The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

4
This story recounts a small section in the life of one Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old foster child, as she lives in Munich during World War II and the people she comes into contact with during this small period. And the narrator of this story? Death himself.

Reading that little summary, I myself would have doubted how good this book could be and would have thought it liable to be extremelye preachy and generally dislikable. This was not the case, and even early on in the book, I feel this is made clear. Death, the character, isn't some figure of malevolence; he is funny, insightful and (despite the irony) remarkably human. It is only towards the end that it made clear that he is not human- he is something more. But the book does not dwell on such things. This is the story of Liesel, not death's job during World War II. Personally, I felt in some ways death was used as the narrator because in our minds he is as unsympathetic and as cruel a thing we can think of, especially in a War environment. Many would see him as snatching away their children- why not let them survive? But he makes it clear that it is his job to collect the souls and allow them to move on. He takes no life prematurely- he has no choice in the matter of taking them.

The story is ultimately about the power of words. It begins as reading and how that helps Liesel escape and then it begins to transform. Seeds of ideas are planted in her, and they grow and take on new life to her. She begins illiterate and yet she becomes a force to be reckoned with- this small German girl. There is the wonderful passage when she is angry and it says how the words which until then had merely moved beneath the surface suddenly break through. Then she knows what to say, how to say and, most importantly, why it needs to be said.

The setting of World War II is fantastic for showing this because Hitler himself is well-known as being a great orator. He managed- with words and manipulation- to unite a struggling country and keep them united despite almost all hardship. I do not deny ths importance of Nazi military might or any of the more heinous things he did, but he began as man who spoke with zeal and could inspire those around him. (Maybe I'm baffling a bit; half of my A-Level- a pre-University qualification- is based on Germany in the 1900s.)

When it comes to characters, I thought they were all brilliant. I loved Rudy, Hans, Rosa and Max because Zusak wrote such believable and wonderful characters. They didn't fall easily into the stereotypes we have of people living in that era (within reason). Part of the way he did that was by not letting the era define them. War doesn't touch Munich very much until well into the book and even then it is mostly sporadic. This distance from War both allows for comparison and stops this book becoming preachy.

But my favourite character was Death himself. Liesel was smart, hopeful and reaslistic girl but at the same time she was the hero and, frankly, I find her less interesting in comparison to Death. Part of the reason she is important and notable is because Death sees her as such. But Death has a personality and a colourful (no pun intended) one at that. Though it isn't expressly said, I feel as though he dislikes death. He talks about the colours of the sky when he collects a soul, since he doesn't want to look into another dead face, another pair of empty eyes. His eternal existence has also left him cynical and often poetic. Perhaps it is ironic that Death enjoys quite simple pleasures as an interesting phrase (but then, that is what I saw the theme as).

I think that this is too long a book to sum up, and the ideas it explores render near impossible to sit down and narrow my thoughts of this book down concisely and precisely. The only other thing I much mention (without giving away anything) is the end. Simply put, it was the kind of ending you accept as inevitable but dislike all the same.

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

4
(You have probably heard what the story is since this novel did its rounds on blogs ages ago, but in case you didn't...) This book follows Cas Lowood who, like his father before him, is a killer of the dead- ghost or otherwise. In addition to this he has to contend with being a teenager and trying to make a somewhat normal life for himself. When he and his mother come to the town of Thunder Bay, his usual method of killing the dead is disrupted by something he never expected.

I have to say I was highly wary about approaching this book. By the time it had my interest, the hype had been so built up and so great that I doubted it would live up to my expectations. I spent some time convincing myself that it wouldn't reach this hype because (a) it's not what I would consider my kind of book and (b) the hype was way, way too high.

Yet I do think this is a fantastic book and is truly gripping. Some of the elements of horror didn't really feel scary for me (and I'm really jumpy) so this may bug some people, but I don't think it is meant as a scary book. And anyway, it wasn't important. And the single thing that made this book so awe-inspiringly awesome was Anna herself. I think she is probably one of my favourite characters ever.

On one hand, she appeals to my urban fantasy side. I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying she is an insanely powerful individual, which I just loved when reading about it. So many romances seem to like making romance interesting or edgy by giving one of the participants a dark mysterious past, or by simply telling us how the protagonist feels threatened. Now, Blake does all this BUT she before doing us she shows us without a shadow of a doubt why exactly you don't mess with Anna and how she is the genuine article of bad-assery.

And then on the other hand, she's simply a great character. Her back-story is so, so sad and soul destroying that despite the horror surrounding her, you can sort of understand her. And then when the whole "Goddess of Death" thing starts to come into perspective, you can begin to understand her as the shy, adorable individual she is.

