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rainwatersparkHello, world. It's the second week of the semester, and Physics is kicking my butt...again.
My method of stress relief is, apparently, talking about books. I'm thinking about writing a "spork"/"Let's Read" of the newly released The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I wouldn't really have been interested in this, except that there's been a lot of pre-release hype and news articles about people trying to turn it into "the next Harry Potter." Heck, FailBetter Games was even commissioned to do a text-adventure game for the book! So I might do that later.
For now, I'm going to ramble about dystopians.
Matched by Ally Condle
Read to about Chapter Five or so.
...And I was disappointed.
Matched starts off with a bang: its first two chapters really are great. It drops you right into the world, in the middle of something important happening to the protagonist, and if it's lacking some genuine conflict, the reader is at least drawn in through the movement and the novelty of the world.
...And then the next few chapters fizzle out.
Next, we're treated to scenes from Cassia's life, what her job is, how she goes and has fun with her friends, random flashbacks, blah blah blah. Way to kill the momentum of the story. I think the real issue is that the Inciting Incident, the disturbance to the protagonist's world, should happen a lot sooner, especially since the reader knows what it is from the back cover blurb. So here I am, sitting there, thinking, "When is Cassia going to meet Ky???" I kept expecting her to look at her microchip right after the ceremony, because that's when the ball really gets rolling, but she puts it off for several days, which are narrated in quite a boring way.
If I hadn't known the summary, though, it would have been worse, because after Cassia's Matching ceremony I would have been left dangling. "Okay, she got matched with her hot, charismatic childhood friend...what's supposed to happen next?"
Now the characters. Matched is written in the dreaded first-person present. After the first two chapters, I had very little sense of what Cassia's character was like. Furthermore, neither Xander nor Ky feel more than paper cutouts, either. I mean, by Chapter Five, Ky still hasn't really formally appeared; Cassia spends way too much time thinking about how he's a mysterious ghost in her life. And she pities him for being an Aberration. That really grated to me, because I felt like Ky (the Designated Love Interest) was being set up to be a Woobie. (Oh, poor Ky, he doesn't fit in, and I bet his life is tragic, too!) Also, I'm irritated by the setup of a love triangle between Xander, Cassia, and Ky. Xander's character is kind of flat--he's the guy everyone likes because he's witty and sociable and handsome. Okay, thanks for telling us...
So, yeah. Another example of an interesting premise that withers due to flat characterization, a lot of filler, and what looks like a healthy heaping of cliché. (Seriously, can we stop with the Tortured Boyfriend who's there for the heroine to swoon over? Please?)
My method of stress relief is, apparently, talking about books. I'm thinking about writing a "spork"/"Let's Read" of the newly released The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I wouldn't really have been interested in this, except that there's been a lot of pre-release hype and news articles about people trying to turn it into "the next Harry Potter." Heck, FailBetter Games was even commissioned to do a text-adventure game for the book! So I might do that later.
For now, I'm going to ramble about dystopians.
Matched by Ally Condle
Read to about Chapter Five or so.
...And I was disappointed.
Matched starts off with a bang: its first two chapters really are great. It drops you right into the world, in the middle of something important happening to the protagonist, and if it's lacking some genuine conflict, the reader is at least drawn in through the movement and the novelty of the world.
...And then the next few chapters fizzle out.
Next, we're treated to scenes from Cassia's life, what her job is, how she goes and has fun with her friends, random flashbacks, blah blah blah. Way to kill the momentum of the story. I think the real issue is that the Inciting Incident, the disturbance to the protagonist's world, should happen a lot sooner, especially since the reader knows what it is from the back cover blurb. So here I am, sitting there, thinking, "When is Cassia going to meet Ky???" I kept expecting her to look at her microchip right after the ceremony, because that's when the ball really gets rolling, but she puts it off for several days, which are narrated in quite a boring way.
If I hadn't known the summary, though, it would have been worse, because after Cassia's Matching ceremony I would have been left dangling. "Okay, she got matched with her hot, charismatic childhood friend...what's supposed to happen next?"
Now the characters. Matched is written in the dreaded first-person present. After the first two chapters, I had very little sense of what Cassia's character was like. Furthermore, neither Xander nor Ky feel more than paper cutouts, either. I mean, by Chapter Five, Ky still hasn't really formally appeared; Cassia spends way too much time thinking about how he's a mysterious ghost in her life. And she pities him for being an Aberration. That really grated to me, because I felt like Ky (the Designated Love Interest) was being set up to be a Woobie. (Oh, poor Ky, he doesn't fit in, and I bet his life is tragic, too!) Also, I'm irritated by the setup of a love triangle between Xander, Cassia, and Ky. Xander's character is kind of flat--he's the guy everyone likes because he's witty and sociable and handsome. Okay, thanks for telling us...
So, yeah. Another example of an interesting premise that withers due to flat characterization, a lot of filler, and what looks like a healthy heaping of cliché. (Seriously, can we stop with the Tortured Boyfriend who's there for the heroine to swoon over? Please?)
