Alyse
Ughh, that was a disappointing end to a story arc. Bigby and Snow are two of my favorite characters in comics, but they make no sense in this. And don't get me started on their stupid, boring litter
Bigby leaves town and goes to extreme lengths to make himself completely untraceable (and cut off from his kids) because Snow cares about the Fable community and doesn't immediately go along with his crazy scheme to live in the woods together...or something...I wasn't sure exactly what he wanted (he did have a point about her wanting a fairy tale and what not, but I'm not sure that justified such a gigantic hissy fit). So then she's stuck raising his 6 annoying kids for like 5 years, completely devoid of any story line for that entire time while he shacks up with some woods-bimbo. Then he decides to come back, spends like 5 pages single handedly defeating the enemy who has been mercilessly persecuting all of them for several hundred years (personally, I like Bigby because he's flawed and even though he's a gigantic wolf, he also needs the rest of the Fable community to keep the Adversary at bay, so this felt silly). Then he meets back up with Snow, she's like, "oh hey, long time no see...by the way, I've been raising your wolf babies who I had no conscious part in conceiving." He's like, "I have a woods girlfriend, but you smell better. Want to get married?" She shrugs agreement, even though they've never actually been together romantically at this point (except for the time they were both roofied and neither remembers). Two pages later they're hitched, and that's the end of that.
Reminds me of The Twilight Zone–one of the hour long episodes that goes interesting places but takes so long getting there that you've lost all interest by the end. There were moments I liked, but mostly there were long descriptions of people climbing up and down stairs.
The characters are all minimally developed (if I can't relate to a female mechanic character, then there are some serious issues that need to be dealt with). The work-related metaphors get old fast (again, if I'm getting tired of mechanical analogies, that's a really bad sign). The “twists” are all easy to see coming, which would be forgivable if they weren't so built up. The world, though initially fascinating, gets less and less interesting and more and more illogical as the story progresses. People do things that no real people would ever do. And, when the characters aren't spending page after page thinking about nothing, the plot takes turns that are either absurdly predictable or just plain absurd.
I thought there was so much potential in the beginning, some fascinating ideas buried within the plodding pace, but by the third book it turned into a cliche action movie (that was still, somehow, paced absurdly slowly)
This is has got to be one of my least favorite books ever. Too much Chosen-One-can-do-no-wrong for my tastes. I had to stop when Our Hero was applying for Hogwarts and far surpassed all the older, much better educated boys, then gave a rousing and heartfelt speech, and then couldn't figure out the difference between a positive and a negative number.
First person narration isn't my favorite thing in the world, but I don't mind it if the narrator is in some way interesting or likable or at the very least has interesting thoughts floating through their head, but when your lead is a hardcore Marty Sue whose only conflicts come because the rest of the world doesn't instantly realize how wonderful he is, well, it's hard to listen to that guy blather on about himself for hours. I mean, maybe the entire point of the series is that if you give someone the chance to tell their story it's going to be long, meandering, purposeless, and self-involved, but that's a really frustrating moral to listen to through three long books.
I'm assuming in the last book we're going to learn that, oh my goodness gracious, he's not a reliable narrator and he's lied to us about key facts–who woulda thunk it. Or perhaps that set up is so obvious that the twist is he actually is a reliable narrator. Either way, it's boring and not nearly as interesting as the buildup wants us to expect. Unless Mr. God Man (I already forgot his name) turns out to be severely mentally impaired and the whole series is his fever dream there is no redeeming this one dimensional wish-fulfillment character
I'm a sucker for a soft-spoken and introspective but also strong and opinionated heroine. I typically get bored with “classic romances,” but this one I like because its simply a part of Jane's life, not the soul defining moment in an otherwise non-interesting life (also, I think it's awesome that they fall in love because they have really good conversations and not that Romeo/Juliet lust across a crowded room nonsense and also that when Mr. Rochester keeps professing his love and singing her songs she's like, “settle down dude, stop being so emotional, you need to approach this marriage thing logically”). Also there are crazy people and fires...
