Well, maybe not exactly 84 years, but it’s legit been half a year the last time we visited our aspiring Intoxibellas in Modelland. Is everyone else still up to speed? Does everyone need to know who did what to whom? Does anyone even really care?

But for those who need a refresher: The Bellas enter a lesbian hipster cube. Golden showers. The iconic line: “This kitty-cat got a taste of your sweetness and wants more of your cream!”

In Chapter 26 “The Porcelain Pact”, we find out where exactly Dylan ran of to after the girls found themselves engaged in a little S&M inside the lesbian hipster cube.

Dylan, of course, is off to vomit up all the food she’s had, because only fat people have eating disorders. Tookie, Piper, and Shiraz reassure her that they all have body image issues, with the girls revealing it to Piper as she barfs her food down into the toilet.

Piper the albino says that she wishes that her mother had never married her albino father, so she wouldn’t have had to live under their dome in SansColor. she shows them a picture of her wearing a wig and foundation, and Piper reveals that she’s always wanted skin like Tookie’s.

Meanwhile, I can’t help but feel like I’m watching an episode of The Tyra Banks Show.

Shiraz, on the other hand, feels like her father never really loved her because she’s not as tall as her parents. Her father died of a broken heart after her mom died, and Shiraz says this is because her father didn’t have any love in his heart for her. I don’t know about you guys, but Shiraz sounds more than a little crazy.

But of course, our little Tyra stand in gets to have the most important personal problem of all. Tookie wants to die because…oh, I don’t even know at this point, and I don’t want to back read either.

The rest of the girls end up consoling Tookie instead, and then decide that their little group of misfits needs to have name. After going through a list that included “The Vulnerable Four” (gag) and “Krapper Sisters”, the quartet decide on Unicas, pronounced “you-KNEE-kuz”.

Maybe it’s just me, but the pronunciation guides that have been scattered throughout this book seem more than a little disrespectful and condescending. Or maybe I’m being one of those equally irritating people who get offended at everything? Someone help!

The chapter ends with Piper volunteering to take Tookie to the FEDS — the Fashion Emergency Department Store — to have her wounds from the lesbian hipster cube checked out, and there’s pretty much nothing else for me to do but go on right ahead to Chapter 27.

As they make their way to the FEDS, Piper and Tookie run into ZhenZhen, the Bella we first met in Chapter 14. ZhenZhen, along with the other Bella upperclassmen, are off to their Go-See-Gos, which I hope I don’t have to explain to all of you guys. It’s a few pages of ZhenZhen just being nice and you kind of want to smash your head into a wall because nothing in the manner of plot has happened in more than 300 pages.

When we finally get to the FEDS we get another dash of crazy as Tyra introduces us to Purse Dresstokill. Yes, you read that right. Tyra describes her like so:

“A woman who looked about one hundred and fifty years old say behind the desk. She wore an elaborate sage-green cape made of multiple types of pistols, knives, nooses, and razors, with a hat shaped like a pair of angry scissors.”

So basically Madame Gasket from the Robots film?

Accurate photo of Purse Dresstokill.

While Tookie waits her turn to be…whatevered…at the FEDS, she spots Zarpessa in line as well, with bleeding gashes all over her hands from the time she spent inside the lesbian hipster cube with the Unicas. Zarpessa gives the two of them the evil eye, but then again, what’s new?

What’s new are the doctors and how Tyra displays her skillful attempts at humor. When a doctor walks in dressed in scrubs, Tyra literall means scrubs.

“Her uniform was a cloak covered in stiff white bristles like the one Creamy used on her face twice a day in the shower. Her thick stockings resembled an elastic version of the material Tookie had used to deep-clean the pots at B3 when she was on cafeteria duty. Her hair was a rather floppy, odd material…a mop, perhaps? Tookie then got the pun right away. The bristle-brush jacket, the grime-removing stockings, the literal mop head…scrubs.”

Tyra, the joke is only funny if you don’t explain it.

Anyways, the doctor is attending to Desperada, a Bella who hasn’t stopped crying ever since she got to Modelland. Her diagnosis? Desperada is suffering from Boy Withdrawal.

Really? Boy Withdrawal? Boy? Withdrawal? That sounds like a very ineffective way of preventing teenage pregnancy.

Desperada insists that the doctor make her a note that’ll let her visit her boyfriend down the mountain, but the doctor is having none of that. She says it’s a mistake to give up everything just for a silly guy, and oh my goodness, do I actually un-ironically like a character in Modelland?

But then Bravo, the hunkiest Bestostero named after a gay-themed cable channel you will ever meet, walks into the room. Every girl in the room is all a-flutter, but before Tookie can get her game on she’s lead into what I assume is the treatment room and then we get a shocking revelation about the inhabitants of Modelland.

Apparently, the reason why most of the inhabitants of Modelland look the way they do — Guru Applaussez, for instance — is because they were born that way. A head shaped like a hand actually pushed its way out of someone’s vagina. I. CAN’T.

The doctor says Modelland is a sanctuary for them and their kind. Tookie then asks the obvious question: If those who look different are so welcome in Modelland, why are the Bellas expected to look and act a certain way? Doctor says she has no idea. Moving on!

They want the D.

Bravo walks into the treatment area, and of course has to be positioned right beside Tookie’s bed. But she’s ocne again cockblocked by every thirsty bitch in the building, because they’re all clambering all over Bravo in his hospital bed.

Bravo, of course, only has eyes for Tookie. As they talk, we learn that the Bestosteros aren’t magical at all, although there have been a few Intoxibellos over the years. Tookie also gets a little hungry, so of course Bravo has to feed her, because the medication has left Tookie’s face numb and her speech slurred. Or zlurred, because every word she says starts with a Z.

