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Comments
I love to avoid spoilers, but it's a bit extreme to spend 5-ish dollars on something I know nothing about. Sypnoses never hurt.
Okay, without spoiling anything, the basic premise would be:
It's about a Welsh serf lad named Evyn who has a natural gift for singing and storytelling (he wants to be a storiawr, a travelling storyteller). He lives with his father (his mother, baby sister, and other siblings died of sickness last year) in a village called Carmarthen.
Remember, this is a time before literacy (wales is only about half-christian), so the oral tradition is more important than it is now.
The main draw of the book is, as Michellevsnetspeak said, " Developed characters, good pacing and plotting, and a researched world. Which leads into The King's Shadow's greatest merit, in my eyes: it understands how people actually THOUGHT in this time. A lot of historical fiction will stop with lifestyle research--what people wore, ate and worshiped--and give their characters modern eyes. Not so. All of these characters' beliefs are presented as they are, with no judgement passed, no authorial nudging of "look at that, how silly we once were." I wish more people would do this. The main reason I don't read much historical fiction is the lack of research into the mindsets of those times. The King's Shadow does not commit this misdemeanor, so I enjoyed it."
This does sound quite interesting, I'll give it a go.
Anyways, so I read The Selection. It was a combination of bad and "Why does this even exist?". It couldn't decide on what it wanted to be; dystopian or The Bachelor or a love triangle. Literally nothing happened aside from what it says on the back cover for 350-ish pages, and then it ended because trilogy.
The protagonist (America Singer) was terribly whiny and had a view of herself that came straight out of an issue of Cosmo. The first love, Aspen, was a creepy, proud and aggressive guy who randomly shows up later (Protip: Protagonist getting a once in a life time shot at something? Premise. Another character randomly appearing due to circumstances that somehow even surpass the protagonists just to create drama? Bad writing).
Then there were the weird little gender things:
Moving on, The Castes, they're there to make no sense, because it's like the kingdom previously the USA and Canada is trying to get people to turn on it.
From what I could tell, since there actually was no explanation:
Anyways, where are the office workers? Pilots and drivers and stuff? They exist in this story, are they all Threes? They can't be, because threes are snobby rich-ish people. Why did anybody think this was a good idea, "How much your ancestors helped in the Third World War" is not a reason.
There was also a Fourth World War, and nobody is allowed history books. I wonder why.
Anyways, the official story is that China attacked the US because it couldn't repay it's debt (Because this is a thing that happens), then turned the US into a protectorate called the American State of China (Because China was so happy about losing all that money and the world's economy did not collapse after all that debt was written off). For the fun of it, Russia decided to go after the ASC and then there was a war or whatever. Then America and Canada banded together under some rich guy (Seriously) and made him King and named the new Kingdom after him (Why a Kingdom? Why?) and his family have been the Royal family ever since (But he married Royalty according to the book, so something happened before or something). Despite this, the Royal family last name is Schreaver and not Illea.
THEN, they still somehow owed China money and they decided this problem would be solved by calling the continent New Asia (Where for some reason all the non-white non-Christian people have been shipped away or something). THEN they established the Caste system. This has worked for over ten decades or something.
Anyways, most notably, after Chapter 17 it just drops all pretense of being a story and just has stuff happen until it can end and tell me to buy the next book in the trilogy.
You read strange things, Fourteen.
Sounds like your typical Young Adult follow-the-leader story, in this case ripping off that whole recently filmed thing whose title I've forgotten, you know, that one about a girl running around with a bow in some sort of dystopic tournament.
The Hunger Games. I don't actually know if the Hunger Games books are worse, but based on the ending alone (Everybody gives up their lives for protagonist so she can spend the rest of her life whining about how they gave up their lives for her) I'd say maybe. At least The Hunger Games didn't attempt to explain why America became Panim.
The worst of the YA dystopia titles that I've actually made my way through was Divergent/Allegiant/whatever the third one is called. Haven't read the third one yet but the basic premise alone was enough to bother me (It's like the caste system from The Selection but whittled down to four who represent different human traits which are the only ones we should care about because reasons, of course nobody ever lives up to these traits).
