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October 08
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Garrett
added Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
to the book list Best Young Adult Novels
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October 04
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Garrett
installed the Goodreads Facebook Application 
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New comment on Garrett's review of
Writing for Visual Media, Second Edition
(see all 4 comments)
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September 25
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Garrett
gave
to:
Through Wolf's Eyes (Firekeeper Saga, Book 1)
by Jane Lindskold
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in September, 2008
Garrett said:
"Hurray! I was beginning to lose a little hope after reading the last several free eBooks from Tor. But, now, I've found a story that was very fun and engaging.
Why?
Setting: Standard divided kingdom setting. But, the addition of a feral child a...more
Hurray! I was beginning to lose a little hope after reading the last several free eBooks from Tor. But, now, I've found a story that was very fun and engaging.
Why?
Setting: Standard divided kingdom setting. But, the addition of a feral child and political intrigues made it all very interesting.
Plot: There were lots and lots of subplots throughout, and the author handled them all quite well.
Conflict: Lots of this too. And while, I am still confused about all the house stuff, I was able to enjoy the story and the machinations of its protagonists.
Character: Here is where I really think the author shines. I grew to care deeply for many of the characters, each with their own unique gifts and attributes; especially Firekeeper, Derian, King Tedric, Elise, Sapphire, Duke Allister, Earl Kestrel, and Blind Seer and Elation.
Text: I mostly enjoyed the writing. There were a few "as you know" moments, but in general it all flowed along rather nicely....less
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September 19
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Garrett
gave
to:
Soul (Hardcover)
by Tobsha Learner
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in September, 2008
Garrett said:
"What to say, what to say?
I truly did not like this book, the premise, the characters (mostly), nor the writing. But, the image from the very first scene pulled me in just enough to get me to read all the way through, hoping for more of the same. ...more
What to say, what to say?
I truly did not like this book, the premise, the characters (mostly), nor the writing. But, the image from the very first scene pulled me in just enough to get me to read all the way through, hoping for more of the same. It came in bits and pieces, and so I was quite disappointed.
I should also give some warnings: this book is a romance (that may be enough to stop many people). The story involves "justified" murder. The story includes a few fairly graphic sex scenes (I've read worse). The sex also includes masturbation with household objects. The sex also includes extra-marital affairs, both hetero and homo. The sex also includes what I would classify as rape (and no, I'm not talking about at the beginning of the book - I'm talking about a 30 year old and a teenager - even though he is probably a little older than 19, the descriptions of him and his "manhood" and body kept putting him at 16 or 17 in my mind).
In any case, let's break it down:
Setting: The book is mainly split between present-day California and England in the mid 1800s, going back and forth between the events in the life of a modern woman and her grandmother (or great grandmother, I forget). The fact that both women are scientists and suffering through a bad marriage is laughable. Soul, indeed.
Plot: This is easy to see coming from a mile away. In fact, if it would have ended with both women choosing the very same path, it would have at least been more interesting and controversial. As it is, the author decided some good old homily about free choice (which I believe in, but come on) would be appropriate.
Conflict: Of this, there was enough to keep me reading and interested. mostly because it was not just about the marriage relationships, but got into some complexities with homeosexuality and choices and accountability.
Characters: The only character I even felt a little for was Lavinia (the one who lived in the 1800s). And it was because she was a strong woman in a chauvenistic time, doing things that were quite remarkable, and using her brain. But, then she would ruin it by some stupid act or through ignorance.
Text: Bad, bad, bad. Poor writing. Grammar issues. Sloppy dialogue.
Luckily, it was a free eBook, so I didn't waste any money on it....less
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Garrett
gave
to:
Battlestar Galactica : The Miniseries (Paperback)
by Jeffery A. Carver
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in September, 2008
Garrett said:
"This was a fun, quick read.
I haven't seen the series (I still had too many fond memories of the original and I didn't want to see Starbuck as a girl), but this book has changed my mind.
Setting: I never really knew or cared about the setting o...more
This was a fun, quick read.
I haven't seen the series (I still had too many fond memories of the original and I didn't want to see Starbuck as a girl), but this book has changed my mind.
Setting: I never really knew or cared about the setting of the original (I was fairly young and just enjoyed the story), but I liked how this set it all up and explained how the cylons came to be and why this battlestar was still around, and so forth.
Plot: Not very original or unique, but not horrid either. I wasn't really ever surprised by anything, but the potential plot twists were set up nicely (if I recognized them correctly as such).
