Books and Tags
Jan. 24th, 2009 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chu_totoroIn an attempt to better organize my tags, I have decided to sort book reviews out from "reading is good for the soul", and by year (taking a leaf from several people on my friendslist). Thus, introducing the new tag -- bookchomp 2009!
(Yes, this comes from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scoradh's Book Glomp idea. See, she glomps her books. I eat mine! Oh, it is perfect.)
First on the list-- Cassandra Clare's City of Bones.
There are some aspects of this book that I am utterly unable to be objective on. However, there are also some things I noticed that still would have bothered me had I been entirely unfamiliar with Cassandra Clare, Harry Potter, Buffy, and Star Wars prior to starting the book. I will address those in particular.
1. Clary. She was all over the place. One moment a bratty teenager, the next a brave heroine defending herself in the face of evil, one moment so dense that she could not see a confession coming from a mile off, the next so observant that she notices a near-stranger is gay almost immediately. It just doesn't add up. And that's my primary problem with this book - a lot of things feel choppy and don't seem to add up. Also, the La I Am So Beautiful But Don't Realize It Until Someone Tells Me thing is so overdone. The fact that Clary ALWAYS had some brave or witty remark to make no matter what was happening also annoyed me. It just didn't feel realistic. In real life, you often don't think of the right thing to say until long afterwards, and on the spot you stutter or blank or say something stupid. It made her seem like someone in a TV show, and while that's acceptable to some degree on fast-paced, image-heavy television, in books it's just. No.
2. How old are these kids? First they're fifteen, then they're in a nightclub acting at least twenty from the way they talk, then somewhere later they'll make some really childish remark to suddenly remind you that they're fifteen again, only they haven't been for about the past fifty pages... again, inconsistent. If you wanted to characterize them as twenty-something, make them twenty-something. If they are fifteen they should act fifteen. Honestly.
3. Plot very generic. Felt like she took a bunch of ideas from all over the place and rolled them all into one without really introducing anything new. I liked some of the side details, such as the menu of blood drinks for the vampires and the concept/description of certain weapons, but she did not give me much outside of that. The climax I found to be fairly anticlimactic, which brings me to the next point.
4. VALENTINE. Okay, first, what kind of name is that for a villain? Second, everyone made such a big fuss about him, and when he came out at the end, he was not impressive at all. He seemed like a cheap copy of Voldemort - and yes, I know I said I'd be objective, just think of this as a simile with which to demonstrate my point - with no depth whatsoever. All right, he's cruel, he's uncaring, he used to be (and still is, when he tries to be) charismatic... why? That's all the image you ever get of him, it never wavers up until he shows up and disappears again, they never explain how he came to be this way aside from the weak attempt by Luke - so he gets a vendetta against werewolves because of his father, great, that's still utterly two-dimensional - and the whole thing essentially remains unresolved. Making Valentine into a flat, two-dimensional character, with a few key traits that any reader can put out in a laundry list. I almost feel like I can see Clare with a list of characters and a few traits under each, and when she hits each bit glances over them and goes "Oh, heartless but deceptive, better do this now," "Oh, always tells the truth, better make him tell the truth now," etc etc. So boring. So predictable. I hate it.
5. Going off the same line as above, there is no character development. Zip. Zero. Nil. If there had been the characters might not have been so painfully dull and predictable. Even some of the supporting characters which I liked - they had some personality and seemed more real, sure (probably because they're side characters and Clare didn't get to focus so much on twisting them to fit her plot), but also as side character they sure didn't develop much. That's just bland.
At this point I think I'll stop. City of Bones is not a bad book. It is simply unoriginal, mediocrely crafted, and does not particularly stand out. I would not recommend it; there are hundreds of not-that-great books out in the market, and if you're going to read, might as well read the good ones. It also (to me) had an overpowering sense of cheap television pulled out and thrusted into a novel, with the exception of Clary's personal thoughts... which could explain why they got so irritating at various points in time and why Clary seemed so unreal. I have to admit, if you treat the entire thing as a TV episode of something (Buffy, for example!) it becomes much more tolerable (after all, we allow television to be more shallow, although something must be said about actually seeing faces and hearing voices rather than just reading words), but then again if you wanted that, why not go watch actual TV?
