I wasn't really expecting to love this book as much as I do right now but I am so, so pleased with that ending. This is easily right up there with TheI wasn't really expecting to love this book as much as I do right now but I am so, so pleased with that ending. This is easily right up there with The Scorpio Races, with each chapter carefully unveiling an entire mini story-arc on its own. I still think Gansey is a little boringly perfect, even though the story wouldn't be the same without him - and I kind of get how Blue isn't supposed to be a scene-stealer (the page of cups, the girl who doesn't seem to have powers but can only enhance others, I know I know), but she doesn't do much at all outside of the romantic plotline in this book (which unfolded like I expected, and is the only thing that I didn't like). The problem is that those raven boys are just as interesting whether or not Blue is there. Their bonds with each other still feel more genuine than they do with her, and I hope that changes.
The best thing is that now the introductions are out of the way, we can really start focusing and delving deeper into what makes the characters tick, and Adam and Ronan are easily the ones I wanted to know more about. Maybe it's because it's so much easier to see their flaws, which in turn leads to more interesting scenes, more conflict and change. I think it's pretty likely that this could be my favorite book in this series- Ronan's family is my favorite, and I really hope we see more of them. The dream sequences, the entire dream-stealing idea, all fantastic. I think there's just the right amount of clues to what some of his secrets are but my skeptical brain also kept making me think it was just all in my head. I'm glad it wasn't. Now when does book 3 come out?...more
Completely brilliant from start to finish, but it's not like I expected any less
The plot is a real mindbender (/understatement), and it's really imporCompletely brilliant from start to finish, but it's not like I expected any less
The plot is a real mindbender (/understatement), and it's really important that you go in without knowing anything. I didn't find Seth as compelling of a character in comparison to the absolutely wonderful (view spoiler)[Regine and Tomasz, you don't how much I loved those two, YOU DON'T KNOW (hide spoiler)]. It could also do a little less with those instances where you think (view spoiler)[the threat is dead and he pops up again at just the right moment (Aaron the preacher all over again) (hide spoiler)], but you know what? 400+ pages just flew by, and it made me think and even laugh quite a bit. The characters/plot/writing are so, so good. ...more
You'd think that after so many years of devouring books that I wouldn't be reduced to the speechless mess that I am right now, mWhere do I even start?
You'd think that after so many years of devouring books that I wouldn't be reduced to the speechless mess that I am right now, marveling at how Fly by Night manages to keep getting better with every page, how it keeps surprising me with a new wonderful way of wording something as it paints so many vivid pictures of its characters with a few deft strokes.
From the first few pages I was in love, and it's hard not to because here is a book that loves words just as much as you do, and brings out the power they have in a way that's nothing short of amazing. As it went on I only fell harder as the world really came to life with all its intricate details and god, that plot. There are so many different threads going on at once, but they're layered in a way that seems effortless. Small hints and details come back and the stakes keep rising as conspiracies, motives, schemes, and factions collide. It's wonderfully unpredictable, and a major reason for that is because the characters are always surprising me.
The characters aren't merely likable, they're tricky and clever, angry and frightened but resilient and entertaining as hell. And that's just a few words for Mosca, our lead, who has 'the keen instincts of the unloved', and the first time she feels like someone wants her around, it was a feeling 'too strange and new to be thrown away lightly.' The fact that that someone is a con man of questionable character keeps things from getting sappy.
I don't think I can describe the characters better than Hardinge can, so here's a few snippets.
"When he smiled, his eyebrows rose into two neat chestnut crescents, as if they knew the world was destined to surprise them again and again, and were determined to believe in pleasant surprises."
"Sometimes fear made you angry. Perhaps after years anger cooled, like a sword taken from the forge. Perhaps in the end you were left with something very cold and very sharp."
"But in the name of the most holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?" Because I’d been hoarding words for years, buying them from pedlars and carving them secretly on to bits of bark so I wouldn’t forget them, and then he turned up using words like ‘epiphany’ and ‘amaranth’. Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn’t since they burned my father’s books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers . . . Mosca shrugged. "He’s got a way with words."