Conflict: You got father and son, pilot and pilot, pilot and commander, humans and cylons, cylons and cylons(?), and many more. Lots and lots of things going on to keep the story rich and fun.
Characters: I liked how well-rounded the characters felt. However, I;m not sure if I am just projecting what I already knew about them into the story (I pictured characters mostly as I remember them in the original version).
Text: This is where the story fell down a bit for me. It had lots of flow problems, even some grammar issues, and it felt like it was written in a hurry, without contemplating the difference between TV and a novel.
Yet, it was still fun and pretty good....less
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Garrett
read and liked
Swankivy's
review of Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1):
"A short (and somewhat sarcastic) summary: Main character = Eragon, mysteeeeerious boy-child left with his aunt and uncle by wandering mother, father unknown. Boy finds mysteeeeerious stone. Turns out to be dragon egg. Boy raises dragon and bonds with...more
A short (and somewhat sarcastic) summary: Main character = Eragon, mysteeeeerious boy-child left with his aunt and uncle by wandering mother, father unknown. Boy finds mysteeeeerious stone. Turns out to be dragon egg. Boy raises dragon and bonds with it strongly. Bad guys come and decimate boy's house and kill his uncle. Boy swears revenge. Boy's secret dragon is discovered by mysteeeerious storyteller who turns out to be master swordsman and random magic user. The hunt for the bad guys begins, and boy searches for his destiny as a legendary Dragon Rider (of course, that must be capitalized). Eragon goes through traditional bouts of training and learning about himself under the stern tutelage of old wise traveling companion. Along the way he gains and loses friends, and rescues a mysteeeerious woman from a horrible dungeon while never straying from his quest to put right all that is wrong a world oppressively ruled by an evil king.
This book has gotten lots of attention since it first came out, partly because the author is so young. He was fifteen when he started the book, and was nineteen when it was published. I do not generally like to judge based on age, especially since I am a young writer myself, but when I read this book, I could TELL that the writer was either young or an immature writer. Though it seems people think it "got published" somehow because of its great merit, this book was actually published by the author's parents' publishing company, and then it was paraded around on a parent-funded signing tour. An established author happened to run into the family, thought a kid writing a book was interesting, bought a copy and made his stepson read it, and decided to try to get the book a deal when the kid liked it. The people at Knopf re-edited and repackaged and re-released it under that label. I believe that if this book had meandered its way to publishing houses the usual way, it would have been rejected as unpublishable, for reasons I will discuss in depth here.
Christopher Paolini himself, in his own words, describes his story thus: "Eragon is an archetypal hero story, filled with exciting action, dangerous villains, and fantastic locations. There are dragons and elves, sword fights and unexpected revelations, and of course, a beautiful maiden who's more than capable of taking care of herself."
I would argue that this book is not an "archetypal hero story" so much as an overused and overly traditional Tolkienien "epic," with "epic" in quotes because it lacks exactly that epic nature that made the world of Lord of the Rings so rich. There was absolutely nothing new or "unexpected" in this book (though the author claims there are "revelations"), and if a reader is excited by this book it is because he or she has never been exposed to the dozens of fantasy and science fiction epics from which this author pulled his influences. My feeling was that this book was nothing special because, if I may be so blunt, "it's been done," and it's been done better.
Overall, I just think that this book was written as though it had a template or blueprint for "traditional fantasy novel" and the details and names were simply filled in. I couldn't help feeling the entire time I was reading it that I had read this story before, nothing was much of a surprise, and things that didn't make sense or got in the way of a conflicting original vision were smoothed over with excuses or deliberate muddling of motives. I think that in order to write something so traditional, a writer needs something special, a unique twist or slant, and this just hasn't got it. (In other words, I'm not saying that writing an "archetypal fantasy epic" is BAD; I'm saying that it needs to not be a rehashing of overused themes that were INVENTED--not derived from mythology or legend, but INVENTED--by classic writers.) The boy and his powerful companion having an intimate relationship? Done, in everything from Anne McCaffrey to freaking Digimon. The hero quest to punish the baddies and bring the good guys back into power? Done, in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Lush descriptions of landscapes and surroundings? Done by Tolkien of course, but more as a background to action rather than in stagnant heaps of detail. Mysterious companions to whom there is more than meets the eye? I don't even want to think about all the books and movies that have done that. I can't pick out a single thing that this book has that has never been done before, the characters didn't interest or capture me, the storytelling was riddled with too many attempts to be grand that I was just entirely turned off by it.
