Mike > Recent Status Updates

This should be entertaining. Why is it boring? Is it because there are too many characters? Is it because I'm unfairly comparing it to Gone? I have no idea why this doesn't work for me.

The slavery bits are more interesting, although I disagree with Ellis' assertion that the Declaration of Independence was unambiguous in its rejection of slavery. Maybe the first draft was, but it was edited specifically to take out the anti-slavery bits. Not to mention that the author of the document owned slaves himself... saying that it was unambiguously anti-slavery gives the framers too much credit.

Just as I was deciding Peters was a terrible author and I was dumb to ever like her, I find a book of hers that's really, really good.

There is some interesting character stuff here. Overall, while this is a pretty bad book, it's not as abysmal as I was told it would be.

There are a lot of potentially interesting plot threads going on, and I don't know why I'm not really latching onto any of them. Maybe there are just too many of them, and they don't relate very much.

I guess it's kinda interesting to get a distinct idea of the framers' personalities. But overall, this is kind of tedious - lots of details of things that don't seem to matter much, with more important issues skimmed over.

Was the issue of where D.C. should be really that big of a deal? I'm not convinced by Ellis' thesis that the Founding Fathers were more important than the general people here - even if there was some intense debate surrounding this issue, I don't think it really mattered much in the long term.

This is alright, as far as Julie Anne Peters novels go. The writing is pretty good, as usual, and this feels a lot more real than most of what she writes.

The writing's getting better, mostly since there's less description now that the plot is picking up. It's still kinda cheesy, but this part is a lot more bearable than the rest of the book has been.

I liked this better when there were no adults, and the kids had superpowers, and Michael Grant wrote it.

Alright, now maybe we'll get to something that's actually significant.

Why do all the Shadowhunters speak English? We've seen mentions of Institutes in Bangkok, Beijing, and all across Europe. There should be a lot of Shadowhunters that need translators, or at least have accents. If English was some sort of universal Shadowhunter language, it would still be lazy, but at least it would make sense. But no, it's never addressed.

SPOILERS:

Okay, King, you did not just write a lesbian character and kill her on the first appearance. I dearly hope that it turns out she's just injured and not dead, because otherwise, King really sucks. Man, this isn't nearly as good as I thought it would be.

While the stuff about Hamilton and Burr's duel is mildly interesting, I can't help but feel like it's not really important, compared to the information that Ellis has said will follow. It's a weak opening.

I guess the character development here is alright. Sure, they all talk the same, but they have well fleshed-out personalities and backstories. That part isn't as good as I remember, but it's not bad.

This is actually not very good. The pacing is a lot slower than I'd expect from a thriller (explains the length, I guess), and there are a lot of cheap tricks used to heighten the tension that just make it feel like a B-list horror movie. I'm sick of King telling me that people are going to die, right on those characters' first appearance.

Y'know, Ellis, it's okay if what you're writing about isn't the most important time period in American history. Arguing about whether or not this time period is the most important is just a waste of time, and the book is potentially interesting whether it's the most important time period or not.

I remember the plots to these books being way more interesting than this. This is all just standard and predictable.

I'm not quite sure what to think so far. Ellis definitely seems to think that what he's writing about is one of the most important historical topics ever (based on all the hyperbole regarding the significance of the Constitutional Congress), which strikes me as a little America-centric. But we'll see.

This prose is really distancing. This jumping around from character to character can work, but it only really works well when the characters have distinct personalities we can latch onto immediately. That's why it was never hard to keep track of the characters in Gone, because they were too distinct to get mixed up. Here... everything just kinda blends together for me.

The characterization still isn't bad, I guess. They all talk the same, but they do at least have distinctive personalities, I'll give Clare that.

Clare has this bizarre habit of saying that things 'seem' to happen, rather than saying they actually do. It makes it hard to get a concrete image from the prose.

Also, SPOILERS:

How much you wanna bet Jordan's not actually dead?

The overall story was alright, I suppose. The black and white world bit wasn't funny at all, but Poison Ivy's backstory is entertaining.

I guess that resolved a little too neatly, but it wasn't that bad.

I feel as if I'm the wrong audience for this. This should be read by longtime fans of Batman, not new fans of Neil Gaiman.

This is actually kinda boring. The pacing is very slow, and Clare doesn't do much to distinguish herself from the rest of her generation of Harry Potter-inspired fantasy writers. The only real difference is that she writes YA rather than MG.

I'm kinda lukewarm about this so far. The writing is kinda rough - some of the stylistic choices are kinda weird, and King seems to be relying on telling us details rather than showing them.

All of Clare's characters sound exactly alike. A 900 year-old warlock talks exactly the same as a 10 year-old girl. It's ridiculous.

If this is the terrible ending, I'm not seeing what's so terrible about it yet.

I gotta say, I'm really enjoying this. Twain's writing is entertaining - he knows how to keep the pace up. That said, I've been told the ending is shit, so I'm bracing myself for that.