My 18th read of 2012 was The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. I give it one star. And I'll tell you why.
OK, so as most of you probably know, I'm not enamored with the paranormal romance genre. I kind of shudder when I walk past that section at B&N, wishing it didn't exist. I just don't dig it. No offense if it is your thang. This book keeps the romance part-- letting us experience another super awesome love triangle-- but branches off down post-apocalyptic lane into zombie territory.
The protagonist is a girl named Mary whom I found always fickle but only mostly ridiculous. She was born and has grown up in a small village in the middle (maybe?) of a forest known as the Forest of Hands and Teeth because of the zombie population that inhabits it. The village is kind of run by the Guardians who are really the puppets of the Sisterhood-- which I gathered were a group of women kind of like nuns who control everyone and everything, making sure everyone follows the rules but also keeping the people fed and clothed and sheltered. The only Sister you really get to know is the big kahuna, Sister Tabitha.
Sidenote: I kind of thought of M. Night Shyamalan's movie, "The Village," as I read this, if that rings any bells for anyone.
OK, so back to Mary. She is caught in a love triangle when a childhood friend, Harry, whom she is apparently not interested in at all, begins to show interest. Before anything can happen, though, Mary's mother (stricken by grief b/c her husband is gone) gets too close to the fence surrounding the village (probably because she was searching for her husband among the zombies), is presumably bitten by one of the Unconsecrated (aka zombies) and becomes Infected.
Oh, and turns out, in this world, a zombie bite eventually causes death followed by a coming back to life, whereupon one is a zombie, or Unconsecrated, as the village calls it. A zombie bite can work quickly or slowly, depending on the severity. If there is time, the Infected one can choose death so as to never experience the change, or they can ask to be allowed to become Unconsecrated and released into the Forest. Mary's mother chooses the latter, presumably because she hopes to find her husband out there and live a zombie life together. I can't even believe I'm typing this.
Mary watches this process happen to her mother, and is then released into the hands of the Sisterhood so she can take time to mentally recover.
And that is only the first two short chapters.
What follows this is even more emotionally and mentally exhausting. You meet Travis, Harry's younger brother and the object of Mary's affections. You meet Cass, Mary's BFF and the one who is engaged to Travis but loves Harry. Huh? Oh, you also meet Jed, Mary's brother, and his wife Beth who is Harry's and Travis's sister.
This group, along with an orphan boy, venture out of the village along fenced-in pathways that, for reasons unknown to me (and everyone else), no one in the village has ever gone down, after their village's fences are breached and the Unconsecrated come flooding in.
There is a lot of zombie killing. There is a lot of confusion and sighing and crying and softly touching one another's faces...in the rain.
Mary's main motivation throughout all of this is to see the ocean, which she isn't sure actually exists but which her mother used to tell her stories/legends about. There even comes a point when she explicitly says she wants to see the ocean more than she wants Travis, who is supposed to be the love of her life. Um...
I don't know what else to say about this book. It has an intriguing premise, but I found it poorly executed. I got so sick of Mary's internal dialog about being surrounded by death, and hopelessness, but the ocean!, and on and on. I felt like the whole book was one adolescent emotional breakdown after another. Too much for me.
I guess there are more books to come, though I don't know if it's a continuation or not because the little excerpt included at the end of the book seemed to have different characters. Either way, I will not be reading any more of this tale.
Showing posts with label one star. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one star. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
#9: The Lady's Slipper
I'm going to keep this short. This was book was a disappointment. I put it on my list after a lady in my church book club suggested it as one of three options for the next month's read. We ended up choosing a different book as a group, but her description of this one piqued my interest.
Basically, this book is set in England in the 1600s. The cast of characters includes, but is not limited to, Alice, a young wife and plant enthusiast who recently lost her little sister, whom she cared for more as her daughter; Richard, a former soldier turned Quaker on whose land a rare orchid, the Lady's Slipper, is found; Sir Geoffrey Fisk, a truly awful man; and Ella Appleby, Alice's servant and, as it turns out, a skanky homewrecker.
When Alice learns of the Lady's Slipper growing on Richard's land, she tries to get him to let her take it and use it to grow more. Richard believes it should be left where God intended, so Alice steals it. In doing so, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that kind of ruins her life. I doubt any of you are going to read this, so I'll just go ahead and say that Alice ends up in jail, framed for a murder that Geoffrey Fisk actually committed, and in the end she and Richard escape to the New England colonies. Along the way she learns a lot about Richard's Quaker beliefs. Oh, and Ella seduces Alice's husband away and plays a large role in the framing of Alice for murder. Wah wah wah.
