Say it isn't so

REVIEW: Mockingjay By Suzanne Collins

2010-09-27T21:30:00.003+01:00

Hype is like a double-edged sword...

No, that’s not right.

Hype is like a woman, pretty face, charming smile, voluptuous body, whose captivating presence we all want to find ourselves in. Everything about her fascinates us, ensnares us, and in the end we are reduced to drooling simpletons.

Then she strips off that skin-tight red dress and we discover she has a penis, and everything changes.

It doesn’t always end like this, but when it does, for most of us our subsequent reaction is ... shock? Extreme disappointment? Disbelief? Denial?

Whatever the outcome may be, it’s not positive, which is why I devised this oh so clever technique of holding off on reading some books, or watching some movies, until the infectious, all-pervasive euphoria attached to them petered out.

Fact: I haven’t seen Inception or Sherlock Holmes.

Fact: I only just finished Mockingjay, and I’m just starting Before I Fall.

You might think I’m punishing myself, but so far my technique has saved me from jumping into a few dodgy bandwagons. You know, the ones brimming with poo.

So, is Mockingjay’s hype more Christian Hendricks than Christina Hendricks?

CHARACTERS

Mockingjay flaunts a myriad of characters ranging from Ok-ish to ho-hum. The cast in this instalment is certainly the largest of any book in the series, though only for the singular purpose of providing readers with recurrent deaths. After all, this is war, and death must be in plentiful supply.

Some characters do excel high enough to carve a niche for themselves, away from the unflattering variety. Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta offer readers the book’s – hell, the series’ only believable romance; Prim undergoes a surprising and well deserved personality growth, taking on a more responsible role that puts her miles ahead of Katniss; and Plutarch embraces the war like a precocious child would an unusual puzzle, seeing it as a great opportunity to flex his creative muscles, just as he did as Head Gamemaker in Catching Fire. As far as he’s concerned, everyone’s a piece on his chessboard, a desirable means to a worthy end – the end being sensationalising the biggest, wildest, and deadliest blood sport in the history of Panem.

Johanna adds a bit of fiery excitement to Mockingjay, a refreshing escape from Katniss’ tiresome self-pitying.

Haymitch starts out great then later reverts to his same old, bland, drunken self. This behaviour was cool and funny back in The Hunger Games. It started to wear thin in Catching Fire. Now, it’s just lame.

Gale’s only reason for being in the book is to complete the needless love-triangle that includes Katniss and Peeta.

Peeta is ... well, Peeta. Neither here nor there. Same way he’s always been since The Hunger Games.

President Snow is still his predictable “mu-ha-ha-ha, I’m eeevil, check out my moustache” self. Collins had a chance to flesh him out in Catching Fire. She didn’t. She had yet another chance to do so in Mockingjay. She didn’t.

Then you have Katniss Everdeen, the star of the show, the Mockingjay herself. As a central character, Katniss does a decent job at carrying the book to its arduous anti-climatic end, tripping and staggering along the way, but never really falling facedown. This is not the Katniss of The Hunger Games, and by that I don’t mean she’s matured.

Yes, she does go through some personality changes, but not for the reasons you think. You see, in today’s YA, female protagonists must all live through a phase where they can’t decide which guy they want to stick with at the end of the story. Why? Well, because girls read more than boys and for girls to truly enjoy YA there must be a team A versus team B, or a team Jacob versus team Edward, or a team Peeta versus team Gale.

For the record, watching Katniss do the ubiquitous girl-caught-in-the-middle-of-two-guys dance is very sad. (And you wonder why most boys don’t like reading YA.)

In all sincerity, these characters make for a nice collection, despite their deplorable flaws. The real issue is that they don’t carry the emotional weight necessary to make me care enough when they die, which is what a lot of them do. They die, and I’m supposed to cry.

Well, my eyes are still very dry.

Score: 5/10

WORLD BUILDING

The first half of Mockingjay takes place in District Thirteen, which is a far cry from District Twelve, and yet not all that an exciting place to read about.

Come to think of it, The Hunger Games series isn’t quite the same when Katniss is outside the arena. The plot wobbles, tottering here and there, like it’s been hit by a truck, and then slows to an unsettling crawl. Nothing feels right. Imagine playing football underwater – that’s The Hunger Games without a hunger game. I think it’s to do with Collins’ prose (more on that to come).

Collins probably agrees, because in the other half of Mockingjay Katniss takes the fight to the capitol, and it so happens that –surprise, surprise – the capitol is one gigantic arena, complete with cameras, outlandish booby-traps and countless unwilling contestants to satiate your thirst for gore and death.

Still, Mockingjay falls short of delivering anything close to what we saw in the series’ debut. I can’t say I’m surprised. Catching Fire was a pretty good indication that Collins had run out of whatever creative juice she’d downed when writing The Hunger Games. It wasn’t a bad book. It was simply a bad case of déjà vu. Been there, done that.

In Mockingjay, war is upon Panem and our intrepid band of heroes, led by Katniss, is on a crusade for freedom, storming the deserted streets of the Capitol, which are not safe places to be at, as they are inundated with all kinds of traps, gadgets, pods, and weapons.

Now, close your eyes for a second and picture the most ridiculous weapon ever, something that makes little sense in logical terms. I’m dead certain you’ll find it in Mockingjay.

There’s a part in the book where a bloke gets caught in a beam of golden light and he stands rigid, mouth open like his screaming though no sound leaves him, and his skin melts like candle wax. Then there’s another part where an entire street folds in like a flap and people fall to their deaths. I literally laughed my ass off reading these scenes, and I had to check, more than once, that I wasn’t reading a novelisation of Road Runner.

It’s amazing how much you have to suspend belief just to enjoy Mockingjay. The violence is so cartoonish, like something straight out of Looney Tunes. No wonder I hardly felt any sympathy for characters that died.

I don’t know why Collins took this route. I understand that Mockingjay is all about war and thus the weapons should be deadlier than any weapon seen in previous Hunger Games books. This is a rational step forward in the creative process of book-sequel writing. However, in this case, the result is catastrophic. We’re talking about a series where in the first book a bunch of kids, some as young as 12, were put into an arena and forced to murder each other in cold blood. That’s disturbing, Ok? That’s psychologically disturbing. If you’re going to take things up a notch, I don’t think cartoon weapons is the right way to go.

Score: 5/10

PROSE

Though Collins isn’t its pioneer she’s one of the few in the industry to have perfected this quick paced wordplay, short sentence structure, prose so many YA authors utilise today. It worked wonders for The Hunger Games – I was practically at the edge of my seat while reading that book. So much action. So much tension.

In Mockingjay Collins flips the script on her prose, allowing for an influx of poetry and metaphors. This is not a tension-laden book, at least not like The Hunger Games. Katniss does a lot of reflecting, retrospective analysing, and character examination, and because so many people presumably die on account of her, she has to properly convey gloom, depression, anger, weariness and a host of other emotions.

Collins’ tweaked prose is a hit and miss affair. When it works, it works really, really well. The ending is beautiful, easily the best part of the book.

When it doesn’t work, it’s like watching your grandmother perform a striptease – awkward and just wrong.

Every now and then Collins over-describes an action, or skirts around what she’s actually saying, and you’re forced to re-read entire paragraphs just to get the gist of what’s going on.

Considering the torrent of major character demises, Mockingjay struggles to be emotive. I think the problem lies with how fast-paced Collins’ prose is, and how awkward it can be sometimes. She’s capable of handling one or two major deaths, as we know from reading Rue’s tear-jerker end in The Hunger Games. Three deaths and above, and she loses her footing.

Mind you, Collins’ prose is still compelling in the end, though sadly not compelling enough to ensure a captivating read.

Score: 8/10

PLOT

From Amazon: “Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena alive, she's still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what's worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’ family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final instalment of Suzanne Collins’ groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.”

Alas, Mockingjay’s plot is more annoying and facile than powerful and haunting. At the end of the book you have to wonder: what was the war about? Freedom? Freedom from what, exactly? Where’s the freedom when the people who wrest control of Panem from the Capitol are no different from the Capitol itself? It’s like the transference of power from a murdered dictator to his murderer son.

I’m guessing it won’t be long long before Scholastic announces a new Hunger Games book featuring a character well beyond Katniss’ time, forced to rise up against the new government.

Score: 5/10

FINAL THOUGHTS

In the past couple of months there’s been heated discussions in the blogosphere concerning YA books and male and female readers. Hannah Moskowitz (I definitely spelled that right cos I checked Goodreads) wrote that a lot of YA authors aren’t writing believable male characters anymore and it’s affecting how boys pick up YA.

She got ripped apart by like a hundred blogger chicks, cos you know, boys should learn to appreciate girl books since girls have been appreciating boy books for eons.

After reading Mockingjay, I don’t see this ever happening. In fact, I think boys should steer clear of YA and stick to whatever it is they love.

Girls make up YA’s greater market share. These days, when you write a YA book it doesn’t matter who you think you’re writing it for, because as far as publishers are concerned you’re writing it for the people most likely to put money in their pockets – girls. You have the freedom to do whatever you please, but certain things must feature in your book, one of them being a love triangle, or some weird romance between a pseudo-strong female and a thing that talks, walks and acts like a guy but really isn’t. Of course there are YA books that shy away from this narrative, but the ones that are considered the genre’s flagship, the ones the media champions every so often, adhere to these rules.

This explains why there had to be a love triangle in Mockingjay. It wasn’t necessary. We all knew Katniss would end up with Peeta, no matter how bogus and forced their romance was. But the triangle – dragged on throughout the book and put to rest in the worst possible way (Gale does the unthinkable and Katniss can’t look at him the same way, so she picks Peeta) – had to happen, because the market demands it. Boys aren’t too crazy about reading this kind of stuff, and when it pervades a book they’re certainly not encouraged to give the book a try. The book might as well have a “Warning: Not for Boys” label on it.

There’s even a Twilight-esque scene where Katniss is supposed to be asleep, but instead she eavesdrops on Gale and Peeta’s conversation about which one of them she will end up choosing. I’m not making this up.

(To be clear: I am not saying there aren't YA books for boys. That's not what I'm talking about here, because whenever someone brings up this issue people start listing out YA books tailored for boys. I'm talking about male characters in the YA books that hold up the banner for YA. I'm talking about themes that make it difficult for boys to get into YA books for girls, because these books make up a greater part of YA, and because bloggers keep saying, "Well, boys should learn to read books for girls, cos we girls have been reading books for boys too."

Like it or not, young boys of today are born into a pop culture environment where what's popular gets the most attention, and everything else is pretty much shunned by the greater mass [that includes 3/4 the list of YA books written specifically for boys that you're probably typing out at the moment to post as a comment]. The most popular YA books right now are YA books for girls. Period. Boys will go for these books, just as they did with Harry Potter. Difference is, Harry had a universal theme. These recent popular YA books don't, and most boys will turn away, not just from them, but from YA in general, because they can't be bothered to carry out archeological digs in bookstores just to find some obscure book that could appeal to them. You don't have to be rocket scientist to deduce this fact.)

Just as I accepted that YA Paranormal is what it is and will never be what it is not, I’ve come to the same conclusion regarding YA in general. I think the argument about boys reading YA or whether they should bother with it is a moot one. If YA’s current market is happy with the way YA is (and they are, judging from the sales of Twilight, Hush-Hush, Fallen and co) then I see no reason why anyone should try and change things.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

To conclude, Mockingjay can best be described as an uninspired end to a rather average series.

Final Score: 6/10

REVIEW: Beautiful Creatures By Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

2010-08-10T17:30:00.005+01:00

A boy falls in love with a girl at 17, marries her at 21, and at 28 he comes home to find her and his son lying in a vast, slippery pool of their own blood. He stares at their mutilated bodies for minutes, maybe hours. Time has no dominion over him, as does everything else that comes with it. He knows who is responsible for this sickening act – the face of the man is a permanent scar in his mind. And as gradual as the sun raises its head to peek from dawn till day, life becomes meaningless. Nothing else matters now.

So, he does the honourable thing. He picks up his shotgun, ambles to his car, drives to the house of the one whose face taunts him, and murders everyone he encounters – men, women, children, even the pet dog. When he’s done, when he has the man spread-eagled beneath him, broken and torn in every way possible and not quite possible, he allows the vengeance prickling his eyes and mangling his heart to ease off. Febrile convulsions follow.

His hands are numb, so he drops his gun. His arms are heavy, so he lowers them to his sides. His legs are drained, so he sits by the door. The holes in his stomach and chest burn and weep crimson tears. His head sags right. There is a place better than this world, a place where he must go now. Living is inconsequential. Fighting the overpowering exhaustion is futile. He welcomes death like an old friend.

Just as I have now accepted that YA Paranormal is what it is and will never be what it is not. Inevitability has always been the number one rule, and I have fought this war of attrition for too long. It’s time to accept and move on.

That said, how beautiful is Beautiful Creatures?

CHARACTERS

Beautiful Creatures parades a good many characters, but first let’s focus on the stars of the show.

Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes.

Ethan is a sixteen-year-old boy. He loves his iPod. He has an absentee father, just like virtually every YA lead character today. He’s in the basket ball team, but that doesn’t mean much to him. He loves books, the complex, tome-like kind. He has the uncanny ability to describe what a girl is wearing. I don’t mean her underwear. Oh no, Ethan doesn’t think about girls’ underwear. I mean her clothes, the design, the folds, the patterns.

Video games and music that don’t include the lyrics, “Sixteen moons, sixteen years,” are for oddballs, like Link, not our dear Ethan. After all, he has better things to do. And what could be better than sixteen-year-old boy hanging out with his grand aunts. Ethan loves those old women. He enjoys every second with them.

Enter Lena Duchannes.

Misunderstood Lena Duchannes.

Lena is a caster, kind of like a witch. She’s super powerful. She can do super amazing things. She’s very pretty too, but everyone at school hates her because she’s an outsider and, yeah, she’s pretty. Ethan doesn’t care though. He’s willing to allow the basket ball team and the entire school ostracise him for this girl. He’s seen her in his dreams, like really, he has. She’s special. Plus she’s not blonde and she doesn’t have big boobs like Savannah and Emily and the other hot girls at school. Who needs hot, blonde girls? When you’re a sixteen-year-old boy, and you’re in the basket ball team and you could have a hot, blonde girl as a girlfriend, it makes more sense to turn the other way and go for the other ordinary girl.

Throughout the book, Ethan spends time with no other teenager except Lena. No need hanging with his dudes when he’s got her and Sixteen Moons thumping in his iPod. During the times they are together, they hold hands, they kiss. They whisper sweet nothings to each other. They do this mind instant messaging thing: Ethan thinks and Lena hears; Lena thinks back and Ethan hears.

They do a lot of cuddling too, even when they’re in bed. They hold hands in bed. They kiss in bed. Nothing else happens.

You’re thinking it. I’m thinking it too. So, I’ll just say it: Ethan is not queer.

No sir.

I have a theory about Ethan’s real identity. At the end of the series, Ethan’s true self will serve as a huge reveal, like Darth Vader telling Luke Skywalker: I am your father. Ethan will tell Lena: Lena, I’m a drag king. I don’t have a penis. That’s why I can’t have an erection around you.

You might think I’m making fun of Beautiful Creatures, but I’m not. I think this would be an awesome twist. YA needs more diverse characters, not just black people, Chinese people, little people, or Eskimos. YA needs gay people too, but not just the politically correct ones – you know, the nice boy who discovers he’s gay and hides his identity, and then falls in love with the boy next door, then realises the only way he can truly be happy is to come out of the closet, and in the end he’s voted as his school’s prom queen. YA also needs the other gays, the ones that dress up too. The ones that change their sex, like that man who got pregnant – he’s a guy but he’s a woman too. Like Ethan.

But that’s just my Ethan theory.

As much as I like twists and mind-blowing reveals, the fact of the matter is Ethan is presented as a guy in Beautiful Creatures, and he makes one hell of a lousy guy. It’s like casting Angelina Jolie as a male stripper, and she successfully fakes the baritone voice, and the walk, but there’s still something feminine about her character ... like the swell on her chest ... or how she doesn’t have an erection.

Lena is a much better character, from afar. I enjoyed seeing her through Ethan’s eyes. You have no idea how glad I was that I didn’t have to spend 500+ pages inside her head. Lena might be strong willed and brave, but she’s not emotionally invincible. The jibes and accusations lobed at her by her classmates burn, and though she stands her ground, there’s a raw vulnerability about her defensive approach. She uses poetry to soothe her anger, writing all over her hands, her bed posts, her walls, and her ceiling. If Beautiful Creatures were written from Lena’s POV it would’ve been 900 pages of super teen angst.

Her invulnerability is only tied to her human side, though. As a caster, Lena is one gigantic Mary Sue. But we’ll get back to that in a bit.

There are other memorable characters in Beautiful Creatures, like Amma, who loves spelling out words whenever she wants to drive a point across. She more than makes up for Ethan’s lame dad who spends all his time in his study instead of manning up and being a father. Your wife died. So? You’ve got a kid. Shut the hell up, stop crying like a bitch, and take some goddamn responsibility over your son. Damn absentee parents. Amma’s verve is refreshing. She’s the matriarch you don’t want to mess with.

Marian sounds like she could’ve offered more, especially being Ethan’s late mother’s best friend, but like Ethan’s dad she doesn’t appear often enough in the book to manipulate my emotions.

Uncle Macon is the Dumbledore of Beautiful Creatures. Always around, but never really around, if you know what I mean; cryptic in his daily dealings. But unlike Dumbledore, Macon’s secrets suck, and he gets rather irritating before the book’s end.

Link, Ethan’s supposed best friend – I say supposed, because in 563 pages Ethan hangs out with him for like 6 times – is sort of stuck between being nobody and somebody. The only time he matters is when he tangles himself with the enigmatic, lollypop-sucking Ridley.

I loved Ethan’s grand aunts. I wouldn’t have spent as much time with them as Ethan did, but they did offer a fun read, especially when they argued, or the comments they made after they found stuff they had lost a long time ago.

If I had to pick one character as my favourite it would be Ridley. Cool, smoking hot, badass, sex appeal oozing Ridley. She wasn’t a pretend teenager like Ethan, and she served as the book’s somewhat tortured character, torn between following her evil instincts and helping her cousin, Lena.

Score: 7/10 (you can thank Ethan for knocking a point off)

WORLD BUILDING

Forget about Ethan and his bizarre sexual asceticism. The real character in Beautiful Creatures is the old southern town, Gatlin. A town filled with bizarre, crippled personalities.

The people of Gatlin are ignorant, annoying, old-fashioned, lame, probably racist, and quite twisted sons of bitches. Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve read southern American depiction of this kind. Either there are lots of people out there who don’t like the south or the south really is this way.

There is a scene where Lena gets really upset and her powers activate and shatters the window near her. Normally, you would expect a reaction like: who broke the window? But in Gatlin, it's: she broke the window. I saw her do it when she walked by.

Someone questions this logic: but she hasn't got blood on her hands.

A sharp, irritated reply: what are you, CSI? She tried to kill us!

From there, the whole town wages a personal vendetta on Lean - parents, teachers, students - everyone. It's ridiculous, but - hey - it's Gatlin.

In the world of Beautiful Creatures there are casters, witches as I explained, and Lena is one of them. Unfortunately, Lena is also, like I explained, a very, super awesome powerful caster, with little to no limits on her powers, which makes me believe Beautiful Creatures has no rigid magic system. Or maybe it does, but I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it. One minute, Lena is breaking a small window, the next she’s walking through fire, making snow fall, and freezing time.

Then there’s The Book of Moons, an excuse for Admiral Deus Ex Machina to make an impromptu appearance whenever things get too tough for our heroes. Apparently, it is the most powerful caster book in the universe, and now it belongs to the most powerful caster in the universe. Gee. Why do we need a sequel?

But it’s not all bad. The authors were able to take some popular supernatural creatures and tweak them for the better. I was absolutely impressed when I discovered Uncle Macon’s true identity and his fascination with dreams.

The whole claiming-on-your-sixteenth birthday was a nice touch, particularly with the way the book ended.

Score: 8/10

PROSE

The authors, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, make a remarkable writing team. I know they know this. In fact, I know they’re so in love with each other’s writing that neither of them could tell the other to stop rambling and get on with it.

Too much rambling in this book, I tell you. There’s just no way to justify Beautiful Creatures’ length – 563 pages, significantly less than 300 of which make up the main plot, and the others, just rambling upon rambling. Ethan rambles. Christ. Jibber-jabber, jibber-jabber, Jibber-bloody-jabber.

On the bright side, the authors were capable of representing Gatlin in all its glory. Forget all that negative stuff I said about the town; it might be a weird place, but it’s still a well-written weird place. I’m not sure calling Gatlin weird is even a criticism. I think Gatlin was always meant to be weird.

Kami and Margaret might score a B in descriptive writing, but their efforts only garner a D in dialogue. The dialogue writing in Beautiful Creatures is inconsistent at best. Sometimes it’s good. Other times – most times – it’s just laugh out loud.

Though I’ve never been a fan of written accents, I thought the authors conveyed an authentic southern drawl when Amma and Ethan’s grand aunts spoke.

(Do note I am not an American. The closest I’ve ever come to a hearing a southern talk is on TV. I might be wrong about the accuracy of Beautiful Creatures’ southern lingo).

Unfortunately, the authors go on commit the heinous crime we writers call “monologuing”. The villains talk and talk and talk and explain. The heroes listen and listen and listen and reply back.

Beautiful Creatures’ dialogue problem is further exacerbated by most of its characters’ inability to shut up and move on, always repeating themselves, over and over, like a bunch of three-year-olds pestering mummy and daddy for ice cream until mummy and daddy are fed up and lock them up in the basement. To illustrate, here’s how a typical conversation between Ethan and Uncle Macon enfolds:

Ethan: Tell me the truth. Tell me everything I need to know to save Lena.

Uncle Macon: You don’t understand. You wouldn’t understand. Telling you the truth will destroy everything. I’m trying to protect you.

Ethan: We need to save Lena! The only way to do that is if you tell me the truth.

Uncle Macon: I love Lena, but I’m trying to protect her.

Ethan: You just don’t care about Lena.

Uncle Macon: I care more than you know. I’m trying to protect her.

By this time you think the conversation has ended, cos as we can see Uncle Macon has made it quite clear he’s not telling Ethan anything.

But –

Ethan: Still, dude, just tell me the truth. Come on!

Uncle Macon: The truth will set us all free, but I won’t do it. It’s for Lena’s protection.

Dear lord.

The funny thing is the so-called truth Uncle Macon keeps evading isn’t as earth-shattering or life-threatening to Lena as is implied. Certainly not something he couldn’t have told her before the big battle. Hell, if he had told her the truth she would have been more prepared to face her enemy.

I don’t know why too many YA authors employ this plotting technique. The problem with it is it could blow up in your face. When a character goes to great lengths in explaining that he’s keeping a secret to protect another character, that secret better be bigger than the universe when it’s revealed, or it’s going to one anti-climatic mess.

Score: 8/10

PLOT

Ethan dreams about a girl. He meets her at school. Her name is Lena. He finds out she’s a caster. They fall in love, deeply in love. But it turns out their love story might be fleeting, because on Lena’s sixteenth birthday, which is fast approaching, she will be claimed. Getting claimed is a nifty way of saying she will turn good or evil against her will. She’s certain she’s going to turn evil. So she and Ethan search for a way to ensure she remains good.

There’s nothing wrong with this plot. What’s wrong is its execution.

Score: 8/10

FINAL THOUGHT

When I started Beautiful Creatures I loved it. Halfway through, I kept it aside (not out of boredom) and got my hands on Justin Cronin’s The Passage. I think that’s part of what ruined Beautiful Creatures for me. I went on to read Cronin’s masterpiece and came back to Beautiful Creatures, sort of like watching Casino Royale halfway, watching the whole of Inception, and expecting to enjoy the rest of Casino Royale afterwards.

You see, Beautiful Creatures should have been more than this. It had that spark that should’ve lit up the sky, but only flared a bit. Too many pointless scenes got in the way. The plot would flow smoothly for a while then Ethan and Lena would go off at a tangent, doing stuff that had no connection with the main plot. Nothing wrong with that, except the authors wasted too much time deviating from the main plot, to the extent that I didn’t remember some of the earlier major plot clues when I got to the end of the book. So, rather than the reveals and twists exploding before my eyes, they deflated like punctured bicycle tires.

