turns in his Antagonist Card, while Annabelle's father spends his time whining and sitting alone in a corner. Meanwhile, the novel wastes unnecessarily large amounts of words insisting that the protagonists' parents Are Really Good People At Heart despite that one time they tried forcing their kids into marriage to serve their own ambitions. Oh, yeah, and the twenty years they spent actively hating each other.

Second of all, our protagonists, despite their gaudy Eloper and Spendthrift costumes, are bland and colourless underneath. They spend most of their time together exchanging a few weak barbs with the predictability and false liveliness of two cuckoo clocks fighting to announce the hour first. The novel tells us at the start just how Feckless and Impulsive they are - but none of this is shown in their actions or behaviour. Nothing is explored about their impulses, passions, and motivations - you know, who they are as actual people.

Thirdly, instead of actually developing the protagonists, we get treacly, intrusive and utterly useless flashbacks to the extremely infrequent times they met as children and teenagers. You know, to show us how empty and predictable and cliched they were then, too.

By the eighty-percent mark of this novella, nothing was making sense. The protagonists' families 20-year feud ended five minutes after tea. Our Spendthrift wasn't thinking about spending and our Eloper wasn't thinking about Eloping. Our flashbacks showed that, despite their extremely infrequent meetings, our protagonists fell in Sweet Savage Love with each other at the age of twelve and fifteen. So what happened?

And that's when we get "The Twist" that turns this story from boring to flat-out nonsensical.

After a hundred supremely boring pages, our hero and heroine get married - and then reveal (tee-hee!) that they miraculously engineered this whole situation in order to overcome their class differences and their parents' disapproval to get married.

Yes, our hero pretended to be a Feckless Spendthrift to intentionally provoke his father and our heroine pretended to Impulsively Elope with her coachman (who was really an actor accomplice) to intentionally ruin herself.

Because just running off to Gretna Green is apparently TOO DIFFICULT FOR THESE PEOPLE.

I don't even know where to start with how monumentally dumb this "twist" was. First of all - it's a complete character cop-out. Neither of our protagonists are developed at all beyond their initial markers of That Chick who Eloped and That Dude Who Really Likes Designer Boots. Take away those basic characteristics, and who the hell are these people? I have no idea. There is nothing definite or memorable about either of them.

Well, no, that's not true - we do learn something about their characters. We learn they're the kind of people who are willing to defraud, publicly humiliate, emotionally manipulate, and exploit the financial hardships of their own parents for personal gain. Annabelle permanently ruins herself in the eyes of society and makes her father a public laughingstock to be with Reggie.

Because, somehow, carefully choreographing a fake elopement with an actor is easier than performing a real elopement with the person you actually want to marry. 

Yeah, didn't make sense to me, either.
D


You can purchase A Matter of Class here, but don't say I didn't warn you.

"Warm Bodies," by Isaac Marion

The Protagonist: R. A zombie who lives in an abandoned airport, he wonders wistfully if this is all he has to look forward to in the undeath - until he has the opportunity to rescue a human girl from being eaten.
His Angst: Um, he's a zombie. Not a lot of positives there. Also, the girl? He totally ate her boyfriend.

The Secondary Cast:

Julie Grigio: The daughter of the General of the local fortress-city of surviving humans, she is rescued by R and finds time to examine just how flawed humanity's survival strategy really is.

Perry: Julie's boyfriend, who is killed and eaten by R - although he continues to live on in R's head as R absorbs his memories.

Nora Greene: Julie's best friend, who helps out Julie and R as they try to convince others of the possibility of a cure for the zombie virus.

General Grigio: Julie's rigid and unstable father who will defend humanity at any cost - even though he ultimately believes humanity is beyond saving.

M: R's zombie friend who also slowly evolves thanks to Julie's influence.

