Mr Darcy And The Secret Of Becoming A Gentleman - Maria Hamilton
Everybody knows how much I love Darcy.
(Tell me, Fitzwilliam, tell me again and again XD)
So it doesn't come as a surprise to know I'm a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice and other variations and continuations. The best I've read remain Pamela Aidan's An Assembly such as this and sequels. Mr Darcy And The Secret Of Becoming A Gentleman was good but not awesome but still good.
Mr Darcy and The Secret of Becoming a Gentlement exploits the what if Darcy had tried to immediately make amends and show Elizabeth how wrong she was. He returns to Herfordshire earlier and tries to figure out if Jane is still in love with Charles so he can fix his mistake and from then on, the story develops. I particularly enjoyed the close bond between Darcy and Jane because Jane tends to be a character that isn't exploited enough and their friendship was nice to read.
Aside for that, my main criticism would be some OOCness here and there, particularly toward the end. I will put a read-more in case of spoilers.
The OOCness to me is the part where she goes in his bedroom and they have sex before the wedding. The book is titled "the secret of becoming a gentleman" but when you read that part you wonder why because well... Darcy isn't acting at all like a gentleman and that's a bit... not good for his character.
This being said, the scene is enjoyable and it happens at the very end of the book so it doesn't hurt the overall story. I regret the complete disappearance of Whickman. I love Whickam (ever notice how even his name sounds like Whicked?) and I love when Whickam creates mischief so it could have been fun.
I'm not certain about the Lucases' son being brought as a rival to Mr Darcy's affection but I suppose it adds a little spice to it all. And with Whickam gone... Still, Lucas is no Whickam.
There is no drama at all in this book, it's all romance which is maybe why it was good but not awesome. It is a little flat in some parts.
All in all, I would recommand it if you're looking for a P&P sequel that will distract you for a few hours. It is a very short book, barely 250 pages so it's a quick and easy read.
A Dance of Dragons (A song of Fire and Ice #5) - George R. R. Martin
Yes I know, this blog hasn't been updated in forever.
Well I was busy writing fanfictions and studying and you know... reading this... monstrosity. I have other reviews lining up because I've more books than this one in the last year obviously but I never got around to type them up. I was thinking of bringing that blog back to life again so I will make an effort.
Okay! Let's talk about the book! A Dance With Dragons! How do I describe this book...
Yes. That's the perfect gif because that's how I felt while reading.
A good portion of ADWD takes place during A Feast For Crows (which I reviewed here by the way) which means for a very good (understand long) part of the book, the main plot doesn't move not to say it's going backwards because we already know about main events.
I heard it say that you either adored FFC or ADWD but that it was rare for people to like both. Very honestly, I liked FFC a lot more.
ADWD was very long and very, very slow paced. It took forever for me to get through it. There are a lot of new characters with their own povs that, I felt, didn't add anything to the main plot - like for instance the prince of Dorne whose name I can't remember right now but that doesn't matter much in the long run.
Now I will put a read more to discuss the book in more details so beware of spoilers under the cut.
To continue on the "new characters" subject, I get that some of them like Victarion were needed but others are added simply to die a few povs away like the Dornish prince so what was the point aside for making an already long book even longer?
And one might think I'm blowing this off proportions but I swear this book is longer than it should be. I lost count of the number of time we got a 11 pages pov only for the chara to take a few steps and not do anything significant that would advance either his personal storyline or the main plot.
Let's take Tyrion... All I want to ask is... Why? his story is long and almost boring during the first half of the book, his supposed death that last for chapters and chapters convinced absolutely no one and aaafter that he ends up a slave only for what? To escape? That's a very convoluted way to get him from point A to point B but I guess I would have been on board if there hadn't been so much povs where he just stands there or takes a few steps when the chapter lasts 10 pages. I'm calling it right now, I'm not convinced by this storyline.
John. I actually loved John in that book - which, you know, had not happen since Ygritte because she's the one who made me like him. He was awesome and I liked his struggling. The parts of the book happening at the Wall (or beyond with Bran but who cares about him since Martin gave up halfway and he never pops up again?) are the best in my opinion. Is John dead or has he gone in Ghost? That's the question.
Dany. I'm disappointed by Dany. I feel like she has caught the "Cersei's syndrom". Now that she's Queen she doesn't know what to do with it. The whole part with the harpies' son and such were boring. I liked the fact dragons aren't pet she can control as easily as she thought and I like the last part when she is lost in the desert but I do hope she won't end up like Cersei, a failed powerful woman.
Talking about Cersei, that plotline doesn't move either aside for a walk of shame that broke her a little bit further. I felt bad for her but at the same time she deserves it so... But it's sad that all the best chara are depicted as weak lately.
Jaime. One pov in all. We still don't know what happened to Brienne. I want to scream.
Arya is becoming a psychopath. I called it.
I liked Asha. That's actually one of the "newish" character's povs I liked a lot but like the rest of the book : a lot of povs that didn't bring anything new.
I was bored when I read more often than not. I didn't have the big gasps that I had in other books in the series - well I did when John got ambushed but...
This was me reading :
Another thing I would like to point out : ASOFAI was always grusome on some aspects but I feel like in ADWD Martin is trying to top himself? I was honestly disgusted and felt sick at more than one point and there is something as over the top gore.
All in all, my problem with ADWD is that it brings a lot of new information and we get lost in it. The characters and the main plot get lost in it. I feel like we're almost drawing in the "writing to write" problem. Is there an ending in sight? I see none. Not even a hint at resolution and that's a problem for a series so huge.
I'm also a bit pissed off by the fact there is no plan to release the next book anytime soon and the answer to impatient readers is to "watch the show". What if we don't want to watch the show and get spoiled on main elements when so many things and plotlines are different? I want to know what happens to Brienne and Jaime with Lady Stoneheart, will I find that in the show? No.
So you see, as much as I still love the universe and the characters, I'm very frustrated with the author and his approach to his own work.
(First of all, I’ve read its translation in French, so forgive any misspell on the names)
His Majesty’s Dragon is the first book in the Téméraire series (Ok, I’ve checked, there’s no accent on the English version but given that it is a French name and it’s weird to me to see it without accents, I accentuate (yes, I’m using a lot more brackets than necessary. Again.)). The story is a dystopian take on what Napoleonic wars could have been if dragons have been thrown in the mix (I think dystopian is the appropriate term but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong (yes, brackets again, infuriating I know)). So basically, you have your traditional Red Coats army, the Navy and the Arial Corps with dragons. The story begins when Captain William Laurence, an officer of the British army, captures a French frigate with an extraordinary bounty on board: a dragon egg. Dragon eggs are very rare and sell very, very well. Problem: the egg is close to hatching and the dragon needs to be harnessed right away or it will be wild all his life and, as a consequence, of no use to the Crown. Of course, they’re far from any shore or Laurence’s life would have been easier. Long story short, Laurence finds himself linked to the dragon, to whom he gives the name of Téméraire, even if he didn’t particularly want to give up his life to go and play pilot.
This book was totally awesome. I don’t even know how I could not have been aware of its existence before, because there is everything I love in it: dystopia, dragons, history and Britain. I’m really, really excited to read the next books (and I’m kind of sad to have to wait before ordering them).
The book in itself is not really long (a little more than 400 pages) and I thinks it’s more of an introduction to the universe than the “real” adventure, but it works quite well. The characters are all really great, there are a lot of good questions raised concerning the time period (about the place of women in society for instance) and I’m impatient to see what the author will do about the ethical problems she raises with the way dragons are treated.
I’m not going to dwell more in the spoiler-free part of the review, because I would like to discuss it freely without being afraid of spoiling anyone, so, suffice to say that :
- If you love fantasy and historical novels: this book is made for you
- If you like Game of Throne, there are good chances you will like this one
- If you like dragons: go for it.
So now, for the more in depth review, follow the read more…
But beware of spoilers
Ok, so… I’ve been researching some review on the book online, and I’ve seen that some people found the characters to be a little bland. I really don’t think they are. I suppose you can they that about Laurence (the main character) because he’s clearly a gentleman, a dedicated officer, a passionate sailor, and I think he could be thought to be a little cliché. He’s the kind of guy you expect to find in a novel taking place in this kind of time period.
Please, Fitz, do…
I’m sorry, I digressed. But, yes, essentially, Laurence is that kind of guy. You know… The guy too honorable for his own good? But I don’t think it’s fair to say that his character is flat or boring… It may be because I’ve spent a week reading and dreading Evelina but Laurence seemed to be quite complex to me. Yes, at first, he looks a little hung-up and quite tense, but after Téméraire has chosen him as his captain, I think the reader can see that he’s much more than just your typical Navy officer… Laurence has to face major changes because of Téméraire and he does it with good will (which makes me think that he wasn’t that upset about it all, in fact).
First, he has to say goodbye to his ship, the Reliant, and he obviously really cares about it and its crew. Then, his father is really not please about his life choices. He wanted Laurence to go into church (is that how you say that? Well he wanted him to become a cleric? I think that’s how you put it in English ?) but Laurence didn’t want that, so given that his father already didn’t approve of him going to the Navy, you can imagine what he has to say about the Aerial Corps (who, by the way, don’t have, at all, a good rep). After that, he has to break his engagement (informal but still) to his childhood sweetheart (and that’s a good think because I didn’t like her one bit).
And to conclude, he has to adapt to his new life style. The Aerial Corps don’t stand on protocol, are a really strange bunch and do everyday things that are most shocking in polite society. Guess what? There are lady pilots! How shocking! So Laurence has to give in a little and learn how to belong.
On that subject, I particularly loved the women in this book. Jane Roland and Catherine Harcourt in particular, they were great because they’re outside the sphere of what women were expected to be at that time but, at the same time, they’re not a mere cliché of tomboys. I also loved Emily, Jane’s daughter, and I thought the scenes between Emily and Laurence were cute because he’s a big softy at heart. How many does he gift Témémaire with jewels just because Téméraire is a little out of it? They’re sooo awesome and cute and it’s the best bromance ever.
I also loved the bound between captain and dragons. Téméraire is really great. The author found the just balances between sentient being and animal, so that you have a creature with animal instinct but the mind of a very intelligent being. Not all dragons are as clever as Téméraire because he’s Chinese and very rare and precious, but each of them has its own personality and that’s really great.
I also loved how Téméraire is impatient to go into battle but, at the same time, underlines the pointless notion of duty without a purpose. There are a lot of philosophical questions you can follow on if you’re interested and it’s obvious Téméraire is a sort of philosopher at times.
Another thing that I found interesting is the ethical problem of owning a dragon. For most of the Aerial Corps, it’s more a question of a bound between captain and dragon than anything else. The dragon chooses someone to be his captain and not the other way around, and there is usually a deep love between them but in this first novel we see that the system can be abused with Rankin and Levitas. The dragons may choose to obey, love and follow a captain seriously lacking in moral, care and wit.