Seeing as she’s nursing a cut lip, what ends up happening is that Tookie ends up bleeding on Bravo’s thumb, and then we get this marvelous gem from Zarpessa.

“Too-Too just mouth-pee-peed all over you!”

I. CANNOT. EVEN.

Meanwhile, not only is Bravo feeding her, he is also being a creep about it. When Tookie pulls out a can of whipped cream from her flower brooch and sprays it all over the food, Bravo has this to say:

“What other kinds of stuff does that hold in it, anyway?”

Sexy enough for you?

And you know what happens after that? They start stuffing things into Tookie’s flower. Keep that in your heads for a few hours or so.

The doctor walks in ont his scene, nonplussed, and asks Bravo to step away from Tookie’s flower because she’s about to be operated on. As Tookie goes under, she contemplates the fact that a boy may actually like her. And you know what, Tookie? After everything he stuffed into your flower? He better like you.

Twenty-thirteen may just turn out to be Cassandra Clare’s year.

Not only is the movie adaptation of her debut novel “City of Bones” set to go up on screens in a few months, the popular young adult (YA) author has also just signed a contract to write three more books set in the same universe of Shadowhunters and Downworlders she first introduced to the world back in 2007.

This year also marks the publication of “Clockwork Princess”, the final book in “ The Infernal Devices” series that tells the story of Victorian-era Shadowhunters beset by a mechanical threat that may just be too much for them to handle.

But unlike the hugely successful books in “The Mortal Instruments” series, “Clockwork Princess” has its work cut out for it. The past two books in “The Infernal Devices” series — “Clockwork Angel” and “Clockwork Prince” — garnered sharply divided opinions from fans. Will “Clockwork Princess” reign supreme over the books that came before it and give Clare  a rollicking start as she embarks on a new series? Or will this conclusion to “The Infernal Devices” be definitive proof that it’s time for Clare to depart from the world of Shadowhunters and Downworlders?

Ever since Jem and Tessa’s engagement at the end of “Clockwork Prince”, things have become tense and awkward at the London Institute of Shadowhunters. Will has taken to training his younger sister Cecily in the ways of Shadowhunters to distract himself, while Cecily plans to bring Will back to their home in Wales. Jem and Tessa are happy in their engagement, but Tessa cannot shake the feelings of love that she also has for Will.

Aside from those problems, the London Institute also has to deal with Charlotte Branwell’s pregnancy at a most trying time, and the budding romance between Shadowhunter aristocrat Gideon Lightwood and lowly maid Sophie Collins. All of this is happening while the villainous Axel Mortmain still remains at large.

The situation reaches a breaking point when Mortmain finally strikes, hoarding the medicine that keeps Jem alive as well as staging a daring attack on the London Institute that results in the capture of Tessa. Now the fate of his best friend and the girl he loves lies on the shoulders of Will Herondale. But what can one teenager do against an army of clockwork soldiers?

After the less than stellar reception that “Clockwork Angel” received from fans. “Clockwork Prince” introduced a few changes to Clare’s storytelling that certainly worked in its favor. In “Clockwork Prince”, Clare utilized the inherent gender and class biases of the time to inject some new life into her narrative and further differentiating “The Infernal Devices” from “The Mortal Instruments”.

It’s a storytelling decision that Clare continues in “Clockwork Princess”, and it is happily still effective in this final book. Clare even adds a dash of epistolary storytelling in the book, and fans of epistolary novels may be amused by this nod towards one of the more popular forms of storytelling of the Victorian era.

Unfortunately, these stylistic decisions fail to disguise the fact that “Clockwork Princess” doesn’t quite bring the events to the climactic finish one would except from a final book in a series. The tension doesn’t really build at any point during the novel, and Clare doesn’t succeed in making it feel like her characters are in any sort of danger.

Part of this is the fact that “The Infernal Devices” share so many links to “The Mortal Instruments”. Readers are already partly aware of what happens to this characters, if their  descendants in “The Mortal Instruments” are anything to go by. How can you worry about their fates when you know that they live long enough to have descendants?

Considering how Clare has also been criticized by how the characterizations of certain characters in “The Infernal Devices” hew so closely to those in “The Mortal Instruments”, it’s also unintentionally funny how certain character are actual ancestors of the characters they seem to have been rehashed from.

There is also the unfortunate similarities that the climactic scene in “Clockwork Princess” shares with “City of Glass”, the third book in “The Mortal Instruments” series. When readers are already pointing out that you do the same thing over and over again, using the same deus ex machina you used in a previous book isn’t going to help in disabusing them of that notion.

Another thing that drags down “Clockwork Princess” is the multiple endings that clog up the final chapters of the book. Clare seems unable to leave some of the character’s fates to the reader’s imagination, even tacking on an epilogue set in the characters’ distant future. It wouldn’t be such an egregious decision if the characters were standouts, but as it is, readers will finally just be itching for the book to end rather than read through even more pages.

After all is said and done, “Clockwork Princess” is a lackluster ending to a series that was on already shaky ground to begin with. It’s not a good sign as to the future of Clare’s books. Hopefully, as she returns to the present time with her latest series, she’ll get back some of the storytelling punch that made the first three books in “The Mortal Instruments” series such entertaining reads.

Dan Brown’s announcement back in January of this year that he would be coming out with a new Robert Langdon thriller was immediate headline news, stoking excitement and anticipation not just from fans but from the publishing world as well.

