Review: Icons

Welp, that happened. Unfortunately.

It's always interesting to see how an author fares as a solo act when for so long she has been part of a team-- and a rather popular team, at that. I wanted to know if I'd like Margaret Stohl's writing on its own, not because I was such a huge fan of Beautiful Creatures, but because I was not. I was expressly indifferent (even antagonistic, sometimes) toward that series and toward MC Ethan in particular, and I wanted this to be more up my alley. I wanted to like a story told by Margie Stohl because I have met her and she is awesome.

Alas, you don't always get what you want.

It's hard to review Icons because it didn't really even feel like a story to me. It felt like a bunch of characters thrown into a situation they didn't understand, with some people tossing facts at them until suddenly they think they've got it all figured out. I, however, still don't have anything figured out. What are the Icons, exactly? Why did the House of Lords come? Why are they called that? Why does the Embassy work with them? What are they doing that is so horrible it incites a Rebellion, and why have they gotten away with it for so long? What does any of it have to do with Dol's and Ro's and Tima's and Lucas's powers?* These questions should have been answered in book one. Book two should be about progressing the story along, not filling us in on the background information that the first book left out. This book does a horrible job of explaining itself, to the point where I was so confused I felt like I was trying to swim to the surface of the ocean with no knowledge of which direction was up. I wanted to just give up, stop swimming, see if maybe I'd float to the top somehow despite the fact that I'd been down so long that all the air was gone from my lungs. Holy extended metaphor, Batman. I'm just trying to give you a sense of how I felt reading this book-- that it was neverending and even a little suffocating.

[*It's possible that if I read the book again, I'd find the answers to at least some of these questions. But I am not going down the read-a-book-a-second-time-to-see-if-you-like-it-better road again.]

I haven't read very many alien books, so I can't tell you which ones come out on top of this one, but I can tell you that there are many of them. Even as someone whose experience with alien books pretty much starts and ends with The Host, the concept behind Icons did not seem groundbreaking to me. Coupled with the snoozefest of a narrator and the barely-interesting other main characters, that pretty much makes this a no-go for me. I didn't like it. 

I give this two stars because I did start to care a little about the characters toward the end. Lucas, especially. I have a soft spot for the morally confused, the ones who are torn between two different versions of right and wrong. Dol got a whole lot more empowered and became less of a looking glass in the last few chapters, too, at which point I breathed a sigh of relief. I saw what Ro and Lucas saw in her (and no, you're not going to see me complaining about the love triangle. They happen; get over it). Also I was told Ro underwent some kind of "change" that made him more endearing, but I would've preferred to be shown this change, because I don't actually know what it was. And Tima-- well, Tima was always pretty awesome. If a little obsessive and weird.

Can't say I'd recommend this one for fans of alien invasions; instead, I predict that I'll end up recommending The 5th Wave, which grabbed me more in the first page than Icons did in the whole book.

★★☆☆☆

Review: Nantucket Blue

Dear Contemporary Young Adult Authors,

I know I am not too old for this genre. I know it because some of my favorite books are from this genre, and they are smart, thoughtful and romantic. I know it because there are books in this genre that don't make me roll my eyes at the teenaged main characters as if I hadn't been their age five years ago.

Contemporary young adult books should not make me feel old by comparing myself with the characters. I am a young adult. The problem is when the protagonists of these novels are not young adults, but rather immature teenagers pretending that they're near-adults just because they're chronologically close to adulthood.

Please stop writing teenagers this way. I realize that yes, there are teenaged girls who judge other girls, and come up with ridiculous lists about why they like the boys they like, and think they can force themselves to fall in love with someone (or force someone to fall in love with them) and basically just live without consequences and run and run and run away from all of their mistakes, because they're young and being young means you don't have to account for your actions. But honestly? I don't want to read about those teenagers. I don't want to read about the petty arguments, or best friends who throw away their friendships without even talking about it or discussing why this is happening, or the gossip that is not in any way related to the storyline. I don't want to read about shallow characters with nary a deep thought to be found until the very end of the book. If you're expecting me to relate to a character like that (which, let's face it, is kind of the point of the contemporary genre), you are insulting me.

This is not to say I object to characters who make mistakes. Humans make mistakes, so I expect characters to do so as well. But honestly? There's a rather thick line between "making a mistake" and "doing something stupid and ignoring it or running away instead of facing it."

Just pay attention to actual young adults in real life. You might stop severely underestimating us.