Don't get me wrong, Cas is great and the story about the Dad and how everything ties in is gripping and makes for great reading, but I doubt I would have loved this book as much if not for Anna. I actually thought the story itself was predictable and I guessed what would happen when the cat growls near the start.

One thing I thought might have perhaps been better if it had been looked at a bit more was the whole disjointedness of the romance. It was never going to be like Lia Habel's Dearly, Departed; but I do believe more should have been made of it. The limit of consideration was "This is weird, but it doesn't matter because love surpasses all."

So overall fantastic. You should read this just to see Anna in action.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

4

Following the events of the magicians, Quentin Coldwater is now one of the Kings of Fillory. It’s something he never dared to dream he’d have…but he’s still not happy. He’s restless. In trying to find occupation in adventure, Quentin stumbles upon something much more cosmically important leading to revelations and undesirable outcomes.

Though this is a sequel to The Magicians, this book doesn’t really feel that way to me. There are some references to Alice and Brakebills (the magic school) days, but they are almost pointless in the grand scheme of things. If you haven’t read the Magicians, it won’t be a problem in terms of understanding the story. I mean, if the names had been changed this could have easily been a separate stand-alone novel. For me, this wasn’t the best choice since what I like about sequels is those nods to the first book or when something in book one directly affects book two. For me these weren’t really there, and though I can appreciate the book it doesn’t feel like too much of a sequel to me personally.

The magic aspect was also elusive. The world was fantastical and there were other times when the magic of landscape was obvious, but other times it felt like the book had forgotten it was a fantasy book and things like magic were forgotten. Book one was a bit like this, but not to the extreme of the Magician King. There is only really one bit that this seems to go away, when Quentin is blasting magic left, right and centre.

But this highlights the crafting that has gone into the book. One thing Quentin says is that he doesn’t feel like a king, let alone a magician, most of the time. By the lack of magic and these things, we really feel this too. And it annoyed me, even enraged me, which only meant I could understand Quentin better.

This was the same for the general idea of Fillory and “real-life magic”. Quentin reminds us every few chapters that magic in books is often good and there is always a happy ending. Even the sadder endings are not so harsh on the characters. This book is not like that though. Even though book one improved at it’s very, very end, the whole final sequence was heart-wrenching and one of the most depressing endings I’ve ever read. In the Magician King, I’m reminded of this again. I don’t want to give anything away, but Quentin’s fate is almost unforgiveable. That one line that Elaine gives just made my heart sink, since I knew it wouldn’t end well after that.

There are also other dark elements involved, especially in Julia’s story. She was never accepted to magic school so she pursued magic however she could and sacrificed almost everything dear to her to get it. And how did that end up? For a long time it was horrifying for her. There’s this one scene which I shan’t repeat and which I don’t even like to think about which disgusted and depressed me so much. But at the same time I couldn’t stop reading. It’s was gripping and, though it pains me to say, realistic.

On a personal level, I struggle to read Grossman’s book. I get headaches from trying to process so much and some of the events genuinely affect me and my view of life for a short. I’ll be depressed, or feel lost, if only for a few hours. That could just be me (!!!) but I credit some of it to these books and these stories that seem to affect me so much. Sometimes I was just reading in a daze.

This book is something else, in a good and bad way. It’s bad in that I sometimes just want to walk away from this book and turn my back on some detestable truths, but then it is just so good at the same time that I can’t even begin to explain. This whole review is my trying to just give you a glimpse of how I feel about these books because in all honesty it’s so mixed up and indecipherable even for me. So read these if you want something magnificently compelling, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

5

Tris is back after the trauma she faced in Divergent. Since her youth in Abnegation, her life has turned upside down and the world seems to be following the same track. Yet it isn’t over, and as Tris comes to terms with her own demons, she has to deal with the next stage in the plot, leading to the unexpected.

I’m having the same problem many reviewers have with book. I want to sit here and talk your ear off about almost everything that happened in the novel, but in doing so I’d ruin the entire thing for you and anyone else. And then the double-sided blade scenario comes into play because I don’t want to spoil Divergent for you either: it is just as gripping and awesome.

So the best I can do is a bit of relativity of Insurgent in comparison to Divergent.

