Review - Met by Midnight

Original Title: Met by Midnight
Series: Star-Crossed Gifts
Author: Janeen Ippolito
Published: September 22nd, 2020
Publisher: Uncommon Universes Press

*THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS AND ONE F BOMB*

THIS HAS TO BE ONE OF THE WORST THINGS I'VE EVER READ.

Whatever this is... it's not a Cinderella retelling. Run from here as fast as you can.

I'll start by saying that, under the claim that a book is a Cinderella retelling, writers and publishers deliver literally anything. The same thing happens with the first book in the Throne of Glass series, by Sarah J. Maas. It's marketed as a Cinderella retelling, but when you read it, you can't recognize any elements from the original story. Both that one, and Met by Midnight, may have some aspects in common with the original fairytale, but that doesn't make them Cinderella retellings per se. As I read this one, I kept thinking that it did not remind me of Cinderella at all, and I kept wondering, why is this even a retelling? Just because it features royalty, a ball and a heroine in servitude?

I'm seriously angry. If you are going to write a book like this, it works just the same without saying it is a Cinderella retelling. Because if you say it is, and then turn it into some sort of unfleshed out fairytale dystopia wich such a far-fetched concept that feels nothing but forced, and it's basically cannibalism... leave poor Cinderella out of it. She deserves better.  

My point is, I understand the original fairytales are, indeed very flat and simple, but retellings like this one are golden opportunities for writers to fill the blanks and make them richer, deeper, and more complex. To tell us that the story was not as simple as we always thought it was. But this book felt more as a lack of respect to the original story. It doesn't feature the stepmother or the stepsisters, and least of all, the glass slipper.

Plus, the whole meeting each other in their dreams thing sounds more like Once Upon a Dream, from Sleeping Beauty, rather than Cinderella. 

Janeen Ippolito seriously needs a few lessons on narration and storytelling, because her entire book feels like a rough draft, not a polished novel ready for publication. The characters are flat and depthless. The setting is unfleshed out. Things happens so fast... It's like she poured all her ideas on the paper as she got them, but didn't work on making them deeper and more complex. I felt nothing reading this novel, except anger.

Don't get me wrong, though. The whole idea of Menders isn't bad, and it could have been better. Renna and her father are prisoners in a Sanctuary where Menders are used as tools by the government, forcing them to heal, and also to marry other Menders, so they  can have children that will also be Menders. This is supposed to be the dystopian aspect of it, a powerful class of people with healing powers used by the government to stay young and healthy, basically through a practice that sounds a lot like cannibalism. Apparently this Sanctuary place is ruled by Attendants and Guardians, but we never get an explanation of what's the difference between the two, which is their role there, nor we get a scene in which to see the real consequences of defying them.

Renna, the heroine, could have been a good character, but she falls flat, and she's... well, she's an idiot. I can understand how she feels about freedom, the need to leave her prison and decide her own fate. But it's so poorly written that it's not even engaging. I don't care if by the end she gets to be free or not, or if she lives or dies. She's forced to Mend, taking on her own body the ailments of others, and then suffering the consequences. During one of these sessions, she meets Lady Anlyn, who is the Fairy Godmother of the story, the one that finds out the terrible life Menders live and helps her in her quest to get the royal seal, rescue her father from the Sanctuary and take him to freedom before he dies. She's the one that provides the dress and the possibility to go to the ball. And in this ball, there's a prince, of course. Prince Jaricob, the second son of the King and Queen, apparently cursed and beyond all healing, because Menders have no effect on him.

Known as Jaric, this prince is... well, he's also an idiot. His family considers him disposable. He's in love with the girl he sees in his dreams, he's convinced she's real, and even though his parents want to marry him off and send him away to the northeastern province (conveniently, Renna's homeland), he refuses, because:

"His heart belonged to another, even though she may not exist."

He loves a woman he never met. And this, for me, it's an insta-no. I'm not even sorry. I can't root for a love story in which the people involved haven't even met. But it doesn't get any better when they finally do. Jaric follows Renna when she leaves the ballroom, and they meet in his study.

"She could no more envision him harming her than she could imagine her own parents raising a blade to her throat.

 No, this royal, this man, would only assist her.

With every aspect of her being."

Last time I checked, Renna's power was healing, not mind reading. And then:

"And that confidence raised a fresh shudder along her skin. Not of fear, but another feeling that Renna had only learned about from the book she had read on spousal pairing. A sense of deep connection, of desire fueling every part of her with heat and need."

You've got to be KIDDING ME.

And then they kiss, and the world stops, and then Jaric is called to the ballroom to announce his engagement; he checks the time and it's 11:45 PM, when it was only 10 when he entered the room. All I could think was "how long have you been kissing?"

And if this wasn't enough, Renna thinks this:

"She barely knew him, and yet all she wanted to do was lose herself in Jaric's arms at last and forever."

At last from what, if you never saw him before?? *massive eye-roll*

So cringy.

"However she also barely knew Anlyn, and Renna had trusted her a great deal. So perhaps that reasoning was not so useful?"

It's cute that she's using the word reasoning for it. Because that's not reasoning, it's just stupidity. Renna is indeed intolerably stupid.  On the one hand she has been warned her whole life that she can't trust anyone, and then this happens. 

"Her hands itched to trail up his arms, to see if his biceps truly were that large, his jaw that strong."

I thought this was a life or death situation. Would you focus, please? You exhaust me. And you are making me angrier than I already am.

