Ok, so I've pretty much been slacking on my reading. I've been reading very little, and (obviously) blogging even less.
The first one up is Lunar Light by Penelope Fletcher. Lunar Light is a nice, erotic, warm and fuzzy love story- except that by '"warm and fuzzy" I mean the protagonists have a habit of turning into giant hairy beasts that eat human flesh. And they prefer to be cold, not warm.
There's a lot of fictional beasts that consume humans out there these days, and I was skeptical about reading ANOTHER love story about some werewolf/vampire/zombie junk. Well, I can promise you that there is nary a zombie, vampire, or werewolf (per se) to be had! And nobody falls in love with their dinner! I was pleasantly surprised! These are violent, people-eating beasts that actually VIOLENTLY EAT PEOPLE.
Don't get me wrong, I read (and enjoyed reading) all of the Twilight schlock, but the more I thought about it, the more the inner cynic in me pictured it as being about as likely as me having an all-consuming love for a freshly-baked cookie, stalking it while it slept, endangering my life for it, and then refusing to eat it. Yeah. Not likely.
Like sex and violence? Like vicious werebeasts? Then give this book a read. I read it quickly (almost like devouring a freshly-baked cookie) and people who are grammar Nazis or overly picky might find tiny details they don't approve of (I can't think of specific examples, but remember seeing a couple of little things as I read) but they can just stuff it. It was a fun, quick read and I liked it.
Next up is Immortalis by R.S. Emeline. This story revolves around a variety of people who have a genetic predisposition to immortality, and their need to 1) continue producing immortal offspring 2) protect their immortal offspring and 3) remain undetected by society at large.
This is a story directed at young adults, but written in a way that it can be easily enjoyed by regular adults or immature adults such as myself. There's mystery, mayhem, and magic, gods and goddesses of varying religions, and truly unique characters.
This is the first on a series of four books, and I am really looking forward to reading the others. The bad news is that I don't think it's been published yet- I got my grubby hands on a copy because I know the author (and she is amazing)... and you can find her here!
...and now to the part where I'm losing my marbles. I signed up for the Army, and I leave for basic training in just over 3 weeks. I'm on the verge of freaking out. I'm going in to learn a foreign language (I know none, unless 'sarcasm' counts) and I'm hoping to get a bachelor's degree while I'm enlisted. I KNOW, with all my heart, that this is the best thing I can do for my family and myself. But I've never had to be away from my kids, so I'm freaking out about leaving them. And I have a TON of things I need to get done, and none of it is doing itself (of course). And, mostly I'm just freaking out about being away from my kids. I want to eat an entire cheesecake, drink a bottle of tequila, and hide in a closet (or similar dark, quiet space) for the next three weeks. Turns out, that isn't an option. I'll try to do at least one more post before I leave, but if you don't hear from me check in the closet, pantry, or other dark, quiet space... and send tequila. Thanks.
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
This is my second attempt at writing this installment- the first time, my wonderful children were both climbing on me and my youngest pushed some magical sequence of buttons that caused my entire post to vanish, and I was unable to retrieve it. I could have gotten mad, but instead I took it as a sign that it wasn't one of my better posts and I should try again. So here I am, a few days later, trying to do this wonderful story the justice it deserves. I know I will fail, too. I've accepted that. Not because of my mediocre blogging skills, but because this is one of my most favorite stories of all time. This and its sister story, Through The Looking Glass. But that one will get its own post. Oftentimes, the two are combined when a film is made, and unless you take the time to read them both, it's easy to get things mixed up. Both are wonderfully weird and fantastic.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carrol) was a literary pioneer and genius. He boldly went forward into the realm of literary nonsense, and forever carved his own place in pop culture by opening up the world he found there and giving us all access to it. I love nonsense. I love it the way I love fine chocolate and the smell of my best friend's childhood home, and the smell of books; the way Hippies love patchouli oil. I love the way it feels to stretch my brain and my imagination in new ways, and the kind of pure, innocent humor that comes with the sublimely weird. I love it because it's funny without being harmful or critical, and because it makes my over-analytical brain take a break for a change. It lets me escape from my daily life for a bit, and come back renewed and full of new perspective.
