Tagged: discussion

Discussion: Strong Female Characters

Yes, I usually reserve discussion posts for weekends, but why not start the weekend a little early this week?

Anyway, what I want to talk about this week is strong female characters, particularly in YA.  Sometimes you encounter a genuinely strong female character that can fall in love and yet not depend on her man to solve all of her problems.  Other times, not so much.  You end up getting a Faux Action Girl who is always described as tough by the author and other characters but never actually does anything.  Well, except get rescued by the male lead.

My latest favourite strong female character is QuiTai from The Devil of Ponong series by Jill Braden.  She isn’t physically strong, but she uses her wits to help her conquered people and stay one step ahead of the Thampurians.  I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say that when it comes down to a choice between a man and the livelihoods of her people you aren’t in much doubt as to what she’s going to choose.  QuiTai was awesome in the first book, The Devil’s Concubine and even better in the second book, The Devil Incarnate.  She’s definitely taken a well-deserved place among my favourite heroines.

So my question for you guys this week is: What makes a strong female character?  Who are your favourite heroines?  Why?

As always, discussion posts are posts where you’re absolutely free to engage with myself and/or other commenters.  My Commenting Policy still applies, but that just encompasses what I like to call “basic human decency”.

Discussion: The Ugly Side of Book Blogging

A lot of my readers here are book bloggers as well and as we know, book blogging isn’t all roses and sunshine.  There are disputes with authors, jealousy within the community, pressure to write good reviews for publishers, etc.  But overall, in my personal experience, I’d say that authors are the best and worst part of book blogging.

I have met some absolutely incredible people through my book blog that I never would have otherwise.  You guys know who you are.  At the same time, I have been subjected to nasty comments, author meltdowns (only in private emails so far) and generic emails by authors who think they’re entitled to a review without remembering basic courtesy.  So yes, authors are the reason why I’m doing this and the reason why sometimes I feel like saying “screw it!” and not accepting review requests at all.  (It’s very tempting at the moment, believe me.)

My question for my fellow bloggers is this: what’s the worst part of book blogging?  What about the best part?  Did you ever have an incident so nasty you almost considered giving up book blogging?

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?

Discussion: Love Triangles

I’m pretty sure you guys all know my feelings about love triangles by now, but I’ll reiterate for any newcomers: I hate love triangles with a passion.

They used to be kind of cool and really ratcheted up the drama in the few books they appeared.  The love triangle trope was used, but it was fairly rare.

Enter the Twilight phenomenon.

Bella had to choose between Edward and Jacob and fans went nuts over the fact.  There were and still are ‘Team Edward’ and ‘Team Jacob’ fans and although the series is obviously finished they still go berserk over it.  Which is fine because if people are reading (even Twilight), that’s awesome.  But I’m getting a little off topic here.

The point is that enterprising authors and publishers saw how much a love triangle enhanced interest in the series by fans as well as how it generated buzz amongst the general public, who would then be compelled to read the book as well.  Can you see where I’m going with this?  So because of the ridiculously huge success of one triangle, now almost every single YA book I read with a female main character has two good-looking guys fighting over her.

Cue the eye-rolling.  I really hate how love triangles are forcibly added to the plot to create a dramatic subplot and I really, really hate how they’re so unbelievable 99% of the time.  The latter is often due to poor writing or the author doing a half-hearted love triangle because their editor told them to.  Love triangles can be done well (see: Cleopatra’s Moon), but those are rare and the fact is they’re so overdone.  Can we just let the trope die for a bit?  Or at least use cryogenics to freeze it for a few years, even a decade before reviving it.

So I’m done rambling about my hatred of love triangles, but what do you think?  Do you love or hate love triangles?  What was the worst love triangle you’ve ever read?  The best?  Why do you think so many authors use love triangles?

Discussion: Favourite Characters

Every person who reads has a favourite character or characters.  There are just some characters that you remember years and years after finishing a book.  They speak to you because you can see a part of yourself in them or they have such strong personalities that you can’t forget them.

Harry Potter is, of course, quite a popular favourite and he remains one of my favourites to this day.  I say ‘one of’ because there is no way I can just choose one favourite character when I’ve read quite literally hundreds of books.  One of my most recent favourite characters would have to be Isherwood Williams from Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.  Ish isn’t a perfect person, but he’s resourceful and intelligent.  He makes mistakes and tries to be a good leader of his group while rebuilding civilization in his own manner.  Things don’t turn out quite how he wants them to, but he’s just one of those characters that believably shapes the world he lives in through sheer force of will.

Keeping with the depressing post-apocalyptic theme, Marco of The Return Man is another of my absolute favourites.  Tortured, cynical and at the same time full of hope, he’s a mess of contradictions that in the hands of any other writer would be a terrible character.  But V. M Zito made him believable by giving him an unique backstory that explained his cynical attitude as well as why his past continues to haunt him.  Opposite him at first is Wu, also one of my favourite characters.  Wu isn’t perfect and neither is Marco, but the two of them formed one of those unlikely friendships that just worked well.

I’ve rambled on enough about my favourite characters, so now it’s your turn.  Who is/are your favourite character(s)?  Why?

[As a side note, there are no rules for Discussion posts other than the usual ones from my Commenting Policy.  Feel free to engage myself and other commenters!]