Characters like Ridley, Larkin, and even the big, bad villain, were ruined by the very people who created them. These characters started off great, promised excitement, and delivered less than expected of them, certainly less than they were capable of delivering. Pity. Reminds me of The Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Video Game); there’s a scene where the prince, having realised the gravity of his error, says “I am the architect of my own destruction.”

I liken Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl to amazing painters, who after producing a masterpiece pick up knives and puncture holes in their art, and then put it out for an exhibition.

Beautiful Creatures, The Forrest of Hands and Teeth and The Demon’s Lexicon all have one thing in common: they feature excellent premises and are written by excellent writers, but in the end they all crumble like shattered, eleven-foot high Lego bricks, in their quest for greatness. (Wait. That's three things.)

Why? How? I have no idea.

I’m done with Forest, but I haven’t given up on Lexicon and Beautiful Creatures.

For those of you looking for a YA book with a real male lead character, look elsewhere. If you’re a girl (or a rather strange boy) looking for Twilight Romance, you know, all the touch, touch, touch, kiss, kiss, kiss, no sex, then Beautiful Creatures is perfect for you.

Final Score: 8/10

REVIEW: The Passage by Justin Cronin

2010-08-08T18:31:00.002+01:00

I am Babcock.

It must be hard being a vampire these days, the top target of a well orchestrated character assassination, reduced to something only half as scary as a floppy-eared beagle. Today’s literature depicts you as a sparkling chandelier, or an overemotional pansy who falls madly in love with a human girl and relinquishes his burning thirst for warm, succulent human blood. You know ... the type that tastes really good.

You used to put the fear of God in people. Now ... now you’re just a whinny, emo bitch. Well, you’re not, but that’s how we humans see you.

If vampires did exist, and they read books and watched movies, I imagine therapists worldwide would see a drastic increase in their vampire clientele, and the number one question they would get from these depressed hunters of the night would be: how can I be myself again?

Those vamps lucky to have Justin Cronin as their therapist would surely thank him after a day’s session. And eat him afterwards.

I am Babcock.

My heartfelt apologies to anyone named Babcock. Discrimination in any form – race, sex, age, height, etc – should not be tolerated or encouraged. However, I’m not so sure I like the name “Babcock” anymore. It frightens me. You can thank Justin Cronin for that.

The Passage is a riveting epic. Justin Cronin has finally put the “V” back in Vampire. You would expect this sort of impressive storytelling from a YA author, considering YA is a genre customarily representative of excellent imagination, but just as England invented the beautiful game of football and Spain perfected it, YA made vampires immensely popular in this generation and now Justin Cronin has schooled the genre and its authors on how to write a real vampire novel.

To be honest, I’m not sure YA authors care that much. The genre has moved on to pastures new: angel paranormal romance. Or is it fairies? I forget.

CHARACTERS

Literary authors understand one concept: character-driven plots. It’s their lifeblood. It’s what they eat, breathe and sleep. Since Justin Cronin is technically one of them (The Passage is his first genre book) he utilises this particular expertise in developing an assemblage of diverse, interesting and invigorating characters that walk right out the pages of The Passage. They’re not classed into simple, cardboard-cutout groups of good and evil, but complex, human clusters of flaws and convictions.

Each character has a story to tell, from Amy, the mysterious and shrewd six-year-old, abandoned by her mother and distrustful of people in general, to Brad Wolgast, an FBI agent, haunted by his failed marriage to the love of his life and scarred by a missed opportunity on fatherhood, an opportunity that resurfaces when he meets Amy.

There’s Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, from Sierra-Leone, who believes she can hear God, but her life is one big twist, and Anthony Carter, a soft spoken, homeless black man who somehow ends up on death row for a crime he did not commit, but willing to take the ultimate punishment – death – all in the name of love.

Clearly, Justin Cronin understands that America is not made up of only white people.

Cronin knows how to withhold information about characters and throw them at readers in tantalising bits. My heart twisted for Anthony Carter when I read the conclusion of his story.

If there is one criticism I have it’s that the characters introduced in Part IV (All Eyes), while well drawn out, are not as appealing as those in the previous parts.

Score: 10/10

WORLD BUILDING

The Passage stretches from somewhere around or before 2008 (Amy’s mother’s story) to more than a hundred years, right into the heart of a dystopian America, shattered, defeated and teeming with ferocious creatures of the night: virals, or vampires.

Justin shows us America we know it today, a Super Power embroiled in a seemingly never-ending war in the Middle East. A country left paranoid by terrorism (in the book Walmart sells Kevlar suits for babies). And then he shows us a new world born out of a devastating vampire apocalypse. A world where children are segregated from the outside, because reality – there are blood thirsty beasts, quick as light, roaming about, seeking to get you – is too traumatising for them.

It’s a dark, dark world. A world nearly bereft of hope.

The science behind the existence of vampires and how the vampire virus works in The Passage is well thought out, plausible and imaginative. It has to do with the thymus, a specialised organ in the immune system, located in the anterior superior mediastinum.

I don’t want to spoil the book by revealing everything.

Score: 10/10

PROSE

Justin Cronin is a remarkable writer, I kid you not. His prose is engaging, touching, and brutal, all at the same time. Descriptions of places can sometimes be a bit too much, dragging on for quite a while, but it doesn’t hurt. And his dialogue writing is wow!

Score: 10/10

PLOT

The United States of America loves policing the world, or at least that’s what a lot of people, other than Americans, say. In 2003, for whatever reason you might think – oil, justice, delusions of grandeur – America attacks a certain country in the Middle East. In 2014, the war is still going strong, and America is losing soldiers by the bucket load.

Desperation sets in. How do we avoid heavy infantry losses? How do we create soldiers who can easily despatch enemies?

Beyond that, how do we permanently defeat ailments like cancer?

A scientist, Dr Lear, thinks the answer is in Bolivia. Thus, Project Noah is born.

The expedition to Bolivia does not end well. Many die. Few return. One of the returnees is classed as Zero, a scientist named Fanning, who was infected by the vampire virus in Bolivia.

For Lear to complete his research and create a solution to America’s military and health problems he needs twelve candidates. The military decides that the twelve will be people who wouldn’t be missed, death row inmates. FBI agent, Brad Wolgast, a man who can pretty much sell water to a well, is tasked with the responsibility of convincing twelve inmates to sign away their lives to the United States government. These twelve inmates are: Babcock, Carter, Morrison, Chavez, Baffes, Turrell, Winston, Sosa, Echols, Lambright, Martinez, and Reinhardt (not listed in the correct order).

Lear then decides he needs a thirteenth candidate, a child. The Army orders Wolgast to apprehend and deliver a six-year-old girl, Amy Harper Bellanfonte.

Wolgast cannot do it.

Long story short, the virals, the Twelve plus Zero, break out of the facility, and in less than a few months, they overpower America.

One hundred years later, the last surviving Americans living in a small, high-walled colony, resolve to embark on a mission to save themselves and their families, because, you see, the batteries powering the lights outside their colony, the lights preventing the vampires from breaching their walls at night, is fading fast, and if they don’t find an alternative means of survival, they’ll all be dead.

Need I say more?

Score: 10/10

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you’re an aspiring writer, read this book. Trust me, there’s much to learn from Justin Cronin’s tome. If you’re just a reader looking for something thrilling to chew on, The Passage will satiate your appetite and leave you wanting more.

Score: 10/10

The Morality of Characters and Plots

2010-08-04T17:34:00.001+01:00

A couple of days ago I read The Booksmugglers’ review for Jackson Pearce’s Sisters Red, and it got me thinking about character behaviours, their motivations, flaws and likeable quotient; book plots, their implications – whether subtle or palpable; and the role authors play in the lives of their readers.

The Booksmugglers’ denouncement of Sisters Red and their subsequent refusal to score it stems from the impression (theirs) that Sisters Red (a) belittles beautiful, self-confident girls who love looking pretty and love wearing revealing clothes, and (b) promotes the popular (and misguided) message: blame the rape victim, not the rapist.

Scarlett, a main character in the book, and the review’s major culprit, is scarred, bitter and an unrelenting werewolf hunter. She’s not particularly appreciative of her life as a hunter, but she reckons someone has to do the messy deed of ridding the world of the Fenris (Old Norse word for werewolf). She also resents beautiful girls who wear skimpy clothes at night because she believes they make themselves easy prey for the Fenris. Her resentment borders on jealousy though; she’s not as beautiful as these girls, she doesn’t have the luxury of “enjoying” herself like these girls, and she doesn’t get a gold medal or a presidential award for saving these girls from the big bad wolves.

These quotes are from Scarlett’s POV, and they’re the ones the Booksmugglers take offence to:

[1] They’re adorned in glittery green rhinestones, shimmery turquoise and aquamarine powders streaked across their eyelids. Dragonfly girls. Their hair is all the same, long and streaked, spiralling down their backs to where the tiny strings holding their tops on are knotted tightly. Their skin glows under the neon lights – amber, ebony, cream – like shined metal, flawless and smooth. I press harder against the crumbly brick wall behind me, tugging my crimson cloak closer to my body. The scars on my shoulders show through fabric when I pull the cloak tight. Bumpy red hills in perfectly spaced lines.

The Dragonflies laugh, sweet, and bubbly, and I groan in exasperation. They toss their hair, stretch their legs, sway their hips, bat their eyes at the club’s bouncer, everything about them luring the Fenris. Inviting danger like some baby animal bleating its fool head off. Look at me, see how I dance, did you notice my hair, look again, desire me, I am perfect. Stupid, stupid Dragonflies. Here I am, saving your lives, bitten and scarred and wounded for you, and you don’t even know it. I should let the Fenris have one of you.

No, I didn’t mean that. I sigh and walk to the other side of the brick wall, letting my fingers tangle in the thick ivy. It’s dark on this side, shadowed from the neon lights of the street. I breathe slowly, watching the tree limbs sway, backlit by the lights of skyscrapers. Of course I didn’t mean it. Ignorance is no reason to die. They can’t help what they are, still happily unaware inside a cave of fake shadows. They exist in a world that’s beautiful normal, where people have jobs and dreams that don’t involve a hatcher. My world is parallel universe to their – the same sights, same people, same city, yet the Fenris lurk, the evil creeps, the knowledge undeniably exists. If I hadn’t been thrown into this world, I could just as easily have been a Dragonfly.

[2] His eyes narrow in something between disgust and intrigue, as though he’s not certain if he likes looking at them or not. I want to comment, but I stay quiet. Somehow it feels important to wait for his reaction. Silas finally turns to look at me in the shadows.

“It’s like they’re trying to be eaten, isn’t it?” he asks pointedly.

“Can I tell you how glad I am that and Rosie aren’t like them?”

“No kidding.” I grin, relieved. “Rosie could be if she wanted, though. She’s beautiful like they are.”

“Beauty has nothing to do with it. Rosie could never be one of them. Do you really think they’d dress and act like that if they knew it was drawing wolves toward them?”

Had a character come up to Scarlett and said, “Hey, you shouldn’t be pissed off at beautiful girls just cos they’re beautiful and like looking hot,” or something of that sort, the review might have sung a different tune.

The status quo in commercial literature today is characters that think or do bad things must get their comeuppance: death, or a terrible event, which eventually transforms them into better, likeable people. A racist main character cannot remain a racist at the end of a book. He has to go through some eye-opening journey and change, or suffer and die. A sexist main character has to learn to appreciate women at some point before a book’s conclusion.

Scarlett doesn’t alter her attitude. She saves the world, but she still retains her “unpopular” belief.

Books are open to all kinds of interpretations and opinions. When I read the Sisters Red quotes I didn’t see any allegories of blaming rape victims or demeaning beautiful girls. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy and I “don’t get it”. (But then again the author is a woman. Perhaps we both don’t get it.)

I read the quotes and saw someone who was pissed off at the world, pissed off because she couldn’t have some fun like everyone else, pissed off because no one knew the true nature of the dangers that lay in the shadows like she did, and pissed off because she had to save the day without so much as a “gee, thanks, Scarlett. I owe you one”.

I just saw a pissed off heroine, that’s all.

Does Scarlett have a right to be pissed off? That’s debateable.

Is she right in judging prettier girls the way she did? Probably not.

Is this her major character flaw? Yes.

Does this flaw make her less likeable as a character? Depends on you as a reader.

Does her attitude make Sisters Red a bad book? No. Not in my opinion.

This whole kerfuffle has got me wondering, do characters have to be likeable for a book to be good? What does likeable even mean: less irritating, more forgiving, eager to save the world?

Do authors have a responsibility as morale beacons to their readers? Must they portray their characters as examples of what happens if you make good and bad choices? Must they write plots that ultimately send messages like: stealing is bad; killing is bad; sexism is bad; racism is bad; having sex before marriage is not bad but you can catch nasty diseases ... or, you know what, maybe it’s bad; everyone should love gay people; etc.

What do you think?

Maybe some authors should. I would hate to read a children’s book to my five-year-old daughter (if I had one) about a girl who kills, steals and gets away with it. But as for the YA and Adult genres, I’m not so sure, but that’s just me.

During the early stages of the Iraqi war, a British man travelled to Iraq, despite government warnings, for humanitarian reasons and also to protest the war. He was captured by insurgents and used as a negotiating tool. The insurgents threatened to kill him unless Britain withdrew its troops from Iraq. The British government does not negotiate with terrorists. They declined.

The man was beheaded.

A friend of mine who was in the Territorial Army at the time said that he hated people like the man, and thought that humanitarians enjoy overdoing things, and they should just shut up and stay at home and not involve themselves in situations they don’t understand.

If he was the main character of a book and the thing with the British man happened and MC said those things and in the end he doesn’t change his mind about humanitarians or apologise for maligning them, but saves the world from the big bad evil, would that book automatically qualify as a bad book, to you?

It’s my belief that characters are to some extent representations of real life people. That’s what authors strive for when they write: to create characters who breathe as if they were standing right next to you.

If that’s the case, shouldn’t characters, like people, possess certain flaws that remain unchanged even after a book’s end?

Must a main character be absolutely moral or ethical before a book is considered a good book?

A book’s hero saves the world from the apocalypse, but while he’s tolerant of gay people, he’s not open to the idea of ever being gay. In fact, the thought of it – grabbing another guy’s ass, French-kissing him, going under the sheets – almost makes his skin crawl. Does that book become a bad book?

What do you think?

REVIEW: Lies by Michael Grant

2010-07-31T05:45:00.002+01:00

Warning: mild spoilers.

Welcome back to Perdido Beach, back to the FAYZ. Welcome indeed. Lies has been a long time coming, it truly has.

I finished it about two weeks ago, but my university project prevented me from writing my review. During that time I read Justin Cronin’s behemoth, The Passage, and I’m almost done with Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures.

Michael Grant’s latest offering, Lies, mirrors his previous hits, Gone and Hunger, in every way possible. Grant doesn’t hold back; from page one the action steams out of the station and the plot unravels in so many twists, turns and flips. No time wasting. Like a Ninja Assassin: get in there, stab-slash-slice, get out. Mission accomplished.

The question is: how good an accomplishment is Lies?

CHARACTERS

If you’re a fan of the Gone series, the first thing you’ll notice when reading Lies is the absence of some beloved characters. Computer Jack appears only twice. Quinn becomes more irrelevant than he was in Hunger. Lana sits around, getting high on alcohol and smoking cigarettes, all the time. Brianna, the character I love most, contributes zilch to the plot; she’s sick the entire book, suffering from the flu, thus bedridden. The only time she does anything is towards the end, when she puts Sam on a skateboard and drags him at top speed from the nuclear plant back to Perdido Beach.

Huh.

Why are these top characters sidelined? Well, the only reason I supply is: to make room for newer characters.

Problem is the new characters are either bad imitations of the old, popular characters, or they are just not that interesting.

Nerezza channels Diana’s manipulative, sultry disposition with little success. Zil, who assumes the mantle of resident villain, as Caine is too busy starving to death, is too weak, too stupid, and too WTF-are-you-kidding-me, that the plausibility of Lies’ plot scuttles off a cliff when Zil and his human crew burn down half the town (killing some kids in the process), walk into a hall filled with kids without incurring retribution for starting the fire, and gun down a bunch of kids.

Maybe this is the author’s idea of a badass villain, in which case: fail.

Then there’re Sanjit, Virtue and the other kids who live on an island within the FAYZ. These guys are late to the party. In the first book they would have made for interesting characters. In Lies, they just get in the way. I’m reading an action scene, the chapter ends, and then I have to read Sanjit and Virtue’s boring mission to fly a helicopter. They accomplish this at the end of the book.

Yes, that’s right. It takes the entire book for them to fly a helicopter.

Fortunately, Sam, Astrid, Orc, and Howard breathe a much needed life into Lies.

Sam struggles to accept his relegated hero status, labours with the memory of Drake beating the crap out of him, and questions his relationship with Astrid: has she been using him all along just to protect herself and her brother, Little Pete? Does she love him or is she only interested in power and control?

Astrid misplaces that astute perception of hers, the one that earned her the fitting moniker, “Astrid the genius”, in her quest to maintain peace, order and unity within the FAYZ.

Orc, though playing a much smaller role like Computer Jack, becomes a more honourable individual. Even Howard shows he’s got a streak of humanity in him and that he’s not simply a brainless, smart-mouthed bully. He totally pawns Astrid at her own game. Yeah, he is still a creep, but he’s a far more interesting creep in this book than in the previous ones.

I have to say though that the character over-inflation problem that plagued Hunger is evident in Lies. In fact, most characters are starting to sound alike that it's hard to distinguish them.

What I don't understand is why the author chooses to give characters staring roles when they add nothing to the plot or the series. There are a bunch of chapters that feature Justin. Yeah, you probably don't remember him. Well, that's because he's very irrelevant. But for some reason we have to read chapters of him getting lost on his way home. That's all. What's the point?

Score: 6/10

WORLD BUILDING

Hunger gave readers the chance to see the FAYZ properly with a new pair of binoculars, one of those nifty types that zoom in and out. Lies takes things one giant step further, with a result that is far more impressive.

Score: 8/10

PROSE

Michael Grant’s prose mimics the rapid, staccato bursts of machine guns. When you open Lies, his prose flips out like an impressive cut-throat razor and slices away all distractions that might steal your attention from the book. I didn’t give it a 9 because my ebook version had some weird errors.

Score: 8/10

PLOT

There is a saying that goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I said earlier that Lies mirrors Gone and Hunger in every way possible, but is that necessarily a good thing?

Every series has a plot formula. In Harry Potter, Harry starts off each book at his uncle’s house. Weird things happen. Then he goes to Hogwarts. Weird things happen. Everyone blames him. Weird things happen. He, Hermione and Ron solve some weird riddles. They succeed. Hurray! Harry returns home. That’s pretty much the Potter formula. The reason it works is (a) there’s always something new to discover in Hogwarts; (b) Harry Potter and other characters are very, very well drawn; (c) the plot elements for each book are always fresh, engaging and exciting [book one: philosopher’s stone; book two: the basilisk/sword of Gryffindor; book three: Dementors/time-turner; book four: tri-wizard tournament/voldemort himself; etc].

The Gone series has its own formula. Unfortunately, that formula is starting to show its age.

As usual, Caine concocts a half-arsed plan and manipulates a bunch of people. The heroes are too busy squabbling amongst themselves to open their eyes and see what’s right in front of them. By the time they realise, oh, crap there’s something bad happening, it’s too late – Caine has done his damage.

Lies’ plot does deliver, but honestly, each book release in the Gone series has shown a progressive decline in plot quality. The new characters – heroes and villains alike – are unable to fill the void left by absentee characters. (Seriously, can someone tell me why Zil is still alive?) The author must know this, which is why he decided to bring back an old character that should have stayed dead. It’s like a bad episode of Passions. Said character used to be scary. Now he’s a joke.

Score: 6/10

FINAL THOUGHT

I know Little Pete is an autistic four-year-old, and I sympathise with him. Actually, I used to. Now, he’s just pissing me off. He’s responsible for the FAYZ, or at least he’s somehow connected, but his unresponsiveness, while realistic, is aggravating, especially since his character is pivotal in the series. It takes forever for him to react to anything, and when he does, I’m thinking: oh, wow. That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do after I’ve sat here for hours, reading about you whine and play a dead Game Boy?

Overall, Lies is a decent book. Certainly not my best in the series. Here is to hoping things pick up in Plague.

Final Score: 7/10

Teaser Tuesday

2010-07-27T12:51:00.003+01:00

The end is coming.

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*Gone with the wind*

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Blue Fire contest

2010-07-14T02:33:00.002+01:00

Once upon a time a girl was born. Her name was Janice Hardy.

Long story short, she grew up and started messing around in her meth lab. Weird. She came up with this legal meth called The Pain Merchants. Very addictive stuff, this drug.

Warning: addictive drug. Will make you dream weird and wonderful dreams, and hallucinate on occasions. Even though deemed legal for consumption, approach with absolute caution, but do approach anyway. Contains too much awesomeness.

Now she’s cooked up a sequel, Blue Fire.

Warning: modified version of substance A, category Z [street name: The Pain Merchant]. Considered far more effective. Deemed Legal, but government will not be held responsible if it blows your mind. Approach? Definitely.

The last time I read The Pain Merchants I was so addicted my folks carted me to rehab. Curse Janice. Well, my therapist told me to stay away from Janice drugs and focus on my life and dreams and girlfriends. I promised her I would.

I lied.

Here’s a link to Janice’s blog, where she’s holding a contest for Blue Fire.

From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry, Mrs Therapist; I’m sorry, Dad; I’m sorry, Mum. But I just can’t help it. I need this book so bad.

Also, please do check out this project: Panverse Publishing. It’s a new sci-fi publisher. Let’s give Panverse our support! You might want to check out Panverse’s latest anthology which features a story by Janice.

Ok, now I’m off to read Karla’s and Karla’s teasers. (I still forget which Karla is which. I should memorise their surnames. All I know is they’re awesome writers.)

Teaser Tuesday

2010-07-13T14:16:00.004+01:00

I’ve decided to do teaser Tuesdays once every two weeks, because I’m coming to the end of a chapter and I’m don’t want to reveal anything from the next chapter until I’m done with the fourth one.

So here’s my teaser. Enjoy ;)

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*Snip snap!*

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New Synopsis!

2010-07-07T07:09:00.001+01:00

I’ve put a new synopsis for my WIP here. And you can see it as my teaser Tuesday, even though I didn’t post it on Tuesday and it’s a synopsis :D

Here’s a bit of it:

“I was sitting right next to you in the bus, and then you were gone, along with the whole world. I was in an awful, dark place. I think I died or something. I was so scared. Then I met this terribly wounded man. He told me all this crazy stuff I can’t even remember. The lights went out again. The darkness consumed me, and it hurt so much. I wanted it all to end. Then I woke up, and here we are.”

Enjoy!

Whitewashing. Who’s to blame?

2010-07-04T14:26:00.001+01:00

Something’s happened.

In 2009 HarperCollins imprint, Greenwillow Books, published Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia. The book tells the tale of an Asian girl, Ai Ling, who journeys to retrieve her father from a corrupt, powerful advisor. It’s got gods and other cool stuff in it. Think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Avatar: The Last Airbender (the cartoon, not M Night Shyamalan’s atrocious, racist depiction).

Turns out Phoenix didn’t do so well commercially, and Greenwillow opted to repackage it in time for its sequel’s release. Now, from what I understand, Borders refused to carry Phoenix, and only a select few B&N stores stocked limited quantities of it. The author said readers did not embrace Phoenix as much as she and her publisher would have liked, and thus, Phoenix was given a makeover ... Ai Ling was transformed from an Asian girl to a generic white chick.


Old cover	New cover

These days, a lot of readers don’t take kindly to whitewashing, and publishers have found themselves staring down the serrated ends of pitchforks when they pulled that stunt.

Furore over Silver Phoenix’s unfortunate cover alteration is growing, and you best believe bullets will be flying Greenwillow’s way pretty soon.

Me, I’m taking a different stance on this issue, and I’ll explain why.

Phoenix’s situation is much different from Liar’s or Magic Under Glass’. When Phoenix was published in 2009 it wasn’t whitewashed. It featured a beautiful Asian girl on its cover. The publisher chose to whitewash it after poor sales figures. That they even bothered to do so, AND publish a sequel, shows how much faith they have in Cindy Pon’s story and her ability as a writer. (Don’t publishers usually dump authors at this point?)

