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Only Modern Thinking: Review of The Infinite Now

The Infinite Now, written by Mindy Tarquini is an interesting book which seems to cross a few genres.  It might not technically fit as a historic fiction, but given the amount of research the author apparently did, it is hard not to see the parallel.  I don’t want you to take my word for this, I’ll try to explain what parts of the book seem to work and what do not and why so you can decide for yourself.  Comments are always welcomed.

 Mindy Tarquini is a talented author and while you may not feel it appropriate to consider the author of the story, it can be an interesting way to gain meaningful insight. Mindy is a self-described Italian traditionalist and it shows in this book.  The historical accuracy seemed to be of interest to her as she sneaks in little details about the experiences of Italian immigrants during the early twentieth century.  She also has a very sharp wit, which is evident if you follow her twitter feed.  The light heartedness finds itself in her book between the moments of intense drama.  If you ever find yourself bored and a little more interested in the author I highly recommend reading some of her tweets, they can be quite entertaining.

 One of the first things the summary of the book, expresses is the passage of time and the future. There is a time bubble involved and one of the first questions this begs is just what does that mean?  Without giving away the story, this is going to be one of the central themes, but it would be a mistake to see this complex story as something so simple.  Right? If a concept like freezing time isn’t complex enough, but even with the myriad of possibilities here the book manages to be far deeper than that.

 If this alone has convinced you to give this book a try then great, but that’s just scratching the surface of what is going on in this book.  She uses a lot of common tropes and techniques in unique ways thorough her story.  Early on there is a hint of a romantic interest and the way the characters interact may seem familiar, but it would be a mistake to think this book is going to be in any way predictable.  Giving up on the book early on would be a big mistake since things do not necessarily play out as expected.  This also shows up in the way the book portrays traditional values versus modern thinking, something which you may recall is dear to the author.

 One of the main themes in this book is modern vs traditional.  The battle between these two concepts is waged practically the entire time and it may seem like the author is trying to push one view over the other.  I won’t spoil where this goes, only that you shouldn’t assume you know or that the book is going to fall into predictable patterns.  One of the things that is most fascinating here is the setting, around 1920’s when a similar battle was being played out in the US.  The culture wars may never cease and this book captures it well and wraps it up into the theme along with the time element.  If you have a horse in this race then try not to let the early book bother you, it is just setting the stage for what is to come.  I do not recall what city the book takes place in, but it could have easily been Boston or New York.  

 The Setting is an extraordinarily fleshed out view of this time and prospective.  The descriptions are not limited to just the lives, but also the houses and even the technology at the time.  No small amount of effort is put into describing the individual aspects of the daily grind or the struggles that go along with them.  The story weaves these aspects so closely to the plot that it ends up feeling integral to the overall narrative of traditional versus modern with a heavy dose of personal responsibility tossed in.  Some of the descriptions may not be for the faint of heart and the loss that occurs as a fact of life is likewise not sugarcoated.

 Is this book a straight historical fiction? It is not.  There is magic in the book even if the book leaves some room for the possibility that the magic occurs all in the MC’s head.  That interpretation would probably be a bit of a stretch and for those seeking something entirely mundane in terms of fantasy elements, this book might not be for you.  The magical part is questionable in what is going on, most of it is vague and without a great deal of explanation for better or worse.

 LGBT is a rather big theme these days and a lot of books will address it in one way or another. Given the setting, it would be entirely forgivable if it didn’t come into this book, but it does.  How it comes into play and where it goes would be a spoiler, so I’ll avoid specifics.  This might be a bit of a sticking point for some and given the resolution it may seem like the book is walking a very tight rope, risking offending people on both sides of the isle.  The only spoiler, non-spoiler I can give is that the book doesn’t pass judgement on the subject.  Ultimately the book does try to lampshade this a touch by reminding the reader almost instantly that this portion is written in the context of the era.

 The biggest thing that might bother some readers is probably the sheer number of topics being covered, or at least their combined complexity.  Even as they do tend to work well together, things like family, responsibility, friendship, time, change. . etc..  These all come up and are very important to this book.  Amazingly everything is managed, but not exactly neatly.  Some of the resolutions may seem to be a little poorly explained or require imagination by the reader to fully grasp.  It may not have been possible to tell this story without taking some risk, so it’s up to you if this sort of thing will bother you or not.