And why wouldn’t it be met with excitement? Dan Brown’s 2003 thriller, “The Da Vinci Code,” was an international success, and by 2009 had already sold 80 million copies around the world. It has been translated in over 40 languages, and has even been adapted into a blockbuster movie.

The book hasn’t just inspired a movie adaptation, it has also spurred the growth of cottage industries as well. Aside from inspiring several “guides” to the symbols and conspiracies outlined in the book, the “The Da Vinci Code” has also inspired themed tours through Rome, Paris, and London.

The novel that came after “The Da Vinci Code,” 2009’s “The Lost Symbol,” achieved similar success, becoming the fastest selling adult novel in history, with one million hardbound and ebook copies sold on its first day in stores.

It’s not wonder that everyone is looking for “Inferno” — which was released worldwide last Tuesday — to perform. Now that it’s out in the world, will it grip readers’ imaginations the same way “The Da Vinci Code” did? Or has the time come for Robert Langdon to hang up his Harris tweed and call it a day?

“Inferno” takes place in the city of Florence, home of medieval poet Dante Alighieri as well as some of the most prized artwork of the Renaissance period. Langdon wakes up in a Florentine hospital dazed and unable to recall the events of the past two days, with only visions of a silver-haired woman and a ghastly river of dead bodies left to him as a clue.

But even before Langdon can make sense of his visions, an armed assailant forces him and a precocious young woman named Sienna Brooks to escape towards Florence’s old city in search of a Dante relic that may explain the reason for Langdon’s presence in the Italian city.

However, with each clue he and Sienna discover, Langdon finds himself pulled deeper and deeper into a plot with terrifying global ramifications — a plot that Langdon is ill-equipped to take down on his own. But with his government seemingly on his tail as well, Langdon has no choice but to rely on his wit and intelligence — and hope that that is enough.

Just like the previous Robert Langdon novels that came before it, “Inferno” follows the same pattern that are now probably familiar to longtime Brown readers. Playing the part of the pretty and intelligent female foil is Sienna Brooks, while a shadowy organization named “The Consortium” takes over the role that the Roman Catholic Church and the Freemasons played in previous Langdon books.

Brown also continues on the scientific streak that he first explored in earlier novels like  “Digital Fortress” and “Deception Point”, and which he came back to in “The Lost Symbol”. While “The Lost Symbol” was concerned with the metaphysical study called Noetics, “Inferno” tackles the much more down-to-earth science of genetics and overpopulation.

It’s a good choice on the part of Brown, as overpopulation is something that readers can see and feel for themselves. When the book’s antagonist talks about why it is imperative to take drastic measures to curb this growing global problem, it’s easy for readers to see the sense in his argument and sympathize, if not necessarily agree.

But what is encouraging is that Brown has added little tweaks to the formula that has worked for him for so long. The fact that Langdon wakes up dazed and confused is a welcome break from previous installments. He’s also discarded the formulaic monstrous henchmen that started with Silas in “The Da Vinci Code”, replacing them with a much more believable adversary in the form of a female assassin named Vayentha.

It would have been even better if Brown took these changes all the way to the novel’s end, but these changes peter off about a fourth into the novel. From there, readers will recognize familiar territory — museum hopping, ciphers in precious artwork, and a plot whose twists and turns essentially mirror the three books that came before it.

“The Consortium” is also a poor substitute for the Roman Catholic Church. It’s much easier for readers to believe that the Roman Catholic Church is a hotbed of conspiracy and controversy because it actually is a a hotbed of conspiracy and controversy. It’s harder to suspend one’s disbelief when it comes to “The Consortium,” — an organization which Brown claims exists in the real world, but one he refuses to name — especially considering some of the world events it supposedly engineered.

The novel’s climactic confrontation in a cistern near Turkey’s Hagia Sophia never reaches the same tension as the Vatican scene in “Angels and Demons,” and the misdirections that lead to the exposition near the book’s end feel too contrived and cheap.

And on a note much closer to home, a scene set in Manila is sure to raise some Filipino eyebrows. While factual in certain respects, some of the things that happen to one of the book’s characters while in the country’s capital is a stretch, even for a work of fiction.

While certainly a better effort than “The Lost Symbol,” “Inferno” still won’t be making Brown any new fans. But so long as his current fans are happy — and propel this new offering to the top of the bestsellers list — it doesn’t look like Brown will have any reason to change what works for him.

The crowd at National Book Store’s Free Comic Book Day celebrations.

First of all, I’d like to apologize to the handful of people who read this blog. Real life has been a lot hectic lately, and it’s been really hard trying to find the time and the energy to finish reading a book, much less update the blog.

I did, however, manage to squeeze in National Book Store’s (NBS) Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) celebrations last Saturday. I couldn’t stay until the afternoon like I wanted, but I did manage to catch a little bit of the morning activities while I was there.

I don’t think I came out with as big a haul as I would have liked — there were a lot of early birds — but I do believe the ones I came out with were quality purchases. I’ve been looking for a copy of “Maus” since forever, and I finally found a copy there. I’ve been eyeballing “A History of Violence” ever since I watched the movie, and the fact that it was on sale at NBS’ FCBD certainly made the decision to buy it easier. And while I still haven’t read the first installment of “Filipino Heroes League”, I thought it best to get my copy of the second volume anyway.

I know that the best part of Free Comic Book Day is that you get free comic books, but the lines was seriously long. As in “I can’t deal with it!” long. I let others have the fun while I just took pictures of them browsing through the freebies. Each one of them got three comic books each!

Aside from the free comic books, NBS was also giving away original artwork from local artists who work for companies like Marvel and DC. I don’t know who won this piece, but I’d be pretty smug if I got to hang this up on  my wall.

