Altered by Gennifer Albin

Altered by Gennifer Albin(Cover picture courtesy of Xpresso Reads.)

Life. Possibility. Choice.
All taken from Adelice by the Guild—until she took them back.

But amid the splendid ruins of Earth, Adelice discovers how dangerous freedom can be. Hunted by soulless Remnants sent by Cormac Patton and the Guild, Adelice finds a world that’s far from deserted. Although allies are easy to find on Earth, knowing who to trust isn’t. Because everyone has secrets, especially those Adelice loves most. Secrets they would kill to protect. Secrets that will redefine each of them. Torn between two brothers and two worlds, Adelice must choose what to fight for.

In this thrilling sequel to Crewel, Adelice is about to learn how tangled up her past and future really are. Her parents ran to protect her, but nothing can save her from her destiny, and once she uncovers the truth, it will change everything.

Usually I expect the second books in trilogy to be boring.  Slow, sometimes with more character development and sometimes not.  Usually they’re just set up books for the final book.  Usually.

Altered is anything but usual.  With a book as awesome as Crewel I knew it would be hard for Gennifer Albin to write a follow up that could top it, but she did.  Altered is a lot different from Crewel in part because Adelice is finally able to make decisions for herself.  She isn’t constantly being monitored by other Spinsters or having Cormac leering down at her at every turn.  It takes her a while to discover that steel within herself, but when she’s able to make her own decisions she does mess up occasionally and learns from her experiences.  Adelice knows she isn’t perfect and tries to be a better person for her experiences.

The plot dragged a bit in the middle, but there was never really a time when I felt like I was about to go to sleep.  There was always some new twist or turn, some new knowledge about the origins or Arras or another interesting character being introduced that made me want to keep reading.  And the twist at the end?  Wow, I can’t wait to read Unraveled because of that.  The first part of the plot twist was not entirely unexpected but the second part dealing with choices certainly was.  I won’t give anything away, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing some more dysfunctional family dynamics in the third book.

The thing I liked most (other than the character development) was Gennifer Albin’s world-building.  In Crewel we were introduced to the basics of Arras’ creation but in Altered we actually go into a lot more detail and learn about the surprising origins of the project and its leaders.  Trust me, the scientist behind the project is not who you’d really expect but it’s a pleasant surprise.  We also get to learn that not only women are born with the ability to weave, but men called Tailors can alter the world around them.  They can’t create like Spinsters but they have some very interesting abilities and many of them have been persecuted for their talents.

So overall?  This is an awesome second book.  I can hardly wait until Unraveled, coming this October!

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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My Day Off

I know, I know.  I don’t usually take days off during the week but today I’m going to.  I’m using this day to catch up on some other stuff in Real Life as well as do a little bit more reading and reviewing.  (It’s hard to focus on reading when you don’t know if you’re going to lose your book blog, like on Monday and Tuesday.)

Anyway, here’s an interesting article by Chuck Wendig about self-publishing I think you’d be interested in.  It’s definitely some food for thought:

Slushy Glut Slog: Why The Self-Publishing Shit Volcano Is A Problem

 

WordPress, Stop the Arbitrary Suspensions

As many of you no doubt noticed, The Mad Reviewer was not available yesterday.  It was ‘either archived or suspended for a violation of the terms of service.’  I’ll explain what went down.

At 8:00am I logged onto my WordPress account to check to see if my Othello review had gone up nicely and that there were no unnoticed spelling mistakes.  When the page loaded I found the exact same message everyone else did: that my blog was either archived or suspended.  I followed the link to the dashboard and it said that The Mad Reviewer had been suspended for a violation of the terms of service of WordPress.  So I re-read the terms of service and followed the link to appeal my suspension because I absolutely did not violate the terms of service.

I sent an email to WordPress around 8:15am on Monday.  I had absolutely no response from WordPress until 2:26pm on Tuesday, over 24 hours later.  Until then I had no access to my posts, my stats or the forums.  I took the step of exporting my blog just in case WordPress decided to be total jerks and permanently suspend it.  Honestly, I was in a bit of a panic because I’m still waiting to hear from publishers about some ARC requests.  If they saw my blog was down, there was no way I’d get approved.  Thankfully this didn’t affect me in that way but I was seriously considering other hosting options at this point.

