Another Old Review in Which I Rant

Being a part of LibraryThing, they also had a SantaThing around Christmas in which you could sign up and pay $25 or something like that, and someone else would pick out books for you to read. I received three books, and I read two of them right away. While they were awesome, I was in a state of mind where they were also depressing and they angered me, so I ranted about them on facebook. So, here for your pleasure, is that rant.

As I slowly descend further and further into my deep world-weary depression, I have to look back and wonder where it came from. Because of this depression I've relied on reading and working to cheer me back up, but still. Is it because of my boredom? No. My monotonous life, doing nothing but working and sleeping? Perhaps. Is it maybe even my friends? Unlikely. I do think that I've sussed out what it is though. It's my books.

I participated in a secret santa-esque event through a book website that I enjoy frequenting. Paying $25, I picked out books for someone else, while another person picked some out for me as well. You think that $25 would go fairly far, but it doesn't. I received 3 books, and instantly delved deep into the first one, titled Sunshine, by Robin McKinley.

This book is about a girl, Rae, aka Sunshine. She barely graduated high school, and then went instantly into the work force, becoming a baker with her step-father as the owner and manager, and her mother financially managing everything. One day she went out to a lake, and the vampires kidnapped her. Oh, by the way, this is a fantasy novel. Very dark, with un-human looking vampires, not the fluffy ones from Twilight, True Blood, or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They have powers of paralysis, and they are unnaturally cruel. As greenmanreview.com puts it,

Now, in Robin McKinley's alternate universe, vampires are not Buffy-charming, Buffy-beautiful, nor Buffy-bumbling. They may have been human once, but as vampires they are completely alien. They look different, think differently, have different abilities. They have absolutely no human motivations anymore, not even hate or desire as humans understand them. And they despise and hunt humans, and humans hate and fear them. So Sunshine doesn't for a moment think, "Hey, cool!" when she finds herself suddenly with a vampire for a companion. She's horrified.

So they take her, with their paralyzing breath, and chain her up next to a vampire that looks absolutely wretched. It turns out that he's a prisoner as well, and they captors want him, Constantine, to eat Sunshine. He doesn't give into that temptation, sticking it to his captor. And, as it turns out later, the wound that they inflicted her with to entice Con had poison in it. After two days of captivity, Sunshine remembers that she has magic in her blood, and she works it to change her jack knife into a key to unlock her chains, and his. Not really sure why she does this, but she feels they have a bond, a vendetta against this 'Bo' character that locked them up. They escaped- in full daylight. Even though Con would burst into flames normally, Sunshine's magic was so powerful in sunlight, that she was able to make him not burst into flames, as long as they touched at all times. He carried her most of the way back to her house, force-fed her, and then left.

After a couple of months, she calls to him, not really expecting anything, but he comes. They quasi-bond, help each other out, and end up defeating Bo. Yay the end.

My problem with this whole book is the heroine. She has a great boyfriend, a man riddled with magical tattoos, the head chef at the coffee house she practically lives at. So why oh why does she consort with Con all the time. They kiss several times, although McKinley never lets on that it means anything, and once they were this close to having sex. Seriously. It was situational, not really either of their faults; she had done magic to transport herself to him, and by doing so had accidentally left her clothes behind. Con was also somehow naked. Never really understood that one... When Con finally threw her halfway across the room to prevent the sex-having, she got super pissed. Like, whoa. Talk about anger. Does everyone that gets cock-teased without actual sex get that pissed? I have no way of finding out. Nor do I care to find out. Even with this episode, she shows absolutely no remorse when she next sees her loving boyfriend, then proceeding to copulate with him. No regrets, no guilty conscience; nothing. WTF?!?

The next book, which I just finished, is The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It was absolutely fantastic, being a combination of The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, and other magical books. Perhaps he even channeled some Lord of the Rings. Once again, the problem was the main character. Quentin just pissed me off royally sometimes. He was fine at first, a little downtrodden, forlorn and pathetic, but then he got admitted into Brakebills College, a Magic college. The beauty of this book was that it didn't linger on anything boring. Three years of college were over in about a chapter, because they just weren't all that important. It was beautiful. No dawdling. As soon as he got himself a girlfriend, them first "playing around" as foxes in Antarctica, he became an asshole. Him and his group of friends, the Physical Kids (pertaining to their magical Disciplines) got drunk every single night, and Q lost all focus on what was important in life. They graduated after their five years there (four years for Quentin and Alice, his gf) and moved to New York, where they also did nothing but dick around and get drunk. It was intolerable! Such a terrible life to live doing nothing.

That's almost how I feel about my life right now. Am I really doing anything with my life? Or am I just passing my time doing nothing? Maybe this is why the book bothered me so much?

One night, in a drunken stupor, Q decides to have sex with their friend Janet, thus making Alice feel terrible, Janet, giddy, and himself like the complete asshole that he was. This goes on, him being pissed at himself, and then mad at her too when she has sex with their friend Penny (a guy), and both Quentin and Alice not talking at all. It's terrible. In the end, after they have this grand adventure, that they all were so not prepared for, they have to battle this guy, referred to as the Beast. Alice, being super awesome at magic as she is, battles him with all she's got, throwing spells at him one after another, changing herself into a zoo of different animals and then winding up for a huge spell to finish him off. Only problem with that last spell is that it consumes her. Completely. It was just too much magical power for her to handle and she turns into a niffin, a blue ball of magical energy. Even then, she tears the head right off the Beast before she disappears.

And then my thoughts are, "What?! She dies?! She can't die! She was the best one! Quentin is a screw up! They just finally got back together! She has to be alive somehow!!" But... She isn't. She is gone. For. Good. Wow. But wait, there's more. Q, after seven or more months of healing, goes on a quest to chase the Questing Beast. This stag grants him 3 wishes. Bring Alice back? Um... no. Can't do that. Heal Penny's hands that got bitten off by the Beast? Yeah, no. Can't do that either. Sorry. Aw hell. Just send me back home then. Q retreats into an empty life of monotony. Right up until the last two pages, his life is a living hell filled with pathetic numbness and no magic, since he decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. And then his other friends, that were still alive, come back to make him come with them to go back to Fillory and rule. Yay the end.

What? That's it? What the hell.

These characters are a little too human for my taste, methinks. And this is why my life suck at the moment. It also didn't help that I went from a lighthearted novel about love and magic and happiness to such depressing novel such as those. So now I'm going to read The Hobbit before I read the next book I was given. Probably a good choice. Don't get me wrong, those two books were amazing. But the main characters' morals weren't. And I hated that with a passion. Morals are fun. I like them a lot.

And this end my extremely long-winded rant about how my life sucks. Thanks.



Recently, I found out that Lev Grossman has a second book coming out in The Magicians series, so what did I do? I automatically wanted it, and almost pre-ordered it. Lack of money stopped me, though. Maybe this next book will be happier?