 Ultimately this is a very thought-provoking book that does a good job of weaving a story that doesn’t exactly fulfill the expected paths it will take.  The historic setting is nicely mixed with a modern view of the world, even though it is written from the eyes of someone living in the century it was written.  Though Mindy self-proclaims to be in love with traditional Italian culture, she isn’t afraid of showing an evolving view of the world and the constant march of change, nor does she ultimately pass judgement on that either.  Though the start may be slow, the destination is worth the effort and there are many treasures to be found in this book.  I personally found it quite recommendable for this day and age.  Only modern thinking.

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Nevernight Book 1

Nevernight book 1, is by New York Times best selling author Jay Kristoff, an author whom likes betrayal and sad endings in his books. He is certainly a good author and his preferences are a big give away if you’ve read any of his work or about him just what you can expect. Since I am a nobody reviewing a work by an accomplished writer I will try to go into what I liked and didn’t like and why so you can decide for yourself if this book is something you want to read or not. I will also respond to any comments posted about the review. What can I say about Nevernight without giving away too much. As I’ve pointed out already, Jay Kristoff likes his books to be dark. This is kind of a pun for this book because shadows play a heavy role, but as far as dark is concerned I’m not entirely convinced. There is dark stuff and if you know about the author you can guess betrayal will happen. But there is also a lot of light hearted and friendly stuff going, heart warming and also the main character (at least in this book) may not be entirely the villain protagonist she’s implied to be. That’s largely up to you to decide, certainly there could be arguments either way, but it doesn’t entirely fit the kind of writing Jay claims to do. Why you may ask, do I care about what kind of writer Jay is and what to expect? Good question, me. The thing about this book is that if you’re used to modern writing and serial novels, or main stream writing, or the mega popular Young Adult genre, then you are probably familiar with more than a few tropes. The romance tropes, the frienemy tropes, the character marked to die, the bury your gays, the fact that most modern authors who want to avoid controversy will simply pretend LGBT doesn’t exist. So on. If you go into this book with that in mind then Nevernight is going to start ringing alarm bells quick and is going to keep ringing them for the good first half of the story. Now this isn’t a critique, this is more a warning that what Jay does in the first half of this book is set the stage. You’re actually supposed to do that with the three act structure of story telling so it’s good that he does. In the first act, which can easily span half a book (three acts doesn’t necessarily mean each act gets equal book time, in fact typically act three is the climax and is the shortest by far). Anyway, the important thing of the three act structure is act one sets the stage and tells you what is and isn’t, therefore it is vitally important and this book uses it extensively to build for what is to come. In a nutshell if you find yourself bothered by over used tropes in the beginning, don’t be, because they’re there to build the story and the pay offs in my view are quite worthwhile because they turn many of those tropes on their heads. There are some problems, but the book is by no means stale or entirely predictable. The book tries to convince you rather heavily that it will be a dark tale and it largely is. A lot of the people whom are going to die will be red shirts (nameless fodder), with some more heavy consequences not appearing until later, but even near the end there mostly red shirt slaughter. I found this particularly interesting because it doesn’t fully express how much the opposition may view the acts perpetrated as evil. The book doesn’t gloss over this nearly as much as many other stories do, but still there isn’t a lot of sense of the “bad guys” living normal lives with families as they almost certainly did. It’s implied that they had lives and that’s no small point to make to the book’s credit. If you like black and white stories where your good guys are white and so on then this book will probably bother you. While there are bones thrown to make the good guys likeable, you’d have to bury your head in the sand to completely miss how dark their actions are and the book does try to throw hints and reminders toward this end. Besides the three-act structure, another good rule to remember when writing is to focus on a topic and stick to it. Most books break this rule by throwing in sub plots, with romance being far and away the most popular sub plot. This book does have a romance plot, but is it truly a sub plot? In the early sections of the book, the first half I mentioned before, it felt that way. A great deal of the romantic interludes happens at inappropriate times. That part is a critique because you shouldn’t be doing playful romantic banter when your life is on the line, but this totally happens a bunch. Still, the romance as much as it feels like a