You know what the worst part of reading a book without a fandom is?
It's being awake, reading, in those dark, lonely hours between midnight and dawn, and feeling things which aren't quite feels because you're not quite invested enough in the book to be crying or laughing or excited, but are still heavy and weighty and maybe just the slightest bit overwhelming, and having nowhere to go.
It's not worse, in my opinion, to be reading a book I'm actually super invested in alone. If I'm reading a book so good that I'm laughing or grinning or hanging on every word or, with those rarest of rare books, crying, I don't need anyone else. Sure, it's glorious when somebody else finally listens to my recommendations, like my best friend is now finally doing with Charlie Bone (we have a marvelous little two-person fandom now, complete with excessive amounts of shipping and fangirling and she's rapidly approaching the feelsy sections of the series and I am so freaking excited) but when I love a book I can happily love it alone.
And, for the most part, I'm okay reading older books alone. Basically anything written before, like, 1990 and I'll happily read by myself whether I'm enjoying it or not.
Well, maybe that's not quite true.
Here's the thing: try to talk to me about school, or politics, or my nonexistent plans for my life, or the shockingly grandiose implications of the speed with which news travels, or philosophy, or the future, etc., and I'll be bored in two minutes, irritated in five, and attempting to leave the room in ten. But get me talking about books and movies and I'll be devastated if you try to leave or change the subject after just an hour and a half. I've said it before. This blog is called "Everything Unreal" because this blog is primarily focused on that which is unreal. For some reason I don't know which might possibly be a sign of deep-rooted psychological unwellness but probably isn't, the dreamy stories born in other people's heads are the surest ways I know of grounding myself and knowing my identity, of getting through life and staving off loneliness. They're the only things I'm really passionate about and they always have been. (And I now have a song stuck in my head that goes, "she is the one who tempts me and she for whom I'm pure; my love for her confounds me and is all of which I'm sure". With some lyrical changes, I think it becomes quite fitting.)
But if I want to spend two hours talking the ears off my longsuffering best friend or my longer-suffering family members in an elaborate and mostly one-sided discourse on the myriad feelings and thoughts elicited in me by some book or movie I've experienced alone, I first have to describe in great detail any plotlines or characters I'll be bringing up, and even if I can get past the guilt brought on by such a spoiler-filled speech I still tend to be met by mostly blank looks and minimalist responses, because no one else I know feels the way I do about stories. My best friend comes closest, and she'll gladly fangirl with me and listen to my monologues for as long as I want her to, but of course she's not always immediately available, and she also has absolutely brilliant plans and ambitions and ideas that make my current life goal of achieving immortality so I can be a sixteen-year-old sitting in my messy bedroom reading books forever look even more pathetically childish than it already is. And my mom...... well, she's basically the best mom I've ever encountered, but we're never going to care about the same things.
Thus the Internet has somewhat spoiled me by giving me the ability to discuss all the stories I long to without even having to say anything. On Facebook posts and YouTube videos, I can read comments for as long as I like, and instead of feeling like an annoyance or a blathering teenager displaying her emotional immaturity way too proudly, I feel like one piece of a massive and brightly colored jigsaw puzzle, acceptable and accepted, united to hundreds and thousands of other people by my love for a story.
But of course this only works for as long as I like super popular stuff. Which isn't very long.
So now we're back at the beginning of the post, a post brought on by a couple of things, like the fact that I just read a few books that were dense and heavy, and then I watched a movie that was heavy, and now I'm a little more than halfway through a book that's quite heavy for different reasons and I don't like any of those three books or the movie but I don't dislike them either and I have no one to talk to about any of it, not really, and I feel like I'm going crazy. And then there's the fact that the last time I discovered a book I really liked was almost six months ago, and that was just a book I liked and I'm more than ready to find something I love again. Or at least to have a deep, probing, fulfilling, three-hour-long discussion with someone about things I don't quite love.
*Deep sigh*
Look, it's not really as bad as I'm melodramatically making it sound. I've been brought down a bit by the book I'm reading, which I was rather expecting to love and which I am instead being disappointed and slightly befuddled by. I'm greatly questioning the advisability of even posting this particular post, because I feel like it says a great many things I'm not entirely sure I mean, and seems to reveal a lot about me to the vast and indestructible Internet, and might very well make no sense. But I've been working on it for a long enough time that I figure I might as well reveal it to the world and face the consequences if there are any. Plus, I think that right now I'm being largely driven by the hateful, ugly part of my brain that desperately wants people to feel sorry for me. Ugh.
But like I said...... this mood shouldn't last. It never does. And there're lots of books coming up on my reading list that look really good (they wouldn't be on my reading list if they didn't). And I've seen some really good movies recently. And Netflix is just a few clicks away, brimming with random movies and TV shows that don't have fandoms but might just be good enough they don't need them. And is it just me, or do I sound insufferably immature right now?
Well, who cares? I don't. (Much.) I am who I am.
Lamest self-affirmation ever, huh?
*Second deep sigh*
And now I sound all sad again. I promise I'm okay. Watch, I'll probably be back in just a few weeks, sheepishly blogging about some amazing new book I'm reading and pretending this post doesn't exist.
I'll see you then.
~Pearl Clayton
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Allegiant, Day 4
*Long sigh*
Well, I'm done. Finished. Another series read and filed away in my memory.
This morning, as I was taking a short break before finishing completely, I thought about some of the many things I considered saying and ended up leaving unsaid throughout this process, because I changed my mind or I couldn't figure out a smooth way of fitting them into the posts or because I got so carried away writing about something else that I forgot about the other points I was going to make. Some of those omitted things were silly, like the observation that I really hate it when books say "so-and-so said" or "so-and-so says" when so-and-so has just asked a question (here's a better example that's actually from Divergent: "I look at her and say, 'Then why did you come, if you didn't believe him?'") (this happened, like, at least once every conversation, too; it about drove me insane). Others were more serious, like the revelation that the main reason I tend to hate dystopias so much is the frequent appearance of frustrating preachiness so thinly veiled it might as well not be veiled at all.
Basically, I got a lot of thoughts and impressions reading this series, so many I couldn't realistically record them all. But I didn't get a lot of feelings. Now, that doesn't mean that this series didn't effect me emotionally. It did. But other books have made me laugh from amusement or joy. Other books have gotten me misty-eyed with happiness or empathy or sadness. One book has succeeded in giving me such a mess of emotions simultaneously that it brought real tears onto my cheeks. Divergent did none of those things. (Actually, I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but during the scenes which were probably supposed to make me cry I found myself quoting "Sherlock", singing a song from Wicked, and thinking, "For pity's sake, Tris, haven't you ever read poetry?". 'Cause see, I'm eccentric and I like to avoid the mainstream.)
That doesn't mean Divergent is a bad series. It isn't. I don't think it's some new pinnacle of great literature, and I'm not adding it to my list of favorite books and book series, but it isn't bad. I read it, I liked it, I'll remember it, and now I'm moving on.
But first, there's one more thing I need to write about.
Killing off characters.
Why do authors do it? What purpose does it serve? How can it possibly make a narrative better?
I find that most writers do it, me included. I've written two stories, am currently writing a third, and have several more elaborately planned out that feature at least one character dying. It's instinctive, somehow. I get an idea, I work on it a little, and pretty soon I'm asking myself, "Should I kill anyone off?"
I have a bit of a method, though, which I discovered as I was mentally drafting this post earlier. Once I've marked a character as doomed, I groom them for it. I damage them through circumstances within or beyond their control. I create characters so demented or desperate or despairing or dysfunctional that they couldn't possibly heal, couldn't possibly build fulfilling lives for themselves after the events of the story have concluded. I manipulate my stories so that, for the characters I've chosen, an early death becomes the only truly satisfactory fate.
I don't feel like this is a common practice.
A similar practice that seems slightly more common among more popular authors, especially of older books like Little Women and Daniel Deronda, is the practice of killing characters who are old or have been sick for a while, characters who have had time to make their peace with God and the past and who go out gently. These deaths, I think, hurt the most, but they might very well be the most justifiable. They remind us of our mortality and force us to ask ourselves who we will become and what will matter most to us when our own deaths approach.
But by far the most common practice, I think in recent years especially, is the practice of creating what I have decided to call "Casualties of Expectation".
J. K. Rowling was a bit of a pioneer in this practice. Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth and, undoubtedly, many others are following in her footsteps, all of them killing off so many characters they make you afraid to like anyone, any character, anywhere. It's become an expectation that there will be casualties, fatalities. So there are.
If you asked any of the authors of action series, Rowling or Collins or Roth, why they wrote so many death scenes, they'd probably say, "It's a war. It's a battle. I'm only trying to be realistic." But I can't help but feel, reading, that characters die who realistically wouldn't have. Authors write past the point of logic just for the sake of killing the youngest characters, or the ones with the most elaborate plans for their lives. They do the exact opposite of what I do. Or at least, it seems that way.
Some of these characters die bravely and heroically. Most don't.
I go on a lot of fandom-themed pages on Facebook, and there I constantly see reactions to all these Casualties of Expectation. Posts like, "Hush little fandom, don't you cry; you all knew your favorite character was going to die", or "Look at this great picture of all my favorite fictional characters!" accompanied by a drawing of a graveyard. Fangirls talk about their "feels" (a word which can mean one's emotions, one's capacity to feel emotions, or simply negative emotions) being broken, or destroyed, or simply being felt. They write about how much they wish they could read a story where all the best characters are alive and living happily ever after come the last page.
But here's the thing (watch out for possible spoilers).
The Charlie Bone series has (in my opinion) the best, brightest, and most hopeful final chapter of any book or book series ever written. The Tiffany Aching series has a happy ending. Really, compared to most modern teen literature, The Lord of the Rings has almost no death, at least not among named main characters. You would think that these series would be massively popular (and I guess that Lord of the Rings is, but at the moment it's rather paling in comparison to Divergent and HG and the like), seeing as how fangirls seem to be constantly begging for them.
And yet they're not.
This is where we get to the disturbing part.
I think that, for some reason unknown to me, we crave death. We crave grief. Fangirls can cry, "You broke my feels!" and "Who gave you the right?" and "I wish so-and-so hadn't died!" all they like, but deep down they're always looking for more. I think that some part of all of us yearns to feel heartache and longing, and fiction has always existed as a safe place to feel it, a place where people can die and be mourned without harm coming to anyone of flesh and blood, a place where we can experience loss and whatever positives we're apparently deriving from it without there being truly irreparable damage done.
And then, there's that even darker impulse, the one I think is buried deep in most authors: the desire to cause heartache. From some dark recess within ourselves we get a horrifying, sickening craving to write pain into existence, and we do. I'm aware of it in myself, and that's why I think I only kill characters whose stories couldn't end any other way. Even though I'm the one who made them miserable in the first place, the fact that I'm ending their misery and sending them to better horizons means I can say they would have been more miserable if they'd survived the story, that their deaths are merciful, necessary, and that I don't have to be terrified of myself.
I wonder if Rowling and Collins and Roth, if the infamous George R. R. Martin and the ruthless Julian Fellowes, feel it too. If you went up to them and asked "Why did so-and-so die?", I wonder if they would immediately reply with an inaccurate, kneejerk excuse like "realism", or if they would pause and blush and look at their hands because they dislike facing their dark sides as much as I dislike facing mine.
*Shrugs*
And with that, I'm out. Through. Run dry.
Finished.
So...... does anyone have any suggestions for next summer?
~Pearl Clayton
Well, I'm done. Finished. Another series read and filed away in my memory.
This morning, as I was taking a short break before finishing completely, I thought about some of the many things I considered saying and ended up leaving unsaid throughout this process, because I changed my mind or I couldn't figure out a smooth way of fitting them into the posts or because I got so carried away writing about something else that I forgot about the other points I was going to make. Some of those omitted things were silly, like the observation that I really hate it when books say "so-and-so said" or "so-and-so says" when so-and-so has just asked a question (here's a better example that's actually from Divergent: "I look at her and say, 'Then why did you come, if you didn't believe him?'") (this happened, like, at least once every conversation, too; it about drove me insane). Others were more serious, like the revelation that the main reason I tend to hate dystopias so much is the frequent appearance of frustrating preachiness so thinly veiled it might as well not be veiled at all.