Greenwillow believes Phoenix is epic and deserves better attention from the public than it got. I agree.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending whitewashing. I think it’s disgusting. However, this time I’m not going to point my sniper at the publisher. This time I’m going to say what I’ve always wanted to say for a long while – the truth.

And the truth is booksellers are the racists. Most of them, at least.

Listen, the math is very straightforward: booksellers are the ones who pick books out of publisher catalogues, stock them and sell them.

A lot of people say that publishers whitewash books because they believe only white people read, and that white readers won’t buy books depicting people of other races on their covers.

You know what I think? I think most publishers whitewash books because they believe most booksellers believe white people are the only readers out there, and that white people are squeamish about picking up books with non-white people covers.

And that’s exactly what happened with Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix. Borders didn’t like it and skipped it. B&N barely stocked it. The publisher repackaged it with a white girl on its cover.

Why would a publisher repackage a book and publish its sequel despite poor sales, in this present economy? Makes no sense at all.

Oh, but wait, average reader reviews for Phoenix was positive; average critic reviews was positive; the original cover was aesthetic and cool.

Why the poor sales then?

Answer: the booksellers didn’t like Phoenix, thus Phoenix was hardly available in their bookstores, and thus a plethora of readers couldn’t find Phoenix to buy.

The guys at Greenwillow must have thought “Why didn’t booksellers like Phoenix then?” and went on to consult these booksellers, which eventually led to their decision to change Phoenix’s cover.

I guarantee you, when Phoenix is published with this new cover Borders and co will pick it. I promise you.

So, I’m not going to blame Greenwillow. In my opinion, they tried. They did everything they could. In the end, this is a business, and unfortunately if racist booksellers refuse to stock up your books then you have no choice but to give into their outrageous demand: whitewash your books.

The situation, I’m afraid, is out of the publisher’s hand. Greenwillow is not the villain here. The booksellers are.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-06-29T13:59:00.002+01:00

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*Snip*

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Teaser Tuesday

2010-06-22T14:27:00.002+01:00

Ah, my favourite day of the week, when I get to share a little bit of me to the world ... to you guys. Enjoy :D

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*Snip*

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Teaser Tuesday

2010-06-15T18:17:00.006+01:00

I had a supervisor's meeting today, so my teaser's a little late.

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*Gone with the wind*

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Teaser Tuesday

2010-06-08T16:43:00.002+01:00

Yeah, teaser Tuesday time, eh? Yup!

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*Snip!*

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The Peter Petrelli Effect

2010-06-08T15:33:00.001+01:00

Last week's teaser we found out a bit more about Giaan, that he has a rather strange ability. Someone said she always thought my WIP was "realistic fiction" and nothing to do with powers or stuff like that, and was quite shocked at the reveal (which pretty much mirrored what everyone else was thinking, judging by their: "Woah, I didn't know he had a power!"). Lol it is realistic fiction, in a way, and I'm happy about her reaction, cos it means I'm on the right track. I didn't have to result to any "my character has this weird power and he's confused and he doesn't want to use his powers but he has to, blah, blah, blah" to generate tension and make her feel for Giaan.

Giaan's biggest problem is not power-related. He's in a bad place right now and he can't come out of it through magic or doing something freaky. And you know what, that's cool.

I believe a character's power shouldn't define them. Who they are – not what they can do – is what should count the most. Giaan's pain, his "normal" struggles, his personality, his choices in "normal" situations, etc, are the very essence of his humanity, and that's the part of him I want readers to empathise with.

I guess this is me revolting against the norm. There are too many YA books out there today where the biggest problem a protag faces is one she has to solve by utilising her paranormal gift, and said problem is the only problem capable of striking true fear in her heart. All other problems, though strong enough to trigger some minor distress, border on the mundane, and only exist to expand the book's pages: protag has a crush on a boy and worries whether he likes her back and if he'll ask her out; protag has to deal with bullies or mean girls; etc.

Romance and encounter with mean girls are not sufficient ingredients in creating believable, three-dimensional teenagers, especially when we know by the book's conclusion the protag will most likely end up dating her boy-crush and defeating the mean girls. If your character's only normal problems are boys/girls and bullies and homework, and their only biggest problem is defeating the mystical beast with magic or paranormal powers, then you risk your character falling victim to the Peter Petrelli effect.

Peter Petrelli is this dude from Heroes, a TV show, who had a lot of cool powers, and everyone wanted to be like him at some point in the show's first season. When he lost his powers he became the most boring ass dude in television history. Why, cos without his powers he had no purpose. He had no vision. He had nothing. I started to ask myself, who the hell is this guy? He became worse than one-dimensional. There was nothing interesting about his life, because he had no life to begin with. The only time he seemed to breathe was when he could shoot something from his hands or read minds or do some shit like that.

Separate your characters from their powers or abilities; render them "normal" and see how interesting they are without the ubiquitous, clichéd young adult problems: "I like a boy but I don't know if he likes me?", "Those girls at school are always picking on me", etc. Doing so could help you and your characters circumvent the Peter Petrelli effect.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-06-01T08:36:00.003+01:00

It's that favourite day of the week again. Here's my teaser. God, that seems to be all I post on my blog these days. Well, you can blame "Beautiful Creatures". Still reading it and loving it very much. Hope the book stays that way until the end. I really don't want any screw ups!

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*Snip*

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Teaser Tuesday

2010-05-25T12:41:00.003+01:00

Here's my teaser. Tell me what you think!

Background info: Giaan's been handed a bag by his uncle and told to board a bus.

Snippet Starts:

*Snip*

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PS: Lost ... oh dear. I'm still crying! :(

Teaser Tuesday

2010-05-18T11:11:00.005+01:00

Considering my last teaser was really long, I've made today's very short.

Background info: Uncle Yashpal gave Giaan a bag and a phone and instructions to board bus 245.

Let me know what you think! Cheers ;)

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*Snip!*

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The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms Review

2010-05-14T15:03:00.003+01:00

The Story of my good friend Hype [Note: you can skip this and scroll below to the Review Proper]

Let me tell you something about this guy I know. His name is Hype. He's a funny bloke. He's also very special. I'm not being obsequious, because he knows he's special too. In fact he flaunts it at my face most of the time, the idiot.

How's he special, you may ask? Well, he has this amazing ability to sway people into picking up anything – books, weird mind-pornography, movies, music, TV, even African American dudes. Isn't that extraordinary? I wish I could do that. I really, really wish I could do that.

Yesterday, after lunch, I asked him to let me in on his secret. What's the source of your power, I said. He looked at me, smiled and told me his power didn't work the way I thought it did. I figured the only reason he said that was he didn't want me learning how to use his power to get that chick we met at the club last Wednesday. Lord in heaven. That white girl was fire on the dance floor.

Anyway, Hype elucidated that his power had a maddening drawback: free will. You see, his special ability is of a persuasive kind. He gets people to give products a long, second look, and if he spins his magic wheels right, sprinkles the right amount of fairy dust, he can blind a person's common sense and get them to buy anything out of inexplicable devotion and misguided trust.

The infuriating quandary that is free will tries to reinstate the common sense of Hype's victims by presenting a series of stupid questions, such as: "Doesn't this Justin Bieber guy suck?" "Am I listening to his music cos I want to or cos everyone's doing it, and if I don't my friends and family will call me a giant bag of Justin douche?" "Am I giving this book a good review cos, you know, if I don't the author will hate me, and I don't want that, cos I'm a closeted lesbian and I love her very much, and I have a secret crush on all her blogger friends?" "Did I just waste my money on this piece of horse sh*t?"

Hype said that after free will posits these annoying questions it urges "hyped" victims to choose an answer – yes or no. Their answers will decide whether they sink further into Hype's seductive warmth or break out of the trance he has bestowed on them. Overcoming his influence is very bad, Hype claimed. Those who do it take to the internet and spread their dissatisfaction, pain and sheer idiocy, which can contaminate other prospective victims. It's a lot worse if those who trounce Hype's control are bloggers. Bloggers are evil beings. They're demons from hell, Hype told me. They're soulless bitches. But when they give in to him they're filled with unparalleled awesomeness.

Now why the hell did I bother writing all this? How does it relate to N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? Well, turns out my good friend, Hype, sprinkled his gay fairy dust on me and made me buy this book. There I was in my bedroom, writing my book, and Hype appeared. He told me to visit the book smugglers. I was surprised. Hype hates the smugglers. They're the worst of all bloggers, he said. They always tend to shake off his influence and badmouth his hard work. Last night I overheard him praying that after Ana and Thea have lived their lives to the fullest and died, God should stick them in purgatory forever. Purgatory is worse than hell. It has women-eating unicorns, serenading imps, and babies that never stop crying. Plus, Rush Limbaugh is going there pretty soon.

(Satan doesn't want Rush anywhere near hell. He's worried Rush might oust him and become the new Prince of Darkness. God, who is responsible for all of creation, good and bad, maintains he has no idea who or what created Rush Limbaugh, and so cannot allow him into heaven. Xenu has only one free room in his spaceship and hasn't decided who he loves best: Rush Limbaugh, Tom Cruise or Philip Pullman).

I went to the smugglers' site and I read this about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: "It says a lot about me, as a reader, that I read those first few lines and am immediately hooked". The second I finished that sentence I was filled with a baffling desire to buy N.K. Jemisin's debut. I knew Hype was responsible, and I hated him for it. Yet, what could I do? He made me read Hush, Hush and my eyes bled (I use glasses now). He made me read The Forest of Hands and Teeth and now I can't stop thinking of the ocean. I have this insane urge to just run to any ocean and stay there, probably drown in it. He made me read Breaking Dawn and I never want to have babies. Ever.

He did all those things to me and I couldn't resist him. How could I now when smuggler Ana said she was hooked after reading the first few lines of Kingdoms?

I bought the book. Common sense commenced protocol 1039: "Are you sure you want to read this book? Are you sure you're not reading it cos Ana said it's really good?"

I read the book.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms Review Proper

In The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Yeine is a barbarian from the kingdom, Darr. She has been summoned by her grandfather to Sky, a magnificent floating mass of a palace and home to the almighty Arameri. Yeine's grandfather, Dekarta, is the head of the Arameri clan and thus uncrowned emperor of all one hundred thousand kingdoms in existence. The power bestowed on this old man to command and conquer as he pleases comes directly from Bright Itempas, the last remaining of the original three gods. Grandfather Dekarta chooses Yeine as an heir to his throne, along with her cousins, Scimina and Relad. All three candidates must battle to become the next head of the family and ruler of the world, and we accompany Yeine as she struggles through political machinations, unfolds secrets pertaining to her mother's mysterious death, befriends gods and goddesses, unravels hidden agendas, and wrestles with overwhelming feelings for the enigma, the blackest of darkness, the Nightlord himself – Nahadoth.

And what a ride it is.

Yeine is more passive than proactive. And you know what? It's OK. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone wants to use her to accomplish something. The only viable way for Yeine to understand what's really going on, to differentiate friend from foe, is to give into the wishes of others, to an extent, of course. You can't blame her. She's been yanked from her home and thrust into an alien world of madmen, madwomen and vengeful gods, and has no idea who or what to trust.

What N.K. Jemisin has crafted here is a world teeming with cultures at odds, clashing principles, and flawed, multidimensional characters. The Arameri family is the quintessence of absolute power corrupts absolutely. Their morals are imperfect: they hold the world to ransom, forcing their philosophy and religion on everyone. It's the only way global stability and prosperity can be achieved, they feel. Can you blame them? After all, eons ago there were three mighty gods: Itempas, Enefa and Nahadoth; many religions; and barbaric customs. The gods and their god children (godlings) fought, the world almost died, and in the end one god emerged victorious – Itempas, the god of the Arameri. Itempas granted the Arameri the power to reshape the world, and so they did, crushing anyone who stood in their way. Order must prevail, they believed. No more unnecessary conflicts. No more religions that promote chaos. No more customs that invoke barbarism and hinder human evolution.

A one world order.

The problem is in trying to accomplish such a momentous feat they lost their humanity along the way. This is most evident in Yeine's cousin, Scimina. Scimina is the prime example of what a person must become to rule over all. She's manipulative, intelligent, ruthless, and unlikable.

I've heard people accuse Scimina of being two-dimensional, arguing that her masochism has no reason attached to it. I honestly don't know where you lot got the crazy idea that three-dimensionality in a villainous character is only achievable when that character can explain away their actions: "I'm bad, cos Mummy didn't read me bedtime stories. Boohoo."

Really?

I disagree. Consider the scale of things. Scimina is royalty, the product of an environment that encourages callousness and shuns weakness and compassion. One day she might lord over a hundred thousand kingdoms. One hundred thousand kingdoms. That's billions of people, a hundred million (or more) of which would seize the slightest opportunity to kill her. She needs to be intelligent. She needs to be ruthless. She needs to be manipulative. And why the bloody hell should she care if anyone likes her? This isn't American Idol. This isn't democracy. Her approval ratings are so down they're in the negative. This is a dictatorship. She only cares about one thing: unyielding submission from others.

I enjoyed Scimina. She was competitive, she understood what needed to be done and how to do it, even though she had lost her mind, and she loved kinky sex – another criticism of her character.

Yeine isn't without her issues as well. She berates the Arameri for being dehumanised when her mother, an Arameri, was the same. She considers the Arameri culture as strange when funny enough, in her culture teenage girls have to be raped as part of a festival celebrating their coming of age. She hates her cousins and despises the gods for their scheming nature, yet she's just as scheming. She fails to see that had she grown up in Sky she might have been no different from Scimina.

These aren't annoying traits. Yeine is not an infuriating character. Her voice is a blessing – beautiful, engaging and poetic. It reels you in, takes hold of you, and charms you until the very last page.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has a lot of exposition. It's not tedious. The characters are so larger than life, their agendas so shrouded in mystery, that you want to know more. You want to know what started the gods' war, why Dekarta brought Yeine to Sky when it's obvious she lacks the fortitude and time to conspire her way to the throne, why the gods and godlings have a special interest in Yeine, what Yeine's mother was like, who killed her and for what purpose.

So much to unravel in this book – my God, it's amazing! It's fantasy soap opera. It's beautiful fiction. It's the kind of book I want YA authors to write, not love-triangle drivel!

The Hundred Thousand Kingdom is simply thus: a book with a graceful plot, a concrete mythology, a cadre of supreme characters, and a remarkable romance that doesn't get in the way. Get it. Go to your local bookstore, online, wherever, and buy this book now. I'd give you a hundred thousand reasons why you should, but I'd be revealing way too much.

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 10/10

World Building: 10/10

Prose: 10/10

Plot: 9/10

Final Score: 10/10

Teaser Tuesday

2010-05-11T14:39:00.004+01:00

Today's teaser is a little longer than I wanted. My apologies.

Last week, Aletea left Giaan alone with Uncle Yashpal, cos he claimed to have some work for Giaan to do. Today, you get an idea of what that work is.

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*Snip*

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Teaser Tuesday

2010-05-04T15:34:00.003+01:00

Been busy filling job applications and getting my final year project proposal sorted, so I nearly forgot it was Tuesday.

Here's my teaser. It continues from last week's.

A little background: Giaan and his girlfriend, Aletea, are back from shopping at Oxford Street in London. They encounter Giaan's uncle, Uncle Yashpal, at Giaan's house.

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*Snip*

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Wings Review

2010-04-29T12:06:00.004+01:00

Laurel has an abundance of problems idiosyncrasies. She doesn't like meat. At all. She craves outdoors and sunlight more than is necessary; she never gets cold; she has never been ill (as far as she can remember); she has never hurt herself (as far as she can remember); and she doesn't menstruate (as far as ... hey!).

She also has hippie parents who abhor doctors and shun orthodox medicine for herbal concoction. The federal government has embedded strange devices in every single tablet, and once ingested your DNA is copied and recorded in a government database. Should the United States government choose to body-snatch you ... Oh, sorry, that's not part of the plot.

Laurel and her parents move to a new home, and in a surprising twist her parents kick their home-schooling tradition to the curb and enrol Laurel in a public school. Public school means sitting indoors, thus Laurel isn't pleased with this turn of events. Remember, she loves outdoors and sunlight.

Her irritation at everything public school soon dampens when she meets David, a cute, charming, understanding boy armed with a dashing smile that can evaporate the ozone layer. (God forbid he gets pissed at the world).

As the months go by, David and Laurel grow closer, a character journey that is both refreshing and engaging. The romance isn't forced. It flows and ebbs with effortless fluidity.

One morning Laurel wakes up to the discovery of bumps on her shoulder blades. She dismisses them as zits. But the bumps keep swelling, and after days of panicking and fussing, they disappear. In their stead are wings ... or petals ... or wings that look like petals. Beautiful wings. Laurel is both amazed and distraught.

With David's help, a visit to the forest at her old house, and Google searches, Laurel discovers she's a fairy. With a twist. I won't tell you what that twist is, but I will say it's a rather good twist.

Wings is not a complicated read and Aprilynne Pike is not a complicated writer. The plot is simple and flows from A to Z with hardly any hitch. Pike's prose does wobble a bit in some areas, and her tendency to over-rely on adverbs will grate on some readers. However, as many will tell you, Aprilynne Pike's mission is to provide entertainment, not literary tediousness, and she accomplishes that.

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 6/10

A statement of fact: Laurel is the only almost-three-dimensional character in Wings. She's smart, vulnerable, confident, brave, reckless, understanding and a lot of things. These traits don't just burst out at once. As the book progresses, one misadventure after another, she picks up a new self-attribute, embraces it, and flaunts it.

David starts out great. He is tailor-made for the role as Laurel's love interest, hence his glorified characteristics. But in spite of his tendency to be perfect most of the time (devoted, sympathetic to Laurel's plight, always says the right thing at the right time), Laurel does not allow herself to be ruled by her emotions. She takes things one step at a time, and in the end theirs is a relationship that is very, very real and cute.

For a while.

Enter Tamani, super hot Edward lookalike fairy boy, and Wings tumbles into mediocre terrain, along with my respect and love for it. It takes Laurel more than half the entire book to fall for David. It takes her two paragraphs to fall head-over-heels for Tamani.

Tamani's role is to serve as the third side of a ridiculous love triangle Wings could have done without. It's the same cheap plot device we've seen female YA authors use time and again. Laurel is kissing David today. Tomorrow she's eating Tamani's face. And the weird thing: David doesn't mind. He doesn't react. Tamani touches Laurel in front of him and he does nothing. His devotion to Laurel never wavers. It's so sad, because in the end David looks less like a teenage boy and more like Laurel's obedient poodle.

World building: 7/10

Until Wings I had never read a book about fairies. I have to say I found Aprilynne's mythology unique and very interesting.

Prose: 7/10

A very easy read. The adverbs in the dialogue tags, however, were a constant annoyance for me.

Plot: 7/10

Wings' plot is linear, very easy to follow. But it's not perfect. There's something like this:

MASTER: Your phone will ring at 3pm every day. You must make sure your mum never answers it.

HERO: Why?

MASTER: Dude, do as you're told.

[Hero screws up at some point and Mum answers phone]

HERO: Master, I ... I failed.

MASTER: Your mum answered the phone?

HERO: Yes.

MASTER: Dude! For fuck's sake. Now the world is going to end.

HERO: Well, you could have told me that in the first place and I'd have done something more drastic, like, I don't know – unplugging the phone.

Then there's the main villain, who we know is the main villain the instant he makes an appearance, but Laurel doesn't know until the very end. Tut. Poor.

Final Score: 7/10

Teaser Tuesday

2010-04-27T15:07:00.008+01:00

Teasers are good for your health. The UK's Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham, and the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius (awesome last name for a villain. I'm totally using it for one of my characters. Thanks Kathleen), said so. I kid you not :D

Just a little background info for those who haven't read my previous teasers: Giaan is Pakistani, hence his unusual name. (I don't find it unusual, as I have lots of friends from the international community, but some people do. So, no - in case you're thinking it, Giaan is not an alien name. It's not a traditional American or British name, but that doesn't mean it's a name from Mars.) Aletea is half-Indian-half-white British (again, Aletea is an Indian name). Aletea is Giaan's girlfriend and Mr Diggavi is Aletea's father.

In this scene Aletea and Giaan are on their way to Giaan's house after shopping in London.

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*Snip snip*

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Sadly Giaan's fun time has come to an end. From here on, it's going to be tough for him.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-04-20T11:15:00.005+01:00

Today's teaser continues from last week's. Enjoy!

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*Snip snip*

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The curious case of bullying

2010-04-15T17:50:00.003+01:00

Something happened yesterday involving an agent, a disgruntled writer, a bunch of people and twitter. The issue reached boiling point and people started taking sides, writing blog posts, pointing fingers, and demanding apologies.

At the earlier moments of its inception, I chose not to comment on it. But now that the whole thing seems to have died down a bit, I feel I should give my perspective on the affair.

Bullying is wrong.

Make no mistake; whatever you think, bullying does more harm than good.

However, as the wise Hogwarts motto goes, "Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus," or in English, "Never tickle a sleeping dragon;" if you decide to take up arms against someone you assume to be considerably weaker than you, and that person takes you down, you have only yourself to blame.

Here's a simple story that represents what happened between the agent and the disgruntled writer.

A wolf trots to a dark cave and spots a rabbit at the entrance. In a show of politeness, the wolf asks the rabbit for a piece of wood, to which the rabbit replies, "I'm sorry, Mr Wolf, but I can't give you my wood. It's the last one I have and I'm saving it for someone else. But please, do understand that there are many woods lying about the forest, and while I cannot help you, I'm sure someone out there will."

The wolf considers the rabbit's rejection, and after concluding that it has a bigger set of teeth, bigger paws and greater strength, the wolf devises a new tactic. It snarls at the rabbit.

Riled and unafraid, the rabbit accepts the wolf's challenge and steps out of the cave.

The wolf is surprised. Turns out, what it presumed to be a rabbit was in fact the nose of a giant bear.

The bear swipes the wolf, and yelping, the wolf retreats, defeated.

An agent received a query from a writer. She rejected the writer on professional grounds, though with fantastic words of encouragement. The writer didn't take it well. But rather than retaliate with the usual, "Screw you," the writer decided to put down the agent by employing gender prejudice (as well as attacking the authors she represents, among other things). The agent snapped and posted the writer's unbecoming replies and his name. People saw it, commented about it, and some took to twitter and began sullying the man's name.

Some other people saw this happening, grew disgusted, bristled in silence, got more pissed off, and finally – unable to cope with the itching – blogged about it. They pointed at the agent and accused her of bullying.

The short sequel to my awesome story goes thus:

A group of tourists are walking by. They stop when they see a wolf whimpering and seeking cover. Hot on its tail, a plethora of animals – snails, dogs, rabbits, kangaroos, et cetera – toss junk at the wolf, screaming abuses. The tourists are horrified.

Who's to blame? The wolf, the bear, or the animals who decided to attack the wolf?

What surprises me is how most people have taken this issue and made it entirely black and white, or victim and abuser – the victim being the man (or the wolf) and the abuser being the agent (or the bear). The agent has absolute power, they say, and as such is responsible for the campaign on twitter to destroy the poor writer's name.

Lol

The agent did NOT lead a campaign against the writer. She simply posted his replies along with his name on her blog. She was hurt and angry, and in the heat of the moment she decided to counter-attack the guy in public. Everybody does it. I've perused hundreds of writer, agent and editor blogs, and sometimes I see posts like, "Can you believe what this person did to me?"

The only contentious aspect in the agent's exploit is exposing the writer's name. Some believe she shouldn't have done that. Some believe she should have.

What do I believe?

I can only imagine what I would do if I were in her shoes. I'm not a woman. I don't know what it's like to be a woman. I know women take a lot of crap just for being women. It's almost like race. Now if I were an agent, and I rejected some guy, and he sent a reply demeaning me because I'm black, I'd be really pissed. I'd be so pissed I'd probably print his name and email replies on my blog.

Will I be justified in doing so? Hell yeah. It's my bloody blog. If I'm allowed to rant about mere books why shouldn't I be allowed to rant about something as serious as racial prejudice?

Does that make my doing so right? No. But still, I will neither judge the woman nor will I begrudge her, her right to defend herself on her blog if she chooses to.

What I've observed since I started using twitter and visiting a lot of agent/editor blogs is this odd opportunistic hypocrisy displayed by some writers (aspiring and published), a sort of weird insincerity. Please understand that this is not directed at any particular group, both those in support of the agent's conduct and those against it. This is general observation.

