briarrose87

Do not plan to read, for reasons I'm no longer allowed to discuss. Just Google 'Cassie Claire' (that exact spelling) if you'd like to know why.

Do not plan to read, for reasons I'm no longer allowed to discuss. Just Google 'Cassie Claire' (that exact spelling) if you'd like to know why.

I was fourteen years old when I found this book hiding on the shelves of my small-town library. My mother had had a psychotic break when I was six weeks old, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized. For as long as I could remember, I had been tiptoeing around the gaping hole in my life. I knew hardly anyone else in the same situation.

This is the book that told me I wasn't alone. In beautiful, wrenching, spare poetry, Sones paints a picture of a child's life, lived in the shadow of a mentally ill loved one. Her anger, confusion, grief, love, and resentment bleed onto the page, as vividly as I remember from my own childhood. This is the book that told me it was okay to feel all those things at once.

I will always love it for that.

I'm not surprised to see that this book has stellar reviews and that it has won multiple awards. This kind of story seems to be wildly popular and to get great acclaim.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the story at all. It was relentlessly dark and depressing (to the point that it sometimes felt contrived), with a side order of confusing. It didn't help that I strongly disagreed with some of the moral and philosophical opinions expressed (especially in the monster's stories). This is one of those unfortunate cases where a book is relatively well-written, but just did not work for me as an individual reader.

One of my favorite books of all time. Moseley's prose is gorgeous and evocative (the landscape is a character in itself), and there are no stereotypes here, no caricatures; the characters are complex and interesting. The main ones are Miranda, widow, mother of 6, struggling to escape from her oppressive, legalistic, cult-like church; and Jack, divorced college professor, a man of both faith and reason, who is equal parts angry and sad to see the life in which Miranda and her children are trapped. Both characters are intelligent, capable of great kindess and love, and like most people, struggling with their own kinds of damage.

This book isn't just exceptionally well-written. (I'm normally not a fan of romance, but the one in this book was so well-done that I didn't mind it one bit.) This book is important. It addresses a world that needs to be better known: the world of Quiverfull fundamentalist homeschooling separatists. Now, Moseley is not implying that all homeschoolers are like this. Obviously not; she herself homeschooled her 3 children. But she is shining a light on a homeschooling subculture that exists, and is a prison to everyone within it. I know. I have a number of friends who grew up in it. Some are still struggling years later.

The Quiverfull movement at its most extreme gives all women, regardless of temperament or gifting or ability, exactly one role in life: to have as many babies as possible, homeschool them all, cook and clean and practice extreme submission. Men are the ultimate, unquestionable authority. (Which many of them feel trapped into, as well--imagine being a sensitive, indecisive guy in a system like this!) Children are harshly forced into unqualified, unquestioning obedience, rather than being taught how to think for themselves and make good choices. Performance and conformity are valued far above grace and courage.

Moseley does a tremendous job of writing a vivid story set against the backdrop of that world, without infodumps and without reducing the characters to bland, powerless stereotypes. Miranda and her children are all so believable that I felt like I knew them, by the end; and despite being trapped in such a stifling world, none of them are without agency. Miranda in particular is done with being controlled; when Jack tries to give her orders, though they come from the opposite of the Quiverfull mentality, she lets him know that her life will no longer be run by men. She will be making her own decisions. She is discovering grace and freedom, the way we all must: not at anyone else's behest, but between herself and God.

I will be leaping to buy any further books by this author.

I hated this book. Hated hated hated. Yes, there was cheesiness, and the characters were not terribly well-drawn, but that wouldn't have garnered a one-star review for me if not for the ending. I haven't read all the other reviews--there are many--but among those I have read, almost no one has mentioned the thing that bothered me the most about this story.

Keturah gives up everything she's ever wanted--all her dreams, all her plans, all her aspirations--to be with emo, dark-cloak-wearing Lord Death. The story presents this as noble on her part, as right, as the only good decision.

Lord Death gives up nothing for Keturah.

If I ever have daughters, this is not what I want their fairy tales to tell them.

That is all.

I liked "Feed" a lot, even though it had some problems (such as the repetition mentioned by many other reviewers, and extremely one-dimensional villains), and even though Mira Grant is coming from a different political perspective than I am. The way it ended was completely unexpected and, in my opinion, took it to the next level, despite the flaws.

Then came book two. And I liked it, mostly. Shaun was a complete asshole, to everyone, but I understood that, for the same reason I understood Katniss Everdeen's behavior in "Mockingjay." Trauma does things to people, and it usually isn't pretty. But the way that book ended... well, to say I'm disappointed that Grant undid the one truly gutsy thing she'd accomplished in this series is a bit of an understatement.

Still, I figured I'd give "Blackout" a try. And what I found was:

-The plot, always thin, has devolved into something my four-year-old nephew would find nonsensical.
-Not only did Grant undo George's death, she did it for no reason that could ever in a million years actually make sense.
-And, for me, the crowning moment of disgust and disappointment... INCEST! Which we are expected to accept as normal and even sweet! I suppose some people are fine with it since George and Shaun aren't biologically related, but... no. They were raised as brother and sister, they still present themselves and refer to each other as brother and sister.