It sounds ridiculous to get angry over something as trivial as a blog, but I was extremely pissed off that two years of pouring my heart and soul into daily posting was taken away in an instant with no warning whatsoever.  I finally got an explanation from WordPress support at 2:26pm:

Hi there,

Thank you for getting in touch. Your site was flagged by our automated anti-spam controls. We have reviewed your site and have removed the suspension notice.

Please be sure to clear your browser’s cache and, if necessary, restart the browser.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/browser-issues/#clear-your-cache-and-cookies

We greatly apologize for this error and any inconvenience it may have caused.

Seriously, WordPress?  How about you not have automatic anti-spam controls that have been known to flag perfectly legitimate blogs and suspend them automatically?  How about you have someone approve suspensions at their discretion so that legitimate blogs aren’t suddenly taken off the face of the internet and suffer stats-wise and follower-wise.  Or you just have that handy ‘report spam’ button that’s on the top of every WordPress task bar for a blog and use that to find spam blogs.

I’m happy that you all stuck with me through the random suspension, but it could have been a lot worse as I’d been reading of cases where WordPress did not get back to people in upwards of a week.  A week!  Yes, I know WordPress is a free platform and they can do whatever they like.  However, people who use the service (free or not) deserve a little due process, not a guilty until proven innocent approach.

So basically, sorry for the confusion guys.  I’m glad you stuck with me through it.

Othello by William Shakespeare

Othello by William Shakespeare(Cover picture courtesy of Monster Marketplace.)

One of the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Othello tells the story of a Moorish general who earns the enmity of his ensign Iago when he passes him over for a promotion.  Bleak and unsparing, this play offers a masterly portrait of an archvillain and an astute psychological study of the nature of evil. Explanatory footnotes.

Hmm, how does one review Shakespeare?  Not easily, as it turns out.  (This is my third attempt at doing a review for Othello.) So I’ll basically just discuss the play and my thoughts about it.

One thing I always have liked about Shakespeare is his characters.  His characters are vibrant, complex beings that stick with you long after you’ve finished the play.  Othello is one of them, but Iago is my favourite out of the whole play.  He’s a fascinating character and his soliloquies are some of my favourites in all of Shakespeare’s plays.  Iago’s interesting in that he doesn’t really have a concrete motive for hurting Othello.  Is it because he’s miserable and wants other people to be miserable too?  Could it be he’s jealous of Othello’s rank?  Or does he see Othello’s good traits and want to turn them evil to bring Othello down to his own level?  It’s certainly up for debate.

Desdemona is fascinating as well in her own way.  She dared to love Othello, a black man, in a time when racism was completely socially acceptable.  She even married Othello against the wishes of her father, which was extremely rare in those days even if you don’t consider the societal taboos on interracial marriages.  In the end her only fault was trusting her new husband, the man she loved.

In some ways Othello is one of my favourite plays by Shakespeare not just because of the characters but that every scene advances the plot.  There’s always a hint of what is to come maybe in a dialogue between two characters, Iago’s soliloquies or even just in the mood of the scene itself from the stage directions.  I sped through Othello like I have with no other Shakespeare play and it’s one that I really enjoyed even though it was pretty easy to predict the ending.

As for this Dover Thrift Edition, it’s adequate but nothing more.  There are notes about definitions of words that have changed over time but if you’re someone looking for an analysis of the play I’d recommend a different edition.

So overall?  One of the best Shakespeare plays I’ve read so far.

I give this play 5/5 stars.

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Discussion: NA Lit

For those of you that don’t know, ‘NA Lit’ is New Adult Literature.  It’s literature aimed at, well, new adults in their early twenties.  It’s one of the fastest growing genres out there and has exploded in popularity in just a single year.  But it’s controversial.

Supporters say that NA can portray a time in people’s lives that is still very turbulent because it’s a time when most people are off to post-secondary education, they’re on their own for the first time, they’re starting to date outside their comfort zones, etc.  Critics say that NA lit is basically a sexed-up more violent version of Young Adult literature.

Personally, I don’t really have a stance on NA.  Like with every genre, it has some good and some bad books.  That’s just how it is.  As for whether it’s a legitimate genre or not I figure I’ll let the literature snobs in magazines and newspapers argue about it while I read or ignore it at my leisure.  I don’t intentionally seek out NA lit to read but I have read some books and they weren’t really all that different from YA.  But I have limited experience in the matter.

So what I want to know is: what do you think of the emergence of New Adult literature?  Is it an important genre for people in the targeted age group?  Do you like NA?  Let me know in the comments below!