Raised by Wolves and Trial by Fire by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I’m on the fence about these books. I bought them because they were on sale for $1.99 each, in anticipation of the latest book in the series, which was released recently. I have liked some shifter books in the past, and these reminded me a great deal of Rachel Vincent’s and Kelley Armstrong’s books, a definite plus. And maybe it’s because of those two authors that I found myself more interested in the adults in this series than in the teenagers. That’s never happened to me before, but I found Callum, Ali, Casey et al more interesting than the main character, who, while interesting, also seemed to play into all the usual YA tropes.

I know it’s important to have a main character with strength, but every time Bryn stubbornly risked her life I wanted her to just do the sensible thing and listen to an adult. I must be getting old, I know. I guess I just want characters who do life-risking things to have good reasons for them, and Bryn’s reasons were basically that she didn’t want to be told what to do. Again, I understand that this is one of the conventions of the genre, but in this particular case I just didn’t like it.

Another convention: the talent or skill a main character has that distinguishes her from secondary characters. In Bryn’s case this is her ability to break and re-form pack bonds. It’s an interesting talent, for sure, and I liked how it had the potential to make or break things for Bryn and for others in her pack. BUT because it’s such a metaphysical skill, it seemed too easy, like it was mostly instinctual and Bryn just had to think of it for it to happen. I began to predict that every time Bryn got into a mess that seemed dire, she’d just do some mind mojo and get herself out of it. Which is pretty much what happened. I found it very dissatisfying even though I realize that magic is a part of this world.

My biggest pet peeve with this series was actually the romance. Often in shifter books the characters find love because of a “fated mate” animal instinct, where they immediately smell/sense that a person is who they’re meant to be with. They feel an immediate affinity to this person, and whatever romantic conflict there is is external, because internally there is no doubting their love. This is a thing I hate. It feels like cheating, first of all, but also it is creepy. At first glance it can seem like a nice fantasy, but really there is an absence of free will thing that bothers me a lot. That’s why the shifter books that I like are the ones that use free will and the lack thereof as the internal conflict by having one or both of the “mates” resist the attraction. Anyway, needless to say, this whole mates thing is 100% creepier when it’s teenagers feeling the pull to each other. I get the feeling that the author is going to make the romance a conflict in later books, but for now it’s creeping me out.

It sounds like I disliked these books, but I didn’t, really, despite my problems with them. I read each one in a day; they were enjoyable enough and interesting enough to keep me reading. But I wouldn’t recommend them, and if you’re looking for shifter romance, I’d highly recommend Kelley Armstrong and Rachel Vincent, both of whom write YA and adult romance.

A Blank of Blank and Blank

I did it! I read all the Game of Thrones books. After three long weeks of putting all personal, professional and social responsibilities aside in favour of reading about Westeros, I’m finished.

It’s hard to talk about all five books at once, but it’s especially hard to do so without spoilers, so if you care about those, maybe stop reading here. There are some pretty major ones.

Because I was a fan of the show first, my thoughts are mostly on the differences between the show and the books. Purists beware.  And because George R. R. Martin has been repeatedly criticized for his portrayal of female characters, I couldn’t help but focus on them a little more sharply than on other things.

So, some thoughts:

Cersei

Cersei was one of my favourites in the show, so I was disappointed to see that a lot of the scenes that gave her character depth in season one, including the scene she has with Catelyn after Bran’s fall and the scene she has with Robert where they discuss where their marriage went wrong, were not in the books. In the books Cersei is more of a straightfowardly evil, dumb woman grasping for power and desperate to hang on to it once she has some. She jumps at opportunities to use her sexuality to get her way. The actor playing Cersei is wonderful, and I credit her with making Cersei a more complex figure than Martin has made her.

Sansa

Sansa is a great example of a character whose part isn’t really big enough in the show to do her justice. I have heard a lot of fans complain about Sansa, referring to her as “the dumb sister” and preferring Arya. Reading from Sansa’s POV made me like her a lot, and I think Martin did a good job of making her motivations and desires real and important, even though they’re less “tough” than Arya’s.

Catelyn

Catelyn is extremely strong in the show, the female character everyone had the least problems with (or at least seemed to, to me) in season one. I liked the way Martin fills in her background in the books, and how we get to see Riverrun and know more about the history of Westeros–something I think is sorely lacking in the show–from Catelyn. That said, I wasn’t particularly attached to her, and I wasn’t overly troubled by her death. This may be because Martin had conditioned me by that point to expect death for everyone, but I think it had more to do with how she was a figure from the old world, and the old world is fast being consumed by chaos.

Arya

Arya is awesome in all things, the character I look forward to reading the most. I’d read entire books just from Arya’s POV.

