BOOK REVIEW: "Shadow of Night," by Deborah Harkness

BE WARNED: SPOILERS TO COME. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Shadow of Night, the second book in the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, is a fairly good follow-up to the first book. The book functions well as the second act in a three-act narrative, which is fairly important for a trilogy.

A brief summary:

Diana and Matthew go back to 1590 England (and Prague, and France) to learn more about the mysterious Ashmole book and to teach Diana more about her magic. While there, Matthew's backstory unfolds and they get clues to the future of their relationship.

As a standalone narrative, Shadow of Night is a pretty good book. As a sequel to Discovery of Witches, it's even better. Matthew and Diana develop more character, independently and together, and they handle threats to their relationship in ways that reflect their character development. This includes one part where Matthew will not sit down and have a much-needed Big Boy Relationship Talk, so Diana finds a way to make him have the much-needed talk without resorting to anything too dangerous.

Now I'm going to do something that I've never done in a book review: Making a List of Favorites/ Least Favorites.

spoilers ahead

new character

Favorite: Gallowglass or Jack Blackfriars. Though Henry Percy, Walter Raleigh, Rudolf II, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and a number of other historical figures make appearances, these two fictional ones are my favorites. Gallowglass is Matthew's nephew (in vampire lineage), and, once he gets used to the idea that Matthew is married to a witch, is a very fun character. Though I always imagined him at around the same age as Diana, he always calls her "auntie," which is funny in contrast to his description (tall, Scottish, and burly). If this were a movie, I would probably ask Chris Hemsworth to style his hair like he does when playing Thor and learn a Scottish accent.

STOP LOOKING SO SERIOUS, GALLOWGLASS.

Source: screenrant.com

Jack is a street rat. I wasn't sure about his function at times, but he allowed Matthew to show his paternal side occasionally. For the record, "Matthew" and "Paternal Side" are things that I didn't think would go together, but it happened and it was adorable.

Least Favorite: Diana's father. Though Diana and her father meeting by chance in 1590 was an interesting chapter, it felt thrown in at the end. He did make a few important points to help his daughter's marriage and magic, they all seemed like things that could have been said by someone else. William Shakespeare could have sent them on their first real date, and the coven that Diana learns from could have pushed her a little bit farther without the help of her father. It was interesting to read Diana's encounters with the father she lost at age 7, but it felt unnecessary somehow.

scene in the book

Favorite: okay, I've narrowed it down to two.

First, there was when Philippe, Matthew's vampire father, finally accepted Diana into the family. The entire chapter was intense for a number of reasons, but when he finally accepts her into the family, every interaction he has with her makes much more sense. There is one final test, which results in perhaps my favorite line in the book: "I just killed a man! Now is not the time to discuss our marriage." (Philippe throws Matthew and Diana a Real and Proper Wedding after that, which is a pretty good scene in itself.)

Second is when Diana and Matthew somehow get on the topic of vampire romance novels. It's only a brief exchange and I'm not sure I should include it, but whatever. It's very funny because, in the context of a vampire romance thread, it calls out basically every vampire romance novel ever. It concludes with my second-favorite line in the novel: "Help! I think I married a vampire!"

Least Favorite: It's hard to say. As a whole, the novel stands out as a fairly cohesive work. The final scene is good for showing how each artifact from Matthew's modern-day life winds back up at his home 420 years later, but I would rather the work end on more of a cliffhanger to race through to the third book.

Some of the flash-forward scenes are somewhat weak as well, but help to introduce at least a few new people. It does make more sense to show these connections rather than have someone say "hi, this is _________ we met when we were searching for you" or something.

overall impressions

this is one rollicking ride. If you like vampire romances where vampire romance is only half the point, definitely pick up this series.

The Return of Classes

One thing never changes about going back to school: the first day is all about getting to know your classes and seeing your friends again. (Of course, in college, it's a lot easier to do the latter earlier than the former.)
Of course, classes in college are different than in high school. The only time my class schedule has been the same from one semester to the next was when I was a freshman, and that's only because the freshmen don't have many options when it comes time to register. This semester is the most imbalanced schedule I've had so far; most semesters, I've had one or two classes on one day and two or three on another. This semester, I have three classes (plus choir) on Monday, no class on Tuesday, four classes on Wednesday, choir on Thursday, and two classes on Friday. Needless to say, Wednesdays are not going to be fun. (I've had good Wednesdays before, but the prospect of those happening this semester are rapidly decreasing).
I'm really excited about the semester, though. I'm doing courses in Shakespeare (commence epic fangirling), Greek Historiography (we're reading Xenophon), Uses of the Bible in Literature (which, as an English course, has more emphasis on the literature and less on the Bible part of it) and Basic News Writing (this is the one that's happening on Wednesdays only. It may be the reason that Wednesdays are terrible, but I don't know yet). I'm also doing choir, which is a lot of fun.

