Book Review: Beautiful Chaos

This is the third book in the Castor Chronicles written by Kami Garcia and Maragert Stohl.  I' m going to try my best not to give anything away, but you may want to shield your eyes anyway, if you haven't read it yet. 

It was a very satisfying read, though not as good as Creatures or Darkness.  Chaos focused mostly on Ethan and I felt all the other characters kind of took on less important roles.  Keeping with the recipe of the books, the flashbacks showed us Sarafine's early days with Lena, which were really good.  I feel like there could be a whole book about Sarafine after reading the flashbacks.

 

Character wise we got to learn more about John and I thouroughly enjoyed it.  He was really cool and like the turn his story is taking.  Liv seemed to take a step backwards and two steps forward, which I found frustrating, but am in the end, happy with.  We still don't see much of Ethan's dad, but you'll be surprised with how Mrs. English plays into everything.

 

The ending was anti-climatic, but still breath-taking and I picked up book four right away.

 

In the end, I give it five stars.

Writers Block: Character Archetypes Based off Beautiful Creatures

Hey, welcome to a new type of post you should see about every thursday.  I no I'm no bigshot writer with any work published and probably don't have any right telling you how to write, but I have been doing it for a while now and thought I could share some advice because, personally, I'm always looking for some myself.  In Writer's Block I'll post anything I find useful, basically tips and tricks.

This week I was thinking about why authors tend to create similar characters (archetypes) and what really got me thinking about this was Ridley from Beautiful Creatures so I thought I would sort of base the post around the characters from the Castor Chronicles.  No worries, no spoilers here, but if you haven't read the books you might be a bit lost.  See the movie, it's close enough character-wise and much shorter.

Ridley
Character's like her are fun to dress up.  An author can out anything on one of these characters and get away with it because anything looks good on them and the bad-ass attitude can rock any conversation because they are the equal amount humorous and kick-ass.

Link
The stable best-friend is something everyone wants, especially female writers.  They create comic relief and a companion who means a lot without being romantically involved or has familial-ties with the protagonist.  Expendible, but heart-breaking.

Boo
An animal is hard to resist, especially a really cool animal you could never have in real life.  Really, these are just characters created out of selfish reasons.

Macon
Ah.  It all started with the wisest mentor of all- Obi Wan Kenobi (OK, it started before him).  A father-figure/teacher, common among stories with orphans and paranormal romances, help introduce a character into the world and/or magical powers, vampires, werewolves, dragons, lightsabers, castors, take your pick.

Ethan's Father
The missing parent.  If they aren't playing a role like Macon, adults tend to be missing from YA fiction.  Why?  Simple, teenagers don't want to escape into a book where the parents are bossing the kid around like in the real world.  If a parent is present, they A) don't care, or B)the kid fights the man and ends up winning.

That's it for now.  If you enjoy this, please comment and say so!  I really hope it helps.  P.S. Did you see the book trailer for Clockwork Princess?

Book Review: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness is the sequel to Beautiful Creatures and as such this is going to be a rather thin review because I can't give away any spoilers.

This book picks up right after the last one, give or take a few days, and doesn't cover a whole year, but rather about a month.  The story has a rather focused plot-line and for the majority Lena and Ethan aren't together, which threw a screw into things.  However the new characters, John Breed and Liv, are neither a breath of fresh air or dead-weights, but were certainly necessary.  The old characters all took steps forward, especially Link, and the plot moved quickly enough.  It kept me breathless throughout the whole thing, and so I give it 5-Stars.  Great read, super excited for the next one, but I'll take a slight detour and read Dream Dark first.

Movie Review: Beautiful Creatures

Where the hell is Boo Radley?

That's my first reaction to the movie adaptation of the fantastic, and rather long, book Beautiful Creatures.  I read the book in preparation of the movie, and fell in love with it completely.  So I was so stoked for the movie- the previews looked great, the actors looked great, everything looked great.  Well, it, unfortunately had what I call PJMS, or Percy Jackson Movie Syndrome.  Basically it's a great movie- unless you've read the book.

The movie left out four characters- Boo Radley, Ryan, Marian, and Reece.  Granted, Ryan and Reece aren't exactly major players, but Marian and Boo are.  They actually combined Amma and Marian to create this softer, librarian version of Amma.  It was a bad idea.  While I have no qualms with the actress, she was perfect for the role of Marian, but not the role of Amma.

And while they didn't completely forget about mentioning the fact that Ethan has a dad, he never once showed up.  Ever.

To avoid really ranting, or giving anything away, I'm going to finish it up here.  Yes, you're probably going to go see it because its just one of several YA books hitting the screen and it deserves to be seen, but if you're looking for a good adaptation, this is NOT it.  I apologize on their behalf.  Like I said, good movie- unless you've read the book.