distraction from the main material is an important part of the story. I won’t give away what that is, only to say that if you like romance you should enjoy this one, if you don’t like romance you should still read ahead because it is important for interesting reasons that fit entirely with the narrative of the story. A couple caveats. There is about twenty pages of very graphic bedroom wrestling (sex) which depending on your taste, you can just skip. It won’t detract from the story if you choose not to read about the intimate stuff that happens. Het norm themes and gender themes are especially odd in this book. During the first half of the story, the het-norm narratives are overwhelming. At first, I thought the author was just going to go the route of avoiding controversy by ignoring the existence of LGBT, but I was wrong. In fact, the book treats it as a non-issue and it does occur and no one blinks or thinks twice about it. This was a relief and a breath of fresh air, though it was still very het normy and this feeds into the greater gender role stuff. You can tell this book is written by a male. For one there is a lot of assumptions about female life that a guy would have. Like a girl casually talking about her pmsing on people, though never once in the book that takes place over several months, if not years, does any of the female characters display monthly irritability. If you read about PMS, it’s a real thing, but men who pin it to women really don’t know what they’re talking about and treating it like a common and typical occurrence just isn’t reality. You can look it up. You could argue that the book world isn’t ours, but since the book fails to show this as a thing anywhere in the story we can chalk it up probably to a male view on women. Additionally, the view of what women find attractive in the story (in one another at least) is heavily slanted at what would probably appeal mostly to men. Full lips, big busts? Sure, typical male might like that, but I really don’t think women have the boob envy as written by a lot of male oriented stuff. It’s a small potatoes complaint I think, but it does show and I think it also explains why LGBT is handled the way it is. If this bothers you at least you should know it’s not a big part of the book and you could probably skip these sections (usually just a line long here and there) and move on. My real complaints are more grounded in a few of the things the book does that I feel either didn’t make sense in a bigger picture sort of way, or just seemed awfully dues ex machina. The whole idea of a dues ex machina is the author takes control of the narrative to force something. Another good rule of writing is not to tell lies, and dues ex machina’s are always lies. What is a lie? Well it is basically making something happen that doesn’t make sense to the world or characters. If Walter White from Breaking bad solved a problem by turning into literal super man and flying then that’s a lie. Super man simply does not exist in his world and Walter White isn’t super man. In this book the powers assigned to characters are at times, way too much. It’s to the extent that I had to ask myself would the world function the way it did if people like this, or things like this truly existed? Would they be treated as cavalier as they are? I found this a little immersion breaking, especially when these sorts of super powers started solving problems for characters. It just felt lazy and made the action scenes less meaningful. If the author was just going to give someone something, like training they didn’t establish or a power then why bother? It is hard to get emotionally invested in a tense scene when these sorts of things happen and I kind of wish there was more thought put into them or checks and balances. So, should you read the book? The biggest thing I would say is that if you can’t handle dark stuff you probably won’t like this book. There will be some heart break if you are invested and prefer happy endings and Jay Kristoff has said he doesn’t really like to write those super happily ever endings. You might not be happy if you like the good guys winning narratives either. This just isn’t that author though and even he might suggest you look elsewhere if that is you. If it isn’t though, if his tag about what kind of stuff he writes does appeal to you then you probably should read it. There may be sections that bother you, but the pay off in the end is pretty good and the time spent setting the stage does have a meaningful conclusion. As far as some of the cheating is concerned with narrative conveniences, it’s a gripe, but not in my view one worth skipping this book over. Ultimately, I would say I liked it more than I didn’t and at times a lot more.

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Romance By Omission

Romance is a topic I tend to rail about quite a bit when reviewing or talking lit to friends.  It’s a very common topic for stories and a huge part of the human condition, but I feel it is unrealistically represented in most stories and done so for all the wrong reasons.  I won’t deny that romance does matter and can make for some of the most compelling narratives, some of which are even in amongst my favorites.  This isn’t about romance done right though, in case you didn’t read the title, this is about romance done wrong.

