Review: Reached - Ally Condie

Reached by Ally Condie is the final installment in the 'Matched' trilogy.

The first book in this series 'matched' I really liked and found interesting. although it was pretty typical of a YA dystopic series, the world itself and how Condie set it up as dystopic was really interesting. Often that's the thing that draws me in to a dystopic series; the actual world that it's set in, what it is that the government controlling, what's unique, what's forbidden, what's allowed etc (eg in the delirium series by Lauren Oliver that fact that love is forbidden is a really interesting concept, or in the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeild its that everyone get turned 'pretty' on their 16th birthday or Firstlife by Gena Showalter where you got to decided which place you wanted to spend you second life/death .. you get the jist)

The concept in the Matched series is 100% government control eg portion controlled meals set per person delivered to your door, whom you are going to marry, what job you will have, and when you get you assigned job people are separated so their job is the only thing that they know how to do so that the whole community is co-dependent on each other. So the 'Society' remains in power because everyone is segregated in such a way that they are dependent on each other, and thus, the 'society' to survive. Also a lot of things are strictly forbidden and there is a emphasis of the use of modern technology other old tech, shown in that people don't know how to write anymore. Creativity is forbidden and they only kept 100 of each of the old 'greats' I guess you'd call them eg 100 poems, 100 songs, 100 stories, etc (but of course there's an underground rebel movement fighting to preserve them.)

That's just a bit of background on the world the series is set in...
Reached is the final in the series and thus the climax, the crux if you will, but really I found the whole thing a bit slow... and just sort of dribbled off at the end.

Here's a couple of thoughts:

#1
I took me about halfway through the third book in this series to figure out/decide her name is probably pronounce cas-ie-a up till this point I'd just skip over her name whenever it was written. But that's probably just me... but it's pretty hard to read a book when you don't know how to pronounce the protagonist's name. * note I just looked it up on youtube to see how other people pronounce it other options include 'ca-se-a' and 'casha'. (I think i've made my point)

#2
This book does fall into the typical YA love triangle. Her best friend of forever is in love with her, they end up being matched, but she falls in love with someone else and ends up with him. Once, just once I want the protagonist to chose their best friend. However as the romance angle is not central to the book I'll let it pass and though annoying and over done it wasn't the focus of this book.
Although now that I think about it why do book with heroine protagonists always have male best friends? (okay so not always) but in the ones that do the friend has always has been in love with them forever and them realising that it's never going to happen and then eventually conceding to their best friend being in love with someone else. I get tired of reading the same characters over and over. It adds nothing what so ever to the plot of the actual story and doesn't give the characters themselves any semblance of their own individual personality or a realistic reaction to being rejected or the long suffering of unrequited love.


#3
On the whole I found the whole book really slow... up to the last 5th of the book pretty much nothing had actually happened. And the resistance, which is called 'The Rising', became a Governmental control in and of itself, like they became the replacement of 'The Society', but they weren't any better, and 'the rising' are trying to find the cure to the Plague, (that they invented in the first place to overthrow The society etc), the whole thing is just messy and hard to follow. It made it very hard to empathise with the characters at all, I really just didn't care about what happened to any of them. (Really I just wanted to to be over..)

#4 
The book is told by all three of the main character's perspectives (Ky, Cassia and Xander) switching each chapter, I'm really not a fan of this to be honest, writers generally do it for one of two reasons: 1 so they can kill off a character or 2 to 'show deeper insight' into the characters. I'm really not a fan of first person writing, just write in third person omniscient narrator and then you get everyone's perspective... 


All in all I was disappointed with this book and was overall underwhelmed. The concept started out as a modern Orwellien retelling but didn't stand up in the execution.

Dear friend

Dear friend,
These are the things that I should have said:

Thank you for telling me. Thank you for trusting me thank you for wanting to get help.

(I'm sorry that I'm a socially awkward munchkin and I'm not good when people tell me big news.) But I want you to know that I hear you and I'm here for you.

