A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I am not going to parse my feeling on this one. And spoilers will abound because I cannot be bothered to pretend I care about spoiling this book for anyone.

I hated 99% of this book. I hated it so much that I ripped through it as quickly as I could in the vain hope that perhaps something could redeem it. Spoilers: no such redemption ever happened. Seriously. It took until 70% of the way through this for me to find one thing I liked about the writing, characters, or setting. (For the curious, that one thing was the punishment Amarantha meted out to Jurian for destroying her sister. It was the first thing I found original and interesting and cruel enough to merit Amarantha's reputation. Amarantha herself did nothing in person to interest me whatsoever. Cookie cutter villain to the nth degree. And her motivations made me want to puke.)

In broad sweeps, my feelings are thus: None of these characters had an ounce of originality. The setting could have been interesting, but was lingered over in all the wrong spots and used in none of the good ones. The plot PLODDED on and on and on. (I was so freaking bored waiting for something to happen. Even when things were happening I was bored because I knew what was going to happen.) The writing was... weak, at best.

In short, I haven't felt this way about a book since the Eragon novels by Christopher Paolini. What could have been an intriguing twist on an age-old story is instead rife with paper cut-out characters, descriptions of clothing and OMGEMOTIONS, and a plot so thin I could've blown it apart with a breath. Even the answer to Amarantha's riddle was obvious (duh, it's love, because of course it is, don't you know LOVE IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING). And I haven't even mentioned the insanity that was the insta-love story between Tamlin and Feyre, or the much hinted at love triangle to come with Rhysand. Which is a shame because Rhysand was the only character I had a shred of interest in even if he is just a typical antihero. Maybe she won't go there with the love triangle (I haven't read the sequel yet), but I doubt it. Everything else has conformed to the worst stereotypes of young adult fantasy-romance, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

Did I mention how much I loathed Feyre? She was unimaginably stupid, even for an uneducated teenager slave to her emotions. Her inner monologue was so frustratingly repetitious that I often felt like Maas wrote this as a NaNoWriMo novel and was struggling for word count. And, oh, her feeling about things completely turned on a dime at several points with little to no build-up to her changing her mind. She's the NARRATOR. We're IN HER HEAD. I feel like the main character's move from loathing the fae to falling in love with the High Lord of the Spring Court might have been a tad more believable.

I'm ripping this to shreds for a few reasons. One is that all the people I know who like young adult novels loved this series. How could so many people be wrong, I thought naively to myself as I pulled this off the library shelf. Two is that as soon as I realized the premise of this book was a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fable, my interest was piqued. Too bad that contributed to the book's predictability and mundanity. I'll take Robin McKinley's Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast or Rose Daughter over this any day.

The third and most important reason I am not holding back on my wrath for how awful I found this book is that I am a writer. I am writing young adult fantasy with romance. I cannot believe things like this not only get published, but are nearly universally loved. This is not good romance. These are not good characters. None of this was good writing. I'm going to give Sarah J. Maas the benefit of the doubt and hope some of her other books are better and that is why people love her so, but... Guys. Really? In some ways, this gives me more hope of being published. In other ways... not so much. If THIS is what readers want? Ugh.

....okay. Enough of my ranting. Time for me to get my hands on A Court of Mist and Fury. Yeah, I'm gonna keep reading. I've heard the sequel is better. And I'm nothing if not persistent.



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Anne of Windy Poplars

Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love the Anne of Green Gables series so much, that I feel terrible knocking a star off this review. So let's get the negative out of the way first, and then I'll perform the gushing this book truly deserves.

The negative = the pacing. This book is a little bit different from the three previous Anne books in that most of it consists of Anne's letters to Gilbert. In that vein, the pacing is mostly composed of short stories about Anne's adventures in Summerside, the town in which she is serving as a high school principal for three years while her fiance becomes a doctor. It's not that I didn't enjoy each of the vignettes about the characters Anne meets (and usually reforms), but overall it made the book feel a bit more choppy and slow then the previous books. Thus, only four stars instead of five.

The positive = just about everything else. Lucy Maud Montgomery has a talent for making happy endings compelling to me. She also has a talent for making me cry happy tears when beloved characters get their dearest wishes even when such endings are completely cliche and fairly unbelievable. What else can I say? Following Anne Shirley on her journey always makes me happy, always makes me want to write and read poetry, always makes sunsets more crimson and stars more twinkly bright. I find writing an objective critique of the story or writing style as impossible as it would be for me to hate a kitten. One just can't.

All of that being said, I did love the first three Anne books more than Windy Poplars. Mostly because I find them more re-readable. But I'm sure the antics of Dusty Miller (That Cat!), Rebecca Dew, Minerva Tomgallon, Katherine Brook, and all the rest will stick with me for a long time...

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The Subconscious Theater

There is a forest in my mind. It is an incomprehensibly huge place, encompassing all of the forests of the world and none of them. Within it are cool shadows, the bitter smell of rotting leaves, the soft scratch of dead pine needles underfoot. The trees soar up and away into the blue sky, sometimes crowding out the view so completely that walking beneath their branches is akin to walking through a tunnel or a cave, trusting only the instinct for light to lead the way out. Roaring waterfalls echo between the pines. Streams babbles away within their mossy banks, talking even when no one is listening. And the narrow deer paths that lace through the hardwoods always seem to emerge upon a grassy meadow, or the top of a hill overgrown with flowers, or even the precipice of a dusty cliff made of red rocks that stretch all the way down to a sudden canyon's bottom.

The forest covers an immense distance, but it does end. It is bordered on one side by a road of hard-packed dirt. The road goes many places both backward and forward, but its real purpose is to provide a break in the trees so one can finally reach the sea. Crossing the road leads to a short stretch of yellow grass and a longer stretch of shale and tumbled stone that forms a barrier before the dunes. On the other side is a shore, a gentle curve of white beach like a patch of spilt sugar between dunes and waves and jetty. Gulls appear, wheeling and crying. Otters rock upon the grey ripples of the water, diving for urchins and abalone. And at the end of the jetty is an old rowboat, tied to a posted wedged into the rocks. It rises and falls with the tides, weathered and wearing only one white coat of paint.

The rowboat has a single purpose - to get to the small island a few hundred meters away from the jetty. On the island is a lighthouse and a small white cottage. The lighthouse can be seen for miles, its tower striped black and red, its light flashing in unhurried circles. Within its impossibly large rooms are dozens, sometimes hundreds of people and animals. And, jammed to the gills as it is, it's amazing the light is lit at all.

Return of the Writer

Because this is mine and no one else's (forget that it's publicly posted on the internet) I'm not going to stress about what this first post of my return to this blog should say. If one wants to know who I am, there's my bio at the top of the site.

All I really want is a place to put my thoughts and the workings of my inner world somewhere I can see. I'm nothing if not a visual person.

Things I Think I'll Post

• Elaborate fantasies about my lighthouse and the world it inhabits
• Conversations with my muse
• Musings on my totems and whether I care if they have actual meaning
• Boring updates about my writing life
• Boring updates about the rest of my life (maybe)
• Thoughts on reading and writing and music
• Memories

We'll see. No promises. I don't want to hold myself to anything because I don't think I'm prepared to deal with the guilt if I can't carry through. Those words in the photo are my father's, not mine. I'm trying hard to live up to them, but it's difficult. I'll probably write about that too.

For now...

At least there's something here.