Many of you are surely familiar with the basic storyline- Alice is getting a history lesson outside on a lovely day. She is bored, and easily distracted. Suddenly, she sees a rabbit run by, clothed, holding a pocketwatch. She chases it, follows it to a rabbit hole, and falls down. The fall is impossibly long, and it seems nearly an eternity before she lands. When she does land, she finds herself in a strange room with a little door with a beautiful garden on the other side and a bottle of strange liquid labelled 'Drink Me' on a table. After deciding that drinking mystery fluid from random bottles seemed like a good idea (as a child, this fascinated me, as a parent I find it horrifying!) she shrinks down to a little size, small enough to fit through the door. Except the door is locked. And the key is on the table that is now huge to her. She gets frustrated, but notices a cake that has 'Eat Me' written on it. Naturally, she decides that eating random baked goods of mysterious origin is a good idea, so she eats it and becomes ginormous. So large, in fact, that her head hits the ceiling and she sees no hope of becoming small enough to go through the door. So she cries. And cries. And, being giant, floods the place. She grabs a fan which makes her shrink again, very small. She, along with many other creatures, get swept away in the flood of tears. And things get weirder from there.
In this book, Alice encounters many unusual characters, including my favorite literary character of all time, the Cheshire Cat. She also meets the Mad Hatter, March Hare, Duchess, Mock Turtle, Caterpillar, and the Red Queen and Red King.
General weirdness ensues and by the end of the story Alice is quite fed up with it all. The Red Queen shouts "off with her head!" But Alice, unafraid, calls out the queen's minions as being nothing more than a pack of cards as they swarm her. Alice then wakes up to find that it is leaves falling on her, not cards swarming her, and her sister is trying to wake her up so they can go home.
This is a fun read for when life gets too serious. It lets you escape to a place so weird, that your own problems no longer matter- and when it becomes time to face them again you can do it with gusto, and take heart knowing that there's a way through it somehow because everything is exactly as it is meant to be. After all, if it was meant to be different, it would be, right?
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carrol) was a literary pioneer and genius. He boldly went forward into the realm of literary nonsense, and forever carved his own place in pop culture by opening up the world he found there and giving us all access to it. I love nonsense. I love it the way I love fine chocolate and the smell of my best friend's childhood home, and the smell of books; the way Hippies love patchouli oil. I love the way it feels to stretch my brain and my imagination in new ways, and the kind of pure, innocent humor that comes with the sublimely weird. I love it because it's funny without being harmful or critical, and because it makes my over-analytical brain take a break for a change. It lets me escape from my daily life for a bit, and come back renewed and full of new perspective.
Many of you are surely familiar with the basic storyline- Alice is getting a history lesson outside on a lovely day. She is bored, and easily distracted. Suddenly, she sees a rabbit run by, clothed, holding a pocketwatch. She chases it, follows it to a rabbit hole, and falls down. The fall is impossibly long, and it seems nearly an eternity before she lands. When she does land, she finds herself in a strange room with a little door with a beautiful garden on the other side and a bottle of strange liquid labelled 'Drink Me' on a table. After deciding that drinking mystery fluid from random bottles seemed like a good idea (as a child, this fascinated me, as a parent I find it horrifying!) she shrinks down to a little size, small enough to fit through the door. Except the door is locked. And the key is on the table that is now huge to her. She gets frustrated, but notices a cake that has 'Eat Me' written on it. Naturally, she decides that eating random baked goods of mysterious origin is a good idea, so she eats it and becomes ginormous. So large, in fact, that her head hits the ceiling and she sees no hope of becoming small enough to go through the door. So she cries. And cries. And, being giant, floods the place. She grabs a fan which makes her shrink again, very small. She, along with many other creatures, get swept away in the flood of tears. And things get weirder from there.
