ARTWORK: A First Look at Papercut

Readers, followers, and other passerby, I’m back with a sneak peek at some of the artwork behind my upcoming novel, Lawbreakers.

This is a sketch of Papercut, the alter ego of fifteen-year old Lukas LeClair. In Lawbreakers, Lukas, an overly-imaginative teenage boy, dons a mystical hoodie and ties a terrifying T-shirt over his head in an attempt to fight crime like his comic book idols do. Unfortunately for the terribly-named “superhero,” the criminals in Ash Valley, Cape Cod pack more than just a nasty fashion sense…

Who’s the girl with the sunglasses? Find out in a future post!

 

 

 

REVIEW: So Silver Bright, by Lisa Mantchev

Hello, readers! Remember me? If you do, then I imagine my namechangery has confused the heck out of you by now. After making a big deal about how I was going to use my real name instead of this silly pen name, I reneged on my promise and changed its back. Does that make me a liberal? (For the record, I’m apolitical. It’s like being asexual, but less icky.)

It’s a long story, but to sum it up, I took some advice from The Indie Author’s Guide to Self-Publishing. J.C. over at Debookery was kind enough to lend the book to me after I verbally crapped all over the concept of self-publishing. I can’t say I’ve changed my opinions, but thanks to that book, I’ve decided the smart thing to do would be to reserve my real name for big-boy, real world professions and maintain the ol’ psuedonym for this blog and my fiction. After all, I’m not so sure my career as a lawyer would go down too well if clients looked me up and found pictures of Professor Snape going all Penn State on Harry Potter. (Too soon?) If anyone ever latches onto the other verbal crap I spew out (that novel I’ve been working on), then I’ll reconsider.

In the meantime, let me spare you the usual BS promise that I’ll start updating with some regularity and get right to a review I should have written months ago.

Back in June, I received my first-ever ARC of Lisa Mantchev’s So Silver Bright. I was so excited that I cross-dressed as a tanner, hairier version of the protagonist in a recreation of the book’s cover. Okay, I didn’t really. But you gotta admit–that dress would look damn fine on me. (My poor wife.)

But enough about my girlish figure–more about the book!

Lisa Mantchev’s Théâtre Illuminata series chronicles the adventures of the aptly-named Bertie Shakespeare Smith, who was raised in the titular (yes, I said titular) playhouse among magical incarnations of characters hailing from every play ever written. Ever. Conjured to life via the powerful magic of a special book, these characters spend their nights performing and their days being general nuisances to the theatre staff. For those of you who haven’t read the first two entries in the series, consider this fair warning: by the pricking of my thumbs, lots of spoilers this way come. But I promise, when you finish Eyes Like Stars and Perchance to Dream (and you should), the following will not ruin So Silver Bright for you.

Unfortunately, I hope I didn’t dissuade you from reading those books! I only awarded Perchance to Dream a score of four out of five. Perchance to Dream ended all of its major conflicts, but left readers wondering whether Bertie would ever choose between the dashing pirate Nate (from The Little Mermaid) or the wind elemental Ariel (not from The Little Mermaid, despite the name). I’ve always maintained that there is nothing worse than a “series book” that can’t stand on its own. It’s lazy and underhanded to write a story without an ending because you’re counting sales from future installments. In this sense, Perchance to Dream was too good. The villain Sedna, a powerful sea goddess, was defeated. Furthermore, Bertie accomplished what she had set out to do and finally met her father, the Scrimshander, a bird-man whose love prevented him from giving into his bird instincts and pooping on his estranged daughter. Sadly.

Oh, what could’ve been.

So without any indication that a sequel was coming, I thought that Mantchev left the three protagonists locked in a perpetual love triangle for the purposes of torturing her poor readers for all eternity. After all, there was no obvious answer as to who Bertie should end up with. It wasn’t like she was choosing between an abusive, undead sparklefairy that watched her while she slept and a Native American shapeshifter or anything. Ariel was Bertie’s childhood friend who knew her better than anyone, and Nate was a freaking pirate.

In so Silver Bright, Bertie finally chooses between Beauty and the Butch. But not immediately. As it turns out, Sedna is still alive, and she’s still out to make Bertie and friends…not-so-alive. I guess that’s what happens when you get into a fight with the ocean. You’d think they’d have learned that lesson from Artie (THE STRONGEST MAN…IN THE WORLD).

To make matters worse, Bertie’s daddy issues haven’t gone away, because unfortunately, the Scrimshander flew the coop. Literally. After all, Bertie had swore to Opehlia (the “get thee to a nunnery” Opehlia) to reunite him with her before she ever set out on her crazy journey.

And boy, is it crazy. Bertie’s troupe’s mission is further complicated by an invitation to a distant castle presided over by a childish (again, literally) and impetuous queen. On her way there, she is joined by new characters Waschbär, who is my new favorite character by virtue of the umlaut in his name, and Varvara, the fire dancer–someone, as we learn, you should never…break wind around).

Varvara. Her name even SOUNDS like a fart.

It would seem late in the series for characters such as this to appear, but we learn they both tie brilliantly into Bertie’s elaborate backstory. Indeed, So Silver Bright retreads the story of how Bertie came to the Theatre Illuminata and adds to it significantly, even when you had thought there was nothing left there to explore. This serves a double purpose, as not only are we enthralled by the revelation of mysteries we didn’t even know existed in the first two books, but the plot advances through them. Bertie and her companions are (more or less) actors, and achieve much by performing a play based on Bertie’s life, including winning a spectacular and powerful boon from the forementioned queen. I won’t spoil the rest, but rest assured, the climax of the story is spectacular. Very few young adult books leave me with a real sense of catharsis (it’s like a catheter, but more touchy-feely), but this one certainly did. I reiterate: Lisa Mantchev is one of the best undiscovered talents in the genre. She has a real knack for plotting. Few sentences in these books stray away from advancement of the story–well, besides those involving slapstick between Bertie’s four fairy companions (Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Cobweb, and Paula Deen).

BIBBITY. BOBBITY. BUTTERRRRRRRR.

Yet even these sequences are much improved from previous instances. In my other reviews, I mentioned that I was very annoyed by the four fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, despite them being such integral parts of the story. This time around, I found myself actually laughing at them. Which can be somewhat embarrassing when you’re riding a subway car full of people who look like they want to hurt me. (But who doesn’t, really?) Heck, I found myself actually feeling concerned for one of the fairies’ well-beings. But only one of them. The rest can burn.

Along with the improved sense of humor, So Silver Bright is a technical improvement in other ways. I previously mentioned that Bertie’s word-magic, which enables her to bring anything she puts to paper into existence, teetered on the edge of ridiculousness, and I had difficulty telling the difference between metaphors in the story and manifestations of Bertie’s abilities. I had no such trouble doing so in So Silver Bright, where Bertie’s other magical abilities, which were somewhat hazy in Perchance to Dream, are also brought to light. Much-needed explanation is also given concerning the nature of the Théâtre Illuminata itself, and it is done in as organic a way as possible.

It goes to show you that unlike so many other “threequels,” So Silver Bright was a much-needed expansion upon the arguably complete story told by Eyes Like Stars and Perchance to Dream. The story is fantastic and endearing, an enjoyable read with a breathtaking conclusion. This trilogy is, all-in-all, a must-read for fans of the young adult genre, and a great book to recommend to teenagers just getting into Shakespeare. For those who may be uninitiated, Mantchev’s unique but mostly-accurate take on the Bard’s classic characters is like a gateway drug into his work. Except unlike other gateway drugs, you can’t be arrested for this one, and are unlikely to prostitute yourself for more of it. (But you can, by all means.)

So Silver Bright gets five donutburgers out of five.

 

Is The Hunger Games Too Much For Kids?