Why didn't I like it when it has such an incredibly awesome story? Ha. Well, first, I was not expecting there to be any romantic element to the plot, and I have to say I didn't like the love story. It was weird and unconvincing. I also could have done well without the gratuitous sex scenes involving Thomas and Ella, which did nothing to further the story except make me hate both of them. I found none of the other characters very sympathetic, except for maybe Richard, but that's neither here nor there. In short, I didn't "like" any of them, and completely despised several. I expected the story involving the orchid to be compelling, but it, too, fell flat for me. I hate to say it, but I wish I hadn't wasted my time on this one.
I'm giving this book one star, mainly because I did keep reading it, and because there are an awful lot of good ratings for it on Goodreads, so I know there are people out there who would like it.
Basically, this book is set in England in the 1600s. The cast of characters includes, but is not limited to, Alice, a young wife and plant enthusiast who recently lost her little sister, whom she cared for more as her daughter; Richard, a former soldier turned Quaker on whose land a rare orchid, the Lady's Slipper, is found; Sir Geoffrey Fisk, a truly awful man; and Ella Appleby, Alice's servant and, as it turns out, a skanky homewrecker.
When Alice learns of the Lady's Slipper growing on Richard's land, she tries to get him to let her take it and use it to grow more. Richard believes it should be left where God intended, so Alice steals it. In doing so, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that kind of ruins her life. I doubt any of you are going to read this, so I'll just go ahead and say that Alice ends up in jail, framed for a murder that Geoffrey Fisk actually committed, and in the end she and Richard escape to the New England colonies. Along the way she learns a lot about Richard's Quaker beliefs. Oh, and Ella seduces Alice's husband away and plays a large role in the framing of Alice for murder. Wah wah wah.
Why didn't I like it when it has such an incredibly awesome story? Ha. Well, first, I was not expecting there to be any romantic element to the plot, and I have to say I didn't like the love story. It was weird and unconvincing. I also could have done well without the gratuitous sex scenes involving Thomas and Ella, which did nothing to further the story except make me hate both of them. I found none of the other characters very sympathetic, except for maybe Richard, but that's neither here nor there. In short, I didn't "like" any of them, and completely despised several. I expected the story involving the orchid to be compelling, but it, too, fell flat for me. I hate to say it, but I wish I hadn't wasted my time on this one.
I'm giving this book one star, mainly because I did keep reading it, and because there are an awful lot of good ratings for it on Goodreads, so I know there are people out there who would like it.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Ellie's Book #2: Coco Chanel
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm packing in a few quick books up front to buy me buffer time to tackle that copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that's been sitting in my TBR pile for a couple of years now.
Book #2: The Gospel According to Coco Chanel by Karen Karbo.
*½
I finished this book a few days ago and have been trying to figure out ever since if I actually liked it or not.
I picked this book up as a Kindle daily deal for cheap as free because I have a secret fascination with things that have to do with high fashion (this may or may not be traceable back to the time I read The Devil Wears Prada. We won't get into that here), as well as a weakness for impulse-buy-priced ebooks, and it looked like an interesting read.
And it was, as far as the actual biographical bits about Coco Chanel went. The author seems to have done her basic research and I liked the way Chanel's life was presented according to category ("On Style," "On Self-Invention," "On Cultivating Arch-Rivals," etc.) rather than strictly chronologically, although it was chronological enough to avoid confusion.
But.
Something about this book bugged me from the get-go, even though it took me a while to figure out exactly what it was. Even while I was enjoying the presentation of Chanel's life and quotes and loves and adventures, I wasn't enjoying the book itself. I didn't hate it or dislike it enough to quit reading, but it just rubbed me wrong.
It finally clicked that I didn't really like the author. I wasn't interested in the autobiographical sections that she used to frame the chapters on Chanel. I didn't like the editorializing she made on Chanel's life and attitudes. I guess it boils down to one basic thing: I didn't like her tone of writing.
Let me clarify: I think she's a good writer. Her tone positively sparkles in some places. She definitely has wit and skills and such.
But.
The book didn't really gel as a whole. It felt a lot like a compilation of newspaper columns in some ways: each chapter is complete in itself and follows some little gimmick or motif, but doesn't necessarily match the preceding or following chapters.
