okay, so i guess i can't just jot thoughts down immediately after finishing anymore, because lately i just don't seem to have that kind of energy. yep, i slept on it. and this isn't one of my favorites, so i gave myself room to deem that okay. i did jot down notes while i was reading though, for better memory later on the subject. specific points include:
1) her little attempt to convince ewan that she was breaking from the dominae sounded like bs. and he bought it. at this point i was just rolling my eyes from the cliches that were coming out of her mouth, and he's like 'you're serious?' why do i get the distinct impression, also, that wells was trying to write in slang and somewhat failing? or is this how the author must talk every day? because it sounds pretentious.
2) the head of the dominae, her grandmother, and an ancient vamp in her own right mentioning a neon sign just seems to make her less intimidating. it was mentioned in usage as a comparison, i.e. "blazing neon sign on her forehead." how would a vampire that old and supposedly so traditional be so up to date on the english language slang? hmm.
3) in the middle of reading a page of dialogue, it struck me that almost nothing had much distinct mood or emotion to it--it's not very emotionally compelling, i guess is what i'm trying to say. i don't feel anything when i read this, as opposed to some other books that make me fully believe for a few hours. causes of this may include the fact that i find the dialogue corny/cliche, resulting in no suspension of disbelief here for me, and/or my being unable to relate to the character's motivations.
4) her name is sabina and she has a talking cat. sound familiar? a lot of the elements present in this book are copied from popular media, and it doesn't appeal to me.
5) the character herself keeps overlooking clues that are just about as subtle as a sledgehammer. doesn't give her any extra points in my book for intelligence. plus she's supposed to be this badass assassin, but she seems to keep getting her ass kicked without her gun. so she's not lethal unless she had a gun? duh. that's everyone else too. what makes her so darn special?
7) she uses the phrase "I'd do best to remember that" a LOT. by then i was mostly rolling my eyes and figuring she likely doesn't remember shit, because that's the impression i was getting.
8) in one instance, adam uses the word "uber" to describe something badass, i think. i'm sorry, but a supposedly powerful and sexy mage popping up with "uber" just totally throws me off.
9) from the get-go, how does she expect all this spywork and infiltration to take a week? real spies, in real life, spend months if not years getting their work done, if it's infiltration of organizations like this. the character either has no common sense, or the author doesn't. i'm hoping this goes to points down for the character instead.
10) also, the de-summoning of the demon could've been done at any time. even before she grew to like having it there. her excuse of "there are bigger issues at hand than to send him back" don't sit very well with me, because it would've taken adam one second to do it, and it's not like the bigger issues are going anywhere. just how my logic chooses to see it (shrug).
11) at one point, adam threatens to tell the hekate council everything if she doesn't continue training, which isn't really a threat to her. and she concedes. this gave me a big "WHAT?" expression on my face, simply because the author also seems to have forgotten what motivates her characters.
12) another point down for sabina is that she makes herself feel better by making other people miserable.
13) at one point everyone was calling her cell, and there was something i remember about it being a private phone and no one else should know the number. unless she carries two cell phones with her at all times? and THAT'S not suspicious?
14) she mentions vinca's brothers and the males in the family waiting for her when she arrived at vinca's place, but i distinctly also remember that she mentioned that nymphs don't come in males? o-kay..
so.. okay. there are several things going for this book, and the biggest one is that it definitely has promise. i think that's most frustrating to me, because it could've been so much better--it was there in the style, and in the workup of the characters, but the abundance of cliche in here really had me cringing. at one point adam actually was about to say that she's the "chosen one"--you fucking serious? if i wanted to read about this i'd go and watch myself some buffy. and regardless, these elements don't even make the attempt at being original. as a result, it lacks.. flavor.
language seemed mostly to be another issue, because her characters lose voice when she makes them say something that while in reality anyone could really say, they also lose her points when those terms don't specifically apply to the picture of the character she's trying to portray. that, and she reuses a lot of the same phrases, and while it wasn't as extreme as some of the other ones i've noticed before, someone should really have caught these things somewhere down the editing process and suggested she fix them somehow. did i also mention that there are a ton of missing words, typos, etc.? i know i'm being picky here, but hey, it was distracting.
i suppose the biggest thing i'll go back to is potential, and she does write some good chemistry. it was a good first effort, all in all. i'm only being so nitpicky because, well, i took notes. i would definitely read the second novel, just to see what happens to this assassin and her mage lover. overall, i'd give this a 3.5 out of 5.
i think i have a strange tendency to read a lot of YA fiction, if only because they afford a lighter read without me having to wade through pretentious writing. at times. sherwood smith has been a very interesting find for that kind of book, and maybe through typing this entry i can figure out why.