A lot of schools made Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games required summer reading this year. So naturally, as the end of summer drew near, the bookstore I worked at was absolutely flooded with exhausted-looking mothers demanding I find the book for them. (Despite, of course, the two bestsellers displays, the alphabetical organization of the store, and oh, the Hunger Games table, piled high with copies of the Hunger Games–is my bitterness showing?)

According to protocol, I was always supposed to lead the customers to the book. And that’s where it got interesting. Because if those mothers were dragging children along with them, the funniest thing happened. The kids flipped through The Hunger Games, looked up at their parents with tears in their eyes, and moaned, “They can’t make me read this! It’s sooo looong!” With that many o’s. I counted. Even funnier: when the mom reassures her child that the teacher was a sicko for assigning such a demanding reading assignment.

Then we drown in awkward silence for a moment while I try to force my friendly employee smile to come back. I know, I shouldn’t judge people, but how would you react if somebody told you your best friend was ugly and didn’t want anything to do with them? That’s how much I enjoyed The Hunger Games. The conversation always end with some forced placation on my part. “Gee willickers! I sure wish I could have read a book like that for summer reading when I was his/her/its age!”

It’s true. Back in my day, when we had to walk fifteen miles to school every day (uphill both ways), and milk the chickens and feed the cows, we had to read icky things like The Scarlet Letter and Jane Eyre. And if my memory serves me, both of them had significantly fewer violence and explosions than The Hunger Games. Heck, if Dimmsdale burst into flames at the end of The Scarlet Letter, I might have actually enjoyed the book (but probably not). Not to mention how short and sparsely descrptive The Hunger Games is! I’ve read longer legal briefs, for gosh sakes.

My life is so hard! I impregnated a girl and everyone holds me in the highest regard while she's constantly treated like dog crap! WOE UNTO ME! I WILL COLLAPSE AND DIE NOW!

So what’s going on? Is it the kids? The way parents approach summer reading? Or does the world just seem different to me now that I’m a wizened old coot?

You can’t blame children for not wanting to read the way they did back in the time of the dinosaurs. Before television hit the scene, books were the predominant form of escapist entertainment, rivaled only by (shudder) going outside. Television was one thing, but we live in the age of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. I had videogames when I was young, but they weren’t online competitions giving me the opportunity to shoot my friends in the heads with AK-47s. Of course, we were pretending that stuff anyway, but the digital age makes those heartwarming killfists we imagined in our backyards real for kids, right in the comfort of their living rooms.

But while the digital revolution is one major reason fewer kids enjoy reading, I think the biggest problem facing literacy is, well, us. Teachers aren’t parents, even if some people seem to think so. If kids’ families don’t encourage them to read, where are they going to find the motivation to do so when they have flashier and less tasking alternatives to put their time into?

It’s not impossible. Kids are like fish. They’re slimy, spend a good deal of their time soiling themselves, and if you ever hope to get their attention, you need a really good hook.

My (much) younger brother Dario, for example, spends plenty of time with an XBOX controller in hand, and would sooner poke himself in the eye than pick up a book of his own accord. So how did I get him to read? Easy. I appealed to his sensibilities.

“Hey Dario. Want to read a book about children thrown into an arena and forced to fight to the death until only one remains?”

Give it a shot. I doubt even the most stubborn kids would be hard-pressed to say “no” to that one. But just one piece of advice: please don’t try to sell The Hunger Games to everyone that way. Until I did, I didn’t even think real human beings had ever used the phrase, “Well, I never!” before. Turns out I was horribly wrong.

On a related note: you probably already know I’m not too happy with the direction The Hunger Games movie is taking. You kind of lose the horror of the concept of children forced to die when those children are portrayed by grown adults, and ones that don’t even faintly resemble the characters in the books. I know, I know, Suzanne Collins said they were her favorites, but authors do a lot of things for money, and I find it hard to trust people when their money is on the line. Or when they wear Crocs in public. Either/or.

HOLLYWOOD, YOU SO CRAZY

However, some fans of the series filmed their interpretation of some choice scenes for the book, and I’d bet you my mangled right pinky that they’re better than what Hollywood will end up churning out. Granted, you can’t expect the casting or acting to be perfect, but the end result will blow you away. I’m in no way affiliated, yadda yadda yadda. As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments!

 

Are Harry Potter Fans More Afraid Of Death Than Voldemort?

Being heartless and insensitive, I usually wouldn’t give a spoiler warning about the movie adaptation of a book that’s been out for four years. But because I understand some of you would like to be pleasantly (or not) surprised by the changes made to the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 movie, well…yeah. Spoilers ahead. But please come back and comment after you’ve seen the movie. It’s well worth the ticket price, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Yes, comment! So I may HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS--like Professor X.

The one reason Voldemort wasn’t a completely two-dimensional, boring villain was his one remaining human quality: his fear of death. Like MacBeth (and Cher), everything Voldemort does is in an attempt to make a rain check with the grim reaper. Voldemort’s name, even, supposedly translates to “flight from death.” Pardon my French. Literally!

Cher's final horcrux is Sonny's corpse.

For this reason, it is Dumbledore, not Harry Potter, who is Voldemort’s perfect character foil. In Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s/Gallbladder’s Stone, Dumbledore asserts to Harry his belief that death is the next great adventure to the well-prepared mind. Personally, I think Disneyworld is the next great adventure to the well-prepared mind, but whatever tickles your pickle, Albus. Indeed, by planning his own death at the hands of Snape, Dumbledore proved that he had no fear of the great beyond whatsoever. He sacrificed himself in the great game of chess between good and evil. So if a checkmate for good is seeing Voldemort’s fear realized as he is finally killed, then why don’t we get to see him die in the movie version of Deathly Hallows?

This wasn’t the only question I was left with after seeing Part 2. One of my favorite parts of the book was when Molly Weasley dispatched Bellatrix LeStrange with the now-classic line, “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” (Remind me to use that in the drive-thru at Dunkin Donuts sometime.) While Molly’s words were preserved, the end of that particular confrontation was not. When Bellatrix got all Avada Kedavra’d, she burst into a cloud of confetti. Either Bellatrix had a self-destruct button, or Ron’s mother is the most powerful dark witch of all time, possessing explodey powers even Voldemort knows not of. This first change carried right over into my biggest problem with the movie.

I had nothing against seeing Harry and Voldemort’s final tussle getting extended. When Harry grabs ol’ snake eyes and spouts a very corny, “Let’s finish this the way we started it,” I wasn’t impressed, sure. But when the two of them started pointing their wooden sticks at each other in private, I realized I was in store for a major cop-out.

The original ending in the Deathly Hallows book was incredible and awful for me at the same time. It was a very western-style showdown. Harry and Voldemort circled each other in the crowded remains of the Great Hall until readers feel dizzy. Importantly, Harry delivered a speech to Voldemort that unraveled the last of his dark mystique with words and bravery, not physical violence, making sure to call him “Tom.” The people who always doubted the legitimacy of Harry’s battles against evil finally stood witness to the conflict. Harry even took pity on him, proving himself the better man once and for all. When they exchanged spells, Harry aimed to stun, not kill. It was short, and a bit anti-climactic after seven books of anticipation, but it was well-written, and having all of Harry’s friends cheer at his greatest victory gave readers a sense of gratification for waiting so long. Triumphs often feel hollow without celebration.

Earlier in the movie, I assumed they were setting up the ending from the book by having heavenly Dumbledore tell Harry to pity those who do not know love, very obviously referring to Voldemort. After all, when Harry showed mercy on his parent’s murderer, he finally became a man, no longer famous simply for surviving as the Boy Who Lived. But it didn’t happen that way. Voldemort, too, got confetti’d, after a drawn-out battle and little to no exchange. Voldemort doesn’t even seem to die of his own spell. The instant Neville cuts of Nagini’s head, he starts bursting. But why?