Love,

Me

Okay, let me break it down for you: this book has 'middle-of-the-road, forgettable summer read' all over it. The main character is ridiculously insecure and judgmental (she's probably insecure because of her own penchant for judging other people-- she feels like they'll do the same to her, and it's her own black hole of STOP CARING SO MUCH ABOUT THE LIVES OF PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW PLEASE GOD I BEG YOU); the plot is predictable, frustrating and unimpressive; the romance is barely romantic; and the setting is not so much transporting as... just there. Instead of feeling like I was in Nantucket, reading this book felt like constructing a diorama of Nantucket and being forced to watch the story unfold through little plastic people and places. Not to mention there were so many times when something would happen in one paragraph and I'd have to go back and read the last paragraph again to figure out what was going on-- especially since the book is written in the past tense, and flashbacks were not distinguished with different language (instead of saying "I had gone" in a flashback, it would still just say "I went," which made it seem like it was still in real time). Characters would be given first names before the first-person narrator had even been introduced to them and learned their names. It just didn't make sense.

All of that said, I was at least able to finish the book because I didn't get bored. It's not a bad story. I just happen to be completely indifferent to it. No attachment to the characters, and the only relationship I really cared about was left unresolved, so I'm feeling a bit annoyed. I'll forgive the author because it's her debut novel, but next time I want more.

★★★☆☆

Rounding up from 2.5/5 stars.

Review: This is What Happy Looks Like

It's no secret, but perhaps you could call it a lesser-known fact, that I am a huge fan of Jennifer E. Smith. Last year, I preordered The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and read it all in one night. Granted, I'm pretty sure that book has less than 300 pages.

I was expecting this book to be around the same size, so I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it and found, like, 400 PAGES. *happy dances* Which is not to say that I didn't still finish it all in one night-- rest assured that I did. I turned to the prologue and I was gone from this world. This book just pulls you in immediately with its unique premise and its self-awareness. Actually, most of Jennifer's books are self-aware: the characters acknowledge what a ridiculous and unrealistic turn their lives are taking, and how if they saw it in a movie they'd scream at the television because it was so unbelievable. And yet, these books are nothing if not believable. This one in particular takes a concept that is totally out-there (movie star accidentally emails regular girl, they begin witty correspondence, then he arranges for his next movie to be shot in her town so they can meet), and spins it so that it really doesn't seem that unusual. It unfolds naturally, like there should never have been a moment when you doubted it.

So, like I said, it pulls you in-- but what makes me love it so much is that it doesn't chew you up and spit you out. Don't get me wrong, I love angst and pain and damage as much as the next person, but sometimes you just need a break. Sometimes you don't want a fantasy/paranormal/dystopian book where there's always the possibility that someone will die around the next corner. Sometimes you want a contemporary book that doesn't rest on tragedy (I've kind of been avoiding the contemporary genre lately because it seems like every book is about girl-whose-parents-died or girl-whose-parent-has-cancer or girl-who-was-in-an-accident-and-her-boyfriend-died-and-oh-yeah-she-was-pregnant. It would be fine if these books could balance the tragedy with humor, a la TFiOS, but they all seem to believe that the two cannot coexist, which is just emotionally draining and tends to result in a distant narrator with frustrating psychological issues).

Maybe that means I'm only giving this book 5 stars because it was a relief from my ennui with the genre, but I don't think so. Plain and simple, there just need to be more books like this in the world. Sure, it doesn't exactly ask The Big Questions or make you Think Real Hard, but it does tell you the story of these characters who you come to care about. The secondary characters may leave something to be desired, but the primary characters more than make up for it. The whole book could have been just the two main characters, Ellie and Graham, sitting around and talking to each other and I'd probably still write love letters to it.

My favorite thing about Happy was the easy relationship between Ellie and Graham. They didn't even know each other but within a few emails they were bantering like old friends. The moment Ellie said "Some pig!" I had officially sold my soul to this book, knowing that it would not use my soul for torture, but rather to feed it cotton candy and shelter it under a rainbow.

I even think the writing in this one is a step up from Probability. It's more lyrical (especially the parts where Ellie and Graham say what happy looks like to them, and I was like, please let me live in this book forever) and the attention to detail is what makes it such a good story-- from the Charlotte's Web references to whoopie pies, it doesn't really leave anything hanging there while you're waiting to get back to it. [Oh, and about the whoopie pies: I felt so ~cultured~ the whole time because I've actually had one before. They DO exist!]