In some cases it felt like the author had already drawn her own conclusions about Chanel's life or actions based simply on surface facts and was writing what fit those notions, rather than actually exploring what might have been really going on in the background, what her motivations were, or the like. (At one point she actually says, "I was going to discuss [incident], but I simply can't bring myself to do it.") I guess I'm more accustomed to having biographers dig a little deeper than mere surface facts, even—or perhaps especially—when those surface facts are pretty damning.
But what really bothered me the most was the author's tone relative to the fact that she was writing this book from a feminist point of view (she all but stated it outright). I have no problem with that in general; what bothered me was that the tone seemed to be less about the feminism that's for gender equality and respect and more about the stereotypical feminism that, to put it bluntly, sounds more like man-hating than anything else, and which gives more reasonable branches of feminism a bad name. To paraphrase a quote from Pride and Prejudice, "Take care, Karen; that speech savors strongly of disappointment." I kept feeling like this book had been written in the aftermath of a bad breakup and the author kept forgetting that the book was supposed to be about Chanel and not her own relationship problems. At several points I wanted to tell her to quit whining and get back to Chanel.
Which is probably very unfair for me to say. It's quite probable that the author meant nothing of the sort. But it was kind of hard to get away from that feeling, and that is what ultimately made me decide that this book only gets 1.5 stars. I liked parts of it, but overall I didn't really care for it, although someone else might.
(Maybe I'll just go watch The September Issue again to make myself feel better.)
Book #2: The Gospel According to Coco Chanel by Karen Karbo.
*½
I finished this book a few days ago and have been trying to figure out ever since if I actually liked it or not.
I picked this book up as a Kindle daily deal for cheap as free because I have a secret fascination with things that have to do with high fashion (this may or may not be traceable back to the time I read The Devil Wears Prada. We won't get into that here), as well as a weakness for impulse-buy-priced ebooks, and it looked like an interesting read.
And it was, as far as the actual biographical bits about Coco Chanel went. The author seems to have done her basic research and I liked the way Chanel's life was presented according to category ("On Style," "On Self-Invention," "On Cultivating Arch-Rivals," etc.) rather than strictly chronologically, although it was chronological enough to avoid confusion.
But.
Something about this book bugged me from the get-go, even though it took me a while to figure out exactly what it was. Even while I was enjoying the presentation of Chanel's life and quotes and loves and adventures, I wasn't enjoying the book itself. I didn't hate it or dislike it enough to quit reading, but it just rubbed me wrong.
It finally clicked that I didn't really like the author. I wasn't interested in the autobiographical sections that she used to frame the chapters on Chanel. I didn't like the editorializing she made on Chanel's life and attitudes. I guess it boils down to one basic thing: I didn't like her tone of writing.
Let me clarify: I think she's a good writer. Her tone positively sparkles in some places. She definitely has wit and skills and such.
But.
The book didn't really gel as a whole. It felt a lot like a compilation of newspaper columns in some ways: each chapter is complete in itself and follows some little gimmick or motif, but doesn't necessarily match the preceding or following chapters.
In some cases it felt like the author had already drawn her own conclusions about Chanel's life or actions based simply on surface facts and was writing what fit those notions, rather than actually exploring what might have been really going on in the background, what her motivations were, or the like. (At one point she actually says, "I was going to discuss [incident], but I simply can't bring myself to do it.") I guess I'm more accustomed to having biographers dig a little deeper than mere surface facts, even—or perhaps especially—when those surface facts are pretty damning.
But what really bothered me the most was the author's tone relative to the fact that she was writing this book from a feminist point of view (she all but stated it outright). I have no problem with that in general; what bothered me was that the tone seemed to be less about the feminism that's for gender equality and respect and more about the stereotypical feminism that, to put it bluntly, sounds more like man-hating than anything else, and which gives more reasonable branches of feminism a bad name. To paraphrase a quote from Pride and Prejudice, "Take care, Karen; that speech savors strongly of disappointment." I kept feeling like this book had been written in the aftermath of a bad breakup and the author kept forgetting that the book was supposed to be about Chanel and not her own relationship problems. At several points I wanted to tell her to quit whining and get back to Chanel.
Which is probably very unfair for me to say. It's quite probable that the author meant nothing of the sort. But it was kind of hard to get away from that feeling, and that is what ultimately made me decide that this book only gets 1.5 stars. I liked parts of it, but overall I didn't really care for it, although someone else might.
(Maybe I'll just go watch The September Issue again to make myself feel better.)
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