A bunch of people commented on the agent's blog post. Some of them went on twitter to attack the guy, because they chose to. She didn't send a mass email asking them to do what they did, but she didn't tell them to stop either. They did it anyway. Why? I don't know.

Maybe they felt disgusted and needed to air out their grievances. Maybe they felt a public show of annoyance would somehow gain the agent's attention and subsequent support when they send her queries. All I know is they, on their own, attacked the guy because he attacked a seemly popular agent.

Opportunistic hypocrisy.

Whenever an agent says something, people just ... agree with them without actually thinking, "Hey, you know what, maybe this dude is wrong."

Then there's the other group – those who disagreed with the whole thing. Most of them kept their mouths shut. They kept quiet and just watched. It took three or so agented/soon-to-be-published authors to come out and say, "Hey, this is bullshit," before they all came out of their nests, chests puffed out: "Yeah man, screw that agent. Who does she think she is? I applaud you. I'm proud of you. You're so brave. You're like Obama!"

Hannah Moskowitz said on her blog that as far as the industry goes everyone is equal; published/agented writers, agents or editors are in no way greater than aspiring writers, and vice versa.

That would have been true if this was an ideal world.

In this world we live in, the words of those who have at least one foot in the publishing industry carries more effectual power than those who don't, which explains why it took blog posts by agented writers to draw out the voices of dissent.

Even then, these so-called opponents fell short of accomplishing what I had hoped they would. All they did was repeat the same format – one agent says something; everyone jumps on her back without serious deliberation. One author says something else; everyone jumps on her back without serious deliberation. Let's all play Russian roulette – pull out our guns and fire, because she said it was that woman's fault. Or let's arm ourselves with snipers and shot that guy cos he hurt that agent.

First: they ignored the blatant sexism in the writer's emails (those who didn't ignore it failed to see the seriousness of it).

Second: they refused to comprehend that some people when confronted with something as upsetting as discrimination, be it on the basis of race or gender, almost always react the way the agent reacted, which was to blog about it. And they have a right to, damn it.

Third: they utilised the same let's-blame-it-all-on-this-guy bullying tactic by refusing to point out that though the agent may have published a blog post about the insulting writer, separate individuals attacked the writer of their own accord. Some of these individuals were agents, published authors and editors. I'm on twitter too. I saw them. I know their names. I followed the whole drama from start to finish. Yet – surprise, surprise! – None of the authors who blogged their disagreement aimed their crosshairs at the other guilty parties. They all made it look like it was a case of one mad woman grabbing a machete and rallying up supporters with the sole aim of destroying one poor, poor boy.

Call a spade a spade. If you want to take the moral high ground on this issue, grab the bull by its horns. Don't play double-standards. Point at everyone involved, not one woman.

As for me, this is simply a case of a bully who tried to bully someone else but got bullied instead. I have no sympathy for the guy. I don't give a fuck whether he needs an agent so badly to help him get published so he can pay his mortgage or hospital bills, or that he's mentally ill (and I'll bet my life he's not. Most people who behave this way aren't mentally handicapped), or whatever naive reason anyone can concoct; in my world, there is absolutely no excuse for sexism, racism or any form of gross discrimination. No excuse at all. I have zero tolerance for that kind of shit.

And while I agree that the agent should have left his name out, I understand why she didn't, and quite frankly, part of me applauds her for putting his name out there.

However, it's my hope that in the future the agent will exercise discretion when dealing with similar issues.

An eye for an eye makes the world go blind, but if history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes in order to get what we truly deserve we have to be prepared to fight in complete darkness.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-04-13T16:01:00.004+01:00

Someone in AW suggested we keep our teasers in the range of 500 words. I couldn't agree more. Lol Actually, I agree because I'm running out of teasers. Also, because it's easier for me to read everyone's teasers in time to get back to my writing. I want to read everyone's teasers. I love doing it. Besides learning from them, I get that amazing feeling of visiting different worlds and meeting new, interesting people – characters born out of minds far more creative than mine. It's a blessing.

So, here's my teaser. It's short, but I hope you enjoy it, nonetheless.

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Should thou point the finger? Should thou kiss some ass?

2010-04-12T15:11:00.002+01:00

On Twitter I stumbled upon this blog post: http://markcnewton.com/2010/04/12/book-factories/

You can choose to read the post in its entirety, but I'll go ahead and give you a snippet anyway. This is what attracted my attention and led to my latest inadvertent blog post:

"As a related aside, I do find it amusing when some reviewers say 'the book could have done with more editing'. An editor (not mine) commented on this at Eastercon recently – it's ridiculous for people to say that, because have they any idea just what work went into that manuscript in the first place? That an editor could have reduced a novel by half to have some clown still say it needs a good edit (when they might also mean, for example, that they didn't agree with the pacing)."

Some clown? Really?

I have to say, I am guilty of this (which makes me a clown). I've reviewed a bunch of books and I think at one instance I did point my finger at an editor. But only once. On the whole, I focus on a book's plot, characters and so on.

The question I have is should we refrain from accusing editors when their clients' books are guilty of plot holes or disjointed plots (baddie walks into a room which has one entrance and no windows. The room blows up. Many pages later, baddie reappears, claiming he escaped through the room's backdoor ... which doesn't exist), lengthy and unnecessary exposition (book is 900 pages. It could have been 250), spelling and grammatical errors, major silliness (character has green eyes in page 1. In page 5 he has blue eyes) (character is black but talks like an idiot, because writer assumed all black people sound like Lil Wayne), et cetera.

(Bear in mind that while editors make suggestions and request changes, some authors do ignore them – though I'm sure there's a limit to this).

Should editors be cocooned from reader/reviewer fulmination because they've worked too damn hard on their clients' books? Are they above criticism because we – readers and reviewers alike – do not understand the intricate process of book editing?

In essence, should thou point the finger?

As this is my blog, it's only fair I let you all know my stance on the matter.

Here goes: I don't know how to animate creatures or characters on screen. I can't act. If Osama Bin Laden strapped me in a chair, wrapped an explosive vest around my torso and told me the only way I was walking out alive was if I wrote a movie script, you had better believe I'd be blown to a million pieces. I don't know how to direct a movie or edit one. Cinematography? What the bloody hell does that mean? I don't know! (Actually, I do now, cos I looked it up :D)

But I do know this: Clash of the Titans remake and Terminator Salvation sucked. Banana. Balls. And we all know who's to blame for that.

Moving on.

This issue of pointing the finger at editors also got me pondering another matter. Should aspiring and published writers review books at all? If you're a writer and you read a book, the book sucked – like sucked really bad – and you knew coming out and stating your opinion about the book would draw unfavourable attention to you, would you alter your estimation of the book from, "You know what, this book should have been edited down to 250 pages. It was horrible," to, "OMG! I loved it! It was better than sex with my boyfriend"?

Panning a book on your blog or twitter is almost like spitting in the faces of the author, his or her agent, and editor of that book. And if you're an aspiring writer, one day, after years of toiling on your baby, chances are your manuscript will land on the desk of the agent or editor whose client's work you pissed all over. Or, even worse, the author whose book you ripped on would be asked to blurb your book. If they've read your blog, you know what they're going to say: "Hell no! Fuck her."

So, should thou kiss some ass?

Again – my blog, so I must state my view: I wake up in the morning, watch some episodes of CSI NY, and at 1:30 I shower. Then I head out to Waterstones. There I pick up a copy of your book. Pay for it with my Barclaycard – £9.80. I go home, sit down and delve into your book.

Three days later, I'm done. And I'm depressed. Why am I depressed? Your book sucked. Not that it had a small character development problem or the ending didn't work well for me – I mean, everything about it sucked. Really bad. I start thinking about what I could have done with £9.80. I start wondering what would have happened had I gone to that party with that girl in one of those three days I used to read your book. Maybe I would have got laid. I start regretting buying your book. I get pissed.

Will I kiss your ass and sugar coat my review?

Here's a hint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

"But Glen – dude, you're digging yourself into a hole!"

Look, let's be honest – I'm black. While my fellow aspiring white writers have to run to get published and recognised, I have to fly ... and probably shit gold along the way. And before you go there, no I'm not playing the race card and I'm not complaining either. Lol I'm stating a simple fact. By association, I'm already in a hole. Editors and agents are going to tell me my urban fantasy manuscript is great but, "Won't it be better if you wrote about Africa? Your name fits the description of an ethnic writer." Hahaha! I always relish a challenge. I can't wait to finish my book, start querying and finally stomp on the status quo.

So I'm going to keep writing my reviews. Even though I don't regret buying any book I've reviewed so far (not even The Forest of Hands and Teeth A.K.A Run Mary, Run to the Ocean, irrespective of what you may think), I know the day is coming when I'm going to purchase that one book that'll make me really, really mad.

Teaser Tuesday ... Interrupted

2010-04-06T14:39:00.014+01:00

This is a teaser tuesday post. Sorry, forgot to add that bit cos I was testing blogging via a new device at my friend's place.

So, what's going on here? It's an unpublished blogpost by a certain character in my book. I decided to shift from Giaan and give you guys this. I hope you like it.

Snippet starts:

*Snip snip*

Snippet ends.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-03-30T15:24:00.004+01:00

It's Tuesday again and you know what that means. Here's my teaser. Continues from last week's, but unfortunately I've taken that one down.

Last week, Giaan and Aletea, his girlfriend, were shopping in London. Today, they're still in London, but Giaan receives a call from one of his best friends. If you've been following my teasers, or if you read the very first few ones, you'll recognise the name of Giaan's friend.

Snippet starts:

*Snip snap!*

Snippet ends.

You don't remember Jon? I'll give you a hint. Here's a brief snip from one of my earliest teasers:

*Snip snap!*

Yeah. Jon. The same boy who encountered David Reilly in Egypt. David Reilly who hates Egypt and his wife. That's whole idea of my WIP. Each chapter (called episodes) focuses on a different character, and all these characters are interlinked with one another somehow.

Quick Reviews

2010-03-29T18:00:00.001+01:00

The Time Traveller’s Wife By Audrey Niffenegger

In case you're wondering, traveller is spelt with double L's in the UK ;)

Audrey Niffenegger's debut isn't a literary paradigm prose-wise, but it is perhaps one of the most compelling romantic stories I have ever read in a long time.

Henry DeTamble has a rare genetic disorder that enables him to travel through time – a gift, because if you think about it, time travelling is cool; and a curse, because he can't control it, and there's no telling where he could end up when he disappears. The book opens with Henry at his workplace, a library, where he encounters Clare for the first time. But the way she acknowledges him suggests he may have met her before, probably during one of his time travelling adventures. Clare promises to explain everything over coffee. Henry accepts her invitation. When she spills the beans, he's blown away. Turns out a future him has visited Clare 152 times right from when she was a kid, and apparently they end up falling madly in love and marrying.

Talk about information overload. Poor Henry.

At first, you think it's an absurd story, but the more you read, the more fascinated you get. You want to find out how Henry and Clare fall in love, how they deal with his time travelling problem, whether or not they get that happily ever after that comes after marriage, and so on.

I have to tell you, at times, this book felt a little wordy, but overall, it was worth my time. I loved it. It made me cry, and I hardly ever cry over a book.

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 9/10

Henry, Clare and their love for each other as they struggle with Henry's time travelling disorder are the main focuses in The
Time Traveller's Wife. In other words, this is a character-driven novel, albeit a great one. So vivid, these characters. It's not a perfect book by all means. Traveller does require quite an effort to get through certain parts, and some characters were just plain disgusting. My accusing finger points to Gomez. I still don't understand why Henry and Clare continued their friendship with this dude. Also, Henry and Clare have very strange tastes in music and politics. But, hey, no one's perfect, right?

World Building: 9/10

Audrey employs some pretty impressive genetic tinkering in her bid to explain Henry's disorder, which surprised me, considering how romance took precedence over science fiction in this book. I really didn't expect her to pull it off. Reminds me of how Stephanie Meyer was able to carve her own unique brand of vampires, even though her aim was to offer a tale of extraordinary romance. It's these aspects – the time-travelling and the vampires – that attracted me to both The Time Traveller's Wife and Twilight. The difference is Audrey was able to juggle both features – the sci-fi and the romance – without skewering one in the hopes of force-feeding the other to her readers.

Prose: 8/10

Awkward descriptions lie here and there, and dialogues tend to be a little off at times, but not enough to detract from the book's awesomeness.

Plot: 9/10

One word: excellent.

Final Score: 9/10

Life as We Knew It By Susan Beth Pfeffer

A meteor slams on the moon, shattering bits of it and shifting it closer to the earth. What follows is a series of unfortunate events that lead to millions of deaths and in some instances, complete devastation of some countries and cities. The story, wonderful and moving, is told through Miranda's diary entries.

Life as We Knew It excels mostly because of Miranda. She grows from a selfish, petulant teenager to a valiant, selfless girl who understands that life as we knew it is but a dream; a new world is here to stay forever, and the logical thing to do is to be smart, adapt and survive. And most of all, in extreme circumstances such as this, family and friends are more important than anything else.

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 8/10

Every. Single. One. Awesome. And it hurts all the more when the memorable ones die. Even the weird Christian girl who starves herself to death – you know she's being idiotic in her ridiculous quest to attain salvation through hunger strike, but you can't help but feel sorry for her and in some ways understand why she's doing it. Man, the characters in this book got to me. Pulled my heart strings, I tell you.

World Building: 8/10

I'm not a scientist, so I can't vouch that Susan Beth Pfeffer's depiction of the world after the moon's repositioning is accurate, but it works well for the book. The fact is if what happened in this book happened in real life, life would suck. Cities would fall. Countries would drown. People would die. A lot of people, good and bad ones alike. I know it. You know. Susan knows it, and she spares absolutely no one in her fictional mayhem.

There is, however, one thing Susan fails at on an epic scale. In times of disaster, Christians are normally the first to respond with a helping hand. They're not the weirdos portrayed in this book. I'm not saying this because I'm a Christian; it just feels like Susan has something against Christianity.

Prose: 8/10

Plot: 8/10

Final Score: 8/10

Catching Fire By Suzanne Collins

This book needs no introduction. If you love reading YA books or books for that matter and you haven't read Catching Fire, then what the hell is your problem?? But before you run off to your local bookstore for this one, I'd advise you to devour The Hunger Games first. It's better that way: The Hunger Games first, Catching Fire second.

After succeeding in the bloody hunger games, you'd think life would take a turn for the best for Katniss Everdeen. But after an impromptu visit from President Snow (strange man, strange name), things actually turn for the worst.

Fans of the series will love this book, no matter what anyone says. And Catching Fire deserves to be loved.

But it isn't as great as The Hunger Games, and that's not Suzanne Collins' fault. How do I explain it? Ok, check this: you're a 22 year-old man. You're on your way to the supermarket when you bump into someone. You mumble apologies, look up, and freeze. There she is – the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. You can't take your eyes off her. She's like ... a goddess. Two weeks later, you two have sex. Amazing. The best sex you ever had. Two years later you marry. Twenty-two years later, even though you're still in love with her, it just ain't the same no more. Not your fault. Not her fault. You probably still love her as much as you did when you two first met, and you wouldn't trade her for anything, but ... it's ... not the same.

Or when you buy a new car and for the first few weeks you feel like you're riding a supernatural rocket. Months later, your car's just a car. Still a nice car, and you love it, but it's not a rocket anymore. It's lost that special tinge of freshness.

That's Catching Fire. Reading it, you get a feeling of déjà vu. Been there, done that with The Hunger Games and Battle Royale. It's still an exciting read, but you can't chase away that nagging sense of familiarity. And if you're smart enough and you analyse hard once you get somewhere close to the middle of the book, you can actually see the plot twist a mile away.

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 8/10

Katniss rules. I wish there were more girls like her.

I'm still not sold on the love-triangle, though. Peeta gets more appearances than Gale, who emerges in, like, a total of five scenes. And even when Gale's around he hardly does anything. How's that fair, Suzanne? It's more than likely Katniss will end up with Peeta, unless Peeta dies, which would suck and piss off an entire fan base.

World Building: 9/10

Prose: 8/10

Plot: 8/10

Final Score: 8/10

FIRE By Kristin Cashore

Imagine for a second: you're a beautiful woman, stunning in every manner – from your hair to your toes. Everything about you magnetises men. Hell, probably women too. You're so gorgeous, so breathtaking, that when people lay their eyes on you they feel a sudden, overwhelming burst of emotion – love, lust, anger, jealousy, greed, rage; whichever the emotion, they will do whatever they must to get their hands on you. To possess you. To kill you.

Now let's ice the cake with chocolate butter: you also have the ability to read and project thoughts, compelling anyone to do anything you want.

Imagine that.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Fire.

In 2008 Graceling was Kristin Cashore's remarkable entrance into the publishing world. From prose to plot, she had it all down to near perfection. The hype was there. The hype was real. And when Graceling reached the general public, it stomped on all expectations, proclaiming: 'I know you heard about me. But what you heard isn't half of what I truly am.'

Back then, the only reason Cashore couldn't be regarded as a literary assassin was because of her debut status. Well, that status is gone. If Graceling was the warning shot, Fire is the bullet that killed the sheriff. And Kristin Cashore didn't have to utilise cheap love-triangles to lure her target.

All you YA writers out there, get a pen, get a notebook, sit your butt down, and let Kristin Cashore school you in how to write a book with a frigging plot and believable romance.

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 9/10

What I like most about Fire, our heroine, is how realistic she is. Taking into account the bad reputation her father bred for himself and everyone like him, Fire is determined never to use her powers on anyone, friend or foe. But then war ensues, and she realises there comes a time when you must use what you have to protect the ones you love. But she doesn't become reckless. She handles herself like a pro, evaluating her moral convictions and altering them for the better, not for the worse. In other words, she evolves. She grows.

The lesson: real life is much too complex to adhere by only ground rules or childhood ideals or fantasies.

So many YA authors struggle with this concept. Even JK Rowling. I remember Lupin chastising Harry in Deathly Hallows for always using the Expelliarmus spell, and Harry defends himself by saying, 'I won't blast people out of the way just because they're in front of me. That's Voldemort's job.' Reading that, made me laugh. Harry first used Expelliarmus when he was 10 or so, in the first or second book. Now he's a teenager, thrust into a war that concerns him, against a dark lord intent on murdering everyone without just cause, and instead of learning new spells or devising new tactics, he makes up ridiculous excuses along the lines of: bad people are the only ones who use guns and bullets and wands and evil magic. Good people should only use sticks and bats and tranquilisers.

Or Mary from Forest of Hands and Teeth who loves the ocean and retains this childhood fantasy to visit it someday; when she suddenly finds herself in the big bad world of zombies, when she has a chance to re-evaluate her choices, take the logical step, she decides getting to the ocean – following her childhood fantasy – is the best course of action. No one should ever give up their dreams, but sometimes, we have to make sacrifices in order to ensure those dreams come true. Why, cos nothing is ever that simple.

At the end of their respective stories, Harry defeats Voldemort with Expelliarmus and Mary gets her ocean. Nothing wrong with that. Remember, these are fantasy books, not guides to real life. But to me, none of these characters grew. Yeah, Harry kissed a couple of girls, got a girlfriend, and fought the big bad wolf. Yet, after all was said and done, all I saw was a kid with braver, more intelligent companions and far too many lucky charms. And Mary was nothing but a romanticised idea of her creator.

Magic, zombies, and powerful villains are fantastic tools for character development, but sometimes, it's the little things that make the big difference.

Nevertheless, Harry Potter would still get a 9 in this category. While Harry, in my opinion, was never deserving of praise for taking down Voldemort (the dude's killing curse rebounded and iced him – it's called suicide), there were still a host of memorable, three-dimensional characters that made the Potter books worth every page.

World Building: 9/10

Prose: 10/10

No, seriously, her prose is THAT awesome, and very distinctive. Kristin Cashore has this peculiar way of stringing unusual sentences and words together, and they end up comprehensible and sounding cool. It's her unique style. Very few writers have that. Kristin is one of them.

Plot: 9/10

Final Score: 9/10

Jack Bauer tries to save President Obama

2010-03-26T05:57:00.003Z

The fact of the matter remains: Jack Bauer is willing to do what is necessary to save the American people, and Barack Obama isn't.

Here's proof:

PS: I nearly pissed myself laughing. The best bit for me was Obama saying, “Need caller ID. That guy’s insane. We need better health care.”

Also, I know for a fact that it was Hitler’s idea to yell “You lie” at Obama:

You’re probably wondering how I got all these exclusives. Well, I won’t tell you. You can cry me a river all you want, won’t change a damn thing.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-03-23T15:20:00.004Z

It's that time of the week again, and I've got my teaser ready your consumption. This teaser is a continuation of last week's, though you will find that time has jumped a bit. Whereas last week we saw Giaan and his brother, Raza, in 2007, today's teaser puts Giaan in 2009.

Enjoy.

Snippet starts:

*Snip snip!*

Snippet ends.

Well, looks like my boy, Giaan, is having a pretty awesome day. *Sigh* Too bad it doesn't last.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth Review

2010-03-22T15:15:00.004Z

Mary lives in a village among what looks to be the last human population on earth. Her village is surrounded by walls made of metal and a forest called 'the forest of hands and teeth', home to the Unconsecrated, the walking dead – mindless beasts who remain relentless in their struggle to breach the village's walls. Mary has lived in this village all her life and has little knowledge of what lies beyond the fences and the forest; knowledge comprising of stories her mother told her, stories of the ocean – a vast bucket of water and salt that stretches to the far ends of the earth. She's intrigued by the ocean. She wants to see the ocean.

Mary's serene world takes its first stumble when her mother wanders too near the protective walls and gets bitten, eventually succumbing to an infection which transforms her into an Unconsecrated. Thereafter, Mary is sent to spend the rest of her days with the Sisters, the village's ruling party.

Things get interesting when an outsider named Gabrielle drifts into Mary's village, and is whisked away by the Sisters before the denizens of the village can hear of her. For Mary, Gabrielle's existence means one thing: there is life outside her village and the forest. But why are the Sisters so intent on keeping Gabrielle a secret? Surely Gabrielle's presence is good news. What are they hiding?

Soon Gabrielle disappears and returns later as an Unconsecrated, but different from her undead peers in that she possesses great speed.

Mary's world finally crumbles when the Unconsecrated, led by a vicious Gabrielle, break through the fences, killing and turning any human being they come in contact with.

It's hard to resist The Forest of Hands and Teeth's pull, whether or not you're a zombie/dystopian fan. Its premise hints at an entertaining, blood-curdling ride. But that's as far as the ride goes – a hint. Forest starts out great, especially during the period when Gabrielle is detained by the Sisters, but after the Unconsecrated break into the village the plot grounds to a halt.

From here on, all we get is Mary and her incessant desire to get to the ocean, or her inner voice constantly analysing her love for Travis and why he didn't come for her before her semi-wedding ceremony to his brother, Harry. It doesn't take long before her inner voice gets rather irritating.

There is some mystery surrounding the Roman numerals labelling the fenced paths and gates Mary and co come across as they seek refuge from the Unconsecrated, but Carrie Ryan doesn't go anywhere with it. The mystery hangs in the air from the start of the book till the end. We get no answers. Nothing.

I'm going to be blunt: all this book has is a great premise. There is no plot whatsoever. Think I'm lying? Here's how Forest goes: Mary escapes from village; whines about Travis; whines about the ocean; whines about Travis or Harry or Cass or Jed; Mary and friends get to new village; she whines about Travis; whines about the ocean; Mary and friends leave new place; she whines about Travis; whines about the ocean; Mary sees gate leading out of forest; whines about ocean; whines about ... hey, this must be the way to the ocean even though I have absolutely no clue; Mary opens gate; Mary gets to the ocean.

Trust me, there's no spoiler in that summary, because there's absolutely nothing to spoil in this book, except maybe that Mary didn't die. But really, were you expecting her to?

It's such a shame. The Forest of Hands and Teeth could have had the greatest plot ever, I'm telling you.

There's this scene where Mary is in a house and she opens a chest. She finds all these newspaper clippings, stuff from the New York Times and other magazines – a whole bunch of informative things that could reveal something, anything to us readers. At this point I'm thinking, perhaps the plot is about to begin. But what does Mary do? She doesn't attempt to learn about the Unconsecrated, how they came to be, how they spread; she doesn't try to learn about what happened to the village she's residing in at the moment. (I mean, she's in a house that is more fortified than any house in her village, stacked with weapons and food that can last a year or more. So how the hell did everyone get infected?)