Because before this scene, there was the Royal Fellowship Ball. Honestly, there's nothing I love more than a fairytale ball, to the obsession point. I've rewatched ball scenes from fantasy and period movies and tv shows I adore, more than a thousand times, and they are one of the things I love the most about them. So, naturally, I was looking forward to Cinderella's iconic ball scene. But as soon as Renna enters the ball and meets Jaric, she exits the room. And it made me furious! Because if there's anything you need to get right in a story based on Cinderella, is the ball scene.

But here, I didn't see anything, or met anyone new. And if in a supposed Cinderella retelling you cheat me out of the most important scene in the entire story, I will hate you with a burning passion. Janeen Ippolito's writing, as I said, requires polishing, and lots of it, and this was especially noticeable here, because I can't forgive that I was cheated out of this. Angry beyond reason, all I could think was "this is a royal ball, f***ng DESCRIBE IT!!". Make the world immersive, tell me about the dresses, the ballroom, the dancing, the music... ANYTHING. But everything is rushed, flat and unfleshed, and there's not even a dance scene, an intimate moment of the prince taking the mystery girl's hand for the dance that will decide her fate. Oh, and just because a book is a Cinderella retelling doesn't mean that her ballgown has to be blue. Just because Disney made it blue doesn't mean you have to do the same. Especially if you are striving to give your own spin to the original story.

The more I read, the more I hated this book. Everything about it is so wrong. The dialogue sucks. The characters are one dimensional, and that's for the hero and heroine alone, because the rest of the characters... Keddyr, Lady Anlyn, Princess Usilea... they are basically background noise. The supposed betrayal by the end -that it is, but then it's not-, the horror elements around the crimes committed by the King and Queen... SO FAR FETCHED. They didn't feel organic, or like they fit with the rest of the story. And much less a Cinderella retelling.

 As for the plot twist, with Jaric being a Mender... It was a no, for me. It didn't feel natural. Of course, since he doesn't have Renna's training to heal people, he's not ready for the consequences of Receiving, and falls unconscious. And I could not understand why he woke up in Lady Anlyn's state, to the quiet and peaceful scenes that follow, when as far as we know all the soldiers in the kingdom are looking for him. Plus, his dog, Opal, is there, and the last thing we know is that he left her in the palace after escaping the ball. How is she there? Who brought her here? Keddyr? Lady Anlyn? Who?

Calling this terrible book a Cinderella retelling is an insult to the original fairytale. There is not one single thing I liked about it. And I can't forgive the fact that I did not get to go to the royal ball. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and I can't understand the glowing five star reviews it got. For me, it's a no.

***

Thank you for reading. Hope my next read isn't this bad.

See you soon!

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Review - Shatter Me

Original Title: Shatter Me
Series: Shatter Me, #1
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Published: November 11th, 2011
Publisher: HarperCollins

*THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Before starting this, I should probably tell you that this will be an angry rant review, the type I normally reserve the one star GoodReads rating for. So, if you like this saga, you shouldn’t keep reading, because I don’t have anything good to say about this book, and you are not going to like it.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The reason I grabbed this book is simple. I heard it is becoming a tv series this year, and I didn’t want to be late to the party. After all, it happened to me before that, upon watching adaptations of popular books and sagas I had ignored, I found amazing stories I couldn’t believe I didn’t know before. So, as I saw this one was so popular among the reading community, and had been translated to so many languages, I decided to give it a try. And, oh, my God, what a let down! I can’t believe how so many people love this so much.

Upon the first few chapters things were going smoothly. Juliette, as narrator, telling us about her situation, locked up in that asylum for so long, was good in the way that it truly reflected a person both physically and mentally trapped, someone who had spent too much time in the sole company of herself and her thoughts. Her way of speaking truly reflected her isolation, her hopelessness, the feeling of being caged as an animal, and the prison of her own mind, as she tried to keep her sanity. She had this relatable moment in which I thought “I’m going to like this girl” because in her words I saw me:

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books” [...] “In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”

For a moment I thought Tahereh Mafi was an amazing, talented new author I would want to keep reading. But that feeling soon crashed and burned, and I don’t even know where to start to explain myself.

Let’s go for the writing. I believe the style is called “purple prose”, and I don’t need more examples of it to tell you I don’t like it. It’s unnerving. Juliette, as the narrator, gets so annoying I wanted to throw the book at the wall every few pages. And I’m going to use actual quotes to support this. For example, at one point she says “Mechanical clinks/cracks/creaks and shifts shake the space I’m standing in.” *deep breath* Really? Do you need three adjectives to describe one single sound? Is it that important? Or, about Adam, she goes “his lips his lips his lips”, just like that, no comas, no breathing, and I wonder, is it necessary? (spoiler: no, it’s not). 

Juliette’s narration drove me CRAZY, especially with these particular phrases and moments:

- “Heat rushes up my neck and I fall off a ladder holding a paintbrush dipped in red.” - What a hell is that?? I’m so glad you asked: it is unnecessary, uncalled for, and exhausting. All those fancy words are only there to tell us she blushed when Adam grinned. And this is just one example of the other thousand times it happens.

- “My heart is parasailing in the springtime.” - *eye roll* Forget her powers, this is the kind of thing Juliette should be in an asylum for. If I meet a person who talks like this every few sentences I would probably think she needs therapy. As poetic as it may sound, I don’t think a Dystopia is the type of story to fill with that kind of writing. 

