Posting for 20four12

Have you ever had a bad teacher?  I certainly have.  My little school inexplicably attracted some of the worst (and best) in the country.  My grade 9 year I dubbed the Year of the Four Math Teachers.  Yes, we had four math teachers in one year.

But I have certainly never had the problem Susan Simmons does in Bruce Coville’s novel!  My Teacher is an Alien by Bruce Coville.  Go on and check it out!  And while you’re there, check out the 20four12 blog.  Caleb blogs about adult fiction certainly a lot more than I do and there’s something there for everyone.

Troy by Adèle Geras

(Cover picture courtesy of Winter Park Public Library.)

The siege of Troy has lasted almost ten years.

Inside the walled city, food is scarce and death is common.  From the heights of Mount Olympus, the Gods keep watch.

But Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, is bored with the endless, dreary war, and so she turns her attention to two sisters: Marpessa, who serves as handmaiden to Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world; and Xanthe, who tends the wounded soldiers in the Blood Room.  When Eros fits an arrow to his silver-lit bow and lets it fly, neither sister will escape its power.

After reading The Song of Troy by Colleen McCullough, Troy by Adèle Geras just pales in comparison.  That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book.  It just means it isn’t the best book about Troy.

Troy follows the story of Marpessa and Xanthe, two sisters trying to live their lives during the last months of the Trojan War.  They’re both three dimensional characters with interesting backgrounds and we get to see them through other characters’ perspectives, but they’re not really all that memorable.  There’s nothing that really sets them apart from other characters in fiction, so in my mind, they will always be good characters, but not great ones.  For those of you hoping to see the traditional legendary heroes of the Trojan War, you’re going to be disappointed.  Achilles, Hector and Odysseus receive practically no page time.  However, if you want to read about the lives of those who were forgotten, the lives of the background characters, Troy is perfect for you.

The plot isn’t exactly fast-paced because Troy is more of a character-driven novel, but it isn’t boring either.  Adèle Geras has certainly done her research about the Trojan War, but I wouldn’t say that there were any exceptional historical details.  Just like in The Iliad, the gods come down from Olympus and interfere with the war, but what’s really annoying is the fact that their warnings are pointless since mortals forget meeting them anyway.  What’s the point, besides to foreshadow what most people already know?  As I said before, it is a good book, not a great one.

I give this book 3/5 stars.

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Sapphique by Catherine Fisher

(Cover picture courtesy of It’s All About Books.)

Incarceron, the living prison, has lost one of its inmates to the outside world: Finn’s escaped, only to find that Outside is not at all what he expected.  Used to the technologically advanced, if violently harsh, conditions of the prison, Finn is now forced to obey the rules of Protocol, which require all people to live without technology.  To Finn, Outside is just a prison of another kind, especially when Claudia, the daughter of the prison’s warden, declares Finn the lost heir to the throne.  When another claimant emerges, both Finn’s and Claudia’s very lives hang on Finn convincing the Court of something that even he doesn’t fully believe.

Meanwhile, Finn’s oathbrother Keiro and his friend Attia are still trapped inside Incarceron.  They are searching for a magical glove, which legend says Sapphique used to escape.  To find it, they must battle the prison itself, because Incarceron wants the glove too.

My thought process throughout the novel basically sounded like this: Okay, that’s interesting…Huh?…What’s going on?…That was random…What the heck?…I don’t get it.

It is very rare that I have absolutely no clue what’s going on in a novel, but I admit I had no idea what was going on in Sapphique half of the time.  There was no real explanation for why Incarceron turned so evil, how it made those horrible creatures and the humans within it, what happened before Protocol in Claudia’s world, what the warden’s motivations were…there were so many questions that were never answered.  I don’t need to have all of the answers, but some of them would be nice so I could understand the novel.

Once again, I couldn’t really connect with the characters.  Claudia I sympathized with a bit in the beginning, but was utterly bored by her near the end; Finn was horrible and Attia didn’t have much depth.  The only character that managed to interest me in the least was Jared and he wasn’t the greatest character I’ve ever read about.  It’s like Verdi’s opera Don Carlo, in which the only remotely sympathetic character dies.