And here I’m going to open a “violent” bracket:
(I wanted to kill Rankin with my bare hands. Levitas is soooo devoted to him… He’s craving for his love and Rankin doesn’t give a shit. It is as infuriating as when you see someone leave their dog in their car, in full sun, with no window open. Levitas is so helpless – dragon or not – it killed me to see him treated this way. And it was really frustrating that Laurence couldn’t challenge him to a duel (because it’s a stupid (well, not so stupid) rule that Aerial Corps are not allowed to risk their lives in that way)…
When Levitas died, I swear I had tears in my eyes. I hope to god we will see Rankin again and that Téméraire and Laurence will “accidentally” step on him. And if they don’t… Well, see, I would like to introduce Rankin to some of my friend. Here’s an incomplete list :
See, charming people, all of them.
And here I close the bracket).
So, anyway, I’m wondering how the question of Captain/dragon will evolve in the future given that most people think dragons to be a little more than animals. I’m also wondering if the author is going to follow historic events or if the dragons will have an impact on that side of things.
But like I said, this book is short and its purpose is clearly to introduce the world so there’s not much else to say about it.
It’s really a great read (and it’s quick, took me two days only) and you really should give it a chance.
Evelina was written by Frances Burney in the 18th century. To sum up the plot : Evelina is the ward of Reverend Arthur Villard. Her father refused to recognize her because he pretends never to have been married to his mother. Evelina is, of course (feel the irony here), the perfect little woman and the story begins when she goes on a visit to Howard Grove. From there, she then embarks on a journey to London and more generally, to her introduction in the world. This is an epistolary novel.
I’ve never, ever, been so much relieved to finish a book. This is a mandatory read for one of my class. I’m not saying it’s not interesting. With critical distance, it is not uninteresting, but judging strictly on the point of view of a mere reader? Here are my reactions to this novel:
However, to be honest, the third part is better. But it may be because you have come so far in the book you can’t help but want to know how it ends.
Frances Burney is often described as Jane Austen’s precursor. I can see the similarities and it’s probably the only aspect that redeemed the book in my eyes. I’m harsh, I know. When you read that kind of novel you have to keep in mind the time it was written but pleaaaaaase…
First of all, if you go here and read my review of A Tale of Two Cities, you will see that I didn’t like Lucy much because she was kind of hollow, only there to embody the perfect Victorian woman. Well I take back everything I said about Lucy because Lucy has the good sense not to speak too much. Evelina relies mostly on Evelina’s account of what is happening around her and it is unbearable.
I’m not saying the book is bad, it does exactly what is supposed to do, meaning : denouncing the comedy of appearances, criticizing the way men treat women, stressing the ridicule of a certain number of things… This is all really important, and was probably very daring from Burney at the time, and I admire greatly her bravery.
But her use of caricature for almost every character made me want to commit murders. Never before have I wanted with so much strength to plunge my arm into the book and throttle the characters – all the characters with the noticeable exception of Orville (and even him at time suffered my wrath).
Never before have I been so upset with characters. Even Umbridge. And God knows I hate Umbridge. Everyone hates Umbridge.
The fact is, the use of caricature while perfectly good for the overall satiric tone, is very, very hard to bear. There is not one character in this book I haven’t wanted to slap some sense into at some point. And Evelina… Oh gosh Evelina… How I wanted to murder thy… Or thee… Or whatever – I’m not an English speaker remember. Evelina is naïve to the point of being stupid. She perpetually commits the same mistakes all over again and never, ever, learns. This, associated to her supernatural goodness and sense of duty, makes it very hard for a 21th Century woman to read.
The romance plot was good, it could be related to some of Austen’s finer novel – but I thank every god above that Lizzie wasn’t like Evelina. The plot surrounding her father is rushed and resolved in the 30ish last pages, this part of the book – main plot, I must add – wasn’t my favorite at all.
All in all, I know it’s a classic and you should never criticize a classic, in the name of decency and cultural thingy and knowledge etc. but I’m sorry I really didn’t like it and I will stop here for the review because I will spent too much time discussing this book for class already. Maybe I will like it better after I’ve been explained why on Earth the story was so boring (to criticize the time period by the use of satirical devices, btw. See? I’ve read the manual.).
The worst thing with mandatory readings is that you cannot not finish the book… This one is the most idiotic I’ve ever read (maybe not the most idiotic but close enough)… I just want to shake the main character and maybe kill her a little for being so very fucking stupid.
Sixtine is a French book written by French author Caroline Vermalle (needless to say I’ve read it in French). I don’t know if it’s going to be translated into English or not, but I really think it should be, because the story goes beyond borders and could be enjoyed by anyone.
So Sixtine (and I feel like I should say right now that Sixtine is French for Sistine, like in Sistine Chapel) revolves around a mystery : two bodies have been found in a secret chamber in Cheops pyramid, a man and a woman. One of them is still (barely) alive. It’s a whodunit with a twist: we’re in the middle of the traffic of antiques where imitations look more real that the real pieces. Big question : what happen to Tutankhamen mask? There is also a mystical dimension to the story with the emotional journey of Jessica/Sixtine.
So, in short: Egypt (and Mexico, London, Paris…), mystery, Tutankhamen, Nefertiti, and weird nightmares that look a lot like ancient Egyptian dogmas. What’s not to like?
Yes, the story mainly takes place in Egypt, be prepared for mummy gifs.
Before tackling the story, I think I have to say that I really liked this book but some things bothered me a little. It’s the first book I’ve read written by this author, so I don’t really know what she did before, but her choice of publisher threw me a little – not in a bad way, I was just surprised. The book is published by “Black Moon” (who, for the record, also were the first to publish Twilight (I think), in France, a book I’m (not) quite proud to say I own) which is mainly known for… How can I put that in a non-derogatory way… Well… Teen fantasy romance? Is that a thing? I may be wrong but everything I’ve read from that publisher was in that vein and we’re so far from that with Sixtine I couldn’t help but be happy. Not that I don’t like teen fantasy romance, some are very good but most aren’t just my cup of tea, so anyway, I was surprised because… Not the kind of story Black Moon usually publishes.
Another thing I have to add, the catch-phrase on the cover of the book : “Le cauchemar commence là où s’arrêtent les contes de fees” which can be roughly translated by “Nightmare starts where fairy tales end”.
Bad. Very, very bad. It totally gives the wrong idea. Sixtine is not a silly fairy-tale revisited, it’s so much more than that ! It’s not your classic “treasure hunt” story either. It’s very atypical. I feel like the catch-phrase is here to attract a younger readership because, like I said, Black Moon is usually for teens/ young (young) adults. It’s a shame because it may deter some older readers. Anyway, it was just a thought, on we go with the story.
The plot is really great. It’s really intricate, there are a lots of elements that are embedded with each other and you’re often left wondering what’s true and what’s not. I enjoyed that aspect very much. There are four main characters and a lot of very important ones, but I will mainly talk about Jessica/Sixtine, Florence, Max and Franklin. (without too much spoilers but still BEWARE if you don’t want any)
Jessica/Sixtine is the woman found almost dead in the pyramid. I think she’s the embodiment of one of the main theme of the book : the death/life paradigm. Death is almost a real character in this book (no, not like in The Book Thief), it’s so very present, so very tangible… It’s actually quite interesting because the motif of reincarnation isn’t as much tackled as I would have thought it would be. Jessica (literally and metaphorically) dies and Sixtine rises in her place, but, actually, Sixtine is just a childhood nickname so it’s not really a resurrection… I was thinking she was linked to Nefertiti in some ways, but I don’t know. It’s difficult to say if Sixtine’s nightmares after her ‘death’ are real or just symptomatic of trauma. I’m not sure where the book is going with that (yes, it is a series) and I can’t wait to know.
Florence, I really liked her. Probably because she has pink hair and I couldn't help but think about Tonks.
She’s funny, dedicated and ambitious and I don’t know… I really think she was my favorite character. I felt bad for her at some points.
Max. Max, Max, Max… German architect student. I liked him in the beginning and I just wanted to slap him near the end. I won’t say more.
Franklin is a great character. A little shady in the beginning but I just loved him after a while.
All in all, all the characters are really interesting. My only problem was the fact that the story is really fast-paced so the evolution of some characters is a little too rushed. Max, for instance, there are some things about him that seemed to me a little far-stretched but I think that it’s because it’s only the first book and there will be more to his story, so it can be excused.
Another good point is that it’s obvious the author knows her subject. Egyptian antiquities, Egyptian history, counterfeiters, Paris, Mexico, London… Clearly she did a lot of researches (or she’s a teacher, maybe, I don’t see a bio in my book and I’m too lazy to look her up), and everything is very detailed, explained in a way that doesn’t make you feel dumb or reading a history lecture. My only, tiny, little reserve concerns the plot surrounding Tutankhamen mask because at some point, I was lost. (Ok, spoiler ahead. Turn your head, now. Really you have to look away now. Are you still reading this? If you’re reading this, don’t complain to me about being spoiled on this) At one point, it’s the real one, then it’s not, then it is, then it’s not again… I openly admit I don’t know at what point it was stolen, replaced or put back. I was confused. But it may be a fleeting lack of attention on my part.
Anyway, to conclude this review, I will say that I’m excited to read more of Sixtine soon and I hope that, if you speak French you will give it a shot because it’s a riveting story with great characters.
The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman. (p19.)
Paper Towns revolves around Quentin Jacobsen, Q for short, who is your usual 17 years old boy. His only peculiarity is his neighbor, the adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman. They used to play together as children until a share traumatic experience left them on either side of a metaphorical and literal window. Since then, Q has admired and loved Margo from afar. But one day, a few weeks before they graduate, she climbs back through his window and into his life and brings him along on her ingenious 11 steps plan for revenge. The morning after that, Margo is gone. But she has left some clues behind.
I love John Green. This is the third book I’ve read from him and I honestly don’t think I will ever be disappointed by one of his books. I love his style, I love his themes and I love the way everything always resonate together. You read John Green and it’s like a giant hug.
Except it’s not. It’s full of angst and questions you’re supposed to find the answers to at the same time as the main character… But it’s life. Every time I read one of Green’s book, I always marvel at how well he manages to capture and write life in its beautiful complex simplicity.
My favorite book still is Looking for Alaska though (Follow the link for the review) closely followed by The Fault in our Stars (which I didn’t reviewed but may eventually reread and thus review). I have to confess one thing: not knowing his bibliography by heart, I was thinking for most of the book that Paper Towns must have been written before Looking for Alaska and I was very surprised to learn that I was wrong. Why do I believed that? Because I found much of Alaska in Margo, much of Miles in Q and much of the Colonel in Radar and Ben. It wasn’t enough to bother me but it was striking to me.
