Last time on Mockingjay, I’m rising to my feet when a woman throws open the door. She wears a bright turquoise silk robe embroidered with exotic birds. Her magenta hair’s fluffed up like a cloud and decorated with gilded butterflies. Grease from the half-eaten sausage she’s holding smears her lipstick. The expression on her face says she recognizes me. She opens her mouth to call for help.
Without hesitation, I shoot her through the heart.
…
Who the woman was calling to remains a mystery, because after searching the apartment, we find she was alone. Perhaps her cry was meant for a nearby neighbor, or was simply an expression of fear. At any rate, there’s no one else to hear her.
And that’s the last thought Katniss gives to the woman she murdered before they get back to business. I think the best part of this is her slow, robotic analysis of why someone seeing armed killers might scream. There doesn’t seem to be any practical use to it, Katniss mulls. Perhaps it was some sort of fear response. How odd.
Katniss moves on to what matters. It’d be nice to rest, but she figures the capital forces will realize they survived sooner or later.
…how?
This actually raises yet another problem with the lizard plan. The lizards eat their prey.
If they stop once Katniss dies (which doesn’t make any sense, but whatever) then unless Katniss died last, other members of the group would escape. If they don’t stop, you wouldn’t be able to tell if they got their intended target or not. They’d just keep running amok in the underground killing people until the capital figured Katniss was probably dead and sent people down to finish them off. (Remember, “biological weapons with expiration dates” are either immoral or lost technology according to Patriarch. All created things lack any sort of built in check. Not only that, but they’re presumably fertile given the capital couldn’t even figure out how to sterilize the jabberjays, so left to their own devices they’ll not only fail to die off but start breeding more.)
The only reason the capital even has a chance at figuring out they’re still alive is because their lizard plan didn’t work right and all the lizards, apparently, are dead. So unless they were betting on their plan failing, they never had any way of verifying the deaths. And even then, the lizards could have succeeded in overwhelming the group and that explosion was some deadman’s switch type deal, so again, there’s no way to be sure if all of the group is dead or not.
On top of that, in any situation in which part of the group survives, even if the capital can tell some escaped and some didn’t, they wouldn’t know who, so they’d have to keep searching for every member of the group in any combination.
But for no reason the capital is expected to immediately figure out what happened, so they’re still fugitives. Luckily (oh, how very sick I am of that word) they’re now only a few blocks from Snow’s mansion! Because apparently the plan was just to walk up to the place because they’re a bunch of morons. And luckily the fact Katniss just blew up their map doesn’t matter, because they’re now in a populated area where the pods are turned off.
“Let’s check her closets,” I say.
In one bedroom we find hundreds of the woman’s outfits, coats, pairs of shoes, a rainbow of wigs, enough makeup to paint a house.
Yeah, don’t let your recent murder make you feel bad about then pawing through her stuff and insulting her for it.
In another bedroom (…I feel like the author just doesn’t quite get the whole “apartment” concept. So the standard apartment is a two bedroom two bathroom setup?) they find clothes for a guy.
Perhaps they belong to her husband. Perhaps to a lover who had the good luck to be out this morning.
Wow.
Okay, let’s stop and think about what the book just did here.
Here’s what the book didn’t say:
Perhaps they belong to her husband or lover who had the good luck to be out this morning.
Instead, it puts the emphasis on the second sentence. It’s sweeping aside the first suggestion (a lawful husband) to make sure you notice the second (fucking someone out of wedlock). Why construct it like this? A husband would also be out if he’s not there, right? But the detail is only in the second one, which makes it sound more thought out and thus more likely.
Furthermore “a lover” generally doesn’t have his own bedroom and exactly as many outfits. I would assume a relative (son/brother/father) under those circumstances. Even if we go with the idea that couples sleep in separate beds, the point where he’s got his own room full of clothes is the point you’d probably describe him as a boyfriend or fiance, not lover, which is the only one of those three words that puts the emphasis on sex rather than relationship. On top of that, while the book says “her” husband, it uses an indefinite article for lover, as if there’s probably more than one but only one actually uses the room.
In short, there is absolutely no reason for this unless you inexplicably really want to imply the dead woman Katniss just murdered was probably a slut.
Then they take her clothes to wear as a disguise, all the while insulting them for being so stupid looking, stuff the pockets with her food, and head out.
Agitated people swirl around us, speaking of rebels and hunger and me in their affected Capitol accents
An “affected accent” is a fake one. Once again, we’re not supposed to be feeling any sympathy. Tying what they talk about to their supposed fake way of talking is a good way of making it clear their agitation isn’t real. On an emotional level, it’s saying they’re all fakey fakers. On a rational level, it’s saying they can’t possibly be that bothered if they’re still keeping up some stupid act based on fashion.
