The Eyre Affair

Written By Jasper Fforde
Original Publication Date: 2001

Rating: 2 Stars

Book Notes:

22%

Jasper Fforde is certainly tipping his hat to 1984 with the Goliath Corporation and the Crimean War.

28%

"HyperBookwormDoublePlusGood."  That hat tip to 1984 just became a deep bow.

61%

THURSDAY.  WHAT.  IS.  WRONG.  WITH.  YOU?!

Your uncle has been kidnapped.  The bad guy just shot the crap out of your unit.  He's probably going to kill Martin Chuzzlewit, and possibly your uncle when he realizes he's been duped.

AND ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS A MAN YOU BROKE UP WITH 10 YEARS AGO?!    YOU BROKE UP WITH HIM.  GET OVER IT!

Review:

I had such, amazingly high hopes for this book.  I adored Shades of Grey  (no, not Fifty Shades of Grey, Godfuckingdamnit) and assumed that a novel written by the same brilliant quirky mind in a universe where you can step into novels, especially when stepping into one of my all time favorites, Jane Eyre, would be of the same caliber, if not better.  I was bloody disappointed.

Thursday Next is the stereotypical drop-in Female Agent Character; see The President's Daughter and Sympathetic Sue, from tvtropes, to see what I thought of how her character was built.  She was wanted by various parts of Special Ops because of what her father did in the Chrono Guard.  Her brother was lost at war, and because of something to do with this fact, she also broke up with her fiance of the time.  My real problem with Thursday as a narrator was that her entire focus was on the "pity me" crap from her past.  All she can think of during the climax(es) of the novel is of Landen, her ex-fiance.  I know she's a woman, but come on Fforde, we do think of things other than our men.

It made me want to kick her in the face hole.

Acheron Hades - what an evil name, right?  Okay, so he's kidnapped Thursday's uncle because he built the machine and bred the bookworms that allow one to step into fiction.  Okay, so he's stolen a manuscript or two.  But Gods above, he is taken as such Serious Business, and I don't see him as as evil as his name and his adversaries seem to make him out to be.  It just escalates too damn quickly for me to really see him as a villain, instead all I saw him as was a mostly-invincible dolt who wanted to be evil.  He was a Card Carrying Villain, instead of a truly evil man.

What really, really, disappointed me though, was that even though this novel is called The Eyre Affair, we don't really get to jump into Jane Eyre until two thirds of the way through the book, and it was so random after the first 2/3.  It seemed like two different stories that were really only barely related to one another.

It did earn itself a star because the stuff with Jane, Rochester, and Thursday was pretty fucking cool.  I just wish there'd been more of it.  And the parallels between Jane and Rochester and Thursday and Landen almost made Landen bearable - almost. 

And that ending!?  Dear Gods, we wrapped it up with a neat little bow.  And they rode off into the sunset, Happily Ever After.  

Headdesk.  Please excuse my while I shoot myself.

I am honestly not sure I care enough to read the rest of the series, which is really, really sad because I so loved Shades of Grey (I recommend it to everyone!).  I just fear that while this was Fforde's first novel (obviously) that this lack of editing continues.  He really needed a good editor for this book, but the series has done so well that I'm afraid he's been given free reign.  Though on the flip side of that same coin, I'm sure that in the past 12 years, the man has matured as an author and it'd be interesting to read one of the more modern Thursday Next stories.  Hmm.  We'll see.

and all the stars

Written By Andrea K. Host
Original Publication Date: 2012

Rating: 3 Stars

Book Notes:

I received this ebook for free from the publisher, via NetGalley.

3%

Toxic ... glitter?

92%

I just spent way too long trying to figure out how these people were flashing their torches.

Torches = Flashlights.  Derp.

Silly Australians.

Review:

Firstly, this cover is friggin' gorgeous.  I thought the little thumbnails I'd seen were beautiful, but when I blew it up for this review I realized how much detail I was missing, in the model's eyes, specifically.  and all the stars, obviously refers to the stars under the model's left eye, but honestly the more I look at this cover, the more I like it - it also could have been a reference to the sparkle in her eyes, or even the freckles on her neck.  Basically, the cover art gets a full five stars from me; the photographer in me enjoys all the details.

The books opens on Madeleine, regaining consciousness, in what used to be a train station - used to be.  She's surrounded by rubble, dead bodies, and a bizarre glittery dust is in the air.  All this destruction is caused by giant, featureless towers that seem to have sprouted from the Earth, spraying the strange dust that sparkles.  Finding her way out of the rubble, she is able to call her parents, and make her way to her famous cousin's apartment, where she showers off the glittering dust that she has become coated with.

Watching the news, and her own body, Madeleine discovers that she is turning ... blue.  Some of the population, like her, is turning blue, and some are turning green.  Not everyone is surviving this transformation, however, and soon those that do are seeking each other out to test what other changes this dust has brought to them.

The answer?  Hunger Games for body-hopping aliens!

I must say, I enjoyed quite a lot about this book.  The story was interesting and a bit unique in that it's definitely a post-apocalypse, but cell phones and news networks are still working and running - being taken care of by those that survive.  Usually post-apocalypse stories have a much more pessimistic view of the population, that people would chip in and actually keep things running, even if they're teens?  I don't know if I love it because it's got an optimism to it, or hate it because I'm not sure I can believe that that would happen.  I chose to love it.