Filmmakers aren’t stupid. They took an incredibly depressing ending in the film adaptation of The Natural and turned it into a feel-good, “Hollywood” conclusion that worked equally as well. We live in a country where killing is frowned upon, and this often chokes the truth out of fiction. For example, despite being a WWII-era soldier, the superhero Captain America rarely kills his enemies in his stories, almost never carrying a gun. Nobody wants their children to look up to murderers, whether they are justified or not. So, the answer’s quite simple: having kids see Bellatrix and Voldemort’s lifeless vodies flattened before the feet of Molly Weasley and Harry Potter, two forces of good, was apparently presumed to be the wrong message to give to the theater-going public.

Strange, then, that killing in self-defense is perfectly legal in this country, and that Molly Weasley would have never been prosecuted in America for dispatching Bellatrix while protecting the ones she loved. And anyone who read the books knew Harry didn’t kill Voldemort; Voldemort killed Voldemort. It was a rebounding Avada Kevadra that killed him. Harry, freshly resurrected from the dead, expressed a very Christian sense of forgiveness for his torturer by attacking with “Stupefy.”

I hope Mel Gibson isn't jealous.

I can only guess the reason there was no crowd surrounding Harry and Voldemort was for the same reasons. In the book, as soon as Voldemort falls, the audience cheers. They are celebrating death, and apparently this is wrong, even if it’s the death of a brutal psychopath like Voldemort. Call me violent, but on the night Bin Laden was finally dispatched (and don’t you dare tell me he wasn’t), I couldn’t help but feel proud at the cheers of “U.S.A.!” outside of the White House.

However, while the director may have thought he was preventing children from celebrating murder, if anything, he only increased the probability. When Harry destroys Voldemort in the movie, it is utterly and fantastically, in one final, private spat that ends in a literal bang.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. I actually thought some moments were improved upon from the source material, such as when Harry stepped out of a crowd of fellow students to stand up to Snape, at the pinnacle of his bravery and character development. But I don’t know what’s more troubling: a society that’s afraid to let its children be exposed to the very real concept of death, or the one that glorifies a hero who privately kills a man without every expressing pity or remorse for extinguishing a living being. So who’s really afraid of death here? Voldemort, or us?

RON, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IT'S ONLY A SPIDER!

 

 

REVIEW: DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth

Being a hairy, twenty-two year old law student who reads books targeted a demographic of nerdy, dateless teenage girls, you don’t get much more “divergent” than me. But when Veronica Roth’s dystopian thriller Divergent hit stores this May, I didn’t give a single crap. In this post-Hunger Games world, I’m often hard-pressed to believe new entries in the dystopian genre are anything but cheap attempts at cashing in on the success of Suzanne Collins’s heartwarming tale of revolution and child-murder. Because really, does it get any better than child-murder? (I dunno, ask Casey Anthony!)

Nobody figured out she was crazy BEFORE she killed her daughter?

Let me explain. You can’t throw a rock in the young adult section of a bookstore nowadays without hitting an oppressive post-apocalyptic government. Not that I’ve ever thrown rocks in the young adult section of a bookstore or anything. That would be hilario–I mean, rude. Anyway, thanks to The Hunger Games, dystopian is the new “vampires.” Not that I’m complaining. There’s only so much blood sucking, corpse-kissing, and Robert Pattinson-with-spray-on-abs a guy can take without losing his will to live. But being inundated with wannabe Twilights is far better than wading through poorly-written Hunger Games knockoffs.

Oh, Pattinson. You get paid more than God and you can't find the time to go to the gym? NO, I'M NOT BITTER.

This is because dystopian novels are to fiction what hot dogs are to meat. They’re easy to mass produce, but most of them are unfit for human consumption. This is because it only takes one rat in the meat grinder to ruin the whole wiener. (Yes, I really did just say “wiener.”) To “cut the mustard,” good dystopian stories must be equal parts believable and fantastic, harrowing and inspiring, alien and familiar, or else they fail to deliver on the very premise they are written. This is evident in Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem and Louis Lowry’s derivative The Giver, which took the genre to its upper limits. Both stories are about “everyman” characters discovering the possibility of a life beyond the oppression of idealistic regimes. These characters revolt to regain their freedoms and assert a sense of individuality outside the hive-minds of their societies.

Suzanne Collins got this. Without giving too much away, The Hunger Games trilogy is about a young girl named Katniss (her name really rhymes with “cat piss”) who, through various acts of buttkickery, overcomes the fear and complacency imposed upon her by a brutal dictatorship. Considering the unrest in the Middle East right now, these books are very topical. Who’d have thought a book about children being forced into an arena to fight to the death would have educational value? But not every author can hit Collins’s high notes.

It really only took One Book to convince me that the industry is about to enter a state of dystopian overkill. This book was possibly the worst I have ever read, and I’ve read Twilight. I won’t name names out of respect for This One Book’s author, but sweet ostritch-riding Jesus. “Show, don’t tell” is probably the first and most important rule of writing, if there are any. Apparently, the author of this One Book didn’t get the memo, or she was incredibly drunk when she heard it and got it backwards. Her book began with three chapters of a young girl narrating the history of a dystopian civilization. No indication of context or setting is given; it’s just a detailed monologue about the history of this teenager’s civilization with thinly-veiled hints that it’s not as good as she was lead to believe. Now, think about it. If you were (or are, bless your pimply, hormonal soul) a teenager, would you introduce yourself to a perfect stranger with a line like, “In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt effectively laid the framework for the United Nations through a joint declaration…” Yeah, that was pretty much the beginning to that One Book. Now, really: if a sixteen-year old girl is aware that her society is corrupt and knows exactly how it got that way, then how the heck did that society come to be in the first place? Surely, everybody else who isn’t a sixteen-year old girl would have come to the same conclusion, and made things well, you know, not suck. Contrast something this with the beginning of The Hunger Games, in which Katniss wakes up and describes how incredibly ugly her sister’s cat, Buttercup, is. It isn’t Charles Dickens, but it’s true to teenage life. No assembly required. Plus, it involves cats.Despite being only twenty-two years old (not that there’s anything wrong with twenty-two year olds or anything), debut author Veronica Roth had enough sense and skill to completely immerse readers in the world of Divergent without boring them half to death with needless narration. You don’t just read Divergent. You experience it.

Divergent is set in a futuristic Chicago that has been divided into five social factions: Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite, Candor, and Hufflepuff. Um, I mean, Amity. (You wouldn’t want to be in either of them, anyway.) These factions are self-explanatory. For example, while the members of Abnegation are prudish volunteer workers and TOTAL party poopers, the Dauntless are goth kids that like to jump off of moving trains for kicks and giggles. This concept seems too simplistic carry a novel, but none of the factions are without their practical functions, adding a much-needed layer of depth to Roth’s story. A la Socrates, since the Abnegation are selfless and do not desire power, they take on leadership roles. On the other hand, since the Dauntless enjoy punching things, they make the best soldiers. The Erudite, naturally, are teachers, professors, and wedgie-deservers. The Candor are lawyers that never lie. Is that an oxymoron? And, uh, Amity…well, they have Cedric Diggory? Anyone who doesn’t subscribe to one of these five ways of thinking become factionless, a.k.a. smelly hobos, and get to scrub toilets for a living. If they’re lucky. When you think about it, this class-based system is not too far removed from our own, so it doesn’t require much suspension of disbelief.

Milhouse was Erudite before Erudite was cool.

