Could it be? Is this really a zombie novel with two bad ass heroines kicking butt and taking names? Oh. No. It isn't.
I'll give Frater credit where cre...moreCould it be? Is this really a zombie novel with two bad ass heroines kicking butt and taking names? Oh. No. It isn't.
I'll give Frater credit where credit is due: this story starts off like a really awesome slap in the face. We're introduced to Jenni, who is staring at the tiny baby fingers of her toddler son reaching under a crack in her door. Why? Because her abusive and zombified husband is having him for a snack. Her other son has been bitten by her husband, too, and is trying to claw out of the house via the window to take a chunk out of mommy. Jenni is only saved when Lesbian Katie (more on this in a minute) rolls up and gets her into the truck before she becomes zombie lunchmeat. Then, I'm afraid, begins the agonizing spiral into What The Shit Is This Land.
Here are the problems with this book:
- Characterization:
Jenni, you suck. After Jenni is rescued and she and Katie find a place to hole up for a while, she offers herself up to Lesbian Katie. I get it in a way. Coming from an abusive household, one might safely assume that Jenni has been brainwashed into thinking that she's nothing but a puppet for the needs of other people. Since Katie is the one that rescued her, it might be logical for Jenni to assume that sex is the price for safety and protection, making it really easy to not see this situation for what it is, which is just the first in a long line of scenarios in which Jenni thinks with her netherparts instead of her brain. Jenni's all-consuming goal of getting laid is so overwhelming for her that she forgets that she has a stepson that she needs to rescue (which, if I'm being honest, feels like just an impetus for Frater to insert a fancy action sequence into her story because her stepson is basically pointless after his rescue) and that she's lost her two sons less than a week prior. In short: abort, abort, abort.
Katie, you don't suck as much as Jenni. You're Diet Suck. I have dubbed Katie Lesbian Katie because ninety percent of the narrative about her is about her sexuality. In fact, the parts about her read less like a zombie novel and more like shitty dialogue in a Lifetime movie about gay acceptance. No, really, it gets so bad that Lesbian Katie goes out of her way to have a completely inappropriate and, frankly, pointless conversation about her sexuality with Jenni's adolescent stepson. She entrusted a fifteen year old the secret of her bisexuality; the whole bit felt more like an unnecessary scene for Frater to explain Katie's blossoming attraction with a man, when, if it had been kept out of the book, the story would not have been lacking.
Also, Frater's dudes sound like ladies. You know how annoying Bella Swan was in Twilight mooning over Edward? That was basically every male character in this book.
- Story:
One thing that Frater did really well was make sure that there was a lot of action. I liked that part about her writing because with the limited wriggle room available with zombie lore, stories can become dull or repetitive, which makes interpersonal relationships between characters necessary. Here is the problem. Much of the story focused on a stupid love quadrangle - Jenni loves cock (Travis', first), Travis loves Lesbian Katie, Juan loves Jenni, Katie wants to mourn her undead wife in peace - which was given far more importance than it should have. I was much more intrigued with the politics of the little community that Jenni and Katie found themselves in instead of a dumb game of elementary school Love Connection.
- General issues:
Every single character says, "Gawd" instead of "God". So it was pages of, "Oh my Gawd," and "Gawd, that's terrible," from every single character. I realize that this was a stylistic choice by Frater, but it made me want to punch puppies when every single character started to sound like an unintelligent Scarlett O'Hara.
It was super cute when Juan gave Jenni the nickname Loca. It stopped being cute around the four hundredth time he went out of his way to call her Loca. It made me wonder if Frater has ever had a conversation with a real person because every single sentence was peppered with her name, unnecessarily. Things he actually said: "You're loca, Loca." Shut up. The only redeeming quality about Juan is that I couldn't unsee him as Kevin Alejandro in my head:
Execution of the story in general was pretty bad. I had comprehension problems with the way Frater described things, but I didn't expect so much when I realized this book was a self-published deal. And it's no wonder. Gawd.(less)
It's always pathetically sad for me when I spend a couple of days hoovering down a novel and in summation the only conclusion that I can come to is th...moreIt's always pathetically sad for me when I spend a couple of days hoovering down a novel and in summation the only conclusion that I can come to is this: eh. It was so eh that it's difficult for me to review it thoroughly and I can talk about everything - so says the guy in the doctor's office waiting room the other day that went home with a skeletal outline of my entire life story.