(Yes, this comes from
scoradh's Book Glomp idea. See, she glomps her books. I eat mine! Oh, it is perfect.)First on the list-- Cassandra Clare's City of Bones.
There are some aspects of this book that I am utterly unable to be objective on. However, there are also some things I noticed that still would have bothered me had I been entirely unfamiliar with Cassandra Clare, Harry Potter, Buffy, and Star Wars prior to starting the book. I will address those in particular.
1. Clary. She was all over the place. One moment a bratty teenager, the next a brave heroine defending herself in the face of evil, one moment so dense that she could not see a confession coming from a mile off, the next so observant that she notices a near-stranger is gay almost immediately. It just doesn't add up. And that's my primary problem with this book - a lot of things feel choppy and don't seem to add up. Also, the La I Am So Beautiful But Don't Realize It Until Someone Tells Me thing is so overdone. The fact that Clary ALWAYS had some brave or witty remark to make no matter what was happening also annoyed me. It just didn't feel realistic. In real life, you often don't think of the right thing to say until long afterwards, and on the spot you stutter or blank or say something stupid. It made her seem like someone in a TV show, and while that's acceptable to some degree on fast-paced, image-heavy television, in books it's just. No.
2. How old are these kids? First they're fifteen, then they're in a nightclub acting at least twenty from the way they talk, then somewhere later they'll make some really childish remark to suddenly remind you that they're fifteen again, only they haven't been for about the past fifty pages... again, inconsistent. If you wanted to characterize them as twenty-something, make them twenty-something. If they are fifteen they should act fifteen. Honestly.
3. Plot very generic. Felt like she took a bunch of ideas from all over the place and rolled them all into one without really introducing anything new. I liked some of the side details, such as the menu of blood drinks for the vampires and the concept/description of certain weapons, but she did not give me much outside of that. The climax I found to be fairly anticlimactic, which brings me to the next point.
4. VALENTINE. Okay, first, what kind of name is that for a villain? Second, everyone made such a big fuss about him, and when he came out at the end, he was not impressive at all. He seemed like a cheap copy of Voldemort - and yes, I know I said I'd be objective, just think of this as a simile with which to demonstrate my point - with no depth whatsoever. All right, he's cruel, he's uncaring, he used to be (and still is, when he tries to be) charismatic... why? That's all the image you ever get of him, it never wavers up until he shows up and disappears again, they never explain how he came to be this way aside from the weak attempt by Luke - so he gets a vendetta against werewolves because of his father, great, that's still utterly two-dimensional - and the whole thing essentially remains unresolved. Making Valentine into a flat, two-dimensional character, with a few key traits that any reader can put out in a laundry list. I almost feel like I can see Clare with a list of characters and a few traits under each, and when she hits each bit glances over them and goes "Oh, heartless but deceptive, better do this now," "Oh, always tells the truth, better make him tell the truth now," etc etc. So boring. So predictable. I hate it.
5. Going off the same line as above, there is no character development. Zip. Zero. Nil. If there had been the characters might not have been so painfully dull and predictable. Even some of the supporting characters which I liked - they had some personality and seemed more real, sure (probably because they're side characters and Clare didn't get to focus so much on twisting them to fit her plot), but also as side character they sure didn't develop much. That's just bland.
At this point I think I'll stop. City of Bones is not a bad book. It is simply unoriginal, mediocrely crafted, and does not particularly stand out. I would not recommend it; there are hundreds of not-that-great books out in the market, and if you're going to read, might as well read the good ones. It also (to me) had an overpowering sense of cheap television pulled out and thrusted into a novel, with the exception of Clary's personal thoughts... which could explain why they got so irritating at various points in time and why Clary seemed so unreal. I have to admit, if you treat the entire thing as a TV episode of something (Buffy, for example!) it becomes much more tolerable (after all, we allow television to be more shallow, although something must be said about actually seeing faces and hearing voices rather than just reading words), but then again if you wanted that, why not go watch actual TV?