                One topic I’ve read about and have since adopted as my own is the new relationship excitement.  My aunt once likened it hoarding, the feeling you get when you acquire something new, that rush, without the work of building to obtaining something meaningful, or spending time with it monogamously afterward.  Relationships are work, the most exciting part for most is when the will they or won’t they is occurring followed by the climatic they will.  It’s no wonder stories focus so hard and often on this.  This topic sells books so it’s often tossed in regardless of if it fits.  I could go into detail about why I think romance finds itself in stories, or what the author is trying to accomplish, but this isn’t that post.  Expect more on romance another time, this is about a specific type of romantic setup used in books and why I hate it.

                This is a term that to the best of my knowledge I coined, just now.  So yay me, you person reading this blog (probably no one) can roll your eyes at my self-congratulations.  Relationship by omission.  So what is this?  It is simply when a story will feature a romantic lead whom really has no competition or really anyone else at all.  It’s that story where no named characters exist who fit the romancing criteria, or even side characters.  This happens an appalling lot and because I do not read romance, I’m referring to it is happening an appalling lot in non-romance novels.  Often it is worse than even that, whereas not only won’t there be any other people of the age and proper gender introduced, there won’t opposite gender (or same, whatever) either.  I guess the authors fear we’ll try to ship the wrong pairs if they put in too many possibilities.

                So why do they do this?  I suspect it is a few reasons, but I can only guess.  First, to properly build a romance takes time and effort. You need two complete characters, which takes a lot of development and time to make them come together.  Every word spent on someone not of the pair is extra work.  Actually, I might be wrong, you could probably do it quite efficiently if you wanted. Jon Snow and Ygrette were a great romance that cropped up in a book series not about romance and it didn’t take five hundred pages to do (Song of Ice and Fire).  So, I’m going to go with option B: Bad writing.

                Sub plot romances as I’ve already mentioned, tend to be book sellers and put into stories for the wrong reasons.  Be it fan service or trying to make a story more attractive, neither of which have anything to do with the story they’re trying to tell.  I mean unless you were telling a story about romance derailing a story or something in which case that sounds like an awesome book sign me up.  When an author is going to get fixed on telling this romance that they find so attractive, I expect that comes at the expense of good writing, or rather the author who would fall into that hole may not of been a good writer to begin with.  Caveat, we’re talking about when this crops up in non-romance novels.

                The problem with Romance by Omission is it’s a lie, ultimately.  The world is usually a place with people in it and people have chemistry or not.  At least half of all relationships fail and I expect the longer you look at a relationship the more likely it is to fail. To suggest in whatever short period of time a story is told in that MC has no friends or past life and Romantic Lead doesn’t either and that they’re both single and have a love at first sight or everything clicks. . ect, is a lie.  Sure, things similar to that happens in real life, but there are other factors, reasons why people fall in love, even if it does happen quickly despite other things going on.  Romance by omission seeks to simplify the equation by removing other possible ships, it’s literally the opposite of considering the factors and instead shoving two people in a room and insisting they get on with it.  It’s revolting.  It is insulting to the reader.

                Now I recognize a lot of people may not have a problem with this and may disagree.  That’s fine.  Even if I was a well-known writer, a towering best seller ect ect ect, my view is just my view.  The reason I’m telling you this is only partially to convince you that I’m right (I am by the way) but also, or even mostly to express to you who I am.  What are you getting when you read my reviews.  Think about romances and what makes them work or not and maybe if there is someone out there actually reading this you can comment.  I’ll respond after I recover from my shock.

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Rules of writing, as told by someone else.

            When I read books I used to have this sense of things I liked and didn’t but it was hard to put into words.  This sort of thing is explained in great detail by Brian McDonald in his book Invisible Ink, but who is he and why should you care?  Brian McDonald is a writer, director and teacher and is well regarded for that book amongst other things.  I really think he nailed it and if you bother reading it I expect you will too.  What Brian did for me is give words to the feelings and the tendencies I had for the things I liked and didn’t like.