- “The sun is revolving around the moon when he responds.” - What a hell does it even mean?? Why it is there? To make me lose the little patience I have left? There’s not even a point for that sentence, it’s too farfetched, it doesn’t add anything to the moment, it’s just... confusing. And exhausting.

- “His lips are spelling secrets and my ears are spilling ink, staining my skin with his stories.” - such a FORCED metaphor, as there’s another billion in the book. For God’s sake, STOP! Talk like a normal person, I’m begging you! You are draining my energy! 

Don’t get me wrong, though. Metaphors are good from time to time, but it should be a limit. Here, it is like the author overloaded the book with them just to show us she can do it. Here is the thing: they are like condiments. You use them to spice up a dish, but if you put too much, you ruin the food, and can’t truly taste it. And this book felt exactly like that, like I was reading metaphors among which I had to find an actual tasteless plot, instead of a plot in which I could find some clever metaphor scattered here and there, and enjoy the hint of poetry in the middle of the prose.

And finally, this abhorrent thing, upon a dialogue between Adam and Juliette:

- “I want to ask and don’t want to ask and need to ask and never want to ask. I have to ask.” - *eye roll and face-palmage* This is EXHAUSTING *snapping fingers repeatedly in Juliette’s face* Come on girl, FOCUS! Make a decision!

I had more examples, but I think you get the idea. Just so you know, the whole book is filled with this kind of phrases, and I could quote a million of them. But don’t worry, I won’t. I choose to keep my sanity. Let’s move on!

Juliette Ferrars is a cardboard character, and I couldn’t stand her. There’s no explanation for her powers, and she lives sunk in self-pity for what they caused in her life (her parents’ rejection, the boy she accidentally killed). She’s considered a monster, a pariah. But when she comes out of her prison, suddenly every single male character is attracted to her, and she’s set as this oh, so insanely beautiful girl who is unaware of her own looks (cliché?). She’s presented as so smart –given the kind of phrases and metaphors she uses–, and as a badass, but unsuccessfully. I don’t like her, and nothing can change that, I’m afraid; and it’s not for the sake of comparison, but I read about so many other female heroines, in so much better books, that, without half of Juliette’s abilities, can teach her a thing or two about true badassery, repeatedly kick her ass, and send her crying like a baby to a corner.

Let’s talk about Adam Kent for a while. From the moment he appeared I knew he eventually would become the love interest. After all, when you are presented a physically perfect character, there’s not much space for doubt. You just know. And that bothered me so much! Adam is set to be this perfect person, and fully becomes a YA stereotype good guy. He does everything right, he has no faults in Juliette’s eyes, and obviously, he has the perfectly sculpted body (like it could have been otherwise), unique blue eyes, dark hair, and so on. And I just don’t like when the heroine falls for a guy she considers “perfect”. It doesn’t work for me, if I wanted to read that I would grab the Twilight saga. On the other hand, Adam is such a good person, that even after running away with Juliette and being chased, he doesn’t even shoot to kill, only to incapacitate, even when every single soldier out there has been ordered to kill him on sight. And I just… *sigh of defeat* This is beyond me.

The love story is probably one of the worst I’ve ever read. I don’t buy insta-loves, and this isn’t the exception. Juliette makes no sense, she says she wants to touch someone with her heart, but when she “falls in love”, it’s only a physical relationship, and there’s absolutely no reason for Juliette and Adam to fall for each other. They claim to know each other from school, and they jump from there to the “I love you”, and that may be enough for them, but for me, it’s not. I can’t root for characters I don’t know. I can’t trust they know each other enough to unfold a love story like this one, because I haven’t been there to see the reasons behind those feelings. Plus, Juliette describes and praises Adam’s body every few sentences, and I’m like “Ok, the guy is hot, I get it, let’s move on!”. I’m here to be told a story, not to read some guy’s description, and/or a completely unreal love based on perfection, which annoys me even more, because I personally consider that love isn’t because of perfection, but because, even knowing imperfection, being together is still worthy. 

Some phrases were just so out of place. At one point, Juliette says “I want to taste the landscape of his body.”, and I just… *throwing book at the wall* What is this, a YA Dystopia or a bodice ripper historical romance?? Not only is the love story so poorly written is sickening, they can’t seem to be able to take their hands from each other for a second. Because, of course, Adam can touch her, when everyone else can’t, and he happens to be the hottest person on the planet. How convenient. Plus, as I already said, Juliette says she wants to touch someone with her heart, but her relationship with Adam is mostly horniness and making out. The scenes in which they almost have sex are too much, and it was kind of boring, like “come on, you like each other, we get it. Is something going to happen, or I just have to read about you making out for another million paragraphs?”. I got sick of them kissing in the most inappropriate times and places, and of Juliette describing her body’s reaction to Adam’s touch every-single-damn-time . Moreover, at one point, I read an entire paragraph of it only to realize I didn’t get a word, because my mind went somewhere else, and I discovered I didn’t even need to re-read it because I was not missing anything worthy important. It feels as if Tahereh Mafi is trying to mask a weak romance with so many metaphors and descriptions, and Juliette and Adam’s obsession with each other. Both things add absolutely nothing to the story, they feel like filler content, and take half of the book. And I just can’t read a novel based solely on that. I need something more.