'the trouble with kings' starts off in the middle of things, as our character has already gone through amnesia and some. i could never be sure who the 'hero' was going to be, since no one in particular seemed promising. several parts made me giggle, but her description of court intrigue seemed the most confusing that i've read of her work to date. some of the humor, if that's what it's called, like that instance with jewel and the cow? i don't get it. what? how is that remotely funny? many other instances like that were found, especially when they were in court and whatnot. i simply couldn't understand what they were talking about, or what some of the supposed hidden messages were.
another is that it seemed to me there was barely any build-up to the romance. i was mostly confused at where the turning point was, because her character (male) seemed so cold that i never saw the affection at all; in this case she succeeded very well in making him the passionless man he seemed. too bad i don't think i ever saw underneath it to make that romance convincing to me. i could only understand the final result, with her ending up with him, and not the reasoning. or even the process. things don't seem as.. i don't know.. satisfying as in her other books? there was never really conflict, making for not much of good chemistry between the two characters. and i got exceedingly tired of her going "i don't trust words" as a response to EVERYTHING that was thrown at her. why her interest in music? i don't trust words. why not respond to that bitch insulting her? i don't trust words. it was like she hid behind that excuse every other corner, and when even other characters starting going, oh, is it because you don't trust words?--i just got annoyed. maybe it wasn't justified that i complain so much about such a little thing, but i felt these characters were just a tad bit lacking in personality.
jewel, on the other hand, i found quite delightful, with exception to her tendency to whine about everything. and her somewhat spoiled character. i also found myself liking garian, for whatever reason--he was cruel, but he seemed more interesting as a character. maybe sherwood smith was so good at convincing me that our heroine was uninteresting that i believed it with unfailing conviction, but either way it's a score against her (the character, whatever her name was). that said.. not all of it was complaint. i just really minded that there was nothing exceptional in this book, especially when i've had her other works to compare this with.
good things.. hmm. maxl was interesting. i wanted a more explosive conclusion with gilian's family, since we kept hearing about it. i understand her need to define what the motives behind her family was, but what was the point if they never resolve it to the reader's perspective? the marriage could be the resolution, BUT we never get to see it resolved, with our own eyes. it seemed awfully anticlimactic. actually. i can't think of anything that stood out to me as a good thing--unfortunately. i'm sure there was something though, i just.. grr.
okay, forget it. i liked it okay. but it was nothing special, and the ending quite anticlimactic, and a bit of a letdown, since all the action ended quite a ways back. it just felt like a drag, so that's about the most i can say for it. geez.
EDIT: oh god, her name was flian. that was how boring her character was to me. *rolls eyes*
well, i guess this must be the last volume in the series after all, considering the way she closed it. see, with good closure, i don't even mind that there are still loose ends left; it all depends on the style, i guess.
the pacing was a LOT faster than the first three, maybe even than those combined. there was almost no time for breathing once everything got slotted into place; the malice fights were truly epic, at specific parts. the molting malice they encounter was almost a joke as compared to what happens after, and it's actually quite refreshing to finally see dag put out of the action temporarily, and have fawn replace him as the hero.
i got somewhat annoyed at fawn still, for wanting her own home and whatnot, when she specifically said she would take up dag's lakewalker lifestyle. in this i think she expects to take more than give, and i'm not even sure why it annoys me, just that it does. i thought dag was her home? if so, what does it matter if she has an actual solid lodging or not? it seemed a somewhat hypocritical thing, so maybe that's why. either way, it's a small annoyance, and doesn't much matter considering the conclusion of the book.
the epilogue i found a bit weird, but it does show us what happens to our protagonists. in that itself it makes it quite satisfactory, and i'm glad to learn that those walnut shields are sought after. the aspect of it getting abused wasn't mentioned in that final note, so.. i guess it's of no consequence. she also left things quite open-ended, so that if she were ever to visit that world again she could pick things up where she left off. maybe not quite with dag and fawn, because it seems their stories are for the quieter things now, but in another character's point of view? maybe someone we've met along the way already? if so.. it would certainly make for another fascinating tale.
well, there's only so much i could say about it. especially since i read it two days ago, and it's becoming hazy already, but i got a very distinct good impression. maybe i'll move on to check out her other fantasy series after all. did i also forget to mention that 'horizon' is by far the most fitting title ever? quite awesome.
okay, so i slept on this one. and don't remember most of my likes or dislikes, because i promptly had a bad dream/nightmare, but i'll do my best to convey my general feeling toward this one as opposed to the first two books. here goes!