I find myself now wishing I had stopped after "Feed," that I had never known the rest of the series existed.

I must confess: I am a bit obsessed with dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA fiction. For me, as with most people, it probably started with [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1)|Suzanne Collins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358275334s/2767052.jpg|2792775], and grew from there. Soon after reading [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1)|Suzanne Collins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358275334s/2767052.jpg|2792775], I found Carrie Ryan’s haunting, claustrophobic [b:The Forest of Hands and Teeth|3432478|The Forest of Hands and Teeth (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #1)|Carrie Ryan|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320633297s/3432478.jpg|3473471], and I was hooked. Though those two series are very different, they share a kind of raw desperation that I found beautiful, and I’ve been searching for more of it ever since.

I started “Empty” with high hopes. The cover is well-done, and the premise sounded timely in a compelling way. I think we’re all aware that our connected modern lives are powered by a non-renewable resource, and I was excited to find a YA book addressing what might happen once that resource starts running out.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I tried to like the book, but its flaws were numerous and glaring enough to keep me from getting absorbed in the story. The writing seems stilted and amateurish, and the characters frequently spout awkward, paragraph-long info-dumps. So many anvils are dropped that I’m surprised I finished the book without a concussion. I love books in which the message is a organic part of the story; in “Empty” the message has been shoe-horned in as frequently and loudly as possible.

Then there were the characters, all too often flat and cliché. The worst offender was the stereotypical cheerleader, whose “character growth” moment was deciding it was okay to wear glasses instead of contacts. (Not even because she had come to understand that appearance didn’t matter much in a world gripped by crisis—more because she realized she still looked pretty in glasses.) A few of the second-tier characters had the potential to be interesting, but they got sadly little attention.

To my total lack of surprise, the ending was incongruous, bordering on deus ex machina. The main female character finds a random abandoned house in the woods, complete with garden and self-sustaining energy source. Hallelujah, we’re saved!

I still think the premise of the book is good, but the execution leaves much to be desired. My advice: read Paolo Bacigalupi’s excellent [b:Ship Breaker|7095831|Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1)|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327874074s/7095831.jpg|7352929] instead.

Do not plan to read, for reasons I'm no longer allowed to discuss. Just Google 'Cassie Claire' (that exact spelling) if you'd like to know why.

Do not plan to read, for reasons I'm no longer allowed to discuss. Just Google 'Cassie Claire' (that exact spelling) if you'd like to know why.

Do not plan to read, for reasons I'm no longer allowed to discuss. Just Google 'Cassie Claire' (that exact spelling) if you'd like to know why.

One of my all-time favorites, "Till We Have Faces" is unique among Lewis's works. It is a dark, complex retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, focusing not on the beautiful Psyche, but rather on her ugly older sister Orual.

Lewis creates a beautifully realized world, a gritty land of myth in which threads of truth are woven into the tapestry of paganism. Like his world-building, Lewis's characters have great depth, all being capable of both good and evil. Orual in particular is one of my favorite characters ever: ugly, strong, loving, selfish, courageous... A warrior and a leader, in defiance of the physical unattractiveness that caused her to be deemed "worthless" as a child. She makes big mistakes, and she does great things, and in the end her life is defined by love in ways she didn't even realize. Anyone who doubts Lewis's ability to write well-rounded female characters should meet Orual.

When pitching this book to others, as I often do, I tell them not to be intimidated by its depth and complexity: yes, it is different from Lewis's other works, and slowly paced in places, but it is a beautiful tale and well worth discovering.

Children in the Night is a story set in total darkness. The Askirit people live in an underground world that has no sun, moon, or stars, and is too damp for fire. The only light they have ever seen is the light of sparks and luminous sea creatures. Within this world, we follow two major characters: Yosha, a tormented boy who is caught between his desire to seek light and his desire to avenge his father's death; and Asel, a strong-minded young female warrior who challenges her people's isolationism and fear of the "barbarians" who live outside their lands.

This is a tale that spans many years, and takes place against an intricately constructed background. Harold Myra spent ten years on this story, and the detail of the world he created makes it clear why. It cannot be easy to write a story in which every character is functionally blind, but Myra succeeds in creating a setting that is detailed and vivid enough to be engaging. The book starts off a bit slow, but once I got into it, I was quickly caught up in the details, the characters, and the overarching story. Yosha and Asel fascinated me, as did the trio of orphan children Asel rescued from the "barbarian" lands--and, of course, Auret, the battered, disabled boy who changes every life he touches.

Children in the Night is a Christian allegory, but I never felt beaten over the head by it, and I found it enjoyable as a stand-alone story. I read it first as a young teenager, and I strongly identified with the tale of two young people seeking the truth, challenging what they had been told, and fighting for their freedom and that of their people.