You know what she does? She picks a picture of the ocean and focuses on it.

The frigging ocean.

And while we're on the subject, what the hell is with this ocean crap? No, really. I get that characters need a driving force, something that pushes them to move on despite adversities in their world, but the ocean? That's it? It's not like the ocean holds the answers to solving the Unconsecrated problem; it's not like Jesus Christ lives there – it's just a freaking ocean. Mary's obsession with it makes no sense. And when she does get to the ocean, nothing special happens. Rainbows don't fly out from the water. Dolphins don't celebrate her arrival. All I get is an anticlimactic scene: the ocean, I've arrived, the end.

Admittedly, Forest reads more like a literary YA book – a character driven novel – and as such it's bound to get away with not having a plot (that's literary genre novels for you). Plus, Carrie Ryan pulls off the literary angle to near perfection. Her prose is beautiful, poetic, and Mary, despite how annoying she is, is well drawn – three dimensional. In the end, even though Mary gets increasingly selfish and infuriating as the novel draws to a close, you realise it's just her character. It's who she is – a bitch. Not Carrie Ryan's fault.

The only thing I can blame Carrie Ryan for is not given me a really cool plot.

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 8/10

Characters were superbly presented, Mary especially. The secondary characters stood out in their own special way, though they weren't as engaging as Mary. I should have given Forest a 9 in this category; I just didn't like most of Mary's decisions.

World building: 8/10

Carrie Ryan crafted a vivid, intriguing and mysterious world – a world bursting with so many exciting questions. It's too bad her world got knocked into the background so the "ocean" could play a more prominent role.

Prose: 8/10

Lush, rhythmical, and moving in most places. Although her dialogues were mostly off.

Plot: 4/10

Which plot? The one where Mary goes to the ocean?

Final Score: 7/10 (on approximation)

Click here to read my review system.

Final thoughts:

The absence of a decent plot didn't go down well with me.
The love triangle (or love square) irritated me: Mary loves Travis; Travis is betrothed to Cass; Cass loves Harry; Harry is betrothed to Mary. Seriously, love triangles are as aggravating as vampires and angels today.
And what's with writers these days and bashing Christianity? The Sisters are a bunch of Christian lunatics who use God as an excuse for everything: "God said you should wear red. You know what happens when you don't listen to God – he sends the Unconsecrated to destroy the world." I read the same thing in Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It: one character starves herself to death because "God" asked her to; her pastor supports her decision, even though he is well-fed. And in Paul Hoffman's The Left Hand of God: the redeemers, much like the Sisters, are a cluster of ridiculous God-loving paedophiles who create assassins out of young boys. Really? Focus on Islam for once. Oh, that's right. You can't. You know what they'll do to you if you pull that kind of stunt with them. Ask Salman Rushdie.

I'd recommend to anyone interested in character driven novels – Forest excels in that area. If you're looking for a fast-paced, zombie plot, you won't get that from The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

Why oh why?

2010-03-19T13:41:00.003Z

So I was on Twitter yesterday when I saw this from Agent Janet Reid: click here.

Whoever did this I'd like them to contact me. Seriously, we need to talk lol

But, on a more solemn note, I really think us aspiring writers should avoid this kind of behaviour. Aren't you worried of becoming the butt of agents' jokes? We may not know who you are, but Janet does, as do a lot of her agent colleagues, I'm sure.

It reminds me of that time when agents did #queryfail in an honest attempt to aid aspiring writers and some aspiring writers turned it into a declaration of war. In fact, I wrote a short story about it back then (base on some of the nasty things these writers said). Here it is. If you're an agent and wouldn't like to be reminded of that horrific time you might want to leave this blog now. If you're one of those aspiring writers who took up arms against agents and are ashamed and would not like to be reminded of ... well, your rash, unconsidered reaction, you should leave as well.

Award winning short story:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there existed a planet called Earth. A planet teeming with resources and life. The most abundant life was human life. Humans strived for greatness in whatever they did, and for many years they grew in great numbers and strength, determined to one day conquer the universe.

Amongst these humans were those who studied the art of writing, and those who honed their eyes, tongues, and nose to better see, taste and smell good writing. They were respectively dubbed Writers and Agents.

Agents have since stood as gatekeepers of the paths which Writers must take to confront the publishing gods.

Because Agents must carefully choose which Writers to let through, many Writers have grown embittered in silence, their anger bristling in the shadows, swelling and clenching their hearts until all kindness and happiness have long been purged, lost forever.

On a day that seemed as ordinary as any other day, a gatekeeper by the name Jessica Faust determined that it would be a clever scheme to utilise one of Earth's newest and most unimpressive (me didn't like Twitter then) awesome technologies – Twitter – in teaching Writers what not to do when requesting access (by means of querying) to the publishing gods.

Unfortunately for Jessica and her cohorts of Agents and Editors (high priests of the publishing gods), her scheme backfired, and Writers were handed a perfect opportunity to engage in a war they had desperately sought after for years:

::This is the part that gets really ugly::

'Take yourselves off the pedestals you stand on and stop acting like we should feel privileged that you allow us to bow and scrape to gain your attention. Without us, you would have no product to sell, therefore no income. To say it very plainly, without us you are nothing.'

Translation: without us, working at McDonalds wouldn't even come close to your greatest achievement. (But I work at Best Buy).

'Reply with more than one freaking line via email that says something like, "I didn't really care for the male characters". I mean, a rejection is OK, but, after all that time (and $$$ in postage for 300 plus pages!!!), I thought I deserved a bit more. I won't be querying her again.'

Translation: I spent my time, effort, and hard-earned cash getting my manuscript to you. I literally lowered myself to your standards, and this is the best rejection you can come up with – 'I didn't really care for the male characters'? Go to hell. (But I will query you again when I calm down).

'Creating art requires the ability to expose the self and plumb the depths of human pain. Please stop telling me not to take it personally. Sending you my manuscript is more personal than a visit to my ob/gyn. If you refuse to acknowledge the intimate dynamic of this transaction, stick to repping diet books or go into accounting,'

Translation: sending my manuscript to you is like letting you sleep with my husband and not slitting your throat. It's more than personal. So when you refuse to recognise the gravity of things, you hurt my feelings. Trust me, honey, that's the last thing you want to do. My advice: leave this industry. Now. (But I would totally do anything to get you to represent me ... AFTER I calm down).

'Many of those querying you are smarter than you are, prettier than you are, and meaner than you are. We have long memories and we share agent stories just as you share "bad writer" stories.'

Translation: You're dumb, you're ugly, and the best way – no, the only way you can hurt me is by sending stupid, lame rejections to my mailbox. If I had to send my rejection to you, it'd be in the form of my foot, so when you opened the letter or email it'd pop out and shove itself so far up your fat arse that "sitting" would become something of an enigma for you. Yeah, I'm THAT mean. And don't forget, we know who you are, and when we become bestsellers and gain access to millions of $$$/£££, we're surely going to destroy you. Literally. (But ... but ... I love you still)

'I'm so tired of smug, wannabe hipsters being the gatekeepers of taste.'

Translation: I'm seriously considering assassinating you. (By sending Starbucks coffee cups with flour in them, or mugs with 'you're the best agent ever' printed on them. Oh, did you get that already? Good. We're even now).

(Note: these are very real statements made by writers. You can find more here).

Jessica Faust, undeterred by the raging battle, has sworn to resurrect her scheme on April 17. She strongly feels she's doing the right thing. However, the APO (Agents Protection Organisation) has dispatched government operatives to protect Jessica and other #agentfail participating Agents/Editors 24-7, just in case things get out of hand.

:: Note here ::
Jessica doesn't have magic powers. She can't talk to ponies either. No, other agents can't too. Actually, agents are just like all of us, with hopes and dreams and jobs, and they don't make a billion dollars an hour and take pleasure in rejecting queries like they're covert masochists.

'Jessica is important to us. She is the last living Agent with magic powers and the ability to talk to ponies, and we intend on making sure she remains earth-bound,' says Jimmy Jim Jims, Director of APO.

On the other side of the pond, rebel leader of AWAW (Aspiring Writers At War), Anon1, had this to say about Agents: 'The sooner they – agents, editors, the publishing gods – disappear, the better for us writers. Publishing-on-demand for the world!'

::Note here::
Publishing on demand or self publishing or whatever it's called is not really the answer to your problems. If you're getting rejected by every single agent it means you're doing something wrong. Honest. It means you should go back to the drawing board and fix your manuscript.

End of Award winning short story.

So, you guys, let's stop this, ok?

Be smart.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-03-16T15:27:00.005Z

Guess who's back?

Yeah, I missed you too ;)

Now, to business.

Eons ago, I introduced you to David and his wife Elle at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, where they met a confused and powerful boy named Jon. Unfortunately I've taken those teasers down, in case you first time visitors are curious. But I do have something for you.

Today, I give you Giaan, another pivotal character in my book. If you've read my half-arsed synopsis (which I wrote under 30 minutes) then you know Giaan is the character who makes a certain choice in the hopes of doing the right thing. But all he accomplishes is tearing a world at peace asunder and putting his friends, those he holds dear to him, in danger.

This teaser is from Episode 2, entitled "Welcome to the Family Business".

Snippet starts:

*Snip snip!*

Snippet ends.

There you go. Hope you liked it.

PS: If Kathy is commenting, can she please confirm if I won the sunshine award thingy? :D

Reviews and other posts to come!

2010-03-11T19:41:00.004Z

Dude, I solemnly swear I am up to some good, even though my blog is so empty these days! Honest. I've been doing more writing than usual, which is great. Finally focusing on my WIP. I'm going to participate in next week's teaser tuesday, and I promise to read everyone's teasers as well.

I have a couple of reviews awaiting public posting, 'cos I read a bunch of books, you see. Really cool books. Fire, et la. I'm still reading Wings and loving Aprilynne Pike's take on faeries. I have Beautiful Creatures clawing for my attention, and I'm also eager to get to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. (Seriously if you haven't bought this yet, you should ... go in a corner and cry!)

I miss you guys :)

So, apology accepted? Cheers :D

Outline – very important

2010-02-25T14:49:00.004Z

Some semblance of normality is starting to trickle into my life at the moment, so I can at least blog about some things. I've never written an advice before, especially one for writers, but I felt I had to after reading the blogs of some writers on Absolute Writers.

Outlining.

Some published and unpublished writers don't do it.

Well, I'm going to tell you now – you need to do it.

Eschewing outlines doesn't make you smarter than those who embrace it, and it doesn't make you more awesome or the greatest writer ever because you can visualise your plot from start to end almost seamlessly. Every decent writer can do that. It's not nearly as difficult as you think it is.

Outlining helps you understand your plot in ways you never thought you did, which in turn aids the transition from idea-I-dreamed-about to written-and-completed-book – the real challenge for any writer.

Let me explain it to you like this. (For those of you studying at university level you'll probably grasp this concept better.) While tackling your dissertation, you know you're going to write a report at some point. So the smart and professional thing to do is research as you go along, writing down whatever useful information you stumble across. When the time is right, you gather your research – the outline of your report – and because that outline gives you a broad perspective of what your final report should encompass, writing your report isn't as difficult as it should've been. You probably won't use everything you uncovered from the internet and books, and you may add some new stuff to your report that never graced your outline, but your journey to completion will still be so much less stressful.

Now I know what some of you are thinking: "I don't have to sift the internet for material to write my book, at least not to a large extent. All I have to do is sit down and write. Research isn't required!"

But you're wrong. You do have to carry out research for your book, though not necessarily by looking at websites or other books. The real Information on your book is stored in your most personal library – your head. That's where your ideas reside. That's where they're bouncing about, waiting to be plucked. And that is where you must go. They're scattered, disjointed, and raw, like crude oil. What you need to do is take that crude oil and transform it into petrol, and you do that by outlining.

It's not enough that you've concocted some brilliant idea for a book: "Oh man, I have this totally awesome idea about a boy who is a wizard but he doesn't know it. He wakes up one morning and discovers he has magic powers and decides to save the world when an evil sorceress kidnaps his little sister as a plan to bring about the apocalypse! Wow – rock on!"

Yeah – awesome, dude. Really awesome. But:

How does your MC discover his powers?
What's he doing at the time he discovers his powers?
Does he turn to anyone when he finds out he can make things disappear with his mind?
If he does, do they teach him how to control his gifts or try to manipulate him or try to stick him in a mental institution?
How does his sister get kidnapped?
What is she doing at the time she gets kidnapped?
Are they really close that he'd be willing to risk his life to save hers, and if so how are they close? (Just because she's his sister doesn't mean they're BFFs. Plenty people hate their sisters, or don't love them enough to embark on crazy adventures.)
Where were his parents at the time of his amazing discovery? Or at the time of his sister's kidnapping? (Are they even alive?)
Does he turn to anyone to join him on his adventure – friends, other siblings?
Does he travel to a different world?
Does the world have languages?
Blah, blah, blah?
Blah, blah, blah, blah?
And plenty, plenty other questions.

So many questions.

So many important questions.

Questions that, while you can sit down and think up their answers, you may never remember to address them, because you had no outline to remind you. Then you finish your "awesome" book and send it out to your betas, and your betas come back saying things like, "Yeah, this is cool, but how come your MC didn't think about going to his parents first?" or "What happened to the dog weapon he found in page 3? He had it all along, didn't he? So why didn't he use it to easily finish off that baddy in page 16, instead of wasting time from page 4 to page 14 trying to learn all that hard magic?"

Little plot holes emerge. Soon you find yourself trying to patch things together, and the more you patch, the more your plot rips, until finally you have to rewrite the whole thing.

Then there's the classic my-novel-sags-in-the-middle problem. Your idea about Wizard Boy is crazy awesome, because:

The first few chapters will focus on his discovery of magic, how his sister gets kidnapped, how he and his family react, and his decision to go on some insane magical adventure to save her. A great opening – will surely leave readers breathless.
The last few chapters will centre on his use of magic to defeat the evil sorceress and liberate his little sister. Oh, the action – so riveting, so out of this world. Your readers will be clamouring for a sequel.
The middle chapters will ... um ... er ... will talk about ... well ... his training ... and some other stuff that you don't really know right now but you're certain you'll know when you get there.

Yeah. Right.

If you had an outline you'd have a good idea of what the middle of your novel would look like, and if the middle is rubbish, you'll know where to add new plot devices to spice things up.

Be aware, outlines do not prevent plot holes or other writing related problems. They minimise these problems by getting you to think really hard about your plot – if it's actually something you should spend days and months writing. True, the idea of a wizard boy trying to save his sister is awesome, but then you don't want to get to chapter 15 and realise you actually don't have that much to write about, because your idea just doesn't have enough meat. That's something an outline would have told you before you went about wasting your time.

There are some accomplished writers who don't write outlines, you could argue. They just sit down and write, and in the end they produce classics. You know what else? Albert Einstein came up with all those physics theories and solved those complex physics calculations without using a calculator. Doesn't mean we all can.

In the end, no one's going to give you a "Best Book that didn't require an Outline" award, and similarly you won't get an extra score in your exams for not using a calculator when everyone else did.

The end product – a book with a great plot – is all that matters. Be smart.

Teaser Tuesday ...

2010-02-16T18:14:00.004Z

... and my final one, I'm afraid. At least, for a while. I've been very, very busy of late (with school, job applications and my WIP), which explains why I haven't posted any book reviews or other stuff that I would love to talk about.

So, here it is.

Snippet starts:

*snip*

Snippet ends:

Hope you loved it. This should give you guys an idea of what my book's all about, since its title is "The End is Where I Begin".

In an hour's time, Manchester United will be battling AC Milan in a Champions League game, and David Beckham, a Manchester United legend, will make his first return to Old Trafford (United's home stadium) in his professional career since he departed United years ago. It's going to be one hell of a football match (or soccer, for you Americans). I know I'm going to be having fun, so you guys should have some fun too.

COME ON, UNITED!!!

Teaser Tuesday

2010-02-09T16:45:00.004Z

It's that day of the week again :) and this time I'm not late for my date with you guys! Here's my tease for the day. It continues where last week's teaser ended.

Background info for those who didn't read last week's teaser (you can still read it now – it's still up): Jon, the strange boy David encountered at the museum, seems to exhibit strange powers. He has stolen the golden burial mask of Tutankhamun, with the notion that he's meant to protect something from someone, and is headed out of the museum.

Snippet starts:

*snip snip SNAP!*

Snippet ends.

Feel free to leave comments XD

Teaser Tuesday

2010-02-02T23:49:00.004Z

Teaser for the week! As usual, I'm late. Late again, Akin! No wonder I'm single lol. If I can't post something as simple as a teaser on time, how am I ever going to make it on a date on time!?

A little recap – the ever so annoying David and his adorable wife, Elle, are at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, and there they meet a boy covered in dried blood. The boy's name is Jon. The last teaser (which is still available if you want to read it) ended with Jon smashing the glass case housing the golden burial mask of Tutankhamun. Today's teaser continues from there.

Snippet starts:

*snip snap, and there it goes!*

Snippet ends.

Hope you enjoyed it, ya'll.

Also, notice how my blog has been devoid of other posts except teasers. Well, I do have some reviews I plan on putting up, but lately I've been so busy with my WIP that I haven't had time to post anything. Hopefully I can find time this week :D

Teaser Tuesday

2010-01-26T23:53:00.004Z

Sooo close!

I almost didn't make it. It's 23:53PM in the UK. That's seven more minutes before Tuesday is officially over, and along with it Teaser Tuesday! Not on my watch.

First, I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who commented on my last teaser. Your kind and encouraging words will not be forgotten, I assure you. Also, a big thank you to whoever began the AW forum in its entirety. It's the best thing ever. Getting to hang out at a place where so many others share my passion for books is such a relief.

OK, down to business. Today's teaser is a continuation of the scene I put up last week (snip snip!). So you get to spend some more time with my very infuriating character, David. Apologies. However, I can promise that today's teaser ends on a rather stimulating note.

Enjoy!

Snippet starts:

*Snip snip!*

Snippet ends.

Hope you enjoyed it. I'm going back to AW to read some more teasers. You lot should do the same after you're done here.

Teaser Tuesday

2010-01-19T19:35:00.004Z

The day has finally come. The day I've been waiting for. Whew!

Okay, this is my first proper Teaser Tuesday, but unfortunately I don't have something that will blow your mind, literally, in terms of plot or action. I wanted to post snippets that contained intrigue or action or suspense or something really interesting, but then I concluded that that's not really the point of Teaser Tuesdays. Sure, the point is to tease, but I want you guys to get to know my story and my characters first and foremost. That way, when I do post the juicy bits, trust me, they will be very juicy. Cross my heart XD

Last week (I think it was last week) I talked briefly about my book, and I even wrote (in thirty minutes) a kind of synopsis, if you will. You can read that post here to get some background info on what my novel, The End is Where I Begin, is all about and how I intend to structure it.

If you don't want to go back and read all that background stuff, it's cool. I'll just reiterate a little.

The End is Where I Begin is about a group of teenagers (sixteen-year-olds) at their college first year in modern-day England who, after a seemingly harmless act by one of them, are thrown into the midst of a tactical and bloody warfare between two extremely powerful organisations.

I can tease you guys a bit by revealing that one of these organisations is actually the Knights Templar, but not the Knights Templar you think you know.

The book will hold three or four volumes, and each volume will contain four to six episodes. Episodes are chapters, by the way, in case you're wondering.

The piece I've posted below is from Episode 1: The Boy King. Now, if you're very clever, you might be able to figure out some of what this episode entails just by its title. For the next couple of Teaser Tuesdays I'll focus on Episode I.

Episode 1 takes place in the future of the book's story, at a time when the consequences of Giaan's action have reared their ugly heads and had their desired effect on pretty much every protagonist. It's not part of volume one (volume one actually starts with Giaan's story in Episode 2, and the plot goes on from there). Its main purpose is to play the role of the trick chapter, or in this case, the trick episode. What's a trick episode, you might wonder? Well, the book is called "The End is Where I Begin", right? Now, what does that even mean – the end is where I begin? Wait. Does it have anything to do with the fact the book begins with an episode whose events occur in the future, which in a way, is the end of the book? Lol no :) But nice try.

Actually, Episode 1 is my way of saying to my readers, 'Look, before you go in, there's something you need to know about my book's title. Listen carefully, cos when you're well into the plot and you've figured things out, you're going to open your mouth and say, "Oooooh, so that's what the title means".'

The title, "The End is Where I Begin," is more than just a phrase, my Teaser Tuesday friends. It's actually a plot device.

Lol I'll say no more.

Today's snippet showcases a rather unusual man, David Reilly, who isn't fond of his wife, Elle. David feels that his holiday plans have been totally screwed up by Elle and he's not happy about it. David is sort of my Easter egg character. He appears occasionally throughout the book, especially when something terrible is about to happen. Poor guy.

Snippet starts:

*snippidy snip!*

Snippet ends.

Before I end this post, I'll just like that add that Elle is in no way as unattractive as she is portrayed from David's perspective. It's a little thing I like to call, beauty in the eyes of the beholder. David obviously doesn't love Elle, and everything about her is just weird and ugly – her arms, her teeth, her lips – everything. Compare that to this snippet from episode 2 where Giaan and Julian run into the couple, who happen to be members of Julian's church:

*snippidy snip!*

Giaan sees Elle as pleasant and pretty. Trust me, if a guy like Giaan sees you as pretty, then you are pretty.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed my Teaser Tuesday. Until next time, folks!

PS: I don't know how college works in America, but in England, when you're sixteen, you can choose to go to college for your GCSE's and A-Level's, and then enrol into a university at eighteen. I just thought I should mention that in case the American readers amongst you guys thought, 'Hang on, how can the characters be sixteen and in college?'

Teaser Tuesdays

2010-01-14T01:13:00.002Z

So there's this new thing called Teaser Tuesday going on at Absolute Writers, the oh-so-awesome site where writers such as myself gather to cause great mischief. Basically, authors (published and unpublished) post snippets of their WIP (Work In Progress) every Tuesday for all to read. I just found out about it and I'm pretty excited, because I want to join in the fun. Unfortunately, it's Thursday, so I'll have to wait until next Tuesday before putting something up. This is going to be the first time I've ever posted anything from my WIP on my blog for public consumption, so I'm quite nervous lol.

As for now, I'll just stick to talking a little bit about my WIP. I haven't sat down to properly write a synopsis or a query, as I'm still a long way from finishing the book, but I think I can manage to pull something out of the proverbial hat.

Book Title: The End is where I begin.

What it's about:

Giaan Taran leads a double life.

In one life, he's a popular, brilliant sixteen-year-old who lost his parents and older brother to a ghastly car crash; he lives with his perverse, socially awkward uncle; he dates one of the most beautiful and wealthiest girls at school; and he commands both devotion and respect from not just his friends but most of his classmates.

In his other life, he's a frightened, depressed sixteen-year-old whose brother and mother were murdered by his father, the most wanted and dangerous man on earth; he lives in constant fear of one day getting killed by his menacing uncle; and what he wants more than anything in the world (besides his girlfriend) is to leave his uncle, his father, his dark family history, and disappear forever – start a new life free of fear and violence. In a week's time, he'll be able to do just that.

But before Giaan can fulfil his dream, calamity in the shape of his father befalls him.

Through his uncle, Giaan is ordered by his father to carry out a mission. A mission so vile it could well mean the death of many innocent people. Giaan is terrified. He can't turn to his friends or his girlfriend for help, because this is the part of his life he has kept hidden from them. This is the part of his life he has determined they would never glimpse. So he turns to the only other person he can trust: Julian Foster, a pastor and a father figure.

However, Giaan's decision to confide in Julian instigates a chain of terrible events that has the entire of Britain gripped with terror and pits Giaan and his friends in the midst of a battle between two powerful organisations that has raged on for years.

That took thirty minutes to write, so please forgive me if it sucks :S.

The book is meant to encompass three or four volumes, with each volume made up of, at least, five or six episodes. Yeah, episodes. Not chapters. I opted for episodes because Giaan isn't the only character I focus on in detail. Each episode tells a story, starting with Giaan's, and as the reader delves deeper into the book, they unravel the mysteries of the plot. Also, all characters are linked to one another in some way – that is to say, characters either know each other intimately or they've met briefly or they've never met but know the same people.

