Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Persy - Wednesday Scrolls -- Book Rant Meets Book Review?


So you may have noticed that I went AWOL for a while. Since Thanksgiving, actually. Yeah, sorry about that. Life exploded in an interesting collection of drama, pain, and bow ties, so I had an unusually hard time getting to a review or even a Wednesday Scrolls.

And what I'm about to attempt probably will not be good enough to be considered a book review, especially since I haven't finished the book. But I must speak my peace. If you want the slightly more sensible version, check out my review of The Iron King on LibraryThing (I'm BrynDahlquis) Or Shelfari (I'm Persy P). On here, though, I'm really going to let loose.

OMGIF***INGHATETHISCRAP!!!!
To be fair, I'm having a bad day, so most of my disgruntled feelings have been directed at this book, so it's probably not as bad as I make it out to be.
BUT OH MY FRICKIN' STARS.

So everyone knows that faeries are starting to be 'in'. They're replacing the vampires and werewolves, which at first was a welcome relief. But then I realized that they're just going to write the same books with faeries instead of vampires. So we're just going to continue the same cycle over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, desperately trying to find that glimmering lantern in the darkness that is YA Fiction (if you'd like a map to said glimmering lanterns, check out our awesomed section).

The Iron King started out bad and pretty much maintained the same level as bad throughout all 86 pages I managed to crawl through (it was like crawling through a mud swamp of super suction). Main Character: Meghan Chase. Idiot level? 15000000000000 POINTS!!!!

What words can I think of to sum up the lovely Meghan Chase? Whiny. Selfish. Shallow. Idiot. Panicky. Boring. Bitter. Gag. Ugh. Annoying. Ridiculous. Ditzy (in a bad way). More ugh. She is the main problem with The Iron King. If this story wasn't told from her point of view, it wouldn't be nearly so bad.

And then Julie Kagawa just haaaaaaad to drag Puck into it. Robin Goodfellow. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Yeah, that guy. That totally awesome guy. That guy who happens to be one of my favorite characters of all time and space and literarydom. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, he's Meghan's "best friend". Actually, he's not that bad in The Iron King, but he really doesn't live up to his name.

At first I felt bad about wanting to throw the book down unfinished because lately I've left a lot of books unfinished. Maybe I used to be more rigorous in my reading, or maybe I've just had some rotten luck picking up books lately, or maybe I've just been in a bad mood and taking it out on books. Whatever the reason, I got over feeling guilty about it and decided to just enjoy hating the guts of this book (what makes up the guts of a book? The story? The words? The letters? The thoughts of the author? The author herself? Now I feel kind of bad about hating this book's guts. It's certainly not the words's fault that they got arranged in such an annoying manner).

So while trying to decide about finishing The Iron King, I read some other reviews of it to see what the general consesus was and if it got any better further in (by the way, I did flip through to see, and every scene I read was miserable), and was surprised by all the good ratings and reviews. Most people "loved it from the beginning", though a few agreed with me declaring it to be badly written crap. And I think I've figured out why it's so popular.

It's not a good faerie tale. In fact, it's really awful. All the people who loved this book mentioned that they weren't normally into faeries, because they wouldn't like good faerie books. They only like this because it's not like everything else they've been reading (though really, it probably is, just in disguise).

And this brings me to The Hunger Games (this connects to The Iron King, I swear). People think it's amazing. I thought it was passable. The only reason everyone loves it so much is because they don't normally read dystopian novels, so The Hunger Games was new and exciting and unlike anything they'd read. Not because it was a well-written, exciting, epic dystopian novel. Sure, it's good but it's not amazing.

So basically this is just one long (badly written) rant about society and passable literature. I'm a bit fed up at the moment, and the prospect of going off into seclusion for a few weeks with nothing but trully awesome novels is incredibly appealing. Maybe I'll mail an update or a review to Arty every once in a while so I won't disappear completely like I did around Thanksgiving.

So farewell, faithful readers, this is my goodbye. I'm leaving with my Neal Shusterman, Vivian Vande Velde, and Shakespeare. Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Wait. If I went into seclusion with only books...how would I watch anime and Doctor Who and nerimon videos???
Never mind, guess I'll just have to endure.

--Persy

3 comments:

  1. XD Nice review.

    I'm going to have to check this book out, if only to find out how awful it really is. =P

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  2. I realized after I finished the review/rant that I didn't actually say much about the book itself, so I apologize =P And I admit to taking my frustration out on this novel, so it may not be all that bad.

    Thanks for the comment!
    --Persy

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  3. Honestly..I've read this book, and I thought it was OK. Not the best book I've ever read, not by far, but it was OK. However, I do agree with the annoying Meghan Chase part. There were parts where she was brattish to me, and others where she was passable.

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