Son of Trash Tuesday (ok, maybe Grandson)

It's been awhile since I've written a book review.

You're right, that is putting it a bit mildly.

It's been awhile since I've written anything - I've thought about it, but it was pretty much in the same way you might think about calling Great Aunt Martha to thank her for the birthday present: I wanted to do it, I knew I should do it. But I kept letting other things get in the way and after a few weeks not doing it became the easier thing to do since facing up to the fact that I hadn't was too embarrassing.

I was in a cab with a group of people from work last week and we got onto the subject of title trends. For awhile there was the Something's Daughter  then it was American Something. These days it feels like Bone is de rigeur in titles*.

City of Bones
The Bone Dragon
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Shadow and Bone
The Bone Season

At some point over the next weeks I intend to review all of those, but I'm going to start with the one that I wanted to like the most, but didn't.

Brownian Motion Does The Bone Season

I should have loved The Bone Season. The recipe is one I know and love: kickass independant female protagonist, magic, an alternate version of London, and a villain of mysterious origin. But The Bone Season was half baked at best and I don't think I'd want to serve it up to anyone.

My biggest complaint about the book is one I've heard elsewhere: it feels crowded, as though Samantha Shannon was trying desperately to cram as much as she could into her debut in case it was her only chance.

Worse, these bits of world building, which make up some of the best writing in the book (not a backhanded compliment - it is good writing) come at the most awkward moments, throwing you out of the story rather than pulling you deeper into the world the way good world building should.

I will also admit to not liking the main character. Her father works for the government and she has had a fairly privileged upbringing. Yet the character as we meet her is all street slang. I'd accept putting on a front to fit in with her new criminal life, but even interior monologues are riddled with it. There is no sign of the type of character I would expect from someone with her backstory. I didn't find her believable except in tiny moments, and those were few and far between.

Let's talk about the slang: there is just too much of it. I didn't find the glossary until part way through the book but I was more annoyed after finding it since I was spending so much time flipping back and forth between new words and their definitions that I actually lost my place more than once. Harry Potter got away with introducing us to a whole new vocabulary because the terms were explained by other characters in-story or presented in a way that explained them to us without resorting to info-dump.

Which brings me to my next complaint. As good as the writing in the info-dumpy sections is, it's still info-dump. Shannon never resorts to 'As you know, the King, your father' but she comes close on a few occasions. I've always liked show not tell, and most of this novel is tell.

At first, I accepted all of this, as annoying as it was, and probably would have given Shannon more of a break (young writer, debut novel, huge expectations) until I got about 5/6 of the way through. This is the point when the camel of slang and info-dump had its back smashed by a TOTALLY unnecessary love story.

I've tweeted about my desire to see a YA novel without a love triangle crammed into it. I read so much YA I'm boooooooooored of them. You always know who the heroine is going to pick and a lot of the time there is nothing particularly original about the path that part of the story takes. But a stereotypical YA love triangle would have been 1000 times better than the sudden...thing that happens in this book.

I'm not going to analyse it, or break it down because I don't think I can be objective. I hated it. I was reading on the train and I honestly did a double-take and said 'what?' out loud. Then I had to put the book away because I didn't think I could get through any more of it in a public  place.**

I will say that based on Paige's behaviour and internal monologue up to that point her sudden change of heart it completely unbelievable. Two or three books from now? Maybe. Probably. But like the world-building it feels as though Shannon wrote the love angle as a box ticking exercise.  There is something fundamentally missing from the story if she expects me, as a reader, to buy into this relationship.

Will I read the book again? Probably not. The hype about the originality of the world is deserved and I when I got over being yanked out of the story, I enjoyed the way the info-dump sections were written, but it just wasn't compelling enough for me to want to climb back into it or to anticipate the next book.

Brownian Motion Rating:

Day 1: Sigh.
Day 2: Sigh.
Day 3: Sigh.
Day 4: Sigh.
Day  - oh you get the point.


*We're just waiting for the American Daughter's Bones to come out and complete the circle.

** I tossed American Psycho across the room halfway through the rodent scene because I couldn't take anymore. The Bone Season is a lot bigger and the train was very crowded.

The Return of Trash Tuesday: The Trash-ening

I said I would review Between on the blog in February. Thanks only to the fact that 2012 is a leap year, I'm going to manage it.


It's been awhile since I did a review, so refresh your concept of BROWNIAN MOTION, my patented* rating system. 


I'm making a change this time: instead of a day by day aftermath rating I'm going to to let you know how I felt while I was actually reading the book because my opinion has not changed since I finished it.


Ready? O-K.

Between, Jessica Warman

I picked Between up because I was looking for something without angels, vampires, werewolves, love triangles, magic (or Magick), faeries, aliens, creatures from another dimension or dystopian government oppression. I wanted the 'real world'.


