Alanna: The First Adventure

Overall Rating: 8.5/10

Summary: Alanna never was much one for magic, so it's a problem when her father sends her to a covenant to learn magic. Her twin look-alike brother, Thom, isn't exactly pleased either. He's being sent to Court to learn how to be a knight when he'd much rather be taught magic.

So the two twins come to the obvious solution.

Switch places.

This is a little more complicated than the initial idea. With the help of Thom's forgery skills and two of the household servants however, the two manage to work things out. Thom leaves with Maude, the village healing woman, for the covenant with his own name in the letter in place of Alanna's. He has no problem, as the covenant accepts males as well as females.

Alanna doesn't get off so easily.

She disguises herself as a boy and with the help of Coram, her manservant, she begins life in the Castle as a page. Alanna quickly learns that life in the Castle is hard, what with wrestling practice, chores, and studies, not to mention there's a bit of a bully problem. Even though she has Prince Jonathan, Raoul, Gary, Alex, and several other pages/squires on her side she refuses to accept their help in fighting the page, Ralon. She makes herself work hard, practicing with a heavy sword late into the night and going to her friends in the city for fighting tricks.

Alanna braves the Castle life, but is she able to keep her identity hidden? Does Ralon get the best of her? Will she be able to keep up with the other boys? Even Alanna isn't sure of the answers.

Opinion: This book doesn't waste time. The very first line introduces us to the problem that our characters are faced with. We meet Alanna and Thom right off the bat and get a feel for their personalities and current lives. Descriptions are short and to the point, a strong contrast to Pierce's later books such as the Trickster stories. At first I was annoyed by the short, choppy sentences and quick transitions, but after a little while I became comfortable with the style and even liked it. There was no waiting for action. There was little to no filler. The plot was quick paced and exciting.

It did take me a little while to sort out what name went with what character for a little while. All of the pages were introduced in the same page or so and descriptions got mashed up in my head, but as the book progressed they became more defined. They became easy to identify with and I began to care about what they did and what happened to them. Alanna herself is very easy to like. She's the underdog striving to be on top, doing everything within her power to get there. She never loses sight of her goal and manages to keep up with the boys, despite being smaller and in some cases, weaker.

Title: Like with Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl: Not very creative, but descriptive and simple enough.

Cover: I'd expect nothing less from a fantasy book out of the 80s. Okay its not bad but it wouldn't stand out very much.

Series: I high recommend reading the remaining 4 books if you liked this one. The others are just as spectacular. :)

Recommendation: If you like medieval stories, magic, fantasy, and/or strong female protagonists you'd enjoy this. The word choice is a bit strange at first, but eventually you get used to the flow and can immerse yourself in the story. I'd say grades 5+

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PS
Here's me with my Wednesday costume ;)

(Thanks to my friend Miranda for taking the top 2 pics, and my brother for the bottom!)
MJ

Haunt

Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat

I have a legitimate excuse for not posting on Wednesday this time! Honestly!
There's this halloween haunt thing that I volunteer for.... I'd call it a haunted house, but it's more than that. It's this trail that goes through a park in my area and they've set up sheds for sets and props everywhere and stuff like that. Anywho.
So I volunteer to act along this trail. And to say it's a time-sucker would be an understatement. If you want to get a good part you show up at 4 or so. School ends at roughly 2:30. I get home and can do my homework at like 3. 3-4. That's not a lot of time to do much of anything, even homework. By the time you're out of set and get home it's like, 11 or later. It's HARD WORK. But so much fun.

The first night that I worked was Monday, the 18th. This was 'press night', where they allow the cameras and reporters and families of actors to come through. I arrived with my good buddy Lauren and my brother. There was a bit of a mix up with paperwork so I requested that Lauren stand in line while I figure things out with my brother. I asked her to get us a part in the pavilion which meant we would be inmates in a prison. As I'm signing some papers she comes up to me and says, "I'm sorry, MJ, I had to." And I was all, "what?" So she tells me, "The chesire cat was open...." (oh yeah, forgot to mention that the theme for this year is Alice in Wonderland) and I know how much she loves Ches, and I don't really mind all that much so I'm like, that's cool. I'll go sign up as the Caterpillar (cuz he's in the same set.) When I go up to the casting person I ask for the Caterpillar, but he's taken, so I go with the next best thing: The March Hare. Not in the same set as Ches, but I figured it'd work out anyway.