                 In another post I went into the four things that generally determine what is my favored stuff to read and hinted that those rules could be broken.  A lot of my friends would, for instance, not recommend romance or heavily qualify it before they did.  However it isn’t universal that I dislike romance, in fact some of my favorite stuff has romance, het norm romance at that.  So what is it that makes romance okay in some instances and not okay in others?  The answer is invisible ink.

                 In essence what invisible ink refers to is the planning and design in a story that isn’t directly written in the story, but was used in the creation of said story.  It goes into great depth about everything, but the main things which my previous post spoke of and I will go into greater detail here is covered in invisible ink.  These are things that I look for in reviews and will always try to call out, for good or for ill, when I see them.  It doesn’t mean a book can’t be good or enjoyable even if it doesn’t follow these rules.  In fact there are many examples of things that break them and still end up being a lot of fun to read, but I think the rules provide an excellent safety against bad writing and tend to keep things more on topic.  Kind of like something with a bad design might still be good, but maybe not as efficient as it could be.  I should also note that it is possible something about invisible ink or the ‘rules’ there in are wrong and maybe there are cases where they will be.  Perhaps new rules will evolve from the old or something, but for now this is what I work with and largely it seems to be accurate in predicting what is good and what isn’t.

                 The rule which made the biggest impact on me was the notion of not telling lies.  This is about keeping everything in line with the world you created.  Does this mean characters can’t deceive or the narrator be unreliable?  No, but don’t include super powers if you established a world without them.  This is where the first act is so important, you really must establish your world in the first act, the beginning of the story.  Are there examples of stories breaking these rules?  Many.  But I can think of no example of a story using lies (forcing something to occur that breaks the established rules or characters) and have that turn out good.  Usually it is at best something you forgive, but at worst it can ruin your enjoyment. 

                 Why rule breaking happens is probably for a few reasons.  Painting yourself into a corner, a narrative corner as it was due to poor planning.  Maybe a narrative was planned out, but things unfolded in a way that made the plan no longer fit the story is a better example.  Brian McDonald says you should be the slave to your story and not the other way around.  If your story changes, or unfolds not how you expected, you need to be flexible and not try to force the story.  A modern pop culture example of this is Game of Thrones.  The show runners, the writers and many fans really want to see Dany and Jon get together.  In season 7 the show runners spoke about how it would happen and how various scenes should be seen as sparks between them.  Problem was, that isn’t how it played.  They were awkward, lacked chemistry and frankly didn’t belong together.  The plan may have been to put them together and fans might of enjoy imagining it but it no longer worked with the story.  Maybe it could have been fixed with enough time, but the show went with their original plan and forced it.  I for one found that particularly jarring.

                 So rules and structure are important and can help make a story or break it.  This doesn’t mean every story needs to have them.  There can be fun stories that do not follow an act structure or have a central guiding principal.  It isn’t that it can’t be done, but that if you’re doing it you should have a good reason.  Bad examples include, because I’m sure I know what I want to do or I don’t want to be constricted by rules.  Those types of reasons sounds like bad authors who might get away with it, but generally their work will suffer for it.  I could be wrong, after all, who am I? But when a book is well planned and designed I think they typically shine way better than those that aren’t.

                 Even Invisible Ink has a part I object to and many others do too.  Though it is an informational book, the fact is it kind of follows the rules of story telling.  The book seems to have a guiding principal that it follows (which it calls an armature).  The book even seems to use an act structure in a bizarre way.  I’m not sure if this was all on purpose, but read the book and it kind of feels like it’s using the same method to convey information.  The book does state story telling is about conveying information so in a lot of ways story telling and non-fictional writing does have a lot in common, but anyway, back to my complaint.  At one point Brian McDonald goes into great depth about feminine and masculine story telling methods and even gives different words than gender.  The section spends a large portion, it felt like half, of the time defending his choice of words, rather than talking about the two styles of story telling (internal and external to be specific).  I couldn’t help but feel it was a distraction from what his book was about and hurt the conveyance of information.  Why go into a gender debate in such a book? What was the purpose.  The thing that Brian McDonald did was he drifted away from his guiding principal and his book suffered a little for it.  It’s supremely ironic that this section exists and that it does that because in a lot of ways it serves to prove his point, even as he himself doesn’t see it this way.  I did ask him about it and he still defends the inclusion of that (being the master of your work).  In a funny way, by breaking his rules like that he demonstrated why they’re so important and I’d like to think someone else reading the book can see what I mean as well.