Basically, I got a lot of thoughts and impressions reading this series, so many I couldn't realistically record them all. But I didn't get a lot of feelings. Now, that doesn't mean that this series didn't effect me emotionally. It did. But other books have made me laugh from amusement or joy. Other books have gotten me misty-eyed with happiness or empathy or sadness. One book has succeeded in giving me such a mess of emotions simultaneously that it brought real tears onto my cheeks. Divergent did none of those things. (Actually, I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but during the scenes which were probably supposed to make me cry I found myself quoting "Sherlock", singing a song from Wicked, and thinking, "For pity's sake, Tris, haven't you ever read poetry?". 'Cause see, I'm eccentric and I like to avoid the mainstream.)
That doesn't mean Divergent is a bad series. It isn't. I don't think it's some new pinnacle of great literature, and I'm not adding it to my list of favorite books and book series, but it isn't bad. I read it, I liked it, I'll remember it, and now I'm moving on.
But first, there's one more thing I need to write about.
Killing off characters.
Why do authors do it? What purpose does it serve? How can it possibly make a narrative better?
I find that most writers do it, me included. I've written two stories, am currently writing a third, and have several more elaborately planned out that feature at least one character dying. It's instinctive, somehow. I get an idea, I work on it a little, and pretty soon I'm asking myself, "Should I kill anyone off?"
I have a bit of a method, though, which I discovered as I was mentally drafting this post earlier. Once I've marked a character as doomed, I groom them for it. I damage them through circumstances within or beyond their control. I create characters so demented or desperate or despairing or dysfunctional that they couldn't possibly heal, couldn't possibly build fulfilling lives for themselves after the events of the story have concluded. I manipulate my stories so that, for the characters I've chosen, an early death becomes the only truly satisfactory fate.
I don't feel like this is a common practice.
A similar practice that seems slightly more common among more popular authors, especially of older books like Little Women and Daniel Deronda, is the practice of killing characters who are old or have been sick for a while, characters who have had time to make their peace with God and the past and who go out gently. These deaths, I think, hurt the most, but they might very well be the most justifiable. They remind us of our mortality and force us to ask ourselves who we will become and what will matter most to us when our own deaths approach.
But by far the most common practice, I think in recent years especially, is the practice of creating what I have decided to call "Casualties of Expectation".
J. K. Rowling was a bit of a pioneer in this practice. Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth and, undoubtedly, many others are following in her footsteps, all of them killing off so many characters they make you afraid to like anyone, any character, anywhere. It's become an expectation that there will be casualties, fatalities. So there are.
If you asked any of the authors of action series, Rowling or Collins or Roth, why they wrote so many death scenes, they'd probably say, "It's a war. It's a battle. I'm only trying to be realistic." But I can't help but feel, reading, that characters die who realistically wouldn't have. Authors write past the point of logic just for the sake of killing the youngest characters, or the ones with the most elaborate plans for their lives. They do the exact opposite of what I do. Or at least, it seems that way.
Some of these characters die bravely and heroically. Most don't.
I go on a lot of fandom-themed pages on Facebook, and there I constantly see reactions to all these Casualties of Expectation. Posts like, "Hush little fandom, don't you cry; you all knew your favorite character was going to die", or "Look at this great picture of all my favorite fictional characters!" accompanied by a drawing of a graveyard. Fangirls talk about their "feels" (a word which can mean one's emotions, one's capacity to feel emotions, or simply negative emotions) being broken, or destroyed, or simply being felt. They write about how much they wish they could read a story where all the best characters are alive and living happily ever after come the last page.
But here's the thing (watch out for possible spoilers).
The Charlie Bone series has (in my opinion) the best, brightest, and most hopeful final chapter of any book or book series ever written. The Tiffany Aching series has a happy ending. Really, compared to most modern teen literature, The Lord of the Rings has almost no death, at least not among named main characters. You would think that these series would be massively popular (and I guess that Lord of the Rings is, but at the moment it's rather paling in comparison to Divergent and HG and the like), seeing as how fangirls seem to be constantly begging for them.
And yet they're not.
This is where we get to the disturbing part.
I think that, for some reason unknown to me, we crave death. We crave grief. Fangirls can cry, "You broke my feels!" and "Who gave you the right?" and "I wish so-and-so hadn't died!" all they like, but deep down they're always looking for more. I think that some part of all of us yearns to feel heartache and longing, and fiction has always existed as a safe place to feel it, a place where people can die and be mourned without harm coming to anyone of flesh and blood, a place where we can experience loss and whatever positives we're apparently deriving from it without there being truly irreparable damage done.
And then, there's that even darker impulse, the one I think is buried deep in most authors: the desire to cause heartache. From some dark recess within ourselves we get a horrifying, sickening craving to write pain into existence, and we do. I'm aware of it in myself, and that's why I think I only kill characters whose stories couldn't end any other way. Even though I'm the one who made them miserable in the first place, the fact that I'm ending their misery and sending them to better horizons means I can say they would have been more miserable if they'd survived the story, that their deaths are merciful, necessary, and that I don't have to be terrified of myself.
I wonder if Rowling and Collins and Roth, if the infamous George R. R. Martin and the ruthless Julian Fellowes, feel it too. If you went up to them and asked "Why did so-and-so die?", I wonder if they would immediately reply with an inaccurate, kneejerk excuse like "realism", or if they would pause and blush and look at their hands because they dislike facing their dark sides as much as I dislike facing mine.
*Shrugs*
And with that, I'm out. Through. Run dry.
Finished.
So...... does anyone have any suggestions for next summer?
~Pearl Clayton
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Allegiant, Day 3
Today's post is going to be uncommonly short (in theory, anyway; sometimes I end up writing way more than I think I'm going to) for two reasons. Reason one is that my next post will be written about the end of the series, and based on reports from trustworthy sources concerning the traumatic nature of the conclusion, I'm assuming I'll have tons to say, making up for a lack of insight and ranting in this post. Reason two is that today's reading was even more dull than yesterday's.
In the 191 pages I read today, there were three scenes that could be classified as action scenes. The first was reasonably intense. The second was very short and basically pointless. The third was, in addition to being really short, only observed from a distance and not participated in by either of our narrators.
And speaking of our narrators, remember how in one of my Insurgent reviews I complained about the frequency of their arguing? Well, at the beginning of Allegiant they had a long, heartfelt conversation in which they apparently worked through their myriad issues, leaving me with high hopes that the rest of the series would be focused on more important matters than relationship drama. Which were fulfilled. They were fulfilled, that is, until Four did something unspeakably stupid which resulted in 70 more pages of Tris being mad and them arguing and me almost wishing there was a love triangle because these two seem so wrong for each other.
Almost.
Don't worry, they're back together now. They forgave each other, and as they hugged, Tris thought to herself, "I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me."
Sounds healthy. (Note my sarcasm.)
In other news, my favorite character from Insurgent who hasn't really been in Allegiant much because Veronica Roth doesn't like me was critically injured and is now slowly dying, and I was right to assume that absolutely everybody in the scientific compound is untrustworthy, deceptive, and if not intentionally evil, at least evil due to ignorance. And how was this information revealed? Through pages and pages and pages of expository conversations.
Ufta.
Well, there is one scientist named Matthew who seems nice and is trying to help the Chicagoans overthrow the compound. Therefore I trust him least of all. I know how this works now. I will not be fooled again!
Actually, I have one more observation about that. Plot twists cease to be powerful if readers are slinking cautiously through books, wracked by paranoia and reluctant to count on anything because of past reading experiences. I'm also in the middle of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and today while reading that I came across a plot twist that doesn't really even qualify as a plot twist that shocked me way more than any of the surprises in Divergent or Across the Universe or The Hunger Games. I was so startled I expressed my surprise verbally reading Great Expectations, which is way more than can be said for any of the YA series I've read. Why? Because I've learned to always expect the unexpected reading teen lit, and so I've come to the point in it where nothing is unexpected and therefore there is no anticipation or suspense.
To conclude, I was bored today. I was really bored. And frustrated. And irritated. If the conclusion of this series is truly as overwhelmingly traumatic as everyone's been hinting it is, I think that something majorly earth-shattering is going to have to go down in the next 50 pages or so.
But I guess I'll see tomorrow.
Until then, I remain,
~Pearl Clayton
In the 191 pages I read today, there were three scenes that could be classified as action scenes. The first was reasonably intense. The second was very short and basically pointless. The third was, in addition to being really short, only observed from a distance and not participated in by either of our narrators.
And speaking of our narrators, remember how in one of my Insurgent reviews I complained about the frequency of their arguing? Well, at the beginning of Allegiant they had a long, heartfelt conversation in which they apparently worked through their myriad issues, leaving me with high hopes that the rest of the series would be focused on more important matters than relationship drama. Which were fulfilled. They were fulfilled, that is, until Four did something unspeakably stupid which resulted in 70 more pages of Tris being mad and them arguing and me almost wishing there was a love triangle because these two seem so wrong for each other.
Almost.
Don't worry, they're back together now. They forgave each other, and as they hugged, Tris thought to herself, "I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me."
Sounds healthy. (Note my sarcasm.)
In other news, my favorite character from Insurgent who hasn't really been in Allegiant much because Veronica Roth doesn't like me was critically injured and is now slowly dying, and I was right to assume that absolutely everybody in the scientific compound is untrustworthy, deceptive, and if not intentionally evil, at least evil due to ignorance. And how was this information revealed? Through pages and pages and pages of expository conversations.
Ufta.
Well, there is one scientist named Matthew who seems nice and is trying to help the Chicagoans overthrow the compound. Therefore I trust him least of all. I know how this works now. I will not be fooled again!
Actually, I have one more observation about that. Plot twists cease to be powerful if readers are slinking cautiously through books, wracked by paranoia and reluctant to count on anything because of past reading experiences. I'm also in the middle of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and today while reading that I came across a plot twist that doesn't really even qualify as a plot twist that shocked me way more than any of the surprises in Divergent or Across the Universe or The Hunger Games. I was so startled I expressed my surprise verbally reading Great Expectations, which is way more than can be said for any of the YA series I've read. Why? Because I've learned to always expect the unexpected reading teen lit, and so I've come to the point in it where nothing is unexpected and therefore there is no anticipation or suspense.
To conclude, I was bored today. I was really bored. And frustrated. And irritated. If the conclusion of this series is truly as overwhelmingly traumatic as everyone's been hinting it is, I think that something majorly earth-shattering is going to have to go down in the next 50 pages or so.
But I guess I'll see tomorrow.
Until then, I remain,
~Pearl Clayton
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Allegiant, Day 2
Hoooooo boy.
My first instinct when starting to compose this post in my head was to say, "Nothing really happened in today's reading." But then I immediately thought, "Well, that would be a staggering untruth."
A more accurate one-sentence summary of today's reading would be that nothing really violent happened in today's reading. Only one named character died, which sounds much more violent now than I'm writing it out than it felt while reading it (which should tell you a lot about this series). After a bunch of action in the first two chapters, including a dead-of-night escape from oppression, some lying (but nowhere near as much as is usually present in the books), and the shootout which resulted in the one character's death, there was a long span of no action whatsoever.
Here's why: throughout the first two books, everything took place within the limits of a city clearly recognizable as a very rundown version of Chicago to anyone who went into the series knowing the most famous facts about Chicago's layout and/or the book series. Every character just assumed that there was nothing, or at least very little, beyond Chicago.
Then, about a hundred pages before where I currently am, all the surviving principal characters left Chicago and were introduced into a massive scientific compound situated in a converted O'Hare International Airport. Since then, the book has been composed mostly of long passages of expository conversation occasionally interrupted by interludes of character development. All sorts of interesting facts have been revealed, like what's been going on in the rest of the country while a select group live in a dystopia in Chicago, and why they were in Chicago, and why the factions were created (the real reason being slightly different from the reason given in the first book), and what Divergence is (the real definition being extremely different from any and all of the definitions given in the first two books), and what Tris's mother's backstory actually is (which is quite different from the one given in the first book), and that a main character who we thought was Divergent isn't actually Divergent, and why there was a select group of people living in a dystopia, and that there are several different such groups living in different sorts of dystopias, and for goodness's sake, Veronica, could you possibly give us a chapter or two to process this mess of information?
Basically, Veronica Roth has created an entirely new world that in many ways collides discordantly with the one she originally wrote, and the sudden inrush of new explanations and revelations is so staggering that it's left me a bit numb, hence my initial thought of "nothing happened", when in fact more has probably happened narrative-wise in the last hundred pages than in the entirety of the first two books. In the end, I have only two real thoughts to share.
