Two books and a LJ grump (Book #52: We Were Wilder, 2016 book: Child of a Hidden Sea)

[thistlechaser]

I love all of you, my friends list people, but I'm getting seriously, seriously tired of LJ. I changed to S2, which means I lost my simple, clear, easy to read S1 style. And yet I still can't use the S2 features. I did open a support ticket, and I got a reply overnight (under 24 hours, impressive), but it didn't fix my issue.

I'm just tired of fighting with LJ all the time. It doesn't help that I finally made a Tumblr account, so I get an easy stream of effortless crack there. (mikhasunthistle.tumblr.com, but it's only FFXIV/MMO stuff, so.)

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Child of a Hidden Sea by A. M. Dellamonica
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I started out loving this book. In it a woman was swept up in a storm, and landed in a different world. A world sort of like ours, but with big differences (magic, land masses were very different, the world was mostly ocean, and yet the languages were very much like Earth languages).

The first quarter of the book, when she was learning about the world and its people, was outstanding. I loved it. Then it became a murder mystery, and her genius brother (literally a genius) showed up in the world, and my interest went through the floor. I reached the 42% point but gave up on it.

We Were Wilder by Rebecca K. O'Connor
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



The author usually writes nonfiction animal books, and that very much showed. There were two threads in this story, one about the main character's past, one about her in the current time. I quickly lost interest in the plotline about the past, and skimmed those sections, but enjoyed the current time one.

The story was set in a world where the vast majority of people were killed by a virus, a virus seemingly created by "re-wilding" America. Wild animals from all around the world were brought to this country and were set free on large plots of land. So America had elephants, lions, jaguars, cheetah, hyenas, giant turtles, basically any wild animal. This seemed to create the new virus that ended up killing off most people in their 20s or 30s (and some strains of it killed people much much younger).

There was a lot of logic you had to not question, but the story was interesting enough that this was a rare case where I was able to overlook plot holes. The main character was a young woman who needed to travel across the country on foot to reach the CDC and hopefully find a cure for the plague. She met and eventually befriended (or was befriended by) a wild dog, and near the end of the story she found a cheetah cub as well and raised her.

Unfortunately some of the plot/logic issues were harder to overlook. The story started 160 years after that virus killed off everyone. 160 years of not that many people around. Yet the girl named her cheetah Laura Croft and the dog McClane (after the main character of Die Hard). Even if the story's world hadn't been hit with the virus, I have a hard time believing those characters would be well known 160 years from now.

Anyway, even with its many issues, I really did enjoy reading about the girl and all the animals, wild and tame. The author clearly knew, loved, and respected the subject, and it came through in her writing.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Sorry to hear you're still fighting with LJ functionality. Hope it gets sorted!

(Tumblr is... a great time-sink for when I don't have the brainspace to actually write down stuff or interact with people, but I find it definitely does not fulfill the LJ niche, like, not in the slightest.)

I've been meaning to read this Dellamonica book, mainly for the sake of the sequel, but any data point is a good data point on that kind of stuff. I'll consider myself forewarned about the genius brother (this is a kind of thing that can either work for me really well or not at all.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Agreed, it doesn't really scratch the same itch as LJ. I do do a lot of writing there, but the lack of comments/interaction is sometimes not worth the effort.

My issues with the Dellamonica really might have been personal things. I knew nothing going into the book -- maybe if I had known it was really a murder mystery, I wouldn't have been expecting something else from it. (Often times going into a book is great, but sometimes not...)

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

Man, okay... I think I read the first book. The cover and the premise seem familiar, but I seriously don't remember anything about it. ^^;

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Isn't it odd when that happens. Sometimes I see a book I know I read, but can't remember a thing about it, so I search my LJ... and it turns out I read it only a couple months back. How in the world can I forget a whole book that fast? Sheesh, brain.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I think I read it pretty soon after it came out, which means that was in... (checks Amazon) ...June/July of 2014. So over two years ago. My memory for books is not what it once was. ^^;

Also I'ma follow your Tumblr. (Mine's satelliteflyer, in case you are wondering who this strange Tumblr that just started following you is.) I post very little FFXIV, though my icon is the FFXIV version of Cydori, who doesn't look much like FFXI Cydori at all. XI Cydori's hairstyle wasn't an option when I made FFXIV Cydori, and later on when they introduced the Lightning (FFXIII) hairstyle, I decided that I liked XIV's hairstyle way more and kept it that way. Also XIV Cydori wears glasses a lot. They may actually look like mine. ;)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah! I was looking at your tumblr this morning! That first picture of the guy with the cat was so cute. :)

I only follow people with near-100% FFXIV blogs, so I'm going to bookmark you instead of follow.

I got really lucky in the FFXI-to-FFXIV switch -- Mikha's hair is perfectly the same as Thistle's had been.

Your icon is sooo cute! I love her glasses! The game is great with all the glasses options.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I post a lot of cat pictures, including cat-related games. ^^ And that is legit.

I love the glamour system. I don't even do that much with it - some people make really clever costumes and fashionable outfits - but the fact that I never have to wear a mismatched armor set because of the stats? Fantastic. Also glasses. Yes. ^^

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Agreed! I don't use the glamour system as much as some, but that it keeps me from being "ugly" makes such a big difference in game! Plus it lets me "use" gear I wouldn't otherwise, like the PVP stuff.

[twissie.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you could still use S1, wow. I'd recommend just picking an S2 style and use the friend feed option, it's easy to read, and the friend feed has some pretty neat features!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep! S1 is still a choice to this day. I finally got 100% set to S2 (seriously, that was my issue, my LJ was only partially set to S2 and still had some elements of S1 in it... I didn't even know that was possible).

I'm not happy with it, but I'll probably get used to it eventually.