The ending was bittersweet and slightly open-ended, which is exactly my favorite kind of ending. It leaves you with hope but doesn't spell anything out for you-- so anyone with an imagination can close the book with a sense of satisfaction and having done something right by picking up this book.

Basically, This is What Happy Looks Like... is what happy looks like.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 

Review: Clockwork Princess. I have waited so long.

This review is going to be... difficult. Here are some things you should know about me in advance:

1. I hate change. I hate change as much as Holden Caulfield hates change. I hate change as much as the Doctor hates change. I just really. Hate. Change.
2. I hate goodbyes. Especially when it comes to saying goodbye to my favorite characters. I don't like being forced to do it.
3. I try really, really hard to be positive. But sometimes I just can't.

That said, what you're going to get here are two different reviews written by the same person (me), about the same book. Review #1 is my positive side rearing its optimistic head. Review #2 is my selfish side, who can't stop focusing on things I wish had been different.

Review #1

Clockwork Princess was everything I expected it to be and more. Which says a lot, coming from a girl who has been counting down since December 11, 2011, when I finished Clockwork Prince. I've spent the past 15 months in a general state of anxiety over these characters' lives-- lives that infiltrated my music, landing me with a 22-song playlist entitled "worse than demon pox," lives that have been in my mind for so long now I've forgotten what it was like not to have them there. I've made friends over these lives and I've thought about these lives as if they were a part of me. Because they are. And now I've turned the last page on these lives. This is all I get.

And I'm okay with it.

This book completely blew me away. The attention to detail is nothing short of extraordinary, and as usual, the characters come to life on the page. I admit I was caught off guard by Jem and Will's tendency to trade places in this one-- Jem being the reckless one and Will being the responsible one for a change-- but it was realistic too. Will couldn't have gone on acting as he always had; there was no reason for it. He didn't have to be that person anymore, the person who distances himself using calculated cruelty and measured thoughtlessness. In that person's place is the person whose heart is broken. He's not going to be the same unstoppably snarky Will who could make a joke out of any situation. To have portrayed him as that person would have been a disservice to the character, for it would have made him seem invulnerable even after everything that has happened to him.

He's pushed everyone away for five years, believing it to be for their own good if nobody loved him. He finally opens himself up to the girl he loves, and finds out she's engaged to his best friend. He believes she doesn't return his feelings, and he can't even talk to the one person he wants to talk to about it because that person is the one causing him pain. No, the Brighter Burning Star is not going to shine quite so bright anymore.

"The hero's journey is not from weakness to strength, but from strength to weakness." Will Herondale is the definition of this. And, make no mistake about it, he is the hero of this story. He and Tessa may have decided that he was not a hero-- one of my favorite scenes in any book, ever-- but they were looking at it from the perspective of real people. To them, they are not characters in a book, so Will is not a hero any more than anyone is a hero. But we, as readers, can view Will the way he views Sydney Carton or Heathcliff-- though we know he is not the same as them. That's right, folks: Will Herondale is not Sydney Carton. He is better. He had reasons for his self-hatred and the way he acted, more than Sydney Carton ever did. Will's love for Tessa is not the kind that prevails only through destruction-- he would give his life for her happiness, but Tessa refuses to be Lucie Manette. They prevail together. Their love gets them through a war; all Sydney Carton's love for Lucie got him was an honorable death.

As for Jem... well, he is steady, as always. He has not changed much, except to become happier and also sicker. He faces unafraid the shadows that creep closer to him every day. He's an open book. This is what I love about Will and Jem: their stark contrast to each other. Where Jem is light, Will is dark. Where Jem is a flame, Will is a star. Where Jem is strong in the face of crippling weakness, Will is weak in the face of crippling strength. [before you go telling me that "crippling strength" doesn't make sense, think about it. Will has always had to be strong, to never show vulnerability, and it nearly ruined his life.]

As for the ending, "bittersweet" doesn't even begin to explain it, though it's probably the word that comes closest. Everybody gets what they want, but everybody has to sacrifice something. My favorite thing about it, though? One relationship really stands out. My favorite relationship. To me, it was always clear why Will and Tessa loved each other, but in this book they lay it out for everyone to see. They don't let there be any doubters left, nobody left to say "but why does Will have such strong feelings for Tessa?" or "but how can Tessa love Will when Jem is so much nicer?" He loves her because she's infuriatingly inquisitive and stubborn, because she listens to him and makes him laugh and remembers his words, because she loves the same books as he does, and because she could never help but see the good in him. She loves him because he says the things she thinks but would never say, because he loves the same books and has a remarkable memory for quotes, because he thinks up ridiculous songs and sees the truth in everything, and because they are unusual in the same ways.