So, there's a girl. This girl isn't particularly memorable except in the fact that her name is Remy, which reminds me of Gambit from X-Men; maybe I would have liked Amanda Hocking's Remy more if she could throw playing cards charged with kinetic energy at zombies. So, there's Remy. Without much narrative on how she got there, it's mentioned that Remy is in a government facility that's presently being overcome with a herd (Is there a proper term for a group of zombies - a herd? a flock? a school? I'm going go go with a murder, since it seems apropos for zombies.) - nay, a murder - of coordinated zombies, which is an interesting addition to the existing zombie lore, but it's not anything I haven't seen before either. Remy escapes the facility with one goal in mind - to retrieve her little brother who had already been evacuated from the facility for mysterious reasons. Oh, the mystery!
There's not really anything new to see here. It's a formulaic plot with a few surprises, but the surprises don't do much except confuse me. A big for instance: at one point, Remy and Harlow stumble upon a lioness who is being attacked by zombies. The lioness will attack any zombie within three feet of her, but throughout the course of the book, the lioness acts like a giant tamed golden retriever for Remy, which is stupid and unfeasible, no matter how well the lion has been trained.
More hilarity: at some point during a raid of a house for supplies, in stumbles a guy and a rock star. I get it. Even before the existence of Zombieland and the whole Bill Murray thing, I was like - what if Jake Gyllenhaal and I were the only two people left in the world after a massive apocalypse and we somehow stumbled upon each other in the canned vegetable aisle at my local Wal-Mart? I don't think that the existence of a rock star bothered me as much as Amanda sort of smushing them together at every corner even though for me, Remy had more chemistry with the creepy dude that was collecting little girls to rape.
The book was okay, but it was never going to be good. There was very little plot aside from Remy's mission to get her brother back and it read like a series of events, not a novel, which is only exacerbated by Hocking's uninteresting prose. The characters weren't unlikable, but they were distinctly amorphous and boring. That's all I got. 2 stars. If you want good zombie lit, read Zombicorns. John Green 4 lyfe.(less)
I've been deliberating for a few hours over doing a Serious Business review of City of Bones and outlining the infinite number of problems that lie wi...moreI've been deliberating for a few hours over doing a Serious Business review of City of Bones and outlining the infinite number of problems that lie within, but I decided that any critical thought that I could flesh out isn't going to be anything that you've never heard before. Therefore, I choose the low road - sarcasm and mockery.
Oh, Cassie Clare, you so crazy. I can only guess that after writing almost a million words of Harry Potter fan fiction, a bunch of people sucking your e-cock for stealing whole paragraphs from books and quotes from Buffy simply wasn't enough. No, I understand. You had to capitalize on all that time spent typing up whole paragraphs from books and outlining plots that pretty blatantly ripped off from various films, books, etc. I get it. I'm sure that's how the Mortal Instruments came to fruition. It is painfully obvious that your dopey red-haired ingenue and snarky blond asshole were essentially Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy in Original Character clothing. Ditto Simon being a hybrid of Harry/Ron and maybe Isabelle being a slutty Hermione. But wait, you didn't stop there! Hodge is Lupin/Peter Pettigrew 2.0 and Luke is better known by his other name, Sirius Black, and I am not entirely sure why you didn't just call Valentine by his true name - Voldemort. And seriously, though, why not just call the Mortal Instruments by their true name - the Deathly Hallows? But wait, it gets better!