Angst Checklist:

• Being undead
• Daddy Issues
• The meaning of life
• The difference between surviving and living
• My Boyfriend Was Suicidal So Eating Him Was Totally Okay
• Every problem can be solved with the Power of Love

The Word: I decided to pick up this book when I saw the trailer for the upcoming film, which made it sound charming and original. A zombie romance? How droll!

Sadly, while the novel is beautifully written, it is also bleak, dull, poorly-developed, and is - essentially - a retelling of WALL-E, but with zombies.

R is a youngish zombie who's in better shape then most. He shuffles and groans around an abandoned airport, occasionally making raids with his zombie compatriots to catch and eat the living humans foolish enough to venture out of their fortified shelters.

The zombies have even formed a sort of society - with emaciated elders known as Boneys who marry zombies, allocate zombie children to worthy couples, hold primitive religious services, and violently defend the status quo. 

Poor R is slightly different from the other zombies in that he has a brain and is capable of higher reasoning - even if he's almost incapable of expressing it beyond a few groaned syllables. When he and his friends go on a raiding party and he bites into the brain of a young man named Perry, he absorbs the boy's memories, particularly those of his girlfriend, Julie.

When R realizes that Julie is also present at this raid, he protects her by covering her in zombie blood and takes her to his makeshift shelter in a jet at the airport. There, he gets to know her better - not only by communicating with her in his limited way, but also through Perry's memories as he secretly continues to eat the remaining pieces of his brain. 

Through Perry's memories we learn that the human race is not in good shape. Thanks to the zombie curse/plague that took over the world, humanity has shrunk itself to fit small, fortified lives - surviving, but at a high cost as many have felt forced to jettison "needless" activities like art and personal expression in order to serve the greater good of just getting through the day.

But as R and Julie's mysterious connection seems to indicate a natural cure to the zombie plague is indeed possible (although that cure is veeeery vaguely developed), many of the humans have become too hardened and jaded to consider taking the risk to live instead of only survive.

So. This novel.

I could tell it was trying to convey some sort of deep message, but it failed in its execution because it stayed too damn vague to be interesting. Humanity apparently ruined itself and somehow created this plague (curse? Evil spell? NOBODY KNOWS) by becoming too - arrogant? Greedy? Apathetic? The narrative waves its hands around humanity's "badness" in a hipsterish way without really getting into it and giving it an actual reason.

Honestly, Marion does a better job demonstrating how humanity is currently killing itself in the present - buying more time to live by abandoning the very things that make life worth living - than he does with his rather pretentious jabs at humanity's unworthy past.

And then the whole problem is solved with the Power of Love. I'm not even kidding. Just like the Celine Dion song!

Warm Bodies turned out to be the type of novel I really dislike - one that takes a science-fictional or fantasy plot and uses it to tell a greater literary message, but without developing the science fictional/fantasy aspects into consistent elements of the story. It's the same problem I had with Gregory Maguire's Wicked. 

You cannot make a zombie story, and then base the origins of the zombie curse (and its cure) on a metaphor. THAT MAKES NO SENSE. You don't get cancer by not appreciating life enough, and you can't cure disease with The Power Of Love - unless you clearly develop your fantasy elements to indicate this. But everything else about Warm Bodies is based on a hard type of reality - with heavily described passages about humanity's struggle to survive, the mental toll on the survivors, the intricate and interesting societies that both humans and zombies have built out of the ashes of the apocalypse.

And then the novel indicates these well-depicted, realistic and sympathetic problems would all be solved if we just Loved Life More. What the hell?

It wouldn't have been at all difficult to create a developed fantasy aspect around the novel, with its own internal consistency and logic, that would have achieved the same message without compromising the reality of the narrative. Fantasy authors do it all the time! Just read Left Hand of Darkness - it conveyed a powerful message about gender, while still having a well-realized science fictional world that was interesting and made sense.

That being said, Marion's novel does have some lovely language, and I appreciated where he was trying to go with it. I still might see the movie (although I'm very concerned that they whitewashed a character by casting a white actress as Nora), but for the book? I recommend a single shot - straight to the brain.
C

You can purchase Warm Bodies: A Novel here.