This ending was perfect because it gave everyone what they wanted the most, without being too Happily Ever After. Tessa's immortal; she cannot have either boy forever. But she got a lifetime with Will, and Will with her-- that was all he ever wanted. He deserved his happy ending, and he got it. Jem, presumably, gets the same: the lifetime he promised Tessa a long time ago. We don't know where it goes, but we don't really need to-- Will and Tessa ended up together (Tessa insisting that Will be only Will, not a polite version of himself), and then Jem and Tessa ended up together. Happy, but with a price.

Review #2

I'm not going to take back the positive things I said in Review #1 about the book itself, but in this review I'm going to be selfish and state my grievances about things I wanted and did not get.

I wish that Clockwork Princess had not lacked the humor that both Clockwork Angel and Clockwork Prince had. No matter how depressing Clockwork Prince was at times, no matter how much Will hated himself, he could always be counted on for a well-timed joke. I miss that about him. He's still the same, he's still got that Herondale bitter humor, but he seems to be hiding it now that he's stopped hiding other things about himself. Clockwork Prince was a better kind of pain.

I wish that I had never had to say goodbye to Will Herondale. I was hoping the spirit in Tessa's angel, after leaving the star mark on Will, would extend its protection to him, and that that would somehow make him immortal too. I didn't want to see him age while Tessa didn't, and it kind of seemed like Cassie wrote herself into a corner with Tessa's immortality. While I appreciate that nobody cared that he looked old enough to be her grandfather even though he was her husband (because they were Will and Tessa) I wanted things to be different. I wish that his death had been an active scene instead of a remembered one-- that I could know what his last words to Tessa were, how he felt about his life, whether he wished he could stay with her. For so long now I've felt like I understood him, and then in his last moment he became a distant story from 70 years ago.

Basically, I just wish the epilogue had not happened. I wish Jem had stayed a Silent Brother-- or better yet, just died. I'm not saying this because I wanted Jem to die; I'm saying this because I have always been used to the idea that he would. I always thought Jem was too. He believed in reincarnation, and it just doesn't seem consistent to me that he suddenly decided to throw away his next life, where he was sure he'd meet Will and Tessa again, for longevity.

The only way to describe how I really feel about the ending is subverted. I had things that I knew would happen and things that I hoped would happen, and yet I feel like I've been played. I cared too much about one person, when the ending was written for people who couldn't choose. It was written to satisfy everyone with mild feelings, and in the process it alienates everyone with strong feelings.

I know I should be happy for the characters, for their happy endings. None of them were dissatisfied with what they had in the end. I should be happy because Magnus says the first one always hurts the worst, and Will was the first one. But I can't help it-- to me, it's always been Will and Tessa. I feel like the epilogue undermined everything these three books had built, like it's not fair that Will had to be the one who died first. Will, the one who was always the most alive, ends up being the one glossed over first. Meanwhile, Tessa is young forever and Jem gets his youth back, and they get their second chance. The irrational side of me kind of sees this as a cop-out. Will and Jem never get their second chance. I feel betrayed on Will's behalf. For me, no one would be able to follow Will Herondale. No one would be enough after that-- not even Jem Carstairs.

All in all.... yeah. Like I said, this was difficult for me to write. I can't choose a side. While I appreciate every single thing about this book and I think it's about as genius as a fantasy/paranormal book gets, the ending was just not what I wanted, and I can't help but take that into consideration. The choice not to find a way around Tessa's immortality seems less about the story and more about the message, which is a problem for me. 

★★★★½

That missing half-star pains me.

Your argument is invalid: Trolls.

Internet trolls are the ugliest of all trolls

So, tonight I have had the displeasure of being directly confronted by a troll on the Internet. Have we all been there? I feel like it is a universal belief that everyone has been there, but certainly I have not been there very often. When it happens to me, I'm sometimes a little bit shocked, because I try to be fairly agreeable on the Internet. I have a knack for seeing every single possible side of an argument-- it's why I'm so indecisive. I often can't pick which side I think is right. So when someone attacks me because they disagree with me on something, it sets me off. I don't think that's an unreasonable reaction. What maybe is a little unreasonable is that I have an oddly physical reaction to trolls who direct their hatred toward me, which is that my hands shake and I find my facial temperature rise a few degrees.