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a book so dedicated to the love of reading and words captivated me because I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. But this book doesn't try to play off those feelings, it takes them and makes the most of all the potential and power that words can have. It's brimming with ideas, rich world-building, lovely moments, and whenever I think about it I can't help smiling. I think I forgot to mention that it's hilarious too. Just.... read this book, stat. ...more
You may have noticed that it took me approximately 9 months to finish this book. And that's because: you never want something Melina Marchetta has wriYou may have noticed that it took me approximately 9 months to finish this book. And that's because: you never want something Melina Marchetta has written to end. You have to bring yourself to put it down for a while because it's like some decadent bittersweet dessert that has a billion flavors of it and it turns out that the flavors are accented with your tears and emotions and the writing and characters that are so good that it's too much and if you keep going you'll faint a little after a few bites and what happens when there's no more left and bc you ATE IT ALL NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO AFTER THIS. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR CHOICES because now you've had a taste of something so good that nothing will compare and all you want to do is sit and stare at a wall forever oh wait this is the second book there's one more that's going to wreck you even more ok but for now all you do is sob and think Froi and his stupid perfect family and that crazy wild gorgeous abrasive Quintana and brothers and curses and darkness and family and sisters and mothers and love, characters that love fiercely or hide it or long for it without knowing they already have it, dozens of characters from everywhere and every age, impossibly different but connected and the same, who all are just dying to have their turn at making you love them, and hate them but it's also because I have a bad habit of being easily distracted and procrastination but w/e read this book and sign away your soul and weep comrade because soon you'll turn into the same raving lunatic as me, and I didn't even like Finnikin of the Rock that much
(view spoiler)[Anyways, I am barely coherent after finishing this (THAT ENDING) but here's some attempts at expressing my undying love for this book and the emotional torture it put me through
-Gargarin and Arjuro. I love them so much. They've been through so much and they can barely show it anymore but you can still tell how important they are to each other. The entire cast of characters is exceptional, Lirah and De Lancey just adding to the tangled web of relationships between people who are ripping my heart out right now
"‘Three warnings?’ Froi asked with disbelief. ‘Three? There are to be no warnings. If someone touches you again, Quintana, you grab the first thing you can find and hurl it at them.’
‘No. Not exactly what I would suggest,’ Gargarin said. ‘It would help if this kingdom didn’t see us as a family of savages.’
There was silence after that. It was too strange a word for Gargarin to use. Family."
-Froi. FROI. Froi, I was almost a little skeptical about a book with you as the lead, and I couldn't have been any more wrong
-Quintana ok
"Tippideaux held a hand out to her. Quintana studied it. Froi feared she would bite the fingers off to the bone. ‘Will Quintana of Charyn be beautiful in your play?’ she asked, quietly. Tippideaux thought for a moment. Just say yes, Tippideaux. ‘She’ll be strangely intriguing,’ Tippideaux said, her eyes faraway. ‘With a touch of mystery and savagery that will bewitch only the bold and courageous amongst us.’ Froi and the lads held their breaths. After what seemed an eternity, Quintana took Tippideaux’s hand."
-Phaedra and Lucian and the way that their storyline speaks volumes about things that are relevant in the world at present, too -
uggggghhhhadsasdfas I'll try to write properly about this later because I just need to lie down and cry for a while at how perfectly unperfect the characters in this book are (hide spoiler)]...more
This is such a strange book. Strange in a way that I can't place as 'good' or 'bad', just different. It's pretty ho-hum a lot of the time, but it makeThis is such a strange book. Strange in a way that I can't place as 'good' or 'bad', just different. It's pretty ho-hum a lot of the time, but it makes sense because this read exactly like the journal of a girl-- despite dealing with magical realism, not all lives are filled with adventure and drama.
So it's about a girl, who's been through a lot: a wicked mother, losing her twin sister, being sent away from home. But despite all that, those events take place before the book even starts, and other dramatic moments are off-screen as well. The majority of the book is her thoughts on the books she's read (with LOTS of references to sci-fi classics, expect at least a few per page), or her somewhat friendless day-to-day life at a boarding school. More than magic or fantasy or tragedy, this book is about finding people who understand you, who are like you, who you can talk to, overcoming loneliness, and the joy of reading (and interlibrary loans). It may not be as interesting, exactly, but the moments where Mori realizes that she is a person worth listening to, or when she worries about talking too much about books with people who've read the same, you can't help but feel happy for her.