For example: episode three, entitled 'Requiem for a Dream', spotlights Madeline 'Maddy' Atwood. Maddy is best friends with Aletea, who happens to be Giaan's girlfriend. Though Maddy and Giaan are classmates and friends, you won't find Maddy running to Giaan for advices or help with anything serious, because they're not that close, which is perfectly normal. I share that type of relationship with some people, as do you.

Sure, there are books that centre on more than one character and are written in chapters and not episodes, but I thought in my case, using chapters would clutter things a little bit. Plus, I thought writing 'Episode I' was way cooler than 'Chapter I' XD lol.

Some episodes will centre on multiple characters and their respective stories.

The one thing I must avoid is writing an entire episode that features a boring character. Alas, while all my characters are interesting in one way or another, not all of them warrant an episode. I like to think that I've picked the best characters to focus on:

In episode three, the reader finds out that sixteen-year-old Maddy has a big secret, like Giaan. She kills people for a living, and she does so without emotion and with amazing and terrifying dexterity. The idea is to get my readers wondering, is Maddy a monster, an eternally broken child or is she doing the right thing, macabre as it may be? None of Maddy's friends know of her extracurricular activities, and she strives to keep it that way.

Amina Moore gets her own episode as well. She's no friend of Giaan or Maddy, but she does attend the same school, and she's quite the popular girl. In her episode, things aren't going too well for her. Her mother is slumped in the passenger seat, bleeding profusely from the neck, while Amina drives as fast as she can to save both their lives from a crazed murderer who seeks a scientific document he believes Amina's mother possesses.

It may not look like it, but the events that occur in every episode (both the ones I've mentioned above and the ones I haven't) are linked by a common thread – powerful people, clandestine organisations, ancient artefacts. And a seemingly inexorable chaos that threatens the lives of everyone – Giaan, Maddy, Aletea, Audrey, Amina, Jon, and the rest – begins the instant Giaan discloses the true nature of his mission to Julian.

I'm going to stop here now, because I don't want to reveal too much. Next Tuesday I'll post a snippet for your pleasure.

Thanks for reading!

The Pain Merchants/The Shifter Review

2010-01-12T22:03:00.002Z

You thought I forgot about you, didntcha? Ah – tut tut, but I never forget.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I present to you, The Pain Merchants by Janice Hardy. I got an ARC of Janice's debut from Janice herself after I came second or third (can't remember) in a competition she hosted. It arrived a week later, and I devoured it in four days. Then I bought myself a retail copy from Borders when it was published.

Right ... Let's take a minute to delve into Merchants, shall we?

Fifteen-year-old Nya dwells in Geveg, a onetime beautiful city devastated by war, its people battered into pathetic semblances of what they once were – affluent, vibrant, and happy. Enemy soldiers forever patrol the streets of Geveg, inculcating order, constraining the locals to a life of servitude while foreigners take their wealth, food, homes, lands and pretty much everything that is rightfully theirs. Sometime during the war, Nya lost her family save her younger sister, Tali. This heartbreaking ordeal compels our heroine to slaving away at odd, sometimes dangerous jobs (one of them has her at risk of losing her limbs to crocs) and having to rely on petty thievery for food when these jobs are in short supply.

In Geveg, you either fall into one of three general classes of people:

[1] A Baseeri, which suggests you're rich, you've got food, a roof over your head, and little to worry about – after all, your army invaded Geveg.

[2] A Healer, which means, even though you're of Geveg heritage, you get to spend your apprenticeship days at the League, good food provided three times a day, and a nice bed to sleep on.

[3] An ordinary Geveg, which means, well, you're screwed – you'll probably work at the docks and lose a large chunk of your butt to a fat crocodile. Tough, mate.

Fortunately, Tali is a Healer. This makes Nya's day-to-day survival antics a little less demanding and crazy, as she only has to look out for one stomach – hers. And sometimes Tali aids Nya by sneaking food from the League to her when she comes visiting (Healers are rarely allowed beyond the League grounds). Still, the stomach is renowned for being a demanding and greedy baggage, especially when it belongs to someone living in a city that has little money to offer. Little money = Little to no food. Your math teacher must have mentioned that in class at some point.

Nya's voice is cleverly fashioned and engaging, and you immediately get a sense that she's the type of person who looks at bad situations through a window of mild humour and opportunity, a somewhat rare attribute encompassed by most YA characters today. Usually, characters in Nya's position – orphaned at a young age, had to look after and provide for her baby sister, is almost always hungry every day – are portrayed as rigid (I don't care about the world. I care about me and me alone), or regretful (I hate my mum. How could she die and leave me all alone?), or vengeful (I'm going to slaughter my enemies my awesome powers! Raaaaaaaaaaar!), or whinny (What am I gonna do? I hate this food. It tastes like wee-wee. I want Kelloggs Cornflakes. I don't want wee-wee!).

That is not to say that most YA characters aren't properly rendered (they are), and I'm not suggesting that Nya laughs at every single bad thing that happens to her. She's just a girl with a big heart who tries to make the best out of anything, good or bad. And as for being funny, it's not like she does it on purpose. Ever had a friend who did or uttered something amusing without meaning to? Yeah, that's Nya.

Take for example: the book opens with a rather hilarious scene that depicts Nya showcasing her not-so-impressive pilfering talent. She tries to steal some eggs, and less than six brief paragraphs into the story she gets caught. Now, whenever Nya finds herself in a sticky situation she recalls an adage her grandmother told her, one that fits her current dilemma and can offer a possible solution. Sort of like when you were a kid and a stranger walked up to you and you thought, Mummy said never to talk to strangers, and you were suddenly on your guard. In aforementioned scene, Nya recollects: 'As Grannyma used to say, if you're caught with the cake, you might as well offer them a piece,' and proposes to her captor, 'Join me for breakfast when your shift ends?' She wasn't trying to be funny; she honestly did want to offer some of her spoils, because she reckoned, hey, if I give him some, maybe he'll let me go.

The young, dashing guard rejects her kind proposition, though not without a smile, and is forced to apprehend Nya. Of course, Nya has no intention of doing time in jail. She bolts. He chases. Then things get very interesting when the guard falls and injures himself, and Nya, out of compassion, shifts his injury from him and pushes it into Heclar, the horrid owner of the eggs Nya tried to steal. And here lies, perhaps The Pain Merchants strongest appeal.

Nya is a Shifter (or Taker). Now, Shifters are a lot like Healers, the main difference being that Healers can only shift pain from person to pynvium (enchanted metal with the capability to store pain), while Shifters can only shift pain from person to person. Healing as a power in YA fiction is nothing new. Healing as presented as such is something that hasn't been done in a while. Everyone's too busy writing Twilight lookalikes they forgot to think for two seconds and give creativity a chance. If I could, I'd give Janice Hardy a gold statue.

You might be wondering: if Nya can shift pain, why isn't she at the League with Tali, where she doesn't have to steal and do ridiculously hard labour? Well, you see, Shifters are quite useless when it comes to the healing business, which is actually a massive, thriving business in Geveg and all over the book's world. People come to the League and pay ample sum of money to have their injuries and pains taken from them. Healers put the pain in pynvium, and when a strip of pynvium is exhausted it is sold to the Pain Merchants. The Pain Merchants go on to forge weapons out of the pynvium – like a sword that has pain stored in it. I stab you and you feel not only the pain from your wound, but also the pain stored within the pynvium blade. Yeah, you know what that means – sucks for you, mate.

Moreover, and more importantly, Shifters are very, very rare. They are as rare as dinosaurs. So, imagine you're a dino and you peak out of your hiding place, exposing yourself to the public. Imagine the public scrutiny that would follow – scientists clamouring to carry out a myriad of tests on you; the government seeking to utilise you as a weapon. Yeah, imagine that. Just imagine. Are you imagining? Good.

OK, you can stop imagining now.

Thus, Nya must keep her ability hidden. But The Pain Merchant wouldn't be a cool book if word about Nya's unique skill didn't slip out, right? Her act of compassion exposes her secret, and soon dangerous people are after her. Even worse, her sister mysteriously vanishes and it could be Nya's fault.

When it comes to character development, Janice Hardy is at her best – a true master. I would expect nothing less, considering her blog is peppered with intellectual advises on writing. Nya is that wonderful friend you have that would rather risk her neck to save lives than commit any wrong, except when absolutely necessary (like stealing eggs to eat). But stealing eggs is a petty crime, acceptable even, when you examine Nya's circumstances. The real test of will and character begins when Nya is asked to use her power to commit acts so grievous they make her literally sick. The flip side? Not only will said acts provide her with enough money for months-worth of food, it would also help her find her sister.

There is a lesson to be acquired from this book, and it is everybody has a price. I don't care how good you are. I don't care if you're the bloody pope. Everybody can be bought at some time with something.

There is a budding romance in Merchants, but it doesn't grow as much as I think most female readers would like. Nothing like that Edward-Bella stuff here, guys. In a way, I'm happy. I think it's realistic. Nya has so much to do that it would make no sense for her to constantly droll over the lead male. There's no love-triangle as well. Thank God!

Janice's writing is graceful, flowing from point A to point B and onwards with no problem at all, and she ramps up the action with every passing chapter. Merchants is structured almost to flawlessness: there is a great opening that grips you, a middle that throws you around, and an end that shatters whatever theories you thought might explain certain things. I won't go as far as saying Janice Hardy is JK Rowling. But I will say, like Rowling, Janice puts excellent plot and character development first, and does both of them justice in the end.

Now all that's left is for Janice to complete her trilogy in style, and not to do a Harry: make Nya win simply because she's the heroine, like Harry beat Voldemort because he was the hero and not because he was better or qualified. Yeah, I said it. Voldemort was the better magician. Voldemort would kick Harry Potter's ass any day. But in the end, through some lame-ass technicality Voldemort missed (which was a total cop-out by Rowling), Voldemort commits suicide – he fires a killing curse which ricochets off Harry's Expelliarmus and kills him. I want Nya to defeat the Duke by sheer intellect and strength.

Of course, no book is perfect, not even The Pain Merchants. My reasoning for this is, when I was a kid my dad told me that all human beings are flawed, and as such, our creations inherit our flaws in one form or another. Some people will love Janice's debut, some will not. That's why it isn't perfect. As for me, I'm totally sold. I loved The Pain Merchants – loved it from the very moment I read its first words, and I love it still.

I'm holding my breath for the next instalment.

REVIEW SCORE

Characters: 9/10

World Building: 9/10

Prose: 9/10

Plot: 9/10

Final Score: 9/10

The Notebook Review

2010-01-06T12:19:00.003Z

For many years my girlfriends have been begging me to watch this movie. They said it was awesome. They also said Twilight and New Moon were awesome. I'm starting to lose faith in what women consider "awesome" these days, man.

The Notebook. I discovered the ending to this movie before I got halfway through the movie, and I really didn't like that. They could have done a better job at concealing the identity of Ally in the retirement home; it would have been something for me to discover, at the end, that Duke's story was about the woman he was telling it to, and that Duke was in fact Noah. So much potential, this movie had.

I can see why women love this – the romance is cliché at best, but it's got that "I'll love you forever, through thick and thin, through heaven and hell" message that women love to read about in their M&B's and Silhouettes. It's the ultimate girl fantasy, this Notebook.

Oh well.

Rating: 4/10

As for the romance, Rating: 20/10. I ... I cried when the movie ended!

Reading Monster, that’s me!

2010-01-02T16:14:00.003Z

So, of late, I've been really busy catching up on my reading, at the steep cost of temporarily abandoning my WIP, and I've got to say, I'm impressed with myself. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should be focused on finishing my book, but I can't complain. You cannot imagine how much I've learnt from these books – their authors' styles, techniques, manners of presenting twists and turns, etc. The Demon's Lexicon, Catching Fire, Life as we knew it, The Pain Merchants, The Time Traveller's Wife – these are the books I've devoured in the past couple of weeks, and I can't stop myself.

I'm currently reading Aprilynne Pike's Wings, even though I said I wouldn't because of that dreaded love triangle which has invaded every goddamn YA book out today. When I'm finished with Pike's debut, I'm going to read Kristin Cashore's Fire. Then I'm going to turn my sights on Carrie Ryan's Zombie fest, The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Oh yeah, I haven't forgotten you, The Dead and the Gone.

Damn.

Someone, give me a cookie. I'm on a roll, son!

Of course, in between all this, I'll be writing my book. Can't forget that. It's 2010 and I must finish this WIP by March. Must. After all, I've been on it since 2007.

The Demon’s Lexicon Review

2009-12-23T01:49:00.006Z

When The Demon's Lexicon was published in June, people made an awful lot of noise about it, probably because its author, Sarah Rees Brennan, was already sort of an internet celebrity, admired even amongst published authors such as Holly Black (Spiderwick) and Cassandra Clare (City of Bones). I had planned to read Lexicon then, but had other pressing matters to contend with, so I put that plan on hold.

About a week ago, I walked into Borders, got myself a copy of Sarah Rees Brennan's debut and started reading. I finished it today.

So, here goes my review. At the onset of the book, we are introduced to two protagonists, Nick and Alan. Nick is a tough boy with a filthy mouth who likes nothing more than to kill magicians, because, frankly, that's the same way they feel about him. Alan, Nick's brother, is the very antithesis of Nick – kind, perceptive, smart, and willing to risk his life for others, especially his brother.

Magicians in Lexicon are not what we are used to, the contemporary sort. They're not wand-brandishing teens. They're cold-blooded murderers. To attain power, they must consort with demons, providing these beasts of darkness something in exchange for power. The more generous this something is the greater the power a demon grants a magician. And nothing can be more generous than a human being for demons to possess, as demons want more than anything to come into our world.

Sounds a bit original, that is until you've read The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud (published way before The Demon's Lexicon), which actually utilises this idea in a more fun, dangerous and clever way. I can't hold that against Sarah; hardly anything is original these days.

Magicians belong to circles, like vampires belong to covens. One of these circles, led by a dangerous and fierce magician, Black Arthur, has been tracking Nick and Alan for a long, long time, because their mum, Olivia, stole an amulet from Arthur and he wants it back. The problem is the amulet is keeping Olivia alive. Giving it back to Black Arthur would mean killing their mum, and Alan cannot allow that.

There are a number of things about Lexicon that really grated on me. I swear, at so many times, I think my brain liquefied, solidified and liquefied again and again while I chopped through the book.

Now, let it be known, I'm not the kind of person who rips on the works of authors just for the fun of it, particularly the works of debut authors. I hope to be a debut author someday and I wouldn't be pleased if I stumbled upon a site/blog and saw a bad review of my book. But in this case I think I owe it to myself to be sincere, and I would totally understand if other reviewers felt the same way about my book.

Alan.

Dude.

Are you for real?

No, honestly. This guy gives his talisman to a chick, which leaves him exposed to demonic attacks. Sure enough, he gets branded with a first-tier mark. What that means is that he's on the initial stages of unwillingly handing out his meat-suit (human body) to a demon for possession. I've done some pretty dumb things for girls just to impress them, okay? Most guys have. Girls too. But this is like Harry giving up his wand in Deathly Hallows when he knows the death eaters or Lord Voldemort is just around the corner. The book clearly states that the boys are on the run from Black Arthur, and Alan dishes out his talisman to a girl? Why, I ask? No rational reason is given, not by Alan or the writer.

Alan's stupidity must be fuelled by some kind of exquisite form of liquid kryptonite, because it shows no sign of giving up the ghost. As the book progresses, Alan continues to make questionable and illogical risks all for the sake of Jamie and Mae (the other protagonists). I won't name all his errors, as I don't want to give too much away, but it did make me wonder how Alan was able to survive Black Arthur's wrath this long if he is this dumb.

Yeah, I know he's a nice guy who loves helping people, but he takes the whole Hero Complex phenomenon to a whole new, ridiculous level. Harry Potter had a Hero Complex thing going on. However, Rowling was clever enough to disclose it in such a way that when it led to a disastrous outcome (it was Harry's desire to save lives that brought about Sirius' death) her readers – I – didn't think, 'Harry, how could you be so daft?' In Alan's case, I kept screaming at the pages, 'BUT, DUDE, WHAT YOU'RE DOING MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE!'

And, Nick – all that inner voice yapping on and on about not giving a crap and being the focused brother and being the sensible brother, blah, blah, blah – this bloke couldn't slap Alan and sit him down for a much needed lecture: 'Alan, bro, I feel you, dude. Okay, I don't, cos I think you're a little pussy. But I kinda understand that you need to save lives. However, you have a mum who's insane and a bunch of magicians waiting to bite our asses at any given chance. Don't you think you should, maybe, tone down the risks you take for strangers a little bit? I mean, it's only logical, right?'

I would have put Alan's and the other characters' aggravating idiocy aside as 'character flaw' had Sarah not utilised it to advance her plot. The fact of the matter is, if Alan wasn't dumb, there wouldn't have been an adventure or a novel, to begin with. It's like reading a book where it is stated that the hero knows the villain is the villain, and that the villain is capable of anything that could lead to the hero's death. The villain invites the hero to his house and offers him a cup of coffee. As a reader, you think, 'But that coffee might be spiked. I wouldn't drink that. Surely this hero must think the same thing.' But the hero drinks the coffee without a second's thought and collapses, shivering. And that's how the plot begins, because now the hero must find a way to survive and kill the villain. However, common sense dictates that the hero should not have drank the coffee in the first place. So, in order for the plot to move forward, the hero has to be dumb enough to do things he's not supposed to do. Get it? That's exactly how The Demon's Lexicon reads.

Let me recount a more practical example for your comprehension, this time from the book. Jamie and Mae, the other protagonists, are intertwined with Nick's and Alan's lives, because Jamie has a third-tier mark on his self and Alan is determined to help him for two reasons: he's nicer than Santa on Christmas day and he has a huge crush on Mae (the same Mae he gave his talisman to, which eventually got him marked). At some point in Lexicon, Alan concocts a plan that involves taking on the magicians face-to-face. Mae decides that she and Jamie are coming along for the ride. I pause my reading and think, 'Jamie and Mae have no combat experience or any experience whatsoever in dealing with magicians. Why should they accompany Nick and Alan to the lair of one of the most power magician circles? Surely, they're just going to get caught and used as leverage to Nick and Alan's detriment.'

Naturally, Nick shares my opinion, and when he voices out his concerns, Mae replies with something like, 'There will be four of us. Four is better than two.' Alan agrees, saying, 'Yeah. That makes sense. We can split in twos.'

Are you f-ing kidding me? Does this Alan knucklehead want to get laid that bad? Imagine Harry going to fight death eaters and taking Aunt Petunia with him, reasoning: 'There's two of us. Two is better than one.' Huh? Oh, yeah, and they did get caught.

That's how things mostly unfold in Lexicon: nice Alan comes up with a dumb plan, feminist Mae superimposes herself on everything and everyone (I hate girls like that), gay Jamie just sits in a corner, blabbering gibberish, and tough Nick, who sees the stupidity in everything (even in things that aren't stupid), cannot seem to put his foot down and say, 'Enough is enough, guys. None of this makes any sense.'

As if that isn't enough, further into the novel, Alan gets the upper hand in the battle against the magicians by shutting off the electricity in the house. Black Arthur, in all his infinite glory and power, cannot, for the love of God, create light. Dude, you're supposed to be a powerful magician. You've got mates who can transform into birds and wolves, and you can't create simple, bloody light?

Prose-wise, Sarah is both fluid and infuriating at intervals. She can write, no disputing that, but she gets carried away at times and jumps overboard, especially in action scenes, leaving me confused rather than engrossed.

Frankly, The Demon's Lexicon needed more tightening before hitting bookstores. Sarah and her agent should have waited an additional year. It pains me when I read books with so much wasted potential (and this book had about as much potential as Graceling, let me tell you). The dialogue between characters was, in most cases, extensive and monotonous. Don't get me wrong – they were well written, but they could have been shorter. Sometimes Nick and Alan talked about the same thing they'd spoken about two pages ago, coming to the same conclusion and just wasting time.

The plot, while riveting in some parts, is not without its issues. This book should have been a novella. In fact, I think it started out as a novella, because it felt way too stretched to me, as if Sarah didn't have much to write about and decided to dump in random stuff in order to bloat the book. The aforementioned plan by Alan to attack the magicians (which takes place towards the end) could have happened earlier in the book. The beginning was great. The end was great (though unnecessarily prolonged to delay the book's climax). The middle was irrelevant.

The mythology anchoring Lexicon and its upcoming sequels is sound, which is probably why my review score isn't below 5. Most young adult books today are usually about some douche bag chick falling for some emo vampire/angel/[insert favourite paranormal specie here] in a biology class (Fallen; Hush, Hush; et la). So, it's refreshing to see a female author taking a different route, kind of like Kristin Cashore.

Another reason this book gets a high rating from me is the twist. Actually, twists. There are two of them. The first one, I did not expect, but I frowned upon because it's been done in so many movies/books/TV shows. But then, Sarah, who is famous for her wicked sense of humour, added another twist right after that one, and I was definitely taken by surprise.

I don't know if I'm going to read the next book, The Demon's Covenant. I think it's written from Mae's point of view, and as I stated earlier, I hate her. She annoys me. Plus, I can tell what 75% of the book will entail: Mae likes Alan, but, oh, she loves Nick, but, oh Alan is safe and understanding, but, oh, Nick is sexy and dangerous. Another love triangle nonsense. I read an excerpt on The Book Smugglers; there seems to be another boy in the mix – McFarlane is his name. So it's a love square then. This is the main reason I stayed away from Wings, which everyone says is awesome. But then everyone said Hush, hush was awesome and "everyone" equals girls who eat all these Twilight rehashes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

By no means, do check out The Demon's Covenant when it's published. I'm quite certain Sarah won't disappoint. Personally, I make it a point of duty to stay far away from young adult books that put love triangles first before actual storylines. That means I don't get to read over 78% of YA novels out today. Love triangles as major plot elements are tacky and cliché and only girls see sense in them. Everyone complains that teen boys these days are quick to ignore books for Playstation and Nintendo. At least Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Modern Warfare 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum offer more than YA books in terms of plot and character development. No offence.

All in all, a good debut by Sarah Rees Brennan.

REVIEW SCORE

Characters: 8/10

Nick was the best character overall, and he kept the book interesting. If it were down to the others? Damn.

World Building: 8/10

Demons live in a different plane; they can be summoned by magicians and asked for powers in exchange for something. Superb. Now, if only Black Author knew how to conjure up light it would have been a perfect 9.

Prose: 8/10

Sucks you in. Keeps in interested. Takes you for a wild ride.

Plot: 6/10

Would have been great. Should have been great. Had Alan and Mae and Jamie had died, things would have been a lot better.

Final Score: 8/10

Edit: Since I've decided to read Wings, I'm definitely going to check out The Demon's Covenant.

New Moon Movie Review

2009-12-04T21:02:00.002Z

The Twilight Saga: New Moon. The ultimate porn for chicks.

I cannot take the pain to regurgitate the synopsis of this film, because I'm assuming you already know what it's all about. If you're a human being inhabiting a place where other human beings live in, and perhaps there happen to be little human beings or teens (yeah, the ones that think life sucks and everyone sucks, and whine about it constantly), then you're sure to have heard all that racket about New Moon.

Or if you live around women – doesn't matter the race, age, height or weight – then I'm certain you've heard about New Moon.

Or, hey, if you have a TV or an active internet connection then, mate, at least a dose or two of New Moon must have somehow twitched your eardrums.

If you haven't ... Dude, seriously, where do you live??

Okay, okay, fine. Here goes.

Edward, the beautiful, sexy vampire from last year's Twilight (in case you don’t know who he is, he’s the bloke with bad hair), decides to dump his ordinary, mouth watering (literally, as in he really wants to drain her dry), not-sexy-in-anyway-but-every-hobo-in-her-school-loves-her human girlfriend, Bella, after an accident that involves his brother, Jasper, trying and failing to eat Bella.

As a result, Bella spirals into a troubling state of depression and mild insanity, withdrawing from the world of the living into a hollow shell. Time doesn't exist anymore for her. Life has little to no meaning. Why? Her Love is gone.

She later turns to extreme sports – like jumping off cliffs, riding motorbikes without prior knowledge on how to ride one, and going off with strangers that could rape her and slit her throat. But, dude, that's all cool, cos Bella has a plan. You see, every time she does something potentially dangerous she glimpses Edward. Not the real Edward, but kind of a vision of Edward. It's real to her, and that's all that matters. She reckons, 'If I stand on a train track, just before the train tears me to shreds, I'll see Edward again.'