First, I'm realizing how mistrustful all the teen literature I've been reading lately has made me. I've talked briefly in the past about a book series I've been reading and enjoying called Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children. Yesterday I finished the second book, and spoiler alert, but after 300 pages of me vainly attempting to guess how the book was going to end but assuming that it was going to be more of a hopeful, "on-to-the-next-step" sort of cliffhanger than a "what-the-heck-just-happened" sort, a plot twist that I didn't see coming at all involving a traitor in the main characters' midst rapidly resulted in all but three main characters falling into the dastardly clutches of the nearly undefeatable villains, with definitely one and probably two of those remaining three left mere hours from dying horribly. The end. And the author is slow, so it'll likely be two or three years before book three comes out. Add to that lovely experience my recent reading of Across the Universe, in which every book contained at least one traitor and at least two shocking twists, and last summer's reading of The Hunger Games, which wasn't as bad but contained plenty of unexpected developments, and of course the fact that I've just read the first two Divergent books, and you'll find that the point I'm slowly but surely leading up to it that I don't trust anyone in this new scientific compound. Seriously. It's still a little too early in the book for a shocking twist, but after a certain point I know I'll be starting every scene just waiting for someone to whip out a gun or inject someone with something or say, "Ha! Everything we told you in those 100 expository pages was a lie!" or "I am your father!"
Paranoia. It makes reading books so much more fun (note my sarcasm).
And second, was this really a good idea?
I understand that the exposition is necessary. Tris and friends' dystopian existence has never really been explained, and it's undeniably nice to finally have some understanding of the society Tris lives in. But after the first book, which didn't have a ton of plot but had plenty of action and a certain amount of suspense, and then the second book, which was essentially just nonstop drama, plot, and fighting, it's a bit weird to have everyone just meandering around a remodeled airport chatting with scientists who appear completely trustworthy to the kinds of people who don't read much modern teen literature. I know it's the calm before the storm and that chaos, betrayal, yelling, and screaming, will probably be reintroduced into the story quite soon. And really, the information isn't even uninteresting. It's just that there's tons of it, and I can easily imagine a reader who had come to expect certain things of this series getting majorly bogged down in the section I'm currently in.
To conclude, one other thing which has been notably absent from this expository section is the maddeningly constant repetition of the phrase "I can't breathe". If there is any aspect of Veronica Roth's writing that I feel I can freely criticize, it is the fact that in pretty much every scene in which Tris is afraid of something, she stops breathing. Perhaps even more maddening is how often heartbeats are mentioned in various different ways. "My heart beats faster than......" "The pain throbs like a second heartbeat." "I can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips." "My heartbeat is as loud as......" Etc., etc., etc. Today's reprieve from the constancy of these two concepts has been very nice, but I feel it can't possibly last much longer.
Oh well.
TTFN.
~Pearl Clayton
My first instinct when starting to compose this post in my head was to say, "Nothing really happened in today's reading." But then I immediately thought, "Well, that would be a staggering untruth."
A more accurate one-sentence summary of today's reading would be that nothing really violent happened in today's reading. Only one named character died, which sounds much more violent now than I'm writing it out than it felt while reading it (which should tell you a lot about this series). After a bunch of action in the first two chapters, including a dead-of-night escape from oppression, some lying (but nowhere near as much as is usually present in the books), and the shootout which resulted in the one character's death, there was a long span of no action whatsoever.
Here's why: throughout the first two books, everything took place within the limits of a city clearly recognizable as a very rundown version of Chicago to anyone who went into the series knowing the most famous facts about Chicago's layout and/or the book series. Every character just assumed that there was nothing, or at least very little, beyond Chicago.
Then, about a hundred pages before where I currently am, all the surviving principal characters left Chicago and were introduced into a massive scientific compound situated in a converted O'Hare International Airport. Since then, the book has been composed mostly of long passages of expository conversation occasionally interrupted by interludes of character development. All sorts of interesting facts have been revealed, like what's been going on in the rest of the country while a select group live in a dystopia in Chicago, and why they were in Chicago, and why the factions were created (the real reason being slightly different from the reason given in the first book), and what Divergence is (the real definition being extremely different from any and all of the definitions given in the first two books), and what Tris's mother's backstory actually is (which is quite different from the one given in the first book), and that a main character who we thought was Divergent isn't actually Divergent, and why there was a select group of people living in a dystopia, and that there are several different such groups living in different sorts of dystopias, and for goodness's sake, Veronica, could you possibly give us a chapter or two to process this mess of information?
Basically, Veronica Roth has created an entirely new world that in many ways collides discordantly with the one she originally wrote, and the sudden inrush of new explanations and revelations is so staggering that it's left me a bit numb, hence my initial thought of "nothing happened", when in fact more has probably happened narrative-wise in the last hundred pages than in the entirety of the first two books. In the end, I have only two real thoughts to share.
First, I'm realizing how mistrustful all the teen literature I've been reading lately has made me. I've talked briefly in the past about a book series I've been reading and enjoying called Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children. Yesterday I finished the second book, and spoiler alert, but after 300 pages of me vainly attempting to guess how the book was going to end but assuming that it was going to be more of a hopeful, "on-to-the-next-step" sort of cliffhanger than a "what-the-heck-just-happened" sort, a plot twist that I didn't see coming at all involving a traitor in the main characters' midst rapidly resulted in all but three main characters falling into the dastardly clutches of the nearly undefeatable villains, with definitely one and probably two of those remaining three left mere hours from dying horribly. The end. And the author is slow, so it'll likely be two or three years before book three comes out. Add to that lovely experience my recent reading of Across the Universe, in which every book contained at least one traitor and at least two shocking twists, and last summer's reading of The Hunger Games, which wasn't as bad but contained plenty of unexpected developments, and of course the fact that I've just read the first two Divergent books, and you'll find that the point I'm slowly but surely leading up to it that I don't trust anyone in this new scientific compound. Seriously. It's still a little too early in the book for a shocking twist, but after a certain point I know I'll be starting every scene just waiting for someone to whip out a gun or inject someone with something or say, "Ha! Everything we told you in those 100 expository pages was a lie!" or "I am your father!"
Paranoia. It makes reading books so much more fun (note my sarcasm).
And second, was this really a good idea?
I understand that the exposition is necessary. Tris and friends' dystopian existence has never really been explained, and it's undeniably nice to finally have some understanding of the society Tris lives in. But after the first book, which didn't have a ton of plot but had plenty of action and a certain amount of suspense, and then the second book, which was essentially just nonstop drama, plot, and fighting, it's a bit weird to have everyone just meandering around a remodeled airport chatting with scientists who appear completely trustworthy to the kinds of people who don't read much modern teen literature. I know it's the calm before the storm and that chaos, betrayal, yelling, and screaming, will probably be reintroduced into the story quite soon. And really, the information isn't even uninteresting. It's just that there's tons of it, and I can easily imagine a reader who had come to expect certain things of this series getting majorly bogged down in the section I'm currently in.
To conclude, one other thing which has been notably absent from this expository section is the maddeningly constant repetition of the phrase "I can't breathe". If there is any aspect of Veronica Roth's writing that I feel I can freely criticize, it is the fact that in pretty much every scene in which Tris is afraid of something, she stops breathing. Perhaps even more maddening is how often heartbeats are mentioned in various different ways. "My heart beats faster than......" "The pain throbs like a second heartbeat." "I can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips." "My heartbeat is as loud as......" Etc., etc., etc. Today's reprieve from the constancy of these two concepts has been very nice, but I feel it can't possibly last much longer.
Oh well.
TTFN.
~Pearl Clayton
Monday, June 16, 2014
Insurgent, Day 4 and Allegiant, Day 1
Interesting fact about yours truly: Sometimes I procrastinate.
Let me rephrase that: I procrastinate frequently.
So I actually finished Insurgent on the day I thought I was going to, but it was so late at night that I knew if I posted a post right after finishing my Allegiant, Day 1 post would end up getting posted on the same day, which I didn't want to do...... you know, maybe I shouldn't attempt to explain my weird reasons for doing things. Suffice to say that I decided that, considering the fact that Insurgent ended on a cliffhanger and I already had a copy of Allegiant, I might as well start Allegiant right away and just combine my closing thoughts from Insurgent with my opening thoughts on Allegiant.
And then I didn't start Allegiant right away. And then it was Father's Day. And then suddenly it was Monday and I realized I really needed to just get started already.
Thus, I'm late, but I am, at last here. On to my impressions.
You may remember that in my last post I mentioned another teen dystopian series I read recently called Across the Universe. That trilogy was rather irritating for several reasons, but one was this; in the first book, several important facts were established. In the second book, it was revealed that all of the most important facts established in the first book were outright lies. In the third book, it was revealed that even more of the facts established in the first two books were untrue or incomplete. I think that series might've had more elaborately planned plot twists than any other series I've ever read.
Divergent doesn't follow quite the same pattern, but it is similar in the fact that the end of Insurgent brought the revelation that the background and history of the story's society is almost entirely different from what most of the characters and all of the readers were led to believe. And I have more than one reason to assume that Allegiant has several shocking plot twists in store.
I'm not quite sure how to feel about this yet. Like I've implied, I really didn't like Across the Universe, but I can acknowledge that it was an extremely well-written and gripping series. You have to be a good writer, the kind of writer who drags readers into your vortex and refuses to let them go, in order to make plot twists work, and so, theoretically, for Allegiant's upcoming twists to fit and be realistic, the book will have to be good, or at the very least addictively readable. The twists might alternatively be completely ludicrous, in which case the whole experience will probably be rather miserable, but I doubt that'll happen.
In other exciting news, Tris and her boyfriend, Four or Tobias or whatever-you-want-to-call-him, seem to have finally worked out their issues and stopped fighting! Hooray!
Speaking of Four/Tobias/whatever (Tobias is his real name and the name Tris calls him, but Four is the nickname used by everybody else), he has now been made a co-narrator of the book. Tris will narrate a chapter or two, and then Four will take over for a while, then Tris, and so on. I haven't quite gotten used to it or decided how I feel about it. It has the same disconcerting effect as the middle of the fourth Twilight book, Breaking Dawn, when Jacob was inexplicably made the book's narrator for several chapters. Suddenly the reader sees the character who has hitherto been narrating from the outside, sees her described in ways that she never described herself, and gets a new perspective on both the new narrator's relationship with the old one and the story in general. In addition, I'm always a bit wary of female authors who try to write from the perspective of a boy. I think Stephenie Meyer failed to do it at all convincingly, but so far I feel that Veronica Roth's doing alright.
That should about cover things for the time being. I shall valiantly attempt to doff my procrastinating self and get back here to continue no later than tomorrow afternoon.
~Pearl Clayton
Let me rephrase that: I procrastinate frequently.
So I actually finished Insurgent on the day I thought I was going to, but it was so late at night that I knew if I posted a post right after finishing my Allegiant, Day 1 post would end up getting posted on the same day, which I didn't want to do...... you know, maybe I shouldn't attempt to explain my weird reasons for doing things. Suffice to say that I decided that, considering the fact that Insurgent ended on a cliffhanger and I already had a copy of Allegiant, I might as well start Allegiant right away and just combine my closing thoughts from Insurgent with my opening thoughts on Allegiant.
And then I didn't start Allegiant right away. And then it was Father's Day. And then suddenly it was Monday and I realized I really needed to just get started already.
Thus, I'm late, but I am, at last here. On to my impressions.
You may remember that in my last post I mentioned another teen dystopian series I read recently called Across the Universe. That trilogy was rather irritating for several reasons, but one was this; in the first book, several important facts were established. In the second book, it was revealed that all of the most important facts established in the first book were outright lies. In the third book, it was revealed that even more of the facts established in the first two books were untrue or incomplete. I think that series might've had more elaborately planned plot twists than any other series I've ever read.
Divergent doesn't follow quite the same pattern, but it is similar in the fact that the end of Insurgent brought the revelation that the background and history of the story's society is almost entirely different from what most of the characters and all of the readers were led to believe. And I have more than one reason to assume that Allegiant has several shocking plot twists in store.
I'm not quite sure how to feel about this yet. Like I've implied, I really didn't like Across the Universe, but I can acknowledge that it was an extremely well-written and gripping series. You have to be a good writer, the kind of writer who drags readers into your vortex and refuses to let them go, in order to make plot twists work, and so, theoretically, for Allegiant's upcoming twists to fit and be realistic, the book will have to be good, or at the very least addictively readable. The twists might alternatively be completely ludicrous, in which case the whole experience will probably be rather miserable, but I doubt that'll happen.
In other exciting news, Tris and her boyfriend, Four or Tobias or whatever-you-want-to-call-him, seem to have finally worked out their issues and stopped fighting! Hooray!