In this book, Alice encounters many unusual characters, including my favorite literary character of all time, the Cheshire Cat. She also meets the Mad Hatter, March Hare, Duchess, Mock Turtle, Caterpillar, and the Red Queen and Red King.
General weirdness ensues and by the end of the story Alice is quite fed up with it all. The Red Queen shouts "off with her head!" But Alice, unafraid, calls out the queen's minions as being nothing more than a pack of cards as they swarm her. Alice then wakes up to find that it is leaves falling on her, not cards swarming her, and her sister is trying to wake her up so they can go home.
This is a fun read for when life gets too serious. It lets you escape to a place so weird, that your own problems no longer matter- and when it becomes time to face them again you can do it with gusto, and take heart knowing that there's a way through it somehow because everything is exactly as it is meant to be. After all, if it was meant to be different, it would be, right?
Monday, January 3, 2011
The Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher
See? I told you I would blog again soon? ;)
I got an iPod Touch for Christmas, and The Demon Girl is the first book I read on the iBooks application. It was a free book with a pretty cover and an intriguing title, so I decided to give it a try.
Long story short: Rae Wilder is a Disciple in a world where humans have been nearly wiped out. An event, called the Rupture, caused all kinds of previously repressed beings (known as Demons) to come out into the open. The list of Demons contains all the usual suspects: vampires, were-beasts, and fairies. There's also witches, which are humans who are sensitive to the Source (as in source of life, source of everything- source of power for the beings in this book) who are shunned by normal human folk and are generally considered bad. Humans have walled themselves up in self-contained city/compounds to protect themselves from the Demons who run wild outside.
One morning. while out for a run, Rae finds finds a way through the wall that protects her and the humans around her from the murderous chaos of the demons outside. Being brave and foolhardy, Rae sneaks outside into the unknown, where her life is changed forever.
There's a lot to this book, so I'll just say that you will find yourself immersed in the following: love, hate, interspecies romance, blood drinking, human sacrifice, beheadings, fancy powerful jewelry, pretty wings, were-cat things, naked guys, not naked guys, tattoos, tribe wars, and an interesting plot line.
When I got to the end of the book, I was excited to see that it's going to be a series- I am eagerly anticipating the next installment!
There were a few bad things about this book- but none of them are story-related. I notice a lot of wrong words (wrong forms of the word to/too, various other mix-ups of homophones) a few misspellings, and some confusing grammar/sentence structure. Once you see past all of that, however, it is a truly engaging read.
I got an iPod Touch for Christmas, and The Demon Girl is the first book I read on the iBooks application. It was a free book with a pretty cover and an intriguing title, so I decided to give it a try.
Long story short: Rae Wilder is a Disciple in a world where humans have been nearly wiped out. An event, called the Rupture, caused all kinds of previously repressed beings (known as Demons) to come out into the open. The list of Demons contains all the usual suspects: vampires, were-beasts, and fairies. There's also witches, which are humans who are sensitive to the Source (as in source of life, source of everything- source of power for the beings in this book) who are shunned by normal human folk and are generally considered bad. Humans have walled themselves up in self-contained city/compounds to protect themselves from the Demons who run wild outside.
One morning. while out for a run, Rae finds finds a way through the wall that protects her and the humans around her from the murderous chaos of the demons outside. Being brave and foolhardy, Rae sneaks outside into the unknown, where her life is changed forever.
There's a lot to this book, so I'll just say that you will find yourself immersed in the following: love, hate, interspecies romance, blood drinking, human sacrifice, beheadings, fancy powerful jewelry, pretty wings, were-cat things, naked guys, not naked guys, tattoos, tribe wars, and an interesting plot line.
When I got to the end of the book, I was excited to see that it's going to be a series- I am eagerly anticipating the next installment!
There were a few bad things about this book- but none of them are story-related. I notice a lot of wrong words (wrong forms of the word to/too, various other mix-ups of homophones) a few misspellings, and some confusing grammar/sentence structure. Once you see past all of that, however, it is a truly engaging read.
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