Relatedly, I bet Katniss is the sort of person who thinks people speak other languages just to annoy her.
Through an apartment window, I see an emergency report and pictures of our faces flashing. They haven’t identified who in our party died yet, because I see Castor and Finnick among the photos. Soon every passerby will be as dangerous as a Peacekeeper.
Okay, we know that they were flashing those same photos in the original broadcast and probably every one since then. People have already seen their faces. And even if they hadn’t before now, no, every unarmed person would still not be just as dangerous as the armed soldier-police, no, it’s still going to be wrong to murder them “without hesitation”.
Cressy says there’s somewhere they can go to hide and leads them into an out of the way store selling fur underwear. It’s run by a woman named Tigris who’s remade herself to look like a tiger, because that is totally clever and not ridiculously contrived in the slightest.
Inexplicably, Katniss recognizes the name from games when she was a really little kid, because asocial Katniss is totally the sort of person to remember the names of everyone in the world.
Then she must have had one operation too many and crossed the line into repellence.
Well, that’s one option. Or she might have been pushed out for not being flashy enough, or because people were bored with cats. It’s obvious that fashion in the capital mostly runs on novelty. Cat things could be a fad for a while, but unless the designer was willing to move on, people would get bored.
So this is where stylists go when they’ve outlived their use. To sad theme underwear shops where they wait for death. Out of the public eye.
…Yes, when you’re no longer doing a good job at a profession people stop paying you for it and you have to get other work. What the fuck book. What the fuck.
Apparently she’s someone under Patriarch. So if her first move isn’t to turn us in to the Capitol, it will be to notify Plutarch, and by extension Coin, of our whereabouts.
Okay, Katniss, first, yes, anyone who’s part of the rebel network that Coin runs is going to know Coin and probably everyone in the capital was also under Patriarch. Second, why the fuck would this matter? The only possible problem is that they might send a message back asking what the hell is this about a secret mission, but certainly you don’t need to worry about just knowing your location.
Anyway, Tigerlady shows them to her secret hidden room. Everyone’s nervous a setup and that Tigerlady will turn them in. This would make a lot of sense in my suggested rewrite where they’re in the capital when the place isn’t five minutes away from being taken by the rebels, but under the circumstances, no, this is the last time anyone would be planning to switch to the capital side.
I have a moment of panic and find myself turning to Tigris, searching those tawny eyes. Why is she doing this?
But it is possible she’d turn them in if she could avoid getting the blame. Cressy was hesitant about Tigerlady, so perhaps she’s not actually a rebel member at all, just someone Patriarch said might be sympathetic if they were sure they were doomed otherwise. After all, if they get Tigerlady killed for harboring them now, the fact the rebels will win in another few days doesn’t mean much.
And besides, Katniss does seem to keep forgetting that the capital is nearly beaten. You can actually make something interesting of this – Katniss is so indoctrinated by the idea that the capital is all powerful and everyone’s an informant that even now she can’t shake the mindset.
She’s no Cinna, someone willing to sacrifice herself for others.
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
This woman was the embodiment of Capitol shallowness.
EVERY TIME I THINK THE BOOKS CAN’T GET WORSE THEY DO
EVERY
FUCKING
TIME
She was one of the stars of the Hunger Games until…until she wasn’t. So is that it, then? Bitterness? Hatred? Revenge? Actually, I’m comforted by the idea.
Saint Cinna, Bestest and Most Wonderfulest, was only there out of the goodness of his heart. But this bitch is just bitter about how hideous she is because she’s shallow and disgusting, so she’s helping them for the sake of revenge.
It’s amazing how much Katniss can tell about people she’s just met who haven’t even said a word to her. But she’s an utterly reliable narrator, so…
“Did Snow ban you from the Games?” I ask. She just stares back at me. Somewhere her tiger tail flicks with displeasure. “Because I’m going to kill him, you know.” Her mouth spreads into what I take for a smile.
…naturally Katniss is right.
Thus reassured that they won’t be betrayed because a woman scorned etc etc, they head to the basement. Gale needs someone to take care of the wound he got back last chapter with the lizardmen and naturally cleaning it out and sewing it up is left to Katniss because I’m probably the most qualified for the job. Then she continues her womanly duties by looking after Peeta, who’s cut his wrists up on the cuffs. Katniss tells him to keep it clean and somehow this means she’s worried about blood poisoning despite blood poisoning being pretty much the last possible stage but otherwise Peeta wouldn’t be able to repeat the line from the first book about knowing about blood poisoning, so contrived conversation it is.