Speaking of Four/Tobias/whatever (Tobias is his real name and the name Tris calls him, but Four is the nickname used by everybody else), he has now been made a co-narrator of the book. Tris will narrate a chapter or two, and then Four will take over for a while, then Tris, and so on. I haven't quite gotten used to it or decided how I feel about it. It has the same disconcerting effect as the middle of the fourth Twilight book, Breaking Dawn, when Jacob was inexplicably made the book's narrator for several chapters. Suddenly the reader sees the character who has hitherto been narrating from the outside, sees her described in ways that she never described herself, and gets a new perspective on both the new narrator's relationship with the old one and the story in general. In addition, I'm always a bit wary of female authors who try to write from the perspective of a boy. I think Stephenie Meyer failed to do it at all convincingly, but so far I feel that Veronica Roth's doing alright.
That should about cover things for the time being. I shall valiantly attempt to doff my procrastinating self and get back here to continue no later than tomorrow afternoon.
~Pearl Clayton
Friday, June 13, 2014
Insurgent, Day 3
Last summer, in one of my Hunger Games reviews (Catching Fire, Day 1, to be exact) in which I explained my dislike of love triangles, I said this, among other things:
"I utterly fail to see the point of giving a character more than one potential love interest. In my opinion, it only creates frustration and, ultimately, some degree of disappointment. I mean, really, what does such a conflict of interest accomplish in storytelling? Is it supposed to make stories more realistic? Contribute to character development? Make readers throw-the-book-across-the-room angry?... I just don't get it."
I was reminded of that quote today while finishing up another book, one featuring a love triangle. In the end, the male in the case married a sweet, childish, honestly kind of boring girl, and left behind the book's main character (also known as the girl I wanted him to end up with) with this result - "Her mother persuaded her to go to bed, and watched by her. Through the day and half the night she fell continually into fits of shrieking, but cried in the midst of them to her mother, 'Don't be afraid. I shall live. I mean to live.'"
I was deeply upset, because I liked her, and because she'd had a miserable life that he could've made bright again, and because dang nabbit the other girl was boring and he just kind of randomly decided he loved her like six sevenths of the way through the book!
But at the same time, he couldn't very well ignore that other girl, who was a rather pathetic character as well, and who would've been quietly devastated (as in, she wouldn't have shrieked and cried and been temporarily bedridden, but she would've been sad) had the fellow made a different choice.
See, this is why I hate love triangles.
This is why I'm glad Divergent doesn't have one.
But today, doing my allotted reading of Insurgent, I think I finally figured out a possible explanation for their existence, at least in the context of modern teen romance fiction like The Hunger Games.
As my friend Ilandere has repeatedly pointed out in the comments throughout this process, this genre of book is pandering to a highly specific demographic. Namely, average teenage girls. And what do most people believe to be the primary occupant of the forefront of an average teenage girl's psyche?
Boys.
Yes, boys. While some teenage females (like me, for example) think that teenage males are strange, unnatural creatures that rarely succeed in escaping the bonds of confusing behavior and attempted coolness and bursting forth into interestingness and, even more rarely, attractiveness, generally girls seem to think that boys and their oft-inconsistent attentions are somehow necessary to happiness. The idea of a boy their age or, even more alluring, older than they are professing to love them and fretting about them and telling them to be careful is unspeakably tantalizing. And the idea of two boys fretting and competing for their affections...... well, that's just downright heavenly.
And thus, apparently both Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth decided that they couldn't write plain stories about terrifying clashes of will, staggering moral quandaries, impossible decisions, and the disaster and destruction wrought whenever one person attempts to gain absolute control over his or her fellow men. 'Cause, you know, that kind of stuff's boring on its own.
Nor, evidently, could either one be content to fashion a simple, straightforward, heartwarming and/or heart wrenching love story against the dark backdrop of a bloody conflict, in which, say, the couple in question have known each other for years, and perhaps are brought into a more close bond and codependence by the war, during which learn to trust each other completely and often turn to each other to rediscover their vulnerability and humanity as conditions grow more brutal around them, until all they have left anchoring them to the world and to themselves is each other. 'Cause, you know, that would also be boring.
Instead, Katniss must decide between Peeta and Gale.
And Tris and Four won't. Stop. Arguing!
Okay, I'll admit that I've had no personal experience with dating or romance or the like. But I feel, in my inexperienced and naïve heart, that if you're either getting into a shouting match with your boyfriend or worrying that you're going to get into a shouting match with your boyfriend every time you see your boyfriend, you might want to, oh, I don't know, find a different boyfriend!
Additionally, if you and your boyfriend move past your stage of intense argumentativeness and right back into your original stage of kissing and touching and thinking things like, "golly gee, I sure hope our author isn't going to kill you off later for dramatic effect", it doesn't automatically mean things are going to be all sunshine and rainbows between you from now on. For one thing, if, like Tris and Four, you don't actually make any effort to apologize or solve the underlying problems that led to the argumentative stage in the first place, those underlying problems are still going to be there. And really, speaking again in complete ignorance of these matters, I feel like the fact that the underlying problems existed in the first place seems to suggest some kind of incompatibility which it might be a good idea to address before you start brazenly risking your lives for each other and depending on each other in stressful situations.
Now, I freely acknowledge that in an environment of extreme uncertainty and danger there might not exactly be time to sit down and have long conversations analyzing, mending, and deepening a romantic relationship. But one could very easily apply that same logic to argue that it might be kind of a stupid idea to begin a romantic relationship in the first place!
Yeesh.
The thing is, I'm still rather enjoying this series. The action is ramping up. The plot twists are not entirely predictable. The villain(s) is/are fascinating. But I'm getting a bit tired of nearly every thought process and decision passing through Tris's head and onto the page involving Four. She and Four argue because he unfairly thinks she's being too reckless, so Tris decides to forgo opportunities in the name of caution. She becomes worried that Four might do something unbelievably stupid and dangerous, and so she completely dismisses that earlier decision to be more careful and does the stupid and dangerous thing so he doesn't have to. She gets injected with a serum designed to make a person suffer the most primal and all-consuming fear imaginable, and what does she see? Well, Four dying, of course.
Despite the fact that he's an emotionally volatile and often unsympathetic freak of nature who can't decide whether he's clingy or unfeeling and fluctuates between demanding exorbitant feats of endurance from Tris and telling her to hide away where it's safe. Whom she argues with. A lot.
Argh.
And thus we arrive at the most awkward part of any given blogpost, where I've completely run out of things to say but don't know how to effectively conclude. So...... I suppose I'll be writing more tomorrow. By which time I'll have finished Insurgent.
Yippee. And stuff.
~Pearl Clayton
"I utterly fail to see the point of giving a character more than one potential love interest. In my opinion, it only creates frustration and, ultimately, some degree of disappointment. I mean, really, what does such a conflict of interest accomplish in storytelling? Is it supposed to make stories more realistic? Contribute to character development? Make readers throw-the-book-across-the-room angry?... I just don't get it."
I was reminded of that quote today while finishing up another book, one featuring a love triangle. In the end, the male in the case married a sweet, childish, honestly kind of boring girl, and left behind the book's main character (also known as the girl I wanted him to end up with) with this result - "Her mother persuaded her to go to bed, and watched by her. Through the day and half the night she fell continually into fits of shrieking, but cried in the midst of them to her mother, 'Don't be afraid. I shall live. I mean to live.'"
I was deeply upset, because I liked her, and because she'd had a miserable life that he could've made bright again, and because dang nabbit the other girl was boring and he just kind of randomly decided he loved her like six sevenths of the way through the book!
But at the same time, he couldn't very well ignore that other girl, who was a rather pathetic character as well, and who would've been quietly devastated (as in, she wouldn't have shrieked and cried and been temporarily bedridden, but she would've been sad) had the fellow made a different choice.
See, this is why I hate love triangles.
This is why I'm glad Divergent doesn't have one.
But today, doing my allotted reading of Insurgent, I think I finally figured out a possible explanation for their existence, at least in the context of modern teen romance fiction like The Hunger Games.
As my friend Ilandere has repeatedly pointed out in the comments throughout this process, this genre of book is pandering to a highly specific demographic. Namely, average teenage girls. And what do most people believe to be the primary occupant of the forefront of an average teenage girl's psyche?
Boys.
Yes, boys. While some teenage females (like me, for example) think that teenage males are strange, unnatural creatures that rarely succeed in escaping the bonds of confusing behavior and attempted coolness and bursting forth into interestingness and, even more rarely, attractiveness, generally girls seem to think that boys and their oft-inconsistent attentions are somehow necessary to happiness. The idea of a boy their age or, even more alluring, older than they are professing to love them and fretting about them and telling them to be careful is unspeakably tantalizing. And the idea of two boys fretting and competing for their affections...... well, that's just downright heavenly.
And thus, apparently both Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth decided that they couldn't write plain stories about terrifying clashes of will, staggering moral quandaries, impossible decisions, and the disaster and destruction wrought whenever one person attempts to gain absolute control over his or her fellow men. 'Cause, you know, that kind of stuff's boring on its own.
Nor, evidently, could either one be content to fashion a simple, straightforward, heartwarming and/or heart wrenching love story against the dark backdrop of a bloody conflict, in which, say, the couple in question have known each other for years, and perhaps are brought into a more close bond and codependence by the war, during which learn to trust each other completely and often turn to each other to rediscover their vulnerability and humanity as conditions grow more brutal around them, until all they have left anchoring them to the world and to themselves is each other. 'Cause, you know, that would also be boring.
Instead, Katniss must decide between Peeta and Gale.
And Tris and Four won't. Stop. Arguing!
Okay, I'll admit that I've had no personal experience with dating or romance or the like. But I feel, in my inexperienced and naïve heart, that if you're either getting into a shouting match with your boyfriend or worrying that you're going to get into a shouting match with your boyfriend every time you see your boyfriend, you might want to, oh, I don't know, find a different boyfriend!
Additionally, if you and your boyfriend move past your stage of intense argumentativeness and right back into your original stage of kissing and touching and thinking things like, "golly gee, I sure hope our author isn't going to kill you off later for dramatic effect", it doesn't automatically mean things are going to be all sunshine and rainbows between you from now on. For one thing, if, like Tris and Four, you don't actually make any effort to apologize or solve the underlying problems that led to the argumentative stage in the first place, those underlying problems are still going to be there. And really, speaking again in complete ignorance of these matters, I feel like the fact that the underlying problems existed in the first place seems to suggest some kind of incompatibility which it might be a good idea to address before you start brazenly risking your lives for each other and depending on each other in stressful situations.
Now, I freely acknowledge that in an environment of extreme uncertainty and danger there might not exactly be time to sit down and have long conversations analyzing, mending, and deepening a romantic relationship. But one could very easily apply that same logic to argue that it might be kind of a stupid idea to begin a romantic relationship in the first place!
Yeesh.
The thing is, I'm still rather enjoying this series. The action is ramping up. The plot twists are not entirely predictable. The villain(s) is/are fascinating. But I'm getting a bit tired of nearly every thought process and decision passing through Tris's head and onto the page involving Four. She and Four argue because he unfairly thinks she's being too reckless, so Tris decides to forgo opportunities in the name of caution. She becomes worried that Four might do something unbelievably stupid and dangerous, and so she completely dismisses that earlier decision to be more careful and does the stupid and dangerous thing so he doesn't have to. She gets injected with a serum designed to make a person suffer the most primal and all-consuming fear imaginable, and what does she see? Well, Four dying, of course.
Despite the fact that he's an emotionally volatile and often unsympathetic freak of nature who can't decide whether he's clingy or unfeeling and fluctuates between demanding exorbitant feats of endurance from Tris and telling her to hide away where it's safe. Whom she argues with. A lot.
Argh.
And thus we arrive at the most awkward part of any given blogpost, where I've completely run out of things to say but don't know how to effectively conclude. So...... I suppose I'll be writing more tomorrow. By which time I'll have finished Insurgent.
Yippee. And stuff.
~Pearl Clayton
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Insurgent, Day 2
There has been a shocking twist.
Brace yourselves.
You might be shocked.
I know I am.
Are you ready?
Are you sure?
Okay.
*Clears throat*
*Glances at floor*
*Takes a deep breath*
*Whispers*, I think I'm starting to like this series.
Shocking, huh?
Granted, it's not going to become my new favorite book series or anything (sorry, Ilandere). But I'm actually getting quite invested in the action. And there are some characters that I really like (who are probably all going to die in hideous ways, but hey, for the time being they're greatly increasing the readability of the series). I'm not deeply annoyed by any irritating character trait or confusing plot development or narrative decision. Best of all, I finally feel like I know Tris, like I can understand the workings of her mind and predict her behavior to a certain extent.