Daenerys

Ooh, boy. This is the problematic female character that started it all. A lot of people, myself included, got a bit queasy when the GoT pilot glamourized the closing scene, where Daenerys is raped by Drogo. By the end of season one I was rooting for her character most of all, but I recognized that a lot of things about her seemed to cater to fanboys more than anyone else. I read the book hoping that it’d be better, but I was wrong. It’s so much worse! First of all, the rape scene turns into an “If I just keep doing this eventually you’ll stop saying no and then it’s not rape” scene. I wish I could have believed that Martin didn’t believe that himself, but I just don’t. On top of that, in the books Daenerys’s eyes are purple and her horse is silver. COME ON. I rolled my eyes so hard. She may as well be riding a unicorn. There are moments when I rooted for her, absolutely, and I can overlook a lot of things. But you write a few gratuitous masturbation scenes featuring a thirteen-year-old and I’m going to give you some side-eye.

It sounds like I don’t like her, but I did like her by the end. She has a lot of strong moments, and despite some lagging there in the middle, her story line is one of the most interesting. I’m eager to see where her character arc takes her, I just hope it takes her further and further away from cliched hot-action-movie-girl portrayals.

I’ll stop there. I might eventually write about the male characters in the books vs. their portrayals in the show, if I can manage to write one that’s not just a love letter to Jaime Lannister. (<3 you, Jaime.) Actually, a love letter to Jaime Lannister doesn’t sound like the worst idea…

 

What I’ve Been Reading, Part 2

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

I’m playing catch-up with posts, which means I actually read this book a long time ago. The Scorpio Races was an impulse buy for me; the ebook was dirt cheap on Amazon, I’d heard the author’s name before, so I decided to try her out when the stakes were low. I’m very happy that I did, because despite my strong dislike for Faerie stories (and oh, boy, is it strong), I LOVED this book. Here’s a quick publisher’s synopsis, and then I’ll get right to why I loved it so much:

 

Based on the legends of the eich uisce— the Celtic water horse — The Scorpio Races take place on the tiny, fictional island of Thisby. Each November, water horses emerge from the black ocean and gallop the beach beneath the cliffs of Thisby. And each November, men capture these horses for a thrilling and deadly race.

Both Sean Kendrick, four time champion, and Kate “Puck” Connolly, newcomer to the races, will ride this year, and both of them have more to gain — or lose — than in any previous year. But only one can win.

This book is the perfect example of how great writing can pull you into a story you wouldn’t believe you’d be interested in. I’m not a big horse person, and my aforementioned lack of Faerie love made me a skeptic–especially since the one character is named Puck, possibly the most overused faerie name of all time. (I get it, you liked A Midsummer Night’s Dream, get over it.) This book, though. Wow. I was completely absorbed within just a few chapters. The story isn’t set in any particular time, though there are cars, so it has a slightly more modern feel than it would without them. There’s a dreamy feel to it, but the stakes are very real, and I wanted both Sean Kendrick (he’s almost always called by his full name) and Kate to succeed and get what they wanted. The horses are beautiful–I was frequently surprised by how effectively frightening they were. This story has just the right touch of magic to make it special without being cloying or weighed down in detail.

The romance was my favourite kind of YA romance: understated. There are remarkably few overtly romantic moments, yet the characters clearly respect and are attracted to each other, and that was enough. Their relationship is a perfect example of show, not tell. I also appreciated the lack of a love triangle–not that I don’t love those, it was just nice to see a YA romance develop without a competing figure threatening the relationship. Their romance has enough conflict without adding something like that.

All in all, highly recommended.

What I’ve Been Reading Part 1

Hello again. It’s been a while (again).

I haven’t been reading as much as usual, in part to focus on other things and in part because when you let too much time go by after finishing a book without writing about it, the urge to blog lessens. This sometimes makes me wonder whether blogging is as necessary for me as I like to think it is. A friend mentioned to me this weekend that she has a fondness for her younger reading days, when she didn’t discuss books she was reading. Before university, before social media, when her experiences with books were of the read one, love it, read another, love it, variety. I agreed with her to some degree, but eventually concluded that discussing books with others is one of my favourite parts of the reading experience, and that doing so has improved my life and the way I read and think about all texts. Still, I remember and occasionally still feel the desire to hoard beloved books (or music), as though keeping it to myself kept it safe somehow.

So, what have I been hoarding, or, to be more honest, what have I been too lazy to blog about? I recently read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, on the recommendation of Vicki. This was the final book in the March project, both because March was over and because I was ready to dive back into books of my own choosing. I loved getting the recommendations, but it was tough to prioritize other people’s favourites above new releases I was eyeing. I am keeping all of the recommendations, though, so that I can return to them when I next need some reading materials!