i definitely likes this one better than the first two, being as that the pacing was set better, and something rather exciting happens near the end, where i feel a good climax should be. then again, i do remember reading that she meant the first two to be one volume--in that case, it might be a bit of a mistake to market them as two books, but seeing as how popular they are and how long it would be if it were marketed as one volume, maybe not so. i don't know. honestly, the pacing did feel awfully odd for the first two, and yes, in an unpleasant way.. because i'd wondered if i was reading about malices in the sideline, for what? most of it was concentrated on them. it just felt like a romance in disguise, and that was not what i went into those expecting. in any case, the pacing in this book justifies the earlier two, i suppose, and the slew of new characters were also very entertaining, if a bit hard to keep track of at times. the one thing i found myself getting annoyed at from time to time was the almost lack of communication between dag and fawn; sorry, but soulmates of any capacity just don't hide that much. now maybe this is a more traditional interpretation of husband and wife, where the wife simply takes off her man's shoes every evening and cooks for him and ETC., but the almost lack of any loverly affection between them throughout this book was.. hmm. sure, he was protective of her and her of him, but that isn't much to go by.
all i'm saying is i like seeing healthy relationships in characters i like. and what dag and fawn has isn't it, yet; feels like they have a while to go, yet i hear the next book is the last installment in this series. kind of alarming to me, but well, i'm a reader and what can i say to change things? now, onto the good things. the REALLY good things, actually, because i just had to get that little part over with.
i've mentioned before that books rarely get me to laugh out loud; at most, i'll crack a smile. the first book showed instances of this humor that i really enjoyed (i mentioned their mishap on the horse, didn't i?) and now that their troubles with the camp are over, i'm finding more of that awesome humor in here nicely spread throughout the book; a good volume to keep up the mood, but not trying too hard. the catfish made me laugh outright; there were a lot more instances that i can't remember now that i've put some distance between myself and it, but i distinctly remember laughing. more to note on that later, if i remember. it was also amazing to see dag go about changing people's ways of thinking, mostly remo and barr (most especially barr). those scenes, i imagine, must be especially hard to write, considering she has to be impartial to the argument somewhat to be able to write that kind of disdain convincingly. what else.. hmm. crane's story was a bit of a surprise in itself, to find that something perfectly good could turn so perfectly wrong in an instant. makes me wonder if he would've killed fawn? he of course, had nothing to lose, but wouldn't fawn have reminded him of his own wife, especially considering that she was bonded to another lakewalker? or would it have made him bitter and threw all to the winds? dag's experiments with his ground were fascinating, and more so than usual, because now instead of fearing it, he's coming close to embracing what he might be able to do. i can't wait to see how he might find this helpful to any future malice fights.
umm.. conclusion was oddly satisfying. no need to go into it, since the next book is coming soon enough. hope it ends with enough closure to be fully satisfying, but again, what can i do if it doesn't? would be an awful shame, that's all. time to sign off and do some homework then..
i'm not entirely sure why, but this book at once both rounds out the characters, and annoys me at the way specific characters interact through that rounding out, because while we begin to see that what the two main protagonists feel for each other has become quite strong, there could yet be no happy ending. well, that's the gist i get from it anyway.
the pivotal "saving the world" moment, i should call it.. somehow it almost feels like fawn gets none of the credit. true, the characters within give her no credit whatsoever, but i mean i almost feel like she deserves nearly no credit. she is good at deduction, but that's something anyone could've figured out, including hoharie and dag before they made risky attempts. is there ANYTHING about her that makes her out of the ordinary? i'm finding her almost a bit of a letdown, because i wanted her to be more. can her powers of deduction do MORE than that? bigger mysteries to solve and all that.
i honestly expected there to be some kind of peaceful resolution in the first half of the book, but apparently there isn't. at one point i seriously thought dag was going to choose patrolling over her, and i don't think i personally would have forgiven that, but fawn did, and it disoriented and confused me. i understand saving the world is a big thing and all, but he couldn't have tried a bit harder to save what they had too? it was like he was walking around mostly in a daze not sure what to do; yeah but WHY, if she's supposedly like a drink of water to a man thirsting to death? i don't know. maybe big world-saving feelings are beyond me. whatever the word for it is.
still sleepy, but i think i'll use my sunday wisely and go read the next one anyway. i know if i don't do it now i won't have any time to later. off i go. i also hear book 4 will be the last, and i sure as hell hope not, at least until all these mysteries are at least somewhat solved, because i'm confused as hell.
missed reading. the two busiest weeks of my life, and today i woke up feeling like sleepwalking, so i figure i needed a wake-up call via my favorite pastime. here goes...