These book/mask combos were pretty sweet, but I already had a copy of the comic book, so I thought twice about buying it. Although the bigger reason was that I didn’t have any money.

But the sweetest things there were probably these bad boys. I don’t have a BluRay player though, so buying them would have been stupid. Also, I didn’t have any money.

I resisted the lure of online shopping for the longest time, based on a couple of reasons:

1.) I was one of those people who did not have a credit card until I was well into my job at the broadsheet. And credit cards are essential to online purchases.

2.) Before moving to Manila, I lived in what would be generously labeled as the armpit of the National Capital Region — Pasay City. While delivery service would probably have no trouble finding the post office, getting my packages would involve me risking getting jeered, mugged, or stabbed. For real-real.

Of course, ordering online is now easier than ever, especially when you consider sites like Lazada. If they’d been around several years earlier, I would have been on this online shopping bandwagon quicker than you can say “Please buy this for me!”

No credit card? No problem, you can pay for your order once you receive it. Most items don’t have the high shipping fees you’d usually get when you order from other online retailers, and they even have a seven days return policy!

Which is why if you’re looking for gifts for your newly grads this summer, you guys should maybe consider checking out some of the book’s available on Lazada. They’ve got a nice selection of books written by Filipino authors — definitely more than you can say for other sites.

Just starting school this coming school year? You can prep your kids for kindergarten with the “Ready for School” series by Ani Almario. You can get all 10 books in the series for P825.

For your graduate fresh out of kindergarten and gearing up for big boy school, check out Adarna Publishing’s “Batang Historyador” series. Lazada has all five books in the series, at P412.50.

Other Adarna books you can find on Lazada include: “Magnificent Benito and His Two Front Teeth,” “The Grand Parade,” and “The Cat Painter”, the three of which you can buy for P241.

And don’t even front like you don’t want your kids to learn how to learn how to manage their little allowances. Or their totally inappropriately huge allowances, depending on what kind of parent you are. “Money for Kids: A Parent and Teacher’s Guide to Financial Literacy for Kids“

For high school kids, why not try weaning them off of some of the international fantasy offerings and introduce them to some local flavor? You can get Karen Francisco’s “Naemryth”, Karl de Mesa’s “News of the Shaman”, and Eliza Victoria’s “A Bottle of Storm Clouds” for P600.

Sometime you just need some overproduced K-Pop in your life.

Everyone knows about the “Hallyu wave” — the rise in popularity of Korean entertainment and culture that started in the 90s and is still going on today, if the programming of local television stations is taken as an indication.

Beyond their conquest of our airwaves, Koreans are also present in a very physical way here in the country. Not only has the Philippines recently welcomed its one millionth tourist from South Korea, the number of South Koreans coming here to the country to study the English language show no signs of declining any time soon.

However, there is still more to South Korea than K-Pop stars, Korean dramas, and students looking to learn English in a country closer to home. In “Korea: The Impossible Country”, The Economist’s Korea correspondent, Daniel Tudor, takes a look at the country beyond the kimchi and the K-Pop and reveals to readers a complex country full of conflicts and contradictions.

Indeed, there is so much more to Korea than what we see on our television screens — and some of it may even be shocking to the casual follower of Korean history.

Local admirers of everything Korean may be pleased to find out that the people of the Korean peninsula share a few similar traits with those of us here in the Philippines.

Foremost of these is the concept of “jeong,” or “the invisible hug.” Defined as “feelings of fondness, caring, bonding, and attachment that develop within interpersonal relationships,” it often leads to an interdependence that results in friends, schoolmates, or coworkers looking out and supporting each other first and foremost. It’s a concept similar to our very own “bayanihan,” and is something that Filipinos and Koreans can definitely bond over.

The chapters on the changing face of the Korean family and the high regard given to the English language will resonate with local readers as well. One can’t help but notice the parallel changes happening in Korean and Filipino families, and how both could learn a thing or two from each other.

In fact, Tudor writes quite a bit about Korean characteristics that Filipinos would do well to emulate. Foremost of that is the high regard given by Koreans to education. The book reveals that after the Korean War, the Syngman Rhee government increased elementary school enrollment eight times and secondary school enrollment 10 times, with 19 percent of the government’s budget spent on education. It’s a policy one certainly wishes the Philippine government would take.

But what gives “Korea: The Impossible Country” its added oomph is its willingness to take on the less than savory aspects present in the Korean peninsula.

Just like the Philippines, the Korean market is dominated by an oligarchy of family-run businesses, or chaebol. Through the years, these chaebol have grown to become global powerhouses as well — brands like Samsung, LG, and Hyundai are now competing against Western products.

What most of us may not know, and what Tudor reveals in the book, is that these chaebol found their start in a crony system not unlike that of former President Ferdinand Marcos. A past full of corruption, bribes, and dubious government connections are shared by these chaebol, and it is fascinating to read about and discover.

As powerful an export as Korea’s media has become, it is surprising to find out that the country has a dismal record when it comes to freedom of the press and free speech. South Korean libel laws are one of the strongest in the world — one can still be sued even if the allegations are true. As such, the book says that these laws have often been used to suppress political dissent in the country.

The pushback against the Hallyu wave is also fascinating to read, especially since it still hasn’t started here in the Philippines. In places like China, Japan, and Taiwan, Korean content is regulated, and is sometimes even subject to opposition. In 2011, thousands of protesters picketed Japan’s Fuji TV because of a perceived excess in its Korean programming.

Female fans looking to bag themselves a K-Pop husband — or at least the closest approximation of it — are also bound top be disappointed by the book’s frank appraisal of the country’s xenophobia. We may welcome them here in the country, but the same may not be the case in South Korea. As the book plainly states in Chapter 25, “Multicultural Korea?”, some bias exists in the country, especially against Southeast Asians.

