Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Swordbird by Nancy Yi Fan
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Khumba:


I love "takling animal" stories -- stories about animals that have societies and cultures and all that. So, when I spotted Swordbird, it immediately caught my attention. Looking further into it, I discovered it was written by a 12 year old girl. If it had been self-published, I would have run screaming. However, not only was it published by a major publisher (HarperCollins), it's part of a series she wrote and was published by them.

A 12 year old? With books published by a major publisher? Using a theme I like? Sold!

So how was it? While the writing was fine, I barely got more than 10% into it before I gave up on it. I could ignore issues like "How the hell do simple birds, bluejays and stuff, carry and use swords while flying? A sword would weight more than the entire flock of them!", but the issue that I couldn't accept was how one–dimensional the bad guy was. He literally cackled and talked out loud about how much he loves torturing people (other birds) and how much he loves whipping them and oh boy he'd get to whip some soon and evil evil I'm so evil look at me being evil.

Before I decided to give up on the book, I watched a totally unrelated movie on Netflix: Khumba. It turned out to be lucky timing, since, while the movie was average, that bad guy was multi–dimensional made the whole movie work for me.

Roger Ebert described Khumba as a "copy and paste movie". Even before I read his review, I noticed the elements of Lion King, Ice Age, and Madagascar in it. I didn't mind it, but it was kind of odd. Songs, characters, elements of the plot, even the voices all felt familiar.

Khumba was made by African animation studios and production companies, and won a number of awards there. While much of the animation was typical movie-quality CGI, there were elements of it that were really, really well done and pretty. I loved the leopard's/bad guy's fur pattern, and the way they animated his ability to track things by scent was amazing and beautiful.

Swordbird: Evil, Evil McEvil bad guy wants to make every bird in the world his slave so he always has someone to whip and torture.
Khumba: A zebra is born with half of his stripes faded out, so is disliked and picked on by his herd, and leaves to find a way to get his stripes back. While he was hated by the others because he "caused" a drought (there was a prophecy stating a half-zebra would cause the rain to stop falling forever), he was also the subject of a prophecy in the leopard society -- unknown to the zebras.

While Khumba was just a "throw away movie", something to fill a couple hours for me last night, because of the bad guy's interesting story, multiple motivations, and background story, the movie worked for me.
Swordbirds was supposed to be a special book, and I thought I'd enjoy it a lot, but it utterly failed for me because the bad guy lacked everything Khumba's had.

I gave Swordbirds a disliked instead of hated rating because it was written by a 12 year old. I do wonder how much she herself wrote and how much her parents/editors helped, but assuming she really did write it, she did a surprisingly good job. I can't expect a 12 year old to understand that shades of grey are better than black/white when it comes to characters, but hopefully she'll pick up on that as she continues writing.

As I didn't get even close to the 50% mark of the book, it doesn't count towards my goal for the year. Alas, I don't think I'll be reaching my 50 book per year goal, as it's April and I've only finished eight of them. So so so many started and not finished this year...

Next up: Gilded, one of the three oldest books in my To Read pile. I think it was recommended by someone on my friends list years ago. I have (had...) no idea what it was about, until I glanced at the Amazon page just now (wish I hadn't skimmed, it's a lot of fun going into a book 100% blind as to what it's about).

Flower's Fang by Madison Keller
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This was a frustrating book. It's easy to hate a badly written book or love a good one, but this book was close to being one I could love, it just fell short in a couple big areas.

The story was set on an alien/fantasy/something world where the dominant species were a plant-based humanish(?) one and a dog-human one.

Big issue #1: In a 353 page book, we never once got a description of what the plant-based race looked like. We learned that their hair(?) has flowers in it. Their feet(?) either have roots or are roots. Very late in the book we learned that they have a different color blood (sap?). What color was their skin? Did they even have two legs? Two eyes? I learned more while googling for a picture of the cover to include in this review than I did in the entire book. (The author made this plush toy of the plant-based main character. So... green skinned.) (Edit: After making this post, I see you can tell skin color and number of limbs from the cover image, but my Kindle is black and white, and the cover images are about an inch big, so you can't really see much at all. You shouldn't have to rely on the cover to know what a main character looks like.)

So, back to the plot. The dog species (basically dogs who could walk on two legs or four; furry, tails, ears, all that) was all about size and strength. The main dog character was literally half the size of everyone else, white furred when everyone else was brown or black, had a curly tail when everyone else had a straight one, and floppy ears when everyone else had pricked up ones.

The plant species was smaller and weaker. They were all magic users -- magic was natural to them. The main plant character was: 1) A prince of his species. 2) Couldn't do any magic.