Now, there are still aspects of the story that are miffing me, but then again most of the books and book series I've read have had miffing aspects, and I feel like my reaction to the miffing aspects has changed from the kind of blind frustration one feels toward a nonthreatening entity that is nonetheless completely failing to impart any benefit to a sensation more closely resembling disappointment that a promising and perhaps even slightly agreeable entity isn't living up to its full potential.
However, I feel that people have come to expect a certain amount of censure and critique from these posts.
So let's talk about Will.
WARNING: Major Spoilers
Will was a character in the first book. While his character suffered from a sort of underdevelopment common in the supporting characters in books that are primarily focused on action and the emotional turmoil of the narrator, he wasn't so two-dimensional that he was forgettable. He quickly became one of Tris's few friends, as well as the love interest of another of Tris's friends. He was nerdy, sometimes a tad goofy, friendly, charming...... well, you get the idea.
At the end of the book, a large group of people, including Will and the rest of Tris's friends, were put under a form of mind control Tris was able to resist due to her Divergence. Shortly afterward, Will, still under mind control, cornered Tris is an alley and held a gun on her, preparing to kill her.
So she killed him first.
In Tris's defense, she was exhausted, in pain, stressed, terrified, had just watched her mother die (have I mentioned what a cheery, happy, and uplifting series this is yet?), and had no time to think her decision through or come up with an alternative solution to her problem.
On the other hand, just a few pages later, Tris, in very similar mental and emotional circumstances, is threatened by her own love interest, who is also under mind control. And she chooses to drop her weapon and allow him to kill her so she doesn't have to shoot him (so it's really blang lucky for her that that somehow causes him to snap out of it).
I was annoyed. Not as annoyed as I was when Al's storyline abruptly concluded (see Divergent, Day 3), but annoyed.
The massive amounts of remorse and grief she expressed throughout the beginning of Insurgent made me feel slightly less annoyed, although I was still a bit peeved by the fact that for a long time she refused to tell anyone what had happened and just held everything inside.
But my two biggest issues with Insurgent (thus far) cropped up when she was finally forced to admit her transgression to her friends.
Issue One: I don't feel like she adequately explained the various pressures she was under at the time or the agony of guilt she'd been experiencing since. Really, I'm not super bothered by this (remember what I said about blind frustration giving way to mere disappointment) and I understand why she would be reluctant to discuss matters more than was absolutely necessary, but...... I guess I feel like Issue Two would've been less of an issue if she'd opened up a little more.
Issue Two: Now everybody's mad at her.
Again, I get why Will's love interest is upset and unforgiving. To a lesser extent, I get why Tris's love interest is upset and unforgiving (he's upset because Tris didn't confide in him earlier, so now he feels like she doesn't trust him).
That being said, so far neither of them has made any apparent effort to sympathize with Tris's reasons for shooting Will in the first place and then for not wanting to tell anyone about it.
To conclude, I no longer no what part of the Will subplot has bothered me the most: the part where Will died mostly needlessly, the part where Tris's love interest didn't die mostly needlessly, the part where Tris refused to tell anybody that she was suffering, the part where Tris did tell everybody but didn't tell them enough, or the part I'm currently in, where Tris's closest companions aren't speaking to her.
But like I've already said--- this isn't that much of a problem for me. I assume that before too much longer there will be hugging and extensive apologizing and possibly crying so that we can get beyond Will and on to grander and more tragic subplots. And actually I have very little right to complain, since the frostiness between Tris and her closest friends has led to her spending more time with some more likeable and interesting characters previously kept in the background.
So...... yeah. That's all for now.
It should be interesting to see if this lack of rampant angriness lasts.
~Pearl Clayton
Brace yourselves.
You might be shocked.
I know I am.
Are you ready?
Are you sure?
Okay.
*Clears throat*
*Glances at floor*
*Takes a deep breath*
*Whispers*, I think I'm starting to like this series.
Shocking, huh?
Granted, it's not going to become my new favorite book series or anything (sorry, Ilandere). But I'm actually getting quite invested in the action. And there are some characters that I really like (who are probably all going to die in hideous ways, but hey, for the time being they're greatly increasing the readability of the series). I'm not deeply annoyed by any irritating character trait or confusing plot development or narrative decision. Best of all, I finally feel like I know Tris, like I can understand the workings of her mind and predict her behavior to a certain extent.
Now, there are still aspects of the story that are miffing me, but then again most of the books and book series I've read have had miffing aspects, and I feel like my reaction to the miffing aspects has changed from the kind of blind frustration one feels toward a nonthreatening entity that is nonetheless completely failing to impart any benefit to a sensation more closely resembling disappointment that a promising and perhaps even slightly agreeable entity isn't living up to its full potential.
However, I feel that people have come to expect a certain amount of censure and critique from these posts.
So let's talk about Will.
WARNING: Major Spoilers
Will was a character in the first book. While his character suffered from a sort of underdevelopment common in the supporting characters in books that are primarily focused on action and the emotional turmoil of the narrator, he wasn't so two-dimensional that he was forgettable. He quickly became one of Tris's few friends, as well as the love interest of another of Tris's friends. He was nerdy, sometimes a tad goofy, friendly, charming...... well, you get the idea.
At the end of the book, a large group of people, including Will and the rest of Tris's friends, were put under a form of mind control Tris was able to resist due to her Divergence. Shortly afterward, Will, still under mind control, cornered Tris is an alley and held a gun on her, preparing to kill her.
So she killed him first.
In Tris's defense, she was exhausted, in pain, stressed, terrified, had just watched her mother die (have I mentioned what a cheery, happy, and uplifting series this is yet?), and had no time to think her decision through or come up with an alternative solution to her problem.
On the other hand, just a few pages later, Tris, in very similar mental and emotional circumstances, is threatened by her own love interest, who is also under mind control. And she chooses to drop her weapon and allow him to kill her so she doesn't have to shoot him (so it's really blang lucky for her that that somehow causes him to snap out of it).
I was annoyed. Not as annoyed as I was when Al's storyline abruptly concluded (see Divergent, Day 3), but annoyed.
The massive amounts of remorse and grief she expressed throughout the beginning of Insurgent made me feel slightly less annoyed, although I was still a bit peeved by the fact that for a long time she refused to tell anyone what had happened and just held everything inside.
But my two biggest issues with Insurgent (thus far) cropped up when she was finally forced to admit her transgression to her friends.
Issue One: I don't feel like she adequately explained the various pressures she was under at the time or the agony of guilt she'd been experiencing since. Really, I'm not super bothered by this (remember what I said about blind frustration giving way to mere disappointment) and I understand why she would be reluctant to discuss matters more than was absolutely necessary, but...... I guess I feel like Issue Two would've been less of an issue if she'd opened up a little more.
Issue Two: Now everybody's mad at her.
Again, I get why Will's love interest is upset and unforgiving. To a lesser extent, I get why Tris's love interest is upset and unforgiving (he's upset because Tris didn't confide in him earlier, so now he feels like she doesn't trust him).
That being said, so far neither of them has made any apparent effort to sympathize with Tris's reasons for shooting Will in the first place and then for not wanting to tell anyone about it.
To conclude, I no longer no what part of the Will subplot has bothered me the most: the part where Will died mostly needlessly, the part where Tris's love interest didn't die mostly needlessly, the part where Tris refused to tell anybody that she was suffering, the part where Tris did tell everybody but didn't tell them enough, or the part I'm currently in, where Tris's closest companions aren't speaking to her.
But like I've already said--- this isn't that much of a problem for me. I assume that before too much longer there will be hugging and extensive apologizing and possibly crying so that we can get beyond Will and on to grander and more tragic subplots. And actually I have very little right to complain, since the frostiness between Tris and her closest friends has led to her spending more time with some more likeable and interesting characters previously kept in the background.
So...... yeah. That's all for now.
It should be interesting to see if this lack of rampant angriness lasts.
~Pearl Clayton
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Insurgent, Day 1
I'm baaaaaack!
So, I don't know if anyone deduced this from reading my Divergent commentaries, but for each of my demographic-conscious summer reading explorations I've scheduled my reading so that I read larger sections of book each day. The first day of reading I read for one hour, the second day I read for two hours, etc. I could outline some good, compelling reasons for structuring the reading like this, or I could just be honest and say I'm highly analytical and eccentric and tend to assign myself a ridiculous reading schedule every time I read a book (although for some reason I only use the hours-by-day system for these summer reading projects).
The point I'm trying to make is that I never get very far the day I start a new book, so today I have nothing to gripe about. Instead, please enjoy my somewhat quirky observations.
First: When I picked up the book from the library yesterday, my initial thorough examination of it included glancing at the back cover. Because the copy I got is a hardback with a dust jacket, the brief summary is on the inside front cover rather than on the back. Instead, the back says only this, in big bold all-caps lettering:
"One choice. A choice becomes a sacrifice. A sacrifice becomes a loss. A loss becomes a burden. A burden becomes a battle. One choice can destroy you."
And I know my first thought should've been something like, "Wow, man, that's intense."
Instead, it was, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate (dramatic pause) leads to suffering."
Star Wars. It is everywhere. You cannot escape.
Second: Another neat Hunger Games parallel popped up. Namely, both Divergent and The Hunger Games feature a character named Johanna who is introduced in the second book. The characters are vastly different (at least they seem to be; I haven't seen much of Divergent's Johanna yet), so I doubt it was intentional. It's just a bit amusing.
Third: Recently I read a book series called Across the Universe, yet another addition to the ever-widening pool of dystopian romance trilogies featuring first-person present-tense narration and written primarily for teenage girls (although, in its defense, the similarities to The Hunger Games and Divergent end there; the dystopian society unravels at the end of book one and the second and third books deal with entirely different concepts) (interestingly though, the series takes place in space and has a redheaded protagonist named Amy, and thus seems to be paying awkward amounts of homage to another popular franchise). I didn't like the series, in case anyone's wondering, and after I'm done with Divergent I intend to never dip into that particular pool again. Anyway, one of the aspects of the dystopian society present in the first book is the extreme passivity of the citizens in the society. It is ultimately revealed that the passivity is induced by a drug pumped into the water supply.
Now, among the many extras at the end of the copy of Divergent that I had was a short essay by Veronica Roth discussing the idea of utopian fiction. In it she concludes that utopian fiction wouldn't work because everybody's vision of perfection is different. She says that the dystopian society in Divergent really began in her mind as her vision of a utopian society. She then says that someone else's vision of a utopian society might be, and I'm going to misquote her because I don't have the book anymore but I'll try to get close, "somewhere where everybody gets happy drugs through the water supply".
And I immediately thought to myself, "I bet she's read Across the Universe".
The reason that I bring it up now is that Roth has now introduced the concept into her own book. Members of Amity, the peaceful faction, receive small doses of a calming drug through their bread to make them even less prone to conflict than they are naturally. So now I think there are two possibilities. One, Veronica Roth read Across the Universe and thought that a passion-soothing drug was such a gloriously creepy dystopian idea she decided to rework the concept slightly and add it to her own story, or Two, Veronica Roth has never heard of Across the Universe and the mention of "happy drugs" in her essay was referring to her future plans for her own series.
Either way, I think it's apparent that the writers of dystopian romance trilogies intended for teenage girls are starting to run out of original ideas.
In much the same way that I've run out of things to comment on.
But I should have shiny new observations to share come tomorrow.
Goodbye for now.
~Pearl Clayton
So, I don't know if anyone deduced this from reading my Divergent commentaries, but for each of my demographic-conscious summer reading explorations I've scheduled my reading so that I read larger sections of book each day. The first day of reading I read for one hour, the second day I read for two hours, etc. I could outline some good, compelling reasons for structuring the reading like this, or I could just be honest and say I'm highly analytical and eccentric and tend to assign myself a ridiculous reading schedule every time I read a book (although for some reason I only use the hours-by-day system for these summer reading projects).
The point I'm trying to make is that I never get very far the day I start a new book, so today I have nothing to gripe about. Instead, please enjoy my somewhat quirky observations.
First: When I picked up the book from the library yesterday, my initial thorough examination of it included glancing at the back cover. Because the copy I got is a hardback with a dust jacket, the brief summary is on the inside front cover rather than on the back. Instead, the back says only this, in big bold all-caps lettering:
"One choice. A choice becomes a sacrifice. A sacrifice becomes a loss. A loss becomes a burden. A burden becomes a battle. One choice can destroy you."