So where do you squeeze protagonist Beatrice Prior of Abnegation into this? Well, you can’t have a dystopian young adult story without characters on the cusp of adolescence being forced through a ritual forever enmeshing them with a life not of their choosing. In Divergent, sixteen-year olds must undergo an aptitude test that prepares them for a “choosing ceremony,” in which they decide which faction they will belong to. One of the city’s mottos is “Faction Before Blood” because after this ceremony, faction transfers rarely if ever encounter their birth families again. The process is reminiscent of the Sorting Ceremony in Harry Potter. The key difference is that instead of sticking her head up the butthole of a singing piece of headwear, Beatrice is injected with a serum that induces a series of hallucinations, her reactions to which determine which faction she is best suited for. The test results do not force one’s hand in the choosing ceremony, though. Which begs an awful question for those better inclined toward factions they weren’t born into: go with the test results and abandon your family forever, or stay put and risk missing your true calling in life?

And this life-changing decision is only the beginning of the story. Most of the plot concerns Beatrices difficult initiation into the faction she ends up choosing, before the story takes a quick change of direction and veers into an unexpected but riveting conclusion. Beatrice, later called “Tris,” is a powerful heroine that readers can easily cheer for. A poorly-written protagonist simply reacts to the plot as it happens to her. Tris, however, confronts situations headlong, and never comes off as obnoxious in the process. In her experience, she grows and changes, and the Tris at the end of Divergent is an entirely different person than the plain old Beatrice Prior she started the novel as. Don’t tell Suzanne Collins, but Tris could beat Katniss in a fight any day of the week. Come on authors, indulge us in a little…Kat fight? Anyone?

Artist's rendering of Tris (left) and Katniss (right)

Tris isn’t the only character worth mentioning. The spectacular Four complements Tris perfectly, even if when you read their names together it sounds like some wonky multi-language counting session. Four is equal parts Mr. Darcy and James Bond, a man of mystery who knows how to break faces while maintaining a gentleman’s demeanor.. His relationship with Tris is a carrot on a string dangled one foot in front of readers at all times, and developments between the two never feel rushed or forced.

Tris and Four end up living in a vast underground complex called the Pit. While there is little to compare between Harry Potter and Divergent, Roth describes the Pit so well I feel like I knew more about it after one novel than I knew about Hogwarts after seven. Similarly, I’ve never been to Chicago, nor have I been to a ruined, post-apocalyptic Chicago, but Tris’s adventures through the city made it real to me, and not just some painted-on backdrop of a city skyline.

This is mostly because Divergent is jam-packed with action. Many books and movies are described as “thrill rides.” While I am loathe to use that cliche, you could call Divergent a thrill ride. A thrill ride spent completely naked as the car to your rollercoaster hurtles off the track headlong into the side of a building before stopping you at the last possible second only to drop you ten-thousand feet toward certain death as a street pancake without giving you time to clean the vomit off of your clothing or the mercy to let you say your prayers all while a Latin chorus chants incomprehensibly in your ears and you scream for your mother like you’ve never screamed for your mother before coming to a sudden stop at the very edge of hell itself. It’s–it’s like riding a bicycle. Without wheels. OFF THE EDGE OF A CLIFF. IN SPACE. OVER A BLACK HOLE. LEADING STRAIGHT INTO HELL. …you get the drift. In short, I have never experienced action of this magnitude in a book before, and never read it described so perfectly that I really got that sense of “being there.” When Tris jumps off a train, your breath catches in your chest like you’re trying to land right beside her. It’s word-magic of the highest-caliber sorcery.

DIVERGENT!!! It'll make you win! It'll make you win at things you're not even supposed to WIN AT like READING or REVIEWING BOOKS!!!

However, this book (unlike me) wasn’t perfect. While Roth’s prose is excellent, she, like most authors, has a few “go-to” phrases that reoccur throughout the book. It’s more the editor’s fault than hers, but after reading about Tris’s “heart hammering” several times in as many pages, I started wondering if someone was building a small house in her chest. Also, while Roth does a great job juggling the huge cast of characters in Divergent, there are occasionally some I don’t recognize by name alone, even in the later parts of the story. I can only imagine this was more difficult for readers who weren’t taking notes along the way. Some (such as Christina) you know plenty about, but they act inconsistently at times. Even Tris, despite being stunning and three-dimensional, does something near the end of the story (which I won’t spoil here) that seemed completely unnecessary and atrocious, but that might be more the fault of the prose lacking a sense of urgency than poor characterization.

And then there’s the ending. It’s unprofessional and boorish for me to say that I didn’t like something without giving the reasons why, but as exciting, well-thought out, and enjoyable as the ending was, something about it felt “off” to me. Maybe that’s because it came and went so quickly in comparison to the rest of the book. Maybe it’s because characters I didn’t really get to know or care about met sudden, jarring ends. Or maybe it was because I get really, really grumpy when I run out of book and I’m aware the sequel isn’t immediately available to me. I just don’t think the ending lived up I to the high quality of the rest of the story. Still, as in life, it’s much better to have a small end than a saggy middle.

Divergent is proof that there still are some gems to be mined from the dystopian rough, and for Veronica Roth, it’s a fantastic debut novel and an almost-guarantee of amazing followups to come. I’ve been recommending this book to anyone who’s a fan of The Hunger Games, partly out of blind hope that eventually this, too, will be made into a movie. It’s certainly written like one, and I’d love to see it acted out. And hey, if it is, maybe Tris won’t be played by someone nearly twice her age. (That wasn’t a jab at Jennifer Lawrence at all.)

Definitely my first pick for a short, olive-skinned sixteen-year old brunette.

While dystopian novels tend to be boring, prosaic, and self-indulgent, Divergent makes any book that calls itself a “thrill ride” look like the teacups at Disneyworld, complete with the dumb music, diziness, and vomiting. It’s tightly-written action adventure full of memorable plotlines and characters that have me more than excited for the upcoming sequel, Insurgent, and the inevitable threequel (which, for rhyming reasons, will probably be called “Detergent”).

Divergent gets five bottles of Cheer Stain-Fighting Whites & Colors out of five.

Tomorrow: My not-so-glowing thoughts on Deathly Hallows: Part 2

 

“I make this look good”: PARANORMALCY Review

I don’t know if there are any better ways to announce to the world, “I’m in touch with my feminine side, so, please, by all means, beat the crap out of me and take all of my money” than to:

1.) be male and

2.) carry around Kiersten White’s Paranormalcy around Boston for a few days.

I know, I know. I might as well be asking for Barbie dolls to be made more accessible to the make demographic. But Paranormalcy was good enough to be enjoyed by more than just teenage girls. …unless all these YA books have turned me into a teenage girl and I haven’t noticed yet. GOOD LORD, COOTIES, COOTIES EVERYWHERE…

I mean, look at the thing. Does this look like the sort of book a manly man like me would read? PAH! (Who says “PAH” anyway? Apparently, me.)

Sure is pouty in here!

Well, now that my complaint session is over, reading Paranormalcy was well worth the risks. Aren’t I brave? You can thank me later.

Paranormalcy stars Eevee, an extremely rare Normal-Type Pokémon that evolves into seven different elemental forms based on external stimuli. …yeah, I know, not that Eevee.

GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL! PARANORMALS!

Actually, her full name is Evelyn, and she doesn’t know her last name. Or a lot of other things, as it turns out. Which can be particularly dangerous when you work for the ICPA, the International…Cartilaginous…Paranormal Agency or something. I don’t remember what the “C” stands for, but I’m sure it’s something close. Anyway, the ICPA is essentially a paranormal version of the Men in Black, except instead of Will Smith spouting lines like, “Damn, I make this look good” beside a frowning Tommy Lee Jones, it’s Evie saying pretty much the exact same sort of things beside a frowning Raquel, who more or less runs the show. Oh, and Evie has the ability to see through the glamours of paranormals, which means she can see what they really look like beneath their human disguises. I’m not sure if it’s a power I want. I mean, imagine seeing everyone naked all the time. And I mean, everyone. Like, that bus driver of indeterminate gender and far too much hair to be human. Laid bare before your very eyes for what heshe really is. Shudder.