I'm not good at talking about my feelings or about other people's feelings for that matter but I can listen and if you want or need to talk about it I'm here.
I don't know if you're aware of it or not but yesterday was international mental health day the day you chose to tell me that you are one the 120 million people worldwide who suffer from depression.
This is not your fault it's no one's really. As you said I feel I should have more to say about this but right now but I don't.

I wish this wasn't happening to you and I wish I could fix it.
Love,
Shell

Review: City of Fallen Angels

City of Fallen Angels is the fourth installment of the Shadow Hunter series by Cassandra Clare.

Having read this far into a series there was almost an expectation for the excitement to drop off and this is what happened here. I devoured the first book in this series having finished it in three days and promptly ordering the next one online before I had even finished, I just had to know what happened. However, I was, over all, underwhelmed and disappointed with a lot of this book. 

Here's some thoughts:

Simon:
Something that I have noticed about fantasy/supernatural books is that no one is allowed to stay as a human... they're either a werewolf or a faerie or a witch etc or if they aren't at the start, they very soon will be. 
This was part and parcel with Simon. In the second book he got turned into a Vampire and by the end of the third book he's a 'super special vampire' (AKA 'Daylighter' Because you couldn't have a sub-central character that couldn't be around half the time...)
In all seriousness a large part of this book's plot focuses on Simon and that's probably a good thing because he's one of the only characters I can stand... despite the 'can't stay human' thing. I actually like his character. Simon is the 'morally good' character without being the annoying pretentious hero archetype. He does have his flaws though *cough dating two people at once cough*.
Simon ends up dating Maia and Isabelle at the same time and both the girls after being mad at him for awhile just let him off the hook by saying "we weren't exclusive". What? I have a real issue with this. If you are dating someone and you call them your boy friend (or girlfriend as the case may be) exclusivity is implied. I feel you shouldn't have to define the parameters of your relationship in order to expect monogamy. I think my issue here is not really with Simon, although he was knowingly cheating (although they decline to call it that) on both these women, my  issue is  the reaction of the girls. They essentials semantically excuse his behaviour.... NO just no. 

One of the things I really liked about Simon however is that he realised that Clary was never going to feel the way about him that he did about her. He recognises that she was only with him because she thought Jace was he brother. Simon didn't want her to settle for him he didn't want to be anyone's consolation prize. Simon is the realistic character. Clary was what he'd always wanted but for her he was a runner up prize and that's wasn't good enough Yay Simon (the closest thing to realistic human emotions in this book, while no longer being human.)

Jace/Clary/debarkle
If you thought that was ranty sit down because my minor issues with Simon are nothing compared to my major issues with the Clary and Jace plot. 'Plot' is a term I use loosely here. Okay so after the whole 'are we related or not/agh I'm soo madly attracted to you even if we are related' debarkle, that was a major part of the earlier books. It was finally revealed that: no, in fact they're not actually related, so they can be inflamed with passionate lust for each other to their hearts content. 
Oh wait, no ,they can't because it's stupid, totally unrealistic and just plain ridiculous. Okay so Jace keeps having these 'dreams' where her tries to kill Clary, but instead of talking to her about it, he tried to distance himself from her. Wallowing in self-destructive self pity "woe is me I have the amazing girlfriend, but I don't deserve her and instead of talking to her I'm going to ignore and avoid her and not tell her what's wrong". Their whole relationship is so empty, melodramatic and based solely on 12 months (ish) worth of Adrenalin amped feelings. Ugh, seriously, see the 'kissing in the alley way in the rain' scene. Legit kissing. In the rain. In a dingy alley. Seriously. Thank goodness Isabelle interrupted them ...
You've known each other for 12 months and you're 17  ( I'm not saying that people as young as 17 cannot have real, strong, romantic emotions) but the way that this is written, in this really possessive, needy, trashy, kind of way (see the kissing in the alley above) it's just. No. Not healthy. Not functional.
I feel this is a common trend in YA teen relationships that they're possessive and over bearing and all consuming... to the point where it's just ridiculous.I do have a lot of issues with the Jace and Clary story line. It's not healthy and it doesn't develop their characters at all. It doesn't add anything to the plot it doesn't move the story on in anyway and in some senses stagnates it a bit. It also seeks to make that 'overly self-sacrifical' love desirable and it's not. Love is sacrifice, but not to the point where it is selfish and uncommunicative. I think that a lot of YA novels write protagonists like that. 'Oh I'm going to go and fight the/my demons by myself and not allow you to help me because that might hurt you/you might see me as weak'. I think that this is potentially very dangerous because it can perpetuate gender stereotypes and sets unhealthy benchmarks for relationships in young people. 