http://ursulav.deviantart.com/art/March-Hare-and-Dormouse-57971384

So as you've probably worked out already, I can be a bit of a nut ball some of the time.... all of the time. This really helped me with the March Hare roll. That, and I've seen both the Disney version and Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland, multiple times. So the Hatter and I played off of each other's acts and had an awesome time with our tea set and crazy techno music.
I guess I must've done pretty well because one of the casting crew (they came through to give us candy for our throats [lots of yelling] and make sure our set was okay) requested I take up the roll for the remainder of my nights at the Haunt! Delighted, I naturally agreed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio1movies/2010/01/

So far I have worked as the Hare 2 nights. Press Night (which was Monday) and Wednesday the 20th. On Weds I actually received a different costume than the one in the pic you see above, and slightly different makeup. If I can ever get my phone to sync with my computer, I'll post it. Basically there was more black than red... my eyes and lips were painted red in the above pic, and the new one I've black lips and dark streaks around my eyes. The hat-ears were the same, but the jacket was different. They gave me a red shirt with a vest. By far the coolest piece of my costume were my glasses. Yellow lenses and bedazzles, round, black rims. THEY'RE FREAKING AWESOME. More need not be said.

Because it's my birthday today, I won't be working tonight. It's closed tomorrow and Monday. I am, however, working next Tues. Weds. (maybe) Thurs. Fri. and Sun/Halloween. Lauren hopes to be the Hatter on Halloween and I hope my position as the March Hare will help convince the casters to let her have it. My brother would also like to be the Hatter, but we don't know what day. I think both of them would make awesome Hatter's, plus it would be so much fun to be in set with them.

...the latex for my nose makes my face itch.
I love my March Hare role. :)

Beautiful Creatures

Overall Rating: 6.5/10

Summary: Gatlin County is the epitome of your stereotypical southern no-where town. Ethan Wate's parents lived in Gatlin, as did his grand parents, and his great grand parents, and... you get the idea. Ethan is determined to be the one to break the cycle, but he's got another 2 years of school before he can go anywhere. And being on the Jackson High basketball team, popular, and living with a single father he never sees, it seems Ethan is too immersed with the middle of nowhere to ever leave. He doesn't want to be one of them, but he is.

At least, until the day Lena Duchanness shows up. She changes everything for him. So completely different from everyone in the cookie-cutter town, Ethan is drawn to her like a moth to a light. Everyone thinks this attraction is unhealthy. No one should be so close to the niece of the town's shut-in, Macon Ravenwood. The guys on the basketball team disapprove. The DAR (a proud women's group of patriot blood) disapproves.  Amma, the woman who has looked after Ethan as she might her own son, disapproves. Even Lena herself doesn't like the attention.

At first.

Ethan and Lena deal with the cruel stereotypes of the small town as they discover things about themselves and their own pasts that may have been better to have kept undiscovered.

Opinion: This book wasn't a disaster, but it did fail to leave a real impression on me. That might be because it follows the typical paranormal book these days, or that I'm not big on books placed in the Southern States (or at least ones that go over the top with embracing their southern heritage... bleh, Civil War!) or it may simply have not been very impressing.

This a pretty typical boy-meets girl sort of story. Ethan is a basketball jock whose mother has passed away. He hates the town he lives in and wants to break free of the cycle that is Gatlin. When a mysterious girl shows up, he's drawn to her. Insert some paranormal stuff here. Then they learn the town is much more than they'd ever thought it could be. It's really more of a mystery than it is my typical fantasy/action/adventure book. Stories about high school tend to bore me, however, as I already have to deal with all of the high school drama. 

It isn't necessarily that Beautiful Creatures is a boring or bad book, it's just... too long. There's too much time between one plot point and the next. The scenes with the other high schoolers involved were depressing and, more importantly, unproductive. By the time the climax came I was so ready for the book to be over I skipped every other line. 

The one thing this book really has going for it is that it's told in Ethan's perspective. It was refreshing to read a paranormal/romance type story from the guy's perspective. (although if I think about it I haven't really read that many paranormal/romance stories period...)

Title: I really liked this title. It seems rather vague for most of the story, but there is a scene in which Macon sort of explains it, and after that I appreciated it even more.

Cover: I also thought that this cover was eye-catching, but I didn't really understand how it related to the book. I've a couple of ideas, but the picture is too vague to really refer to anything, in my opinion. 

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I guess my mind took a break from reality last week, because not only did I fail to post last Sunday, I neglected Wednesday as well. Gahhh! It's hard to keep things straight in my head sometimes. I just need to get in the habit of it, I think. If I remember I'll try and post tomorrow to make up for last week.