Anyway, Paper Towns deals with adolescence and how shallow life sometimes seems to be at that time, because you have a future ahead of you and a past behind you but you’re caught in between childhood and adulthood. While Quentin is quite happy to go to college and to grow up, Margo is stuck in a kind of Peter Pan state. It’s not that she does not want to grow up so much than she doesn’t want to be a part of the system.
Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement. There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future, and so they spent more time thinking about it. About the future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college. (41)
She rejects what she calls the Paper Towns where everything is superficial and part of a well-oiled machine, where everything and everyone have their place and their future is already decided for them. So she runs away and Q, for most of the book, is not so much chasing after her than after an idea of her, his own mean of escape from the paper towns.
I related better to Quentin than to Margo. Margo seems to me to be a bit lost and selfish at the same time. I get where she’s from and where she wants to go, but I had the impression that she was doing a poor job of it (which only goes to show how human John Green’s characters are). She does share some traits with Alaska (or maybe it’s just me who think that) and in that respect, I found Alaska more real, more tangible to me.
Quentin, too, was a bit of a stretch for me. He was lacking something but I don’t know what. Ben, Radar and Lacey, on the other hand, were great characters and I loved them all dearly.
There’s much to say about the characters and the story but, as usual, not to spoil anyone, I will discuss it under the cut.
Ok, where to begin…
I’ve noticed a recurring theme in all the John Green’s books I’ve read, there is always a big place for literature and an invitation to reflect upon literature’s impact on your life. In Looking For Alaska, Miles is obsessed with Rabelais’s Great Perhaps and with last words in general and books play a great part in Alaska’s life. In The Fault in Our Stars, a good portion of the book is devoted to An Imperial Affliction (fictional but still a book). In Paper Towns, Walt Whitman is key to the book because Song of Myself plays a big role in the plot resolution. There are always a lot of parallels between “classic” literature and the characters in the book. For instance, in Paper Towns, Quentin’s English teacher has this reflection about Achab from Moby Dick:
Ahab’s a madman railing against fate. You never see Ahab wanting anything else in this whole novel, do you? He has a singular obsession. And because he is the captain of his ship, no one can stop him. You can argue—indeed, you may argue, if you choose to write about him for your final reaction papers—that Ahab is a fool for being obsessed. But you could also argue that there is something tragically heroic about fighting this battle he is doomed to lose. Is Ahab’s hope a kind of insanity, or is it the very definition of humanness? (137)
This is interesting because in this case, Quentin is very much “the captain of his own ship”. He becomes the leader of his group of friends in the search for Margo and not one of them can put an halt to his growing obsession about Margo’s disappearance. Is Quentin doomed to lose his own battle and is it tragically heroic ? I would say yes to both instance. The tragic hero is the role Margo wrote for him in her story and doesn’t seem to be able to escape it. As to his battle or quest, it seemed doomed from the start. Either, Margo is dead and he may find her body but not her or he never finds her or, third option and I’m glad John Green went with that one, he finds her and doesn’t at the same time, just like the last line suggest :
Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness (238)
In the end, Quentin sees Margo for who she is and not who he believes her to be but even then, he can’t really see her, not as a whole. He can’t really understand her. And thus, he doesn’t really find her. They’re doomed to stay forever on either side of his bedroom window which seems to divide them so often in the book.
I would argue that Margo wants to be found but is not ready to be. The trail of clues she left behind weren’t mean to be followed, indicating that while she wanted someone to found them, she didn’t want them to find her.
Why? Maybe because of the body she and Quentin found in the playground. While child!Quentin internalizes the trauma and seems to have dealt with it, child!Margo becomes obsessed with it. She’s the one who does “an investigation” (21) and discovers the body used to be a man called Robert Joyner who was very depressed and committed suicide because, as she puts it, “all the strings inside him broke” (21). It could have stopped there. Quentin never forgot that day but doesn’t seem to focus on it as much as Margo (probably because his mother told him, he shouldn’t concern with death at that moment and, as a consequence, he laid the body to rest in his mind, but it will eventually come back to haunt him through the hypothetical body of Margo and, that time, he will have to concern himself with it and confront the traumatic experience) , and yet the prologue foreshadows that, for Margo, it won’t stop there.
Before I could sit back down, she just raised her face up toward me and whispered, “Shut the window.” So I did. I thought she would leave, but she just stood there, watching me. I waved at her and smiled, but her eyes seemed fixed on something behind me, something monstrous that had already drained the blood from her face, and I felt too afraid to turn around to see. But there was nothing behind me, of course—except maybe the dead guy. (22)
And thus begins the “haunting” part of the trauma. I can’t help noticing that for Quentin, Joyner stays “the dead guy” and, as a consequence, a body, whereas for Margo, he has an identity and is a real person. She seems to resolve her trauma by writing a story in which she and Quentin found Joyner’s supposed murderers, but she remains deeply marked by the event.
“The dead guy” is not often mentioned but is key to the relationship between Quentin and Margo. When they find the body, Quentin steps back two steps and, at the very same time, Margo takes two steps forwards, which tells me that they will never be on the same page. Margo can only move forwards and towards the action, while Quentin is happy standing still and far away from life’s dramas.
Their relationship is one of misconceptions as indicating by the beautiful metaphor of the window/mirrors put forward during their make-up game “That guy is a Gigolo”. The idea is that when you look at people, you mostly project yourself (mirror) instead of seeing them (window). And even then… It seems to me that Quentin spends a lot of time watching her through literal windows and not really seeing her. Quentin realizes soon enough that he doesn’t really know Margo. To him, she is an idealized adventurous and fearless girl when, in truth, she is as scared and vulnerable as anyone.
They relationship is echoed by Ben and Lacey’s. At first Ben loved Lacey because she’s supposed to be this cool hype girl but once he begins to know her, he realizes she’s different from what he imagined. He accepts that and moves on.
I’m not sure that Quentin ever accepted that. Even when he realizes that “Margo Roth Spiegelman was a person, too.” (165), it doesn’t seem to alter his attitude towards her. He claims to see her as a person but still thinks of her as this wonderful being and he is still very wrong about just her, just like he was in the beginning when he though she was laughter when she was actually screaming bloody murder.
The concept of “strings” is actually really interesting and relates to the idea of people as balloon developed by the detective (whom, incidentally I didn’t like. He said “kid” too much and it bothered me while reading). For the detective, Margo is a balloon floating away because her string is broken but for Quentin, if her last string is broken, it means she’s like Joyner and, thus, is going to kill herself. He actually thinks that she wants him to find her corpse because of their shared traumatic experience with founding a dead body and doesn’t want random kids to live through what they did (return of the repressed?).
The passage when Q, Radar and Ben stand before the minimall and are practically convinced they’re going to find Margo’s body inside is, to my mind, one of the best of the book.
Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington’s house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead. (122)
This is an example of what I love about John Green’s writing: it is powerful in its simplicity. It grips you tight and makes you feel.
Paper Towns is an awesome book. What did you think of it?
Marcel Pagnol is, as its title hints, a biography of Marcel Pagnol. I have to say I’m not much one to read biography but I have a particular fondness for Pagnol, so I let myself be tempted. I’m not quite sure how well known Pagnol is outside of France. I have observed, in recent years, that, even in France, he tends to be forgotten or, at least, that he is a victim of his own success. He is famous for his Souvenirs d’enfance (translated Memories of childhood ) and more particularly for La Gloire de mon père and Le chateau de ma mere (translated My Father’s Glory and My mother’s castle). People from my generation (meaning around their 20s) tends to forget that he isn’t just a memoirs writer but also, and mainly, a play writer and a film writer, director and producer.
In this biography, Raymond Castans tells us the story of Pagnol’s life, from his birth to his death, with a playful but sincere tone that makes the book really easy to read. I felt like I was reading a story rather than a biography which, sometimes, takes themselves rather too seriously.
What I really appreciated was that Castans respected the way Pagnol had of telling a story. It is both sad and funny, just like most of Pagnol’s work is.
Marcel Pagnol is very much a self-made man. He was born is the south of France in 1895 and remained very attached to his origins (for those not so well versed in French topography the south and the north aren’t too keen on each other, just like in every other country I guess. I live in the south, we have the sun and we’re supposed to be a little crazy. In the north, they have rains but they’re supposed to have a big heart. See, it’s all very logical that way.). His father, Joseph, was an school teacher, old schooled – meaning that he believed in absolute secularism and that instruction was the key to freedom (let’s keep in mind that at that time, social classes were very defined: working class and upper class and it was really hard to go from one to go up the social ladder). Joseph had big ambitions for his son and Marcel grew up with the weight of this expectations. He was deeply marked by his mother’s death when he was 15.
While trying to make his own career in teaching (he was an English teacher), Pagnol began to write. First he wrote plays. His first success was Topaze (I’m not sure it was translated but there are some American movies adaptations) quickly followed by what is probably the thing he is most famous for outside of Les Souvenirs : the Marseille’s Trilogy (composed of three plays: Marius, Fanny and Cesar).
Around 1930, Pagnol discovers what will make him a true genius : talking movies. In France, he is a precursor. At that time, there was a clear distinction between silent films and drama – drama being considered as the “noble art”. Talking movies, on the other hand, were seen as the murderer of drama, directors/writers were accused of putting plays into a box. In short it was really an ill-considered choice for a dramatic author such as Pagnol to go into the movies. He did anyway, sure that it was the future of drama. He had to face his pairs, the harsh criticisms and technical difficulties but he did it and he was right. If he was a good play writer, he was a much more better director. He wrote, directed and produced around 30 films and practically all of them went down in history : he adapted for the big screen Marius, Fanny and Cesar, all of them being so famous and well-known that everybody know most of the lines by heart. My personal favorite was La Fille du Puisatier (it apparently was translated in the USA under the title : The Well-Digger’s Daughter). In his late life, he took up to writing novels and excelled at it just like he excelled at everything else.
The best thing about this biography is that you don’t follow only Pagnol’s life but his circle of friends (encompassing some of the greatest actors, writers and politics of the time) and I learn a great deal about the place art had taken in France between 1900 and 1970. I think it’s particularly interesting to contrast what it meant to be a famous actor then and what it means now. I may be talking about France more particularly because I’m not quite sure how it was in America or England at that precise time (even if I’m quite sure how it is now) but I think, at that time, actors were seen more as people than as products like they are today. And in that book, Raymon Castans talks about people.
He evokes Pagnol’s complex friendship with great actors such as Raimu or Fernandel (And I’m really not sure how well they are known out there but they’re like our Clark Gables or Charlie Chaplin) and what he wrote about them rang true. I truly had the sensation of reading about real people and not about people who are in a different league (which is a feeling I sometimes get while watching interviews of some actors or reading about them in more contemporary books. Not all of them are like that, of course, but I think the sheer materiality of the world we live in makes them products that you choose to buy or not, rather than people. You don’t know what’s true and what’s not, what they do with sincerity and what they do for show, it gets confusing.).