Anticipation

There was huge anticipation for this book and sometimes all that hype can ruin a book. It was somewhat similar with Divergent. Last time, for Divergent, I really got caught up in all that and frankly it lived up to that gargantuan expectation. The thing was, I tried to not get mixed up with the stuff prior to Insurgent for two reasons. One was purely personal, and if you follow me on twitter you probably have a general idea of that. The other was that I’ve been disappointed about hype a few times since I started blogging and the method I’m slowly developing is to not get involved in it and so I can’t be disappointed. The only reason I say all this is that I genuinely think this book deserved what hype I was exposed to and I genuinely think it was a great book.

Action

I think this book was about as action-packed as Divergent- they are dauntless after all! In some ways this was something I was expecting, since I rarely find myself so involved in fighting sequences in books. But these tended to draw me in, though they lacked some of the lustre of Divergent- but I think that was Tris’ influence. She loves her faction, but she’s still recovering psychologically and the almost manic loss-of-self in the action is less pronounced.

Characters

Four/Tobias was really great. In Divergent, my memory was that he went from International Man of Mystery to…well, Tobias. Without getting into it too much, it’s almost as though Four and Tobias are actually different people, which then links back to the Divergent things. Holy… I think pontificating actually rendered something vaguely sensible.

Tris got on my wick a little bit though. I don’t begrudge her being depressed, nor do I dislike the occasionally spontaneity of her, but I find part of me just wants to grab her and shake her. As Tobias puts it, she’s so frustrating. Not wrong, not hateable, she just makes me grind my teeth sometimes. I think the problem is that I can see, understand and even emphasise a bit with her, but I think she seems narrow-minded sometimes or inconsiderate of other things. It’s more of a niggle but meh.

Plot

I thought the plot was like a train journey before a huge crash. Strangely, this is a good thing. It started off fairly slowly, which made sense, and then when it got into the actually meat of the story it stayed fairly interesting. I think Divergent was more involving as a story for the middle section and I would stand by the belief that though the plot was good, it wasn’t perfect. It seemed sometimes too straight-forward or bit repetitive, but like an action movie. You sort of know what will happen, but you can still enjoy it. For me, the whole ending sequence was just brilliant. This is why I use the train crash analogy: you’d notice when you start to move, and you’d notice when you were on the main section of the journey, but you simply can’t ignore it when you crash. I don’t want to give away a thing about the ending though- I just want to say I thought it was utterly brilliant.

Conclusion (!)

A great book, and definitely a commendable sequel. It might not have been special in a particular way, but that might only be because it followed Divergent which was so fantastic. It’s a solid 5 for what it is and I’m oh-so-grateful to Karen for getting this for me! If anyone liked Divergent, they should definitely look into this.

It's been a while...

So I haven't posted in a while, the last time was over a month ago. I'm just going to say my piece then get out of your hair.

This was kind of unexpected stop. I'd been trying to stick to my reading so that I could post things, but then exams started bearing down on me and they basically dominated my time in terms of revision and extra lessons and then just moments of sheer overload where I had to just sit there and try yo quell the storm in my mind. I couldn't do anything in those moments and it was exhausting to have them.

And then there was the whole psychological side of it. I try to keep actual personal blogging to a minimum here, but it slipped in occasionally. Basically I had a really bad few weeks in February which I dropped off the radar for a while. I sort of moved past that for a while, but then it hit me again around mid-March, I think. I still kept up the blogging but it was just so forced. I felt in some ways I had to and in other ways that by doing it I would be able to move past my issue and just get back to being normal, happy, readersome me. It didn't actually happen, but I forced myself through most of George R. R. Martin's books before I hit a immovable wall- and, frankly, I was too exhausted to bull my way through it. I'm not completely past it, but at least it quiet for the moment. To be honest with y'all, I imagine that in the next few weeks it will resurface and I might go dark again. I didn't let myself get distracted by my brooding or depressive outlook since I had exams but since they're more or less out of the way, I don't know how long I can keep this up.

So that's it. That's why I was gone. And this isn't an "I'M BACK!!!" it's more of a "Hey, I was just thinking about you" that may lead to "I'm still thinking about you" in the acceptable total normal way.

I've read two books in the past few weeks whose reviews I'll post in the next week or so and, unless I genuinely feel interested, I'm going to stop myself making myself do memes. I love them, I do, but I need to just need to do what I want when I want until I get out my funk. And I've got make some decisions about University and Degrees and all sorts which is going to take forever to decide.

The only final thing is that I wonder if anyone would like to do an actual bloggy blog? Not a review one, just one where you log on and talk for however long about whatever happens to be on your mind. Then you incline your head and get on with your day. I'm not making this too committal, I'm just thinking I'd like to do one but in know way could I bear the burden of a second blog. I think I'd just blink out of existence.

Thanks for your time!