Also, here's an update on THINGS WILD CARD IS READING RIGHT NOW.
As some of you may know, there's a very popular YouTube series called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which follows the story of Pride and Prejudice in the form of video blog posts on YouTube. Well, now it's come full circle, and The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, the companion novel to the series, is the book I'm currently reading. It's written diary-style; while you could probably understand the book with some decency if you know the basic plot of Pride and Prejudice, it's definitely a lot easier to take out a few hours to watch the series before you read the book. (I realize that this may be the only time I advise someone to watch before reading, but the vlogs came before the book.) You should all go check it out on Amazon. I may do a proper review of it later.

But, for now, it's time to prepare for a lot of academia.

On Harry Potter characters

I'm really into audiobooks. Lately, I've been listening to the Harry Potter series again, and it's kind of interesting to go back and relive the experiences. Right now, I'm on book 3 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Since I've read the series multiple times, there may be spoilers in here. You have been warned.

The first two books, I've realized, are very structured within themselves. Each scene drops hints and clues, explicitly or implicitly, about what happens. The Mirror of Erised shows the deepest desire of one's heart, for example. As it turns out, if the Deepest Desire of Your Heart is to get the Philosopher's Stone and do nothing with it (as opposed to make the Elixir of Life, create gold, cause severe head injury to one's enemies, etc), then you can get the stone.
In the third book, however, there are a few more subplots, and I think this is an area where character development shows itself. I know that there are other characters that are far more frustrating, but Ron is really bugging me in Book Three. Admittedly, it's easy to get defensive when a cat seems to be intent on killing your rat in particular (especially if that rat is one of the only things you can call your own), but I feel like he shouldn't have been so annoyed at Hermione over it. I feel like he should have had someone make him take a step back and think about Hermione's feelings. If Hermione Granger, the know-it-all who gets perfect marks in everything, is so disoriented that she misses classes, that should be a heads up. It could be everything from a first period to time travel, but picking on someone in that situation is not going to make it better.
I know characters change over time, and I'm definitely not the person I was at 13 (if only because I have a pixie cut now, as opposed to waist-length hair). I'm starting to see, however, why J.K. Rowling said that Ron and Hermione would have a very tumultuous marriage.

BOOK REVIEW: "The Professor and the Madman" by Scott Westerfield

Right, I know this is really late, but it's not as late as the Hitchhiker's Guide review. I should probably not judge as harshly until something is promised for a full month until it is delivered upon.

Anyway, this is the review of The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Scott Westerfield. Don't be daunted by the title. It's probably the most incomprehensibly rambling part of the book. The book is, indeed, about a bit of murder, a good chunk of insanity, and pretty much entirely about how those two things contribute to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The Madman (also the murderer, but that's not important.... not really, anyway) is Dr. William Chester Minor, an American who served in the Civil War as an army surgeon. The madness led him to delusions, which led him to the unfortunate path of murder and being subsequently locked up in an insane asylum for most of the rest of his life.
The Professor is James Murray, who eventually takes on the project of defining all the words in the English language. Not some of the words. Not the super rare words that are only interesting for people who want to sound smart. Not the remotely vague words for people who need to learn new things. The goal of the project he took one was to locate and define every single word in the English language. This includes regular words, new words, old words, words that are super obscure, and words that came about in 888 AD and were never seen again after 1000 AD. Though the project's editor kept saying, "Oh yes, it'll be done in ten or eleven years," you can see why he had to say that seven times over.
How these two relate is interesting. The professor sent out a general call for assistance; after all, defining every single word ever in the English Language is not something to be taken on alone. Dr. Minor saw the summons and, since he was one of patients that got really nice treatment (he got several rooms, lots of visiting hours, and was allowed to have a whole bunch of books with him), he responded to it. That's the short story, anyway. Read the book for the full story; it's really interesting.

I really liked this book. Westerfield puts the story in a narrative sort of style; he tells this as a story instead of a series of facts. I don't know if this is standard for a history book, but my familiarity is more with textbooks that do the series-of-facts approach. As a cool addition to the narrative, Westerfield starts every chapter with one or two vocabulary words in the form of a dictionary entry; frequently these words (or some action associated with them) show up int the chapter. My new favorite word came from one of these entries - sesquipedalian (it means "polysyllabic" or "loquacious," depending on the context.) I appreciate this book mostly because it contextualizes the massive effort it would have taken to write a dictionary. People don't normally think of dictionaries as being written; they just seem to be there, and then you add words like "selfie" to them, but Shakespeare didn't have any dictionaries to look up new words. (This could be why Shakespeare made up so many new words).

In all, I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who is interested in gaining a new appreciation for the English language and dictionaries as a whole.

The Long-Awaited Review

GUESS WHAT I'M FINALLY REVIEWING TODAY? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

I wish I could say it doesn't normally take me half the summer to read a book that's barely 200 pages long and fairly enjoyable when I do read it, but it's not exactly a rare occurance. That being said, this review is very much going to be based on what I remember of the bits and pieces of the book.