Though used sparingly, the effects are a lot better than in Twilight. The werewolves look adorable… Um, yeah, you see I'm not so sure that's a good thing. I think the special effects guys were aiming for scary 'RAH-RAH' werewolves, not 'Aww, cute puppies' werewolves, which is what they gave us in the end. No matter.

Okay, here’s the deal: you know how you hate someone not because of what they did but because of what someone else who's somehow related to them did? Like, if Osama's kid was in your school you'd probably hate his guts, even though he had absolutely nothing to do with the September 11 bombings that snuffed the life of your relative/friend/fellow human being. That's how I feel about New Moon. The actors were okay. Yes, believe it or not, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart can act. The director was great. For quite a while now, until New Moon, I don’t think I ever watched a movie based on a book that was more true to that book. Chris Weitz should have directed Harry Potter. The effects were manageable. But the movie still sucked for me ... because the book sucks.

There are a lot of things we overlook when reading books. But when these things are transferred verbatim to the big screen it gets one thinking, 'Okay, that's pretty lame. It was awesome when I read it, but now seeing it just makes it ridiculous.' Like Bella participating in dumb stunts just so she can see Edward. In the book, I didn’t mind. In the movie, I thought, come on, man! It was laughable. We’ve all gone through heartbreak. You haven’t really lived until you’ve experienced one. But jumping off a cliff just to see a boyfriend inside your head? LMAO!

Fans will adore this film. They're mostly women and, what can I say, maybe there's something about Twilight that makes them orgasm over and over again, with no end in sight. God knows, nothing any man tries can achieve such a colossal feat. Nothing floats a woman's boat better than Twilight. Maybe that's why dudes hate Twilight so much.

Non-fans, however, will toast the end of an era when good movies made the most money in the box office and shitty movies tanked.

Rating: 3/10

Po, the punching bag [Graceling Review]

2009-06-17T15:45:00.003+01:00

By now you must have heard about this book, Graceling by Kristin Cashore. If you haven't then now you have. I've had the American cover as my profile pic since I first heard about it in 2008 but I only just read it last Saturday. What took me so long? School. Masters. Exams. Stuff like that.

So after a long wait, I finally trekked to my local Borders in Birmingham and bought me a copy of Graceling. I tell you, I was entertained. It's been a joyous ride, one that I'm going to miss. Damn you, Kristin. Damn you!

In Graceling there are seven kingdoms ruled by seven kings, and in all of these kingdoms there exist certain people who possess disparate eye-colours. These people are known as Gracelings. A Graceling is someone gifted with an extra-ordinary talent called a grace. Graces can be mundane, like being able to climb any tree, being able to cook really well, being able to run fast, and the like. They can be useless, like being able to talk backwards. Or they can be dangerous – being able to read minds, being able to fight like no other ordinary person, etcetera.

Katsa, our heroine, is graced with fighting. She can beat anyone, kill anything, and she does it with fluid dexterity and creativity. There simply is no stopping this chick. But Katsa has a problem. She's the King's tool for destruction and she doesn't like it one bit. So in attempt to right the wrongs she's been forced to dump on the world she initiates the Council, a secret organisation tasked with helping people. Nice, huh?

Enter Po, a man who Katsa encounters on a mission that takes her to the prison of one of the seven kingdoms. Although they don't start out as friends, their relationship develops and Po soon becomes Katsa's official punching bag. So humble is this bloke that he is willing to take blows from Kasta's fists on a daily basis. He is bruised and broken after each fight yet he keeps coming back for more. And he smiles about it too! Yes, gentlemen, the feministic vibe is very strong in this book.

And yes, the character-names in Graceling are a little odd. Not bad odd though. It's just Kristin Cashore's way of introducing herself to book lovers. You normally expect fantasy books to have names like Eragon, Aragon, Baragon, Lalagon, Shortgungon or something like that. You don't expect Po, Oll, Leck, Birn, Thigpen, or Greening Grandemalion (OK, allow me to say WTF here).

Graceling's story is rather straightforward. Too straightforward. There are no twists, nothing that will cajole that elated and surprised wow from you. The intrigue begins from page one and halfway into the book you know who the baddy is, because our clever heroine and hero, Kasta and Po, figure things out early on. At some point I thought maybe Cashore would do a 180 and weave the threads of the plot to give a new outcome but nothing of such happens. It's not entirely a bad thing, as the plot in itself hooks you from start to finish.

The finish, however, is where Graceling's grace fails it. The villain meets his end in a somewhat lacklustre fashion and in his second appearance. Alas, Graceling is anticlimactic. This is a common problem that plagues most YA books where you have a very, very, very powerful main character (Katsa) and a very, very, very powerful villain (???). You expect some kind of massive, explosive epic battle and all you get is a muffled poof. Disappointing.

Characters are well drawn out and believable, though not all of them. Meet Bitterblue; ten-year-old princess with a cute name, but very implausible as a human being. She talks like she's 30 and behaves like she's wooden (shows very little emotion, particularly for a ten-year-old).

Marriage. Kids. Ah, yes. The main controversy that spawned from this book. Everyone was talking about it when the book came out last year. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Katsa is against marriage or bearing children, and she does neither in the book's entirety, albeit she falls in love with Po. Po accepts her choices without much of an argument and tells her that he will take her the way she is.

For me this is Graceling's biggest problem. It's not Katsa's odium for marriage or having kids. It's Po. It's Edward in Twilight. It's the innumerable male characters in YA novels today. Why is it that nowadays female writers create great male leads only to bastardize them later so that these men/boys can fit into their boxes of weird and flawed fantasies of how they think men should behave towards women? And seeing as how women don't generally like how men are in real life readers are sure to get a healthy dose of Edward-esque clowns.

That's right. Edward does everything for Bella. Everything. The bloke has no sense of direction. No life. He's a robot designed to indulge Bella's every whim (and vice-versa). Po too. Built for Katsa, this one. The man started out great, and then from nowhere he's like, 'Yeah baby, I totally agree with your no marriage/no baby logic. You're right. I mean, I feel marriage is supposed to be a wonderful union between two people who love each other. In fact, my parents, brothers and their wives are a pretty good example. But f@&* how I feel, because I'm all for you, babes. I was made for you. You complete me.'

Huh? First he generously donates his body for Katsa to molest on the training ground, and now this?

Katsa was born a pariah, a hardened, adroit killer. Of course she wouldn't want marriage or kids. I completely understand that. But Po, born a prince, born into a family of love, a family with small shortcomings – yes – but one that still adores him, and he doesn't want marriage and children? He must have a very good reason for that, but – oh no! The book doesn't say.

Hang on, did you say it's because he loves Katsa? Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't love the chief ingredient that pushes men like Po to marry and make babies?

'I told him I'm not going to marry you and hang on to you like a barnacle, just to keep you to myself and stop you from loving anyone else.' Katsa's words to Po. Translation: sex with you is awesome, hun, but you're free to do it with someone else if you want, just like I'm free to jump into the sack with another man too. Understand?

'It's alright, you know. Other people don't have to understand.' Po's reply to Katsa. Translation: babes, if I slept with someone else you'd smash my head like a tomato, so I'd just agree with every BS that spews from your mouth and stick with you until you tell me to sod off.

Po doesn't even try to convince Katsa. Either he's afraid of her or he's really a daft robot with the grace of looking and acting somewhat human. I remember him asking her to marry him once. Immediately she says, 'Screw marriage, and babies too,' he goes, 'Yeah, screw 'em all. Let's go train. After you've rearranged my bones with your hands we can have sex again.'

Grow some spine, mate.

Seriously, you have to wonder whether Po and Katsa are in love or in lust. It didn't seem like love to me, especially after considering the excerpt I posted above.

I'm going to pretend that Po's stance on all of this is temporary. Let's be honest, guys, if you fell in love with a hot chick and she told you that marriage and kids were a no-no but sex was a yes-yes, would you turn her down? Nope. Not me. Nuh-uh. I'd tell her what she wants to hear, which is, 'Baby, I couldn't have said it any better. Marriage and babies are evil,' and jump right in.

If I read Bitterblue (the sequel to Graceling which comes after Fire) and find Po still yapping on about how he's cool with not marrying Katsa... Epic fail, Ms Cashore.

In spite of all this, Graceling is a great book. The world Kristin Cashore has created is addictive and blossoms with life, adventure and wonder, and you always feel like you're right there with Katsa through every battle, every pain, and every happiness. Kristin Cashore's voice is new, true, strong, unique and sweet, and I look forward to reading many more of stories with weird character names (Magalusomaduoeomon, anyone?) from her in the future.

In fact, I need Fire right now. Damn it, Kristin, what gives?!

REVIEW SCORE:

Characters: 9/10

World Building: 9/10

Prose: 10/10

Plot: 8/10

Final Score: 9/10

PS: my grace is pissing people off. What's yours?

Agents vs Aspiring Writers

2009-04-09T15:23:00.000+01:00

My blog's first short story:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there existed a planet. It was called Earth, and it was rich in superfluous resources and life. The most abundant life was human life. Humans strived for greatness in whatever they did, and for many years they grew in great numbers and strength, determined to one day conquer the universe.

Agents have since stood as gatekeepers of the paths which Writers must take to confront the publishing gods.

On a day that seemed as ordinary as any other day, a gatekeeper by the name Jessica Faust determined that it would be a clever scheme to utilise one of Earth's newest and most unimpressive technologies – Twitters – in teaching Writers what not to do when requesting access (by means of querying) to the publishing gods.

Translation: without us, working at McDonalds wouldn't even come close to your greatest achievement.

'Many of those querying you are smarter than you are, prettier than you are, and meaner than you are. We have long memories and we share agent stories just as you share "bad writer" stories.'

'I'm so tired of smug, wannabe hipsters being the gatekeepers of taste.'

Translation: I'm seriously considering assassinating you.

(Note: these are very real statements made by writers. You can find more here).

On the other side of the pond, rebel leader of AWAW (Aspiring Writers At War), Anon1, had this to say about Agents: 'The sooner they – agents, editors, the publishing gods – disappear, the better for us writers. POD for the world,'

The Hunger Games review

2009-04-07T22:15:00.002+01:00

I'm not a professional at reviewing books, so I'm going to keep this concise: this book rocks. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Katniss is my new girl-hero.

I am miffed that the sequel isn't coming out until September. Why? What's the deal? Why punish us!? I want it now!

Next on my list: Graceling.

Speaking of which, check THIS out:

Cool, huh? That’s the cover of the sequel (or prequel) to Graceling. There’s a saying that goes, ‘Do not judge a book by it’s cover.’ That’s going to be a lot difficult with this one, if you ask me. How can you not love Fire when it has a cover like that!?

This is what being British is all about

2009-04-07T06:24:00.001+01:00

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/would-you-save-a-stranger/catch-up

Quite frankly disgusting, if you ask me. This seems to be a common trait amongst most British people, especially those born of the older generation – they stick their noses up, turn away, and pretend like nothing's happening, like the bad stuff going down around the will float away in the unpredictable manner of unsettled dust particles.

A 12 year-old gets pummelled repeatedly and you sit there and stare like mindless buffoons? Wow!

The funny thing is, British adults are so damn opinionated about everything ... and now, as the video proves, even bigger cowards.

Blog under construction...

2009-03-29T04:32:00.001+01:00

I've decided to focus my blogs on my writing progress and my road to publishing. So there's going to be less blogs about random stuff and more blogs about my work-in-progress (WIP).

I'll have to make a couple of minor changes here and there, and then I'll be back, blogging full time. I have so much to talk about, I don't know where to start...

Friday Night Lights

2009-02-18T18:55:00.002Z

If you haven't seen this show, if you haven't so much as Google-d it, then you need to right now. Friday Night Lights is perhaps the best thing I've seen on TV. The writing is mature, on-point and very realistic. If NBC bosses had any sense they would promote this instead of Heroes.

December so far...

2008-12-10T10:13:00.000Z

Yes, I know, I know. I haven't been blogging as frequently as I would love to. Blame it on the ever-pilling coursework, guys. My last post (a scathing, thrilling review of the epic fail, Breaking Dawn) was on Sunday, 2 November 2008. That's almost of month ago. Jeez. But, my lord, so much as happened since then.

Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States! Wow. I didn't see that coming. Actually, I did towards the end of the presidential campaign (by which time Obama had pretty well transformed McCain into a floor mop). But I didn't see it coming when Obama initially announced his bid to run for office. History, baby. That's what I'm talking about. Let's hope he lives long enough in the white house to fulfil his dreams (remember Dr King? Yeah, that's right – he got shot and killed). I wish you all the best, sir.

Twilight opened in American cinemas and grossed $69.9 million in its opening week ($7 million on the midnight of its release and $35.7 million at the end of the day one). What the f-k? I watched the movie and it was okay. I admit, it was cheesy at certain bits (some lousy dialogue from the book forced their way into the movie at Stephenie Meyer's insistence) but it turned out to be an interesting take on the Twilight book (the baseball scene was awesome). However, most of the special effects were rubbish (I've seen a lot better on Supernatural, no jokes), though that's expected bearing in mind the undersized budget Catherine Hardwicke was given. I heard fangirls went in droves to see the film over and over again. Some chick said she had watched the movie 4 times in a week, and I am sure she wasn't the only one. Scary. Scaaaary.

But the real bombshell is that Catherine Hardwicke will not be directing New Moon. Again, what the f-k? Summit Entertainment, the company which owns the rights to the Twilight saga movies, claimed they wanted New Moon released by the end of 2009 (how's that going to happen??) and, as such, needed a director that could work with this timetable. There have also been rumours that Catherine was a pain in the studio chiefs' butts.

What a load of crap. Here's the real explanation: Twilight, after making so much money in the box office, has officially become a franchise, and franchise = money machine. Summit wants money and Twilight is their golden goose. Creativity is out the window now. It's all about the money, people. It always is in instances like this.

For what is worth, Catherine, you did a fantastic job. Good luck. I'm sure something great will come your way.

Smallville redeemed itself! That's another shocker ... for me, at least. But I'll talk more about this in my next post when I discuss which shows ruled and which ones sucked this year (a distant echo that sounds oddly like 'Heeerooooes' drifts to my ears).

Fifa 09 sucker-punched Pro Evolution 2009 to become the best football rendition on a video game console to date. My take: unexpected and very nice. I've had Fifa 09 since its release and I can't seem to stop playing it. It's a fantastic game. Now all EA needs to do is ensure that they don't get ahead of themselves and screw up like they did after Fifa RTWC 98.

That's it for me. I'm off to finish my java assessment (last one for the term, thank God). See ya!

Supernatural = Super-awesome!

2008-10-26T11:27:00.004Z

Normally it takes forever for me to publish my next post on my blog (check my archive if you think I'm bluffing) but after watching an episode of Supernatural titled Yellow Fever I had to kick my bad habit to the curb and do some immediate posting!

A brief synopsis: Dean Winchester catches a spirit virus that causes its victims to go through some kind of anxiety attack times a million. They become scared of ... everything (people, animals, pencils, erasers, etc). And in the end they die of a heart attack. So basically Sam and Bobby must come up with a way to save Dean in 24 hours or it's 'bye, bye Dean.' Again.

Now Dean is a tough guy. Always has been. He was the one who convinced Sam to give up law school and become a fulltime demon hunter. So seeing Dean act like this (see below) is pretty effing awesome!

At the end of the episode, just after the initial credits rolled, the good writers of Supernatural treated us to this:

I loooooove this show! Eye of the Tiger, baby!

What’s really good on TV?

2008-10-20T07:05:00.002+01:00

So I've been watching a lot of TV shows of late. In fact, I've watched more TV shows than I have movies this year for research reasons (it has to do with my book). It's been a bitter-sweet ride so far, and I have to tell you, some shows have got to go.

Here are my reviews of my favourite shows based on what I've seen so far (granted, you will find that I haven't started the latest seasons of some of them for a number reasons, like school work). Please be aware that there are potential spoilers:

Smallville (CW)

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, on a planet called earth, a show was born. It was called Smallville. It promised to chronicle the life of Clark Kent, a farm boy, as he walked the path to becoming Superman, the greatest and most powerful (yeah, right) superhero earth had ever seen (all fiction, ladies and gentlemen). And so everyone loved it. Including me.

Alas, my love for this show was ephemeral. It lasted for four seasons (the show is currently in its eighth and a rumoured ninth is in the works. Dear lord, when will it end?). After season 4 everything slopped to disaster level; the plot, the characters, the dialogue, the overall writing – everything.

First there was the on-going, monotonous makeup-breakup love tale between Clark and Lana that got to a juncture where calling it nonsensical was a flattering remark. The episodic plots started to make no sense at all, with storylines feeling more ad hoc than planned. Sure, season 5's finale sort of sparked the series back to life (Clark was imprisoned in the phantom zone by General Zod) and the premier of season 6 promised greater things to come (Clark escaped from the phantom zone in company with some very pissed off, irrepressible phantoms). Somewhere along the middle of season 6 that flare died out. Then the finale arrived and the fire burned bright again (the last phantom stole Clark's DNA and became Bizarro). Nice ending to an otherwise substandard season.

You would think they (the producers and writers of Smallville) would continue in this fashion but noooo. Season 7 saw the introduction of supergirl A.K.A Kara Zor-El and a baffling plot with so many gigantic holes. When the bloody hell did Lionel Luthor belong to a secret society? How come this wasn't addressed long before or at the start of season 7? It didn't feel right. Why? Get this: Lionel Luthor's secret society was headed by a certain Dr Virgil Swann. Ring any bells? Yes, that's right – Swann, played by Christopher Reeves (R.I.P sir), appeared in a number of episodes in season 3, and Lionel Luthor visited him once. The conversation they had was very formal, as though they had only heard of each other but never met until that moment. Fast-forward to season 7 and we find that Lionel and Virgil used to meet every week to discuss aliens and fortune cookies. Rubbish.

The nail in Smallville's coffin is unquestionably season 8. Every character seems mystified, like they haven't a clue what they're meant to do. The new characters are out of place and add little to no interest to the show (please, did the producers really think they could replace Michael Rosenbaum's Lex Luthor with some anorectic chick?). And the holes in the plot just keep widening; I doubt there's any way of stitching them without making a right mess. What happened to Kara? Don't know. Apparently, so do the writers. And it makes no sense that Clark or anyone else who knew Kara isn't a tad worried about her absence. It's like she never existed to them.

Even if you put all of these things aside, the show has become the perfect definition of humdrum, so much that I am left feeling delirious after watching each episode. I can't take it anymore. Sorry, but I give up.

You know the sad, sad thing about Smallville? We already know what happens at the end of the day. We know Lex will be evil, we know Clark Kent will be superman, we know Clark Kent does end up with Lois Lane not Lana, we know Jimmy Olsen does not end up with Chloe Sullivan, and plenty more. Consequently ... there's absolutely no point in watching this show. Given this incontrovertible piece of information, one would expect the writers and producers to come up with something extraordinarily good, but instead we get this – dog poo.

Criticisms aside, they did manage to get one thing right – the show's theme song: somebody saaaaaaave meeee! Because every time I watch Smallville, that's what I cry to the lord.

Clark Kent should do us all a favour and crawl next to a bag of kryptonite rocks and die.

Rating: 3/10

One Tree Hill (CW)

Drama. I'm not one for drama. But there's something about One Tree Hill's drama that keeps me coming back for more.

The show is about a bunch of people living their lives in a spirited town called Tree Hill, and every now and then something crappy happens and affects all of them. I've fallen in love with all the characters, because they've grown and matured right from season 1 to season 5. However I do not like Lucas Eugene Scott. Don't get me wrong, he's an interesting, amusing and congenial character who I can see myself hanging out with from time to time, but I've never seen a boy act like a big fat emotionally-disturbed bitch the way Lucas does, and I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the line in season 6 the writers reveal that he bleeds for seven days. Honestly, this dude has issues. Issues that only chicks should have.

First it was Peyton. Then it was Brooke. Then it was Peyton. Then it was Brooke. Then it was Peyton. This freaking Peyton-Brooke cycle of madness is driving me insane, and every time I watch the show and this hackneyed storyline pops up I feel like shoving my flat screen TV out the window. That's how frustrating Lucas is to me.

I don't get how the writers can't let him settle with one girl for longer than one season. They did okay with Nathan and Haley; those two have gone beyond teenage romance issues to couple dilemmas. Lucas, on the other hand, is still stuck in the past and experiencing the same crisis as in season 1: trying to figure out which girl to spend his life with. The writers even added Lindsey to the Peyton-Brooke merry-go-round. Sons of bitches.

Seriously, this has got to stop!

Everything else appears to be wonderful. Playing on its greatest strength, characterisation, the show introduces new and diverse characters, and, I must say, I love them too. Jamie, Nathan and Haley's son, is adorable, Quentin is rebellious and funny, and Victoria Davis, Brooke's mother, is a bitch from hell. As far as Villainy goes, Dan Scott's got some stiff competition with Victoria. Dan's bad, but he's on a path of redemption. Victoria, on the other hand, doesn't know the meaning of the word nor does she care to know.

I'm definitely rooting for this show.

Rateing: 9/10

Supernatural (CW)

The yellow-eyed demon made an infamous appearance in the first season of Supernatural, and when he departed at the end of the second season (got shot in the chest by Dean with the remarkable Colt) all hell broke loose literally (a gate was opened and demons from hell gained unlimited access to earth). Did I forget to mention that Sam died and Dean sold his soul to bring Sam back?

Lilith arrived afterwards and made the yellow-eyed demon look like Michael Jackson dressed in a tutu. The Colt – deemed the most powerful and effective weapon against demons – was useless by now. There was only one goal in Lilith's mind: find Sam and kill him.

Even with the imminent writers' strike the producers and writers of Supernatural were able to do something I didn't think they had the balls to do – kill Dean. I say this because the entire third season was mostly about saving Dean, but he ended up dead anyways. Where's the logic in that, you ask? Well ... I have no idea but it sure as hell worked for the show.

Season 4 has begun, and now we have Castiel, an angel of God. Yep, you read that right – there are angels in Supernatural. And Lucifer just might parade his ugly face on the show too, so be prepared for some action!

Things are spiralling out of control for the Winchester boys. It's one thing to hunt down demons; it's another thing to fight Lucifer. Awesome. Can't wait for that to happen.

There aren't enough words to truly describe this season's Supernatural, but I'll settle for one: incredible. I am impressed with how far this show has come. The writers are one of the few brilliant cadres of their kind in the business and it shows in every episode. Kudos.

Rating: 10/10

Samantha Who (ABC)

Meet Samantha, a girl who suffers from amnesia as a result of a hit and run. Not long after she wakes up from her coma she realises that she would much rather not remember who she was, because who she was is a major bitch without an ounce of sentiment for anyone or anything. A major bitch, I tell you.

So instead of trying to get her old life back she decides to start afresh, turn a new leaf. The phrase, 'Easier said than done,' springs to mind as Samantha's infuriating past always manages to claw its way into her present, leading to some serious identity crisis for her.

Samantha Who is a simple, funny show that doesn't attempt to take things over the top, and Christina Applegate (who plays Samantha) is so sassy I could spend my entire life just staring adoringly at her even if the show made no sense.

Rating: 8/10

Heroes (NBC)

In a world where a new kind of evolution has occurred, we find a multitude of characters with abilities to perform feats beyond our imagination: fly; run faster than a speeding bullet; teleport into the future; transform moist to ice; become invisible; generate electricity; regenerate from any type of injury, be it minor or major; dream of the future; paint the future (in a way, this is lame); and so on. That is what Heroes is all about – a bunch of freaks with nothing better to do with their time besides to cause mayhem or save the world.

At first sight, Heroes appears pretty refreshing when you consider all the other stuff on TV, though when you look beyond each character's power(s) you realise that most of them are 2-dimensional. There is nothing interesting about Matt Parkman other than that he can read minds. Peter Petrelli was by far the most boring of all in the first season until we found out he had the ability to copy everyone else's abilities, then things got interesting. The only engaging, 3-dimensional character in Heroes capable of stealing your affection is Hiro Nakamura.

What am I trying to say? Heroes relies too much on everyone's abilities/powers to drive a plot. Characterisation is nonexistent. If Nathan Petrelli or Peter Petrelli died, I wouldn't care, because I don't sympathise with them or what they're going through. If Dean Winchester died, I would be really sad and ticked off. See the difference?

Heroes has got a massive cool factor, no one can take that away from it. But in terms of storyline and character development, it completely falls short.