Ok. Moving on. I would like so say a few words about the villain, Warner. At first, I thought he had potential, but soon it fell flat. He’s obsessed with Juliette and wants to use her as a weapon in a war that is barely mentioned, and although he’s meant to be this guy slowly going crazy by power, I hated him for a whole lot of different reasons. He’s so poorly written that I just couldn’t even hate him for the right thing. He keeps talking to Juliette about his plans, and when he discovered that he could actually touch her, I wanted to flush the book down the toilet. The scene in which Warner finally captures Juliette was the final straw. He pins her against the wall and kisses her, and I quote: “I don’t know how to reconcile the confusion in my mind, my hesitant repulsion, my inexplicable chemical reaction to his lips.” It is like she knows this is wrong, but at the same time she doesn’t want him to stop, when a few pages ago she claimed she loved Adam. Oh, my God, she’s so annoying! And I wonder, is this supposed to be the hint of a future love triangle around a girl who can’t touch people, but casually these two guys can? What are the odds? In my opinion, it would be a lot more meaningful and less insufferable if Adam can’t actually touch her, like the rest of the world, and they count it as another reason to fight for their love and find a way to be together. That would be something worth reading instead of seeing that they are great with each other right from the get-go (and can’t control their impulses).

There’s so many scenes that just don’t make much sense, like when, after Kenji shows up all beaten up in Adam’s house and warns them about the soldiers being an inch away from capturing them, he immediately goes and hits on Juliette for at least… two pages? I think that both Kenji and the scene are meant to be funny, but they aren’t. I mean, weren’t they in a rush? Two seconds earlier they were getting ready to run as fast as they could, and now they have time to flirt? Right after that, Adam’s little brother, James, comes home, they try to explain him that they have to flee, Kenji blurts a cuss word, and Adam tells him not to use them in front of James, who says he doesn’t mind, because he hears them all the time. And then, Adam has no better idea than asking him where he learns cuss words, and says is not okay for him to keep hearing them… *eye roll* Are they running for their lives or NOT?? Come on people, common sense! Right in the next line, Juliette says “we are all fugitives running for our lives” and Adam decides to play the big brother part, worried about Kenji’s swear words in front of his kid brother *if I roll my eyes one more time I’ll go blind* 

After this, things just go from bad to worse. They are finally captured, and Adam is shot and tortured. And the worst part wasn’t the situation itself, but finding myself thinking that “if he dies, I actually don’t care”, and if your reaction to a main character’s (and love interest) death is “meh”, I think that speaks volumes. Anyway, Juliette is taken alive to Warner, and here is when things start making even less sense. This is the scene I previously referred to, when he kisses her, and she sorts of likes it, but my point is that, in previous chapters, Juliette proved the reach of her powers, being able to smash through nothing less than a concrete wall with her bare hands (and later, steel), but right now, she can’t push Warner away? Seriously? Are you going to tell me she’s not capable of just breaking his arm, or snapping a finger or two, instead of trying to reach for his gun?

But, wait, it gets worse. She manages to reach Warner’s gun, shoots him and escapes, to find and rescue Adam. For some reason, she finds him (it’s not very clear how), in a prison of concrete and steel, tied up, and absolutely NO ONE is watching him. I mean, an entire army was after him (with every possible high-tech advantage), and once they capture him, they just leave him there, alone, unguarded? Right. I think that speaks for itself, I won’t delve deeper. You get what I mean.

Can we just talk about the ending? They escape the army, guided by Kenji, and find themselves in the rebel’s hideout, where, as I guessed from the start, Juliette is not unique, and finds out there’s others with powers like her. I don’t like to compare, but it is so like X-Men it is impossible not to notice. And it’s not like the author really bothered to disguise it: Juliette is untouchable, just like Rogue, and Castle, besides being the resistance’s leader, has mental powers, exactly like Charles Xavier. I mean, seriously, I know that comparisons are not fair, but it is like the author didn’t even try. I understand that Tahereh Mafi loves X-Men (as she clearly does), but she took the obvious path, when she could have written one or two characters as a tribute to the ones she loves, without making them both her protagonist, and the leader of the good guys, exactly as it is in X-Men. Just as the authoress Jenna Moreci says in one of her vlogs, “imitation is the highest form of flattery, but is the lowest form of creativity.”

As for Kenji being a rebel, I was not surprised, because I just met him, and I didn’t have the time to be shocked, as to say, “seriously? This guy, the whole time?”. It is like the author tried to drop a bomb, but it didn’t work. And I never doubted they would end the book among the rebellion, even before meeting Kenji. What was actually a surprise was Kenji’s powers, though by the time that’s revealed, I was just too bored to care. 

Finally, a word on the book in general. I can’t rescue one single thing I liked about this book. Half of my energy was wasted trying to understand the two million annoying metaphors Tahereh Mafi decided to include for no reason at all. And I have to say it, this isn’t a YA Dystopia with a romantic subplot, but exactly the other way around. The “romance” practically dominates the book, and I think it opens up a new genre possibility: a style we could call “Dystopian Romance”, or something like that. The entire plot of “Shatter Me” revolves around an insta-romance, and the futuristic setting is more like an excuse, because it is barely mentioned. There’s practically no information about it, we don’t know what caused the current situation they are living in, and the characters are never truly in contact with it, there’s not even one first-hand experience that would help us feel something about this so terrible society they are living in. Moreover, at one point I thought that entire thing could have been moved to a contemporary background, and it would have made absolutely no difference. Plus, there’s not even a mention of where this futuristic society is located on the planet (I took for granted it is the USA, by default). I think the author missed what “Dystopian society” actually means, and, simply, adjudicating a story to the wrong genre is going to attract the wrong audience. I came here looking for a truly dystopian society, and my first thought is that I’ve definitely read better. 

