to be abrupt, no one really makes much of a difference here except anna.. everyone else almost seem like they're just there to make cameo appearances. this has become a complete focus on just anna, and i'm not sure it's a good switch. the idea of avery coming back is interesting, and in the body of a woman.. but otherwise? i'm not so sure.
anna seems to be overly aggressive for no apparent reason, first of all. if her former career was a schoolteacher, i'm afraid i really don't want to know what she did when people failed or didn't do homework. i know she's supposed to be a badass now that she's a vampire, but when she keeps claiming to want to hang onto her humanity and appears that violent.. i'm not sure it works for me, personally. the mythology involved in the vamps and weres seem interesting, at the least. i guess we will end up seeing recurring characters later on, but i was really looking forward to seeing more from the rest of the cast.
the whole thing with gloria wasn't very memorable, and i've already forgotten who it was behind the death, and how exactly the mystery was solved. it didn't pique my interest much. hopefully the next installment will perk me up a bit more, but this one didn't do much for me. it was decent, but again, nothing out of the ordinary.
ehh. got this from good will, probably, and to be honest, i expected much less from this since her dragons series is so bad. it actually wasn't quite that bad, but her main character's "logic" has serious faults. her main male protagonist is a bit lacking in that he's like any other male character in any other chick lit romance, and overall i guess it was at least not trying as hard as her other ones to be funny.
him turning into a "vampire" was not at all unpredictable given the title, but it was still random. it was one of those wth moments because the pacing for it was terrible, at least to me. at least the villains weren't straight-shot, right? there really isn't much more i can say about this one, anything else i've quickly forgotten already (including the names--they weren't very memorable characters, sad to say). i guess i'm not a fan of katie macalister then?
ehh--this was okay. i just sort of expected it to be super angsty like her first, and this was just.. different, actually, from what i expected. it wasn't in a bad way. but throughout most of the book i just ended up being confused about what was really going on, which was the point, right, because she was too? i'm just saying it could probably be set up in a better way so that i related to her more, but that might be asking for too much especially when i personally have no idea how i might've gone about doing that.
anyway, i'll just cut it short then. the twist at the end was weird, and i wasn't sure how to feel about it. i personally thought her and finn should go together, for whatever reason--i think the scene where he interacts with our protagonist made a huge imprint in my mind. plus i actually thought their dialogue was really cute, and prefer him much more than uhh.. the dude she ends up with at the end, since his character actually comes out more. the "twist" wasn't much of a twist at the end, but.. eh, this is the anal bitch talking. i guess my personal assessment is that it's decent, but could've been better. the language didn't sound convincing at times, with an almost forced feel to it. well, and.. seriously, i need to be hired on as copyeditor. i could've easily searched out errors every 5 pages or so. and they weren't even really big ones, often just the subject-verb agreement stuff, but it really does jar the reading experience when i do notice them (which wasn't actually as frequent as i make it sound, but still.)
i wonder what i'll read next then..
well.. this one was sort of just lying there, and i'd had it out from the library for about 2 months now. i don't even know how much i'm going to have to pay for overdue fees, but i'll deal with that later. what i want to say about this one is that it totally caught me off guard, especially since i was so AGAINST the first book, and convinced that nothing would come out of this read. obviously--pretty off there.
zoe the character still bugs me. she's a woman in her twenties acting like an 8 year old, and that still sort of applies throughout this book--though i see making her mute definitely had its advantages. her voice isn't entirely without entertainment throughout the book, but when i was entertained it most certainly felt like the author was trying REALLY hard to put humor into her writing. there are darker elements to this book than the last one, and the darker parts read well to me--which hints to me that she is more practiced as a serious writer, and should probably try to steer clear of the attempted humor and odd infusements of "oogy" every paragraph. it does grate on the nerves, and just the inclusion of that word ruins the flow of the text, which would have otherwise been actually pretty good. i think dialogue isn't really her strong point, but seeing that this one is much better than the last installment, i guess i can say that she is improving pretty fast.
as for characters: zoe is still annoying to me, but she's a bit more mature in this one, and i can't describe exactly what it is--she still acts out with teenage rampants from time to time, but sometimes i actually find her acting like the woman in her 20s she's supposed to be. there is certainly character development, which shocked me--although the character daniel is admittedly two dimensional, and so lacked appeal for me. joe, on the other hand.. could really see how that could build up to something in whatever next book there will be. although the end does leave you wondering, i can't help but be drawn to joe, since, again, daniel has been cardboard cutout material for me so far.
i wonder what the development will be with the archer. and i do like what's going on with her and her powers. the scene with the clown completely freaked the crap out of me, and so yes, she can manage serious very well. i hope she can carry it off just as smoothly in the next installation, although they really need to assign her better copyeditors--"shouldn't of"? "hadn't of"? come on.