Ender’s Game was a fantastic story, and I was thinking about it for a long time after I had finished reading. It’s a classic in the scifi genre, and for good reason. For me, it was definitely the story–a young, superintelligent, supertalented boy chosen to train to fight Earth’s enemies and set up as Earth’s last hope–that pulled me in. I didn’t love the writing, and I keenly felt the absence of girls–there were a couple, but the story was more boy-centric than most things I choose to read–but the story was interesting enough to keep me reading past the first few chapters, at which point I was completely hooked. It’s a fascinating look at the way we interact with and share/don’t share information with young people, and the effects that can have on society and the individual psyche. Highly recommended!

 

This is the first of two catch-up posts. I’ll update you on what else I’ve been reading later this week. Bye for now!

Black Heart by Holly Black

You know how there are some trilogies that wrap up everything in a nice little bow, leaving you with a happy sense that those characters may go on to do nice things but their stories are mostly finished?

This is not that book.

The Curse Workers series is among my most-recommended reads. If you know me in real life, I’ve probably told you to read it before. Before I get into spoiler territory (I’ll warn you before that happens), I’ll try to explain the basic concept of the Curse Workers world:

This series is an urban fantasy, meaning that the world is pretty much as you’d recognize it right now, except for one tiny detail: a significant portion of the population are magical—specifically, they’re curse workers, and they can do magical things with their bare hands. (I will try to describe this in less dirty-sounding ways in the future.) To give a specific example, Cassel’s mother is an emotion worker, which means that just by touching someone with her bare hands she can influence his or her emotions—making them feel happy, paranoid, angry, sad, etc. There are also physical workers, who can break your neck just by touching you; memory workers, who can make you forget things or implant brand-new memories in your head; dream workers, who can give you nightmares; transformation workers, who can change your entire appearance; and more. Because these talents are obviously potentially dangerous, everyone in this world wears gloves to protect themselves. Not everyone in the Curse Workers universe is a worker, and workers are generally not “out.”

The history of curse workers is fraught with organized discrimination, and present day looks to be heading in worrisome directions. The books are set in New Jersey, and Cassel’s family has mob ties. The crime families are curse workers who employ curse workers, and they are a huge part of what makes these books so interesting. The general public’s distrust of curse workers (and the fact that our MC and almost all the secondary characters are pro-curse-workers) made me much more sympathetic to the mafia than I ever would have thought. Anyway, if you’ve read this far and haven’t read at least the first book, White Cat, please go do so. This post will be waiting when you’ve finished the entire series (and I would be surprised if you read one without wanting to read the others).

On to specifics, and spoilers! I won’t spoil anything from Black Heart, but there will be spoilers from White Cat and Red Glove, the first two books in the series.

I said at the beginning of this post that I didn’t feel like the story is finished, per se, and I don’t mean that Holly Black didn’t conclude Cassel’s story in a satisfactory way. She did. I loved this book. But I am SO interesting in every single secondary and tertiary character that if I had my way, she’d keep writing in this universe for a very long time. If this were a TV show, episodes could go on for so many seasons and stay interesting. I want to hear more about the Zacharovs. I want to see Barron and Daneca’s story line play out. I want everything!

My favorite urban fantasies are ones in which the parallels to our world are effective without hitting us over the head, and I think this book does that beautifully. Cassel’s personal story line was riveting as usual, but this time I was more interested in reading about what was going on in the world generally—Governor Patton’s situation was a frightening glimpse into America’s current political mess.

The secondary relationships revealed in this book, between Cassel’s mother and Zacharov, Cassel and his father, Lila and her father, Daneca and Barron, Cassel and Barron—I could go on forever—added a depth to the story and are, I think, most of the reason I want more from this universe. Also, in every single one of these books Black puts her characters through the ringer and blurs the line between what’s right and what’s wrong, and I love that. What’s right for one character is wrong for others, and Cassel’s growth from someone who puts family above all else in book one to someone who has to decide what is right for him independent of his family in this book—and the constant doubt that I experienced as to whether his decision was the “right” one at any given point of the book—is what elevates this above most urban fantasies I’ve read.

Some disorganized thoughts on Mad Men

[Spoilers up to season five episode two. I've only seen this episode once, so forgive me if quotations are less than exact.]