this book was thoroughly interesting in its world-building, in that i mostly remained fascinated throughout of the history and complexity she built from scratch. the age difference between the two characters was a bit weird, but i can get over that through the next few volumes, probably. what i did find weird was the pacing, because the action stops about halfway through the book, and then the rest of the book is about them going back to her place and getting married, which drew a big 'huh?' from me. cuz didn't she spend the entire first half setting up the history of the world, and the mystery of the malices? then that gets sidetracked and of course their RELATIONSHIP takes precedence. it seemed kind of jarring, and i don't know, it's weird for heroes to take time off out of nowhere just to be like "hey, let's get married!"
on the other hand, i'm likely to start reading the next volume within the next few hours, so i guess i'll find out the rest of that stuff going on with the malices. oh, and her description of the malice was kind of bland.. i didn't find myself getting remotely disgusted/scared; would that be considered a weakness? my favorite scene has got to be when they were on the horse and he gets aroused by her sitting on his lap, simply because it's amusing to see this character who's supposedly so stoic embarrass himself like that, and it's nice he has her for a weakness. i got annoyed with her throughout the book regularly though, because she seems to be so ridiculously juvenile about so many things. it's completely beyond me how these two characters can come together, and i frankly don't really feel it that much, aside from the lust.. so i'm guessing i'll count that as a weakness too.
gonna read the next one sometime soon now.
(cries) oh pritkin, how i've missed you!
even though this started off rather slow, i don't think i quite minded. i did notice that she spent more time reintroducing characters than normal, and perhaps even got impatient from time to time when she kept introducing information from past books--but things got better as soon as pritkin came back into the picture. i've always been pretty passive toward mircea as a character, and the couple of intro chapters featuring mostly mircea certainly got me really impatient, but there were several moments when i actually found myself warming to him, which really surprised me. up until now i've found his motives annoying and counterproductive to cassie, but it seems it took 4 books for me to realize he might actually care for her more than everything else, that he might actually drop all the other stuff if it came down to it. that who knows? maybe she might actually come first.
but anyway, if it comes down to it, i would still choose pritkin over mircea, just because he seems to always be there to guard her, i guess. i guess i might have a thing for white knights, even those who are cranky all the time. (but secretly, the crankiness might be the real reason why.) plus the sexual tension between them is undeniable, though i did notice (and am a bit miffed by) the fact that it's definitely been toned down as compared to books 2 and 3. after reading the brief scenes with heat between cassie and pritkin in this book i definitely felt myself wanting to go back and read book 3 again, if only to experience the initial awkwardness between pritkin and cassie again. xD anyway, the plot seemed somewhat confusing throughout, but it does drop clues from time to time, which i must admit were completely lost on me. cassie's visions made no sense to me, so i can't exactly blame her for not getting them either. the way the demons and the gods came together was very unexpected, but i should've known something was cropping up in that form somehow. at this rate, they could probably make a plan to put all their enemies together, sit back, and enjoy the show.
the pacing was rapid as usual, but coming from karen chance that's not entirely surprising. unlike her usual though, it seemed a bit darker than previous installments, and it wasn't until the second half of the book when cassie and pritkin get into some very gender-challenged scenarios that things got interesting. i couldn't stop laughing once that rolled in, but it was certainly random as hell given that the scene before that had nothing to do with it. i did find myself getting confused whenever she described the ley lines though, because all i could see were descriptions of colors, and her descriptions of fissions and vortexes made little sense to me visually. or maybe i wasn't reading it right, or whatever it is. either way that's about the only criticism i had toward this one; the dialogue was entertaining as always, and the characters do tend to be a little more emotional than in previous installments, but i guess it only means they're growing into the roles they will have to take later. what i was really looking forward to happening, though, was to have cassie grow into more of her abilities, because by that intro, that was what i'd assumed would be happening. there's also almost NO time shifting involved in this book, and what else is a pythia supposed to do? not to mention her spatial shifting also got limited after a while, and i had to wonder at the purpose of this book by then. the necromancy could, of course, be viewed as a new ability she could develop in latter volumes instead. i do still sort of wish billy joe could've played more of a role in this book too, like he has in the past, but it seems he's mostly limited to just a cameo appearance, along with a slew of all new characters. i had also wondered what was up with that.
and then, of course, what of mircea? i'm not even sure i want him gone from the picture. he obviously really does care for her, but i want cassie to be first on his list of priorities, and so far she doesn't even know that he has a daughter yet. pritkin, as mysterious as he is, has mostly tended to be straight with her, even if that wasn't his intention. or maybe he just has less to hide, i don't know. again, it could just be pritkin's emotional overload that appeals to me, since mircea seems to barely react most of the time. in this book he does react somewhat though, and the most memorable scene to me when thinking of this change is when mircea kisses "cassie" after catching her.