The book maintains that it doesn’t seem like it will change any time soon: “It is unfortunate that while South Koreans are opening up very quickly to people from abroad, the pace of change is much slower for those from places like Indonesia or the Philippines. Since discrimination against people from these countries is mainly a product of wealth disparity, it will probably remain in spite of the decline of pure-blood nationalism.”

It is this wealth of information, the balanced perspective on the pros and cons of Koran society, as well as the clear and concise prose that prevents the book from reading like an academic textbook, that makes “Korea: The Impossible Country” impossible to resist. Admirers and detractors of everything Korean have a lot to gain from reading this book, and precious little to lose.

]]> http://ronreads.com/bookreview/book-review-daniel-tudors-korea-the-impossible-country/feed/ 0 http://ronreads.com/bookreview/book-review-jennifer-a-nielsens-the-false-prince/ http://ronreads.com/bookreview/book-review-jennifer-a-nielsens-the-false-prince/#comments Fri, 08 Mar 2013 02:53:39 +0000 Ronald http://ronreads.com/?p=1867 Continue reading →]]>

Jennifer A. Nielsen is no stranger to epic plots and lovable anti-heroes.

For instance, her “Underworld Chronicles” series features such a formula. The first book in the series, “Elliot and the Goblin War”, charmed readers and reviewers alike as it told the adventures if Elliot Penster, a boy who finds himself in the middle of a war between Goblins and Brownies. Kirkus called “Elliot and the Goblin War” a “quickly addictive page-turner”, and it spawned two equally liked sequels, “Elliot and the Pixie Plot” and :Elliot and the Last Underworld War”.

With “The False Prince”, published by Scholastic, Nielsen is taking that tried and tested formula and setting it in a much darker and deceptive world –  a definite departure from the world the “Underworld Chronicles” introduced to readers. Will going dark work in Nielsen’s favor? Or would it have been better off if she had stuck to her roots?

“The False Prince” follows the young orphan Sage as he finds himself drawn into a plot that intends to install an impostor on the vacated throne of the kingdom of Carthya. Along with two other orphans — Roden and Tobias — Sage is made to live in the residence of the nobleman Conner, who molds them to look and act like Jaron, Carthya’s lost prince.

While Conner maintains that all his machinations are intended to stop Carthya from plunging into civil war, Sage believes otherwise. But even as he tries to unravel Conner’s convoluted plots, he has to contend with Tobias and Roden, who are both desperate enought for a better life that they both are willing to lie, cheat, and maybe even kill, just to be the orphan that Conner installs on the throne.

As the day of their revelation draws near, Sage must use all of his wit and skill to outmaneuver not only his competitors, but Conner himself. Because as tempting as being a prince might be, the strings attached to that position may prove deadlier than anything in his previous life could be.

The themes and tropes that Nielsen explores in “The False Prince” aren’t exactly new to the seasoned fantasy reader. Political maneuvering, double-crosses, and untrustworthy allies are standard fare in epic fantasy, and older readers will readily recognize these in “The False Prince”.

What makes “The False Prince” such an entertaining read despite the twists and turns that older readers may find familiar is the fact that Nielsen has hit the jackpot with her characterization of Sage. Witty, wisecracking, and wonderfully fleshed-out, Sage is immediately engaging and intriguing to readers young and old.

That is why Nielsen’s decision to write the book through the perspective of Sage is such an inspired choice. Young readers will have no trouble identifying with Sage’s rebellious nature, while older readers will find him witty and charming, and perfectly capable of leading readers through the book’s 54 chapters.

While the book’s central mystery can be easily figured out by older readers or perceptive tweens, Nielsen throws in enough red herrings and misdirections so that readers still get a thrill of having their suspicions proven right in the book’s later chapters. She also does a great job of pulling together all the loose ends scattered throughout the book to come up with a climactic confrontation that satisfyingly answers any questions that readers may have.

And while Sage may take center stage, the book’s other characters aren’t any less interesting either. Both Tobias and Roden are hard to pin down, with Nielsen successfully obfuscating their true motives and intentions. Also of note are the servant girl Imogen and  Princess Amarinda, two female characters who hold their own against the mostly male cast of characters.

Sage’s voice is so engrossing that it’s enough to overshadow a lot of the book’s shortcomings.

As a villain, Conner isn’t as complex a creation as Sage. Even as he maintains that what he is doing is for the good of Carthya, the way he is written makes it too obvious where his loyalties actually lie. If it weren’t for the verbal tussles he engages in with Sage, Conner would hardly be worth the reader’s attention.

It is also Sage’s engaging voice that distracts from the less than stellar world-building within the novel. Despite the world map that is prominently featured on the book’s first few pages, it’s hard to get a feel of the kind of world that Nielsen’s characters move in. The fact that most of the action happens within the four walls of a nobleman’s estate doesn’t help either.

Despite these faults, it’s hard not to look forward to the promise of more Sage in the sequel, “The Runaway King”. If he remains as engaging and as exciting as he is here in “The False Prince”, then there’s no doubt that Nielsen has a smashing success in her hands once more.

The people who’ve been reading the blog for the past two years know that, with the exemption of “Beautiful Redemption“, I have been a very big supporter of the “Beautiful Creatures” series. I quite frankly bawled at the end of “Beautiful Chaos”.

When news of the movie adaptation came out, I was understandably excited, especially when Jack O’ Connell was first cast in the role of Ethan. Then he got replaced by Alden Ehrenreich, and I was a little bummed.