Other Notes:
Dumb ass Clary. Newly found out she was a shadow hunter with her (super special power of creating new runes) gets an address as a clue to this super creepy old church known in conjunction with the dead baby. Does she tell anyone about it? No.. she goes there. By herself. Oh yeah she tells Isabelle as an after thought.....

I feel I have to mention the other main romantic relationship in the book although they are absent for most of it: Magnus and Alec I feel this relationship is just so random to begin with. It came out of no where in the second book and all of a sudden they're super serious and they're on this major trip abound the world. Anyway Alec, for the part they're even in the book is such possessive childish brat; Magnus is a centuries old bi-sexual warlock that cannot die, of course he's had relationships before you, you conceited dick. Do they have any baring on your current relationship? No. Are you being a childish selfish brat? Yes. I mean yeah knowing that you're going to get old and your partner is going to live forever and move on eventually is something to think about.. but really, you'd think he would have considered that before this point.... ugh 

Ok so when I got to the part where they revealed 'Lilith' I was like 'of course she's Lilith'... It's the one demonesque thing that they haven't exhausted yet. Werewolves? Check. Vampires? Check. Magical vampire that can walk in daylight? Check. Half angel half human? Check.
What haven't we used...? Oh yeah .... Lilith the mother of all demons!


Alright after sassily slamming 'City of Fallen Angels' for the last 1100 words here are some good things about this book:

It's written in third person so you do get to know everything that's going on and not just a one dimensional narration. A lot of YA series go the first person and you don't get a full view of what everyone is thinking/feeling. 
I have already mentioned my thoughts on the Jace/Clary debarkle, however there was no quintessential 'love triangle' in this series. Well there was for a little bit, but Simon steped aside, coz he aint no consolation prize *see above*.
The  shadow-hunter/nephilim  creatures were actually a really cool idea. With the runes being tattooed on their skin to give them different powers a really cool idea that could have been developed a lot more and the actual city/world of the nephilim was really interesting as well (shame that most of the story is set in modern day america..)
There were a number of characters that I quite liked in this book Izzy for example. She's bad ass and I feel didn't get developed enough. same with Maia and I'm interested to see where the Maia/jordan story goes...
So I slammed the book pretty hard and after writing this I did move my rating down from 3 stars to 2... 
but I'm still interested enough to read the next book...
Eventually.

Go tell it on the mountains.

Well I have been home from Nepal for one week. I thought that I would write a 'reflections on Nepal post', but I don't know where to start.... There are so many things I could say about this wonderful country, with its beautiful people and amazing scenery. I could go on and on about where we slept and what we ate (and our absolutely amazing chef!!) and all those things. But that's not really the point.
We went over there to tell people the gospel, to reach un-reached people for Christ, to love the lost, to share the good news with people who who might never hear it otherwise. It seems unfathomable to me that there are people in the world that have never heard the Gospel, ever. Back home there are so many that have not understood or even accepted the message of Christ, but they at least will be held accountable for knowing what they rejected. But there are hundreds of thousands of people who have never heard. They have never had the oppertunity to hear the message.
It is such a privilage to tell these people the life changing message of Christ. Something that really struck me was Binay said we are not comanded to convert people that's the work of the Holy Spirit we are just comanded to tell them. That is our comand. How wonderful that the burden is not on us? And how much of a blessing is it that God uses tiny broken humans in His olan for salvation? What a privlage! 

“for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!””

Romans 10:13-15 NIV

http://bible.com/111/rom.10.13-15.niv

Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere, that Jesus Christ is Lord.