Category: Uncategorized
Discussion: Villains
For me, a good villain is practically a necessity in most books. I really do love great villains but I realize that not everyone’s definition of a ‘great villain’ is the same. So here’s a brief explanation of mine:
Villains have to have believable backstories to explain why they’re so terrible. It could be that they’re more morally ambiguous than most people and fought their way to the top, losing their morals all the way. Or it could be that they thought the world had done an injustice to them and wanted to strike back. But what I hate the most is villains that are evil for no reason other than they’re crazy or just want to watch the world burn.
Even with the best authors, villains are hard to pull off because it’s so easy to stray into the realm of cliché with them. They should have doubts about what they’re doing but not too many doubts or they risk becoming a hero. They should commit atrocities, but too many and it just looks like the author is aiming for senseless violence.
Some of my personal favourite villains (from all sorts of mediums) include: Baron Scarpia from Puccini’s Tosca, The Governor from The Walking Dead, Tbubui from Scroll of Saqqara, Niccoló Machiavelli from The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel and Satan from Paradise Lost.
But what I want to know is: who are your favourite villains? What makes a ‘good’ villain? What villain clichés do you absolutely hate?
Look What Just Arrived! (#11)
No, I did not just go on yet another book buying spree. In fact, exactly half of these books were given to me by either publishers or authors.
- The Color of Rain by Cori McCarthy
- The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan
- Red Dragon White Dragon by Gary Dolman
- The Devil Incarnate by Jill Braden
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough
The Color of Rain is an unusual book that I found through Grace’s blog, Books Without Any Pictures. Her description of it intrigued me so much that I went ahead and ordered it from my bookstore, read it in a day and will be writing my review for it shortly. For those of you that are curious, it’s the book that spurned me to write my ‘The Beauty of Fiction‘ article.
The Transhumanist Wager is something that I’m both excited for and reluctant about because while it’s something I might normally pick up on my own, I know it will be a controversial book to read and review here on my blog. Red Dragon White Dragon was sent to me by Gary Dolman’s publisher ages ago (2-3 months!) and only got here a few days ago. Hooray for Canada Post.
The Devil Incarnate was sent to me by Jill Braden’s publisher because they saw how much I loved The Devil’s Concubine (the first book) after I reviewed it through NetGalley. This second book is not necessarily better than the first, but it is different and I love the cover art even more.
The Kite Runner was a book recommended to me by a fellow book lover in real life and when I saw it at the library’s “fill a bag of books for $1” I knew I had to get it. It may be a while before I actually get around to reading it, but I’m definitely anxious to see what all of the hype is about. And of course the last book I bought for myself was The Grass Crown, the second book in Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series. It’ll take me a while to read, being over a thousand pages, but it will be great in that since I’m so far ahead in my book challenge I’m going to skew my results by only counting books with larger page counts. That, and Colleen McCullough is a great author.
So what are you guys reading lately? See anything you like here?
The Beauty of Fiction
As I learned years ago, fiction is a beautiful thing for so many different reasons. It can teach you about the real world, provide an escape and bring history to life. Of course it can do so much more than that, but those are the main reasons why I love fiction.
Literature has been a driving force in pop culture for hundreds of years from Charles’ Dickens Oliver Twist to Harry Potter. So many different books have left their marks on world history, but more importantly on the lives of many individuals. When you find that one book that really changes your outlook on life it’s a hard feeling to put into words.
When you find that book that changes your life, it leaves you quite literally breathless when you finish it. You close the book, maybe stare at it for a few seconds and then slowly release your breath as you’re sucked back into reality. You get that odd feeling in your chest that’s a mixture of sadness, amazement and sheer awe. Continue reading
Poll: Links at the Bottom of Reviews
At the bottom of every review I always add links to both Amazon and Barnes and Noble, those being the major online retailers when it comes to books. But what I want to know is if you guys would like links to other sites as well. After all, I’m here to help both authors and readers and I want to do that as much as I can. However, I don’t want my links to be crowded so if you let me know which links you really want I can add them to all future reviews and possibly go back and add them to 350+ past reviews.
How to Write a Review Request
Sometimes I think things are so obvious that I couldn’t possibly need to write a tutorial on them. Review requests seem like basic common sense to me, but judging from the number of requests I’m still getting despite having closed submissions over a month ago shows that some authors have no idea what the heck they’re doing. So in my usual list format I’m going to go through the steps of writing a book review request email that won’t make reviewers want to punch you.
Credit: Eating Y.A. Books
Step #1: READ THE REVIEW POLICY!
Due to the generally family-friendly nature of this blog I am resisting the urge to swear to emphasize my point. Regardless, the first thing you should ever do when visiting a book review blog looking for a blogger to review your book is read their review policy. How do you find a review policy? Well, it’s either under its own tab at the top or side of the web page or is generally under FAQs. If it’s not under any of those, use the search bar. Once you find a reviewer’s policy, ask yourself these questions while reading it:
a) Is this reviewer open to submissions?
b) Is my book in the acceptable genre list?
c) Does my book meet any other requirements?
d) What other information do I need to collect in order to make a request? Continue reading