"Now, stare into the little red light and listen to what my partner tells you." "WELCOME TO EARTH! Oh, and you will now give all your money to the Cult of Scientology."

Evie (and her faithful companion Tasey, a pink Taser I want to get Jess for her birthday) are going about their “normal business” of registering vampires, werewolves, Republicans, and the like when a mysterious stranger named Lend shows up at the ICPA. Lend is an unidentified species of paranormal that Evie and her employers have never encountered before. He’s also an attractive teenage boy. But Evie has little time for flirting, because scores of paranormal creatures are mysteriously dropping dead everywhere, and the ICPA is trying to discover why before it’s too late. Too late for what, I’m not entirely sure. Hopefully Breaking Dawn the Movie, but I guess that’s a catastrophe that’s unavoidable at this point. But, luckily for my poor, vampire fiction-addled mind, Paranormalcy is anything but disastrous.

Kiersten White can write teenage girls like the cast of the Jersey Shore can spread STDs. I mean that as a compliment somehow. Because Evie has an extremely convincing voice. She’s a bit flakey, but that tends to be more the rule than the exception at that age. I wish I could write teenage girls like White can, but I’m kind of glad I can’t, because I’m guessing that’s the sort of thing that comes from experience and as we all know, I’m so manly Arnold Schwartzenhagger looks like a chihuahua in a tu-tu next to my rippling physique. Evie is a strong female character, who has clear motivations, despite her boy-craziness and dedication to television shows.

On the other hand, Lend falls somewhat flat, but the relationship between him and Evie is convincing and at least a bit touching. Not that kind of touching, you sick freak–this is a young adult book (not that it’s ever stopped anyone…). He reminds me of myself when I was young, so many, many years ago (okay, four), drawing pictures of my fiance and taking her to dances. Lend has a few moments of heroism, but I wish he had more to do in the book.

This my only real criticism of Paranormalcy. It implies much and shows little. We know there are vampires, werewolves, mermaids, hags, water elementals, Twilight moms, and other unspeakable creatures lurking about this world, but we see far too few of them. This averts any genre cliches, but I also felt a bit disappointed the only real paranormal action that goes down involves some (intentionally) laughably stereotyped vampires.

Evie has a best friend named Lish, for example, a mermaid who works as a receptionist for the ICPA. But we hardly get to know Lish, and although I understand she can’t exactly flop around behind Evie wherever she goes (well, she could, but that would be too funny to be true), I would’ve loved to know more about their relationship. In the same way, I felt that we only just skimmed the surface of the inner workings of the ICPA, as I’m sure there were other agents besides Evie out there going about and doing the dangerous things she does. But on most missions, she seems very alone. We do get to know Raquel a bit, but I personally found her and her constant sighing to be annoying, but I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with me on that!

Evie's best friend, Lish, who's half girl and half fish!

Some of the other characters are unarguably fantastic. The paranormals we get to know best are (ironically) the most enigmatic: the fae, and boy, are they frightening. The fae in Paranormalcy have nothing in common with Tinker Bell–if anything, they’re more evocative of aliens or gods and goddesses, immortals that plan events out for generations and treat humans like playthings. There is a major loose end concerning the fae and their plans with Evie, but I won’t spoil anything. I just hope it was left open intentionally. Oddly, some people actually found Reth, Evie’s fae ex-boyfriend, attractive. He was a very interesting character, but certainly an abusive one. I mean, I guess the Rihannas of the world might be into that, but I dreaded the idea of Evie reuniting with him.

"I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT IT REALLY IS I CAN ONLY TELL YOU WHAT IT FEELS LIKE" ...thanks, Eminem.

Overall, Paranormalcy was a quick, enjoyable read. I was an enormous fan of Men in Black when I was a kid, and while there aren’t any talking pugs in this book, I actually preferred the idea of a paranormal registration agency to an alien one. My only real criticisms of Paranormalcy were things I wanted more of! A sequel, Supernaturally, is due out, and it, too, looks to be a nice “mug me” flag to wave every time I take public transit when it hits shelves later this summer. But you can bet I’ll be braving the beatings.

Paranormalcy gets four and a half ounces of my testosterone out of five. God help us when the last ounce is gone.

 

A Eulogy for Spider-man

See, followers? I do read things besides novels marketed toward teenage girls! …comic books marketed toward teenage boys. But I’ve been a fan of Ultimate Spider-man since I WAS a teenage boy (a handsome, popular, athletic teenage boy, if I remember correctly), so of course I have a few things to say about what’s going on with the series. Brace for nerdrage.

I have four words and one finger wag for Brian Michael Bendis: OH, NO YOU DI’INT! Does that count as five words? It doesn’t really matter. Because there are actually plenty more words to follow.

If the giant subheading “DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN” hadn’t spoiled it for you already, this is the issue Peter Parker finally bites the dust. Kicks the bucket. Commences pushing up daisies. Slips the surly bonds of…comic book pages. I say “finally” bites the dust not because I wanted the death to happen, not because this story was announced all the way back in December, but because this was actually supposed to happen two years ago.Give me a paragraph to catch up the uninitiated: Ultimate Spider-man is the comic book that launched Marvel’s “Ultimate” Universe. It is a complete re-imagining of Stan Lee’s classic superhero for our modern world, the main difference being that Ultimate Peter Parker is fifteen years old. You know, instead of thirty-something (even though he’s lived through like, fifty years of adventures). This makes for a far more likeable character than the current “Amazing” Spider-man, who not-so-amazingly made a deal with the devil and exchanged his marriage with Mary Jane for a dying Aunt May’s life (even though she’s got to be at least 150 years old and has already died like four times). For me, the main thing that got me into Ultimate Spider-man was the sense that I could latch on to the story and actually feel a sense of progression. Some would argue after half a lifetime, the only place Amazing Spider-man has gone is backwards.

In 2009, the Ultimate Universe was forever changed by the Ultimatum event, in which a vengeful Magneto murdered countless innocent people and a good chunk of the superheroes, too. This event spilled over into the Ultimate Spider-man book, and Spidey was seemingly killed in an enormous explosion after New York City was devastated by an enormous wave.

It was a harrowing moment in the series, and although I had my doubts at first, I really thought Peter was a goner. The issue after Peter’s apparent demise was “silent,” lacking any dialogue whatsoever as Spider-woman sought to uncover the truth about Peter, recovering only his waterlogged mask. When interviewed, Bendis marketed the pending relaunch and renumbering of the series as a bold new world with a brand new Spider-man.

He didn’t really live up to either promise.

After reading Ultimate Spider-man ever since I was in high school, I finally dropped the book after a few issues into Volume 2. This was the equivalent of dropping an addiction cold turkey. Ultimate Spider-man was the comic that got me into comics, but enough was enough.

The lights were on in the series, but nobody was home. The brilliant Stuart Immonen stepped down as the book’s artist, for starts. He, too, was another casualty of Ultimatum. Immonen was frustrated about Ultimate Spider-man getting delayed, because even though he met his deadlines, certain other Marvel staff members couldn’t. He was replaced by David LaFuente, who draws in a psuedo-manga style and has been criticized for his portrayal of a “melon-headed” Spider-man. (The Japanese style allows you to ignore basic human anatomy, apparently.)

No neck, no anatomy, no problem!