“Go to sleep,” I say. He won’t until I’ve rearranged his handcuffs and shackled him to one of the stair supports. It can’t be comfortable, lying there with his arms above his head.
Yeah I’d be a little less concerned with comfort and more the lack of blood flow and impending double amputations you’re going to do. Seriously, folks, absolutely never chain someone’s arms above their head for long period. This kind of thing can cause permanent damage even when you’re not starting off with severely damaged wrists.
We are completely at the mercy of a decrepit tiger-woman
Incidentally, Katniss, do you realize how hypocritical of you it is to bitch about the evil capital not wanting her as a stylist when you can’t shut up about how ugly she is?
I have only one dream I remember. A long and wearying thing in which I’m trying to get to District 12. The home I’m seeking is intact, the people alive. Effie Trinket, conspicuous in a bright pink wig and tailored outfit, travels with me. I keep trying to ditch her in places, but she inexplicably reappears at my side, insisting that as my escort she’s responsible for my staying on schedule. Only the schedule is constantly shifting, derailed by our lack of a stamp from an official or delayed when Effie breaks one of her high heels. We camp for days on a bench in a gray station in District 7, awaiting a train that never comes. When I wake, somehow I feel even more drained by this than my usual nighttime forays into blood and terror.
I hate this book so, so much.
You know what the best part about this? Effie’s disappeared and presumed dead. If she’s not dead, she’s one of the people being tortured. And Katniss knows this. Doesn’t give a shit, but she does know it. And still, she’s whining about how stupid and annoying Effie is.
A decent scene, written by an author who didn’t think in terms of heroic sociopathy, would be her with Effie trying to do this in a seemingly idyllic setting but somehow they can’t seem to get home, and having the stress be from that. A really common sort of dream is where things are at a point before anything bad has happened to a place or person, but when you try to get there you can’t.
What’s especially awful is that Effie never did hold them up. She did the legwork before their first games because Haymitch was a drunken wreak, and likely did the same for every other set of tributes she had. She was good at her job.
But she had stupid hair, so she was dumb and stupid and useless.
Katniss eats some food and finally realizes what anyone paying attention already knew: that all the deaths that have happened are her fault, for a mission she made up. She even mentions the thing where she killed an unarmed woman. Innocent unarmed woman, Katniss. Don’t forget the innocent.
When everyone finally awakens, I confess. How I lied about the mission, how I jeopardized everyone in pursuit of revenge. There’s a long silence after I finish. Then Gale says, “Katniss, we all knew you were lying about Coin sending you to assassinate Snow.”
I forgot. We’re doing the thing where when Katniss admits fault it’s just so the other characters can tell her that she was actually right.
“You knew, maybe. The soldiers from Thirteen didn’t,” I reply.
“Do you really think Jackson believed you had orders from Coin?” Cressida asks. “Of course she didn’t. But she trusted Boggs, and he’d clearly wanted you to go on.”
No, Jackson fought against this at every turn, until it led to the squad aiming guns at each other after Katniss refused yet again to give up the holographic map.
“We’ve infiltrated the enemy camp, showing that the Capitol’s defenses can be breached. We’ve managed to get footage of ourselves all over the Capitol’s news. We’ve thrown the whole city into chaos trying to find us.”
Their defenses have already been breached. That’s why there are blocks upon blocks of evacuated areas. The propaganda team was never on the front line, and other, actual soldiers were clearing areas and marching in this entire time. They were always on the television because Beetee was hacking it to show their own tapes. It doesn’t matter that they’re in the news because there’s a war being lost as well. And chaos? From the sounds of it, the majority of the capital is evacuated, with only the core area around Snow still populated. The people are talking of the rebels and the lack of food. You really think your little change did all that much more?
But Katniss isn’t convinced and is still emo, so everyone left alive keeps talking to her about how awesome her awesome plan was and how all the dead people totally were fine dying for her poorly thought out revenge plan.
Finally, Peeta speaks up to say the exact same thing, that everyone knew and supported her and was willing to die. Well, except that capital woman. And Jackson, who made it clear she didn’t believe it and wanted to head back. And whoever the other unnamed people who were pointing their guns from Jackson’s side that time they mutinied.
But she’s convinced and that’s all that matters. So they move on to plotting how they’ll get Snow, because of course at no point during this plan did they think about that minor issue.