When this happens, my immediate response is to type as quickly as I can in defense of myself. I don't know why I feel the need to defend myself to strangers on the Internet; but I do. I'm sure this is not uncommon. But tonight's troll wasn't just attacking me, he was attacking everything that I find good about the Internet, everything I like. He was attacking the foundations for many of my friendships and my hard and fast belief that the things I like are worth liking.

And that is something that makes me angry.

The troll's argument is that books like Divergent and The Hunger Games are not worth the adoration they have been given by "idiot teenage girls" (direct quote, because apparently only girls are foolish enough to like these things and guys are superior). Now, let me clarify that I am neither an idiot nor a teenage girl. But these are two of my favorite series. The troll is obviously a book snob who believes that the name of the author carries more weight than the words he or she has written-- he probably sings of his love for Kerouac and Thoreaux and Salinger from the mountaintops, but scoffs at the names Rowling, Collins and Meyer. He cannot distinguish between "literature" and "classic literature," or between "classic literature" and "good literature."

As someone who can distinguish between these, I could have responded to this by explaining that while The Hunger Games may not be classic literature yet, it is still literature. And good literature at that. These books have knocked even the toughest of critics off their feet. As someone who enjoys reading both modern and classic fiction, the Hunger Games books are steadfastly my favorites of all time. And I have bookshelf after bookshelf full of other books-- from classic to historical fiction to paranormal to contemporary and beyond-- to which I can compare them. I will read just about anything fiction. To illustrate my point, let me tell you that that this week I finished reading the Vampire Academy series and then started reading A Tale of Two Cities. I'm no stranger to appreciating a variety of books.

The thing is that the troll, well, is.

The troll does not understand that just because a novel isn't lyrically written with grandiose vocabulary, or driven by descriptions of every single thing that happens or exists in the novel, does not mean that it isn't literature. I could have set him straight by explaining exactly why The Hunger Games is fodder for teenage girls and literature enthusiasts alike, but I think this guy already did a pretty good job of that. It would be a waste of my time.

What I feel like I do need to defend, however, is my right to like The Hunger Games, even if the troll doesn't. I have a right to be a part of the Divergent fandom, because to me, there is no reason not to be a part of it. I guarantee you that every single person in that particular fandom is well aware that those books are not perfect-- but we have a right to love these series and these characters, because we do love them. We can see past faults, and it's worrisome that some people cannot. There is nothing inherently wrong with the message or the themes portrayed in the series, as there are with a series like Twilight. There isn't the overall idea that a girl is incomplete without a boy, or that it's okay to change everything about yourself in order to be with someone else. There are no ideas that set society back. But even if there were, we'd still be allowed to like it. People are allowed to like Twilight. I am allowed to enjoy anything I want to enjoy. To love the things I love with or without anyone else's consent. My love for them is not hurting anyone-- certainly not the troll himself-- and so I don't see why it should stop.

You cannot take away someone's right to like things. You can use your words to belittle us all you want, call us idiots, try to make us feel like we're not smart because we read a certain type of book, but you cannot take away from us the things that have made us feel better, the things that tell us we are not alone. That's what these books do for us, and your telling us that we're wrong for feeling that way is just proving to us how little you know about the world. Your argument is invalid. Take your blows to make yourself feel stronger, but you're not making us any weaker. We've built communities around the things we love-- can you honestly say you've accomplished as much? What has your hatred built?

We are people who read stories. We can spot foreshadowing, metaphor, and parallelism the second we lay eyes on it, whether it's in The Hunger Games or Moby Dick. We analyze and question and intellectualize everything. We know the importance of storytelling, which is more than we can say about you. Because if you don't understand why the world needs these stories, you don't understand why the world needs stories. Period. Every story is important, and it's a shame that anyone would live in denial of that just because he takes pride in classifying himself as a literature snob.

Review: The Madness Underneath (SPOILERS)

***THIS IS NOT A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW***

I know I always start my reviews by saying that I'm probably not ready to write the review, but this time I really mean it. (Warning: I will probably also really mean it if I write one for Clockwork Princess)

It's going to be difficult for me to write this review about the whole book when all I really want to do is scream about the ending, but I shall bravely venture forth and ignore the tiny wailing Mandrake in my mind as best I can.