I'm also going to see the second Hunger Games movie because I really really want to see if they'll go through with double flaming outfits (Also, the movies seem way more techy than the books, but YA dystopia book is just code for "Set in the past but in the future" nowadays).
I'm also eventually going to read Matched oneday, which I hear is somehow even worse than all the other series.
Caste systems are easy. Just pigeon-hole people into a few societal roles, some families becoming the most important but also suffering the most losses, some families growing the largest but having little power. Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra.
"This does sound quite interesting, I'll give it a go."
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Just finished reading Tim Gunn's Gunn's Golden Rules (Wow, nonfiction) and I feel like my faith in modern books was restored. Honestly, I didn't agree with most of what was written in it, but it presented lots of different points of view from my own that I respect which I feel has sort of become rare in modern literature (both fictional and non-fictional). It was well written and had a wonderful little concept with the many anecdotes and how those rationalized his viewpoints.
Of course, this was nonfiction, so I'm still kind of
towards popular modern written fiction.
Hey, Fourteenwings, did you get around to reading the book I recommended you?
I managed to get a copy of the book but I haven't read it yet. I'll try to read it by the end of the week though.
@AlirozTheConfused
Finished The King's Shadow a few days ago, it was quite the interesting read and I did quite enjoy it but I feel like I missed out a bit because I didn't know much about the Battle of Hastings beforehand. The ending felt quite abrupt until I learned that was a real thing <_<.
I kind of felt that the middle was a bit slow and the battle was a scene filled with History nerd. But I think it managed to keep something that was so massive... liveable? Which was quite impressive.
So, I've got the last part of the story that I've described in this post. A bit underwhelming after the previous three parts, but I still gulped over eight hundred pages in a space of like three days. I mean, it isn't worse, but a couple of scenes feel a bit repetitive after similar things happening in the previous three, and a few times it seems the protagonist gets new powers out of nowhere. It is sort of explained, at least I can explain it to myself based on certain fragments of the story, but it still feels a bit ill-fitting. There is a big battle, and the story's big mysteries get explained at the end.
Dear Sara Shepard,
Thank you for making Pretty Little Liars a series where a line like
somehow gets past an editor, and where one character overcomes amnesia just to have another one immediately get amnesia.
Also Aria doesn't know how to check when a file was created. And despite being a free-spirited AP Literature student has never heard of or even read the back cover of The Scarlet Letter.
And literally everybody is blonde aside from Aria.
And Emily's parents are so anti-gay off screen that it was only right that they accepted their daughter off-screen as well despite them sending her to live in Mormon country... for two whole days.
Sincerely,
fourteenwings.
I finally bought all five The Clique Summer Collection novellas and was really impressed by Massie's story (which is the only one I've read so far).
Taking Massie away from the other toxic characters in the series allowed her to shine under her own light and really not only recaptured but amplified her original character. Massie's not just a mean girl, she's driven and has goals (Some of which admittedly are just to be mean).
I liked how even though it was a slightly simple story, it showed off her ability to navigate and change concepts in a way that would benefit her ventures into business.
Aside from that, I was kind of surprised that there were moments where I'd agree with Massie over the author (Because she never really goes to far even when the book tries to claim she does) and I quite love what happens at the end, even though the final scene feels overwritten (as if it were written before the rest of the novella and then left unedited) and kind of fake compared to the rest of the book (I didn't expect a danged purple streak to actually matter).
And now I'll be moving on to Dylan's, even though the premises of the rest of them don't excite me as much as Massie's did.
Yay! You actually read that book! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
That makes you the first person other than Yarrun to read it on my recommendation.
Seems you liked it alright (dang, nobody ever really can get enthused about it but me.) Thank you for actually reading it.
And yeah, the middle did get slow (admittedly, at a point in the story where it kind of had to.) How else could a captivity go? And, the end was abrupt, as it kind of had to be.
Just read the Fionavar Tapestry. Fine, but too much screwing for my taste.