And I know my first thought should've been something like, "Wow, man, that's intense."
Instead, it was, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate (dramatic pause) leads to suffering."
Star Wars. It is everywhere. You cannot escape.
Second: Another neat Hunger Games parallel popped up. Namely, both Divergent and The Hunger Games feature a character named Johanna who is introduced in the second book. The characters are vastly different (at least they seem to be; I haven't seen much of Divergent's Johanna yet), so I doubt it was intentional. It's just a bit amusing.
Third: Recently I read a book series called Across the Universe, yet another addition to the ever-widening pool of dystopian romance trilogies featuring first-person present-tense narration and written primarily for teenage girls (although, in its defense, the similarities to The Hunger Games and Divergent end there; the dystopian society unravels at the end of book one and the second and third books deal with entirely different concepts) (interestingly though, the series takes place in space and has a redheaded protagonist named Amy, and thus seems to be paying awkward amounts of homage to another popular franchise). I didn't like the series, in case anyone's wondering, and after I'm done with Divergent I intend to never dip into that particular pool again. Anyway, one of the aspects of the dystopian society present in the first book is the extreme passivity of the citizens in the society. It is ultimately revealed that the passivity is induced by a drug pumped into the water supply.
Now, among the many extras at the end of the copy of Divergent that I had was a short essay by Veronica Roth discussing the idea of utopian fiction. In it she concludes that utopian fiction wouldn't work because everybody's vision of perfection is different. She says that the dystopian society in Divergent really began in her mind as her vision of a utopian society. She then says that someone else's vision of a utopian society might be, and I'm going to misquote her because I don't have the book anymore but I'll try to get close, "somewhere where everybody gets happy drugs through the water supply".
And I immediately thought to myself, "I bet she's read Across the Universe".
The reason that I bring it up now is that Roth has now introduced the concept into her own book. Members of Amity, the peaceful faction, receive small doses of a calming drug through their bread to make them even less prone to conflict than they are naturally. So now I think there are two possibilities. One, Veronica Roth read Across the Universe and thought that a passion-soothing drug was such a gloriously creepy dystopian idea she decided to rework the concept slightly and add it to her own story, or Two, Veronica Roth has never heard of Across the Universe and the mention of "happy drugs" in her essay was referring to her future plans for her own series.
Either way, I think it's apparent that the writers of dystopian romance trilogies intended for teenage girls are starting to run out of original ideas.
In much the same way that I've run out of things to comment on.
But I should have shiny new observations to share come tomorrow.
Goodbye for now.
~Pearl Clayton
Friday, June 6, 2014
Divergent, Day 4
*Long exhale* *Deep breath*
Ahem.
I remember back when I was reading Twilight, how the first two thirds or so of the first book were completely dominated by romance drama ("I'm a vampire" "I don't care, I love you forever anyway" "You shouldn't, Bella" "But Edward!" "Okay, fine, come play baseball with my family", etc.) and then, out of nowhere, suddenly there were evil vampires and the book was trying desperately to be an suspenseful action story complete with a vampire getting ripped limb-from-limb and Bella being in "danger" and stuff.
Divergent is in no way guilty of the same desperate shoehorning-in of plot. Nay, there were hints and nudges and red flags from the first page that clearly indicated that something big was brewing that was going to boil over before the end. It was just completely unclear what was brewing. Basically, I got within a hundred pages of the book's end, and I knew that something was going to happen, but I had barely any idea what that something was going to be. In short, I could surmise that, in a way just the slightest bit similar to Twilight, 400 or so pages of comparatively little action (although, you know, in Twilight it's 400 pages of overblown schmaltzy romance weirdness and in Divergent it's 400 pages of hardcore strength-and-resilience training with only brief interludes of schmaltzy romance) were about to be followed by 100 pages or so of nonstop action, suspense, and shocking twists (although I figured that, unlike in Twilight, the action would actually be nonstop, the suspense might actually be suspenseful, and the twists could actually be shocking).
I'll admit I was a bit reluctant to read those last 100 pages (which is why this post is so late).
And I think I had a right to be.
I finished the book several hours ago, but I didn't want to write right away because I was feeling a tad overwhelmed by the events of the final chapters. Not overwhelmed by the darkness, mind you; I read The Book Thief and was (mostly) okay, I can handle a bit of fictional dystopian violence. Rather I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of things that happened, both expected and unexpected. So much was crammed into those last 100 pages that I'm having trouble deciding what my overall opinion of the book is.
So I've decided not to decide. I'm withholding any kind of final verdict about the series until the very end.
It'll be a few days before the Insurgent reviews start showing up because, for some bizarre reason, when I placed my holds I was hold 8 on Divergent, hold 3 on Allegiant...... and hold 27 on Insurgent. I have no idea why the second book is so wildly popular at the moment, but it still hasn't come in yet. It's actually kind of nice, because this way I have a few days to let the ending of Divergent really sink in, and also to catch up on some of my other reading.
So...... see you sometime.
~Pearl Clayton
PS. Aloisa - I share your sentiments concerning Will.
Ahem.
I remember back when I was reading Twilight, how the first two thirds or so of the first book were completely dominated by romance drama ("I'm a vampire" "I don't care, I love you forever anyway" "You shouldn't, Bella" "But Edward!" "Okay, fine, come play baseball with my family", etc.) and then, out of nowhere, suddenly there were evil vampires and the book was trying desperately to be an suspenseful action story complete with a vampire getting ripped limb-from-limb and Bella being in "danger" and stuff.
Divergent is in no way guilty of the same desperate shoehorning-in of plot. Nay, there were hints and nudges and red flags from the first page that clearly indicated that something big was brewing that was going to boil over before the end. It was just completely unclear what was brewing. Basically, I got within a hundred pages of the book's end, and I knew that something was going to happen, but I had barely any idea what that something was going to be. In short, I could surmise that, in a way just the slightest bit similar to Twilight, 400 or so pages of comparatively little action (although, you know, in Twilight it's 400 pages of overblown schmaltzy romance weirdness and in Divergent it's 400 pages of hardcore strength-and-resilience training with only brief interludes of schmaltzy romance) were about to be followed by 100 pages or so of nonstop action, suspense, and shocking twists (although I figured that, unlike in Twilight, the action would actually be nonstop, the suspense might actually be suspenseful, and the twists could actually be shocking).
I'll admit I was a bit reluctant to read those last 100 pages (which is why this post is so late).
And I think I had a right to be.
I finished the book several hours ago, but I didn't want to write right away because I was feeling a tad overwhelmed by the events of the final chapters. Not overwhelmed by the darkness, mind you; I read The Book Thief and was (mostly) okay, I can handle a bit of fictional dystopian violence. Rather I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of things that happened, both expected and unexpected. So much was crammed into those last 100 pages that I'm having trouble deciding what my overall opinion of the book is.
So I've decided not to decide. I'm withholding any kind of final verdict about the series until the very end.
It'll be a few days before the Insurgent reviews start showing up because, for some bizarre reason, when I placed my holds I was hold 8 on Divergent, hold 3 on Allegiant...... and hold 27 on Insurgent. I have no idea why the second book is so wildly popular at the moment, but it still hasn't come in yet. It's actually kind of nice, because this way I have a few days to let the ending of Divergent really sink in, and also to catch up on some of my other reading.
So...... see you sometime.
~Pearl Clayton
PS. Aloisa - I share your sentiments concerning Will.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Divergent, Day 3
I am a little over 350 pages in, and I am just now beginning to approach the book's climax. The romance between our intrepid heroine and the tormented Edward Rochester wannabe has officially commenced, conspiracy and distrust lurk behind every corner, the Factions are weaving webs of lies, and it's clear that the clouds will be bursting soon, raining destruction on our characters' heads and probably forcing them into new lives of chaos and insurgency.
But I'll talk about all of that tomorrow, after finishing the book.
Today I'm going to vent my feelings concerning a problem which is really impeding my enjoyment of the book.
I feel like I don't know anybody.
Alright, that's not quite true. I do feel like I know some characters, like some of Tris's closest friends and most hated enemies. But Tris? Tris is a mystery to me. I feel like many of her actions and her reactions are unpredictable and unexplained. One moment she's angry, fearless, determined, the next she's frightened and unsure. Her narration suddenly expresses feelings and opinions out of nowhere, with no preamble and no apparent hint that she has these sensations earlier in the story. She often mentions how much she's changing, talking about she used to be more compassionate or timid or thoughtful, but I never saw her behaving or thinking in the way(s) she describes, so I have only her word for it. And she does that with other characters too, mentioning traits of theirs or expectations she has of them that I feel I've never actually seen evidence of. And once or twice she's used about a paragraph to describe a traumatic experience that would theoretically have provided me with a better understanding of her motives and a few much-needed insights into her personality- if, you know, she'd spent more than a paragraph on them!
I'm not sure how much sense I'm making, but I don't really know how to express this frustration more clearly. I just feel like there's little that's distinctly unique about anyone, and what traits are distinctly unique have a tendency to confusingly change. An anxious, unsure, kind, nonviolent character I really liked unexpectedly turned vicious; Rochester (whose name is actually Four) (sort of) can't seem to decide whether he's gruff, taunting, prickly, and rather off-putting, or tender and affectionate and really into physical touch (although I guess he seesaws like that in Jane Eyre and Twilight, too, so I really shouldn't be all that surprised; I just feel like Four switches more frequently than either Edward or Edward).
I just- I just- ugh, I just don't know anyone!
Now, admittedly, this issue could be entirely my fault. As I've said before, I'm unused to reading books like this, so it's possible I'm missing clues and hints to people's natures. And the more I think I about it, the less random it all seems. The one character's uncertainty and lack of confidence foreshadowed his descent into cruel madness; Four feels threatened by those around him, and so he tends to project a gruffer, less approachable demeanor when he's with others than when he's alone with Tris. And as for my confusion concerning Tris's character...... well, like I indicated yesterday, I don't really relate to Tris. At all. And maybe if I did, what appear to me as baffling mood swings and personality changes would instead appear perfectly natural.
*Sigh* I'm- I'm kind of struggling with this book (and everyone said, "Thanks, Captain Obvious!"). I don't even really have a problem with the story. In fact, I rather like the story so far. The concepts are interesting and the conspiracy undertones appear to be heading in a direction different from the most common dystopia clichés that I get so annoyed by. I don't dislike Four, and I don't think I dislike Tris, despite her ability to provide me with two days of ranting material.
Come back tomorrow. I feel like after finishing the book I should be able to better express my current feelings toward the series.
But there's just one more thing I have to address today. I considered omitting it, since I'll only be able to use very vague terms because spoilers, and so it's likely that the following section won't make any sense to anyone who hasn't read Divergent. But by gourds, I need to express my feelings on a certain matter!
There is a character in Divergent named Al. Al became one of my favorite characters dangerously quickly, because Veronica Roth's description of him makes it sound like he looked a lot like a friend of mine, and of course once that idea entered my head it wouldn't leave, and pretty soon I found that I could easily imagine that friend doing a number of the things Al did. I've actually considered writing about Al, and about Tris's opinion of Al, before, but on both of my previous days of writing I couldn't decide exactly what I wanted to say, and besides, I had more important things to gripe about.
I'm now glad I waited. Remember how earlier I was talking about that one likable, kind character who unexpectedly joined the Dark Side?
Care to guess which one it was?
Oh, don't worry, I'm not upset. I don't mind that Veronica Roth seems to be implying that trying to be gentle and protective in a violent environment will inevitably lead to one's downfall. I don't even mind that Al's destruction was almost wholly Tris's fault. Rather I'm happy, since the developments I read today have enabled me to sum up my feelings about Al, his character arc, and his overall role in the story in a single statement:
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Takes deep breath)
I feel better now.
Until next time!
~Pearl Clayton
But I'll talk about all of that tomorrow, after finishing the book.
Today I'm going to vent my feelings concerning a problem which is really impeding my enjoyment of the book.
I feel like I don't know anybody.
Alright, that's not quite true. I do feel like I know some characters, like some of Tris's closest friends and most hated enemies. But Tris? Tris is a mystery to me. I feel like many of her actions and her reactions are unpredictable and unexplained. One moment she's angry, fearless, determined, the next she's frightened and unsure. Her narration suddenly expresses feelings and opinions out of nowhere, with no preamble and no apparent hint that she has these sensations earlier in the story. She often mentions how much she's changing, talking about she used to be more compassionate or timid or thoughtful, but I never saw her behaving or thinking in the way(s) she describes, so I have only her word for it. And she does that with other characters too, mentioning traits of theirs or expectations she has of them that I feel I've never actually seen evidence of. And once or twice she's used about a paragraph to describe a traumatic experience that would theoretically have provided me with a better understanding of her motives and a few much-needed insights into her personality- if, you know, she'd spent more than a paragraph on them!