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Ballad for a Mad Girl by Vikki Wakefield review

It is really amazing the power of a good cover and title.  The only thing that I really knew when I first found Ballad of a Mad Girl was the way the title looked.  Despite the book being over three hundred pages, I read it in a single evening and now I will certainly be taking note of Vikki Wakefield’s work.  This book was amazing, a near masterpiece.  For all my reviews I attempt to explain what I liked and didn’t like and why so that you can decide if it is right for you. Please feel free to leave comments or message me, I am always happy to talk about reviews or the books themselves.

 Who is Vikki Wakefield? Well this is my first foray into her so I decided to take a moment to read her biography.  I always read about the author of a book before reading it to get a feel for them.  There are a lot of benefits to doing this, but one reason is prejudices thrown into a book is not generally my taste so I try to avoid it.  Vikki’s bio doesn’t tell me a whole lot about her feelings and preferences except that she seemed to have a lack of creative outlet in her first life in the daily grind.  She talks about her past work in accounting and journalism and how she’s adventurous and frankly sounds like a lot of fun to hang out with.  While I may not have a sense on how she feels about big issues, I’m very glad that she decided to become a writer.

 One of the first things about reading books I’ve come to appreciate is the importance of design. This can the three act structure, or other foundational rules like following a guiding principal and keeping your story honest.  In the case of a good book you won’t even notice these rules exist or are being followed because they will just feel natural.  While it may seem constricting, the rules are actually very open ended. I will go over each of those three and how they apply to this book because I think they have a lot to do with what makes it so great.

 Is Ballad of a Mad girl about mental illness or not?  It isn’t instantly clear and I’m not going to spoil that for you, only that the book sets the stage very well so that you are able to accept and understand what is happening thorough out the rest of the story.  I’m a big fan of ghost stories and this one certainly is one even if you wanted to say it was all a delusion.  There is a great deal of suspense and a great deal of mystery, the latter of which you could probably largely solve on your own if you wanted to really put the pieces together.  There are twists but none without adequate foreshadowing and the hints to solve what is going on, but it’s up to you if you want to try to put them together or just enjoy the ride.  It’s satisfying either way and in no way utilizes the out of left field tricks to cheapen the experience of the mystery.

 Characters all feel very real, with flaws and motivations all their own.  The reader might have a window into more than the characters themselves, primarily in that we’re not in the same frame of mind as the characters, but this doesn’t affect what the characters know or do.  The guiding principal is one that should be pretty clear to the reader early on.  Ultimately this is a coming of age story and that is where every single aspect of it is rooted.  Why is that important?  Because it means that everything that happens in the story will fit and none of it feels like filler or added for cheap thrills.  This is one of my biggest complaints about a book and many readers will eat that stuff up especially when it is a romance with a new romantic excitement. This book does not strive to give the reader any of those instant gratification pay offs, instead focusing on the long and hard earned.  You the reader might find this to be not to your liking, this book is going to engage from start to finish but what it isn’t going to do is give you a quick fix.

 Telling the truth is very important to me.  Most things that can be considered plot holes are when books are being dishonest.  Does this element fit the narrative, the characters and the reality that has been established?  If not, it is lying.  This book doesn’t tell lies.  Every bit of it goes back to the reality that was laid out for you and even fits the guiding principal.  Now herein lies probably the biggest debate you could have in the book.  Before I mentioned that this is a ghost story but you could insist it is all delusion.  That’s ultimately not the story it is trying to tell because the book isn’t about delusion, not really, it is about growing up.  This means is questions about reality or fiction will be answered because they’re not supposed to be the central point.  The book could have played more with the is she or isn’t she crazy but that wouldn’t have fit.