I really liked the people that Madeleine teams up with, I find them to be fairly accurate representations of our teenage population.  My problem however, with these people is that they're fairly interchangeable.  They all different skills, but I had a really hard time remembering which one was which person.  It was rather confusing.  

I also found the flow of the writing not quite right.  Personally, I was definitely thrown by the amount of Australian slang, but that wasn't the only reason that I didn't think it flowed well.  Some of the sentences, I read quite a few times and they still didn't make sense, even within the context of the sentences before and after.

My last complaint was the Epilogue.  The book ended in a satisfying way, and then there was this epilogue that felt like someone screaming AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER!  THE END!!!  This is a problem I've seen in quite a few YA novels, the authors want to tie everything up, but it doesn't need to be gift wrapped for us.  Nothing wraps up that nice in the real world, and it seems like a cop-out.

In Summary:  Good book, with some problems.

Ariel

Written By Stephen Boyett
Original Publication Date: 1983

Rating: 2.5 Stars Out of 5

Book Notes:

Page 84

"Fred"?  He named his new sword "Fred"?

Page 134

"You moved around a lot in your sleep.  You kept ...rubbing yourself.  You know, on your ... crotch.  It bothered [her]."

HEADFUCKINGDESK

Page 143

He categorizes his sex dreams as "bad dreams."  Whatnow?

Page 224

Ugh.  A Twin Towers: Two Towers reference.  I remember when the movie came out I had to explain to numerous people that no, they didn't need to change the name of the movie out of respect for those who were lost on 9/11, because the Twin Towers didn't exist when Tolkien wrote The Two Towers.  Pet Peeve of DOOOOM.

Page 272

"A bit Tolkien-ish, isn't it?  Washington going to war with New York."

If by Tolkien-ish, we mean that there's a necromancer, like there is in The Hobbit?  Then sure it's Tolkien-ish.  Otherwise, no, not really.  This author seems to like to compare himself to Tolkien.  It is inaccurate and cocky as hell.

Review:

I'd recommend this book for mature-ish 15/16 year old boys.  It's gory and sex-filled.  However, it reads better if you think of Pete as a 16 year old boy rather than a 20 year old.  It doesn't quite qualify as Young Adult, but it comes close.  Pete is a good Young Adult hero, what doesn't make it Young Adult is the length, sex and gore.  The writing style even puts it at borderline Young Adult.

I'm pretty sure I just read a 400 page metaphor for a boy going through puberty; either that or it's a 400 page metaphor for a boy losing his virginity.  Five or six years is a really long time to go through the worst of puberty.  The lights, cars, and guns stopping working is even called The Change! 

The fact that guns stopped working was pretty damned arbitrary, by the way.

When The Change happened, Pete was 14 or 15, just a normal nerdy teenage boy.  He went to his debate event and even when the lights went out, at 4:30, they opened a window shade and kept going.  He walked his girlfriend home in the dark, and when her folks weren't home, they walked to his place with the plan to go back the next day.  They'd spend opposite nights in each others' houses until one set of parents made it home.  Surprisingly enough, that plan didn't work, and that night Pete headed out on his own.

Two years after The Change, Pete was bathing in a clean stream musing on how quickly the waters cleaned up after technology stopped working.  When he looked up, there was a unicorn standing amongst his clothing.  When he got out of the stream, Pete could tell that the creature had a broken leg, and it spoke!  After the Change, mythological creatures started cropping up everywhere.  Unicorns, however, only show themselves and allow them to befriend the purest, the virgins.  Pete names it Ariel.

The sex thing in this novel is so weird.  Pete is so afraid of his own sexuality.  He is so afraid of his sex dreams and when he masturbates in his sleep he really bugs out.  I know he's afraid of losing Ariel, but dear Gods, he's supposed to be 20 or so.  I know the world is different, but it's not so different that men and boys stop physically maturing.  Even though it may have been weird having no one to talk him through puberty, he clearly knows what sex is from the way he describes his dreams.  But he's so goddamned afraid of it and every time someone comes onto him or admits to have had sex, he gets nasty.

Five or six years after The Change is when the bulk of the novel takes place.  (In the novel it says six years, but on the blurb, it says five.  Consistency fail.)  Ariel and Pete have been wandering from town to town, when they meet men on the road who will do anything to posses Ariel, especially her horn.  These men are led by an evil necromancer, who lives in New York City.  They go on a quest, to defeat him, walk to New York where Ariel is taken.  Making a few friends along the way, Pete is able to free Ariel, but only after it is too late for his innocence.

Oh, he wants to kill us with his powerful magics?  We should walk right into his lair!  HERP DERP!

Also, what is it with these characters crying all the fucking time?  After The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I thought I was done with the sobbing main male characters for a while.  I picked up a post apocalyptic book, for Godssake.  But no, Pete cries at everything.  Come on!  Every time he's over tired, scared, confused, angry, etc. etc. etc.  He's been living in this world for 5 or six years, by himself.  Why hasn't he grown up a little more?  At the end of the book Pete finally grows up.  There's an event that forces Ariel to turn away from him.  He couldn't stay a child forever.  Thank Gods.

Two and a half stars because, regardless of how weird and unsettling and arbitrary the sex, gore, and world was, it was actually a fun read.