The back of Between sounded promising:


Elizabeth Vachar is young. beautiful and popular. Everything is right in her expensive, glossy life...until the night of her eighteenth birthday party, on her parent's yacht. A persistent thumping noise from outside the boat wakes her. What Liz finds changes everything she thought she knew about her life, her friends, and what lies in between.


I'm not giving anything away when I say that the body is Liz and that the book is narrated by her ghost. I grew up reading Christopher Pike and by page six was already comparing it to Remember Me. Not favourably either. Only a few pages in I was ready to put the book on the bottom of the TBR pile for the next printed-word drought. Except that there was no TBR pile anymore and it was this or nothing. 


Boy am I glad I kept reading.


Liz is dead at the end of Chapter 1 and everyone accepts that it was a tragic accident before we hit page sixty. There is no drama about the situation for the living, beyond her death and funeral for most of the book. Liz mostly watches her friends and family cope with her absence and try to move on. But what they do, or don't do, reveals a lot - both about Liz and about how she died.



There are definite echoes of Remember Me in Between. It's narrated by a ghost, exactly how she died is a mystery, and there are lots and lots of family secrets, but the similarities are mostly surface detail and I think I'd have found them in almost any book with a ghost as the major character. The most impressive things about this book were the subtle changes that Warman made to Liz after each visit to her past. The only way I can think of to accurately describe the transformation is that I got to watch a character grow up, and do so pretty believably, in only 430 pages. 

The mystery is written well. I kept revising my opinion of The Truth because Warman kept feeding me crumbs which, together, seemed to make a cake. Every time I thought I had it worked out, another bit would come out and I would have to revise my opinion. The actual Cake-of-Truth at the end was made of most of the crumbs and it wasn't a surprise, but I like it when authors make you second-guess yourself, even if it's just a little bit.

The book may have paranormal DNA, and I may be So. Over.That.  but Warman's writing is engaging and the visits to the past are written in such a way that you forget the fact that the narrator is already dead. By the end, I wanted Liz to somehow make it. To be able to go back to her body and take the things she had learned with her. Mostly I just wanted to hug her. And I hated her in the first few chapters. Hated. 

Between is about death and learning about yourself. but it isn't preachy. The author doesn't bash you over the head with life lessons, make the book into some kind of Very Special Episode or have everyone hug at the end and promise to be nicer to the school outcast. Not everyone is able to move on.


Since there are two mysteries in the book, telling you much more would be spoiling. Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed it, despite an initial wobble and that I'll be adding it to my 'Read Again' pile.


Brownian Rating:


Bookstore reaction: Awesome. YA crime. That thumping noise outside has got to be a body and Liz is going to turn Nancy Drew. I love Nancy Drew! 9/10


Chapter 1: Aw CRAP. This is going to be a rehash of Christopher Pike's Remember Me isn't it? Those are some pretty big shoes to fill Warman. I'm not sure you're going to live up to my memory of that book** 4/10


Chapter 2: Aaaaaaaand we've got the dead classmate guide going on. He was hit by a car a year ago. Yeah. This is totally Remember Me, except Liz is kind of a shallow bitch and I think I hate her. 2/10


Chapter  6: Okay. Maybe it's not a total rip-off. Liz is messed up. Is that pity, or do I need another cookie? 3/10


Chapter 12: Seriously messed up! Man. That feeling was pity. I actually feel sorry for you Liz. Sorry for calling you a shallow bitch. 6/10


Chapter 21: Oh god. You poor screwed up girl. I saw it coming, but I didn't see THAT coming. Wow. Okay. Not Remember Me. I hope when I die that this does not happen to me and I solemnly swear to be nicer to people so viewing the past isn't so horrible if it does. 8/10


Finish: I think I might have actually cried a bit. 8/10


For a book that started out high and which would have been abandoned before Chapter 2 if I'd had anything else to read, Between ended on a high note. I think it is one of the better YA books I've read this year and I'll keep an eye out for  more of Warman's work.


If you do pick it up and start to draw comparisons with Christopher Pike, favourable or not, don't give into the temptation to lump them together. Like Liz Vachar, there is definitely more going on under the surface here and it is worth finding out.


*Patent pending


** Unrepentant C.Pike FIEND here. Remember Me is third on my list of favourites after Sati and Witch. The sequels didn't happen. La la la. I can't hear you.

Trash Tuesdays - Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

Welcome to Trash Tuesdays. Watch out for the Binja.


I love China Mieville. My Masters thesis was based on three of his 'grown-up' novels. I love the way he builds worlds and characters. I love the way he manipulates words and convinces them to mean the same thing but in entirely new ways. I love the way he quietly gets you to think about government and the way you live, without being overtly preachy. Reading Mieville makes you think about life and language in entirely new ways. In Un Lun Dun Mieville abandons grown-ups for YA.* 


Weird things are happening to 12 year old Zanna: Sycophantic graffiti, clouds in the shape of her face, animals bowing and strangers congratulating her on the street. Zanna is the Chosen One - chosen for what, no one is exactly clear, but she's Chosen, and that's enough for their support. But then something happens to Zanna and her best friend Deeba has to ditch her role as side-kick and become the Un-Chosen one.