I can’t believe this was recommended to fans of the Hunger Games, how dare they? That is a true masterpiece. Besides, this one is actually more similar to Twilight, in everything, from the lousy heroine to the sticky, exaggerated romance, and what I decided to call a “nice-try villain”, meaning, a character with potential, but wasted. When (and if) the tv series comes out, I may or may not give it a chance. I don’t know, and I won’t decide until it is out, though I admit I’m curious about how they will actually tell a story out of a book that is 50% forced metaphors, 40% horniness and making out, and 10% actual plot.

Phew, that was exhausting! I hate to tear books apart like this, but it really made me angry, I can’t even pretend it had good things, and if you liked this book, I’m really sorry. I just can’t think the same way, and I’m honest about it. And if it wasn’t clear already, no, I’m not going to read the rest of the saga. It isn’t for me.

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Review - Allegiant

Original Title: Allegiant
Series: Divergent, #3
Author: Veronica Roth
Published: October 22nd, 2013
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books

*THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

I can’t even explain how I feel. I’ve been unable to smile or laugh for hours. I can’t think of other things. Because now, I know what it is to have your heart ripped out from your chest, and crushed into a million tiny pieces of the most numbing pain I’ve felt with a book in, literally, years. Allegiant is the very definition of ugly crying. I know lots of people for whom the ending was spoiled (I was not among them), but one thing is having known it like that, and actually reading it in the book, passing the pages and trying to bite back your tears with every word confirming the truth of what happened. Until the last moment, I had the hope that something –anything– would happen, telling me that it wasn’t true, that what I just read had only been a trick. But though I’m pretending that I haven’t been stabbed in the chest, the pain is blinding, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll do my best with this review, even in denial, as I am, right now. There was a lot of revelations in this book, but it is like the ending dominates everything, and I can’t concentrate.*Deep breath*. First things first.

I was originally going to give it a more negative review. But then I thought better, and I decided to be kind, not because I liked or disliked the ending, but because of the huge step that writing it actually meant. It is a big risk, but it put aside all possible cliches and platitudes expected from a YA novel. Veronica Roth was truly brave (dauntless, if you want) when she made the decision of sealing Tris’ fate like that, in despite of what we readers may think after it. We all can agree that it was a decision you don’t take lightly, and, in despite that I cannot stop thinking “She’s gone, she’s dead, she’s not coming back”, trying to wrap my head around it, I suddenly realize how much the characters in this story grew on me. Upon this ending, I discovered that this wasn’t just another book, that I came to love all of them in a way I didn’t even noticed during this whole journey.

“Sometimes, all it takes to save people from a terrible fate is one person willing to do something about it”

They say that there’s some fictional deaths you will never recover from, and I feel this is one of them. I loved Tris. Since the first book, I liked her more than I thought I would. But most of all, I respect her. She is brave, determined, honest, and kind. She proved she was more than what met the eyes, she honored her parents legacy, and to the last moment, she was true, and loyal, to her friends, and to herself. She truly earned the “heroine” title, and I will always remember her, and admire her for what she did. Her death is not the end, but the beginning. Reading those pages, I suddenly felt the tears in my cheeks, knowing that, even when I was begging it were all a trick to make us believe something that wasn’t real, I knew there was no turning back. But although I can’t help the pain, I know she wasn’t completely gone for those who loved her, proving that her sacrifice was worth it. 

“I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me.”

My already broken heart broke even more, if that was even possible, when they took her ashes and spread them in the wind from the zipline in which she felt so free, during the one that would be the Choosing Ceremony day, if the factions hadn’t been eliminated. I can’t even explain how much I cried. Because of her choosing that day she cut her hand and let the blood drop fall in the Dauntless bowl, things started to change. She was set free. And because of her, people were able find their freedom, and their chance to finally live instead of only existing in a couple of places and activities they didn’t even chose by themselves, determined by someone else. As I said before, Tris is a true heroine, and she earned my respect and my admiration. She truly gave everything for love, and for the greater good. In the first book, she called herself “selfish”, but now I understand things better. She may have been selfish in the little things, but in the end, she was who I saw she was since the first page of the first book, and since that first blood drop that fell in the middle of the two bowls, during the Choosing Ceremony. In the end, she was both: selfless, and brave, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for those she knew it was worthy. Tobias said once “I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren't all that different”, and at the end, Tris proved him utterly right.

As for the rest of the book, it is very good. There’s plenty of new villains, like Nita, and David, in addition to Evelyn and her iron-fist system in the factionless city. I had more questions about the experiment that weren’t answered. In the Bureau, they said there were other cities that were like Chicago, in which the government had installed the faction system as a way to control the population and try to perfect their genetic material, in order to improve human nature, but they didn’t give more information, except for what happened in Indianapolis; I wanted to know more, like if the factions were the same five we knew in Chicago, or if there were Divergents there, and how the people there dealt with Divergence... But there’s not much about them. Though I find very interesting the whole plot around their genes, and how things turn out for Tobias and his not-so-full Divergence. I noticed it was research there, and it was good to finally get some answers about the mysteries we came to read about both in Divergentand Insurgent. 