Some specifics about the bad writing style:
Every imaginable permutation of the word "said" is used. If the reader cannot tell how someone is saying something by what they are saying, it is likely that the dialogue has been written sloppily. "'You're not thinking,' admonished Brom." Yes, that is an admonishment without you telling us so. Leave it out. "'Get on with the story,' he said impatiently." Well, if one person is urging another to get on with it, it stands to reason that it's being said impatiently. Running into "'Sorry,' apologized Brom" made me cringe. The fact that Brom said "Sorry" means that he apologized, so use "said." You can deviate from "said" if for some reason HOW the sentence is said is not obvious, such as volume ("he whispered") or intent ("he said sarcastically," if it isn't obvious that that's a sarcastic comment anyway). Leave out the decorations because they're tacky. The speech tags are not the part of the writing that is supposed to be interesting, so don't distract us; believe me when I say that if you do it, nearly any editor will consider it an early warning sign that you are an amateur.
Unnecessary description is inserted with maddening frequency. I am not usually a reader of traditional fantasy, and traditional fantasy does tend to be more flowery than the hard stuff, but either way random descriptions should not just be thrown into the mix. Eragon is waking up and stretching. Suddenly we get a description of the items on his night table, including the random information that he likes to look at one of the objects on it frequently. In the meantime, while we are getting this rush of information, Eragon is putting on his shoes. He then does not proceed to touch, pick up, or look at anything on the night table, and none of it is ever mentioned again. Also, people and places just get sudden paragraphs of description. We're fighting an Urgal and all of a sudden . . . drop some description on us. While he's rushing at Eragon with drooling fangs, no less. By all means, describe the fangs, slipping the adjectives in gracefully. But don't give us a run-down of a typical Urgal when we're a lot more interested in whether those fangs are going into Eragon's head.
And lastly, too many words, phrases, and concepts seem to be entirely lifted from other well-known works. Word choice seemed as though it was the author's attempt to use all his SAT words; it was verbose and flowery as if on purpose, trying to impress with vocabulary that would have been better used sparingly. The similarity of some people's and places' names to those of Tolkien have not gone unnoticed by seasoned fantasy readers; I have heard several people call this book "Aragorn" without even noticing that they weren't saying it right, not to mention things like Ardwen (compared with Arwen), Isenstar (compared with Isengard), and Isidar (compared with Isildur)--and there are a LOT more. A ridiculous number of phrases seem to be something I've heard before, though I'm not sure where; for example, near the beginning someone is touching a wrapped package repeatedly, "as if to reassure herself that it was still there." I mentioned this to a friend and said, "That's FROM something." He replied, "It's FROM everything!" Far too often, ridiculously overused or clichéd similes and metaphors are used, such as tears being described as "liquid diamonds." It is less like this book was written and more like it was sewn together from the torn apart products of others, like some old quilt on which the stitches are showing. (How's that for an original simile?)
There's definitely not enough space in this little box (which has a character limit) for me to go into as much detail as I'd like talking about how bad this book is, so if you really want to read my ranting in all its entirety, you might want to check out my essay about it on my Web page....less
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Garrett
read and liked
Brownbetty's
review of Eragon (Inheritance - Book 1):
"Two or three years ago, everywhere I went there was some display attempting to sell me Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. It was obviously a bad book without opening the cover: the back cover carries a quote from the book, and an endorsement by A...more
Two or three years ago, everywhere I went there was some display attempting to sell me Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. It was obviously a bad book without opening the cover: the back cover carries a quote from the book, and an endorsement by Anne McCaffrey, and I'm pretty sure I could get that woman to supply a blurb for a double mint wrapper to the effect of "I couldn't put it down! An author ... to watch for!" The quote is "Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world." Please note, the author has just claimed that the world is going to be changed by a smell. Which would actually be an interesting book, sadly, not this one. I know this, because that quote is the first sentence of the book, and what the author means is "Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent giving warning of the coming of persons who would set in motion events that would change the world." I know, it lacks a certain something.
Better the eighty percent of the pit of voles, but still, undeserving of being published.
I do not blame Paolini for writing a bad book. People write, and sometimes, they write badly. But I do blame the editor, and his publishing house. This book is crap, and it should have been obvious to anyone who read it. The main character's most interesting bit of characterization and only vestige of personality is that he collects rocks, and this is only mentioned in one paragraph. He's a transparent sue. Everyone acts as if they have just acquired their motivations and history on a 3x5 card before walking on for their scene.
The plot is a clumsy clunker that is foreshadowed on page 22. He has never known his father, and his mother refused to answer questions about him! Do you think this will turn up again later? His name is Eragon. Like dragon, but with an E. An old man pops in to tell what in a better novel would be suspiciously appropriate myths and folktales every time Eragon needs to know what is going on.