The world of Sapphique and Incarceron had so much potential, but there really was no depth to it.  To me, it felt like Catherine Fisher assumed readers knew as much about the world as she did and didn’t bother with any explanations.  It’s very frustrating and about halfway through the novel, I was mentally calculating how much time I had left to finish.

I give this book 1.5/5 stars.

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Blood and Gold by Anne Rice

(Cover picture courtesy of Rankopedia.)

Once a proud Senator in Imperial Rome, Marius is kidnapped and forced into the dark realm of blood, where he is made a protector for the Queen and King of the vampires—in whom the core of the supernatural race resides.  Through his eyes we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Emperor Constantine, the horrific sack of the Eternal City at the hands of the Visigoths, and the vile aftermath of the Black Death.  Ultimately restored by the beauty of the Renaissance, Marius becomes a painter, living dangerously yet happily among mortals, and giving his heart to the great master Botticelli, to the bewitching courtesan Bianca, and to the mysterious young apprentice Armand.  But it is in the present day, deep in the jungle, when Marius will meet his fate seeking justice from the oldest vampires in the world.

If not for Pandora, Blood and Gold would be my favourite novel by Anne Rice.  The story of Marius, a logical Roman man, kidnapped and turned into a vampire against his will.  But what stands out for me is the amazing amount of detail Anne Rice puts into her historical fiction.  The splendor of ancient Rome, the horror of the Black Death, the energy and creativity surrounding the Italian Renaissance…all of the settings come alive and you feel like you’re really there along with Marius.

Marius himself is a very complex character.  His traditional Roman upbringing and his naturally logical personality clash very well with Pandora’s free spirit and dreamy personality and it makes for a very interesting relationship.  However, since Pandora mostly focused on their relationship, Anne Rice doesn’t spend nearly as much time on it.  Instead, she focuses on the relationship between Marius and Armand, his student and the courtesan Bianca in Renaissance Italy.  Blood and Gold certainly fills in a lot of the questions I had from reading The Vampire Armand.  If nothing else, it paints Marius in a more sympathetic light!

Blood and Gold isn’t for everyone.  If you get annoyed by long, detailed descriptions of historical events and daily life, you won’t enjoy Blood and Gold.  But for someone like me, who loves it when a writer showcases their knowledge of the era, Blood and Gold is perfect.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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Should Authors Pay for Good Reviews?

Yet another ethical dilemma for reviewers and authors.

Most people consider me either ridiculously calm or emotionally stunted.  Either way, I don’t get angry very often and on the rare occasion I do, it’s generally very mild.  However, there are two things that make me furious to the point of being irrational: bullying and paid reviews.  The former is neither here nor there on this blog, but the latter is an issue that has cropped up frequently these last few weeks.  Somehow I think you can guess my stance on paid reviews, but I’ll tell you anyway:

I AM ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVOCALLY AGAINST AUTHORS PAYING REVIEWERS TO WRITE GOOD REVIEWS. (Yes, I’m shouting.)

Accepting money for a good review is unethical on the reviewer’s part and laughably pathetic on the author’s.  There is only one scenario I can think of in which money for a review is acceptable: if it’s in exchange for an honest review.  But if you’re the kind of author that would even consider paying for a review, you’re not going to risk a bad review when you can pay the same amount for a guaranteed good review.

Notice that here I’m against paying or sending free books in exchange for a good review.  There is nothing wrong with an author sending a reviewer a free copy of their novel (print or ebook) in exchange for an honest review.  If you’re an author, sending a reviewer a free ebook in exchange for an honest review doesn’t cost you a thing and most reviewers are scrupulous enough to delete the book when they’re finished with it.  If you’re a reviewer and you get a free ebook, all it costs you is time and in return you get content and publicity, possibly even new readers who never would have found your blog otherwise. Continue reading →