To make matters worse, it seemed like Bendis had forgotten his own short-lived continuity. While masquerading as a red-hooded vigilante in one issue, Kitty Pryde delivered nearly-identical dialogue to the impassioned speech Peter Parker made after Gwen Stacy’s death way back in Volume 1. It’s pretty awful for a writer to forget his own words, but even worse for an editor getting paid to check for goofs not to pick it up either. Psst–Marvel! If you’re listening, I’d love a job.

So with art and continuity out the door, the book stopped being believable. I mean, I don’t exactly read comics about kids swinging around the city on spiderwebs because they’re true to life. But Ultimate Spider-man had always been a book that, despite the occasional goblin-punching, remained consistently grounded in the real world. For example, way back in the very first arc of Ultimate Spider-man, it was made very apparent that Aunt May and Uncle Ben weren’t exactly rich. They had financial troubles enough for a family of three. Yet, somehow, in Volume 2, Aunt May adopted both Iceman and the Human Torch on top of Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy (who’d been revived). Maybe Susan Storm left her a check, but we never saw it happen, and I really wasn’t sold on the idea of Aunt May’s halfway house for homeless superheroes. People were already noticing Spider-man swinging around the Forest Hills area. How could anyone’s secret identities possibly stay secret with two celebrity superheroes and a girl thought to be dead living in the house along with the Parkers?

Me too, Aunt May. Me, too.

When I heard about The Death of Spider-man, and the very familiar announcement that Peter Parker would die and be replaced by a new Spider-man in a subsequent relaunch, I was flabbergasted. Didn’t anyone remember the empty promises of two years ago? Was this always the plan, but some higher-up in Marvel delayed it until now as some last resort to get more sales?

I had to pick up an issue. And, like an ex-addict telling himself “just one more time,” I was hooked all over again. I’m like, the Lindsey Lohan of comic books. But lock me up, because these past few issues were worth splurging for.

The Death of Spider-man arc is Bendis and Bagley at their best once again. Not only am I considering subscribing to the series, but I want to re-read the entire thing from issue one all over. I don’t want to spoil the actual events which happen, but here are some highlights. Doc Ock goes through some (unfortunately brief but) incredible progress as a character, and all the longtime villains of the series besides Venom (who disappeared from the face of the Earth) make appearances as well. While the events leading up to Peter Parker’s demise are a bit attenuated, every negative turn Spidey’s final battle took was gut-wrenching. Every punch he takes, you know he’s one step closer to the bitter end. It’s devastating to read, especially for me–and that’s how I know it’s well written. After all the things that bothered me in Volume 2, I care again, and you can tell the comic’s staff do, too.

Spider-man’s life may be cut short. But for a longtime fan of the series like me, it’s incredible to actually see the fulfillment of everything Peter Parker set out to do as a superhero. This will never happen in Amazing Spider-man, who will probably still be thirty and living with his aunt when my kids are thirty and (hopefully) living on their own. Peter’s heartbreaking last words are so appropriate for this, which I won’t spoil here. Believe me, there were a million ways they could have been cliché or forced, (“ET TU, AUNT MAY?”) and they weren’t.

:'(

Some might say this event had no impact because we knew from page one what was going to happen. But if anything, this only intensified the experience for me. I jumped right on the bandwagon, and rode it straight down to awesometown. I really, truly hope that for once, Marvel has the courage to keep a main character dead and move on with the story. This is the first time there’s been any sense of closure in a superhero comic. Most Marvel and DC comics have wonderful beginnings, but there is never a middle, and certainly not an end. But seeing as this is the Ultimate Universe, it might actually happen for once: Wolverine, for example, has been dead for two years now.

The irony of this, of course, is my biggest criticism. For this story, Green Goblin inexplicably came back to life after taking a bullet to the head in human form way back in Death of a Goblin. Well, mostly “inexplicably.” He did come back from seemingly fatal injuries before, but back then, I had praised the idea that a main villain could stay dead for once. If they want to play this up as Norman’s true power, some sort of immortality, then that’s fine by me, but I hope it is explained. (This is at least somewhat teased in Issue 160.) Even so, I still think it felt a little forced, especially because he escapes imprisonment the exact same way he did in Death of a Goblin, with Carol Danvers apparently forgetting the lessons she learned in that arc as if they never happened at all. “What? How is he transforming? He showed no signs of mutation.” Yeah, that happened already.

Norman was pretty out-of-character, too. In Death of a Goblin, he was calculated and devious, manipulating Peter and the media into getting his way. And he was suicidal after Harry died. In Death of Spider-man, Norman simply bum-rushes Spidey and is back to the same murderous rage he harbored in the first place (although, to be fair, it was perfect timing, considering the Ultimates were distracted). To make this conundrum even more awkward and ill-thought-out, Peter remarks something to the effect of, “Killing me won’t magically bring your son back!” without ever acknowledging Norman came back without any apparent reason, either. And why hasn’t Harry come back, too?

Ultimate Green Goblin. A lot scarier than Willem Dafoe in a Power Rangers suit.

But hey, you just can’t kill Spider-man any other way. …Morlun? Who’s Morlun?

In conclusion, this moment could be a defining one for Bendis, and comics in general, provided it brings about the changes I believe are to come. I’m wary about the ability of any character but Peter Parker to be Spider-man, but Bendis has assured us that Peter’s successor is inspired by Peter’s death in the same way Peter was inspired by Uncle Ben. I just hope it’s not some god-awful Mary Sue. Give me Jessica Drew disguised as a boy, or Eddie Brock reformed, but please don’t let it be some random schmuck or a character without the right ties to Peter.

The Death of Spider-man felt sudden, and somewhat unplanned. But it gives me hope for the future of the Ultimate Universe, and comics in general, while still making me sniffle back some manly, manly tears for the character who inspired my love for comics, written by the scribe that made me want to become a writer in the first place.

Ultimate Spider-man gets five Aunt Mays With Guns out of five.

 

Can Reading Ever Be A Bad Thing?

Well, yeah, of course it can. Ever see the Mummy? All you have to do is read a few words and Mubarak’s great-great-great mummified ancestor gets all up in your grill and tries to get his hot bandaged body all over your girlfriend.

And I’m sure Snooki and Justin Bieber’s memoirs have killed more brain cells than they’ve stimulated.

But what I really wonder is if reading too deeply into the genre I’m trying to write is clogging up the toilet of ideas that is my mind.

The more I read, the less confident I am in the idea that my novel isn’t all that novel. I’ve been working (more or less) on this W.I.P. so long I might as well rename the file R.I.P. And the longer I sit on it, the more I encounter stories that feature elements I’m afraid my future readers will see in my writing and close the book. Been there, done that.

Take Kick-Ass, for example. When I first started working on my story, it was going to be a comic book with a very similar premise–albeit, less vulgar and gory. A teenage nerd without superpowers whips together a superhero suit and takes to the streets to fight gang violence and win the heart of a much cooler girl, and ends up stirring more trouble than he bargained for.

I loved the movie, though.

Said teenage nerd’s costume was realistically lacking. Didn’t you ever wonder how Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker whipped up that incredibly detailed Spider-man suit in Sam Raimi’s trilogy when he didn’t even have enough money to pay his rent? I didn’t recall him being a sewing expert. Or a good actor…but that’s besides the point. Anyway, my main character through together a semi-wetsuit with lines running up and down his arms, legs, and face-mask. Then Mark Millar comes along and has the gall and create Kick-Ass, a comic (and then, a movie) with not only the same premise, but starring a character of the same physical description wearing a similar costume. I know, it’s an easy enough plot to come up with, and the costume just extends from that, but I couldn’t help but feel shafted. Hey, I’m a writer. We’re all attention whores to some extent. The world’s all about ME–in this case, it’s out to get me.