To get there, though, you're going to have to wade through some not-so-interesting parts. Not every page of an ordinary teenage girl's journal is going to be beautifully written, but when that ordinary-ness is an essential part of Among Others. And when the ordinary-ness subsides, even if it's only for a brief moment, it's really something. I mean, here I was, reading about buying buns and going to libraries, when the next journal entry is something like this.
Then I saw Mor. I hadn’t been expecting it at all. She was walking along quite unconcerned, a leaf in her hand as if she was playing some serious part in a game. I shouted her name, and she turned and saw me and smiled, with such gladness that it broke my heart. I reached out for her, and she for me, but she wasn’t really there, like a fairy, worse than a fairy. She looked afraid, and she looked from side to side, seeing the fairies, of course, lining the path.
“Let go,” Glorfindel said, almost in my ear, a whisper so warm it moved my hair.
I wasn’t holding her, except that I was. Our hands reached out and did not touch, but the connection between us was tangible. It glowed violet. It was the only thing with colour. It wasn’t visible normally, but if it had been for the last year it would have been trailing around me like a broken bridge. Now it was whole again, I was whole again, we were together. “Holding or dying,” he said in my ear, and I understood, he meant that I could hold her here and that would be bad, and I trusted him about that although I didn’t understand it, or I could go with her through that door to death. That would be suicide. But I couldn’t let her go. It had been so very hard without her all that time, such a rotten year. I’d always meant to die too, if dying was necessary.
“Half way,” Glorfindel said, and he didn’t mean I was half dead without her or that she was halfway through or any of that, he meant that I was halfway through Babel 17, and if I went on I would never find out how it came out.
There may be stranger reasons for being alive.
There are books. There’s Auntie Teg and Grampar. There’s Sam, and Gill. There’s interlibrary loan. There are books you can fall into and pull up over your head. There’s the distant hope of a karass sometime in the future. There’s Glorfindel who really cares about me as much as a fairy can care about anything.
I let go. Reluctantly, but I let go. She clung. She held on, so that letting go wasn’t enough. If I wanted to live, I had to push her away, through the connection that bound us, though she was crying and calling to me and holding on as hard as she could. It is the hardest thing I have ever done, worse than when she died. Worse than when they dragged me off her and the ambulance took her away and let my mother go with her, smiling, but not me. Worse than when Auntie Teg told me she was dead.
Mor was always braver than I was, more practical, nicer, just generally a better person. She was the better half of us.
But she was afraid now, and lonely and bereft, and dead, and I had to push her away. She changed as she clung, so she was like ivy, all over me, and seaweed, tendrils clutching, and slime, impossible to shake off. Now I wanted to get her off I couldn’t, and even though she was changing I knew she was still Mor all the time. I could feel that she was. I was afraid. I didn’t want to hurt her. In the end, I put my weight down on my leg. The pain broke the bond, the same way it frightens the fairies. The pain was something my living body could do, the same as picking up oak leaves and bringing them up a mountain.
She went on, then, or tried to but the twilight had became darkness, and couldn’t go through the door, it wasn’t there any more. She stood by the trees looking like herself again, and very young and lost, and I almost reached out for her again. Then she was gone, in an eyeblink, the way fairies go.
Mori mentions magic and fairies as if they're as mundane as anything in the world, and we can't really be sure if she's making it all up or not; maybe it's just her way of coping with everything she's been through; maybe her mother's just a cruel parent, maybe she really does use magic for evil. Maybe a sci-fi book club was created because Mori used magic selfishly to make it so, because she wanted it so badly; or maybe magic had nothing to do with it. But that's not what matters, not really....more
The Ask and the Answer is still my fave though. If only for Davy. DAVY EFFING PRENTISS. I've never been so emotionally manipulated*foams at the mouth*
The Ask and the Answer is still my fave though. If only for Davy. DAVY EFFING PRENTISS. I've never been so emotionally manipulated by a book to feel sorry for someone so loathable. WTF these books MESS WITH YOUR MIND. ...more
Man, I can't believe I ever doubted Mrs. Moriarty. Her books are one-of-a-kind - I read the first ten pages and put it down, thinking I'd never botherMan, I can't believe I ever doubted Mrs. Moriarty. Her books are one-of-a-kind - I read the first ten pages and put it down, thinking I'd never bother finishing it; it's bursting at the seams with oddities (reading like some mad fantasy Lydia conjured up) but once you get used to it you'll find a lot of depth in even the most (seemingly) innocuous scenes. Once I picked it up again on a whim, I ended up reading all 400 some pages in one day. (No small feat given my disturbingly short attention span these days, ok.) A Corner of White is brilliant, creative, ingenious but most of all it's surprising.