I'm not sure how much sense I'm making, but I don't really know how to express this frustration more clearly. I just feel like there's little that's distinctly unique about anyone, and what traits are distinctly unique have a tendency to confusingly change. An anxious, unsure, kind, nonviolent character I really liked unexpectedly turned vicious; Rochester (whose name is actually Four) (sort of) can't seem to decide whether he's gruff, taunting, prickly, and rather off-putting, or tender and affectionate and really into physical touch (although I guess he seesaws like that in Jane Eyre and Twilight, too, so I really shouldn't be all that surprised; I just feel like Four switches more frequently than either Edward or Edward).
I just- I just- ugh, I just don't know anyone!
Now, admittedly, this issue could be entirely my fault. As I've said before, I'm unused to reading books like this, so it's possible I'm missing clues and hints to people's natures. And the more I think I about it, the less random it all seems. The one character's uncertainty and lack of confidence foreshadowed his descent into cruel madness; Four feels threatened by those around him, and so he tends to project a gruffer, less approachable demeanor when he's with others than when he's alone with Tris. And as for my confusion concerning Tris's character...... well, like I indicated yesterday, I don't really relate to Tris. At all. And maybe if I did, what appear to me as baffling mood swings and personality changes would instead appear perfectly natural.
*Sigh* I'm- I'm kind of struggling with this book (and everyone said, "Thanks, Captain Obvious!"). I don't even really have a problem with the story. In fact, I rather like the story so far. The concepts are interesting and the conspiracy undertones appear to be heading in a direction different from the most common dystopia clichés that I get so annoyed by. I don't dislike Four, and I don't think I dislike Tris, despite her ability to provide me with two days of ranting material.
Come back tomorrow. I feel like after finishing the book I should be able to better express my current feelings toward the series.
But there's just one more thing I have to address today. I considered omitting it, since I'll only be able to use very vague terms because spoilers, and so it's likely that the following section won't make any sense to anyone who hasn't read Divergent. But by gourds, I need to express my feelings on a certain matter!
There is a character in Divergent named Al. Al became one of my favorite characters dangerously quickly, because Veronica Roth's description of him makes it sound like he looked a lot like a friend of mine, and of course once that idea entered my head it wouldn't leave, and pretty soon I found that I could easily imagine that friend doing a number of the things Al did. I've actually considered writing about Al, and about Tris's opinion of Al, before, but on both of my previous days of writing I couldn't decide exactly what I wanted to say, and besides, I had more important things to gripe about.
I'm now glad I waited. Remember how earlier I was talking about that one likable, kind character who unexpectedly joined the Dark Side?
Care to guess which one it was?
Oh, don't worry, I'm not upset. I don't mind that Veronica Roth seems to be implying that trying to be gentle and protective in a violent environment will inevitably lead to one's downfall. I don't even mind that Al's destruction was almost wholly Tris's fault. Rather I'm happy, since the developments I read today have enabled me to sum up my feelings about Al, his character arc, and his overall role in the story in a single statement:
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Takes deep breath)
I feel better now.
Until next time!
~Pearl Clayton
Monday, June 2, 2014
Divergent, Day 2
I have been most dreadfully spoiled.
I don't often read books like Divergent. I think I made that reasonably clear yesterday and in my 16 Book Recommendations post. Generally, I read book series like the ones I mention in that post: Charlie Bone, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, The Mysterious Benedict Society, the Tiffany Aching books, etc. With the exceptions of my popular summertime readings, my only real forays into the world of teen literature have been Tiffany Aching, The Book Thief (which I liked, but not enough to add to my written list of favorite books) and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (another book I didn't end up adding to my list despite seriously considering it).
What I'm saying is that I've gotten very used to a certain kind of heroine.
I've gotten used to the likes of Olivia Vertigo, who dresses flamboyantly because she knows she's fabulous (unless of course she's sneaking into the home of an evil enchanter to steal his most prized possession and therefore must try to be inconspicuous). Or Alex Morningside, the ten-year-old friend of pirates and octopuses and temporary professional mind reader. Or Kate Weatherall, who is strong and exuberant and fearless and has a pet falcon. Or Tiffany, wordsmith, vanquisher of monsters, and hag o' the hills. These heroines, along with the book thief and at least a few of the peculiar girls, fit the same basic archetype; smart, confident, and generally both sweet and snarky, depending on the character and the situation.
I've discovered that this is not the kind of heroine typically found in those stories most popular among girls my age.
Evidently, my peers tend to prefer heroines like Tris and, because I consider the comparison rather unavoidable, Katniss.
I'm approaching the halfway point in Divergent now, and I've assembled a sort of list of traits that I think both Tris and Katniss have which, if my memory serves me correctly, the heroines I listed above, do not. They include:
- Low self-confidence
- A strong belief that they are undeserving of admiration
- A continued belief in their lack of likability or defining characteristics despite strong evidence that they possess both
- Less-than-ideal analytical thinking skills
Really, these four are all interconnected. Katniss and Tris think that they're unattractive, unremarkable, and disliked. They then proceed to fail to notice when anyone begins to admire, respect, or trust them, because they misinterpret and misanalyse the attention and cryptic comments they receive. Then there's the fact that even after Katniss becomes the Girl on Fire and Tris is told she's Divergent, they're both still all, "Oh, well, I'm nothing special, or at the very least everything special about me is disadvantageous and will make people hate me."
(Maybe I should explain what these things mean before I go further. Spoiler alert, but Katniss wins the first Hunger Games she participates in, after which people start calling her either the Girl on Fire or the Mockingjay. Tris belongs to a society in which people are sorted into different factions based on their primary character traits. Generally they're told they belong in only one faction, but Tris is compatible with three, forcing her to choose which one she wants. Her tri-compatibility is called Divergence.)
Now, before everybody jumps on me (and yes, I'm looking at you, Ilandere), I get that being the Girl on Fire and being Divergent are not presented as things to be proud of. Rather they're endangerments, differences that cause these girls to become marked as outcasts and hunted.
And yet......
Naturally I have no real idea of what my response to a situation like Tris's or Katniss's would be. All I know is that, sitting here comfortably in my chair in my not-really-dystopian society, if somebody told me, "You could belong to any of three factions, now don't ever tell anyone because it's extremely dangerous," I think I'd be like, "Do you mean dangerous for me or dangerous for everybody else? Because I've got triple the power, and so I think they'd better be watching their you-know-whats!"
I just feel like if Tris thought it through, she could come to the conclusion that Divergence could prove to be a useful attribute, especially if she's in a life-threatening situation and therefore needs to be both very brave and very intelligent instead of one or the other. Divergence means unpredictability and adaptability, both of which are invaluable if you're locked in a mindgame with someone.
Instead, Tris's reaction is more along the lines of, "No! What do you mean I have a complex character structure and can't be marginalized and pigeonholed? Is there something wrong with me?"
And with Katniss, obviously she's powerful, obviously she's skilled, obviously she's capable of survival, obviously she's terrifying. We know, because she won the Hunger Games! But every time she's asked to do something, she's fearful and mistrustful and reluctant because despite her proven superiority she has absolutely no self-confidence.
So I think my question is: why?
Why does the teenage female demographic evidently prefer this self-doubting, overly cautious breed of heroine to, say, Olivia Vertigo, who, upon discovering that she possesses a strange and potentially dangerous talent, flaunts it and loves it and uses it as a weapon against her antagonists? Or Tiffany Aching, who boldly and mostly unflinchingly faces off against massively powerful magical entities every book? Is it because teenage girls stereotypically have no self-confidence? And if that's the case, wouldn't it theoretically be better to create confident, assertive, and discerning female characters to act as role models rather than these unsure, self-deprecating caricatures created in an apparent attempt to be relatable?
Just to clarify, I'm not saying heroines should be incautious or brashly self-assured or unfeminine. I'm merely saying that it couldn't hurt to temper the hesitancy with a little more oomph.
And note (hi again, Ilandere) that I don't think Tris and Katniss are necessarily poorly written or weak characters. More than anything else I'm just jarred by how different they are from the heroines of the books I would normally choose to read.
Come back tomorrow for more nitpicking!
~Pearl Clayton
I don't often read books like Divergent. I think I made that reasonably clear yesterday and in my 16 Book Recommendations post. Generally, I read book series like the ones I mention in that post: Charlie Bone, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, The Mysterious Benedict Society, the Tiffany Aching books, etc. With the exceptions of my popular summertime readings, my only real forays into the world of teen literature have been Tiffany Aching, The Book Thief (which I liked, but not enough to add to my written list of favorite books) and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (another book I didn't end up adding to my list despite seriously considering it).
What I'm saying is that I've gotten very used to a certain kind of heroine.
I've gotten used to the likes of Olivia Vertigo, who dresses flamboyantly because she knows she's fabulous (unless of course she's sneaking into the home of an evil enchanter to steal his most prized possession and therefore must try to be inconspicuous). Or Alex Morningside, the ten-year-old friend of pirates and octopuses and temporary professional mind reader. Or Kate Weatherall, who is strong and exuberant and fearless and has a pet falcon. Or Tiffany, wordsmith, vanquisher of monsters, and hag o' the hills. These heroines, along with the book thief and at least a few of the peculiar girls, fit the same basic archetype; smart, confident, and generally both sweet and snarky, depending on the character and the situation.
I've discovered that this is not the kind of heroine typically found in those stories most popular among girls my age.
Evidently, my peers tend to prefer heroines like Tris and, because I consider the comparison rather unavoidable, Katniss.
I'm approaching the halfway point in Divergent now, and I've assembled a sort of list of traits that I think both Tris and Katniss have which, if my memory serves me correctly, the heroines I listed above, do not. They include:
- Low self-confidence
- A strong belief that they are undeserving of admiration
- A continued belief in their lack of likability or defining characteristics despite strong evidence that they possess both
- Less-than-ideal analytical thinking skills
Really, these four are all interconnected. Katniss and Tris think that they're unattractive, unremarkable, and disliked. They then proceed to fail to notice when anyone begins to admire, respect, or trust them, because they misinterpret and misanalyse the attention and cryptic comments they receive. Then there's the fact that even after Katniss becomes the Girl on Fire and Tris is told she's Divergent, they're both still all, "Oh, well, I'm nothing special, or at the very least everything special about me is disadvantageous and will make people hate me."
(Maybe I should explain what these things mean before I go further. Spoiler alert, but Katniss wins the first Hunger Games she participates in, after which people start calling her either the Girl on Fire or the Mockingjay. Tris belongs to a society in which people are sorted into different factions based on their primary character traits. Generally they're told they belong in only one faction, but Tris is compatible with three, forcing her to choose which one she wants. Her tri-compatibility is called Divergence.)
Now, before everybody jumps on me (and yes, I'm looking at you, Ilandere), I get that being the Girl on Fire and being Divergent are not presented as things to be proud of. Rather they're endangerments, differences that cause these girls to become marked as outcasts and hunted.
And yet......
Naturally I have no real idea of what my response to a situation like Tris's or Katniss's would be. All I know is that, sitting here comfortably in my chair in my not-really-dystopian society, if somebody told me, "You could belong to any of three factions, now don't ever tell anyone because it's extremely dangerous," I think I'd be like, "Do you mean dangerous for me or dangerous for everybody else? Because I've got triple the power, and so I think they'd better be watching their you-know-whats!"
I just feel like if Tris thought it through, she could come to the conclusion that Divergence could prove to be a useful attribute, especially if she's in a life-threatening situation and therefore needs to be both very brave and very intelligent instead of one or the other. Divergence means unpredictability and adaptability, both of which are invaluable if you're locked in a mindgame with someone.
Instead, Tris's reaction is more along the lines of, "No! What do you mean I have a complex character structure and can't be marginalized and pigeonholed? Is there something wrong with me?"
And with Katniss, obviously she's powerful, obviously she's skilled, obviously she's capable of survival, obviously she's terrifying. We know, because she won the Hunger Games! But every time she's asked to do something, she's fearful and mistrustful and reluctant because despite her proven superiority she has absolutely no self-confidence.
So I think my question is: why?