It didn’t stop there, of course. Long after I’d written the bulk of my first draft, I read and reviewed Maggie Stiefvater’s the excellent two first books in Maggie Stiefvater’s Wolves of Mercy Falls series. In Linger, one of the characters is named Cole St.Clair. Furthermore, Sam, the main character, reveals a love for orgiami, constantly folding paper cranes and talking about the well-known 1,000 paper cranes legend. He dangles his finished creations from his ceiling.

After reading Linger, I was tempted to delete chapters of my book altogether. Not only was my main character named Lukas LeClair, but he, too, was an origami fanatic and dangled hundreds of cranes from the ceiling of his bedroom. Again, the ideas aren’t entirely original, but when they’re present in books I’ve read and reviewed (and Stiefvater even read those reviews), I couldn’t help but fear that someday authors would pick up the fruit of my labors and say, hey, this strange manchild who writes YA copied me!

The (working) title of my story is called Lawbreakers. This is partially because law school is awful but mostly because the plot revolves around the possibility of breaking the laws of physics to achieve superhuman feats. As I read through Michael Grant’s (so far, incredible) book Gone, I continue to stumble upon the notion that the laws of the universe were “hacked” to bring about the sae sort of results.

Don’t take this as whining, but should I just pick up a different genre for a while or something? Or should I suck it up and accept my ideas aren’t as original as I thought they were? As I plow back into my story for what might be the final rewrite before I spread the manuscript around to some readers, these are the questions that keep me up at night. When I’m not being kept awake by a cat that suckles my toes thinking they’re his mother’s nipples because he had a traumatic kittenhood.

Probably what goes through my cat's tiny mind as he seeks out his Mommy...

…I’m going to go sob into my books now.

 

 

Sequelitis (And now, for something completely different…)

It’s Friday. You just got home from work, and you’re excited to spend the weekend with your love interest…okay, your cat…okay, your right hand.
But, as soon as you plunk your tired butt down to dig into a well-earned dinner, your phone starts blowing up.
“Are you ever going to change that ringtone?” your spouse/cat/split personality nags you, as the digitized Rihanna in your cellphone asks everyone in your kitchen what her name is because she just can’t seem to remember ever.
Oh na na! It’s your co-worker calling. We’ll call him Gus. Because, why wouldn’t we? Being the new guy on the job, Gus is a bit awkward, but you two get along just fine.
“Hey there Bro-seph Stalin,” Gus greets you, eloquence rolling off his tongue. “Want to pound some Four Lokos and get jiggy with it later?”
A bit worried Gus has the wrong idea about your working relationship, you politely decline, and invite Gus to come over instead. You love meeting new people.
Gus woos you and your significant other/smelly roommate over with his fascinating stories of what he liked best about working part-time as a janitor. He doesn’t weave the most thrilling yarn about toilet scrubbing you’ve ever heard, but Gus is so charming that you wouldn’t mind hanging out with him a little more to figure out what makes him tick. Exhausted, you hint to Gus that you’re ready for bed. It’s been fun; the two of you should hang out again next week sometime maybe.
Gus has a more exciting plan in mind. He’s had so much fun drinking your beer and telling you about all the juicy details of cleaning toilets (literally), he thinks you should have a sleepover! Before you can suggest you have a busy day tomorrow, Gus drops his trousers.
You inform Gus that, for one, crack does kill, and furthermore, you never asked to see all that junk inside his trunk. I sleep naked, Gus explains. Mind if he sleeps with that blanket your recently-deceased grandmother knitted for you when you were a baby?
Of course you don’t, Gus says, treating the heirloom like the Charmin Bear treats toilet paper. Then he dangles himself over your couch. Quite literally.

At this point, you’re beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. You like Gus, sure, but you barely know the guy. You invited him over for a few hours, not for an extended stay. That comforting feeling of closure that only comes on Friday nights, that light at the end of the tunnel you look forward to all week–it’s been swallowed up by the mysterious, screaming darkness of Gus’s buttcrack.

Sound familiar? I hope to holy hell it doesn’t. I apologize, but as sexy as that hypothetical was, it was only a metaphor. If you’ve ever read a crappy novel that thinks it’s entitled to a sequel (that ho of a book that doesn’t know well enough to keep her skirt on for the first date ’cause you don’t want to see everything that’s quacking down there just yet) then you know exactly what I’m blabbing on about.
If you’ve ever been on Twitter, then you’ve seen it before in peoples’ profiles. “Hi! I’m currently working on my first novel, a fantasy historical urban fantasy vampire bisexual romance called BITE CLUB, book one of twelve in the SHAKE THAT GROOVE FANG series.”
Color me impressed. Halfway through your first novel, and you’ve already got sequels in the works? Move over, J.K. Rowling.
Being the nice person you are, you throw Isa-smella Swan a bone and follow her on Twitter. Sure enough, one day you’re congratulating your new buddy on completing her very first novel. How…um, precious! (…basedonthenovelSushbySapphiremoviebyTylerPerryoriginalcharacterDONOTSTEAL…)

I will NEVER stop making fun of "Sapphire." Sorry, Gabourdey.

You ask Isasmella if she wants a critique. Revising is a long, grueling process, after all. She scoffs! Why, she’s working on book two, SATURDAY NIGHT’S ALRIGHT FOR A BITE, while she queries BITE CLUB. Isasmella needs no critiques. Teh editur wil taik cair of any erors, thats wut their four!
Months pass. Jaded and bitter, not a day goes by that you don’t hear Isasmella lament about how:
1.) Nobody in the publishing industry understands true talent!
or
2.) Self-publishing is the way of the future! Who wants to get published, anyway?

Hey. Emily Dickinson never got published until after she died, either. AM I RIGHT?

Pic not totally related.

This is the problem with amateur writers. (And plenty of professional ones. Cough, Dean Koontz, cough?) Much like stinky Pete down the street–that guy who thinks the fact that he breathes qualifies him for the government to wipe his ass and reimburse him for the the corn–Hollywood’s Sequelitis and Cinderella stories about authors like Stephenie Meyer have caused everyone and their mothers who gets their hands on a laptop keyboard to think they, too, have a Really Good Idea For A Novel, and it’s going to be the First In A Series.
Before I invite Gus over for the night, I want to know what he’s all about first. When I read a novel, I’ve got to know it’s actually going somewhere before I even want to think about forking over more cash for part two. A story that isn’t complete in and of itself–a story without a proper ending, it’s like a car without an engine. Looks pretty on the outside, but it can’t take you anywhere.
There is nothing wrong with leaving your book’s ending open enough that a sequel. But you’ve got to wrap up your current plot before trying to base a second one off of it. It’s like trying to write a review of a movie you’ve never watched. The result is neither accurate nor fair.
Focus on the first book before thinking of the second. Because even if you do manage to get a book published, it may never do well enough to allow for a sequel to get out there, and that sprawling story won’t ever have a chance to get told. You owe it to yourself, your story, and your readers. And when you finish properly writing book one, leave some minor threads open. A hook to hang book two off of, just like that first chapter of this book was the line you cast out to reel in the rest of the novel. From what I understand, publishers dig authors who do this, because if your book leaves people wondering what mischief Harry Potter could possibly get into next after he vanquished that weird turban guy Voldemort was hiding in, then your readers will happily fork over money for more.
There are exceptions to the rule, of course. If length of his novels are any indication, Stephen King has been really compensating for something. The Dark Tower was intended to be an epic series from the start, for example. But, he’s Stephen King. You know he’s the best there ever was, and you trust his storytelling like you trust Goodwill to smell like old socks. And sure, Harry Potter wasn’t poetry, but J.K. Rowling was lucky enough and clever enough to pry kids everywhere away from their Playstations for a while until her stories were adapted into movies. Doesn’t mean you’ll win the lottery like she did, and it doesn’t mean that somewhere around Order of the Phoenix we all didn’t get bored enough start wondering why Dumbledore didn’t roll out a welcome mat for Voldemort every spring. But I digress…
I’m not published, true. And yeah, I’m writing a story that could get pregnant with a litter of sequels if people got hot and heavy over it. But that story is going to have an ending. Remember, a story is a promise to your readers. They pay you in money, and if not that, in attention. They expect you to hold up your end of the bargain and take them to a destination they’ve never been, not leave them stranded in the middle of a highway with no clue where you drove them off to. Do your readers a favor; don’t be another Gus–keep your promises.