The Madness Underneath picks up three weeks after the events of The Name of the Star. I did not reread TNotS before reading TMU, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that my brain had lost very few details so the reread wasn't really necessary (thank you, o freakish memory). Rory is living with her parents in Bristol, and she's not super excited about it or the fact that she has to see a therapist who wants to learn Things about her Personality. She's also feeling a bit lonely, as one does when one has been taken away from her school friends and her after-school-ghost-locating friends, and bored, as one feels when one is shirking her academic duties. She's so lonely and bored, in fact, that she attempts to befriend a ghost who is apparently from the 1970s and not at all impressed by the fact that she can see him. I say "attempts" because, sadly, this friendship cannot be: one touch and poof, her groovy new BFF is gone forever. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, Rory has become a human terminus.

And there are more ghostly murders happening.

And they're not all done by ghosts.

And Rory's not stopping until she ends it.

I seriously loved Rory in this book. Maybe I just forgot how much I loved her in the first book, but DANG. I have never read a main character like her before-- one whose absolute favorite thing in the world is telling stories. Usually you just assume that about a narrator, right? I mean, if they're narrating the story, you may feel comfortable assuming that they like telling stories. But to Rory, it's like a drug. She gets weird. She likes telling those stories, like the ones about her Southern family that make people uncomfortable, or the ones that she thinks will shock someone enough to make them come out of a coma-- sorry, that was the ending slipping in there a little. *slaps hand* BACK ON TRACK.  Her favorite story in the world to tell is the one about how she once pet a taxidermied dog, thinking it was alive. Just saying.

Anyway, it's not long before Rory's back at Wexford, casually failing all of her classes... but she's kinda got other concerns, like sleeping until noon, getting drugged by therapists, and, um, popping homicidal ghosties. That was not a euphemism. She insists on being part of the team this time around, and being a human terminus gives her the leverage to do so. She's not going to take herself too seriously, but she's going to make darn sure nobody else thinks she's a joke.

And then, of course, there are Boo, Callum, and Stephen. Or, as I like to call them, Stephen. Don't get me wrong, I love Boo and Callum, but poor, unsmiling, serious Stephen has a special place in my heart. As Rory would say: Because, Stephen. This is the part where I get superspoilery so if you have not read the book yet, you should depart now. Or maybe you should have departed back before I said the thing about the coma.

It's now occurring to me that this book seemed really short. It's already gone in my brain as one of those books that I REMEMBER reading, but I don't remember spending any time reading. I don't think that makes sense. Sorry, the end kind of stole much of my brain functionality.

You see, this was my brain on The Name of the Star: "This Stephen is the exact opposite of Rory in every way. She's talkative and weird, he's quiet and serious. I now ship this for no reason other than it would be totally awesome."

This was my brain between the books: "I hear someone dies. I bet it's Jerome. There's no way it's going to be Stephen. Maureen knows we love him, but I don't think she knows we love him *that* much."

And this was my brain on The Madness Underneath: "Stephen didn't even give Rory his phone number and he signed his text message '-s.' And she knew who it was. That is so adorable I can't even. She risked the school's alarm 'Because, Stephen.' High adorability factor. Oh, Jerome, go away. Hey, Jerome is gone! HEY STEPHEN (not the Taylor Swift song), RORY'S AVAILABLE! You know you want her Stephen. Steeeeephen*. Oh look, Rory's making a move. SHE IS MAKING A MOVE. Lol, she said he wouldn't want to kiss her, and then she did it anyway. She's like Stephen, I don't care what you want. BUT HE WANTED IT. My ship is canon. *floats away*

two pages later: *falls back to earth and hits the ground hard*...what? No. This is not happening. You wouldn't do this to me. I trusted you, Maureen. All this time you've been obsessing about shipping, I thought you knew that a shipper's heart is fragile. I thought you cared about us, Maureen. You have betrayed me. But more importantly, you have betrayed Story."

And then I went a little bit Callum, like, HE WAS FINE. IT WAS JUST A SMALL INJURY, HE WAS TOTALLY FINE. IT'S NOT FAIR THAT AFTER EVERYTHING HE'S BEEN THROUGH, THIS IS WHAT DID IT. And I added a little AND HE DID IT FOR RORY. HE CRASHED HIS CAR ON PURPOSE TO SAVE RORY AND THEN... NO. I HATE EVERYTHING.