Strong with this novel, the Force is - because somehow there's a creepy Luke and Leia thing going on with Clary and Jace which, for the record: dude, that's nasty. How dare you let them make out and then discover they're related. Because I had to know in order to keep myself from hurling up my dinner, I did discover that this little detail does get resolved eventually, but I reiterate: that's nasty. I thought the point of this book was to make teenage girls hold their hands to their hearts and swoon, not make them want to upchuck with what I find to be your disturbing affinity for incest (seriously - you had the whole six episodes of Star Wars to steal, uh, draw inspiration from and you pick the creepy incesty parts?). But it's weird, because if Jace and Clary are Luke and Leia, does that make Simon Han Solo? In a weird way, I found Jace's whole over-confident demeanor to be more like Han, which I guess is pretty on point with what happens in later novels. In other news, I will no longer be referring to Valentine as simply that; he is now Darth Valentine. Yes, I said it. I guess this makes Jocelyn Padme, except she's not dead yet.
I must give you where credit where credit is due, though. Clary isn't a total dumb, annoying, doormat heroine, which is essentially my biggest pet peeve in the entirety of fiction. Instead, Clary is just dumb and annoying. Why the fuck does she slap everyone? It doesn't make her a strong, venerable female, it makes her a psychotic bitch, especially since there wasn't a single justifiable slap she delivered. Also, she's a moron. Blind, deaf babies knew that Simon was in love with her. My dog knew that Simon was in love with her and the most complicated thought he has in a day is, 'gee, I think I'll lick my junk today'. I have no idea why it's such a surprise to her, really. This brings me to my second greatest pet peeve and yet another trope that you liberally borrowed from, well, everyone: all the boys want Clary. What the hell is this shit? Clary isn't even likable. You stole it off of Stephenie Meyer who stole it off of L.J. Smith and frankly? You keep copying copies, the shittier-looking and harder to read they get. You are not an exception, you are the rule.
Also, okay. So the Clave is like the circle of Jedi, right? And the Circle is like the Order of the Phoenix and the Death-Eaters, sort of, but bad. So, like, Order of the Sith, kind of? Also, is Darth Valentine channeling Magneto from X-Men: The Last Stand with his whole 'purifying the race' bullshit? I think he is. Now that I've brought the X-Men into the picture, I can see the vast similarities there, too; Clary is film version Rogue and Wolverine - Rogue because she can't be with the person she loves physically (Rogue's life-sucking power = Clary's being in love with her brother) and Wolverine because of the whole not having any memories thing and wondering why he has all this power. Also, The Institute = The Knight Bus/Hogsmeade/The Leaky Cauldron (because sometimes the Institute boards travelers and there's bad food at all three places, much like Isabelle's cooking) and also Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters (and Hodge is kind of Professor Xavier-esqe - his inability to leave the institute = Professor X's disability) and also The Jedi Training Academy and also possibly Starfleet from Trek.
You know what the funniest thing about all this is, Cassie Clare? You aren't even stealth about stealing. You know, when most people shoplift, they maybe do a cursory look for the cameras and stuff something in their pocket when they think no one is looking, but you're that chick that goes up to the clerk, asks a clerk a question about a product you have in your hand while winking that you just don't have the money to pay for it. In this book there were blatant reference to both X-Men and Star Wars (Magneto and Prof. X by name and the dice hanging up in the Millennium Falcon).
Now that I've drawn all necessary attention to your totally original content, I want to talk about the story in general. I read this book because it was handed down to me by my recently-turned eleven year old niece. I figured, okay, I'll figure out what the big deal is with this book since everyone and their mom (no, really, I think my mom, too) has read it. My niece isn't what anyone would call fastidious; she hates cleaning her room and at dinner, she likes to mash all of her food together and make a sculpture with it and then eat it. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the portion of the book I borrowed from her had pages upon pages of highlighted words. I figured, aw cute, she highlighted her favorite parts. But, no, my eleven year old niece had gone through the book and highlighted grammatical errors. There were misspellings, comma splices, and just general bad phrasing all throughout. She had also highlighted words that she saw in multiples. Seriously, Cassie Clare, I get it. Every time a wolf shows up in your book, you don't have to describe it as 'brindled'. I get it. Did your word-of-the-day calendar run out? Did you lose your thesaurus? Do you have a short-term memory problem and forget that you used the word 'brindled' to describe a wolf eight times? I can't even talk about the metaphors and the similes. I can't. I used to like them. Now they make me want to punch toddlers in the face because your book is full of approximately nine hundred and thirty-three million of them. I am also not going to talk about your bizarre tense changes and the random chapter you threw in from Luke's point of view which was completely out of character for both a man and a human, let alone Luke - no one talks like that.