As for the love story, Tobias and Tris aren’t really my favorite couple ever (I actually liked better Tris’s parents love story). They fought a lot, which they wouldn’t have if they talked more, but I don’t want to say anything negative about them, not after the way they ended. Tobias’ despair and denial killed me, because even when they disagreed in many things, there was real love between them. Their night together was brimming with happiness, honesty, and pure love, and for that I knew something terrible was coming. But I have mixed feelings about them. I still believe their story shouldn’t have ended that way, but at the same time, it wasn’t the typical ending. It was painful, it was terrible, but it made the story all the more unique.

As for the other deaths in this story, I was really sorry about Tori, especially after I read her brother was still alive, and she had killed Jeanine to avenge his death. But more than her, I suffered for Uriah. I came to love him as much as his friends, and I didn’t want him to end up like that. But just like Tris, he was loved until the last minute, and forever remembered as the great guy he was. He didn’t had to die, but he did, and I hate it. However, I was able to make peace with other characters, like Caleb, after knowing that it wasn’t utterly his fault when he made the mistakes I hated him for. And Peter! What a coward! He choose the easy path, and the worst part is that he didn’t remember doing it. I thought I would like him more after what he did in the second book, but it didn’t happen.

I can’t say it was a happy ending, but it wasn’t a bad one. There was too many painful losses as to end this book with a smile. But, in a way, I felt all that sorrow was worth it, because, though the story doesn’t finishes with happiness, it does with hope. Tris’ sacrifice brings hope, and I would hate this story if it had been in vain. But it wasn’t. Her death brought the people in Chicago the chance to be free, to truly choose their own destiny, and be at peace with the world. One death brought the opportunity to live to hundreds of people, and I think that’s why I can deal with it, because otherwise, I don’t think I would accept it easily.

My applause and respect to Veronica Roth, she earned it! She did a risky, but brave move with this book, and in despite of how much it made me suffer, I’m glad I decided to read this whole trilogy. I’m sad, but not disappointed, that’s for sure!

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Review - Insurgent

Original Title: Insurgent
Series: Divergent, #2
Author: Veronica Roth
Published: May 1st, 2012
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books

*THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to paraphrase myself. 

NEVER judge a book by its movie. Ever. Especially with this one.

I liked it more than I thought I would. Definitely, there’s is more about this saga than what the movies show, and we can’t take them as reference for the books, because they are not the same. In Insurgent, we find a new set of characters, as well as those we already know from the first book. After the disaster Dauntless caused, manipulated by Erudite, Tris, her friends, and part of the Abnegation and Erudite factions need to flee in order to avoid capture, finding a refuge in the Amity farms, outside the fence that isolates Chicago from the rest of the world. And things only go from bad to worse.

Surprisingly, I discovered that I like Tris. At first I thought I would hate her, that I wouldn’t be able to swallow her as narrator, but I actually like her. She’s no mild, lame heroine, but a strong, honest, selfless, and brave one. She doesn’t wait for things to happen, or solve themselves. If she wants somethings, she goes and makes it happen (like any self-respecting Dauntless, for that matter). Life only gets more complicated for her, and if she were another type of heroine, I would probably be here criticizing the fact that she mentions how guilty she feels –over Will’s death, and teaming up with Marcus, Tobias’ abusive father– too many times, but then I think, she’s only sixteen years old, and only one month has passed since the events in the previous books. She’s still a girl, and, given all this, she needs to grow up quickly, so I excuse her. Still, she clings to the hard-won freedom she found in Dauntless –the faction she still considers hers–, and I like that she’s so very determined; once she made her mind, nothing can dissuade her. She doesn’t want anyone to suffer in her place, and when Jeanine threatens to use her friends as puppets and force them to kill themselves if at least one of the Divergents doesn’t appear on Erudite, she is the first one stepping forward, ready to save her friends, the people that has become her family.

The only thing about her that kept me rolling my eyes was her relationship with Tobias. In the first book, there was actually feelings there, if not very well written, but you could tell why they fell in love. But here, even when there was some character evolution, I got tired of them fighting over and over again, over the secrets they weren’t telling to each other. All the time arguing about this or that thing they hid or didn’t mention, never agreeing on anything, except on their physical attraction, of course, something that makes Tris sneak into his bedroom more than once, in a couple of pointless scenes, except one (when he makes her promise she won’t turn herself in the Erudite headquarters, and she lies, doing it anyway). They kiss a lot, but there’s not much written around their feelings. Thankfully, the whole story has other pillars sustaining it, because if it depended entirely on the love story, there wouldn’t be much there to keep the whole thing going (and interesting).

Something I really liked about this book is that we get to know more about the other factions. I was curious about them, about how their customs were, and their initiations, and luckily, here we get more insight. I even grew a bit fond of the Amity faction, they seem to have a really peaceful lifestyle, with their apple orchards, their farms, and their no-conflict life philosophy. And on the other hand, we have Candor, the truth-seeking faction. Their occupation is a bit scary, especially the initiation process, because they force you to spill out your secrets, after the injection of a serum, so you have nothing to hide, and hence, no reason to lie. I wouldn’t have picked that faction for the world, and I support Christina on this one; some things must remain hidden. 

