all the trouble you're in
Dec. 12th, 2008 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyAhh, let's talk books, shall we?
The Host, or my last chance to win me over S. Meyer book. I'll admit it. I loved Twilight, and I love Alice and Jacob, but as a whole, the series *coughBellacough* drove me insane at times. If you're new, then you don't know that. But there aren't that many new people. Anyway, Cassy's husband recommended The Host and Mom requested the book from the library by accident. [She was bitten by the Twilight bug. She, I'm sorry to say, is enamored of Edward, but I tell myself that's because Jacob's level of awesome doesn't really kick in just yet.] So. I cracked the book once Mumsy began complaining it had to be returned to the library soon. I know, right? I didn't request the thing, she did and I'm getting fussed at for not reading it fast enough. Rude!
I do, really. That is, I keep thinking, "This is an awful lot like a Pike book. Only... not." If you're too lazy to look the synopsis up, here goes. Aliens have taken over Earth. Body snatcher style. The book is billed as a romantic triangle with only two bodies, which is an interesting premise, but not all that accurate.
Wanderer, the parasite/alien/Soul inserted in Melanie Stryder is a bit disconcerted when she can still hear Melanie rumbling around in her own head. Not supposed to happen. It doesn't take long for Melanie/Wanderer to go off in search of Melanie's little brother and true-love. And they nearly die in the process. So far, so good. I want to smack the person/Soul I'm supposed to and I kind of like Mel and Wanderer. They meet up with the humans and things get a little... strained.
I'm not sure if this is a case of Ms. Meyer just having opted to tell stories where your Male Romantic Lead abuses the FRL and it's a bit of a coinky dink, or if she's got a kink I really don't need to know about. Years of being abused by LKH have jaded me, honey. I'm just pointing that out. See, Jared, our MRL attacks W/M because, well, Wanderer isn't Mel, right? Right? Of course she is. The abuse is heaped on from all sides and Wanda is a doormat, which is just as infuriating for me as it is for Mel. Except Mel's no better if Jared is in the picture. But there's a balance here, and I mostly like where the book heads, although there is one NEON sign I see coming away and it kind of spoils the end of the book. The triangle ropes in a third actual body and if you don't see where that's going, you... obviously skipped Twilight and went for The Host first.
For the slight annoyance at the happy ending at the expense of... I'm not sure. I like happy endings, but I don't like them when they're either really obviously telegraphed from the start even when I'm told there won't be one and I'm screaming, "Duh! Will too!" or... well, when I'm promised a fight and I get warm fuzzies.
If there was a style issue, writing wise, it didn't bother me. What did bother me were the two things I'm a bit worried might become recurring themes in her writing.
1) The aforementioned violence kick wherein the dude kicks the crap out of the heroine and she accepts it as her due. In this case it's a bit harder to cry foul on, given that I'd probably hit first, ask questions later if someone body snatched someone I was in love with and then waltzed back into my life, potentially bringing the rest of the bodysnatchers with them. I'm not all that fond of the total googly eyed thing Mel had going on, but Wanda [...it's rare to find someone worse with names than I am, but I'll be damned if Stephenie doesn't manage to pull it off] tempers that with her attraction to Ian. Of course, the violence continues given that Ian appears and attempts to flat out kill Wanda...
2) Dude, lady, you've got an underage girl thing. Wanda's second body is 17, lies about her age to be with her twuuu wuv, and looks even younger than she is. But when you put it back to back with Jacob and Nessie? Yeah, ick. Issues, honey. Issues! I guess Wanda being a thousand should outweigh this but there's an ick factor, particularly given the Mel/Jared freakout in flashbacks.
Overall I say thee yay. The 'not' portion of the Pike comparison is because if it had been Pike? They really would have been the only pocket of humans left, at least on this side of the world.
Leaving that brick behind, we move on to my brain candy in the form of Revelation, the latest book [that I can get my grubby hands on, at any rate] in the Private series. For once it took until the end of the book for me to want to throttle Reed something horrible. With that in mind, an open suggestion to all YA protaganists: When you come home to find your room/house/whatever trashed, you call the fucking police. When someone leaves proof of the crime they've commited? You call the damn cops. You do not flush the evidence down the toilet.
But I can overlook that because Reed had a backbone through most of the book and I swear, I could not be more proud. But I could be more smug because... you ready? I knew it! I KNEW Sabine was Reed's psycho-stalker! I didn't know why, but the moment she went out of her way to trash Noelle I knew she wasn't right. It makes me sad because, dude, this is twice Reed's been tricked, but she's a bit dense at times. But there's got to be a cease fire on these fucking cliff-hanger endings. Really. No more! Not end the series to stop it, just stop the cliff-hangers. It's annoying.
Dude, though, there's something seriously screwy in Ariana's gene pool.
Okie. Amandas have been carded and will be escorted to the mailbox tomorrow. I'd take them out today, but, um, the mail has already come and I didn't think to grab my pile o' cards and hand them to the mailman when he rang the bell to get me to sign for something.