Anyway, they’re not much more to say about the book without getting into a deep and sincere essay about how much I love Pagnol. It was a really good read. I doubt that this biography was translated (to be honest, I found it in a stroke of luck in a garage sale but I can’t even find it on goodreads) but I wanted to encourage those of you who didn’t know Pagnol to read some of his work because it is amazing. He has a way to use words that will tear you apart and make you laugh while you cry. To this day, I can’t read/watch La gloire de mon père ou Le chateau de ma mère without crying. And I love it. So I leave you with some quotations from some of his works, because they’re beautiful and should be known worldwide (my translation, he wouldn’t mind he was also a translator at times):
“Telle est la vie des hommes. Quelques joies, très vite effacées par d’inoubliables chagrins. Il n’est pas nécessaire de le dire aux enfants. »/ “Such is the life of men. Moments of joy, soon erased by unforgettable sorrows. Children don’t need to be burdened with that knowledge.” (Le château de ma mere)
« De mourir, ça ne me fait rien. Mais ça me fait peine de quitter la vie. »/ “I don’t care about dying. But it grieves me to part with life.” (César)
« Si vous voulez aller sur la mer, sans aucun risque de chavirer, alors, n’achetez pas un bateau : achetez une île ! »/ “You want to go to sea but wish to be certain of not keeling over, then, don’t buy a boat: buy an island!” (Fanny)
« Quand on aime quelqu’un, c’est effrayant ce qu’on pense peu aux autres. » / “When you love someone, it’s terrifying how seldom you think about others.” (Marius)
« Les serments, comme les personnes, perdent leur force en vieillissant. » / “Oaths, like people, grow weaker with age.” (Le temps des amours)
According To Jane begins in a sophomore English class when, shortly after being handed a copy of Pride and Prejudice, Ellie Barnett begins to hear Jane Austen’s voice in her head. The dead author then proceeds to become her best friend and to advise Ellieon her own little Austenian romantic tangle with Sam whom Jane promptly labeled as Ellie’s own Mr Wickham.
This will be a VERY short review (yes italics and capital letters, never bides well) for the good reason that I couldn’t find it in myself to finish the book. I actually thought about not doing a review because I didn’t finish it and it didn’t seem quite fair but then I thought… It’s my blog, I do what I want and you have to know that I usually finish all my books even those I don’t like, so…
I’m sorry for not liking this book, because the author’s note was the first thing you can read in it and she sounds nice so I was expecting something fun. In truth I was, very, very, very, bored and disturbed by the book.
I quite like Jane Austen rewritings. I’ve read a few P&P rewritings, reinterpretation, sequels… I’ve read some of Emma too… (My two Austen favorite books being P&P and Emma) Some are good, some are bad… I call that high level fanfictions.
Anyway, I found According to Jane on my bookshelf and found myself puzzled as to when I had bought it because I didn’t remember. But, hey, it seemed fun! Jane talking to a teenager/young woman? Bound to be fun, no?
No. Nope. Noooooope.
Again, I’m sorry because I feel very biased. I didn’t like it one bit. If you read this and you had liked it, maybe tell me what I missed and I may give it another shot but I found everything awful.
So, I didn’t go past the middle of the book but I did read the end because I had my suspicions and wanted to be justified in stopping where I was. No need to say, I was right in my suspicions. Here’s what really bothered me from the very beginning (so spoilers alert for the first pages) : the greatest flaw of the book is the way Jane (very dead) ‘s voice is introduced to Ellie and to the reader.
Here’s a totally partial summary of what I read: Ellie’s a teen described as a geek, a little insecure, more or less a social outcast, and attracted by her popular not-friend Sam Blaine. So, a fragile teen with a sarcastic voice the kind you can find in a dozen of books. Key word being fragile, here. And then, her teacher gives their next assignment (and do school really give book in America? Here you have to buy your own books when they’re assigned… Unfair.) : Pride and Prejudice.
Here, have some Darcy in a wet shirt :
(No, I won’t tell you why the BBC version is a thousand times better than the movie with Keira Knightley. I could, I reaaaaally could. But I won’t because I said this review will be short.)
Ok, so back to the point. Ellie takes the book in her hands and begins to hear a voice. Jane Austen’s voice as it soon introduces herself, before asserting that Sam Blaine is a Wickham. Before tackling the obvious point of hearing voices, I will just say this: Wickham? Like, really, Jane? You’ve known the boy a total of 3 seconds and he’s a Wickham? Who’s prejudiced now? Because…
This being said. What really, really, really bothered me is this: Jane Austen’s voice doesn’t disappear and stays with Ellie for years, Ellie questions it for a few days and then just accepts it. She just accepts it. I couldn’t go past that. Worse, Jane Austen’s voice (notice how I keep using voice because I couldn’t believe for one second it was her ghost or whatever) clearly has an influence on Ellie.
So, here’s the point that I couldn’t go past: Ellie hears a voice in her head, a voice that seems to have a conscience of its own, and claims to be Jane Austen’s and instead of freaking out, she calmly accepts it and proceeds to make her/it her new best friend. And she listens to her.
I will say this once, because I kept saying it to Ellie but she didn’t seem to hear: if you hear a voice that claims to be a dead author’s in your head ? Go to your doctor, right now.
I don’t want to comment the rest of the book, suffice to say that Jane gives extremely bad advices (not surprising given that we’re not in Kansas anymore. This is not England and this is not the Regency era), that, I think, she’s not believable as a character (and for good reasons, it’s a voiiiiiiice, people) and the whole plot was boring from start to finish.
Is Sam really Ellie’s Mr Wickham (and he’s a sixteen years old at the beginning, please… He just wants to get some, he’s a little on the idiotic side but he clearly has it bad for Ellie. How can he be compared to the greatest villain in Regency romance novels?) ? I wasn’t even on page 30 when I guessed the answer.
I will stop there. This review is not positive at all but I may have missed the point of the book. I picked it up as a fun read but it wasn’t fun at all. I try to look at it more broadly, to find irony or meaning in the characterization but I found nothing but boredom. I didn’t like it at all.
A Feast For Crows (A Song Of Fire And Ice #4) - George R. R. Martin
(This review may contain spoilers for the first three books, read at your own risks)
A Feast for Crows takes up mostly where A Storm of Swords has left us. Arya is on a ship for Braavos, Jon is Lord Commandant on the Wall, Sam is Sam, Brienne is looking for Sansa and Cercei discovers her father’s death.
This is a biiiig book so I will try (and probably fail) to keep this review short but I fear that there won’t be a spoiler-free section because I really don’t want to spoil anyone who doesn’t wish to be. Also, I’m sorry if some names are misspelled, I read the first volumes in French and I have just switched into English, some names aren’t the same. I will try to double check everything but you never know.
Some POV are noticeably missing : Tyrion, Daenerys, Jon, Bran, Davos… To name a few.
There are a lot of characters in this series and the work the author must do to keep everything in proper order is really amazing. My personal favorites in this book (and the last) were Brienne and Jaime. It’s the first time we get a Brienne POV and I loved it. Not to mention that I ship these two very very very much.
What else can I say without spoiling everything? I think it was a really good book. I know some didn’t really like it because of the pace. There are less battles and shocking/suspense moments than in A Storm of Swords but I don’t think that’s very surprising. The titles talk for themselves… A Storm of Swords was talking about battles and wars and A Feast for Crows is all about what happens after that when the battle is won or lost and the crows come to eat greedily the defeated, metaphorically or not.
Great book, great series, you should read it if you haven’t already. It’s one of those few books nowadays that can really make you stand up in indignation and cry for hours straight because someone has just been hanged in the woods ( yes, you know what I’m talking about if you’ve read the book).
I will stop there for the spoilers-free review but I will discuss some characters and events more in depth under the cut so if you haven’t read the book and spoilers don’t bother you and, of course, if you want to join, feel free to click!
Excuse me while I fangirl for a few seconds.
Ok, I’m fine. Let’s do this.
I don’t even where to begin so let’s begin with characters I don’t particularly like.
Sam. Let’s begin with Sam. It’s not really that I don’t like Sam, more like that I don’t really care for him (actually, he reminds me of Frank in Heroes of Olympus. Or Frank reminds me of him. In any case, I still don’t really care for them both). I like him well enough with Gilly (who is called Vère in French, I don’t know why) but his pov are always kind of sedate and it’s not really my cup of tea. What happened to Sam… Aemon! Aemon learnt that Daenerys had dragons and was well on her way to become the ultimate Queen! I loved that passage so much… But then Aemon died, of course, because everyone must die in those books…
Anyway, I’m not thrilled about Sam going to the Citadel. I’m guessing there will be even more evil plots there than there already is in King Landing or at the Wall or anywhere else in those kingdoms. I do hope however that we will see Sam stand up to his father, that would be interesting.
Another character who was there without being there: Arya. She doesn’t have a lot of POVs in this book but they get darker and darker. Is Arya becoming a psychopath? Because… She killed the singer (I don’t remember his name but began with a D) without a second thought and, ok, he wasn’t a very decent man but still… He didn’t even try to kill/molest her (and I can’t believe we’ve come to the point in this series when I say that so casually)… Her storyline is becoming interesting though with the God of Many Faces… I’m guessing she will never be able to truly become “no one” because she’s too much a Stark, her refusal to throw Needle away proves that. And there is Nymeria to consider. Arya can’t reject the wolf in her, so…
Wasn’t it absolutely infuriating when she crossed Sam’s path? I was screaming at my poor friend who had already read the book that it was really frustrating.
I’m going to briefly talk about Jon because I won’t talk about the Night Watch after that so… First, I have to say I don’t really like Jon. I’ve never ever really like him, I found him too much of a Hufflepuff (I’m not hating on Hufflepuff I’m just very much a Slytherin, so that kind of driven behavior tends to bother me it goes on too long) and too bloody much obsessed with his supposed duty for his own good (and my own incidentally). But then he met Ygritte…
And I loved her and she loved him so, step by step, she made me love him (and then, oh surprise, she died and it was awful but at least they were together when it happened not like someone who’s hanged on a tree). I was so excited when he became Lord Snow, Commandant of the Night Watch… But now… Now I hate him again. I know he did what he had to do to protect both Dalla’s baby and Master Aemon but I wished he wasn’t so cold and so distant to everyone. I hope we see him more in Dance With Dragons and that we see Stannis too, because I don’t really like him (for the same reasons I don’t like Jon, ironically) but I want to see what he’s going to do. Talking about Stannis, I hope to god Davos is not dead or there will be hell to pay. Learning about it through Cersei was bad enough, I hope it’s a scheme and it’s not true.