Katniss proposes plan Get Caught And Hope He’ll Come Out In Public To Kill Me Personally In Front Of Everyone, And Also He Won’t Have Any Security Around So Then Gale Can Shoot Him.
The other characters, perhaps having used up an extra ration of stupid on the previous bit, are able to point out the many obvious flaws in this.
Then they watch TV, because if Katniss can’t directly be on it, we can at least hear about her through the medium.
The government has the rebel survivors narrowed down to the five of us.
That’s impossible. They were fighting over an open sewer line against things that eat people, after which Katniss set off an explosive that reduced everything to tiny pieces.
They emphasize how dangerous we are. Show us exchanging gunfire with the Peacekeepers, although not the mutts ripping off their heads.
Well, considering you said bragged about how your group killed three fourths of them in the first exchange, yes, you are dangerous and the lizardmen were mostly eating the corpses you left.
Do a tragic tribute to the woman lying where we left her, with my arrow still in her heart. Someone has redone her makeup for the cameras.
How can someone write this?
They head back to the cellar and plan more. They say they want to try infiltrating and that Katniss shouldn’t try giving herself up until they’ve made an effort to get in without that.
I consent to that second point to avoid further argument. If I do decide to give myself up, it won’t require anyone else’s permission or participation.
Because sure, she’s dragged everyone else along and insisted they treat her as leader, but that doesn’t mean she owes them any consideration in return.
Anyway, Gale and Peeta have a friendly chat.
It’s so strange to hear them talking like this. Almost like friends. Which they’re not. Never have been. Although they’re not exactly enemies.
Katniss.
Gale has said that he’d have been happy if Peeta had stayed insane except for the fact that he was sure he’d have no chance with you because you’re attracted to the most miserable person in the room. After you proved you were willing to leave Peeta anyway unless he stopped being so crazy, he has repeatedly offered to kill Peeta.
They’re enemies. If they’re acting friendly now, it’s either because Gale is the kind of psychopath who can chat with his victim like they’re best friends while passing the time before he gets a chance, or because Gale is deliberately trying to lure Peeta into a false sense of security so he’ll have an easier time helping Peeta accidentally fall into all those bullets.
They chat about which of them Katniss loves. Peeta’s side of the conversation is presented as insecurity while Gale comes off as knowing what he’s talking about, so the ship is officially sunk. Seriously, if anyone’s still reading wondering who Katniss ends up with after that conversation, this is either the first book they’ve ever read or they’re such dedicated Katniss/Gale shippers that the people who think actors are actually gay lovers are pointing and laughing at them as being delusional.
Our dramatic ending line this time is quite underwhelming.
“I wonder how she’ll make up her mind.”
“Oh, that I do know.” I can just catch Gale’s last words through the layer of fur. “Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can’t survive without.”
I mean, yeah, that’s a pretty unhealthy way to describe a relationship, but it’s not anything new about how the book has been handling this.
And that’s it for Chapter 23! There are only five more entries before I’m done with this horrible book and this horrible series.
So, naturally, my thoughts turn to what’s next.
I’m considering doing a book I already read, since there were definitely a few that I think could benefit from an in-depth look. But reading something new is fun too.
I prefer the fantastic over realism, and anyway, as you may have noticed, worldbuilding is my big interest. It can be somewhere else entirely or our world plus zombies/unicorns/whathaveyou, it just has to be different. I want interesting premises to pick apart.
I’m not reading Twilight. Anything where everyone already knows it sucks is a waste of my valuable telling-people-it-sucks skills. Also, I would sooner smash my head through my laptop than try to read any of that again. I would actually like a book somewhat better put together than The Hunger Games, for that matter, because explaining why everything ever is wrong every chapter is a bit time consuming.
The book will need to be available as a PDF or some similar format. I’m willing to do the legwork to see if I can find it, but if I can’t, I’m not going to be typing up all the stuff I quote. If god wanted me to have to do that, he wouldn’t have invented copy-paste. Don’t argue with god, people.
Edit: Also, I’m lazy. Tell me what the book’s about and why it’s interesting enough to sustain this sort of scrutiny.
Katniss can be so judgmental sometimes. (Well, more like the narrative. The author wants us to think that Katniss is a decent person deep down, but the way it’s written makes her seem a bit sociopathic.) I mean, Christ, you just killed the woman, and then pretty much looted her home. Eh, whatever.
I like morally complex characters. I have villains that I love, and sociopaths that I enjoy. But I can’t stand characters like Katniss, always making (often mean) assumptions about people all the time out of what seems to be spite.