anyway, i feel i've probably rambled about this enough. i need the next volume right now. it wasn't until i got to the ending (and what a hilarious ending) that i realized that i would have to wait another whole year for the next volume, and it's just a little too far away without anything to satisfy me in between. i am a little suspicious that this volume tended to be so much darker, right after she's had to write the first volume of dorina basarab. if this trend were to continue.. well, i'm hoping there would be more humor and less of the emotional outbreaks in the next book. but otherwise, i'm hoping other releases will keep me company from here until then. i can say for sure that i won't look forward to much else aside from kim harrison and richelle mead nowadays, and those only come once every couple of months. in fact, i'm almost dreading the release of the MJD, CH, and LKH books.. because i'd most definitely have to read them, and am almost guaranteed to be let down. but what else is new?
oh well. here's to hoping this year passes fast and the next book hits a release date soon then.
huh. what an interesting way to spell kelley.
i started this once upon a time at the recommendation of a lot of people, got about halfway through it, then gave up on it. i still have all the first editions though, stored safely away in my shelf, for no apparent reason. and don't ask me why. the covers were pretty, and what better reason was there for a girl to keep books?
i don't quite know what made me decide to go back to it, but i guess i was bored by all the mediocre books i've been picking out lately, and after having some time apart from it, i thought, if so many people are recommending it, then there has to be something to it that i've missed, right? and so i went back to it.. to promptly find that i don't remember a single detail from anything i've read previously. and so rereading ensued, much of it. took me a while to get back to where i was, but once i got there, the story did get somewhat interesting.
i think what i found that kept me from being completely immersed in the character or the storyline was that she contradicted herself very often, which i can tell is intentional and meant to be part of her character. somehow i find that kelley armstrong's characters tend to be very.. unemotional? that's not the word for it. lack of emotion implies that the character doesn't react, and that is definitely not the case, because she does react very realistically. there's just still some color missing from her characters somehow. almost like.. she writes like her protagonist isn't her main character most of the time, like i feel like her other characters are the real main characters to the storyline. i feel like sometimes while she's writing she might get carried away with certain others of her characters, and forget her focus from time to time. this is purely theory on my part, of course, but that's the best way i could think of to describe the reason why i felt the character wasn't as compelling as she could have been. and by the sheer amount of recommendation out there, i can tell a lot of people will disagree. but, that's to be expected.
plotwise, it was slow from the beginning to about the middle, with somewhat inconsequential events happening throughout those chapters. i understand a lot of it is to introduce characters, but i feel there could have been a neater and more productive way to do it, without boring an audience member? of course, again, i may be the only one getting bored, but i just feel like this kind of plotline has been done before. of course, it is also a rather old book and i am getting into it pretty late, so maybe it wasn't quite so overused when the book first got published. i remember during one portion she mentions a top of the line entertainment system, full with VHS and everything, and distinctly remembering my eyes bugging out at that description. i actually did end up flipping back to the copyright page just to check when it was published, and turns out, it was 2001. VHS in 2001? maybe someone should've called her on that before it got published? or maybe mostly people will still overlook stuff like that.
so right, the plot. i felt it was rather slow, and i wasn't entirely fond of the character clay, so maybe more could've been done for his character to make the average reader sympathize more? i feel the same applies with elena, because a lot of her logic makes absolutely no sense. even if she were the most impulsive and irrational person in the world, she jumps to the most absurd conclusions for no reason, if only because it fits her hypothesis of the world. she likes to blind herself to facts, but when this is coming from a narrator, i find myself not trusting the voice most if not all of the time. it also made it somewhat hard to believe events witnessed in her pov, much less connect with her as a character.
and yes, i've gotten off topic again. PLOT. it got somewhat eventful near the end, but still, nothing much happens. there were no surprise motivations, no mystery to it. it was all a matter of hunting some bad guys down, and once they nailed that, it was done and done. i just.. got bored by it? i wanted there to be some kind of twist. some thrill to it. but it was a straight shot matter of point A to point B, and i wasn't sure what to expect from it. even the little mystery in the beginning, of who the mutts responsible for the havoc were, was dimmed by the fact that we don't know any of these characters (yet?). so i do feel that there is a well of potential, and i did enjoy it, but was disappointed by how much better it could have been. i kept looking around the corner for that twist, only that it never came at all.
so there was that. when, or most likely IF i have any time in the near future, i'll probably follow up sometime with the next volume. but in the meantime, it's back to classes and life. again.
ciao.