Another thing that I want to reference is this whole stele thing. In Tatiana's review, she mentioned that there didn't seem to be any parameters with this stele; it seemed to be a fix-it for whenever you had written yourself into a hole. I may not have noticed it had I not read the review first, given that as I was trudging through, I was filled with an irrational rage. It's a very good point, though. But since I read your book in three days just to get through it, I'm feeling like an asshole and I want to ask the following questions: can the stele make me look like Scarlett Johansson?; can the stele magic a cheeseburger out of thin air? These are questions of vital importance. Because if the stele can't, maybe you want to consider it in case one of your characters gets stuck on an island with no food for three years or something.
In conclusion, Cassie Clare, OF COURSE YOUR BOOK IS GOOD. YOU STOLE EVERYTHING IN IT FROM OTHER PEOPLE. I just want to say that I sincerely hope that you make/have made a lot of money off your books; I also hope that the people you blatantly stole your content from take it all from you when they sue you.
Here is the Reader's Digest version of this review:
The Mortal Instruments = Harry Potter/Star Wars/X-Men/possibly Star Trek Clary Fray = Ginny Weasley/Princess Leia/Rogue/Wolverine/Uhura/Cassandra Clare, herself Jace Wayland = Draco Malfoy/Luke Skywalker/Han Solo/Wolverine/possibly Captain Kirk Simon = Harry/Ron/Cyclops/sometimes Han Solo/possibly Spock Isabelle = Slutty Hermione/one of the green chicks Captain Kirk always hits it with/one of Jabba the Hut's slaves/possibly Jubilee or another dumb, irrelevant mutant Alec = token gay character/C-3P0?? Luke = Sirius Black/Chewbacca Jocelyn = Padme Hodge = Remus Lupin/Peter Pettigrew/Professor Xavier Valentine = Voldemort/Darth Vader/Magneto The Institute = The Knight Bus/Hogsmeade/The Leaky Cauldron/12 Grimmauld Place/Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters/Starfleet Academy Church the cat = Mrs. Norris/R2D2 the portals = Floo Network/Disapperating/Beam me up, Scotty
EDIT:
Someone pointed out that mundies = muggles GOOD POINT, YO(less)
I either read an interview or saw one with Stephenie Meyer who remarked that she got her plot to Twilight from a dream that she once had. After having...moreI either read an interview or saw one with Stephenie Meyer who remarked that she got her plot to Twilight from a dream that she once had. After having read this, I can say in all certainty that if she got the idea from a dream, it was at some point after reading this series. Look no further for her source material, here it is.
Just a few of the parallels that I noticed: Stefan (Edward) can read minds. Stefan and Elena fall splendidly and exquisitely in love with each other despite the fact that there's little narrative to their love story. Stefan wants to stay away from Elena because he's a killer, and so on, ad nauseum. Credit L.J. Smith here, though, considering that she was the one that did it first and she did it better (although I'd say not much, since I'm being honest).
Particularly in the first novel, "The Awakening", I found the main character - Elena - to be selfish, spoiled, and revolting. Perhaps it's because the popular, pretty girl foil is simply something that I can't related to, or perhaps it's because the idea of making my friends swear in blood that they won't stop until they 'get me' a boy is totally and completely absurd.
In the second book, Elena is a touch more palatable, but that might have been because the story as a whole got marginally better, leaving less time (but still ample, believe me) for Elena to wax poetic about the unexplainable love for Stefan that seemingly flourished after one kiss.
I'll give this three stars because it did get better in the end, but a more realistic rating would have been two or two and a half.(less)
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