Also Heroes has never impressed me with any of its season finales. I remember season 1 when the show teased us viewers with the looming battle between Sylar and Peter. Well, that battle sucked ass. And don't get me started with season 2's finale – that one was terrible too. I expect season 3 to carry on the same tradition, after all, the show's rating in the US has plunged.

Rating: 7^1/2/10

Ghost Whisperer (CBS)

So this girl can see and speak to ghosts. She uses this special ability of hers to guide any ghost she comes across into the light. 9 out of 10 times in Ghost Whisperer ghosts will refuse to go into the light until they have completed an important task or tasks they failed at when they were alive, and because this girl is uber-obsessed with getting them into the light, she'll have to make time and help them with whatever they need doing.

Already in its fourth season, Ghost Whisperer is an okay show. It could be better if Jennifer Love Hewitt's character, Melinda Gordon, wasn't such a whinny little sissy all the time. I'm not wrong in saying we would all feel better if one of the ghosts she encountered slapped some sense into her and told her to stop acting like a pussy cat and man up. Or woman up. Whatever.

Every so often Melinda meets ghosts which are going through lots of pain or are in confused states over some random issue. It's pretty clear they have unfinished businesses, but rather than saying something like, 'Let me help you finish this so you can go into the light,' she says (and this is her trademark line), 'You need to go into the light. You don't belong here.'

Well, duh. What part of 'unfinished businesses' don't you understand, Melinda? Is it 'unfinished', 'businesses', or 'you're a sexy idiot'? It's very clear they're not in the light because of some issue keeping them on earth so why say something that inane, Melinda?

That line, once uttered, gets my eyes rolling sardonically in my eye sockets.

Irrespective of my criticisms you should give Ghost Whisperer a chance. You'll love it, honest. It's got an engaging storyline and better season finales than Heroes. At least that counts.

Rating: 8/10

Other shows that might interest you are:

24 (Fox): One man versus one government. Good stuff. Great stuff.

Rating: 9/10

Bones (Fox): The best show since CSI. Trust me, you'll love this one.

Rating: 9/10

House (Fox): His name is Gregory House and he's a sarcastic egomaniac who likes to grab his boss's perfectly formed butt. What more can I say? Oh yeah, he's incredibly brilliant and 10 out of 10 times, he's right.

Rating: 10/10

Prison Break (Fox): Michael Scofield is constantly being chased by the American government or a part of the American government that the rest of the American government knows not about. If Michael were in England I would say he was having these government predicaments because he forgot to pay his TV licence fees. But as the case may be, it's something significantly less serious. Good luck, Michael.

Rating: 9/10

Lost (ABC): I don't think written or spoken words can ever do Lost any justice. This is a show you absolutely must see for yourself. It never disappoints. Hell, what is that island made of? It can move? Can I get a 'Say what?'

Rating: 10/10

Merlin (BBC): The best thing BBC came up with since EastEnders. And it's absolute crap. So is EastEnders. Bite me if you can.

Rating: 5/10

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox): John and Sarah Connor are on the run right after the events of Terminator 2, but we all know, from Terminator 3, that Skynet takes over the world and judgement day comes to fruition. It's sort of like Smallville (we know what happens to Clark Kent in the end). I sincerely hope, unlike
Smallville, the writers don't screw this up. Otherwise, great show.

Rating: 9/10

Ugly Betty (ABC): I have no idea why I watch this, really, but it's addictive for some reason. Betty, a supposedly ugly woman (even though the actress playing her is sexy as hell), somehow gets everyone to love her despite her shortcomings in the looks department. Even hot guys fall for her. Strange. Oh well, it is called fiction, right?

Rating: 9/10

Desperate Housewives (ABC): Funny, insane, drama, more drama, and even more drama. You will not be disappointed.

Rating: 9/10

If I forgot to mention your favourite show then it means either I was too bored to write about it (my fault), it's horrendous so I can't be bothered to write about it, or I haven't watched a single episode of it. But take heart – the important thing is you're happy watching it, right? Right.

My Apologies, Matt Damon vs Sarah Palin, Twilight Spoofs

2008-10-03T10:15:00.001+01:00

It's been a long time since I posted anything on my blog and I apologise to myself for the temporary setback. I was moving houses (from Wolverhampton to Birmingham) in preparation for my Masters at the University of Birmingham, and when that was done I had to attend the freshers' week (a week set aside for new students) and a lot of lectures. A lot. I mean 5 lectures a day, 5 days a week. I'm presently working on cutting them down, believe me.

One interesting and niggling issue I have always had with packing is how things I thought gone forever pop back from the dead to surprise me with a 'Hey, remember me!' Old Manuscripts (of discarded plots that have since been re-written) jump forth from derelict corners of my room with wide Sylar-esque grins. They've been stalking me, I tell you.

The problem is I can't just chuck them into the bin for fear of someone picking them up and turning them into bestsellers (no, it doesn't matter how badly they were written – look at Twilight; not a very well written book but selling buckets of copies worldwide). I must figure out a way to get rid of them for sure. They are becoming a real pain in the behind, a reminder of how terrible my writing skill was (some would argue it hasn't changed, and some would prefer The Bold and the Beautiful to Prison Break).

Maybe I still have these manuscripts because they mean more to me than I realise. Reminders, whether good or bad, can generally be good. These manuscripts are the product of my hard work at a time when I hadn't a clue what I was doing. I admit, sometimes I glance through them and laugh. It's always pure comedy reading bad writing.

I'll probably keep them anyway.

Back to business, though. Here are some of the posts I should I put up days ago:

Matt Damon vs Sarah Palin

Ladies and gentlemen it looks like one of my favourite American actors doesn't like the idea of Sarah Palin as Vice President or President of the United States (the argument here being that McCain will be dead by the end of his first term).

"It's totally absurd and I don't understand why people aren't talking about how absurd it is."

Well Matt, people are talking now.

Twilight Spoofs

Trust me when I say you're going to have so much fun watching these videos.

Twilight movie trailer:

Breaking Dawn Review as a song:

"I lived on lots of fan-fiction, but if this book was a fan-fiction I would report it for SPAM."

Simply class.

In Breaking Dawn's defence:

"Renesme rocks! She's the coolest little girl ever - I want one!"

Oh dear.

This video really frightened me. I had nightmares for four straight nights after watching this for the first time. I propose that the United States government use this video as a torturing device. It would reap fantastic benefits, I promise.

Twilight at Comic Con (not a spoof of Twilight):

Fan support for Twilight is insane, you have to agree. But I really hope this movie doesn't tank, because if it does ... if this movie so much as sucks...

David Blaine, the amazing magician?

2008-10-03T09:33:00.001+01:00

For those of you who haven't heard of him, David Blaine is a supposed (??) American magician and endurance artist who holds numerous world records. He has performed many idiotic – I mean – fantastic feats in the past. I'll list them below.

Buried Alive (5 April 1999): Blaine is entombed in a transparent plastic box underneath a 3-ton water-filled tank for seven days.

Frozen in Time (27 November 2000): Blaine is encased in a massive block of ice for 63 hours, 42 minutes and 15 seconds.

Vertigo (22 May 2002): Blaine is lifted onto a 90ft high and 22in wide pillar with the assistance of a crane, and remains there, standing for exactly 35 hours.

Above the Below (5 September 2003): Blaine is sealed inside a transparent Plexiglas case suspended 30ft in the air for 44 days.

Drowned Alive (1 May 2006): Blaine is submerged in an 8ft diameter, water-filled sphere for seven days and seven nights.

Revolution (19 November 2006): Blaine is shackled to a gyroscope rotating at a rate of eight revolutions per minute, hanging above an empty lot in Manhattan.

And his latest daredevil, so-magical-it-astounded-the-whole-world stunt:

Dive of Death (18 September 2008): Blaine is hung upside down without any safety net for 60 hours above Wollman Pink in Central Park.

If you would like to read more about David Blaine, go here

But, amazing magician he is? I think not. If this is what you call magic then I have definitely seen Africans in Sudan and Somalia perform greater, mind-boggling tricks than yours, Mr Blaine.

Want to convince me? How about you get shot, die and come back from the black pits of hell in two days – then I'd be most convinced. Until then, you're just a fraud for the average white man's amusement.

I end this post with a word from the illustrious Stephenie Meyer: laterz!

Blame it on the boogie

2008-09-01T21:25:00.002+01:00

"Don't blame it on sunshine

Don't blame it on moonlight

Don't blame it on good times

Blame it on the boogie."

The above is a morsel of Blame it on the Boogie's lyrics originally written and performed by Mick Jackson or Michael George Jackson, a British singer-songwriter (not to be confused with Michael Jackson, extraordinaire dancer, black-turned-white man, King of Pop, has incomparable and unsettling love for children, et cetera). Yet, The Jacksons' rendition of the song is so much better and so much popular that anyone reading this would probably think I fabricated George Jackson. Well, I didn't.

But why am I bringing this up?

In reply to Pro Evolution Soccer 2009's poor reception by the general gaming press at Leipzig, aficionados of Konami's Pro Evolution soccer series are blaming it on the amateur cameraman.

Videos have always been the finest method of disseminating information about a game, and it matters not if they were recorded by a fledgling Steven Spielberg wannabe. Granted, some videos are really terrible (Spielberg should be held accountable for some of the unforgivably horrendous ones. Think War of the Worlds) but that is not the case here.

The video evidently shows one thing: Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 is no different from Pro Evolution Soccer 2008. The only aspect of PES 2009 absent from its predecessor is the slower paced game-play. Other than that, PES 2009 still utilises the same core game engine as PES 5 on the PS2 (Playstation 2). Makes me wonder why it has "Evolution" as part of its name when it's patent that the series has ground to a halt in terms of evolving.

I'll reserve my right to say, 'This game is not worth £39.99,' until I play it properly and write my review.

On a side note, devotees of the Fifa series (unlike those on the other side of fence) should be delighted with all the videos of Fifa 09 gushing forth from the fountain of amateur cameramen:

I have to admit, EA has got me interested in this one.

(below, courtesy of IGN)

Don’t be pansy; let’s Fifa 09!

2008-08-29T21:09:00.002+01:00

'Let's Fifa 09,' is the catchphrase EA Sports is adopting for its upcoming video game, Fifa 09, the nth title in the Fifa football simulation series. Last year's effort, Fifa 08, was the beginning of the end of an era foolishness that saw EA churn out dreadful Fifa games one after the other. I think they finally realised that footy fans wanted a proper footy game, given the upsurge in sales of Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) series, a.k.a Fifa's arch-nemesis.

In those days it was unheard-of for PES to oust Fifa from the number 1 spot on any platform chart. I guess when that started happening recently EA got scared and decided it was time to turn a new leaf ... time to take their fans more seriously.

If you are a long time fan of the series you'll be glad to know that Fifa 09 is looking and playing better than ever.

As for me, I have pledged no allegiance to either franchise, nor will I ever. Instead, I'll buy whichever is the best; I'm not going to pay 40 quid for a Sensible Soccer copycat.

On the subject of the Fifa 09's slogan, I like it. It's quite catchy, like last year's ('can you Fifa 08?'). Here's to hoping Fifa 09 lives up to the hype.

Midnight Sun leaks

2008-08-29T12:26:00.002+01:00

Apparently a different version of the Stephenie Meyer hit, Twilight, has been in the works for some time now, titled Midnight Sun. While Twilight tells Edward and Bella's soggy love-tale through Bella's eyes, Midnight Sun does the same thing through Edward's eyes.

If you don't know anything about Twilight (and I don't know how you wouldn't, except ... please refer to my previous post on this subject) then let me take the pain to elucidate: Edward is a vampire, sexy, super fast, super strong, and smart. Bella is a human girl, mundane-looking compared to Edward, maladroit (the book does mention that she trips a lot), delicate, and ... smart. Both fall in love and stuff happens (read the book to discover more).

Twilight was an okay book by all standards. It started really slow and dragged on for hundreds of pages until James (a psychopathic vampire who takes great pleasure in videoing his victims before offing them) and his nomadic vampire mates popped into the scene at the very end. That's when things got very interesting. I suspect the reason for this was experiencing the world of Twilight through Bella's eyes. Yes, that's right – she's not a very appealing character, to say the least.

Edward was the gem of Twilight (along with his vampire family), so it would be nice and exciting to observe everything from his point of view.

Unfortunately, it seems that won't be happening any time soon. It appears that the first twelve chapters of Midnight Sun leaked a couple of weeks ago (or months, I don't know) and Meyer isn't pleased about it. Thus she has put the release of Midnight Sun on hold ... indefinitely. Or maybe ad infinitum, though I hope not, because I do want to see what it's like being Edward ... being a vampire with superpowers.

In her public statement, Stephenie Meyer mentioned that she had a good idea of how the leak happened. Turns out she gave away copies of Midnight Sun's incomplete manuscript to certain "trusted individuals for a good purpose".

Perhaps this is lesson to learn from, Ms Meyer. You don't write a book, shatter records (Breaking Dawn sold a reported 1.3 million copies in one day. Wow) and mail out copies of your series' prequel to anyone but your editors or publishers. I'm not a published author (yet) and I don't allow people to read my works, complete or incomplete, except my closest, most trusted friend who acts as my editor. So why, Stephenie, should you?

I know it hurts; I'd be in a fit of spleen if one chapter of my book(s) leaked (not to talk of twelve), but what's done is done, Stephenie. Relax for a few weeks, get over it and get writing. There's no need to punish your entire fan base for your mistake.

Will this leak affect Midnight Sun's sales? Nope. It wouldn't even put a dent in it. Knowing Stephenie Meyer, this book will probably end up being fifty chapters and 900 pages long, so twelve giveaway chapters is a nonentity, really.

I'm still reading Breaking Dawn, and ... I won't say anything until I'm finished. But it is everything I expected it would be: slow-paced plot and awfully verbose, all packaged into one neat, gigantic 754-paged hardcover book. Only time will tell if the book's size is practical or pointless.

Twilight series attacks!

2008-08-28T15:47:00.028+01:00

Harry Potter will live on forever. Don't even, for one split second, doubt that. So please, let us pay homage to one of the greatest, yet overrated piece of literature in history by taking a moment of silence.

[Count from 1 to 50 here].

[Now recite the letters of the English alphabet seven times. Do the same for the French alphabet nine times].

Moving on, lads.

I can only fathom out four solid reasons why you may never have heard of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga.

Reason number one: you don't read books, in which case I feel utterly sorry for you, you poor, poor thing.

Reason number two: you read books but you live under an enormous rock ... in Antarctica. I understand. No Waterstones. No Barnes & Noble. No Canadian hockey team. Even the things closest to a book that you read over there are written in scrolls similar to the ones found in the Dead Sea caves.

Reason number three: you live in a third world country, so although you read so much that you somehow gain the preternatural ability to read, hence a first class entry ticket into Professor Charles Xavier's school for the gifted, and finally a prestigious invitation to join the X-men so you can use your powers to read alien books, your chances of hearing of the Twilight saga is as good as Mugabe's odds on seeing the gates of heaven.

Reason number four: you're dead. Can't you help there, mate. Sorry.

If you are reading this blog and one of these reasons applies to you (though if yours is reason number four...) then now you know about the Twilight saga.

Latterly the American media has been making some heretic comparisons between J.K Rowling and Stephenie Meyer due to the Twilight saga's popularity and the manner in which Meyer shot to fame.

Thus, is Stephenie Meyer the next J.K Rowling? Honestly, that's a chimera, a flitting dream so pale it's not fit to be called a dream anymore but a lousy afterthought. The thought of the possibility is not in any way as bold or real as my fantasies of Kate Winslet, Jessica Alba and I ... fishing in the sunset. The media and the rest of the world needs to understand that it can never happen (not the part about Kate, Jessica and I – that's definitely going to happen very soon, you watch). Rowling has set a standard so high that even she may never surpass.

To give you a quick synopsis, Twilight (the first book in the saga) centres on a teenage girl, Bella, who moves to the town of Forks in Washington and falls in love with a very sexy vampire, Edward Cullen. Edward, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to rip Bella's throat and drain her blood to the last ounce. But there's a catch: before Edward can bring his gory fantasy into fruition he falls in love with Bella.

Stephenie Meyer never fails to be monotonous when describing Edward, almost to the extent of making the book interminable. I swear I lost count of the number of times Stephenie told me, the reader, that Edward was sexy. What's worse is I'm a bloke and I had to swallow all her narratives of Edward's hard, lean muscles; contoured surfboard stomach; strong, pointy nipples... What the -? Come on! The first few pages of Edward taking off his tight top, I took like a brave soldier. I took it all. But then she just kept going on and on and on and on and on about Edward's sex appeal. It was really disturbing for me, I tell you. I had nightmares. Instead of dreaming of my sunset fishing escapades with Jessica Alba and Kate Winslet, I found Edward sitting next to me, shirtless, a bottle of baby lotion in hand... YIKES!

When I finished Twilight I couldn't help but see it as a female's guide to fantastic sexual fantasies. So why did I read it? Simple: the vampires.

Now, these vampires are not your ordinary vampires. Forget about Angel or those clowns in Buffy. Edward and his entourage are simply something else, out of this world. They make Anne Rice's vampires timid, like little school girls about to get bullied in the playground.

Firstly, Edward and co won't burn to ashes when they step into the sun. They will ... glitter like irresistible diamonds.

Okay, I admit, that part is lame (glitter? What?). But, seriously, what really got me hooked was that Meyer's vampires (not all of them) have supernatural abilities. Edward, for example, can read the minds of everyone, vampires and humans alike (except Bella's, which is in fact the major, causative reason for his fierce love and enthralment for her and her unique, byzantine mind). Then there's Alice Hale, Edward's adoptive sister and also a vampire, who can see the future. So you can imagine what it's like when Edward and Alice engage each other in a calculated game of chess: Edward reads her mind to see her next move and Alice peers into the future to see his next move (this happens in the book). Here, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of an unremitting chess game.

Jasper Hale, Edward's adoptive brother and Alice's lover (no, it's not incest), has a degree of empathy far above normal – he can feel/share your emotions and manipulate them. To be exact, if you're really pissed off, he can you make you the happiest person on earth. Likewise, if you're happy, he can make you angry, sad, lonely, depressed, and that.

Secondly, Edward and co have very low body temperature and rock-hard bodies. And I mean rock-hard. They're like living, breathing, indissoluble statues, which means bullets, knives and nuclear weapons can't destroy them. By now you must have understood why I said earlier that Angel and Buffy's vampire villains are clowns, and Anne Rice's vampires are school girls. But I'm not done yet.

Thirdly, Edward and co can run faster than Clark Kent/Superman and Flash put together.

Fourthly, Edward and co do not sleep in coffins, or transform into bats or fear wooden crosses and holy water or do any of that ludicrous stuff you heard of or read in those vampire novels you own.

Fifthly, Edward and co do not have fangs.

Talk about revitalising and giving new meaning to the vampire genre. What Stephenie Meyer has done is introduce her own unique brand of vampires, and they are the coolest that ever existed in literature, hands down.

Other vampires related to Edward are Carlisle Cullen (his adoptive father), Esme Cullen (his adoptive mother), Rosalie Hale (his adoptive sister), and Emmett Cullen (his adoptive brother and my favourite of the bunch). These ones don't have any powers, but don't worry, they're not boring.

Another interesting fact about Edward and his family is that they don't feed on human blood (they can still daydream about it). They hunt animals instead, earning them the moniker: vegetarian vampires. Need I say more?

Despite its palpable setbacks (namely Bella's implausible imperfection, Edward's too perfect character, his nipples ... YIKES) Twilight is a good read for boys and a must read for girls. Nevertheless, it has got nothing on Harry Potter, so I would appreciate it if people stopped talking about both books as though they equal in magnificence, brilliance and glory.

New Moon comes after Twilight. I'm not going to discuss this one extensively. Suffice to say, it shares the same over-descriptiveness and other drawbacks as Twilight (although less Edward), and in addition it's the most depressing book I have ever read. Look at it this way: have you ever been inside the head of a broken-hearted girl? Get the picture? Good.

Perhaps New Moon's redeeming factor is the introduction of the Volturi, an organised coven of vampires who see themselves as the royal family and rule enforcers of the vampire world, and rightly so; if you thought Edward, Alice and Jasper were cool, wait till you read about the zany (and super-cool) abilities the Volturi vampires are packing. Every good series needs a fantastic and grotesque set of villains: Harry Potter had Voldemort and his death eaters; the Bartimaeus Trilogy had – well – every magician; and so Twilight has the Volturi.

Eclipse follows, and with it, more talk of Edward's nipples and his nine-pack. Indeed, I think since Edward scarcely made an appearance in New Moon, Stephenie thought it best to push him into my face and subsequently stuff him into my mouth for good measure (by that I mean she told me over and over and over again that Edward was the sexiest being ever to walk the earth). If you read Twilight and New Moon and could stand Meyer's prose, which can be heavy and tedious in places, you won't have a problem with Eclipse. In my honest opinion the previous books in the saga don't stack up to it; it's the best in the series in terms of everything – action, romance, intrigue, and fun. But that's just my opinion.

There is a fourth book, Breaking Dawn. I haven't finished reading it so I won't mention anything about it now, but rest assured I will post my review when I'm done.

Ratings

Twilight: ¤¤¤¤ (4 Stars) [8/10]. Great!

New Moon: ¤¤¤ (3 Stars) [6.5/10]. Good.

Eclipse: ¤¤¤¤ (4 Stars) [8.5/10]. Great!

Buy the books: Twilight (US/UK); New Moon (US/UK); Eclipse (US/UK).

Welcome, Glen Akin

2008-08-27T20:08:00.003+01:00

Since there's no one to congratulate me (shake my hand, pop a bottle of champagne, etc) on successfully creating my first blog, I'll do it myself: congratulations Glen Akin, you have done me proud.

I cannot say it was an easy task. The first bit was rather effortless (creating the blog on Blogger), but truth be told I created this blog only because I really wanted to try out the feature in WORD 2007 that gives bloggers the ability to publish write-ups from WORD itself (rather than from the online blog publisher) ... and that's where my train of problems began its journey with one mission in mind: to drive me mad.

I must admit, the initial fault was mine; somehow I had forgotten my password and couldn't seem to register my blog with WORD, but as soon as I realised I was the idiot slowing me down everything was smooth sailing.

Until my ship crashed on a gigantic iceberg and sank faster than the titanic; that is to say, I encountered another maddening crisis – I couldn't upload pictures from WORD to Blogger! I spent the next hour or so raking the internet for a solution and was even more frustrated when I found zilch. Nada. Nothing. One thing I did discover was that this problem has been in existence long before I even knew what blogging was. So my question is why hasn't Microsoft or Google done anything about this?

I was miffed. I even considered abandoning Blogger for Word Press. Pay attention please. The analogy here would be: so, after crashing on that iceberg and sinking my ship to the bottomless ocean of sub-zero doom, I'm freezing my bum off and trying to swim for safety. I see a ship in the distance (that ship is Word Press). I scream as loud as I can – with difficulty, of course – 'Help! Help me!' The sailor aboard the ship spots me. He manoeuvres and approaches. Nearer. Closer.

A meteor drops from the sky and obliterates the ship and her crew right before my eyes (Word Press isn't free – I have to bloody pay to use it!).

Okay, maybe I am being overly dramatic (paying to host a site these days is really cheap, or so I've heard) but I'm a newbie at this! I can't pay now! What if I get bored of blogging? Listen, I don't care if it costs £0.09 to host a blog; it's still money spent, and I spend money wisely. So, there!

Moving on.

I decided to concentrate my efforts on Blogger. Although a lot of bloggers have testified that Blogger is easier to use and a far better choice than Word Press for beginners (such as myself), I still think they (the developers) need to sort out this inability-to-upload-pictures-with-WORD problem, because I'm still swimming around aimlessly in the icy water waiting to be rescued. And my bum is freezing. Trust me when I say it's nothing to write home about. The sooner I get out of this blasted water, the better.

So my plan is this; I'll do my typing in WORD and put up any necessary pictures through Blogger (that's right – all of this, everything you're reading, was typed and published from WORD 2007). And probably in the future (that is if I keep blogging) I'll create different blogs for different stuff: blog for movies, another for books, and then another for sex, etc.

Now, if you'd be so kind to excuse me I'm off to down the champagne bottle sweating buckets of water on my desk and hopefully I'll get drunk, because I never get drunk. I think it's a genetic disorder. Damn my father.