The book is split into two halves. In the first is the story you think you expect. In the second is the story you need and ultimately, the one you wanted all along. When I reached the division I thought 'finally!' and my irritation with the book started to fade. Zanna is about as interesting as any stock 'chosen one', which is to say she isn't. Deeba, on the other hand, is who I'd back in a fight.* Like Deirdre last week, Deeba uses her own brain to figure things out, does her research and makes her own decisions based on her values.  Strong Female Protagonist FTW! (Especially if she has a pet milk carton).  


Un Lun Dun has an environmental message, and at times this gets a bit heavy handed. Maybe obvious is a better term than heavy- handed since I'm not sure the target audience would pick up on the same clues as an adult reader. I will say that for a book aimed at tweens and early teens, it's amazingly frank about the world around us and pulls very few punches.


Mieville draws on lots of my favourite books for this: Alice in Wonderland, the Narnia books, Neverwhere, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Wizard of Oz - the wonderful weirdness that saturates these books and makes them so good is here, but it's mixed with something seriously sinister. The coating on this book isn't sugar, it's a film of petrol.


On to the Brownian Points:


Day One: BR: 6/10. Enjoyed it but ticked off by the age adapted writing.


Day Two: BR: 7/10. Okay. Protagonists are actually 12. Age adapted writing not so bad in context.


Day Three: BR: 7.5/10. He-he - carnivorous giraffes!


Day Four and Five: BR:  8/10. Ninjas + Dustbins = binja = AWESOME.


Day Six: BR: 8.5/10 - I'd like a suit made out of books.


Day Seven: BR: 8.5/10. Carnivorous GIRAFFES!!!


Final Brownian rating: 8.5/10. Like so many of Mieville's books this one sticks with you. The longer I think about it, the more I like it. It's definitely different from his other work, but equally enjoyable. It didn't win the Locus Award for nothing.


Next week: Graceling by Kristen Cashore.






*A bit Y-er than I initially thought when I bought it which put me off for awhile, but it grew on me. 


*Yes, even though she's 12.

Trash Tuesday - Fallen by Lauren Kate

Taking a page from the Divine Ms Em and Stupidgirl, I'm going to theme some of my days in an effort to be more consistent with my blogging.

So: Trash Tuesday is born.

'What's Trash Tuesday?' I hear you ask.

On Trash Tuesday I'm going to post Book Reviews. But not just any book reviews. There will be no Booker or Orange prize winners here. I'm going to review mass- market brain-candy. Mostly Young Adult mass-market brain-candy because I plough through them like popcorn - and like popcorn one bite always makes me want MORE!

So, the first tome to be reviewed?

I'm going to go with Fallen by Lauren Kate, if only because I tripped over it so many times last week that I when someone asks me about the bruises on my legs I want to be able to shake my head and say 'blogging injury' in a knowing tone, perhaps with a sigh and one arched eyebrow.

No. Actually Fallen was ok- but wait! I have yet to introduce you to:

BROWNIAN MOTION

My patented* ranking system, named after the strange phenomenon that occurs when you read a book by Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown.*

Brownian Motion Ranking works like this: I read a book (with me so far?) and when I finish reading it I note down how I felt about it. From 'Wow! I'm gonna read it again RIGHT NOW!' through to 'Meh'. Then I wait 24 hours and think about how the book makes me feel. Is it still as great as it was yesterday? Or is it still pretty good, but maybe not so fantastic that I have the urge to carry copies around with me and give them out like the Watchtower.* I do the same on day three and so on until day seven when I complete the review.

So, with the method out of the way, here comes the madness.

Fallen actually has a Brownian Motion rating that dates back to long before I actually read the book. I saw saw it at Waterstones, liked the look of the dress on the cover and picked it up. As soon as I saw the word 'Angel' it went back on the shelf. I had absolutely NO intention of ever reading it.

But then I went on what can charitably be called a reading binge*. I picked over the choicest morsels first, not thinking that eventually I would be left with only tins of spam and noodle-coodle.

Fallen began to look like a possibility.

Finally, in the middle of December I caved and picked it up to complete a 3 for 2.

Lucinda (Luce) Price has been sent to a decaying southern reform school called Sword and Cross for something that gets hinted at, but not revealed, for a good chunk of the book. She doesn't come across as the type who gets sent to reform school, so you figure out pretty quickly that she was either framed, or the EVENT was pretty bad. While at Sword and Cross she meets Daniel, a gorgeous boy who (like all gorgeous boys in recent YA novels) spends half of his time treating her like crap and the other half acting like some kind of Romantic ideal all lip melting kisses and walks by moonlight. Oh yeah, also like every boy in recent YA, Daniel isn't what he appears to be. He's an Angel.