on to sleep then. and more acting (or screaming) done tomorrow.
sigh, here we go again then. i remember reading somewhere on her blog that that's lissa and dimitri on the cover, and it's supposed to be in the pov of rose looking at the two of them and having to choose--or something like it. i could imagine that being dimitri (though i thought he'd be a bit less lanky and more buff), but that's not really how i imagined lissa, since she's supposed to be all daintiness and pale nordic beauty. the girl on the second book's cover fit my imagined lissa a bit more, but hey, that's me.
well, anyway.
le sigh.. this book.. changes things. a lot. and i have no idea how to touch base, at all. i don't even have any idea if there's any hope of salvation for rose in the end, because things seem pretty dark for her right now. and i'm not sure if the therapist in the book got to me, but i ended up resenting lissa myself throughout--mostly because she's so oblivious to what rose sacrifices in order to save her, but also because it doesn't seem like the sentiment is mutual. when lissa said no--it broke my heart. especially since we've just gone through three books seeing rose throw herself into harm's way for lissa's sake, no matter what. i almost wanted to smack lissa at the end; if you were really her friend, you wouldn't ask her to choose. neither friends nor friendship are property, and that's how lissa seems to treat them in my eyes. maybe she'll manage to redeem herself. who knows.
the most painful part was seeing a glimmer of hope for rose and having it destroyed. the masterful part of it was that i loved every moment of it, even the painful ones--and i applaud ms. mead for being able to be such a skilled writer to have played with my emotions so well, even though she has no idea who the hell i am. i do feel so sorry for adrian though, especially since he genuinely seems to have feelings for rose. i almost want something--even a brief mistake--to happen between them, but of course that would just cause more of a mess. so i'm not sure how things could possibly play out from here, which returns me to my original sentiment.
but either way, knowing her style of writing now.. i know she has something planned, and i know it's gonna be something good. i just can't wait another year for it to come. i think i may even personally be in love with rose. not too hard to cry just thinking about her. so a prayer to whoever is up there, rose needs to stop suffering.
guess that's enough of my ranting in this one.
since i keep forgetting to write about these right after i finish, this is what i get: i have to jot all my thoughts down for all three books, in a row. which probably doesn't sound quite as challenging as it is, because after some time passes i really do begin to forget main plot points. so i'll try to remember what really happened in this one.
while i don't remember specifics, i do remember that temeraire is now a commander of some sort, which is cool--but there was wayy too much angst going on between laurence and temeraire in this book. i didn't understand what laurence's hangup was most of the time, which really separated me from him as a character--that was a weak point for me. i felt much for temeraire, but didn't trust laurence ultimately. it seemed like he was so out of it that he was a completely different character--and that's all well and good, but for most of the book? it gets exhausting. i know realistic character developments need to be, well, realistic.. but i started to lose interest when laurence acted like that. and what was all that crap about duty and whatnot? if he didn't feel guilty about having done it in the first place, why does what society think of him have anything to do with his duty?
the moment when he realizes his hangups was a bit abrupt to me too, though i'm not sure how well it carried over with other people because i haven't read other reviews. maybe it's just a lack of understanding on my part. i am excited now to see temeraire and laurence on a new continent, however--and wonder if any of the other characters will show up again. i particularly missed the antics of maximus and lily in this installment, and was kind of looking forward to a bit more of them in the next--but i guess that's not quite possible if they're leaving england. though i suppose that's giving too much away, but ehh, it's the journey that's most of the fun anyway. there's my main sentiment on this book then.
mostly though, i'm still intrigued about what else could come now that the whole napoleon thing's done with, as that i personally don't know anything about.. uhh.. anywhere else at that period in time. but hey, we'll see.
ahh, dreamworks. when this came out, there were way too many trailers and way too much hype associated with this--so i never really thought much of it, in response. people tell me it's good, but then people me everything is good. so what the heck.
i especially liked the turning point in the fight, when we find that panda's weakness is why he was chosen--but i won't spoil it. it's enough to say that it's loads of cuteness, and the bunnies walking across the bottom of the screen never fails to amuse. i got sniffy through several scenes, especially in the fight between taipo (sp?) and the master. which was pathetic, because i watched this with mike -__-;;
ah well, what else can i say? i'm trying to find things to actually write down to remember later, but this is just one of those movies--supremely entertaining, but lightly plotted, which is the way i prefer my light movies anyway. jack black is hilarious. i didn't know jackie chan was the monkey. angelina jolie?? REALLY?? lucy liu as snake was unexpected--and the little bows they give her for "hair" decoration was adorable too. but oh well. enough ranting then, and onward to reading!