Big Issue #2: While it makes sense that both of these characters would be outcasts, it was way, way over the top. Even the prince's mother didn't believe in him (in one scene, the prince was clearly in very bad pain and fainted -- his mother said he was faking it). And the dog girl? A male character who was basically the alpha of his generation bullied her endlessly (makes sense), but then suddenly decided he wanted to (have her as his mate? have sex with her? rape her?) even to the point of using a date rape drug on her. (Nevermind there had been no indication at all before this that the world had drugs at all -- every member of the plant species other than the prince could do healing magic, so no need for drugs.) Every Single Person in the whole entire world* hated and bullied these two characters. (*Other than the dog girl's parents.) It was just so over the top 'everyone must crap on these two'. The mother not believing her son was really in pain/really fainted was the last straw for me.

Through the first 60% of the book, I loved it. Was it perfect? No, but the world was interesting and I liked the two races. By 80%, my enjoyment of it quickly cooled, and I started reading faster/skimming. By 90% I had lost all interest in it. I haven't actually finished it yet, but I think I'm going to move on to the next book instead of continuing with Flower's Fang.

I'm frustrated, because I think this author is close to being really good. I did enjoy much of the book (which is why I gave it an 'okay' rating even though I'm not going to finish it). I'm not sure how her editors/beta readers didn't point out the lack of a description of the plant species. (She wasn't lacking in other sorts of descriptions, settings and objects and such.)

Dialing back the "everyone HATES these two!!!!" would have made all the difference for me. I'm 100% fine with outcast characters, and it makes sense that at least the dog character was. (The plant character was both a prince and a nice guy, so I less buy that everyone in the world hated him. True he couldn't do magic, but that was hidden and the general population didn't know about it.)

Sadly, I won't be reading the next book in this series, but if she keeps publishing, I'd be perfectly willing to give some future book a chance.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



There were two quotes from this book that could sum the whole thing up:

Random character said (paraphrasing, since I didn't mark the quote):
War is coming, you say? War's been coming for generations, it'll be coming for generations more. What makes now different? Nothing.

The author wrote:
My books, I know, can be kind of slow sometimes. That comes from the fact that I, myself, like to read books that are kind of slow.

There's a slow book and then there's this book. 688 pages, and by the halfway point, not a single sign of real plot movement. "War is coming," but like the character said: It's been coming for generations, and it'd likely be coming for generations more. Just low level hostility between two nations.

Three-quarters of the way through the book, still not much happening. Nice world building? Yeah. Interesting magic system? Meh, sort of. But so little plot. Add onto that that I hated two of the three main characters, and this book was a chore to read.

It was such a shame, I had been saving this book for when I was sure I'd need a good one. (I loved his other books so much, and everyone said such good things about this one...)

I'd explain the plot, but I already did. War is coming (slowly, with no real effort, energy, or drive behind it). Some people wanted it to happen, most didn't.

There were a group of "physical" gods in the book (gods in physical human bodies, sort of). They were the most awful, unenjoyable people to read about.

Twice in the book, characters did a 180 on personality. The first time, a group of people acted as friends, then betrayed one of the main characters. Usually I like plot twists, but this pissed me off as there were no indications that I could see that it would happen -- it felt like the characters were changed mid-story just as a plot device. Then, as annoyed as I was at that happening, it happened a second time!

Blah. As much as I usually like his work, I'm hard-pressed to name a single thing I liked about it. It even had many editing issues (missing periods, lots of missing capitalization, multiple characters' dialogue in the same paragraph). Okay, one thing I did like was the 'twist' that explained the title.

---

In non-book news, saw my podiatrist today about my toe. She pulled the stuck-in gauze out OW OW OW. Big open raw/bloody section again now. Ow. I'm on another run of antibiotics for it, one I might be allergic to (but it's also the most effective one against MRSA, so... the allergist couldn't narrow down what I was allergic to, so she listed the antibiotic just to be safe, so we're going to take the chance).

Also spent the morning at a conference for work. Boring stuff, but it was nice to get out of the office and visit the convention center. It would have been a nice short work day, except had to go to the doctor after, so. Oh well, home now! Yay!

Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



When I reviewed the first Seraphina book, I loved it so much I couldn't decide which reason for loving it to write about first. Unfortunately, for book two, I have the opposite problem.

There were two main reasons this book didn't work for me. In no special order:

In the first book, it was the dragons ("saar" -- a dragon in human form) that were the most interesting element of the story. They were such an fascinating, utterly foreign culture. In Shadow Scale, the saars were absent for literally half of the book -- the first 50% of the book was about the half-dragon Seraphina and her search for others like her. Even when they started showing up again in the second half, they still had very little screen time.

The driving force of this book was conflict with a villain. Unfortunately the character never for a moment worked for me. I did not believe she was ever a threat. I didn't believe the power she had could be used the way she used it. I did not believe how the entire world reacted to her. Basically she came off as a boogeyman to me, but the story characters treated her like the most powerful creature that ever walked the planet.

Unfortunately the story dragged so badly. While I flew through the first book, it felt like this one took months to read. (Though by the date on my previous review, it took "only" three weeks.)

There were a number of good elements to the story, but unfortunately they weren't enough to save it for me:

The quigutl: Lizard-like people. Their culture was amazingly interesting. I wish the whole book had been about them instead of just a couple chapters. I loved them to death -- I felt about them in this book as I had the saar in the first book. While I have no desire to reread this book, I'd happily reread their chapters over and over.

