Guys, I don’t know myself anymore. I’m currently sitting here eating baby carrots, and I’m not happy about it, which is characteristic, but the sheer fact that I’m ingesting a vegetable in the first place is astounding. I’m currently addicted to watching feature-length episodes of a British quiz show on YouTube, when up until two days ago I was convinced I was racist against British people. But most importantly (and actually, you know, semi-relevantly) I don’t know how I feel about Marissa Meyer. https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co... She used to be my Favorite Author!!! (Capitals and excessive exclamation points for both emphasis and flair.) Or I used to say she was. Because I also used to say that the Lunar Chronicles were my favorite series, before I realized that was patently false. But now there’s a whole lot going on. I do remember loving all of the Lunar Chronicles books except Cinder, which was meh. Well, and Fairest was pretty bad. Okay and Wires and Nerve was also bad. But anyway, I read most of them in 2015 and 2015 me, as has been stated many a time on this account, canNOT be trusted. Example of an opinion I held in 2015, for proof: “I should wear full makeup, including eyeliner, to school every day. Even though school starts at 7:35 a.m. Even though I could sleep for at least 14 more minutes if I, you know, didn’t do that.” See the level of illogical we’re working with when we reflect on 2015? Anyway. But it gets worse, because I hated the book Heartless with everything in me. Which caught me off guard, because that was in very early 2017 and I hadn’t realized past me’s lack of reliability yet. The point of all of this is that I approached this book with trepidation. And now I am approaching this review with trepidation, because I DON’T KNOW HOW I FEEL!! Yes, I am claiming to be “approaching” this review even as I am clearly an excessive number of words into it. What of it? Let’s divide this into two very broad categories. Bad news first. THE BAD I am currently taking a class called “The Art of Fiction,” and it has threatened to single-handedly absolutely full-on ruin reading one hundred percent of YA fantasy for me. Just in time for me to be in the hugest fantasy mood of my life!! Ideal. Life is filled with these perfect symmetries, etc. Anyway. In that course, we read a couple of stories by Anton Chekhov, and Chekhov’s got this quote, maybe, which may or may not go something like this: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.” This is a very great quote to ponder as a writer, but as a reader it sucks SO BAD. No twist is a twist anymore. I see everything coming. I am now prescient and it is a goddamn curse. Basically what I’m saying is that I saw a twist in this book coming and I blame Chekhov. My more major, less literary complaint: the pacing of this is extremely strange. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that this book is FIVE HUNDRED PAGES LONG!! Can you imagine being bold enough to make the first book in your trilogy five hundred pages long?? Who besides Marissa Meyer has the clout to pull that type of sh*t off. But anyway. As the old saying goes, just because Marissa Meyer can doesn’t mean Marissa Meyer should. There is just no reason this book had to be 500 pages long. One, because that’s too long for almost any book, but two, because this book was doing absolutely nothing good with all of those pages. First off, I finished this book and was like, “Ah! A whole lot of nothing.” It truly feels like there is absolutely zero plotline to this book. There are a few separate events with very little tying them together, and definitely no tension or suspense of any kind. The last hundred pages especially were like Dry City, USA. (Dry meaning boring. Not as in “not wet.” Hopefully all pages are Dry City, USA in that sense.) The second pacing thing: this felt like 1.5 books. I can pick an exact moment around 350 pages in that felt like a perfect stopping point, but this bad boy just...trucks on. And not only does that 350 page mark feel like a perfect ending, the actual ending (150 pages or so later) feels like the exact middle point of a book. The ending was so, so, so weird and so, so, so rushed. I’m going to say what happened that was very strange in vague terms, so hopefully I won’t spoil anything, but if you haven’t read the book just skip this paragraph maybe. Okay so basically, one character has a near-death experience and we are expected to believe this character died. However, this character did NOT die. Character tricked us and other characters! That is just so classic this character. Anyway, character pops up, alive and well, and no explanation is ever given for how this character didn’t die. We just move on! Sloppy, sloppy. I’m honestly very glad I have the ARC of Archenemies. not because this is so good that I’m like, let me get my hands on that sequel, but more because this feels aggressively unfinished. In terms of characters: I feel pretty meh about all of them. There were some that have potential (more on that later), but a few were so devastatingly devoid of personality that a side-by-side comparison between them and a sleeve of saltines would make the crackers seem like a day trip to Flavortown. (Guy Fieri reference: Check.) Finally, this book often just felt like...nothing special. Superheroes have been done. Slow burn romances and banter and fight scenes every hundred pages and halfhearted twists have been done. At a lot of moments this just felt like every entry into the superhero genre tossed in a blender with every YA fantasy of the last five years. And that’s really lame. Luckily, we left the good stuff to cheer ourselves up!! THE GOOD Even though this was unoriginal, it still managed to be...kind of fun? And a way quicker read than any poorly-structured book over five hundred pages has any right to be. At the beginning of the month, I was STRESSING about the idea of reading 1000 pages of Marissa Meyer superhero content on top of, like, midterms and basic human responsibilities. But it seems to be going peachily. (Massive shoutout to Google Drive for not marking the adverb version of “peachy” I just made up a spelling error. I feel like a linguistic prophet.) Also, I think Marissa Meyer puts forth a good effort in terms of diversity in this book. And she kind of always has. Cinder came out in 2013, back when SJM was just writing undiverse books instead of undiverse books feigning diversity, and presumably when JK Rowling’s Twitter was something other than a nonstop fountain flowing with cringe. Cinder is pretty diverse, considering. Marissa Meyer has always seemed to me like one of the only YA authors who may actually care about diversity for diversity’s sake, rather than point-scoring. Which is rad. There’s also a really interesting exploration of good versus evil and moral ambiguity in this book. Essentially what Wildcard stumbled over itself trying to do, except this was actually remotely good. And also this wasn’t constantly interrupting itself to have its female protagonist moon over a very annoying and morally corrupt man. Other good things: I don’t know if this is fully one hundred percent unambiguously good, but I think there is POTENTIAL for me liking these characters. I am the closest to liking Nova. If a seven on the ten-point love scale is “truly like,” I am probably at 5.5 with her. Close second, Oscar, then Ruby, then Honey, then Adrian. If Archenemies really puts in work, I may end up liking one or two of them. There is absolutely no question of me possibly liking any other character in this series. But here is the single most surprising thing I liked about this series, and I’m almost embarrassed to say it… Okay, FINE. It was the romance! I liked the romance. It’s nice. It’s slow burn. The characters are awkward and both like nO STOP I DON’T LIKE ANYONE. I AM THE VOID. I FEEL NOTHING. Which is very fun. I think they’re a good match and oh my god I am going to go lay in a pond now since when do I say things like “a good match.” Closing out this review like we started it: With me having a minor existential crisis over my own identity. Bottom line: This was not good, per se, but it was fun and fine! ---------- "I can't wait to read this book," I say, and then wait almost a year before reading this book ---------- I can't forget the pain Heartless caused me, but Marissa...I'm willing to forgive.
currently-reading updatesplease be better than Heartless
tbr review