BUT THEN! Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons got cast as Sarafine and Macon, respectively, and I felt myself getting excited for the movie adaptation again. Add to that the fact that the movie had some pretty impressive trailers, and I was quite pumped to see it over the weekend.

Quite frankly, there’s a lot of things in the movie for people to complain about. Purists will be up in arms at how much the movie differs from the book. Movie critics will lambast it for how sloppily it was made. And somebody from the South will probably make fun of all the accents in the movie.

I can’t say I disagree either. Lots of characters have been jettisoned, and it doesn’t always result  in something good. Combining the characters of Amma and Marion into one streamlines the narrative, but it also resulted in a character that isn’t as memorable as the Amma in the book was.

Link is basically non-existent in the movie, reduced to just making out with Emmy Rossum. Which really isn’t all that bad a gig if you’re a straight guy. But the character is no longer the lovable doof from the book.

In fact, the least likable characters from the book — Ethan and Lena — end up being the most relatable characters in the movie. Their love story comes off as more grounded here in the movie than in the book, and there is an authenticity in their interactions that just wasn’t present in the novel.

Plot also seems to be the least of the film’s considerations. Magical terms are handed out so willy-nilly that those who didn’t read the book will most definitely be confused,  and anything that could set the stage for the second book/film were discarded. It’s like they already knew that this was the first and last time that they would be able to do this.

But having said all that, 10 minutes into the movie I was already hopelessly in love with it. Crazy, right?

Maybe it’s because I grew up reading so much Anne Rice that anything set in the South is immediately fascinating and charming to me. Maybe I just have a thing for anything even remotely gothic — and I think I can still blame Anne Rice for that. But I just found all of the craziness in “Beautiful Creatures” so entertaining.

I also loved how helpless all of the men in this movie were. It was refreshing for me that a supernatural teen romance has the women keeping the men in thrall. The climactic confrontation scene — where it was just Lena, Sarafine, and Ridley — was so fascinating for me to watch because the only male character was dying on the ground and didn’t say a word.

I also liked how it is made more explicit in the movie that Lena chose to be both light and dark. I thought it was very inspiring to have this young girl declare that she isn’t just the Virgin or just the Whore. She can be a little bit of both, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

It was most definitely not a good movie, and I don’t think I’d recommend it to other people who I don’t really know personally. But I most certainly enjoyed it, and if you think the same way that I do, you’ll probably enjoy it too.

Now have some pictures of Alden Ehrenreich.

]]> http://ronreads.com/book-to-movie-review-2/book-to-movie-review-beautiful-creatures/feed/ 0 http://ronreads.com/bookreview/book-review-melissa-marrs-carnival-of-souls/ http://ronreads.com/bookreview/book-review-melissa-marrs-carnival-of-souls/#comments Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:46:45 +0000 Ronald http://ronreads.com/?p=1850 Continue reading →]]>

From 2007 to 2011, Melissa Marr was a constant presence on bestseller lists, thanks to the five books that make up her “Wicked Lovely” series.

Through “Wicked Lovely,” “Ink Exchange,” “Fragile Eternity,” “Radiant Shadows,” and “Darkest Mercy”, Marr introduced readers to the world of the Faery Courts, where mythical creatures plot and plan against each other and struggle against the machinations of Bananach, the embodiment of war.

After achieving so much success writing faery tales — “Wicked Lovely” peaked at number two on the New York Times Bestseller Lists, while “Ink Exchange” was a Locus Recommended Read — one wouldn’t fault Marr if she kept on doing so.

However, her latest book, “Carnival of Souls”, is certainly something different. Marr takes a break from the world of the fae and introduces readers to The City, a place populated by daimons and where danger, deception, and violence is the norm.

But will Marr’s decision to take on a new world that readers may not be familiar with prove to be a wise one? Will “Carnival of Souls” blaze a new path for Marr, or would she have been better off sticking to what worked in the past?

“Carnival of Souls” tells the stories of Aya, Kaleb, and Mallory, three teenagers whose lives are being drawn closer to each other by the political machinations and power plays constantly happening in The City’s Carnival of Souls.

Aya, a noble-born woman seeking to change the way things are done in The City, has entered in the Carnival of Souls’ male-dominated  Competition, where the winner gains a place in the ruling class and an opportunity to shape the way things are run in the chaos that is The City.

As the Competition runs its course, Aya crosses paths with Kaleb, a lower caste daimon fighting for a better life for himself and his packmate, Zevi. To make ends meets, Kaleb has been offering his services as an assasin, and one of his jobs has taken him into the human world, where he is tasked to kill Mallory, the daughter of Marchosias, the most powerful daimon in The City.

Further complicating matters is the fact that Mallory has no idea of her true daimon nature. Spirited away from The City as a baby, Mallory has been raised by withces and told all her life that daimons are things to be feared and destroyed. Despite that, she finds herself growing closer and closer to Kaleb.

Circumstances bring these three disparate people together, and the distrust they have for each other is certainly mutual. But as far more powerful forces than either one of them start to converge, Aya, Kaleb, and Mallory must learn to trust each other if they are to survive.

It’s abundantly clear form the first few chapters what the biggest strength of “Carnival of Souls” is — Marr’s ability to craft a tangled plot criss-crossed with power plays, political maneuvering, and backdoor deals that seem to abound in the tumult of The City. It’s hugely entertaining keeping track of who’s allied to whom, and the constant wheeling and dealing adds another layer of tensions to the one already built-in to the Competition.

It’s also wonderful that the people who populate The City and move the plot along are also such great characters. Aya is a study in complexity, and it’s fascinating to read about her inner conflict as she grapples with her desire for power and respect and her love for her former betrothed, Belias.

