A Fantastic Little Corner

The Halloween party went well. I totally owned that mystery; figured out what happened and everything. It wasn't easy, but I doubt the claims of only a 22% success rate. I could be wrong, tho. Only 2 out of 9 of us got it, which does match the stats.

Day 7 - What fictional character are you (secretly) in love with?

Leander Hastings.

Oh dear fuzzy. Tall, dark, mysterious, and exceedingly handsome and powerful with a dark, tragic past that shapes him into an unstoppable force willing to sacrifice anything. And none of you know him!! WHY?!?!?

Ahh, yet again, a character from the Heir Chronicles. ;)

Day 5 - A book you acquired in some interesting way

The Harry Potter book releases were always interesting. All the people packed into a normally large bookstore, many dressed up, and everyone guessing what would happen next... I miss that excitement. For the release of DH, some Death Eaters came, dressed in hoods and masks, supposedly revealing spoilers of the book. I don't know what their spoilers were; I avoided them entirely just in case they had real spoilers. I never was sure if they were Borders employees or just some random fans, but it certainly entertained us while we counted down to midnight.

Uh... I pretty much slept through Sunday. And played the Battlefield 3 Beta. (You know, I actually get it now! And now I don't know whether to buy it or not. I wasn't going to, but...) Anyway, I'm skipping a day, I guess.

Day 2 - Your earliest memory of reading or being read to.
Hooked on Phonics everyday until Rush Limbaugh came on (which meant naptime. Believe it or not, I used to hate El Rushbo. lol) is the closest I can get, but I was bored with it by then. I remember wanting to read before I could. I remember being bored with reading assignments in kindergaten. I actually remember taking chapter books off the shelf and Mom either taking them from me right then or finding me extremely frustrated because it was taking FOREVER to read the first page!

This one time around when I was 6, I kept taking down Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's a special edition my mom got years ago from some Dickens museum overseas. Anyway, I couldn't get past the first page, but I really wanted to read it. I got in SO much trouble... LOL

I finished the book around 3 am. I was so. nervous. Seriously, I can't remember the last book I read where my favorite characters were allowed to survive, so I was on pins and needles throughout. I mean... I think I have to go all the way back to Percy Jackson. (But does it really count if I didn't actually have a favorite character in that series?)

Anyway. I'm not giving anything away, including whether they survived, though I will say that I wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending. - Not that it was weak or inconclusive at all; just too fast.

Review Of: The Warrior Heir, The Wizard Heir, & The Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima

Endings are actually just the weak point of this series. Chima spends so much time building the story up that she doesn't really have long enough to resolve it in as much detail. I suppose that's to be expected with Teen Fiction, though. I'm so used to longer novels where it seems absolutely everything is fleshed out, usually to a fault. There were definitely points where I felt that the narrative was moving too fast to have the emotional impacts she was aiming for.

It's a fantastic series, though. -And ongoing, too. According to Chima's website, two more books have been approved.- I wish it was more widely known. A quick glance for any fandom revealed very little fic and even far less art. The books themselves won a couple of awards, though.

Would I recommend it? Most definitely, and highly at that. Not only for the characters, who are wonderfully flawed throughout, but also the desperate plot. Plots, more like, because there are several.

Also, because as a Harry Potter fan, it filled a void for me left by the Order of the Phoenix.

I was so incredibly disappointed with the Order's role in the 7th book - they did a radio show. Ooo! How daring. I had expected they would be doing more; that the secret of what exactly the Order was doing, especially as agonizingly hinted in Book 5, would be worth the anticipation. Of course, JKR never really gave us anything towards that; it was crushing to me. I'd expected the alliances built across the world in GOF would come to play as well, but they didn't. Especially at the end of HBP, I came to have high hopes for my favorite characters: I'd thought that Remus would become the leader of the Order and that Tonks would have a central role in it to shine as the young Auror. Instead, JKR just turned him coward and immediately incapacitated Tonks from the plot line, even to her eventual death. - If she'd still killed them after some important central leadership roles, even passingly mentioned, I may have actually not hated the book. But no. She ultimately invalidated everything they stood for, never once letting them have a true victory. Even Teddy repeated the very cycle she was supposedly ending.