We'll see if my blender of a mind will manage to remember.

MJ

Wax Wings

As promised, I'm (finally) getting around to posting a blog about my own writing project! Just took me a couple of weeks to remember, haha. Although I only remembered last minute so this post won't be as well prepared as my future ones will (hopefully) be. But none the less, I forge on ahead!

Recently I have been contemplating the name of my story. Well okay, I was actually thinking about my band. In the past week or so I've grown tired of my band sitting around and doing nothing, so I mailed them all (originials and our newest member- a singer) and figured out a good time for us to meet. Except in doing so we learned that one of our members couldn't come. Ever. Fortunately our new singer is also a fantastic piano player, so she can fill the shoes of our lost pianist. That means we have a drummer, a pianist/singer, and a guitar player. Always working to bring things to their full potential, I am now considering stepping down from my guitar position to maybe play some simple bass. I'm not exactly julliyard material or anything. I know a decent guitar player who might be willing to take over. My main job would be to find/provide music and organize things.

Yes I know I said this would be about my writing project. But I think I also mentioned it would be about my life. Either way it shouldn't matter much, since this whole band story ties into what I planned on making this blogpost about.

Names.

The original trio (myself, the drummer and pianist) named ourselves Clockwork. But now that we've had so much switching around I'm thinking, isn't that too... mechanical? If it was all created on the computer, maybe. But it's not. I want us to have a creative name with some p-zaz in it, you know what I mean?

My current project is called Spindles. I've been writing a little more recently as it's just passed the 60,000 (word) marker. I never really intended for it to be officially named Spindles, and I still don't. I want something interesting, eye catching, short and memorable. Something that related to myths/legends/fairytales. One name I came up with was Wax Wings, referring to the story of Icarus and Daedelus. But then I realized, what does that have to do with my story? Salem isn't particularly arrogant. In fact he's rather cold and calculating. So maybe instead that would work for a band name.
But I'm still without a story name. I think I'll have to research more into greek myths and see if there's anything that catches my eye.

All of this mythology talk... I'm kind of hooked on myths right now. I blame my english teacher. She has us studying them. But I love myths, so it's okay.

Time to go research!
MJ

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Overall Rating: 9.0/10

Summary: It's tough living with ADD, let alone dyslexia, but when you put that on top of the fact that your mother remarried to a jerk, you never met your real father, and you've been to at least 6 different schoolssince you began your education, things begin to get unbearable. Just imagine the trouble that Percy Jackson must get into to be kicked out of 6 schools. It also doesn't help when your math teacher tries to kill you.

There is, however, a logical explanation to all of Percy's troubles.

Greek Gods.

Although an explanation doesn't make it any easier that the strongest god, Zeus, holds a grudge against Percy because he's not supposed to exist. He also blames Percy for stealing his Master Bolt and demands to have it returned by the Summer Solstice.

So with the help of two new friends Percy goes out on a quest that takes him across the United States (as well as above and below!) to meet interesting (and life threatening) people, see fun (and life threatening) sights, and do exciting (and life threatening!) activites. In the process he discovers a twisted plot and a darkness that runs much further than anyone ever thought.

Opinion: I first read this book a few years ago and looooved it. I'm a sucker for greek mythology. The idea of this book is just totally awesome. Rick Riordan does a fantastic job with this story, and it remains my favorite of the entire series. The characters are genuine, the humor chuckle-worthy and the plot well thought out.

Reccomendation: Grades 4-8. You could read it in later grades, but I think PJATO sort of lost some of it's glamor after 8th grade. This might be because the following books were a let down, but it might also be because I outgrew them. Maybe both? Younger teens with some knowledge of Greek Mythology and a love for fantasy and action will think this book is the coolest thing since peanut butter. (and let me tell you, PB is pretty cool.)

Title: Uncreative, but descriptive.

Cover: I love this cover. It's eye-catching, and if I hadn't first read this as a class in school I probably would've picked it up at the store.

Series: I actually wouldn't reccomend reading books 2-5. They just weren't worth it.

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Probably my shortest review of all cuz I'm in a bit of a time crunch! Plus I didn't finish the book I planned to review (beautiful Creatures) in time for this so I had to pull an old one out of my hat. Sorry guys. I also missed Weds. again. Bad MJ! Ahg. I'll try and post then to make up for my lame review today.

-MJ