Oh, there are new characters in this book! Dorne. Arianne Martell is so badass but with a sort of girlish innocence… I love her. And she was secretly engaged to Viserys! It’s not the last we hear of Dorne, I think. They will become important players in the Game. It’s sad that Myrcella was disfigured though… And it was sad about Arys Oakheart too, I liked him and his devotion to his princesses.
Sansa. I sense great things coming Sansa’s way. With Petyr at her side she may well become the Queen of the North… But I’m a little worried about Petyr’s intention towards her. It’s clear he loves/wants her as a substitute for Cat but he’s also a Every-man-for-himself sort of man… If need be, will he really protect her? Wouldn’t she do better on her own just like Arya does? I know they are not the same but… Stark children are resilient.
“When the cold wind blows, the lone wolf dies and the pack survives” Arya keeps repeating Ned’s words and thinks he was wrong because : “the lone wolf, still lived, but the wolves of the pack had been taken and slain and skinned.” (p155). I think that even if they’re apart the Stark are still very much a pack and that’s why they will survive and, eventually, find each other. I don’t see Arya or Sansa dying anytime soon. And no one should underestimate Sansa. She’s good at playing dumb and she can do surprising things. The foolish girl who first arrive to King Landing to marry Joffrey is truly gone and Allayne is someone to reckon with…
Talking about the Stark… I’ve never liked Cat but I’ve never wanted her to become a zombie either:
Lady Stoneheart lowered her hood and unwound the grey wool scarf from her face. Her hair was dry and brittle, white as bone. Her brow was mottled green and grey, spotted with the brown blooms of decay. The flesh of her face clung in ragged strips from her eyes down to her jaw. Some of the rips were crusted with dried blood, but other gaped open to reveal the skull beneath. (p 1014)
I will come back to Cat later when talking about Brienne and Jaime. It’s just that the zombie thing kind of threw me.
Let’s move on to Cersei!
I used to love Cersei. I also used to ship her with Jaime, incest notwithstanding. You see, at the beginning of the book, I was very much a Lannister supporter. I didn’t like Robert and I was with Cersei all the way when she schemed to get rid of him. However, the more the story went on, the more she disappointed me and in this book, I’m sorry, but she was a total failure. She’s a strong woman, no one could deny that, but she also thinks too much of herself and that is her downfall. She wants so much to be the man (and, more disturbingly, to be a man, as seen when she tries to emulate Robert and tries to dominate her lovers with sex. She aspires to become her father, to become her father’s heir. She wants to be Jaime just because he’s a man. She needs therapy and fast) and she destroys herself with the very web she had spin.
I hated the way she treated Jaime and I hated the way she treated Tommen. I don’t doubt she loves them both but I think she loves herself more. I was very very glad when Jaime threw her letter in the fire at the end. It’s all that she deserves for being so poor an opponent. When you play the game of thrones you win or you die, well Cersei, you’re going to die and it was obvious. The whole plot with accusing Margaery of adultery was obviously going to fail, it was childish and badly done and I don’t think she realizes what she had created by giving leave to the Faith to arm itself.
I found the story with Maggy the Frog particularly interesting. The foretelling that she would marry the King and buried her children (which doesn’t bide well for Tommen or Myrcella)… The foretelling of a younger and more beautiful Queen being her downfall… I’m not so sure it’s Margaery… It could be Sansa (when Queen of the North), it could be Dany and it could also be whoever decides to crown herself Queen at some point.
More interesting is this:
“And when your tears have drowned you, the valonquar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.” (851)
I don’t think Tyrion is going kill her. I think it will be Jaime. It is said somewhere that she was born first so Jaime is her valonquar, her little brother. I think it will be him. It’s coherent with the evolution their characters took. They’re not who they were anymore. Jaime discovered Cersei’s true face and, because of Brienne, he has found back his honor, so… I don’t know. I feel like Ceisei’s death will be a symbolic moment and Jaime should be the one to kill her to be truly freed from her.
Jaime. Jaime. Jaime. Jaime. Jaime. Jaime.
Is it a coincidence that “Jaime” in French means “I love”? I’m not sure but I’ve decide that it is not. I love him. I looooooove him. (Ok fangirl mode off). Jaime is clearly a changed man. He has opened his eyes (because of Brieeeenne) and is decided to keep his numerous oaths. He is misunderstood but stands true and I hope he will be friend with Loras (if Loras doesn’t die, that is) because I like their friendship.
So, in this book, Jaime rejects Cersei just as she rejects him because he doesn’t want to be her lapdog anymore. Their relationship is irrevocably broken, the symmetry between them is gone with Jaime’s hand. Cersei used to see herself in Jaime (physically. She found him beautiful and so she was beautiful) but now all she sees is a crippled man who’s getting older and not so attractive anymore. And that’s really, really interesting to see because there is a sort of reverse parallel. Just like the portrait of Dorian Grey what Cersei sees when she looks at Jaime is herself: she is ugly inside, she’s the one who’s getting old and crippled by her own scheme. Jaime, on the other hand (no pun intended), is becoming lighter of heart, at peace with himself and honorable. He’s as beautiful inside as Cersei is physically. Moreover, at first, Jaime doesn’t want to believe Tyrion’s words about her but, deep down, he knows they are true and it hurts him so he deserts her. He sees Cersei for what she is : a mad woman, and he’s disgusted by it all.
I like Jaime’s newfound friendship with Illyn Payne. And I think it’s great to see him learn how to fight with his left hand. I think he hates the golden hand as much as he hates being crippled…
Jaime is great in this book. He’s more than great. He’s perfect. He manages to take Riverrun without a fight and he sorts out Harrendal and saves Pia. Of course, my favorite passage was:
“Why, I went to Tarth and saw her. I had six years on her, yet the wench could look me in the eye. She was a sow in silk, though most sows have bigger teats. When she tried to talk she almost choked on her own tongue. I gave her a rose and told her it was all that she would ever have from me.” Connington glanced into the pit. “The bear was less hairy than that freak, I’ll – “
Jaime’s golden hand cracked him across the mouth so hard the other knight went stumbling down the steps. His lantern fell and smashed, and the oil spread out, burning. “You are speaking of a highborn lady, ser. Call her by her name. Call her Brienne.” (641 -642)
A passage which is sadly echoed by another one later on, on Brienne’s feverish dreams :
“Finally, the doors opened, and her betrothed strode into her father’s hall. She tried to greet him as she had been instructed, only to have blood come pouring down her mouth. She had bitten her tongue off as she waited. She spat it at the young knight’s feet, and saw the disgust on his face. “Brienne the Beauty” he said in a mocking tone. “I have seen sows more beautiful than you”. He tossed the rose in her face. As he walked away, the griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions. Jaime! she wanted to cry. Jaime, come back for me! But her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.” (1002)
This paragraph really was my undoing.
The worse in all this is that Jaime would come back for Brienne. He is not going back to Cersei because he would go back for Brienne. He has chosen her values before Cersei’s. She has reminded him who he truly was or, at least, who he wanted to be.
And Brienne…
I think only Renly and Jaime have ever treated her right. Renly didn’t love her that way for obvious reasons but Jaime…
I really appreciated knowing more about her past and about how she became who she is. I liked her friendship with Pod, I like that she would want children even if she’s a tough woman… I love her because she’s not just an archetype.
It’s terribly, terribly unfair that she’s accused of breaking her oath when there is no one more loyal and more dedicated to her duty than her. I hated her confrontation with Catelyn. I hated that Catelyn wouldn’t listen… I guess, maybe, Cat recognized Ice in Oathkeeper and that’s why she was so harsh (her being half dead, notwithstanding). I also think she’s an evil zombie back from the grave and should be slain on sight.
I liked Sir Hyllas well enough even if he’s a jerk. He was funny. I liked Brienne’s quest even more. It’s great that she’s got to kill the men who captured and tortured her and Jaime… I loved the way she becomes even more a true knight with Oathkeeper because it is a proof that Jaime believed in her just like Renly did. She needs people to believe in her because she doesn’t really believe in herself most of the time. She sees herself as a freak and I just hope that someone (*cough* Jaime * cough*) will eventually tell her how great she is. (yes because I refuse to believe she’s dead).
The trip from the inn to Lady Storneheart… The way she keeps dreaming and calling Jaime… It broke my heart. And when Cat asks her to choose: kill Jaime or die and she refuses to… I swear I was in tears.
And it was nothing to when they actually hanged her. Because then I was :
My faithful I-pad didn’t like it but one has to do what one must. I want to know what she shouted. I want to know if it saved her. I want to know if she died with Jaime’s name on her lips. I want to know if she’s alive but at the same time I don’t want to because, as Sheldon would say, it’s Schrödinger cat. If I don’t know she’s dead, she isn’t. And worse, she may be a zombie.
Well, better let go of this before I become hysterical again.
What else… Ah! Asha and the Ironborns. I love Asha and I love the Reader and Victarion but I don’t like Crow Eye obviously. I’m wondering what will happen to Victarion because… Good luck kidnapping Dany and bringing her back if she doesn’t want to go. As to the business of stealing her dragons… Let me laugh.
I think we covered nearly everything so… I’m going to stop there. But I have to ask... What's up with the cover? Why a cup?
What did you think of the book? What do you think is going to happen next (no spoilers please, only speculations) ?
I've noticed quite a few of new followers... So... Welcome, new followers! I hope you enjoy my reviews and that you won't hesitate to talk book with me. :)
The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4) - Rick Riordan
Seven half-bloods shall answer the call
To storm or fire, the world must fall
An oath to keep with a final breath,
And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death
The House of Hades. The freaking House of Hades. I don’t even know where to begin. I think the spoiler-free review will be short because I don’t feel capable of talking about the book without actually discussing the book.
This is probably the best Percy Jackson book in both series. It is darker, the amount of pain the characters go through in the book is astounding and even if I’m the first one to complain that Riordan has a tendency to resort to Deus Ex-Machina a little too often at the end of his books, this one wasn’t really like that. I absolutely loved The Lost Hero but I wasn’t convinced by The Son of Neptune because of the ending.
The Son of Neptune (ok, spoilers ahead if you hadn’t read that book but it was published so long ago, I consider it fair game) disappointed me because it embodies everything I don’t like about Riordan’s idea of plot resolution. I hate when, in a book (or a movie), I am warmed of incoming hardships, of an incoming death, only to be spare the trouble by a Deus Ex-Machina not that much believable. I would prefer to be sad because someone actually dies than to be disappointed. It may be an unpopular opinion, but it’s mine, I’m sorry. So after The Son of Neptune, I felt a bit let down by the story but The Mark of Athena was much better. The ending alone was enough to “redeem” The Son of Neptune’s in my heart. It was maybe more “realistic” (if I can use that kind of word to talk about a young-adult dystopian fantasy-ish novel), certainly more mature and more darker which foreshadows nicely the tone of The House of Hades and I dare say The Blood of Olympus. The first Percy Jackson series followed the same path, the first books were fun and games but the more we leaned towards the end the more serious and heartbreaking the books became.