So I've been looking for a long time for something like this series. I initially looked through fanfiction, and while I've certainly not done any sort of exhaustive search, I hadn't found the story I needed.

Finally, that wait is over: This was that story.

It's far from Harry Potter, to be sure. I mean... it's all about magic, and there's a character who reminds me of Kingsley Shacklebolt. But I think even the limitations and rules of magic in this story make more sense than HP. (Why not just run around screaming Avada Kedavra at your enemies? Why waste time with stuns and charms when there's no real limitation except that it's taboo?) Also, Chima actually delivered, despite her rushed tying up of loose ends. (It was a big plot: she's totally forgiven.) There's of course the fanfiction benefit there, as well: plenty of room for fic involving my 4 favorite characters, should there be any inclination. Something JKR also did brilliantly, though both probably unintentionally.

I don't mean to rag on Harry Potter so, because I'm still in love with those characters and the world, but JKR did disappoint me, and I finally feel a sense of resolution. It's like... the resolution of a cliff hanger that I've been on for years.

I did say in my last entry that I'm obsessive about my fiction. ;)

Anyway. I'd say to anyone to pick up these books and give them a chance. And particularly to any Harry Potter fans, if you were disappointed by the Order of the Phoenix's role, definitely give it some consideration.

*My thoughts at the time in italics

Wednesday nights are Borders nights. Our church building just so happens to be about 10 minutes away, give or take traffic, as opposed to the 25 minutes coming from home. So out of convenience, we go to Borders after mid-week Bible study to browse books and pick up coffee from Seattle's Best.

Tonight, I went with the intention of picking up the book to follow The Magician's Guild, which was recommended last year by gilpin25. Yeah, I'm slow; got caught up in nonfiction and all that jazz. (It's good, btw! :D) So after placing orders for Ter's and my drinks, I headed over to Sci-fi/Fantasy looking for 'C.' Unfortunately, Borders had rearranged the shelves since last week; the empty aisle I thought I would be going down was not my aisle. Instead, I had to go down the aisle with the 30-something guy standing in the middle of the row, looking at the books blankly.

And he just so happened to be standing in front of, though not obstructing, the 'C' section.

Joy.

I ambled onward and hoped to not disturb him, squatting and reaching for the book there that looked like it was from the series. I flipped it over and read the cover: Book #3.

Man. They don't have it.

"I haven't tried her." It was a terrible way to phrase a sentence, coming from a man, so he said again, "I haven't read anything by her."

Uhh.... "She's pretty good." I smiled politely. "She was recommended to me by a friend. Pretty good." Don't talk to me again.

Alas, he couldn't hear my thoughts. (Later this would be a very good thing.)

"So, are you a fan of light fantasy?" he asked. He was looking at me expectantly; I suddenly understood the common phrase 'hope shining in his eyes.'

As I began running a mental dictionary scan on all the definitions of the word 'light,' I cottoned on to what this guy was doing: this was some sort of bizzare mating ritual. Someone had told him a good way to pick up chicks was to hang out in book stores; that had been a conversation starter that I'd walked straight into.

( The strange conversation got weirder... )


Funny thing is that thinking back on this, I'm wearing a Halo t-shirt today. "Hardcore" sci-fi, as he puts it, actually makes sense to me. Halo is "hardcore." Spin is "hardcore." They're devoted to the tech and worlds as opposed to character development. Unlike, say Iron Man. Iron Man has lots of tech but even more character plotline.

So my book interests were splayed across my chest, and the guy still couldn't get it. Of course, complete confusion and disbelief was written on my face, and the guy was way older than me... If he was younger and hadn't been a creepy psycho geek with retarded social skills, he might have had a chance.

lol Not. XD