Tagged: love
Along the Watchtower by David Litwack
(Cover picture courtesy of Masquerade Tours via email.)
A Tragic Warrior Lost in Two Worlds…
The war in Iraq ended for Lieutenant Freddie Williams when an IED explosion left his mind and body shattered. Once he was a skilled gamer and expert in virtual warfare. Now he’s a broken warrior, emerging from a medically induced coma to discover he’s inhabiting two separate realities. The first is his waking world of pain, family trials, and remorse—and slow rehabilitation through the tender care of Becky, his physical therapist. The second is a dark fantasy realm of quests, demons, and magic that Freddie enters when he sleeps.
In his dreams he is Frederick, Prince of Stormwind, who must make sense of his horrific visions in order to save his embattled kingdom from the monstrous Horde. His only solace awaits him in the royal gardens, where the gentle words of the beautiful gardener, Rebecca, calm the storms in his soul. While in the conscious world, the severely wounded vet faces a strangely similar and equally perilous mission—a journey along a dark road haunted by demons of guilt and memory—and letting patient, loving Becky into his damaged and shuttered heart may be his only way back from Hell.
[Full disclosure: I received a free paperback from David Litwack so I could review this book in conjunction with the blog tour. As always, this is an honest review.]
Having previously read David Litwack’s work I was expecting a novel that was mostly high fantasy or maybe even a combination of science fiction and fantasy. What I didn’t expect was a high fantasy story running in conjunction with a very real heart-wrenching story.
Freddie has had a crappy life. Both of his parents and his older brother are dead and he was severely injured in Iraq by an IED. Most of his squad died but he lived so in addition to his physical injuries there’s some pretty huge survivor guilt mixed in with PTSD. Add to that the fact that his developmentally disabled brother went missing because of him years ago and you’ve got the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy. You’d think a book with a plot like this would stray into opera level dramatics but it never does. David Litwack’s writing has improved since There Comes a Prophet so he gets just the right amount of emotion without ever becoming too sappy or cheesy.
His characters are very much three dimensional. Both Freddie and his alter ego Frederick are three dimensional characters facing (obviously) similar challenges. In the dreamworld all of Frederick’s challenges are a metaphor for what’s going on with Freddie in real life, from his rehabilitation to his growing feelings for his physiotherapist. Now a book like this could very easily stray into the territory of sexism because it would be easy to portray both Becky and Rebecca merely as background characters who help the hero reach his goal. That’s very much not true. Becky is a complicated woman with her own demons to look out for and she’s a very determined and competent physio. You can’t ask for much more than that where a romantic relationship is concerned: two people with their own problems come together slowly and try to work those problems out while acknowledging that some scars may never fully heal.
The plot isn’t fast-paced by most people’s standards but this is definitely a character driven novel. You’ll cheer for Freddie to succeed after going through so much and you’ll feel his pain as your own. He’s a very vivid character and his world of rehabilitation is brought to life by David Litwack’s amazing writing. Most people have never had physiotherapy but I have so I can tell you that the scenes between Becky and Freddie are pretty darn accurate (especially the attitudes of the medical staff). And to top it all off, this book ends on a satisfying note. Not all loose ends are tied up but enough are so that you’re pretty sure what happens to Freddie after the story.
Basically, this is just a good book. I’m so glad I joined the blog tour for it!
I give this book 5/5 stars.
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Discussion: Romance in YA Novels
No, this is not a discussion about whether romance is appropriate for YA novels, but rather a discussion of the romance we already find in YA novels.
I, for one, find most YA romances unbelievable and/or just plain creepy. Yes, I know young love is crazy and even a little clingy, but some books take this to a whole new level. In some novels, we see the male love interests take on qualities I would consider to be borderline abusive or worse: controlling what the main character does, who she talks to, giving her mixed signals constantly, etc. The most notable example is, of course, Twilight. However, I’m still seeing some of these behaviours in mostly male love interests in young adult novels. It’s certainly not sending out any great messages to impressionable teens about what is love and what is not.
The other thing I have a problem with in YA romances is that they’re so unbelievable. I know teenagers are particularly hormonal and romantic, but declarations of love after a week or so are just plain ridiculous. In some books, the main character hardly knows her male love interest before she’s saying she loves him. And when she realizes she loves him, suddenly she can’t live without him and has no interests outside her relationship with him. Is that realistic? Not really. Is that healthy? Definitely not.
Okay, I better stop now or I’ll be ranting all day. Yes, there are some great, healthy relationships in YA (Katniss and Po from Graceling), but the trend of borderline abusive relationships is frankly disturbing to me. But now I want to hear your thoughts on the topic: What do you think of romance in YA novels in general? Are the portrayals of relationships healthy? What is your favourite YA couple? Why?
Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey
(Cover picture courtesy of Wikipedia.)
Imriel de la Courcel’s birth parents are history’s most reviled traitors, but his adoptive parents, the Comtesse Phedre and the warrior-priest Joscelin, are Terre d’Ange’s greatest champions.
Stolen, tortured and enslaved as a young boy, Imriel is now a Prince of the Blood; third in line for the throne in a land that revels in art, beauty and desire. It is a court steeped in deeply laid conspiracies—and there are many who would see the young prince dead. Some despise him out of hatred for his mother, Melisande, who nearly destroyed the entire realm in her quest for power. Others because they fear he has inherited his mother’s irresistible allure—and her dangerous gifts.