This week’s episode continued a theme we’ve seen a lot of—old versus young—with a particular emphasis on parent versus child/husband versus wife.
Speaking of wives, Betty returns this week, thank God. We begin the episode with a newly hefty Betty (a workaround for a pregnant actor that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before; it’s refreshing to have writers acknowledge first—in a meta kind of way—that women sometimes get fat as a side effect of pregnancy and second—in Betty’s story line—that women sometimes get fat as a side effect of life) making her excuses to Henry, saying she can’t attend a political fundraiser with him. She claims illness, but we’ve seen that it’s really because she can’t fit into her dress. Betty has always been mildly childlike, and this explicit “I can’t go to school today because I have my period, Dad,” behavior isn’t particularly surprising from her.
Elsewhere in the episode, we see Don continuing his strange apathetic behavior at work. He and Megan go to dinner with the Heinz people (of the rejected bean ballet), where he quickly accepts the client’s absurd idea of having the Rolling Stones sing their jingle. (“A client’s idea if I’ve ever heard one,” Roger says later.) This dinner is where we see another hint of Megan as a new-world element in Don’s life: when the client’s wife looks to Megan for wifely commisseration and agreement that the shop talk is boring, Megan reluctantly agrees, despite a clear interest in business. She’s ambitious, we know that, and in an episode rife with comparisons to the old Mrs. Draper, this—making Don look good by keeping other wives entertained—is another way in which Don’s old expectations don’t fit into his new life.
Don and Harry go to the Rolling Stones concert in the hopes of speaking to them backstage about the proposed jingle. Don wears a suit despite Megan’s warning that he looks square, and he spends most of the night talking to teenage girls and exhibiting how no matter how young his wife is, he can’t fake youth. (“We’re worried about you,” he says in the voice of parents everywhere.)
Meanwhile Betty has learned from her doctor that her weight gain may be the symptom of something more serious, as he’s found a tumor on her thyroid. Betty, clearly terrified, runs home to tell Henry and in the absence of one father figure looks to another and calls Don. Don calms her down (both “Betts” and “Bertie” nicknames feature in the conversation) but is obviously worried too; it’s unclear what upsets him more—Betty’s potential death or the thought of raising three children with Megan.
What we see from Betty in this episode is beautiful: the thought of her death turns her suddenly into a loving wife and mother, as if the knowledge that she doesn’t have to do this for much longer makes it finally bearable. Her desire to be remembered as dutiful and angelic rejuvenate her and turn her into a combination of adult (worrying publicly about what will happen to her kids when she’s gone) and child (her gratitude for being freed of her responsibility).
Don goes back and forth between adult and child too, switching from the staid square at the Stones concert to a sullen boy who tells Megan he can’t go see her friends because his ex-wife is sick. Megan sees right through this, and every time she does something like this I like her more.

The new/old world theme continues in the office, with a potential new Jewish copywriter being interviewed by Peggy (prior seasons cast Peggy as the new-world representative at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, but this development indicates she may have to fight not to be grouped in with the old guard) and the continuing Roger/Pete struggle for control.

Jon Hamm directed this episode, and it’s full of wide shots of couples—Betty and Henry in their gigantic Gothic house, Don and Megan in their ugly, modern apartment, and finally, Don and Roger at the office. As usual, no one represents the old world more than Roger (remember the blackface incident?), and at the end of this episode, upset that Pete has taken the Mohawk airlines account from him, Roger loses some of his bluster and becomes more pathetic than we’ve seen him since the heart attack days, obliviously asking Don, “When are things going to get back to normal?”

It remains to be seen what exactly the new normal is.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This wasn’t an original March project recommended book. That is to say, this recommendation wasn’t solicited. But it came up in the blog post I wrote for Carina Press about book recommendations, and so many people thought this book was great, including my friend Jayme, that when she offered to lend it to me I couldn’t resist. (Also, if you put a book in my hand, I am likely to give it a try. Actually working hard to get me to read something means I take your recommendation pretty seriously.)

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

This book is beautiful and engrossing; the copy makes it sound as if the love story/competition is most important, but the real magic here is not plot but setting. Morgenstern creates a world that is thoroughly pleasing, and even at the moments when I could tell my emotions were being manipulated (the one complaint I have about this book is that there were more than a few cliches), I couldn’t help but want to keep reading for more glimpses of the circus.

Magic realism isn’t a genre I read much at all, so for that reason I’m saying this book is an ideal candidate for March project. I enjoyed this book quite a lot, although I have to say it’s not something I’d go back and reread, and I have put off writing this blog post because it’s not one of those books that inspired me to talk at length about it. If you’re looking for a fast, commercial literary fiction* love story, The Night Circus doesn’t disappoint. I’m glad I read it. Thanks, Jayme!

 

*If you’re wondering what commercial literary fiction is, to my knowledge it is fiction that is written in a slower, more introspective way than genre fiction, but isn’t as high-brow as what we think of as literary fiction. Think The Time-Traveller’s Wife. Then again, all definitions of genres are problematic, this one as much as any.