The Weekly Wanting (22) and the Power of Blogging

I thought I would turn this particular Wanting into a bit of a post on the importance of blogging.

Not all blogs are created equal - if they were, I would have no time to eat, sleep, or tentatively type a few words of my novel before fleeing in terror. I'd just be blog-hopping all the time.

I realize that blogging, for many people, is a personal activity. And it should be - you should blog about what you want because you want to. But it does mean that the standard of writing in blogs can vary widely. This also means that different readers react differently to different types of writing.

Over the years, I discovered I gravitated the most towards blogs that were exceptionally well-written. The blogs that read as if someone spent time considering what to write about a particular book instead of spewing their raw opinions across their keyboards.

I recently had to unfollow a longtime blogger because her reviews were just terribly written - garbled syntax, non-specific blanket statements, lazy descriptions. And she's actually an author! That boggled my mind - why wouldn't you apply the same standard of writing to your blog that you do to your books?

I realize writing well doesn't come easily to everybody. I feel this is the point where I should clarify that this isn't a post about how bloggers should write, but rather an explanation of the type of blogging I prefer to read. I am a pretty insignificant person in the larger scheme of things and writing does come very easily to me so I tend to take the ability to write well for granted. I also realize that other people prefer blogs with clearly effusive or condemning writing styles. They feel passionately about books and they want reviews that demonstrate how out of their mind AWESOME a book was. Capslock-awesome! Glitterfont-awesome! 

And "good writing" can vary. For me, good writing means that it falls under the hazy categories of "easy to read," "fun to read," and "effectively gets the point across." To me, that means I actually enjoy the occasional .gif-using review because hey, it's funny, and it very clearly gets the point across so long as it's not overused.

And all of this is a roundabout explanation of why I finally decided to add this novel to my Wishlist:

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman

This novel was mentioned freakin' everywhere and wound up on a huge number of Best of the Year Lists and for the longest time I just couldn't bring myself to give a crap about it. I read review after review, and I got to the part about "angsty girl with a musical secret plus dragons" and a switch in my head would just go "nope nope not interesting at all nope." 

So the more reviews that came out about this novel, the more I skimmed over them. Nothing about them really explained to me why I should find this novel interesting. Even reviews from other bloggers I love and admire! It just didn't hit my buttons.

Until Janine's review from Dear Author. Somehow, the way she explained the intricate worldbuilding and the gorgeous writing, and the way the heroine's musical talents actually related to the dragon plot instead of being some random Mary Sue affectation, parted the clouds, removed the scales (heh) from my eyes, and made me realize that yes, this is a book I must have. Now. At any price. Please please?

Now, this isn't a wagging-finger at the other bloggers who loved this book. This is just an indication of how important writing and blogging can be - that even one review, one special review, can sell a book to a reader where dozens of others have failed. And I just thought it would be meaningful to try and explain that this week instead of going with my usual format.

What books are you eagerly wanting this week? And which bloggers have changed your life and made you want a book you'd never thought of before?

"Speechless," by Hannah Harrington

The Protagonist: Chelsea Knot. Chelsea will do, and more importantly, say anything to stay in her popular best friend's good graces. So when she discovers a schoolmate is secretly gay, she rushes off the share the details with her - and accidentally informs the whole basketball team, too.
The Rub: When that gay classmate winds up in a coma, Chelsea becomes an outcast when she comes forward. Learning the hard way how powerful speech can be, she takes a vow of silence.

Secondary Cast:

Asha: A sweet-natured social outcast who befriends Chelsea after her vow of silence. Loving knitting and working at the local diner.

Sam: The best friend of Noah (the gay bashing victim), he's paired with Chelsea in art class, and the two bond over their mutual friendship with Asha.

Andy: Noah's boyfriend. Still angry at Chelsea for outing Noah, he's also angry at himself.