Adam, Mallory’s witch stepfather, is a pleasure to read as well. Deeply flawed but also deeply protective of his stepdaughter, her actions throughout the book will have readers raising their eyebrows and maybe even their voices in consternation.

The City, while not as fleshed out as one would like, is still likely to engross readers with its brand of danger and deceit. Pain and pleasure coexist side by side in The City. It’s something its citizens seem to enjoy all the more because of the constant threat of the Untamed Lands knocking right on their doorstep.

Marr should also be commended for the unflinching way that she depicts the savageness that exists in The City. Kaleb and Zevi have had to murder and whore themselves to survive, and Aya is working against a society that is deeply masochistic. Their lives and what they go through may not be pretty to look at, but one certainly can’t look away.

“Carnival of Souls” does have some missteps, foremost of which is the character of Mallory. It’s hard to root for her the way Marr has written her — someone devoid of her own choices and whose concerns seem to revolve only around Kaleb and Adam throughout the course of the novel.

There is also the fact that Marr’s engaging plot isn’t matched by equally engaging prose. More often that not, the words on the page come off as dry and listless, completely out of sync with the quick-moving plot. If the readers keep on turning the pages, it certainly isn’t for the prose.

“Carnival of Souls” ends on a cliffhanger, and while there is certainly enough plot to fill another book, the question is whether the book’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses enough for readers to want to have another go. As it is, the series has a 50/50 chance.

]]> http://ronreads.com/bookreview/book-review-melissa-marrs-carnival-of-souls/feed/ 0 http://ronreads.com/author-interview/ronreads-interview-lysley-tenorio/ http://ronreads.com/author-interview/ronreads-interview-lysley-tenorio/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2013 02:01:37 +0000 Ronald http://ronreads.com/?p=1838 Continue reading →]]>

I feel like I have to start this out with an apology.

Lysley Tenorio is a nice guy, who was very accommodating even after a day full of interviews. He answered every question I had, and they were great answers too! He would often be quiet for a few seconds, really digesting the question in his mind, I guess, before replying.

What I feel I need to apologize for is that I could have done better. I feel like I could have asked better questions and dug deeper, but this was an off day for me. Everybody has them, I guess.

In this interview, Lysley Tenorio talks about growing in a multicultural neighborhood in California, getting the emotions rights, and why he loves working with the short story.

RONREADS (RR): Is this your first time in the country since you left?

LYSLEY TENORIO (LT): I’ve been here a couple of times. We left here when I was seven months old and then we came back when I was seven years old for about a month. And then I came back when I was 27 for about three weeks, and now I’m back. I’ve spent very, very little time in the Philippines.

RR: That’s surprising to me because when I was reading the stories in “Monstress”, I thought that you had grown up here. The way you’ve written about Filipinos and the Philippines feels authentic.

LT: I appreciate that because that’s one of the worries that I had. I’m not trying to say that this book represents anything, but I did want it to seem authentic, especially to a Filipino reader. I’m glad that you believed it.

RR: Where did you get this authenticity then, if you didn’t grow up here in the country?

LT: I grew up in a Filipino family, and in many ways we are a traditional Filipino family. We grew up in a suburb in San Diego called Mira Mesa, which is called Manila Mesa because there are a lot of Filipinos, so I think just growing up in that kind of environment and being aware of the Filipino popular culture. My family would sometimes rent Tagalog movies and we’d watch it as a family. In recent years, my mother watches TFC. You can watch an episode of Wowowee (laughs) and glean a lot from that, at least for a story. Growing up in a multicultural community helped with some of the characterization.

RR: You’ve never been to Culion then?

LT: No, but I did a lot of research. I was able to get a primary source, a book about Culion, a very old book that had pictures, illustrations. I saw pictures of their currency, of their money there. I had to do a lot of research for that.

RR: At which point did you know that you had enough research? Or do you research as you write?

LT: I definitely do some preliminary research just to lay down some groundwork, and I research as I write. But at a certain point, these stories are about characters. I can only do so much research, and you know I would love to make sure that I get everything right, but there’s probably stuff in there that I get wrong. But it’s fiction, and the things that I need to get right are the emotional lives of the characters. That’s the thing that needs to be authentic; their emotional, psychologic, and interior lives.

RR: Were there actual Filipino films that actually inspired some of the fictional ones mentioned in “Monstress”, or were they all American B movies?

LT: I don’t remember the titles, but I remember watching a lot of really bad Filipino vampire movies that bordered on comedy. I actually couldn’t tell if they were meant to be funny. I named one of the movies in “Monstress” “Dracula, Dracula” because it’s a Filipino thing to repeat names (laughs). That to me felt like it could be Filipino. Seeing a couple of those growing up I think influenced me a bit.

RR: What are particular Filipino things in the household that you grew up in?

LT: The food. Corned beef in the cupboards. Santo Nino. Crosses. Rosaries dangling from the rearview mirror. We had the upright piano (laughs). It seems like every good Filipino family, at least in America, has an upright piano. Definitely some of the furniture is still covered in plastic. That was very Filipino growing up.

RR: You were talking about growing up in a traditional Filipino family, but did you also grow up in a family that was into reading and writing? Or are you the first one in the family?

LT: My older sister is five years older than me and she loved to read when she was younger, but no one in my family pursued the arts. That’s not to say that there aren’t any of them artistically or creatively-inclined, but I’m the only one who made it into a pursuit and a career choice.

RR: So where did this fascination with writing and the arts come from?