Cue the 'he loves me, he loves me not' melodrama and the 'our love is greater than time and space' hyperbole. So far so good on the 'Be-a-YA-Writer-in-Three-Easy-Steps' check-list.

Where Angels are involved, so are Demons and Luce and Daniel soon have something to occupy them other than laps in the schools pool (a converted church) and alternately avoiding each other and the bodies that start to turn up. Luce is in danger, Daniel wants to save her, not everyone is on the side you think yadda yadda yadda.

And it was good. I enjoyed reading it. The mystery about how Luce got sent off to reform school is pretty well handled, and though you kind of guess the what, you certainly don't guess the how. I'll be interested to see if the tiny seed that gets planted in that reveal comes back into play in the final book of the series.

I did mention at the beginning that this book has Angels in it, right? Okay - well then to try and stay semi-spoiler free I'll only say that some of the Angel characters are pretty bad-ass and others are just pretty bad.

That's actually my biggest complaint about it - my day three thought. Why weren't the two main characters as interesting as the supporting cast? As a wannabe writer, this really bothers me - mostly because I'm afraid that I do it too. (I'm trying really hard not to!) Luce suffers a lot from Bella syndrome - in many scenes she seems to exist solely for the other characters to demonstrate their awesomeness. In others she's better and you can begin to see that there might be something worth rooting for there, but it isn't enough to make me connect with her.* I get no sense that there might be a reason she is so flat - and Lauren Kate has the perfect reason, she just never seems to make use of it. I think that's really at the root of my feelings for it. There are some serious questions that I felt needed to be answered - just what are Angels doing in reform school anyway? And had I been given an answer - any answer to that question and the one above, I probably would have accepted it. For example, Luce had been sent off to Catholic/Protestant/Buddhist/Whatever boarding school for her transgressions, I would not even have questioned the presence of Angels. As it is, I did. Like the question of why Luce so often seems flat,my questions are something that 90% of the supporting cast could and in some cases, should comment on, but never do.

Fallen certainly isn't the best YA book I've read this year. But it certainly isn't the worst. Not by a long shot. Lauren Kate writes well. She writes most of her teenage (human) characters in a believable way and the humour dotted through the book doesn't feel forced. I enjoyed it while reading and my appreciation dropped only a little over the week. I'm willing to admit that the nit-picks listed above might only occur to someone who reads the book with the aim of reviewing it.

So, Brownian Motion Rating starts in the sub-basement on first contact, rises to indifference, reaches acceptance, peaks at enjoyment and then levels out back at acceptance one week after reading. It's an easy read and annoyances are often iced over for several chapters before reappearing. There are some really good characters - Arianne, Pen and Miss Sophia all deserve more than their allotted number of pages. But the two main characters often feel a bit flat and those nit-picky questions DO keep popping up. I'll probably read it again. As mentioned below, I have already finished the second book in the series and book three comes out this summer. Fallen gets 6.5 out of 10.

Next Trash Tuesday I'll review another YA novel : Maggie Steifvater's Lament. Faeries and Music and Magic. Oh my!

* It's very shiny.

*While reading a book by Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown (at least the first time you read one of his books or if you are perhaps, on a beach holiday and spending a large percentage of each day slightly drunk) most people really enjoy it. You read the book and you think, 'Wow, this is great. This story is fantastic. I can't wait to find out what happens next.' You give yourself paper-cuts you turn the pages so fast. You ignore family friends and personal hygiene. The book is that good.

The day after you finish a Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown book, you sit around in a happy glow. The book was really good. You can't quite stop thinking about it.

On day three you think, yeah. That was good. I enjoyed that, but I'm not actually sure the story made that much sense. What was the point in making the Evil Monk an Albino? And why is everyone introduced with both their name and profession?

By day five plot holes and the overuse of adjectives are seriously beginning to bother you.

By day seven you think that if no one ever finds out that you read a book by Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown, all the better.

*There is actually a book that makes me feel like this. I have purchased multiple copies specifically to give to people as un-birthday presents.

*I worked my way through the 3 for 2 offers with the same single minded focus I usually reserve for a box of peanut butter daisies. I was reading three or four books a week, EVERY WEEK. In the month of September alone I spent over £300 on books.

*Okay SPOILER I've also read the second book and I'm now thinking that this is either intentional or else Kate has become a much better writer really quickly. Luce has fewer wallpaper scenes and more spine in book two. She's a definite work in progress. If she ends up somewhere 'real' I'll forgive her characterisation in Fallen and revise the rating accordingly. Until then, I'm annoyed.