In this book, all characters have to face themselves at one point or another. This is probably the book where everyone become who they have to be and I think it will the turning point. No character is the same at the end as they were in the beginning.
My favorite Percy Jackson book until now was The Last Olympian and I think this one is as good and maybe a little better. So, if you haven’t read Percy Jackson at all, go read now. If you haven’t pick up the new series, go do so now. This book is great.
Now, I will discuss the book because there is much to say, so beware of spoilers if you click below.
This booooooook killed me. So, I will begin with the characters before tackling the plot itself because I think the characters’ evolution was one of the most important thing in the book. By order of apparition :
Hazel: Hazel kicks ass in this book. I’ve always had a soft spot for her, she was actually my favorite thing in The Son of Neptune. I love her. I love how conflicted her character is, how hard her past made her. She was really insecure with her powers in the beginning of the series but here, and in the line of what happened in The Mark of Athena, she accepts who she is. She is Pluto’s daughter and she’s not afraid of that anymore. She uses her powers, she controls her powers and I think she’s finally at peace with herself. She is the one leading them through the house of Hades and that surprised me because I thought it would be Nico and she has that great moment in the end when she attacks Clytus with diamonds and gems and I thought it was so great… She turns what used to be a curse into a weapon and it’s quite epic.
Hazel’s fear turned to rage. She screamed. The walls of the chamber made a crackling sound like ice in warm water, and dozens of gems streaked towards the giant, punching through his armour like buckshot.
She also has a talk with Pluto (I like Pluto better than Hades, by the way, he’s much nicer) and I think it’s important, not because he says that he is proud of her but because he says that the only way he can care for his children is by keeping his distance and it is relevant both for Hazel and for Nico.
Hazel also learns to control the Mist and find an ally in Hecate even if it seems it won’t be a permanent alliance (it never is with gods anyway). She’s instrumental in this book and she has become really powerful and I can’t wait to see more of her.
Annabeth: Annabeth is probably the character I felt more sorry for in this book. She really made me want to hug her. Her first point of view begins where we have left her, during her fall in Tartarus and it broke my heart.
Annabeth pressed her lips to Percy’s ear. “I love you.
She wasn’t sure he could hear her – but if they were going to die she wanted those to be her last words.
Way to begin. You know it’s going to be absolutely emotional from now on and you are going to suffer for her and Percy. I love Annabeth. I absolutely love Annabeth. She got a sword in this book which is cool because I’ve always thought that having only a knife couldn’t be that practical in a fight with a Titan or a Giant or anything really…
I love Annabeth because she loves Percy. I will talk about Percabeth separately but it’s extremely relevant to her character. She would do anything for Percy and I think it changed her. I’m not sure because it’s been sometimes since I’ve read the first series and it was in Percy’s point of view so you don’t really know what goes on through Annabeth’s head in that series but I think she was harder, more guarded, and now… When she cries when leaving Damasen in the swamp, her relation with Bob… It makes her a great character because she’s emotional, she connects with them emotionally and when they’re left behind it’s heartbreaking in a way Percy’s point of view couldn’t have conveyed. Percy’s ultimate flaw is his loyalty to his friend and leaving Damasen and Bob behind would hit this flaw, it would be about him (and I’m not saying that Percy is egocentric, I’m just saying that his sadness, his despair would manifest through that part of his personality) whereas Annabeth is just purely, truly sad but she knows there isn’t another way, she knows the sacrifice must be made (which Percy would never accept) and that is where the tragedy lies. Through Annabeth, we know things couldn’t have turned out differently. And this passage is one of the saddest in the book:
“Monsters are eternal,” she told him, trying to keep herself from sobbing. “We will remember you and Damasen as heroes, as the best Titan and the best giant. We’ll tell our children. We’ll keep the story alive. Some day, you will regenerate”
The line “Monsters are eternal” actually made me tear up a bit.
I also like her cleverness. She’s always the one who tries to find another way than violence, to gain time. Her desperate idea to pose as a tourist with Night, for instance, is completely crazy but it’s also bloody brilliant. I love how Percy, for a moment, is like “Whaaaat are you doing?” before rolling into it. She’s brilliant.
Leo: I love Leo (Yes, I love everyone). He was my favorite in The Lost Hero and in The House of Hades he was awesome. The fight with the dwarves? He was so great! But my favorite part was the chapters with Calypso. God, I ship them soooo hard. I really, really, really hope he will able to go back for her and that we will see it. The moment when the raft appears is so sad because I can’t help but feel bad about Calypso (even if she cursed Percy). I really hope it works out for them.
As usual Leo is also the comic relief and he has some great lines, my favorite was probably towards the end when they are in the House of Hades:
“That way,” she decided. “It feels the most dangerous.”
“I’m sold.” Said Leo.
He’s so funny and sarcastic and I can’t help to love him and I don’t understand if you don’t love Leo. It must be hard being the only single person on a ship with three couples. I think he matures a bit in this book, through his story with Calypso, I’m not sure he feels as alone as he used to.
Percy: Percy, my god. Is Percy becoming bad? I love, I absolutely love, that we get to see a darker side of Percy. I have the sensation that this trip through Tartarus was emotionally harder on him than on Annabeth because he has to face a number of things he’s done in the past. Every single monster he killed and we see the other side of the coin there, the monster’s view on the matter, when he is cursed by the arai. There is also the matter of Bob/Iapetus for which he feels really bad and with reason I think.
But the most terrible moment is the moment when they affront the goddess of misery, Akhlys, because at that point Percy is kind of terrifying. He uses the poison through his powers over water and then controls the tears of Akhlys to choke her.
As the flood of venom rolled towards the goddess, the fumes began to make her cough. Her eyes watered even more.
Oh good, Percy thought. More water.
Percy imagined her nose and throat filling with her own tears.
That’s pretty dark. Even Annabeth is afraid and I think she states several times that she sees something in Percy that makes her afraid. I found this passage really interesting because it raises the question of what powers – great powers – can do to someone. It’s more or less established since the first Percy Jackson book that Percy is the most powerful demigod (I don’t really know if it’s all that true anymore because Jason, Leo, Frank and Hazel are powerful and Piper and Annabeth are pretty resourceful). Where do you stop when everything is possible? When you have the ability to do anything? I think its relevant to what happened with the gods of Olympus, we’ve already seen that in the first series and the fact that Percy was offered to become immortal is relevant here. I’m wondering if we will see that side of Percy again outside of Tartarus, if this will be addressed.
I rather would like to see that again but I think Percy really faced himself down there. He had to come to term with what he had done and it was painful for him, I think. I love that Percy is more mature than he ever was. In The Mark of Athena he was talking about living in New Rome with Annabeth, living their life there together, and we see that again in The House of Hades, now he muses about possible sons and daughters and that’s cute.
I love their relationship. Sometimes, when a couple is established it becomes boring or duller and the author feels the need to introduce a third party in there to shake things up but here it’s really not necessary because I think Percy and Annabeth are meant to be in a way few fiction couples are. They work together, they really work.
I particularly loved in the end when Percy obviously felt the need to play the hero and decided to stay behind to allow Annabeth to go up in the mortal world but Annabeth won’t hear of it.
“You promised, Seaweed Brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!”
“You’re impossible!”
“Love you too!”
That sums up their relationship. They’re perfect for each other. It’s easy between them, the problems usually come from outside their relationship.
Frank: Frank is my least favorite demigod. He’s kind of awesome, I will give you that, but I don’t really care for him. I don’t know why. He’s… too much. He can take any animal shape, he can defeat an army of cow-like thingy single-handily, he’s not so cool with Leo when Leo has stated several times he wasn’t going to steal Hazel from him…
I think he has it easy (ok, there I’m going to be lynched by Frank’s lovers). He’s really insecure and I get that but… He actually mans up a bit in this book, accepts his legacy and takes the lead. And for his trouble he becomes taller and broader. Was that really necessary? I wonder. I quite like the idea of a demigod who was a little chubby and not perfect or handsome in the way Jason and Percy are. Frank has a great evolution in this book because he actually becomes the leader he’s supposed to be.
Jason: What the heck with Jason in this book? Has anyone else notice he’s kind of a klutz? First, he gets capture by the dwarves because he is too busy showing off he is the son of Jupiter to listen to Leo, then he makes the most ridiculously late entrance in the history of ever :
Jason flew like Peter Pan, electricity sparking around him and his gold sword steaming.
Leo whistle appreciatively. “Man you just wasted an awesome entrance.”
After that, he manage to lose his sword, to fall asleep on the job quite literally because he forgot to held his breath while fighting venti, turns into a popsicle and I won’t even talk about his epic fail with the dead Roman legion.
I love Jason but I feel like he’s getting more and more lost about who he is. All the others see him as perfect and a great leader but I don’t know if anyone else noticed or if it’s just a personal impression but Jason doesn’t lead at all in this book. And that actually worries me because that’s how he was introduced to us in the first place : as a great leader, as a Roman parallel to Percy. But Percy never stopped leading (which ultimately with this “darker side” emerging could be a problem, I’m wondering if that will play a part in the rest of the story) while Jason? In this book… I’m looking for a comparison and I don’t know… Jason is always out of the loop.
He has two important passages. The first one is with Nico and Cupid because after that he probably is the closest thing Nico has of a friend. I like their friendship, I hope we can get more of that and I hope Jason will help Nico in the future. The second passage is in the palace of the Wind King whose name I don’t remember. Let’s not mention the fact that Jason screwed up because he was waiting for a permission he didn’t need (and once again I’m worrying about his leading skills disappearing because of his choice not to be a praetor anymore) and talk about how, in that moment, he chooses Camp Half-Blood and the Greeks. And later when he renounces his position as praetor to give it to Frank, he kind of frees himself from who he was expected to be.
I really like the parallels between Jason and Percy. They both are sons of two of the three most powerful gods, they both have been through hardships, they both have a relationship with a girl who is cleverer than them and with whom the relationship is easy (I’m not going into the controversy Piper/Jason being boring. They’re not really as interesting as they were and I liked them better in the beginning. They don’t have the chemistry Percy and Annabeth have but they work), and they both want to change side. Percy wants to go live in new Rome and Jason wants to go to Camp Half-Blood. In a way, this doppelganger-like relationship they have kind of worry me because first rule of the doppelganger? You find yours, you die. And, here, it’s hard to see who is the double of whom. I don’t see Percy dying but Jason…
Anyway, Jason wasn’t at his most awesome in the book but he has this great line at the end:
“Sorry we’re late,” Jason said. “Is this the guy who needs killing?”