Descriptive sections are often incomprehensible, as for example, "His hand was numb, his fingers paralysed. Alarmed, he watched as the middle of his palm shimmered and formed a diffuse white oval." The only reason I know what the author is intending to say there is because I have read enough fantasy to recognize the Mystical Mark.
Our hero makes decisions that make no sense, simply because they are necessary to move the plot forward. Obstacles like hiding a dragon from those living in your house are hand waved away in two paragraphs. Things that oughtn't be obstacles, like buying groceries, are, just to build sympathy with the protagonist by inserting baseless discrimination.
Why publish this!? Were they incapable of finding something more deserving? Was this book even edited? Is he someone's nephew? Publishing this book is an insult to readers and a disservice to writers everywhere, including Mr. Paolini. It's like telling someone they look great when they have spinach in their teeth. Dammit!...less
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Garrett
read and liked
Chelle's
review of Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1):
"I hate Paolini's work. To my very core. I don't really think it's so much the "he stole from Tolkien/Lucas/Ghandi/God/my dog.." Even though he blatantly took ideas from masterminds, that isn't what bothers me. It's his writing style... When...more
I hate Paolini's work. To my very core. I don't really think it's so much the "he stole from Tolkien/Lucas/Ghandi/God/my dog.." Even though he blatantly took ideas from masterminds, that isn't what bothers me. It's his writing style... When I was fourteen, I admired him out of mere jealously. I was absolutely green with envy that he could publish a book at age fifteen, and recieve any kind of high acclaim. But on retrospect (and nearly vomiting as I attempted to get through a chapter of Eldest, which I failed at miserably), I was done.
On a sort of similar topic: have any of you realized that he is obsessed with stating distances? Something like, "Two feet away stood three troops of fifty, in rows of five, making ten people per row" is a possible sentence that wouldn't surprise me had I seen it in one of his books. He has zero character development (Who IS Eragon? I seemed to have forgotten what he even looks like, or any part of his personality). I DO remember Murtagh... a little. Probably because I pictured him as being hot (and he's played by Garret Hedlund in the movie, which I'll admit I did see because of the amazing CG dragons). Seriously though... the plot is a cliche hero's journey, with no flavor or haecceity thrown into the mix. The characters also are horrible. None of them are memorable and the main character is my least favorite character of them all.
What left is there to hold in high regard? His world building skills? Nay, my friends. I don't know why he decided that his world of Alagaesia had to have EVERY single climate condition imagineable. It made his world seem fake, trite, and boring in my honest opinion. And the language he "created," I'd rather not get started.
Anyway, not that I am one to talk, but Paolini really needs work in his writing skills. His book is receiving such high acclaim, and I am still trying to figure out why. Sure, it's great that he published a book at such a young age, but are we as a society lowering the bar that much as to celebrate mediocrity? Well, I think my job is done here. If you would like to see more of what I have said, there is an entire website focused on the Inheritance Trilogy (with many criticisms). http://www.anti-shurtugal.com/ Fun times at Anti-shurtugal....less
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Garrett
read and liked
Gwyn's
review of Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1):
"This book spells 'trite' excellently. Unfortunately, that's the best quality it possesses.
This idea has been overworked many times before, and, if I may borrow a baking metaphor, overworked dough makes for flat product. Not only does he steal fro...more
This book spells 'trite' excellently. Unfortunately, that's the best quality it possesses.
This idea has been overworked many times before, and, if I may borrow a baking metaphor, overworked dough makes for flat product. Not only does he steal from successful greats, but ignores completely that the reason why they were great would be because of their ingenuity with GOING TO THE SOURCE and making it their own from there. The book takes information from mouths others, throws it together into a conglomerate mess, tries to serve it with a different label on an old beverage and expects the reader to eat this previously chewed, bland, ill-matched blob of scraps.
On top of the clearly traceable sources for ideas (almost all of which come from this century), his characterization is static and mary-sue. Eragon, a name in itself that is clearly not an ingenious solution, trots through the story with no growth or believability. Sure, he may outwardly follow a hero's journey, but there is no internalization of the theme. The physical journey is the hero's journey in this tale, despite the fact that the hero's journey is a representation of spiritual changes.
It was a stale story even before it had a sequel.
I could probably write a doctorate thesis on why this is not a prime example of a truly successful novel, but this is neither the time nor place for such a rant.
In conclusion, I will admit that I did learn something from Paolini: it helps to have parents who own a printing press....less
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