As he comes of age, plagued by unwanted desires, Imriel shares their fears. When a simple act of friendship traps Imriel in a besieged city where the infamous Melisande is worshiped as a goddess and where a dead man leads an army, the Prince must face his greatest test: to find his true self.
I was skeptical about the spin-off Imriel Trilogy after the Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy was so good. But what I like about hearing Imriel’s story is that it’s a coming-of-age story in which the protagonist truly struggles with a terrible past in order to find out who he is. He has very real trust issues, he’s scared of his mother’s reputation following him everywhere and most of all, he still has the emotional scars he gained in Darsanga.
You can’t help but cheer for Imriel the whole way as he tries to overcome his past and discover what his future will be like. From his escapades in Tiberium to his burgeoning love life back home, he’s quite a likeable character. Imriel really does go on a physical, but also spiritual and emotional journey to find healing and make peace with his past. He does both great and not-so-great things along the way, but in the end he comes out as a better person. Yet still, because of his past, he has trouble reconciling the fact that he is of Kushiel’s line just as his mother is. But with friends like Eammon and Lucius, you have the feeling that he’s in good hands.
The complicated politics of Jacqueline Carey’s world are still at play here, which includes the fallout of Melisande’s treachery. There’s also the movement in Tiberium to return to a republic rather than having a princeps who is more of an emperor than anything. Not only that, part of the fallout of Melisande’s treachery is that although Imriel is third in line, there are those that would quite willingly murder Ysandre’s daughters to help him gain the throne. It makes me happy that Jacqueline Carey’s books are not just shamelessly sex-filled, but that she actually developed a world and populates it with three dimensional characters that have realistic motivations. Not many authors can do that, believe me.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
(Cover picture courtesy of Lauren Oliver’s website.)
They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them. Until now.
Now everything has changed. Now, I’d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.
And now since opera usually says things best, here are some lines from Verdi’s La Traviata:
Love is a heartbeat throughout the universe,
mysterious, altering,
the torment and delight of my heart.
It sounds better in the original Italian, but you get the point. Love is important; it’s in our everyday lives and it is one of two main forces that motivate people’s actions. (The other is greed.) But what happens if you remove one of those forces from the entire adult population of a country? You get Delirium, that’s what.
The main character, Lena (short for Magdalena) lives in a world where love is called amor deliria nervosa and is the only recognized mental illness anymore. That’s why when people turn 18 they must get an operation to ‘cure’ them. After that, they are safe from love and all the nasty consequences that usually come around because of it. But they never get to feel the ecstasy it brings either.
You can probably guess where this is going, right? You’d be right if you said that Lena will fall in love with a mysterious boy who is originally from the rebel movement but snuck his way into the city. Yes, I totally saw that coming as I was reading Delirium, but there are a few plot twists and Lauren Oliver at least tells the story well.
She does rely on the forbidden love factor a little too much if you’re reading this as an adult, but teens will love it. Lena is going through her first love, which is both awkward and amazing at the same time. For a teen that just experienced love for the first time or has yet to experience love, this is the perfect description of what it is like. So although I rolled my eyes at some parts of Delirium, on the whole it’s a well written story. It’s well written enough that I’ll be reading the sequel, Pandemonium, at any rate.
And for those of you that forget what love is like to the young, go see what Mozart says about it in his classic opera Le Nozze di Figaro:
I give this book 4/5 stars.
Tomorrow Land by Mari Mancusi
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Can true love survive the end of the world?
Imagine finding your first love, only to be ripped apart by the apocalypse. Peyton Anderson will never forget the day she was forced to make a choice–between her family–and Chris Parker, the boy she’d given her heart. Now, four years later, as she steps from the fallout shelter and into a dead and broken world, he’s the only thing on her mind.
All Chris “Chase” Parker wanted was to take Peyton away and keep her safe from harm. But he waited for hours in the rain on judgment day and she never showed–breaking his heart without ever telling him why.
Now the two of them have been thrown together once again, reluctant chaperones to a group of orphan children in a post-apocalyptic world where the dead still walk…and feed. As they begin their pilgramage [sic] to the last human outpost on Earth, can they find a way to let go of old hurts and find the love they lost–all while attempting to save what’s left of the human race?
(Book blurb courtesy of Mari Mancusi’s website.)
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
For all of you zombie lovers out there, be warned: this is more of a romance novel with zombies than a zombie novel with romance. Like Feed, it focuses on how people are affected after a zombie apocalypse. It doesn’t really get into the nitty-gritty of how the virus works (much to my dismay), but it does give a nice explanation, unlike in The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which doesn’t give any explanation at all.
The story switches between Peyton’s and Chris’ points of view to keep up the suspense, and I think this works well. Both characters are well-developed and you can really feel the raw pain they experience when they see each other again. Chris’ addiction to painkillers heightens the suspense even more and I love how he is ready to quit because of Peyton. The only thing that didn’t sit well with me was how long it took from exposure to death and re-animation in this book. In Tomorrow Land, it can take up to 2 weeks before you actually turn! Since most common viruses take 4-7 days to incubate, that seems a little ridiculous to me.
The plot moves along at a fairly fast rate, in spite of all of the backstory scenes about how the outbreak began and Peyton and Chris’ respective choices. Personally, the ending seemed much too rushed, especially because of the big twist the plot took. Otherwise, Mari Mancusi has penned a nice romance with zombies thrown in for fun. If you love naturally developing romances, you will love this book.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
Amazon (Kindle)* Barnes and Noble (Nook)*
*If you want the paperback edition, it is called Razor Girl and is only available through used book sellers.