Ever since Feeling Sorry For Celia she's been creating these stories where none of the characters are as simple as you assume. She takes your expectations and subverts them as effortlessly as she creates characters that are endearing, distinct, a little strange and all the more human for it. I also love that feeling I always get when I read her books - at some point in the story, it's almost as if something otherworldly is happening - hard to describe, but just when you're think you're going nuts she brings it back to reality again. And you know what's really going to be strange? Reading anything after this, a book that's so uninhibited with every whimsical thought and turn of phrase that every word lights up the mind. The typical droves of stripped-down first-person present tense narratives (well, to be fair, anything, really) will pale in comparison.
also, I personally find the NA cover kind of awful. It's colorful in all the wrong ways. Looks like they were aiming for a younger audience with it (the AU cover looks much more adult-oriented) but it's definitely not a book you can dismiss just because the fantasy is more lighthearted than most. At least, it seems lighthearted at first, and it never loses its humour and warmth - but as the story gets more involved it becomes emotionally compelling as well. Like I mentioned earlier, sentences that look completely random become meaningful hundreds of pages later. Brilliant stuff ...more
“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen.” - Jellicoe R“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen.” - Jellicoe Road, Prologue
And so begins Jellicoe Road, one of the most frustrating but rewarding books i have ever read. Jellicoe Road contains many stories; the book weaves together past and present, family and mysteries, loyalty and friendship, and at times it is heartbreakingly sad.
Taylor Markham has lived at a boarding school ever since she was abandoned by her mother many years ago. The story is hard to explain; one narrative takes place in the present, with Taylor trying to figure out where her closest friend and guardian, Hannah, has disappeared to. The second story is set in the past and follows four friends. The prologue is part of this second story.
The flashbacks were a breath of fresh air and the way they tie in to the present-day story is simply amazing. I had figured out the twists behind When You Reach Me because I had heard there were secrets lurking in the story; I didn’t think that Jellicoe Road would have any plot twists, but when they were revealed not only was it shocking; it felt right. Not like “What the heck was the author thinking?” but “Ahhh, it makes sense.” Just what you want in this little puzzle of a book.
I could barely read this book when I first started it. Actually, that’s not totally true; the introduction is simply amazing. I read the first few pages and thought that the rest of the book would be just as gripping- but instead, the plot became incredibly convoluted and confusing.
The story springs right into Taylor’s life without any exposition whatsoever. Usually I love these types of stories; figuring out what’s happening is usually fun. But in this book, I was just frustrated.
I couldn’t seem to care about the characters; the back story to the plot was either to brief or vague; some plot elements made absolutely no sense until the very end. I found Taylor to be an unsympathetic lead; she seemed so caught up in her teenage angst.
Reading it began to feel like a tiresome trip; I tried to encourage myself to stay with it (it won the Printz award! That prologue was breathtaking!) but I eventually just gave up and put it down for a while. After wondering if the plot actually got anywhere, I picked it up again to read the ending (it’s a bad habit).
And I decided to give it another try. And I was completely blown away. I couldn’t put it down; I cried like i had just read the ending of The Book Thief for the first time (well, almost).
Thing is, it didn’t get that good until i was 3/4 through the book. Once I was about to read the final chapter, I actually decided to read the entire book from the beginning again to see what I had missed; it made the epilogue all the more powerful. Reading it the second time through, it almost seemed like another book. There are a whole bunch of little details that you miss the first time (mostly because what the heck is going on?!?!) but you can take the time to get to know the characters the second time through. And the characters, I find, are one of the most important elements of a novel.
Final Verdict: An amazing book. The way the Marchetta ties together the past and present is nothing short of genius. The frustrating confusion at the beginning drags the book down but it’s all worth it for the ending.
--- Apparently I read and reviewed this book when I was around thirteen. Every time I re-read Jellicoe it never loses its power; although I've fallen harder for Melina Marchetta's characters in other books since then (and she's easily become my favorite author), I still marvel at how everything falls into place so skillfully here. If I had to pick one novel that really stands out in being a gateway to the stories that shaped my high school years, this would be it....more