bookshelves: currently-reading
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bookshelves: currently-reading
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bookshelves: currently-reading
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bookshelves: currently-reading
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Hollowspine wrote: "Only 884 pages to go. You know you're crazy right? Even people who claim to follow the religion do...more " |
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bookshelves: ya
A story about a teenage girl, Zee, who makes a new friend, one whom she finds both attractive and dangerous, and who introduces her to a secret world within the everyday world. In this hidden world she has mysterious elemental powers. But...with power...comes immense danger. It seems that the skeevy bio teacher is also more than he seems and he has it out for Zee and her new friends.
I found the book somewhat interesting. It had good ideas and some potential to develop into something cool, but I feel it fell short. Rather than being a self contained story it felt rushed and underdeveloped to me, like a failed attempt to launch a series. I felt that the beginning started out well, as a first book in a series, but then the second half of the book (in two separate acts) comprised the second two books condensed into a few short chapters. Things that should have been explained in more detail were rushed through and the reader was forced to assume many things for themselves that should have warranted some explanation by the author.
The characters were shaping up in the first part of the story, but development completely stops at that point and only perhaps three out of six characters have any development at all.
I was also taken out of the narrative by some terminology choices that I felt were poor. For example in the beginning of the story Relly explains to Zee that they are gods. Gods over the four elements, water, earth, fire and air. However, there are apparently many hundreds more people with similar powers to their own. The bands Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin for a couple. If there are so many people with similar powers...how could you call yourselves gods? Gods are individuals with immense powers, who are ageless and have many smaller minions to do their bidding. Although the issue is not huge and didn't greatly affect the reading of the story it still galled me a little. It would have been more effective, I think, if they were called something else. Just about anything else would have worked. Elementals. Mages. Mutants. Even changelings would have been better. I also noticed that the author didn't recall the four horsemen of the apocalypse correctly, which is another mistake, although not huge, that could have been easily fixed and would have made the story that much better. I also was annoyed that whenever the band name was brought up "Scorpio Bone" the characters would say, but scorpions don't have bones...but the band isn't scorpion bone, but Scorpio Bone. Although it's easy to see where the scorpion part comes in there is much more to the word Scorpio than just scorpion. For one in the zodiac it is considered a feminine water sign. Gee, isn't that convenient? Couldn't the author have used that to their advantage in the story? Did Watts do so? No. No one who didn't know that will know that. If, in fact, Watts even knew that.
Another bizarre thing was the connection the book had with the dead. There are many references, including the title, that lead the reader to expect some sort of ghost story. In fact, the only ghost scene comes at the very end and is ...as if it immigrated from some different book. It didn't make sense at all and could have just been the delusions of an paranoid schizophrenic. Other than the references to "Ghost Metal" which seemed to just be a cool name and the use of 'grave poetry' (of the most incredibly insipid nature) the dead seemed to have no place in this bizarre story.
Overall, although I read the entire book (which took only about five hours in total, being very short and simple), I felt that the only part the author really shone in was describing Zee's feelings while she played as part of a band. But having read other books with such descriptions even in that the author fell short of other writers. In the end it was rather short, underdeveloped and rushed. Some parts didn't make much sense and many of the characters seemed like they were replaced by mannequins in the second act. With all I've said (and all that I remembered was odd later) I think Watts should recall all the books and ...treat this publishing as a rough draft. I bet you could do better. ]]>
bookshelves: to-read
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bookshelves: graphic-novel
Neil Gaiman and Alice Cooper team up in this creepy comic book. The Showman (Alice Cooper in appearance) invites a young man into view his delightful show of horror and the macabre. The boy, in an attempt to prove his bravery to his less than savory friends, goes with the Showman and watches his show, but even once he escapes the theater the show seems to go on. Not only a comic about an ancient evil, but a coming-of-age story as well. It is also a perfect read for the October season, due to the timeliness of the story (taking place right at Halloween). The imagery and artwork is superb, details keep popping out every time you scan the page. ]]>
bookshelves: ya
I found this book enjoyable, especially reading it aloud with my family. I thought that it was fairly mature for a book found in the childrens section (though it was in the stacks, which are available to the public to browse, but a bit out of the way). There are a lot of different characters at least 16 different odd German (Wendish) names to remember, though only about five or six are really memorable. Although there is only one female character of note in the book I didn't actually find it too chauvinistic. Although the girl didn't have too much of a role it was made apparent that she was intelligent and kind and quite capable, as we see in the end of the story. I also thought that the story hit on a lot of little stories or sayings that I'd heard of before or seemed familiar. Overall I enjoyed it, and found that September and October were perfect months to read the story.
I also thought that the battle between 'good' and 'evil' were not...well Disney. There was never a point where Krabat made the choice to be a good person and to throw over the Master for everyone's sake or to join the Master to forsake everyone else. Though the Master was obviously a vile man, he wasn't without depth. In the end Krabat won out through love, not an entirely unselfish motive. ]]>
"There should be a category, like 'to read' or 'read' only 'not to read...ever.'"
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