 In most of my reviews I usually attempt to put a section in where I can talk about the bad of a book, but in this case that section is going to be absent.  There simply wasn’t anything about this book I can really complain about.  There are some matters of taste that might make an individual not want to read this book, but for me this book was entirely up my alley.  A few notes, this book is a Young Adult.  That’s kind of a vague thing since that category includes things like the maze running with some rather graphic acts of child murders or hunger games, so to be more specific in what I mean is that this book is rather simple in terms of light and dark.  We’re only going to skirt a little bit of assault and bullying and darker themes and unhappy endings really aren’t applicable.  Some dark stuff does happen and is strangely glossed over though, possibly owing onto the genre.  Once again, I chalk that up to the age range, the book could of probably focused a lot on the emotional trauma of the bullying and how the characters reacted but it just doesn’t.  Frankly this is the biggest criticism I could come up with and it isn’t even a good point because to focus on the bullying wouldn’t of fit the guiding principal. In other words, it would have been a different book.  Does that mean the toe dipped in darker subject matter is out of place?  Well not exactly, it does fit the story, but at the same time I could see the argument why it shouldn’t have been included.  If it would bother you to touch but largely gloss over this aspect then you might be bothered by it.

 At the end of the day I found Ballad of a Mad Girl to be a near masterpiece if not complete perfection. I kind of hate giving five-star reviews because it sounds kind of cheap, or pandering, but I hope my review going into depth has helped you see that I am not doing this.  There certainly is a matter of taste and for me this book fit my interest very well, but that doesn’t mean it will be universally loved. Romance novels are for instance very popular and this book is not that.  If you’re hoping for high flying action then you’re also looking in the wrong place.  For what this book is, the execution, the writing style and the characters I do feel this book couldn’t have done better.  I would recommend this book as an essential read.

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A long winded introduction

Who am I and why should you care?  To say that I’m a nobody is a pretty big understatement.  There are over seven billion people in the world and everyone is a perfect snowflake.  And when everyone is a snowflake no one is.  Clearly, I’m not important in the grand scheme of things and yet, you’re reading this.  That is the only thing I can be sure of is if someone is reading this than they’re reading this.  So why should you care?

 The first thing about this blog that I ought to make clear is what the point is.  This is a blog entirely built around reviewing and discussing the craft of writing and story books.  I am not an author, at least not when I wrote this, but I do read a lot of books and try to help other people filter through the endless mass of books to find the ones they will enjoy.  Think of it as a service I provide for the satisfaction of sharing my passion.  If you’re reading this blog then you should be interested in either my point of view on books or reading books yourself at the very least and maybe writing, although there are probably better blogs for that.  Probably better blogs for all of this.

 Now to the million-dollar question still unanswered, why should you care who I am. What books someone enjoys will depend on several factors and quality is only one.  The fact is a very high-quality book may yet still be unenjoyable to you specifically as determined by your taste.  I can go into what I think makes a book quality and for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m right.  Does that mean you will enjoy the book…? Not necessarily.  Taste matters.  Take any genre and there is going to be master works in those genres and people who won’t enjoy them.  I for one do not enjoy the romance genre at all, or the regency, so books like Jane Austin, who is unquestionably a master writer, wouldn’t particularly interest me. While my reviews are aimed to express my point of view while exposing the lens I view it through to help anyone reading them to know if they share my point of view and may enjoy the same sorts of things I do.  The fact remains my lens and point of view matters if you are reading my review.  It matters because without knowing what that lens is you won’t know if the view you are getting is distorted to your taste. It’s kind of like eyeglasses that way I guess.

 That isn’t to say a good reviewer who likes stuff you do not won’t be useful. I will express why I dislike something or like it and then if you’re already reading my review you might be able to say, huh, they didn’t like that but I like that in books so maybe this book is for me even.  I have a friend who loves romance for instance, and she doesn’t particularly mind if a book sub plots to include it.  She’ll enjoy stuff I won’t and I try to keep that sort of thing in mind when I critique a book.  So if I’m going to include that explanation, why then again should you care who I am? Well because if a book is Jane Austin, whom I recognize as good but not down my alley I simply won’t read it to begin with.  So that is why it matters who I am.