I just don't know what to do with myself until I get the next book, which we learned yesterday is called The Shadow Cabinet. (Oh, I also had a revelation about why The Madness Underneath is called The Madness Underneath: there is literally madness underneath. It's where all the ghosts are coming from.) I mean, she said book 3 will address The Thing That Happened. HOW? They'll probably find Stephen's ghost, right? But then what? Rory can't touch him because she's a terminus! Will they think more about what Jane and her cray-cray cult said about "destroying death"? Does it mean BRINGING PEOPLE BACK TO LIFE? Because if so, I'm all for it. They need to bring Stephen back. Not just so my ship is canon again, but because Stephen is important. Throughout the whole book, he was Rory's rock. He was the one she called when she had a problem, or a theory, or if she needed anything. Stephen's the one who takes care of things. And that was before there was anything romantic between them. It's just who he is. And yes, it's his fatal flaw that he does everything himself (I feel you, bro. INTJ represent), but who's going to do it if he's not there? Just on the few pages at the end where he's gone, you can feel the weight of his absence. It doesn't make sense that he's not there. He's one of those characters: you don't realize how important he is until he's gone, and then you can't wrap your head around the fact that he's gone. Also it's just a serious injustice that he went comatose literally hours after they became canon. I mean, what is that.

Let's recap the things that give me hope:

• the book explicitly mentions the words "destroy death" but never elaborates on what they mean. It's probably important.
• The Thing happened at the end, not the beginning. Usually when Things happen at the end of a book (especially the second book in a series), it is either reversed or made more bearable in the next book
• Story became canon
• I'm big on analyzing the first and last words/sentences in books, and the last sentence was "And I will find Stephen." This doesn't just tell me that Rory's first priority is finding Stephen's ghost, but that her priority is finding Stephen. Like maybe she can get him back.

This book could have been so much longer, but it used its few pages well and did not waste time. It's already gone down in my head as one of those books I vaguely remember reading, because I flew through it so quickly.

★★★★★

*- I did have a moment where I noticed how Stephen's head injury wouldn't stop bleeding and he wouldn't go to the hospital, and I was like, "don't tell me he's going to sleep and not wake up."  I brushed it off because I thought if Stephen was going to die, it would be at the hands of some murderous ghost.

Review: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

I don't really know where to start with this review other than to just say right now, I worship Lauren Oliver. If she ever stopped writing YA books, it would be a loss from which I could probably never recover. I worship her so much I am actually probably going to read her adult book even though adult books are sometimes the bane of my existence.

Requiem is not perfect, but it is my perfect book-- and to be honest, my main problem with it is that there was not enough of it. It's right up there with Mockingjay (appropriate, considering they're both the last book in their respective heart-pounding dystopian/utopian trilogies). Bittersweet is my favorite kind of ending-- I mean, happily-ever-after is great for books like Anna and the French Kiss, but it hardly seems fitting for series in which death and destruction run rampant.

Now, to be clear, I was terrified of this book. I've been waiting for a month to get my hands on this ARC, hardly able to contain my excitement, but the entire time an evil fear lurked underneath the excitement. I had skimmed reviews from other people who had read ARCs, and the general consensus seemed to be "unimpressed."

Now I'd like to ask those people what in the world they want. Because if there is one word to describe how I felt after finishing Requiem, it was impressed.

Allow me to start, as usual, with the characters. I shall write them in open-letter format because after the amount of time I spent with them yesterday (and have, for the past two years), I see no weirdness in addressing them personally.

Lena Haloway:

Girl, you rocked this book. Remember at the beginning of Delirium when you were totally supportive of the cure and you were like "fight back?! Pshaw, yeah right"? Look how far you've come. As much as I resent the fact that your character development was basically the entire focus of Pandemonium, I have to appreciate what it did for you in Requiem. You've finally come into your own and learned how to balance fightin' Lena with lovin' Lena. You make all the right decisions for yourself and even when I started to go all NO LENA STOP, I understood why you had to make those decisions, and my NO LENA STOPs weren't so much for you as for myself. My shipper heart could not stand by and watch certain things without getting a little riled up. But in the end, you discovered the truth about yourself and your relationships and I stopped wanting to yell. Well, I actually still wanted to yell, but this time it was YES MORE OF THIS instead of NO LENA STOP.