so, very, many, commas–and asides
There are things I adore about this novel–George Smiley in particular, but also the jargon, the focus on intricacy over action, and the interwoven plot. I mean, it basically defined my all time favorite genre of intricate espionage novels
And there are things I hate about this book. People always complain about the convoluted plot and the abundance of characters, but I had no issue at all with that (if anything I found it a bit too straight foward for the genre). What I can't deal with is le Carre's convoluted sentences and the abundance of commas. I couldn't focus on the plot because I was too busy rearranging his sentences in my head
Goodness, these books have horrible covers. Honor Harrington (space-bound Horatio Hornblower with lady parts) has the makings of an interesting character but she's annoyingly perfect (I don't consider being bad at math when she thinks too hard to be an endearing character trait, but that's just me). Other characters either think Honor is amaze-balls (and are thus good guys) or hate her because she's too darn efficient (and are thus the bad guys), along with the occasional character who “while he wanted her dead he had to admire her dogged determination.” But, even though I really didn't care one way or another about the plot, I still did more or less enjoy the book
I don't know how I felt about this. There wasn't really anything that I actively disliked, but there also wasn't much that drew me in and made me care about what was happening. I did like the take on the mind/body problem (although by the end it was taken to a rather absurd extreme) and I appreciated the complexity of the world that was created with this unique take on an old troupe. But I finished this about ten minutes ago, and I've already forgotten and stopped caring about almost everything that happened.
This is basically fan-fiction without someone else's interesting characters to fall back on. The dialogue is an experiment in telling an entire story through cliches and quips that would make a CSI writer embarrassed. (Phrases like “Do you need me to draw you a map?” and “Captain Vomit” are said without irony and with the intent of being condescendingly clever.) I hated the characters, they were flat, blatant author avatars and annoyingly immature (I kept forgetting they were supposed to be adults and not 13 years old). There are a few interesting ideas, but they tend to turn into simplistic political soapboxes.
If I had to hear one more time about the chick's messed up eyes or her brother poking things with sticks or all of the ditzy girl's cameras or an in depth description of every blood test they had to take or blatantly obvious or blatantly stupid line of dialogue that a character “deadpanned” or...well, what I'm getting at is that the narration was more than a bit repetitive.
I wanted to like this book, I thought the idea adding politics to the zombie scene could be really interesting. After all, that's what science fiction does best–adds some distance between the subject and the audience so current “hot button” issues can be examined with less bias. But it has to be logical first. I mean, I couldn't get past the whole “We've matured past the death penalty, you'd have to be an idiot to think otherwise.” Yes, the prisoner would reanimate, but he would do so in a controlled environment where he could be immediately dealt with or brought to a research lab. Somehow, in this illogical world, it's more humane to let the prisoner die naturally in jail where he will reanimate and kill fellow prisoners (I'm not inferring this, it is specifically stated). It was only a minor point in the book, but the perfect example for how most of the politics felt–the author had some specific point she wanted to make ahead of time, so she molded her society to justify said point. It wasn't genuine or logical or anything that would have naturally developed out of a zombie infested world.
And I was never sold on the world. I could buy bloggers becoming respected newsmen, if all the bloggers portrayed didn't exemplify every stereotype currently making the blogging community a joke–they were all immature, outspokenly opinionated, and obsessed with fan fiction.
Personally, I like when authors try to use legitimate science to create their worlds–but this felt like she just googled a few things, found some official sounding words, and called it science. I mean, the whole premise is that the common cold (presumably all the millions of constantly changing strains) and cancer (again, all the different and incredibly varied types of cancer)are both magically cured AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT. And, as we all know, scientific progress is scary, so then zombies pop up...or something...I admittedly got a bit lost at that point. I mean, zombie stories don't need an in depth scientific origin story (I don't remember there being one in the Romero movies our heroine can't stop mentioning)–origins help, but if you're going to add one, it had better be believable.
And the “twist ending” is only surprising in that it somehow manages to be both illogical and obvious.
I'm obsessed with this book. I love historical espionage and generally hate young adult fiction, so I was afraid my beloved genre was going to be perverted by love triangles and simplistic, linear narratives. But that was certainly not the case. The characters are complex (sometimes heart-breakingly so)and the story is intricate and historically accurate. I can completely see Virginia Hall and Christina Granville living in the same universe as the characters in the book
Starts with a bang and then proceeds to go nowhere. The characters were all completely and utterly bland–people with money were beyond evil and people without were beyond reproach, and that was about it as far as character development went. I did like the mythology and attempt to lend some scientific credence to vampires. And the plot was enough to keep me interested even if it wasn't particularly memorable.