huh, this actually wasn't so bad. i'd expected sex scenes galore and no plot whatsoever, but there was actually development within the storyline, and there are problems solved. i think merry will always be cooler to me than anita.. must be the fairy thing. and you know, not bitching every female character that enters the scene out thing.
actually, it could be that i went into it with low expectations, but regardless, i ended up liking it. all the descriptions are pretty as usual, with the flower crowns and the glowing and what have you. and there are only three sex scenes--i counted! that's rather impressive, and i rather like the change. i still miss when it was like fade out for sex scenes in the first book, but she does handle them a bit more tastefully, and less like watching porn with the bad dialogue and storylines. i find holly and ash particularly attractive, if only because they seem like such devils most of the time--their characters are fleshed out a bit more in this volume, even though they were only in maybe max, one scene. i could maybe complain that doyle wasn't as prevalent as in previous volumes and that's not quite fair (since the title IS named after him, i presume?) but i've seen enough of him in the previous volumes not to miss it much, and besides--darkness could be referring to andais, which might actually be the case instead.
merry shows she can stand on her own in this volume--the previous ones have always been her bringing up pretty flowers or something, and then the men fight when it comes to defending her. she does okay for herself here, which i rather quite liked. ruthlessness is a character trait i like to see in her, apparently--because maybe i didn't even notice it before, but her acts of "kindness" may have been wearing thin for me, subconsciously. either way.
oh well. bottom line, she took two steps in the right direction, after the letdown of BLOOD NOIR. that's more than i expected from her, and for that i'll give her credit and an extra star. maybe she does hear her fans after all.
hmm. well, it's been a long time since i've read anything, so maybe this wasn't the best reintroduction back into literature for me, but it was fun for a while. there might have been several things where i set myself up expecting it to be like the first book though, so again, my fault on the expectations.
the main character, charmain (is that really a name? cool!) is mostly just really unwilling to do anything, so i didn't really feel like she did anything productive to advance the plot any further. in fact, it almost felt as if there wasn't really a plot--thanks largely in part to charmain's attitude of not wanting to do anything as a protagonist. i don't know, that just really didn't help in the way i ended up seeing this.
the character of peter was also very annoying at the best of times; howl was annoying in the first book, but in an adorable way. peter was kind of cute at times i guess (the strings for direction) but otherwise didn't really mean much to me as a character. the most loveable character in this entire thing is still howl, and that's kind of sad to me, because it was a character i'd already known, and i had wanted to meet new ones who i could enjoy reading about just as much. but again, i'm way too picky for my own good.
overall, i'd say that it was a generally slow plot, and what really made it crawl was the characteristics of charmain in general. i guess that doesn't really mean much when i generalize it that much. oh well, doesn't matter. i'm tired as fuck and i can't think of anything else to say about this, only that howl is adorable as usual. yes, i will not be able to stop talking about howl, and i want more sophie and howl romance! i feel like i would've enjoyed this much more if it was written in the point of view of sophie again, just as another episode of adventures for howl and sophie and of course, my dear beloved calcifer. what happened to the unexpected twists of old? miss those :(
and what's up with the ending here? nothing.. happened. it seemed almost as if she was in a hurry to get rid of these characters herself so she just ended at the first sentence she thought she could try to make a break for it. i'm not sure if i'm the only one who feels this way, since i haven't read any other thoughts on this, but.. shrug. that's that then, i guess. i guess i could always go back and read the first one :(
actually got this one a while ago, but didn't get around to it until.. last weekend, actually. i would be posting thoughts of these much more regularly if firefox wasn't such a bitch with the spacing, which i still have no idea how to fix. and IE freezes and crashes often for the home desktop, so i'm typing both of these at school. anyway.
the conclusion left me floundering a bit. i personally liked eliseo daisani, and thought that he didn't become quite as personified as i expected it to get in this installation. i mean sure, great secret revealed and all, but i want to KNOW him, as a character. it's just a bit of a shame that we never really get to it.
still love janx, still pretty hot for alban, i guess. margrit isn't coming through as strong as she did in the previous installations, however, though i suspect that's more events getting out of her hands than her actually becoming weaker. that little episode with the "heart of the earth" was kind of random, and at the end of the day nothing really was explained by it. but i guess that's fine, if we are to know that there will be future installations, just simply that this is on halt so she can write the walker papers from here on for a bit. the random introduction of the daughters was.. well.. random. you don't really get to see it coming, and it doesn't, until about 3/4 into the book, and by then you're like what? NOW? but i guess it's fine. again, need more personification. such a wide host of characters and no time in getting to know them, it seems.
so it seems like a lot of characters can actually come back from the dead ;) again, i wonder at chelsea huo's real identity. i wonder at the real origin of vampires. many, many things left unanswered, but that leaves me in more hope than ever that there will be a next installation, rather than having this be the final volume. that said, i guess there's nothing much i can do but wait from here on.