Read Agatha Christie's After the Funeral, it was a fun book but there were a couple of problems with it. At first it didn't feel like a Hercule Poirot novel and even after he comes in it feels as if he's just sort of written in. And of course the maid did it, which was really disappointing because she was the least interesting of all the characters and the initial premise was excellent minus the nonsense that she was involved in (If Cora was so dumb why not just ask for the painting? Why did she fail to perfectly mirror Cora's thing anyways?). I wish anybody else had done it really.
Also started Robinson Crusoe forever ago but it is a slog to get through and I kind of feel like it should be over already despite only getting to the part where he escapes from his captors on his first journey.
The Tain Bo Cualnge has some hilarious deaths.
Barely into the Mahabharata and some of the imagery is fascinating.
After reading about "crystal car", I can't help but imagine the whole scene like a rap music video. Dancers and singers, heh heh heh.
A scene from an earlier chapter was pretty similar.
Note that Indra proceeds to just disappear afterwards because reasons.
Oh my.
That said, still not as awkward as that Hittite myth where one god chews the balls of the other and m-preg ensues.
Doubling the post because the topic is much different.
So, when I was recently wasting my life away on TVT, I stumbled upon such a trope: "the eight deadly words". As in, "I don't care what happens to these people" or something like that. It got me curious because of a book I once read, I think I mentioned it in passing here.
Most of the time this idea is about the story being so dark, nobody has the patience for it.
The book was a fantasy novel and it involved three daughters of a legendary pirate captain searching for his treasure. And when I say pirate, I mean we get a slaving raid in like the second scene. Then there is some sex slavery, murder of leftovers and some more raping. The pirate captain commits suicide once he realizes he just did his long-lost daughter (now you get where the other two come from). Then the girl gets tortured to death after the chase catches up with the pirates.
She gets better thanks to a magical artifact once in possession of her father, but apart from that she's not really the same person anymore. The other unambiguously sympathetic character in the story spends ten years as a slave miner for doing his job and then he dies too.
It's a wicked good read, you know.
Afterwards we get the two other girls trying to beat the other to the hidden treasure. One wants to use the money to become a greatest pirate ever, but the other has much grander plan: to fund a mercenary army, start a revolution against the local empire, then double-cross the rebels and claim a land to turn into a pirate haven. Meanwhile the first one initially wants to end her father legacy there, but ends up consumed by the artifact and takes over the latter's plan.
I said it's fantasy, but it's quite different from the stuff one will think of. The world, which is a single continent and outlying islands, is ruled - barely - by a single empire. Magic is something between getting the impersonal godlike force to do your bidding, and using leftover tools of creation. No fantasy races save for violent animalistic orc stand-ins, but you have intelligent cats and vultures. There is gunpowder, but handguns aren't because the empire sees no need to develop the stuff that could only threaten its dominance (so it's up to one of the girls to arm her mercenaries with them).
Well this is awkward...
(from section 118 or so in book 1 of the Mahabharata)
Well then.
If he turns into a deer, does it count?
Section 135 was kinda random. The guy teaching kids from royal families how to use weapons was at the river with his students, and he is suddenly attacked by an alligator*. And instead of actually doing anything, he asks his students to save him, and Arjuna, the hero of the story does that. Arjuna is rewarded by being taught the Brahmasira astra, a weapon that can supposedly destroy the universe if he ever tries to use it on anybody.
* the translation says "alligator", which I assume should be "crocodile" since this is set in India.
In my reading, some African epics. Quite like a modern fantasy story. The historical Shaka probably didn't have an evil wizard mentor offering him great power for a terrible price, and I struggled here not to use TVT's trope names.
(edit reason: typo)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m01/m01200.htm
Well this part was really weird. Apparently, the five Pandavas are all incarnations of Indra, or rather, the five Indras. There's no explanation of why there's five Indras. Mahadeva/Shiva/Isana just tells Indra there's five of him, and that they all have to incarnate on earth. Super confusing when you consider that Indra himself is the father of Arjuna, one of the Pandavas.
I don't know how to interpret this, except to consider that this part was just explained by Vyasa to convince Drupada to let all five of them marry his daughter, so maybe Vyasa made it up on the spot.
I honestly wonder if this is a chapter people try not to think about, even people who like thinking about the rest of the story.