LT: I’m the fifth of five children, and we were all about five years apart. There’s almost a 20 year span between me and my oldest sibling. By the time I came around, my parents were pretty hands-off. They didn’t neglect me, but they let me do my own thing, which I really appreciate. I was the kind of kid who at four or five years old, would go into my room, close the door, and be in there for hours and just draw. I would just read comic books. That’s all I cared about. They didn’t force me if I didn’t want to play outside. They didn’t make me do any sport or anything (laughs). I did what I wanted to do and I did what I knew. And so I think just having that idea of just reading and drawing, these two very creative hobbies as a kid, naturally lead me to writing.

It took a long time to get there. I did not grow up wanting to be a writer. It was not some childhood dream of mine. I didn’t start writing until I was maybe 21. But having that love of drawing and reading comic books, especially when I was younger, is probably the seed of this writing thing that I’m doing.

RR: Do you still remember the comic books you were into as a kid?

LT: The Justice League, Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes. I was DC. Everyone made fun of me but I like DC. I was not a Marvel kid.

RR: Can you still remember your first story?

LT: The first story was about a young woman who has this repressed memory of her mother having to sell their youngest child, her baby brother, out of desperation. It sounds terrible, doesn’t it?

RR: It sounds very Filipino teleserye.

LT: Right! But I think I made them Mexican. I was writing these immigrant tragedies of the week. Really bad, bad stuff. It was bad, but at least it gave me the energy to write. I knew I wanted to get better.

RR: What made you move away from those “immigrant tragedies” then?

LT: I moved away from them because they were so one-dimensional. I was trying to offer a kind of political thesis, that immigrant life is hard. But everyone knows that (laughs). It’s not like i’m saying anything new. What I realized is that what I needed to commit to is not so much the subtextual message, but the story and the character. Here is a character who is making a really bad movie. Here is a character who is trapped in a leper colony. Just focus on the situation that these characters are in and find the drama there. All the other stuff — identity politics, issues of home, issues of leaving home — that stuff will just naturally rise to the surface if the reader is so inclined.

RR: I also liked how there seems to be a running theme about the families we make for ourselves in the stories. Is that something you gravitated towards when you first started writing?

LT: In “The Brothers”, for sure. Family is a big deal for me, and in some cases you do need to create your own family. I think that is true for a lot of people who leave one home for another. They’ve got to create their own communities. He did have his family here, but that was when he was Eric. When he became Erica, he had to find his own family. It’s definitely something I think about.

RR: Which comes first when you write a story? Did you find out about Culion first, or did you want to write about a leper colony and Culion was conveniently there?

LT: With that story, I wanted to write a story set in a leper colony because I read an article about a leper colony in Japan in the Wall Street Journal. It was a very moving article.

When I started doing more research about leper colonies, I found out that there was a leper colony in the Philippines and that it was run by Americans and full of Filipino patients. There was all these different layers of tension and conflict. That was one where I wanted to write about a leper colony and then I found out there was one in the Philippines.

But usually it all begins with the research. Sometimes I just look through the news just to find ideas. I wrote a story, it didn’t quite work. There’s corruption in the police force in Manila, and at a certain point a lot of them had gained weight and they were forced to climb Mount Pinatubo as punishment or exercise. I tried writing something about that. You find these weird situations that can be interesting, and you try to create characters out of those situations. I couldn’t get that story right.

RR: Is there anything within the collection that you feel the closet to?

LT: I feel closest to the last story in the collection, “L’amour, CA” It’s the story that took the longest. It took 10 years to finish. And I think the reason that it was so hard for me is because it doesn’t have that overtly strange factor of faith healers or leprosy or drag queens. It’s just about a family moving to America and having a difficult time. It’s a really ordinary story, and it’s ordinariness was really hard for me to capture and dramatize. That was the story that was hardest for me and that’s why I feel closest to it.

The crowd at the Lysley Tenorio book signing held last week.

RR: What is it about short stories that you like and you like working with?

LT: I like that the short story demands that you be economical because you only have a certain amount of space. I feel like every word and every sentence has to do extra work. Everything that you leave out, you have to leave out for a purpose, because you can only pick and choose the things you want to include. I like having to work with that sense of economy and precision, and I think it makes for a really satisfying read. You can read a short story in one sitting and it’s done. You can think about the whole thing and you can look at it. As human beings, we tell stories everyday. We don’t tell novels to each other. We tell stories. And I like the package of it.

RR: How different are the reactions between Filipino readers and Fil-Am readers?

LT: I think with Filipino-Americans, they’re not as familiar with these situations, like faith healers. Culion is something they’ve ever thought about. It’s all very new. What I’m finding being here in just the past day and a half, a lot of these stories are things that they’ve heard about. I appreciate that they seem to appreciate having these things they know about appear in ficiton. It feels almost validating to hear from Filipino readers that the book sounds authentic. Whereas for Filipino-American readers, it’s just new and strange material. Here, it’s stuff that Filipino readers recognize and is being rendered with some sort of authenticity. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.

RR: What do want people to take from these stories after they’ve read them, whether they’re Filipino or Fil-Am?

LT: I hope that they’re going to feel like they were taken away to another life, to another world. I hope that they’re moved. I hope that there are things that make them happy and I hope that there are things that make them sad about these stories. I feel like all these characters win but they also lose. I hope that they have a real emotional journey and a complicated one, because I’m hoping that these stories are multi-layered and complex emotionally. And more than anything, I hope that they’re entertained. People lead busy lives, and their time is very valuable. If someone were to read my story and feel bored, I would feel horrible (laughs). I wasted your time! I hope that they’re entertained for an hour or for however long it takes to read the story.

(Photos are from the National Book Store Facebook page)