 Now that I’ve got that out of the way, who am I?  Well, I’m not actually going to tell you that.  Rather I’m going to tell you what I like and appreciate and look for in literature.  This is where you put your taste against mine.  First, I like female inclusion if not female protagonists.  Media is over whelmed with male leads and male oriented stories. Most fiction, games, movies, tv, ect. . will include this magic number of thirty percent or less female inclusion. Just count the characters and you’ll see it is this bizarre trend that for whatever reason goes across lines, even cultures.  It is like all content creators got together and agreed on this in advance.  Obviously, it isn’t -all- media, but it is very pervasive. So one thing about me is I try to find the stuff that doesn’t follow that.  For me to want to read something I will generally look for fifty percent or greater female inclusion (because to make up for all the times the opposite was true we need to head in the other direction).

 Second, I care a lot about stories telling the truth.  What is telling the truth?  In a nutshell, it means an action or event shouldn’t happen that doesn’t fit the world that the story already established or character motivations.  Dues ex Machina (hand of god) are great examples.  When the author forces an outcome and it just doesn’t fit this sort of thing bothers me and I will always attempt to call them out. Why this bothers me is because to put it simply it isn’t any fun to read about something with shifting rules.  You can’t speculate about the world if there are no criteria with which to speculate on and if the author demonstrates willingness to break rules they themselves set then there is a problem.  Examples might include having a character cliff hanging involve falling into deep water in full armor and somehow swimming to escape anyway.  If you don’t want your character to die, don’t put them in a situation they can’t escape, it cheapens the experience and the story.  

 Third I care a lot about guiding principal.  I realize story telling is an art and not a science really, but I think everything should be built on something.  If you are designing anything you should have a purpose in mind and stories are no different.  Sub plots are a great example of a violation of this, something tossed into the story that doesn’t belong or have anything to do with what the story is about.  The most common subplot is romance, many stories will include this for the sake of a quick fix for the reader, like taking a drug. Instant gratification may sell, but it rarely makes for quality.  I find sub plots to be distractions and often detracting from a story.  Since this is the third thing on my list I’ll also mention these are in order of importance to me.  Generally, I’m more willing to forgive something farther down on the list than earlier.  Rules are made to be broken, right?  Just make sure if you’re breaking them you know what you’re doing because if you just think rules don’t apply to you than you’re probably just a bad writer.

 Lastly, I prefer there to be modern elements to the story, like LGBT awareness. This isn’t to say everyone in every world has to be gay or what have you.  No, this is more a comment on the author themselves.  If the author is homophobic I probably won’t read their stuff. If their work simply doesn’t touch the subject, okay, but I would rather that in some ways it is at least acknowledged. Once again, this doesn’t have to be by making a character non-het norm, tokenization can be worse than exclusion, but for instance same sex characters should be able to have meaningful friendships with each other.  For me the LGBT issue goes beyond simple sexual preference but it goes into gender identity and comfort with members of the gender which someone is not attracted to. A great example of being anti-lgbt in my view is if a character only truly interacts with potential partners and ignores everyone else and treats same sex characters purely as romantic rivals. In those hyper het-norm settings I find my interest quickly wanes.

 So now in a nutshell you know what kind of books I’ll be considering.  The last thing to touch on is genre.  The only one I don’t particularly like is romance. Why don’t I like the romance genre? Mostly because I feel it focuses a little too heavily on one aspect of human nature.  Stories usually exclude description of the main character when they shower.  Most people shower every day, see themselves naked every day.. ect.  These things are not parts of stories, why?  Well one it doesn’t usually have anything to do with the guiding principal, but two it’s just gratuitous.  I feel many or maybe most romance novels to be gratuitous. There is probably lots of good ones in the genre, but I’m not prepared to dig through the others.  It is unlikely I will review many, if any, romance novels.

 Now that you have a feel for me, you can keep reading my blog, or you know, not.  Also, my reviews are available on Amazon.  I try to review everything I read, though the stuff that is already reviewed to death I may just skip.  Happy reading!