Why does the teenage female demographic evidently prefer this self-doubting, overly cautious breed of heroine to, say, Olivia Vertigo, who, upon discovering that she possesses a strange and potentially dangerous talent, flaunts it and loves it and uses it as a weapon against her antagonists? Or Tiffany Aching, who boldly and mostly unflinchingly faces off against massively powerful magical entities every book? Is it because teenage girls stereotypically have no self-confidence? And if that's the case, wouldn't it theoretically be better to create confident, assertive, and discerning female characters to act as role models rather than these unsure, self-deprecating caricatures created in an apparent attempt to be relatable?
Just to clarify, I'm not saying heroines should be incautious or brashly self-assured or unfeminine. I'm merely saying that it couldn't hurt to temper the hesitancy with a little more oomph.
And note (hi again, Ilandere) that I don't think Tris and Katniss are necessarily poorly written or weak characters. More than anything else I'm just jarred by how different they are from the heroines of the books I would normally choose to read.
Come back tomorrow for more nitpicking!
~Pearl Clayton
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Divergent, Day 1
Let's begin with the explanatory paragraph I was intending to post yesterday but didn't end up posting because of laziness and heat-induced apathy.
For the past two years, I have been spending sections of my summers endeavoring to gain, at the very least, an understanding of the passions and obsessions of my age and gender demographics. Non-pompous translation: I've read popular book series. Two summers ago I read Twilight. Last summer I read The Hunger Games. In addition, both to enhance my experience of the books and to potentially provide entertainment and/or recommendations and/or warnings to my friends and family members, I have posted daily reviews of the books, sharing my thoughts on what I read each day and explaining in the vaguest, least spoiler-y terms I could why I liked or disliked what was going on in each book. Previously I just posted my commentaries on Facebook, but this year I figured, Hey, I've got a blog now, and golly, it's dedicated to fiction. Say, I might as well post my reviews there!
So that's what I'm doing. This summer, as is evidenced in the title of this post, I'm reading Divergent by Veronica Roth.
On to the review.
I'm not very far in it yet, so thus far I don't have much to say about the book itself. The only thing I can really think to say is that the beginning feels very Hunger Games-y, in places almost awkwardly so. Katniss sells food at the Hob; Tris visits the Hub. Katniss is Reaped; Tris Chooses. Katniss's Reaping takes her away from her family and plunges her into a dangerous new reality, as does Tris's Choice. Both books are narrated in present-tense first-person style by a sixteen-year-old female narrator who lacks self esteem, has one sibling, and lives in a strictly regulated, tenuously peaceful postwar society modern Americans would likely classify as "dystopian". Both books feature a scene in which the female narrator's thin, blond mother arranges her daughter's hair.
Yikes.
I know people who like this series, so I'm going to be making more of an effort toward diplomatic reviewing this summer than I did with The Hunger Games and Twilight. So I can acknowledge that both series have plenty of original content. For example, Tris's world is much less restrictive, cruel, and dangerous than Katniss's (for now, anyway) and thus far I have encountered no indication, either in the book itself or on the Internet, that Divergent features a love triangle (my fingers are tightly crossed). But still...... I felt slightly uncomfortable with some of the similarities today.
Slightly.
Otherwise, I have yet to formulate any real opinions for the book yet.
Instead, I'm going to gripe about the author.
The copy of Divergent that I obtained from the library today contains a really long "bonus" section at the book. I discovered it while indulging in my sometimes dangerous habit of flipping to a book's last page to see how many pages there are. This habit is dangerous because it can result in the accidental learning of spoilers. Or it can result in accidentally becoming annoyed with the author.
The bonus section includes "Q&A with Veronica Roth", "Quotations that Inspired Divergent", "Veronica Roth's Divergent Playlist", "Writing Tips from Veronica Roth", "Discussion Questions", "Veronica Roth Talks about Utopian Worlds", "Faction Naming with Veronica Roth", "Faction Quiz", "Faction Quiz Results", "Faction Manifestos", and "Sneak Peek of Insurgent". Following this table of contents are some 45 pages of pretension and condescension, featuring lovely quotes from Veronica Roth (who, judging by the Table of Contents, seems to really enjoy seeing her name in print) like,
"The stuff in your manuscript that you love best is probably the stuff that needs to go - and you have to be willing to get rid of it."
and
"I have been asked in the past if I made up the words for the faction names. I didn't, but I did intentionally choose unfamiliar words, for an assortment of reasons. One of them is that I wanted to slow down comprehension of what each faction stands for, so you learn as much by observing as by the name of the faction itself."
I will freely confess that I am a touchy, controlling hoarder who is viciously protective of my writing and is somewhat easily offended. Thus my hackles rose as soon as I started reading "Writing Tips from Veronica Roth" (from which the first quote is taken) because I am SICK, sick sicketty sick, of all writers telling you that you need to tear the first draft of anything you write to shreds and throw it away. I have heard it over and over and I think it's STUPID for various reasons that I'll maybe go into another time. The point I'm trying to make right now is that, while I'm sure Veronica Roth didn't mean this, I was miffed, and in my miffed state I interpreted the first quote as, "Don't write a story you will love. Write a story other people will love because your minority ideas are silly and your goal is to become a bestselling author whose work is eerily similar to that of other bestselling authors."
Moving on to the second quote and getting back to the easily offended thing, DID YOU JUST SAY YOU EXPECT YOUR BOOKS TO BE READ BY IDIOTS?????? I'm fairly positive that I have encountered at least three of the five faction names (which are Amity, Candor, Erudite, Dauntless, and Abnegation) reading other books over the years. And if I didn't already know what the words meant, I would have looked them up, because those don't sound like made-up words. But luckily I wouldn't have had to, Veronica Roth includes her favorite definition of each word in the bonus section, along with one-paragraph-long segments explaining her reasons for choosing each word as a Faction name for the convenience of all the fans of hers who don't know how to use dictionaries. She also mentions how much she loves it when people notice that the Faction names are different parts of speech (three nouns, two adjectives), almost like she wasn't expecting OCD grammarians to notice it immediately and start uncontrollably twitching.
And the whole "slow down comprehension" phrase is just the icing on the Cake of Annoyance for me. If I used rare, marginally archaic words as significant descriptors in something I wrote, it would be to enable all my fellow Tiffany Achings to have major nerd spasms and to say things like, "I know what that word means and used in this context it's like the bestest inside nerd joke EVER!", not to force them to decipher context clues in order to understand the traits of the various factions.
*Deep breath* I want to like this book series. I do. I still might. I'm only 60 pages in to the first book. That leaves what, at least 1440 pages? That's plenty of time for the awkward HG similarities to fade and for me to forgive Veronica Roth for coming across as a bit high-and-mighty. Really, it's not fair of me to begrudge her that, because I know that if I ever got a book published I would probably seem at least as pretentious to my non-fans.
Also, all the rest of these should be a lot shorter, now that I'm done whining about the authoress and will be focusing on just the books.
Until tomorrow.
~Pearl Clayton
For the past two years, I have been spending sections of my summers endeavoring to gain, at the very least, an understanding of the passions and obsessions of my age and gender demographics. Non-pompous translation: I've read popular book series. Two summers ago I read Twilight. Last summer I read The Hunger Games. In addition, both to enhance my experience of the books and to potentially provide entertainment and/or recommendations and/or warnings to my friends and family members, I have posted daily reviews of the books, sharing my thoughts on what I read each day and explaining in the vaguest, least spoiler-y terms I could why I liked or disliked what was going on in each book. Previously I just posted my commentaries on Facebook, but this year I figured, Hey, I've got a blog now, and golly, it's dedicated to fiction. Say, I might as well post my reviews there!
So that's what I'm doing. This summer, as is evidenced in the title of this post, I'm reading Divergent by Veronica Roth.
On to the review.
I'm not very far in it yet, so thus far I don't have much to say about the book itself. The only thing I can really think to say is that the beginning feels very Hunger Games-y, in places almost awkwardly so. Katniss sells food at the Hob; Tris visits the Hub. Katniss is Reaped; Tris Chooses. Katniss's Reaping takes her away from her family and plunges her into a dangerous new reality, as does Tris's Choice. Both books are narrated in present-tense first-person style by a sixteen-year-old female narrator who lacks self esteem, has one sibling, and lives in a strictly regulated, tenuously peaceful postwar society modern Americans would likely classify as "dystopian". Both books feature a scene in which the female narrator's thin, blond mother arranges her daughter's hair.
Yikes.
I know people who like this series, so I'm going to be making more of an effort toward diplomatic reviewing this summer than I did with The Hunger Games and Twilight. So I can acknowledge that both series have plenty of original content. For example, Tris's world is much less restrictive, cruel, and dangerous than Katniss's (for now, anyway) and thus far I have encountered no indication, either in the book itself or on the Internet, that Divergent features a love triangle (my fingers are tightly crossed). But still...... I felt slightly uncomfortable with some of the similarities today.
Slightly.
Otherwise, I have yet to formulate any real opinions for the book yet.
Instead, I'm going to gripe about the author.
The copy of Divergent that I obtained from the library today contains a really long "bonus" section at the book. I discovered it while indulging in my sometimes dangerous habit of flipping to a book's last page to see how many pages there are. This habit is dangerous because it can result in the accidental learning of spoilers. Or it can result in accidentally becoming annoyed with the author.
The bonus section includes "Q&A with Veronica Roth", "Quotations that Inspired Divergent", "Veronica Roth's Divergent Playlist", "Writing Tips from Veronica Roth", "Discussion Questions", "Veronica Roth Talks about Utopian Worlds", "Faction Naming with Veronica Roth", "Faction Quiz", "Faction Quiz Results", "Faction Manifestos", and "Sneak Peek of Insurgent". Following this table of contents are some 45 pages of pretension and condescension, featuring lovely quotes from Veronica Roth (who, judging by the Table of Contents, seems to really enjoy seeing her name in print) like,
"The stuff in your manuscript that you love best is probably the stuff that needs to go - and you have to be willing to get rid of it."
and
"I have been asked in the past if I made up the words for the faction names. I didn't, but I did intentionally choose unfamiliar words, for an assortment of reasons. One of them is that I wanted to slow down comprehension of what each faction stands for, so you learn as much by observing as by the name of the faction itself."
I will freely confess that I am a touchy, controlling hoarder who is viciously protective of my writing and is somewhat easily offended. Thus my hackles rose as soon as I started reading "Writing Tips from Veronica Roth" (from which the first quote is taken) because I am SICK, sick sicketty sick, of all writers telling you that you need to tear the first draft of anything you write to shreds and throw it away. I have heard it over and over and I think it's STUPID for various reasons that I'll maybe go into another time. The point I'm trying to make right now is that, while I'm sure Veronica Roth didn't mean this, I was miffed, and in my miffed state I interpreted the first quote as, "Don't write a story you will love. Write a story other people will love because your minority ideas are silly and your goal is to become a bestselling author whose work is eerily similar to that of other bestselling authors."
Moving on to the second quote and getting back to the easily offended thing, DID YOU JUST SAY YOU EXPECT YOUR BOOKS TO BE READ BY IDIOTS?????? I'm fairly positive that I have encountered at least three of the five faction names (which are Amity, Candor, Erudite, Dauntless, and Abnegation) reading other books over the years. And if I didn't already know what the words meant, I would have looked them up, because those don't sound like made-up words. But luckily I wouldn't have had to, Veronica Roth includes her favorite definition of each word in the bonus section, along with one-paragraph-long segments explaining her reasons for choosing each word as a Faction name for the convenience of all the fans of hers who don't know how to use dictionaries. She also mentions how much she loves it when people notice that the Faction names are different parts of speech (three nouns, two adjectives), almost like she wasn't expecting OCD grammarians to notice it immediately and start uncontrollably twitching.
And the whole "slow down comprehension" phrase is just the icing on the Cake of Annoyance for me. If I used rare, marginally archaic words as significant descriptors in something I wrote, it would be to enable all my fellow Tiffany Achings to have major nerd spasms and to say things like, "I know what that word means and used in this context it's like the bestest inside nerd joke EVER!", not to force them to decipher context clues in order to understand the traits of the various factions.
*Deep breath* I want to like this book series. I do. I still might. I'm only 60 pages in to the first book. That leaves what, at least 1440 pages? That's plenty of time for the awkward HG similarities to fade and for me to forgive Veronica Roth for coming across as a bit high-and-mighty. Really, it's not fair of me to begrudge her that, because I know that if I ever got a book published I would probably seem at least as pretentious to my non-fans.
Also, all the rest of these should be a lot shorter, now that I'm done whining about the authoress and will be focusing on just the books.
Until tomorrow.
~Pearl Clayton
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