I mean to write a fuller review, but for now all I'll say is Nope. This one was a dud. Stick to Trease's children's fiction.I mean to write a fuller review, but for now all I'll say is Nope. This one was a dud. Stick to Trease's children's fiction....more
I'd been studiously ignoring this book for years, probably precisely because it was that popular, and had become the storytelling bible du jour. GivenI'd been studiously ignoring this book for years, probably precisely because it was that popular, and had become the storytelling bible du jour. Given my skittish attitude, I was pleasantly surprised. With one big caveat, this book is something that I think a lot of young storytellers could read with immense profit. The now-legendary Blake Snyder Beat Sheet would be a really great tool for anyone to apply, and I dearly wish more authors would take to heart his comments on plot structure, building intensity, the pitfalls of inactive heroes, and so on.
I thought that about a quarter of the advice Snyder gives in this book is universal storytelling advice that everyone needs to learn. Plot points and story structure and proactive heroes are not optional. But, I didn't agree with roughly a further quarter of it, and the rest...well, it may not be something that I'd take as a hard and fast rule, but even a skittish individualist like me can tell that it's jolly good advice. (How to tell the difference between the stuff that's universal, the stuff that's fashionable, and the stuff that's myth? Just compare Snyder's advice with what great authors in the past have actually done, which in fact is an exercise he gets you to do over and over in the book).
My one big caveat has little to do with the book itself. I'd just highly recommend authors to pay close attention to what it says in the title: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need. Unless you are a writer of screenplays that aspire to become Hollywood hits, it does not necessarily apply to you. Snyder is absolutely upfront about this; he acknowledges that there are other ways of telling a story but that they do not make enough money to be made into Hollywood films ("I know how much Memento made", he says, and I admit, much as I love Christopher Nolan, I'm so glad to see someone taking the mickey out of that grim and confusing hotchpotch that's on all the syllabuses ever). So: bear in mind that the scriptwriting method, the celebrated Beat Sheet, and everything else Snyder is selling here, is primarily a formula for enticing risk-averse Hollywood producers into shelling out millions. If you are a novelist, and especially if you are a self-publishing novelist, you will likely be targeting a smaller, more niche audience, with much lower financial stakes and much, much more freedom to write more experimental stories.
Which is not to say you shouldn't read this book and learn all you can from it. Please do. Lots of good stuff here. It's just not all vital, unless you want to be the next Rossio and Elliott....more
In the 7 years since I wrote the below review, and perhaps partly as a result of it, Rosamund has somehow become an excellent friend. This book contaiIn the 7 years since I wrote the below review, and perhaps partly as a result of it, Rosamund has somehow become an excellent friend. This book contains all her hallmarks: lifegiving female friendship, brother/sister feels, theology, guilt, and stabbings. On top of that it also contains - - a one page retelling of the Volundarkvida?! - gratuitous St Augustine quotes - one of the only valid deconstructions of the Villainous Boyfriend trope, because it approaches the trope with understanding and respect (and it's SO LEGIT)
I adored this book even more this time around. And I can't wait for Rosamund's next book, WHAT MONSTROUS GODS (not far away now!!!) which is very much in the same vein.
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"Are you going to tell me it was a kindness to kill her? That it wasn't so bad, because at least I ended her suffering? I was there. I know exactly how bad it was, and not all the suffering in the world could make it right." [...] "No," said Armand after a moment. "It's not all right. You should have died first."
Despite my reservations, I liked CRUEL BEAUTY, Rosamund Hodge's debut novel, for exactly one reason, and that was its brutal honesty about the fact that its heroine was a terrible person. A sinner, deserving of judgement. That was the reason why I decided to take a chance on CRIMSON BOUND, and I'm so, so glad I did.
Once again, Rosamund Hodge has taken a well-known fairytale ("Little Red Riding Hood") as a jumping-off point for a dark, bitter fantasy. This time she's melded it with a little Norse myth, as well as a couple of other fairytales ("Hansel and Gretel", perhaps), and set the whole shebang in a vividly-realised fantasy analogue of Louis XIV's Versailles. The worldbuilding is great, the action writing is splendid, the research is apparent, the plot is fast-paced, and the characters are wonderful pretzels of guilt and shame (but more on that in a moment). I've not always found my forays into the YA genre particularly rewarding, but this book is exactly what I always hope for (but so rarely find). The quality of the storytelling alone lifts the book far ahead of the pack.
But all this is not the reason why I loved this book.
"I never asked for your pity." "Oh no, of course not. That would make you less special, wouldn't it, if you were just another sinner needing pity. No, you have to be the daughter of the devil himself before you're satisfied. You cry and you cry about your lost innocence, but the truth is, you love being this way. You love believing that you're damned because then you can do anything you want. Because you're too much of a coward to face what you've done and live with it."
The reason I loved this book was because once again, the main character is someone who has sinned terribly. And Rosamund Hodge is utterly fearless in facing her with the consequences. It takes a rock-solid moral compass to write like this about sin, guilt, despair, and repentance - a fact that I dimly guessed while reading CRUEL BEAUTY. In CRIMSON BOUND, it becomes blindingly obvious that Hodge must have some kind of faith, most likely of a Catholic nature. She is far too good a storyteller to descend to preaching, but the book is peppered with biblical allusions and the Christian theme of sin and repentance, the ethical-judicial lens through which she sees the world, is too strong and uncompromising to miss.
See, I have this against many writers. Many writers are careful not to let their characters mess up too badly. Most Christian authors shield their characters from sin, doubt and despair in a way that doesn't ring true to real life, and a good number of the ordinary run of YA novelists I've read are quite as willing to shield their characters from having to make really difficult ethical decisions.