Piper: Piper is the only one to have only one point of view in this book (a succession of 3 chapters) and it comes a little late in the story. She’s not really present. She’s kind of in the background. We knows she trains with Hazel, she has some moments with Jason and Leo but other than that she wasn’t really present and I was kind of disappointed. Maybe we will see more of her and Jason in the next book? Maybe they will have a bigger role to play and that’s why we didn’t get much of them here?
Piper learns to further control her charmspeak in here, she actually become more comfortable with her place in the team and she brings Festus to life which is kind of awesome. I liked her point of view, I like that she got to kick ass because she was awesome in The Lost Hero but since then she kind of disappeared into the background.
Nico: I love Nico. It never occurred to me that he could be in love with Percy before this book. I’ve always thought he liked Percy but as a sort of role-model or big brother and he was sometimes mean because he wanted his attention but not in a romantic way. I realized he must be in love with him when Jason and him went to see Cupid. I called it before Favonius even began his tale about his ex-boyfriend because it explained so much.
Nico’s story is the most tragic in the Percy Jackson series. I’m telling you. He lost everyone he loved. He lost everything. He’s gay and can only be conflicted about it because he was born in the 40’s when it was still a big no-no. And, the cherry on top? The guy he’s in love with? No way it’s gonna happen. Ever. He knows Annabeth is Percy’s true love. Everybody knows. And that is tragic. I really hope he meets someone or at least that he makes a friend. I think he really could have a friend in Jason. I hope he connects with someone.
Ok, I think we covered the main characters. I also loved Reyna’s arc, I’m wondering if we will get her point of view in the next book. I didn’t like that her Pegasus had to be put down, that was sad and not necessary.
So, to the plot, to the story…
Tartarus. Tartarus was really creepy but at the same time it was great. I loved everything in Tartarus (I’m not saying go there on vacation, I’m saying I loved the way Riordan designed it). I just have a tiny little problem with Tartarus: when Tartarus took a physical form… He was walking upon himself? Was it like a little part of himself? Not sure about that. I’m not sure I liked him as a physical villain. I’m not sure it was really necessary in the plot because Bob and Damasen could fight him when nobody else could, there is again this idea of an exception or Deus Ex-Machina I’m not so fond of…
The Door of Death. I didn’t picture an elevator but I think that’s great, that’s what make Riordan’s finer writing points. In a dark plot, there is comic elements or things you are not anticipating like Small Bob, for instance. I loved Small Bob. I’m kind of sad because I think he must have died with Bob and Damasen.
Which brings me to my next point : Bob and Damasen. Are they really dead? I have to say I was excepting one of the seven to stay behind to close the doors, I was actually expecting one of them to die, I was preparing myself for that so I was a tiny bit let down because once again nothing bad ever happens to the main characters (Tartarus, notwithstanding). No main character ever die, never (with the exception of Luke but it was to redeem himself and he was a bad guy for most of the series so…). That was my problem with The Son of Neptune. You don’t say someone will have to sacrifice himself, having this person makes the sacrifice and then save them at the last moment. It diminishes the impact the sacrifice had, it’s all for nothing, it doesn’t count. I’d rather be heartbroken than disappointed but that may be a personal idea.
I wasn’t that mad about not losing any of the seven because of Bob and Damasen. There wasn’t any doubt that Damasen would come, and given that Annabeth explained early on that Damasen and Bob were the foes who would bear arms to the Doors of Death, I was kind of expecting the ending. But it was sad anyway and I want to see, I hope we will see, how Percy will deal with Bob’s death (assuming Bob doesn’t resurrect sooner rather than later) because he let him down twice. First by leaving him at Hades’ palace and not checking on him and then by having to leave him behind in Tartarus (I know he didn’t have a choice but I don’t think Percy is the sort of person who can accept that. Actually, I bet that when everything is done he will ask the gods to raise Bob again).
It was great to see some of the old characters. I was waiting to see Grover! I was happy to see him. I also loved that Coach Hedge was the one to take Clarisse to Camp Half-Blood, I like Clarisse.
The last lines of the book were really hard. It made me want to cry a little because it’s really, really sad and kind of desperate.
Percy studied the constellations – the one Annabeth had taught him so many years ago.
“Bob says hello,” he told the stars.
The Argo II sailed into the night.
I’m not sure how the next book will play out. “To storm or fire the world must fall, an oath to keep with a final breath” surely means that someone will have to die. I kind of hope one of the seven dies actually because this is a great story and it needs a great, realistic ending. And for all his mastery of cliff-hangers and torture of characters, I sometimes get the feeling that Riordan is afraid of killing his main characters. They think that “to storm or fire” refers to Jason and Leo but I’m not so sure… Percy can also do storms… And given how Jason acted in this book, I really fear he will be the one to die. Or maybe Leo and that way, he can become immortal and be with Calypso forever.
In Measure for Measure, the Duke of Vienna is concerned that his people no longer fear the law and disregard it too freely mainly in the matters of sexual behaviour. So, he chooses to leave the city in the hands of Angelo, pretends to go abroad, and disguises himself as a friar to assess the situation unobserved. Meanwhile, Angelo has sentenced Claudio to death because he got Juliet pregnant without marrying her first. Claudio’s sister, Isabella, then tries to plead for his brother’s life but is confronted to Angelo’s lust for her. Angelo will grace her brother if she has sex with him.
Once again I’m afraid this review won’t be my most brilliant because this is an assigned reading and, as such, not something I would have chosen for myself. I don’t like to read plays. I enjoy watching them in a theater but I’m really not a fan of reading them. As it were, I had to read the play out loud because the old English is difficult for someone who is not a native speaker. This being said…
I have to begin this review with something that made me laugh for five whole minutes. And it’s probably not even funny. So, at some point in the play (and no, I didn’t have the presence of mind to note the passage so I can’t find it now but it’s in there somewhere), someone says “Peace and Prosperity” so, obviously, the first thing I thought about was:
Which then made me imagine a convoluted scenario in which a Star Trek meet Shakespeare for whatever reasons and then I realized they didn’t have to because:
Yes, I had to say it. And while we are on the subject of David Tennant… There’s nothing as beautiful as watching David playing a Shakespearian character so here is a link I found on You Tube where you can watch him play ACT III scene IV.
So, Measure for Measure. Not my favorite of Shakespeare. I know, I said I don’t like reading plays but that doesn’t mean I hadn’t read some before, namely a few well known tragedies and a couple of the historic plays. Measure for Measure is a really quick read (2 hours and a half for me) so if you’re like me and don’t really like reading plays, you may want to give it a shot because it’s quick and overall, funny.
Regarding the story, it focuses mainly on luxury and non-marital intercourses through the story of Claudio. But it goes beyond the comic aspect and the puns. Through Isabella and Angelo, the play explores the themes of lust, virtue, hypocrisy and tyranny.
Angelo is a dark character but I’m not sure if he is a real villain or not. The characters, I think, are not as Manicheans as some are in other plays. Angelo is blinded by his desire for Isabella and is obviously not a very good man if his behavior towards Marina in any indication, but he lacks something to be a real villain. He has no thirst for power and doesn’t seem to enjoy doing evil things, he is just a very selfish man who hides behind a misplaced sense of virtue. He is, in fact, very human.
Isabella is a true virtuous woman. She is to become a nun in the beginning of the play and doesn’t seem to want anything else. She’s the classic “angel”. She stays true to herself even when Angelo offers to trade her virginity for her brother’s life, she refuses to sin. And in the end, she chooses to show mercy. Ok, small spoiler alert here so don’t read the next sentence if you don’t want to, seriously avert your eyes, now. I didn’t like that the Duke doesn’t really respect her whishes in the end before asking to marry her. She obviously wanted to become a nun, and what he likes is her virtue so…
The Duke is the mandatory character in disguise. He assumes the role of a god-like figure all along the play, carefully setting things up in the shadows and only revealing himself in the big finish I don't really like him and on the cover of my edition, he looks like a stalker. He's a bit creepy, so...
I am going to stop there because I realize I don’t have much more to say. I’m sure there was a moral somewhere in the play (I suppose that you have to exert measure when having power) but I didn’t really see the point of all that. It is unclear if sexual intercourse outside of wedlock will be banned or more strongly enforced after the ending. It is unclear what will happen to the characters who are all paired up with someone they didn’t really want to marry…
I really enjoyed all the puns and the clever writing. I’m not sure I enjoyed the story as much.
Fangirl is about Cath who is a die-hard Simon Snow fan (like basically the rest of the world) and also is a big-shot Simon Snow fanfictions writer. She also has a twin sister named Wren who used to be as passionate about the fandom as her sister but who has mostly grown away from it. Now, it’s time for them to go to college and leave their old life and their fragile father behind. Wren is absolutely delighted by the prospect, she wants to make the most of her experience without Cath for a roommate. Cath, however, is overwhelmed by the whole idea and isn’t sure she can survive college on her own.
Oooook, first of all, I’m not sure how objective this review will be. I’m waaaay too emotional for that and I can relate way too much for this to be something other than praising. I say now, however, than this book isn’t for everyone (well I guess it could be for everyone on tumblr…). I’m not sure someone who isn’t really invested in a fandom can relate and I’m not sure someone who hasn’t at least some social anxiety problems can understand Cath.
That being said, this is a really, really, awesome book (read my other reviews, how many time have I said that?). I actually though it would be more funny when I picked it up. Don’t get me wrong, it was funny but it was also serious (and I was looking for a chick flick romance). This is a funny book about serious matters and that’s what got me. I was fully expecting to be told that a little fangirling was ok but that you have to grow up eventually in order to live your life. You won’t find that kind of judgmental moralization in this book (and thank you soooooo much for that Mrs Rowell).
I’m not sure I’m making a lot of sense so I will try to order my thoughts.
Cath is me and I am Cath. Cath is a very well-read fanfictions author (ok now I look like I’m boasting but I’m actually well-read in my country thank you very much) in the Simon Snow fandom. Her star fanfiction is called Carry On, Simon and I still haven’t forgiven Rainbow Rowell for not saying what Cath intended to do with Baz in the end. I will come back to the Simon Snow fandom and fandoms in general later on, but let’s focus on Cath for now.
Cath isn’t only a fangirl, she’s a slash(er? ist?) fangirl. Cath’s character could be – and probably would be – a cliché in any other book. She’s the epitome of what people outside fandoms make fun of, she is a real nerd (glasses accounted for). But Fangirl isn’t about that. It isn’t about making fun of her for being active in a slash fandom, it isn’t about making her see the light and abandon her fandom for real life, it is about accepting that you can have both. Cath also deals with a childhood trauma (I will talk about that in the read more section even if I’m not sure it counts as spoilers) and social anxiety problems.