As I wanted when I finished the first book, here in Insurgent we get to know more about Jeanine (if only a little), whose part as the villain mastermind continues. She’s fascinating, in the way she’s more a machine than a human being. She’s scary because of her Erudite mind, as she can both command an army from a computer (previously dominated by a serum and being used as puppets, not being aware of their actions), and use cruel, almost-torture methods in the name of scientific research. She’s scared of those things she can’t control and/or frame in a scientific explanation. She’s driven mad by Tris’ divergent nature, and I shared her satisfaction when she realized she broke her, and her only solution for her to stop being a problem was getting rid of her. I love a hero/heroine when only death can stop them, and only with a syringe they can stop them from fighting back, tooth and nail. As for Jeanine’s death, I was expecting it would happen as I saw it in the movie, when actually, the whole scene is completely different, and I never saw it coming. Tori turned out to be fiercer than I thought, and though she made a mistake branding Tris as a traitor, after all ended up doing what Jeanine wanted: killing her, and thus eliminating the only person who knew how to handle the computer containing the secret Abnegation sought to protect and reveal at the right moment. Her death was a lot more bloody and cruel than I thought it would be, and somehow I felt sorry to see her gone, because she was intelligent and rational, but also a bit mad, and she made a great villain.

And if we are talking about villains, I hated Caleb on this one. My God, he really swallowed that “faction before blood” thing. Influenced or not by Jeanine, I was so mad at him for being a traitor and doing that to his own sister! I was sympathetic with him when he left Abnegation for Erudite (I would have left that gray faction too), but this is just unforgivable. He calls himself an Erudite but he doesn’t have much of a brain. As I read once, intelligence is not the same as wisdom. He maybe smart, but he knows nothing about the bonds of love and friendship, and doesn’t see that the whole faction system isn’t right. However, the Erudite people are still nice and funny (when they are not in Jeanine’s team, as the ones living with the Amity faction), so Caleb is just an idiot and a traitor. 

And on the other hand, we have Evelyn, Tobias’ estranged mother, until then considered dead. She left Abnegation when Tobias was still very young, and has been living among the factionless (who, by the way, are so many that practically make their own faction), eventually becoming their leader. I don’t know if I should consider her a villain. She’s definitely strong, and bold. She did a risky move after taking over the Erudite headquarters, depriving their allies from their weapons, and I think that she reflects the true potential of the factionless group: underestimated, mistreated, but capable of great strength, unity, and loyalty towards a common goal. She wants to put an end to the faction system that left them out of society, and create a whole new city where everyone can live without the pressure of belonging here or there, or, in their case, being social outcasts. I think that she has a lot of potential as a character, and knowing about her past was really interesting, so I hope there’s more development ahead.

And the ending!! That cliffhanger was just mean!! Now, I just need to know more. It’s not an option. The sole mention of the Prior last name there made my jaw drop, I just can’t... I don’t... AH!!! I never thought I would like this saga, but it is great, and I definitely recommend it if you like dystopian books. Do not let the movies convince you, especially the one based on this book. That phrase we use so much, you know, “the book was better”, is here truer than ever. Give it a chance, it is a pleasant surprise!

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Review - Divergent

Original Title: Divergent
Series: Divergent, #1
Author: Veronica Roth
Published: April 25th, 2011
Publisher: RBA

*THE FOLLOWING REVIEWS CONTAINS SPOILERS*

“Don’t judge a book by its movie”.

That’s what made me pick up Divergent and give it a chance. I’m new to dystopian stories, they have never been my favorite genre, but now, I’m reconsidering it, seriously. After watching the movie, something told me that I shouldn’t completely judge this story before knowing more. Somehow, I needed more details that the movie simply couldn’t provide; that’s why I grabbed this book. And it was a nice surprise, especially because I knew what was coming, and still, it kept me reading for hours. I sat there, and read, and during three whole hours and a half I only dedicated myself to pass the pages. It is truly engaging, and every chapter ends with a cliffhanger that makes you need to know more. I love when a book does that.

Definitely, Divergent presents one of the most interesting dystopian societies I’ve ever encountered. The city of Chicago is the home of a population living under the belief that peace only can be kept if each person knows where they belong, and occupies a place in one of the five factions in which society is divided (Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Erudite and Dauntless), each of them representing a human virtue necessary to live in harmony, created to eradicate those negative human tendencies they consider responsible for the chaos in the world. Each person needs to fit in one of those categories, or face ending up factionless, which, in this version of Chicago, means being an outcast, a homeless, and hence, being left out of literally every social event and decision, living only by the mercy of those belonging to Abnegation. This faction system seems to work. Everyone, apparently, know where they must be. At sixteen, teens must face a test that will tell them in which faction they should be, given their natural inclinations, that may or may not be the faction they were born in, but they still have the chance to make their own choice, in the Choosing Ceremony, a right considered essential in society: the right of deciding who you want to be. And that’s where I wanted to get. The amazing thing aboutDivergent is that it depicts a totalitarian society disguised as a democratic community. People live under oppression, but they don’t seem to know it. They accept the faction system because it is the right thing, convinced it is the only way to live (unlike other dystopian societies in which people live oppressed and they know it, but they can’t do anything about it). These people accept what it is given to them, when in fact, those rules they live under, those aspects their faction values more than anything, are extremists, and determine that you are only one thing in life, walking down a path that, once chosen, can never be left.