 

REVIEW: Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

Having been raised by the colorful, explodey cartoons and videogames of the 90s, I have the attention span of a headless goldfish in a bowl full of food. So I avoid books with boring covers like the plague–the ugly plague. Don’t laugh, you. It’s going around faster than those chain letters about dead people who will knife you to death unless you forward their e-mails to fifteen of your friends. (NOTE TO SELF: Threaten people with stabbity murder to increase future readership?) But, the point I’m always going on about is the majority of Young Adult publishers have apparently decided that boring is “in.” Too many YA books have cut-and-paste slopjpb photoshop covers, sporting pictures of young girls moodily exposing any body part you can imagine, from necks (appropriate for vampire stories) to shoulders (appropriate for chiropractor fantasy?).

To be fair, I've never seen a book cover as awful as this one...

This is apparently why the staff at my fiance’s local Borders shelved Maria V. Snyder’s Poison Study in the YA section. The cover features some girl, presumably the protagonist, emerging from a curtain of hair and vines. There is a fierce, unmistakable hunger for human flesh shining in those demonic excuses for eyes, as the hair-beast slathers over the thought of shredding potential readers to gore and kibbles. Believe me, I wanted to put that book right back where it came from. (Or KILL IT WITH FIRE–whichever came first.) but my fiance was intrigued, so we coin flipped over it. I, of course, wanted to by Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan. (Its many pictures satisfied my “ooh, shiny!” method of finding a good book.)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So, a couple weeks later, Jess disappeared behind that awful cover. I asked her if the hair-beast had consumed her mortal soul yet, and if I could sell it off on eBay to some unfortunate sucker, readying my holy water. Consume her it did. But not in the OM NOM NOM HUMAN FLESH way.

Despite originally being published by Harlequin Books, Poison Study is better compared to Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games than Jane Doe’s My Hot Steamy Inappropriate Firefighter Affair. Sure, there’s still a good deal of mantasizing* to be had in this book, but far less than you’d find in any given page of The Twilight Saga. But really, I can’t compare this book to anything because I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. It’s kind of like that first time you eat sushi and can’t get off the toilet for three days afterward wondering what hit you. But GOOD. I guess if you took The Hunger Game’s setting, added a good helping of The Princess Bride, threw in a dollop of The Legend of Zelda, sprinkled on a Dungeon and Dragons nerd’s dandruff, and prayed for your liver, the experience might be roughly akin to Poison Study.

* Mantasize (V): To fantasize about a man. Copyright October Daniels, 2011, who has no use for this term. No, really.

The story begins when Yelena, the protagonist, is sentenced to death for the murder of a general’s son. Spoiler alert: she survives. It would have been epic if she died and Snyder followed with 390 blank pages, but maybe next book. Anyway, Yelena’s offered a second chance at life as the Commander of Ixia’s food taster. Which would be pretty sweet if people didn’t have this tendency to try to poison Commander Ambrose all the time. Haters gonna hate!

Yelena is trained for this position by Valek, the Commander’s chief assassin. Editor’s note: assassin’s such a dirty word. While in the Commander’s employ, Yelena unravels the tangled ball of yarn that is her childhood (sorry, my cat turned one today) and finds herself at the center of a conspiracy which puts far more than just her new job as poison taster at stake. This premise seems way too simple to be entertaining, especially for a guy like me that rates movies on a Michael Bay scale: the more explosions, the better. But Snyder’s strong, suspenseful writing makes every page-turn into an explosive pleasure–NO, NOT THAT KIND. Hey, it was a Harlequin book… But the book grounds itself in a believable, quasi-medieval setting that lures you in for a nice, comfortable spot of tea, and then TAKES OUT A SHOTGUN AND BLOWS YOUR FEEBLE MIND OUT with magic and murder and mayhem and malady and mischief and-and all those other “m” words I can’t be bothered to include but it’s awesome, okay? It’s awesome. Just about everything you wouldn’t expect in a Harlequin is in Poison Study. AND SOME THINGS YOU WOULD.

Classy.

Because there is a bit of romancing in this story. It doesn’t feel forced or strange, and nobody makes up strange, unrealistic, inappropriate quotes about lions having interspecies relationships with lambs. I mean, come on, think about that one for just a second. But it’s hard for me to relate to the love story in this book. I mean, for starters, I’m a beard-sprouting beer-drinking fart-tooting boy. And for seconds–and this is a soft spoiler–I just don’t understand why girls like older men so much. Maybe it’s sexist of me to say, but besides Ashton Kutcher, I don’t really know too many men who are into GILFs. It’s like, “Hey, bro, did you see the sag on that dame?” “Totally dude–go get her number for me!”

Like Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, Poison Study is pretty much Stockholm Syndrome the book. Now, I actually liked The Host, so this isn’t entirely a bad thing. Because the characters in this story are deeply likeable, and it feels like they’re a part of you. Like intestinal parasites, almost. Take Valek, for example. He’s imposing, enigmatic, sympathetic, and totally hardcore all at once. Throughout the book, he pulls off moves that would make Spider-man jealous, without the embarrassing spandex. Or the Tobey Maguire.

TOBEY IS DISPLEASED

My favorite character, though, is Commander Ambrose, whose story is something I’ve never encountered in literature before. After reading Mockingjay, I more or less assumed the Commander would be the main antagonist of the story, a heartless, iron-fisted tyrant with a stick up his bum. But his motivations, which I won’t reveal here, are admirable, and before the story ends you’ll wonder whether or not life was better under the deposed king or this enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a nutshell. A major plot twist concerning this character occurs late in this story, and I want to ruin it for you so badly. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you.

For all its brilliance, Poison Study is flawed in more superficial ways. Having read so much YA the last few months, I didn’t notice at first. In most YA, you don’t have to tell the reader much more than the meadow is beautiful, the vampire is sparkling, or the ugly fish-mouthed teen shoots a look like daggers. Cliches and minimalist descriptions like this are easy to pull off but are way too rampant to be excused. Why does everyone in popular fiction have eyeballs made out of dangerous weaponry? How do you carry on a conversation with these characters? Because when someone shoots daggers, I imagine they have some gun that fires cutlery. That would be pretty awesome, but it doesn’t cut the mustard, so to speak. See, I can be cliche, too.

In Poison Study, here’s the description: castle. Forest. Road. Factory. FACTORY. I mean, you’d think a factory in this sort of setting deserves explanation, because factories are a product of the industrial revolution and everyone is swinging swords at each other in this story. It’s not like anyone’s toting a glock. To be fair, it’s a common oversight. I mean, really, did J.K. Rowling ever explain why Harry Potter didn’t invest some golden galleons in an AK-47 and pop a cap in Voldemort’s snaky butt before he could mutter “Avada Kedavra”?

But this book isn’t “Ridikulus” by any means. Awful pun, I know. But I really mean it. The fact that Snooki can be a bestseller and Poison Study is virtually unheard of is so unjust it puts my faith in God into question. So please, pick up this book. Being an atheist can be awfully morbid sometimes.

POISON STUDY gets 5 dagger eyes out of 5.

Better cover is better.