Hana Tate:

In Delirium, I cared about Hana Tate, Lena's Best Friend. In Requiem, I cared about Hana Tate. Parts of me want to punch you in the face, and parts of me want to hug you. How can a cured character be so complicated? You're singing the praises of the cureds one minute, and the next minute you're risking your reputation-- and, consequently, your life-- to help the family of the best friend you betrayed. The measures you take to find out the truth, to still be Hana Tate even while the countdown to Hana Hargrove is on, are a reminder of who you once were-- that they can try to mute love, emotions, personalities, but the strong ones will never be silent. I refuse to believe that you do it out of guilt. You're a jealous wench who has no idea what she wants, but you're not heartless. You're cured, but you still love. They cannot take it.

Alex Sheathes:

Poor, tortured baby Alex. I missed you so much in Pandemonium, and I still kind of miss you. I miss Delirium-you, who is in my head as full of life and hope, dashed with realism, with a sprinkle of perfect hair and a backdrop of sunlight making your entire existence glow. But alas, the worst things happen to those kinds of characters (here, ladies and gentlemen, we have another example of how similar Requiem is to Mockingjay), and Delirium-you has been buried by this new Alex with the scar on your face and the almost-black hair and the gloomy presence. And, ahem, I still love you. Because you're still Alex, you still know right from wrong, you still fight for what you believe in, and you still love Lena no matter what words come out of your mouth to contradict this. Because you understand how Lena feels and give her what she doesn't even realize she needs-- you sacrifice your own happiness for hers repeatedly (metaphorically, you let go of the baby when the other mother clings and agrees to cut it in half). Oh, and because you finally get up the nerve to look Julian in the eye when he won't even return the favor. [Spoiler: And then when you're fighting and Lena tells you to stop, you agree. Then Julian charges you off-guard and you take the fall for beating him up when he totally deserved it.] Alex Sheathes, moody looks good on you.

Julian Fineman:

Oh, Julian. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't like you. I didn't like you in Pandemonium and I don't like you now. But you sure did try, didn't you? You tried to make me like you. You gave Lena her space when she needed it, you gave her comfort when she needed that, and you tried to prove yourself a fighter time and time again. But you can't do these things and then prove yourself a coward time and time again, and still expect me to like you. When you refuse to look your "opponent" in the eye while he's staring directly at you, you're a coward. When you attack someone who's walking away and then go all wounded-puppy-dog when they retaliate, you're a coward. Go ahead and get offended when the rest of the Invalids still treat you like an outsider, but I don't feel sorry for you. You're a slightly less boring character than you were in Pandemonium, but the non-boring traits you've acquired are not helping your case.

Now, moving on to the plot. It was intense. Things move pretty quickly, and you don't get a lot of time to sit there and wonder where it's going. It doesn't focus too much on the relationships, and everything that happens brings the series back to the characters and setting with which it all started. Instead, the relationships are kind of a deep undertone throughout the entire plot, making all of the stakes higher than ever. This is the kind of thing that makes it my perfect book, along with...

The ending. My initial reaction was, WAIT. THAT'S IT? BUT I WANT MORE. There is easily enough room in the end for a fourth book. Not very much is actually resolved in a blatant way-- instead, it's riddled with symbolism. The future is unclear, but it no longer seems so hopeless. To me, this is the most realistic way to handle everything that's happened in the past three books: when you've got two books that end with serious clawing-at-your-eyeballs-WTF-moments, you can't very well end the third one with a neat little bow. All you can do is hope things are clear enough, and to me, they were.

And if you're wondering about the love triangle thing... Well, it was not so much a choice as a realization that one relationship just couldn't compete with the other. You could say Lena chooses, but really she just lets go of something that could not go anywhere (Again: Mockingjay, anyone?).

Oh, and the writing? I feel like thus far in my review I've been pretty good at not going all fangirly, but this is about to change. This is the part where I am 100 percent fangirl and not ashamed enough to hide it. Can someone explain to me how Lauren Oliver packs so much punch in such SMALL SENTENCES? How she uses such simple words to BREAK ME APART AND PUT ME BACK TOGETHER? THE WOMAN IS MAGICAL AND IT IS NOT FAIR. I would give examples, but it's so much better when you read them for the first time in context. WARNING: Do not stand while reading, for you may collapse. Keep sustenance nearby.

Overall Rating:

★★★★★ or 4.5/5 stars if I take away half a star because I want more of certain things. Delirium is probably still my favorite book in the series, but I feel like a good portion of my love for that book is pure nostalgia for the good ol' days in Portland with Alex and Lena and Hana and sunshine and 37 Brooks and parties and opening your eyes to good things instead of bad things.