But then there are the authors who see that this is not true to life, and so in the name of realism and grittiness they let their characters get away with (literally, in one book I read not too long ago) murder.
It's a very rare author who is brave enough to first allow the mistakes, and then face the characters with the consequences. Rosamund Hodge is one of these rare authors, and in this book, the picture she paints of sin, guilt, and repentance is so gut-wrenchingly powerful that one scene toward the end brought tears to my eyes (a thing that almost never happens when I'm reading fiction, just so you know).
Rachelle has a terrible sin in her past, and she's dedicated her life to atoning for it. But her own efforts and good intentions can't cleanse her, because she insists that she had no other choice. When she meets Armand, however, the mere fact that he faced the same dilemma she did, and lived with a clean conscience, makes him a walking insult to her pain.
This is not a story that gives easy answers. There's pain. There's bitterness. There's anger. Rachelle does her share of raging against the heavens, but that's not where Hodge leaves her. My biggest complaint about CRUEL BEAUTY was that it seemed heavy on the Total Depravity but light on the Irresistible Grace. CRIMSON BOUND does much to address this fault (though I am still reminded of the "certaine bitter taediousnesse" that one sixteenth-century Catholic theologian once pointed out as the hallmark of his tradition's theology).
While I was delighted and entranced by this story, I did have a few minor complaints; some characters and some aspects of the story world seemed a little underdeveloped, and while I found the love triangle about 100x more compelling than the usual young adult fare (there was a really, really good thematic reason for it) I felt not all of the book lived up to its glorious themes.
That said, with her first book, Rosamund Hodge got my attention; with her second, she's converted me into a serious fan. This is my best YA discovery since the RED RISING series, and now I'm eager to see what else she writes....more
Each of the Carey series follows the adventures of a young man from a noble Welsh family in some historical period or other. Tank Commander focuses on World War I. Young John Carey is a career soldier like his father and grandfather (and most of the rest of his family, all the way back to Philip D'Aubigny of Montgisard during the Third Crusade), but he's never experienced war until he finds himself as a second lieutenant under shellfire at Mons, in the first major battle of World War I. The death of the heir to the Austrian throne in Sarajevo has sparked off a continent-wide conflict, and nothing John has learned so far, about fencing with the sword, cavalry charges, or maneuvering over the open ground of a battlefield, has prepared him for a whole new kind of war. As the war bogs down into the ghastly, flooded trenches of the Western Front, John gains experience, rank, and cynicism as nearly everyone he knows is wiped out. When a new invention promises to end the stalemate and save thousands of lives, John jumps at the chance to help...
I've been interested in World War I ever since my teen years, when I discovered and fell in love with John Buchan's Richard Hannay novels. Though very little of those novels actually took place in the trenches, the books were peppered with references to the different battles - Ypres, Arras, the Somme, Cambrai - which meant nothing to me but would have been well-known from the headlines to the original readers. In addition, Buchan had no call to be providing a detailed picture of trench life, since the vast majority of his readers would have experienced it for themselves.
Tank Commander, being written in the '70s for a generation who had never known war, fills in this picture with vivid, gritty, immersive detail. I feel it's the single most informative thing I've ever read about how WWI was fought--Welch, as a renowned military historian who had seen active service himself in the Tank Corps during WWII, is on his home turf in this book. And while the book doesn't give a comprehensive picture of the war - it ends right after the battle of Cambrai in 1917, when the war still had a year to go - its compelling and often stomach-churning descriptions of important battles including Mons, Le Cateau, First and Second Ypres, Arras, and Cambrai definitely give the reader a good idea of how the war developed over the first three years on the Western Front.
Each time I read a new Ronald Welch book, I gain a better appreciation for him both as a historian and as a writer. Welch is no Shakespeare, not even a John Buchan, but his books are always meticulously researched, exciting, and manly. Tank Commander, like all his novels, expects a certain level of maturity of both its characters and its readers. In this novel, anyone can (and does) die. John must break the news to a young soldier that he has been sentenced to death for cowardice. He must take orders from incompetent, outdated officers while trying to use his own experience to protect his men. Tank Commander is a challenging book for any young person to read.
The book was not without its faults. The first chapter, which catches us up on the month leading up to the war, is (I thought) rather badly edited together, with some characters introduced twice, as if for the first time. The characters, especially supporting characters, never quite come into three-dimensional life. And the plot is pretty tenuous. The book makes up for all these shortcomings by being so incredibly immersive, and so historically detailed. It straddles the line between history and fiction, its purpose less to tell a story than to follow a fictional character through a very real historical setting.
Parents might like to be warned that Tank Commander contains pretty consistent use of mild British-type swearing along with regular, graphic descriptions of wounds and death. It may be too gory and intense for young readers of previous books in the Carey series, but I'd definitely recommend it for young adults.
After being unaccountably out of print for years, Ronald Welch's Carey Family Series is now being released by Slightly Foxed in illustrated, clothbound limited editions. Slightly Foxed were kind enough to send me a free review copy of Tank Commander, but I was under no obligation to write a positive review, or to tell you to rush off and MAKE THESE BOOKS YOUR OWN BEFORE THEY SELL OUT....more
Hilarious, irreverent, scholarly, and vivid account of the author's epic journey across Asia on the Silk Road, in the footsteps of Marco Polo. WilliamHilarious, irreverent, scholarly, and vivid account of the author's epic journey across Asia on the Silk Road, in the footsteps of Marco Polo. William Dalrymple's first book (I'd previously read, and loved FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN) was written in the late 80s, when was still difficult to get into China and large parts the country were off limits. No doubt it would be just as dangerous to follow the same path today, just in different areas.
Content warning - not recommended for younger readers. ...more
Suzannah Rowntree
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