What I loved in this book (and I’m saying loved because I don’t have a stronger word) is that Cath isn’t the crazy person nor the person you have to pity. Even Reagan doesn’t really pity her despite being her total opposite in terms of characterization. It’s unusual to see that character presented as the main character of a novel without a more or less patronizing narrative voice. And thank you, really, thank you.
Ok, maybe a psycho serial killer isn’t the best way to say thank you. Well… It’s Moriarty, best not to upset him.
Anyway, Cath is a very believable and relatable character. You can help but care for her.
Wren, Cath’s twin sister, is also a good character. She is also believable and touching in some ways. She actually made me think of some of my friends who were so involved in various fandoms only to declare it was all stupid when they went to college and became proper (quite boring) grown-ups. Wren is kind of an ass at times but I still love her. I’m a little sad we don’t know more about her side of the story (because the book is Cath’s point of view only) because I think, in her way, she’s as troubled as Cath.
Reagan, Cath’s roommate, is soooo cool. She isn’t really present in the book but I loved her. I loved her friendship with Cath because it’s easy as friendships should be.
Levi is a great character. I will talk about him a little more in the read more section because some things about him left me a little mixed.
And I have to say also that I couldn’t help but imagine Nick as Colin Morgan. So if ever there is a movie, this is a shout to the world, Colin Morgan is your man.
Ok, next is the Simon Snow fandom. The Simon Snow fandom is very obviously (it was obvious for me anyway) mainly the Harry Potter fandom mixed with some others. Simon and Baz, I gathered, were Harry and Draco. So, of course, if, like me, you’re a Harry Potter fan (admit it, you would never have guessed if I hadn’t told you), you will love every references to HP and all the Simon Snow books or fanfictions excerpts.
It’s quite clever because you come to care as much for the actual characters as for the fandom characters. There are a lot of fanfictions excerpts and of book excerpts and, in the end, you want to know what will happen between Simon and Baz. You understand why Cath loves them so much (or I guess you understand if you care as much for your own characters in your own fandom). And I want to know how Carry on, Simon ended dammit…
Ok, I will stop there for the review without spoilers because I fear I’m going to say too much. In the read-more I will talk more about how the novel tackles the various problems surrounding fanfictions in general, the confrontation between fanfictions and original writing and why Simon Snow is so important to Cath. I will also talk about Levi because I think is character is the most striking example of the only recurring fault I could find in the novel. And, of course, of Cath’s evolution and of why this book is one of a kind.
Two last words for the posterity: READ IT.
So, if you’re not afraid of spoilers, follow me. If you want to read the book and don’t want any spoilers, stop right here.
I will actually start with Levi. Levi is a little too much perfect. He’s the only character I had trouble caring for but I still liked him, that’s not the problem. Problem is : Levi can read but at the same time he can’t. I’m guessing (only guessing I have no knowledge whatsoever of those problems so if someone knows and could tell me, I would like that) he has a kind of dyslexia which is perfectly fine and goes nicely with the fact that Cath is an author. But, and that’s my main problem, it isn’t really addressed. Cath reads to him. That’s not a solution. I suppose there must be other way to help him? (Again, I don’t know, I’m not a specialist) It should at least been brought up, I think.
There are a lot of things about other characters that aren’t really addressed. For instance, after Wren is admitted to the hospital, she has a bruise and can’t stop crying… What happened? Was it really, really bad? Because I got the feeling that it was…
It didn’t bother me that much that we were evading those questions because the book is about Cath. Not that she is self-centered! But it’s more like what she doesn’t notice is put aside and it actually quite suits her character. But still. I would have liked answers.
Moving on to fanfictions. What I liked the most about that aspect in the book is that you get to see all the debates around fanfictions. For Professor Piper, fanfictions aren’t a real piece of writing, it’s stealing bordering on plagiarism. For Cath, it’s easy, it’s borrowing a world and characters and playing with them. And for Reagan: “What the fuck is ‘the fandom’?” (p34).
You see every view possible on fanfictions: those who don’t approve, those who write them, those who read them and those who don’t even know what you’re talking about. Every fanfic author has lived that moment where someone ask “What are you writing about?”. You can’t always answer that question because it requires soooo much explanation and more often than not you’re actually made fun of. And I’m not even a slash author, I can imagine it’s worse for them.
Aside from fanfictions and original writings, I think the most important thing in the book is Cath’s relation with the act of writing itself. She writes fanfictions because it’s a way of escaping reality :
“Why do we write fiction?” Professor Piper asked.
Cath looked down at her notebook.
To disappear. (p21)
I think it’s implied somewhere that she began a little after their mom left? In any case, it’s obviously her way of coping with the world around her and with her problems (here again, I do the same). What’s interesting is the way fanfictions are opposed to original writing. Cath, despite being a very good writer, apparently can’t write an original story. Why? Because while fanfictions can be very personal, they aren’t often about you. You may know the characters better than anyone, you may put them in unusual stories, they’re not yours. Well, they’re yours without being yours. They’re adopted. You love them, you raise them a certain way in your stories, you care for them, you cry for them… But, you didn’t give birth to them. You didn’t bleed, you didn’t hurt… Original writing is another thing. Original writing implies giving birth. You bleed and you hurt and they are your characters. It’s scarier than fanfictions by far.
I think Cath’s incapacity of writing original stories comes from her mom and her fear of rejection. She’s afraid of “giving birth”, I think. She’s afraid of not being good enough. And in the end, she only succeeds in writing an original story by confronting those fears through the telling of her own childhood trauma. You can’t totally “disappear” when you write original fiction.
What I liked most about this book, and what surprised me the most I must admit, is that she doesn’t leave the fandom behind at the end. Usually, in that kind of book, when the “nerd” has a boyfriend/girlfriend, the character realizes that she/he doesn’t need all that anymore and leaves it for the “real life”. I absolutely loved that Cath did not do that. She stays true to herself and that’s really great.
And I still don’t know how Carry On, Simon ended… I think I would have killed Baz too. I agree with Cath, it’s the ultimate form of redemption for that kind of character. I often killed Draco myself in order to redeem him…
Anyway… What did you think? Don’t be shy, leave an ask, I want to discuss books… What did you think?
So I read your review about "A tale of two cities" and I chose to comment in an ask instead of in the actual comment line because I'm using too many words. ;) First: Oh my God. I loved your comparisons! You started with Les Miserables (YES! :D and bless you for using this gif :D ), digressed to Mulan (my fav Disney movie) and then you mentioned Tom Branson!!! Oh and of course the Harry Potter parallel! I agree with you in a lot of points, especially about the characters.
You’re my first ask ever! I’m so happy someone loved my comparisons ! I’ve just started studying the novel as a matter of fact but I didn’t get to the point where we analyze the characters yet. I can’t wait to see what people who actually studied this their whole life have to say about them.
About Lucie, I really think her character is what it is because of the context. It’s really annoying for us but books written by men during this period usually have that kind of characters (I have to read Evelina by Burney next and I can already tell you it’s gonna be a pain in the ass). I guess that’s part of what make the book look boring because I, for one, like my heroine sassy and in charge and that’s also maybe why I don’t read that much Victorian novels. Dickens as an author never particularly attracted me. I know it’s horrible to say but I don’t really care about Oliver Twist and all his childhood dramas – or is that David Copperfield ? – anyway I’ve studied basic English civilization for three whole years and my teacher was actually a big fan of the Industrial Revolution period and of the Victorian Era which means I know more than I ever wanted to about the steaming engine (James Walt if anyone’s wondering) and Victorian context in general so every novel talking about workhouses and such I can live without. I’m the kind of person who gets attached to characters and it often makes a difference in whether I love the book or not. I scarcely if ever read for historical background.
I went off topic again.. I was talking about Lucie, yes, and I was going to say that if she is the way she is because (I guess) she stands for the ideal woman, it’s a little extreme even for the context because there are plenty of Victorian novel main female characters who aren’t as flat. I want to mention Jane Austen but I feel it’s different because she’s a female author, but who else… Well I’m going to stretch a little bit and mention French authors like… let’s say Victor Hugo (I’m not actually sure they’re contemporary but it should be around the same period) his female characters aren’t as thin as Lucie is. I got the feeling that Lucie was nearly ethereal, she was there without being there and that’s why I think she’s more an allegory than anything else. She has no flaw, that’s it. That’s why she doesn’t come as real as everyone else, I think.
About Miss Pross, I began to care about her in the third part of the book because compared to Lucie, she was awesome (not so hard because compared to Lucie everybody is awesome). I was desperate to connect with a character at that stage and I supposed I was so bored by the characters, I started to wonder if it was possible to ship Pross with Lorry. I didn’t say anything about him at all in my review, that’s true. I agree with you though, I liked him very much because he looks like a nice man and I couldn’t help but imagine an old man who looks like a kind grandpa. He looks like the glue that stick everything together and, you’re right, he is the most “normal” character because, I think, he’s the most developed. He’s here from beginning to end and as such, we have time to get to know him whereas Darnay or Carton don’t often get much “screen time”. Every chapter with them is quickly done.
I think I have quite the same feelings as you about Madame Defarge… I liked her in the beginning but after a while my admiration for her (because she is quite badass, we have to admit it) began to fade away. I think that’s how we’re supposed to feel because she’s kind of an embodiment of the Revolution? So there must be a duality fascination/repulsion? She’s a bit extreme with her convictions but I guess that it’s what makes her a great character.
I kind of want to watch a movie adaptation of the book in fact but I’m not sure because watching an adaptation after having read the book is sometimes irritating. I’m thinking about that because you mentioned I’ve talked about Les Misérables and I’ve heard quite a lot of criticism about the movie but people don’t seem to realize that it’s an adaptation of the musical which is itself adapted from the book… Of course it won’t be exactly like the novel. There are quite a lot of good adaptation of Les Misérables which are closer to the book – Robert Hossein’s for instance is a really good one – but that does not mean Hooper’s Les Misérables wasn’t a good movie. In the case of A Tale of Two Cities, I’m almost thinking it would maybe work better for me as a movie (and by movie I mean mini-series BBC style) than as a book. I know a loooot of people won’t agree with me and maybe call me the slayer of good old literature but, fact is, this book is really hard to read, not because it’s hard to understand but because the way we apprehend literature has changed so much and it’s completely normal. Literature has evolved, keeps evolving even today, and I’m afraid the book is not as enjoyable for the masses (understand by that people who aren’t passionate about Victorian literature or specialist of British literature but casual readers) as it once was, not because of the general story but because of the way written words present that story. I think an ethereal (*cough* boring *cough*) Lucie wouldn’t be as nerve-grating on screen for instance.
I’ve got waaaay off topic and I’ve written way too much. And maybe you won’t even see this answer because I’m hopeless with technology. I’m not sure I answered everything you asked me… I hope I did. J
I’m happy to discuss my reviews with anyone who wants to! Don’t hesitate to ask, I don’t bite I promise.