The Host, or my last chance to win me over S. Meyer book. I'll admit it. I loved Twilight, and I love Alice and Jacob, but as a whole, the series *coughBellacough* drove me insane at times. If you're new, then you don't know that. But there aren't that many new people. Anyway, Cassy's husband recommended The Host and Mom requested the book from the library by accident. [She was bitten by the Twilight bug. She, I'm sorry to say, is enamored of Edward, but I tell myself that's because Jacob's level of awesome doesn't really kick in just yet.] So. I cracked the book once Mumsy began complaining it had to be returned to the library soon. I know, right? I didn't request the thing, she did and I'm getting fussed at for not reading it fast enough. Rude!
I do, really. That is, I keep thinking, "This is an awful lot like a Pike book. Only... not." If you're too lazy to look the synopsis up, here goes. Aliens have taken over Earth. Body snatcher style. The book is billed as a romantic triangle with only two bodies, which is an interesting premise, but not all that accurate.
Wanderer, the parasite/alien/Soul inserted in Melanie Stryder is a bit disconcerted when she can still hear Melanie rumbling around in her own head. Not supposed to happen. It doesn't take long for Melanie/Wanderer to go off in search of Melanie's little brother and true-love. And they nearly die in the process. So far, so good. I want to smack the person/Soul I'm supposed to and I kind of like Mel and Wanderer. They meet up with the humans and things get a little... strained.
I'm not sure if this is a case of Ms. Meyer just having opted to tell stories where your Male Romantic Lead abuses the FRL and it's a bit of a coinky dink, or if she's got a kink I really don't need to know about. Years of being abused by LKH have jaded me, honey. I'm just pointing that out. See, Jared, our MRL attacks W/M because, well, Wanderer isn't Mel, right? Right? Of course she is. The abuse is heaped on from all sides and Wanda is a doormat, which is just as infuriating for me as it is for Mel. Except Mel's no better if Jared is in the picture. But there's a balance here, and I mostly like where the book heads, although there is one NEON sign I see coming away and it kind of spoils the end of the book. The triangle ropes in a third actual body and if you don't see where that's going, you... obviously skipped Twilight and went for The Host first.
For the slight annoyance at the happy ending at the expense of... I'm not sure. I like happy endings, but I don't like them when they're either really obviously telegraphed from the start even when I'm told there won't be one and I'm screaming, "Duh! Will too!" or... well, when I'm promised a fight and I get warm fuzzies.
If there was a style issue, writing wise, it didn't bother me. What did bother me were the two things I'm a bit worried might become recurring themes in her writing.
1) The aforementioned violence kick wherein the dude kicks the crap out of the heroine and she accepts it as her due. In this case it's a bit harder to cry foul on, given that I'd probably hit first, ask questions later if someone body snatched someone I was in love with and then waltzed back into my life, potentially bringing the rest of the bodysnatchers with them. I'm not all that fond of the total googly eyed thing Mel had going on, but Wanda [...it's rare to find someone worse with names than I am, but I'll be damned if Stephenie doesn't manage to pull it off] tempers that with her attraction to Ian. Of course, the violence continues given that Ian appears and attempts to flat out kill Wanda...
2) Dude, lady, you've got an underage girl thing. Wanda's second body is 17, lies about her age to be with her twuuu wuv, and looks even younger than she is. But when you put it back to back with Jacob and Nessie? Yeah, ick. Issues, honey. Issues! I guess Wanda being a thousand should outweigh this but there's an ick factor, particularly given the Mel/Jared freakout in flashbacks.
Overall I say thee yay. The 'not' portion of the Pike comparison is because if it had been Pike? They really would have been the only pocket of humans left, at least on this side of the world.
Leaving that brick behind, we move on to my brain candy in the form of Revelation, the latest book [that I can get my grubby hands on, at any rate] in the Private series. For once it took until the end of the book for me to want to throttle Reed something horrible. With that in mind, an open suggestion to all YA protaganists: When you come home to find your room/house/whatever trashed, you call the fucking police. When someone leaves proof of the crime they've commited? You call the damn cops. You do not flush the evidence down the toilet.
But I can overlook that because Reed had a backbone through most of the book and I swear, I could not be more proud. But I could be more smug because... you ready? I knew it! I KNEW Sabine was Reed's psycho-stalker! I didn't know why, but the moment she went out of her way to trash Noelle I knew she wasn't right. It makes me sad because, dude, this is twice Reed's been tricked, but she's a bit dense at times. But there's got to be a cease fire on these fucking cliff-hanger endings. Really. No more! Not end the series to stop it, just stop the cliff-hangers. It's annoying.
Dude, though, there's something seriously screwy in Ariana's gene pool.
Okie. Amandas have been carded and will be escorted to the mailbox tomorrow. I'd take them out today, but, um, the mail has already come and I didn't think to grab my pile o' cards and hand them to the mailman when he rang the bell to get me to sign for something.