Noah: A classmate of Chelsea's, whom she outs after she catches him making out with Andy. Is attacked and hospitalized by two basketball players.

Kristin: Chelsea's former best friend and the most popular girl in school - she is a ruthless, conniving, and, yes, stereotypical Queen Bitch who makes Chelsea Public Enemy #1 after she rats out Kristin's boyfriend to the cops.

Lowell: A thuggish basketball player who starts bullying and harassing Chelsea for ratting out his teammates.

Angst Checklist:

• Homophobia
• School bullying
• Personal responsibility
• Bitchy Frenemies
• The importance of speech
• Popularity (and the lack thereof)
• Tuna Melts

The Word: This was an interesting novel to read because although I really didn't like the writing style, um, at all, the story was interesting enough to keep me absolutely addicted to it.

Chelsea Knot is living the high life as the best friend/minion/personal Gretchen Wieners of Kristin, Grand Lake High School's vicious Queen Bee. Sure, she always has to play second fiddle and cater to Kristin's exacting moods and personal style, but the ensuing popularity is all she's ever wanted. Chelsea is incapable of keeping a secret and is one of the biggest gossipmongers at school, a trait she maintains because it entertains Kristin and keeps her in the popular girl's inner circle.

When Chelsea drunkenly walks in on a male classmate, Noah, making out with another boy during a party, she stumbles off to share the scandalous details with Kristin - and blurts out the deets in front of half the basketball team as well. That very night, two basketball players attack Noah and put him in a coma, and for the very first time, Kristin demands Chelsea keep her mouth shut.

But Chelsea is horrified at what she's done, and makes the hardest (and ultimately best) decision of her life: she goes to the cops with her story, resulting in the arrest of her school's star basketball players - one of whom is Kristin's boyfriend. She then makes the second hardest decision of her life: to take a vow of silence to atone for her formerly loose lips.

Chelsea becomes a pariah overnight - half the school despises her as the traitor rat who crippled the basketball team, the other half are eager to kick the Queen Bee's sidekick now that she's down, and her teachers have no idea what to do with a student who refuses to speak. The only people who reach out to Chelsea are the people she least expected - the quirky, unconventional social outcasts who knew Noah personally.

There were a lot of things I didn't like about this book. The voice, for one. The writing style is juvenile and simplistic in a cliched way - it doesn't come across as immature because it's the voice of a teenager, but because it sounds like an adult trying too hard to imitate the voice of a teenager. I also thought the villains' comeuppance at the end was disappointingly lame considering the huge amount of build-up the story bestows upon Chelsea's "brilliant" revenge scheme. As well, I was kind of annoyed by how little "screen time" both gay characters in the book received. The Inciting Incident of the novel is a gay bashing - but it's used to illustrate the story of a sad, straight, privileged, white girl while the actual victim is only present for ten pages or so. However, one could also make the exact same argument about Lauren Myracle's Shine, and that book rocked my socks like a laundry machine hurricane.

But what did this novel do well? Despite the clunky writing and the disappointing payoff, the character development is amazing. I loved reading about Chelsea's progression towards being an independent person. I loved how her voicelessness helped develop her self-awareness, especially regarding her friendship with Kristin and her own personal value. Chelsea starts the book as a stereotypical Popular Girl - obsessed with clothing, gossip and boys and terrible at schoolwork. Once Kristin destroys their friendship and Chelsea starts to make friends who don't require that she constantly praise and entertain them, she has time to explore things she'd always convinced herself weren't important because they didn't keep her in Kristin's good graces. Chelsea's grades improve significantly, she gets a job, and she finds a way to interact with the community without having to speak.

As a character novel, Speechless is incredibly effective and well-paced and explores some excellent themes about the power of words and a person's contribution to their community. If you can tolerate childish writing and a weak ending, you might want to give Speechless a try.
B-

You can purchase Speechless here.