Hitchhiker's Guide is about Arthur Dent, who gets swept away from Earth by his friend Ford Prefect, just before Earth's destruction by aliens trying to build a highway. From there, the two join up with a bunch of crazy characters - Zaphod Beeblebrox the two-headed ex-hippie, his human girlfriend Trillian, Marvin the brilliant but chronically morose robot, and other crazy characters. They travel across the galaxy on the run from the law, riding on an improbable spaceship obtained by illicit means.

WHAT I LIKED ABOUT THIS BOOK:

1) the humor.

This book is full of wit that's very dry, quite British, and really funny. Often this can point out important things in general. On the first page, the narration notes that most people were unhappy on Earth, and "many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." There are little asides that add humor to the whole thing - page two sets the date as "one Thursday nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be for everyone to be nice to each other for a change..." Also, dolphins and mice are smarter than everyone expects, and the answer to the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" is 42, after 7.5 million years and the realization that there was not actually a question posited in the first place.

2) Marvin the Robot.

Normally I don't laugh at sad people, but Marvin is the exception. Many of his statements begin with "Brain the size of the planet and they make me do [insert menial task]." My favorite Marvin quote comes near the end - he waited for the Participants in Main Action to come back, so "I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged into [the police ship's] external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the universe to it... And it committed suicide." (214). I know that's very morbid, but that's very much Marvin's personality. (Apparently he's voiced by Alan Rickman in the movie, which I really want to see now.)

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT THE BOOK:

1) I don't know if it was just the fact that it took me several weeks to read this book, but some of the middle bits weren't very memorable. It's hard to remember exactly which bits I can't remember, but it seemed to drag a bit in some points. 

2) I would have liked a bit more from the actual Hitchhiker's Guide (it's an actual book in the book), since it does loan the novel its title.

In all, though, pretty good book, even though it took me forever to read. Next time, I'm doing The Professor and the Madman.

"The Fault In Our Stars" review

Before I do this, let me preface this by saying a few things:
1. this is my first real review. Please be forgiving.
2. I've been putting this off to go back over the book a second time. Guess what I didn't do? I did write down what I liked/ disliked, but it was a few days after I'd read it. Keep that in mind. I'll do better next time, honest.
3. I tend to be biased in favor of the positive. Think I'm over-praising something? Let me know; just do what I didn't and reread the book first.
4. There may be spoilers. You have been warned.

OFFICIAL REVIEW STARTS HERE

So this is a review of John Green's newest book, The Fault in Our Stars. Most of the time I don't read books that are primarily romances; in my limited experience with them, they tend to be corny, over-romanticize the love interest, and provide situations that sometimes violate the suspension of disbelief. This may be because my primary experience with romance novels include the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and a lot of Meg Cabot novels, but it could be that romances are often written with those goals in mind.
That being said, The Fault in Our Stars does very little of that.
PLOT SUMMARY: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Age 16, has cancer and is very aware of her mortality. Augustus Waters then comes into her Cancer Kids Support Group one Wednesday night, and nothing is the same. Until the end.
ADDED SPOILER: In the end, Augustus dies.

That is a terrible summary, but I'm going to do the analysis stuff. THERE MAY BE SPOILERS.

GOOD STUFF:

1. I really like Hazel's voice. Like good character development, Hazel's is subtle, until a moment of crisis occurs. In the beginning, she's all, "blargh de blargh i don't want to do anything i just want to sit on the couch and watch dumb TV and read this one book boiajo;efiwao;i...." Near the end, however, she has started hanging out more with Augustus and Isaac (their other friend), partly because Augustus's condition has worsened. It gets to the point where her parents ask her to stay home one night; after an argument, she basically tells them that she's going off because someone she cares about is GOING TO DIE SOON AND SHE WANTS TO GO SEE HIM.
2. People idolize others all the time - especially recluses who have done something great. Hazel is no different. After Hazel introduces Augustus to her favorite book, Augustus is able to get them both the chance to meet the author. Turns out the author is... not okay. Drunk, etc. The important twist in his story comes at the end. I'm not spoiling that, but it's an interesting way to rework the "Childhood Hero Turns Out To Be A Wreck" trope without it all coming out in that one important scene.
3. I like the humor. Hazel is very sarcastic and snarky, especially at the beginning; it's a blend that works for my sense of humor.

BAD STUFF

1. Like many romance novel heroes, Augustus is a bit pretentious for most of the novel. This is partially why the end of his storyline is so saddening, but I wasn't sure I liked him for the first part of the book.
2. I don't know how much Cancer Wish Foundations can pull off, but I don't know whether they would pull off Augustus's wish.
3. Sometimes it was difficult to figure out how much time had passed. This may be due to my lack of a second reading, but I don't know if someone would take me to meet J.K. Rowling, John Green, or Patrick Rothfuss after a few weeks of possible dating. (I don't think my boyfriend would do that, and we've been dating for a solid three years).

Right, I know this is super rough, but I'm still muddling through How To Write A Review Without Going Into English Major Mode. Thanks for reading; come back on Friday!