In this society lives sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior, born in Abnegation, but with difficulties to live the extreme selfless life expected from a stiff, as the members of her faction are mocked by the rest. Through her eyes, you see how ridiculously extreme the system is, even for people like the Amity members, whose job is, literally, being happy. In Abnegation, altruism is the way of life, but it reaches the point that its members only can eat certain food, or look at themselves in the mirror every two months, because that simple and apparently irrelevant act makes them forget about the needs of others, and think about themselves. But Beatrice is the only one who seems to notice how things really are. She doesn’t feel like she fits in any of the factions, something that her test confirms, as it turns out inconclusive, branding her as Divergent, someone the government can’t categorize, and hence, can’t control. Her life in Abnegation is stifling, with all its strict rules, and she knows, deep inside, that if she wants to be free, she needs to leave it behind. But she can’t abandon her family just like that, they are the only world she’s ever known, and especially after his brother Caleb, a natural for Abnegation, leaves for Erudite, when everyone thought he would stay where he was born. Her struggle as she cuts her hand and prepares to swear her loyalty, is between what’s right for her, and what’s easy. That’s the reason why, in my opinion, her first blood drop falls in between the two bowls. She feels how her family is the magnet that makes her want to stay in Abnegation, but she needs space to let herself be, to discover her purpose and find her true identity. She knows that what waits for her in Abnegation is no life at all, but a peaceful, altruist existence that will never let her be at her fullest. And that’s why she chooses the closest thing to freedom she can have in her society, as she swears allegiance to the Dauntless faction.

But still, even when they exalt the possibility to choose their own destiny, deciding what and who you want to be, you see how dominated the society is, and how little they notice it. Yes, they can choose the faction they want to belong to, but what they want to do with their lives forcefully has to fit in one of five options. As Beatrice says, that’s not a choice at all. Upon choosing the Dauntless faction, for the first time she thinks only of herself; she decides she wants the freedom she never had, that it is time to leave a life that doesn’t fit her, even after sixteen years of trying and failing. In Dauntless, Beatrice renames herself Tris, and meets those who will be her first real friends, people she can be with without thinking of their needs and forgetting about herself. In that noisy and fully active faction, Tris can start savoring the freedom she was denied back in Abnegation. But for the whole initiation process, you see how she can never truly shake what she learned in her former faction, and how she doesn’t fully belongs to Dauntless. Just as the drop of blood fell in the middle during the Choosing Ceremony, she is in the middle too. Not Abnegation anymore, but neither a hundred percent Dauntless.

It is there, during the initiation in which they learn to fight, shoot and control their fears, that Tris meets Four, our scarred hero. Their love story was truly good. Their attraction is not just a whim, not something based only on physical attraction, something that in YA novels normally dominates everything, and doesn’t leave enough space for the emotional connection they claim to share (and there’s no romantic triangle! Bonus point!). Tris and Four, when they are together, are just Beatrice and Tobias, two people who know they don’t fit in this world they live in, that left their factions because they couldn’t with such a burden. Through their moments together, they come to know they understand each other better than anyone ever could. They are kindred spirits, both Divergent (even if not in the same way), they know what being alone means, and also the fight to belong somewhere. But none of them want to be only one thing in life. I thought I would be unfazed by their story, but I actually liked it. She is not a stunning beauty; she’s just normal, and is surprised that someone notices her, not to mock her for being a stiff. He wants to help her because he knows what she is, and what will happen to her if her true nature were discovered. But then, there’s the other aspect I loved about Tris. She doesn’t need him to be who she is, and doesn’t let him turn into her whole world. She loves him, but she doesn’t let that define her whole life. She has other people she loves and needs to protect, and doesn’t forget it because she’s in love. She’s no silly girl, who doesn’t go blind or stupid when she falls in love. She’s perfectly capable of fending for herself, and the Dauntless training helps her to bring to the surface those qualities that lied dormant inside herself, that the Abnegation rules forbade her to show. She’s not transformed by the initiation. She’s awaken. She can find her true self and shape her personality, and even when her society only allows one face to be shown, she has many. She’s Divergent.

I was surprise of how little the head villain of this story appears, given that the story is more around Tris. The mastermind behind the serums that will control the Dauntless soldiers, so they kill the Abnegation members, is Jeanine, head of the Erudite faction, and her characterization intrigued me, because even when she has the aspects of the conventional villain (wanting to dominate everything and being the sole governor of their society, as head of the faction she considers above the other four), she’s scary, because of her Erudite nature. She knows too much and her eyes are trained to see those things that want to be hidden from them. She connects the dots, and finds out Tris is Divergent (something that wasn’t fully hidden, if you think about it), but her cruelty is calculated. She’s a machine that works following certain principles, and smart enough as not to take the power herself, but to put her intellect as Erudite to work in the creation of serums that will make others do the dirty work for her. She needs an army, and takes the Dauntless to use them as her puppets, to seize power and destroy the Abnegation faction, who has the power, given that, according to the rule, it has to be theirs, because of their commitment with selflessness. I wish there had been more about her backstory, I’m curious about her past, and her life in Erudite, but as it is Tris who tells the story, I doubt there will more insight on her life in the next book.

If you like Dystopian books, try to give it a chance –and if not, too; the whole fuss the movie created has a point. Don’t be blinded by the movie, because the book is better, it has a lot more details the movie just can’t include, and Tris is a great narrator: easy, direct, honest, and brave, a heroine in her own right, with a great group of friends and enemies that were fun to read, like Christina, who grew up in Candor and it is funny how she has no qualms about being brutally honest. Overall, it was a very good read, and I’m glad I picked it up! 

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