The writing: The technical writing, I mean. Rachel Hartman constructs very nice sentences, she's really clever with her wording, and has an enjoyable vocabulary.

(Edit: I forgot a good part. Spoilers for details about characters. One of the characters, a strong female character, was transsexual. I don't think I've read a YA book with a trans character before! And one of the main female characters was lesbian, which was quite cool as well.)

The ending of the book was the biggest letdown for me, though the epilogue was touching. In a world where every YA book seems to be part of a trilogy, it seems like this series might just be the two books.

As a final note: It's possible my expectations were so high that there's no way this book could have lived up to them. I loved the first book on a "Best book ever!" level. I know a number of people reading this are either looking forward to the second book or are intending to read the both of them; I hope that my review can reset expectations so you all are able to enjoy Shadow Scale more than I did.

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
(Book received free for review from Random House.)



The good: I loved the author's writing. Her world was detailed and interesting, and she quickly drew me into the story.

The bad: This was a "chapter sample". I've never been given one of those for review before. (Thus the short review, how much can you say about a chapter sample?)

The future: I already bought a copy of the complete book, which I'll read and review next.

---

RL happenings: Like many people who live in an apartment, I hate my upstairs neighbors. Oh but I have really good reason to. They're the kind who cannot wake up when their alarm goes off. They let it sound for many minutes before they turn it off. This is a problem as they get up at 2 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM, or 4:45 AM. Every morning. Weekends included.

Once they're up, they're VERY loud. Stomping and yelling to each other. Run the dishwasher at 4 AM? Sure! This morning, Sunday morning, they were using their washing machine at 5 AM. But hey, I was awake at 4 AM thanks to them already, so no big deal?

I'm the type who, once they wake up, they're awake -- there's no going back to sleep for me. That means I tend to be very, very tired.

This morning they were especially loud, including what sounded like them throwing everything they own down the stairs. Turns out that was basically what they were doing. Looks like they were moving out, YAY. Sleep! Perhaps tonight I'll get a full night's rest!

Samurai Jack Volume 3: Quest For The Broken Blade by Jim Zub (Author), Ethen Beavers (Illustrator), Andy Suriano (Illustrator)
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
(Book received free for review from IDW Publishing.)



I've missed watching Samurai Jack on TV, so when I was offered this graphic novel to review, I jumped at the chance. I wasn't disappointed, it read just like an episode of the cartoon!

Love Volume 1: The Tiger by Federico Bertolucci
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
(Book received free for review from Diamond Book Distributors.)



I loved Loved. Another graphic novel, this one about the life of a tiger. Told with no text, panel after panel was wonderfully drawn colored pencil artwork of the tiger's life. Every page was a thing of beauty.

The tiger and other animals weren't anthropomorphized at all, other than rare occasion where an eye looked a little human-ish to better show what was going on in the scene.

(Graphic novels don't count towards my 50 book per year goal, so these two reviews aren't numbered.)

Go Down, Aaron by Chris Davidson
Rating: Hated (Loved-Liked-OK-Disliked-Hated)

Cover image - linked for NWSness.

While this book was only 50 pages long, I couldn't get even a quarter through it. I had been hoping it would be amusingly bad, but instead it was just bad-bad with a heaping helping of distasteful. (I know, who would have thought that Nazi porn would be distasteful?)

The story was bad, the porn was bad, this book had no redeeming features other than the semi-amusing cover.

How bad was the story? Aaron was captured and raped by a dozen or so Nazis and then sent off to a concentration camp, but escaped, then was recaptured. Major story events, right? From the end of the rape to the recapture, the author took one single sentence to explain the whole sent off to camp/escaped events! One sentence!

( Two head-scratching quotes from the book, mildly NWS. )

I don't think I've ever been so relieved to give up on a book. Even WEREBEES, TAKEN BY THE SWARM was better! And that were-warthog book! (It'll never stop amusing me that the WEREBEES title is supposed to be in all-caps.)

I finally found a copy of a doozy of a book. Nazi gay porn from 1967.

( Front and back cover images, potentially offensive. NWS? Cover of a 1960s book, but very suggestive. )

I'm hoping this will be bad of the amusingly-bad variety. I'm going to try to read it tomorrow or over the weekend.

I really should officially review that porn book from the 1970s that I have around here somewhere. There's no mention of it or the author anywhere online, so it would be nice to have some record of it out there. It was amusingly bad as well. (Edit: Oops, apparently it was copyrighted in 1981, so just barely not the 70s. Unlike when I last posted about it in 2010 (NWS) it now has an entry in Google that isn't my LJ! Amazon has it for sale for $20. That's nice, I'm glad it exists somewhere else besides my LJ now.)

Edit 2: I read the first chapter of Go Down, Aaron before bed. I kept notes as I read along.

( NWS! TW: Rape. )