You know, this trip into the Capitol would’ve been a good opportunity to characterize the place and people who live there, add a layer of moral complexity, but it just comes off as the Capitol folk being stupid and tacky and shallow and that’s all.
I dislike the love triangle very much. I heard that they’re actually ramping it up for the movies.
My suggestions for future books: I would love for you to tear into the House of Night series, but it’s several books long and extremely difficult to read, and not in a good way. My other recommendation is the Mortal Instruments series, which is at least readable. It is also pretty popular amongst some circles, reminds me of the Hunger Games in that way. Also, they are making a movie for it.
Yeah, Katniss would be far more tolerable if we weren’t told what to think about her. Even if the author does feel this way, if it wasn’t so blatant it wouldn’t be so bad. And looking at it the other way, even if the morality was right instead of this mess, show don’t tell! People should be able to get this across without the narrator telling you how things are.
Aren’t the Mortal Instruments by that plagiarist, though?
My recommendation would be Battle Royale, a Japanese book that’s been translated. I haven’t read it yet, but many people who have read it and the Hunger Games say that the HG were rip offs of BR. After reading up a little on the plot summary (Wikipedia is my friend), it sounds a lot better than this. Also, only one book, I think. A darker, more realistic set up and more victims in the childmurder match (though I’ll need to read to see the motivation behind the match) pairs up with some darker and more practical equipment, it seems. An example would be the explosive collar every kid has to where that can pass along whatever they say. If they step into a restricted area, try to escape or speak of rebelion- Kablooey! Also, if there is no death within twenty-four hours, all of the collars go off and there is no winner. No berry suicide plots there. And every kid gets a pack with some food, a flashlight, and a random weapon or something else. If you kill a kid, you keep their supplies. More incentive. There’s even a real sociopath kid that decides whether he’s going to go on a violent murder spree by flipping a coin. 8D Look! A sociopath that the book /won’t/ pass off as a saint.
I’m in the process of ordering it in at the library. Not sure if it comes in PDF, but it’s been out for a while, so quite possibly. I think it would deserve an analysis to stack up against all of these ones. Then again, I can definitely empathize if you’re getting tired of anything related to murder games.
Whatever you do, I wish you happy writing. You’ve got a good eye for detail. My one request would be that you cut back on cussing or at least not take the Lord’s name in vain. That’s worse than the cussing, for us believers, and very offensive. I like your content, though. Hoping to see more.
Battle Royale is better when it’s read in original Japanese, I heard. I’ve read the English translation – it isn’t that great.
Battle Royale has a HUGE cast of 40+ kids in the game, all of whom are named. A good portion of them get their own chapters, too. It was pretty confusing on my first read, but a lot smoother once I got to know them and reread the book. Because of this, the kids get a lot more humanized than in HG, when it’s just “that boy/girl from District X.” There are a few central characters who do get several chapters, but their survival is truly in doubt. I remember that one of the “main” characters died halfway through the book, which really took me by surprise.
It’s a lot gorier and has some sex in it, though nothing explicit. If you ask me, it’s a lot more psychologically horrifying as well.
That being said, it does have its flaws. It’s not perfect, just better than HG at executing its premise.
Yeah, they are infamous for that. I read them on my own before I knew of the whole debacle. They are very YA and reminded me somewhat of the Hunger Games, not the plot or setting but in the way it was written.
OH MY GOD ITS ALMOST OVER AND YOURE STILL GOING TO MANAGE TO HATE KATNISS BY RAISED POWER AMOUNTS from now.
This commentary just makes it all worthwhile that I forced myself to read this garbage. That teachers actually have on their required reading lists. (see what I did there? DRAMA FRAGMENT) Although, I must say that it’s OBVIOUS Sean Connery and Harrison Ford really are gay lovers.
Okay, I shouldn’t be commenting on this when I’m this tired, but mostly I just wanted to say that yes. It’s by that psychotic sociopathic selfish plagiarist bitch Cassandra Clare.
I have book suggestions, but I’ll wait to post those when I can do so coherently.
As far as your next book goes, perhaps Temeraire? It’s certainly better than these books, and dragons in the Napoleonic era, right? Could be cool. idk, this is just one that a lot of other people really seem to love but I think is decent but not all that great, so I’d be interested to see your analysis of it. A quick Google suggests you shouldn’t have trouble getting a PDF.
I’ve been enjoying your analyses a lot so far, even though I haven’t really commented. I’m sure whatever you pick next, you’ll have some great insights.
“Do a tragic tribute to the woman lying where we left her, with my arrow still in her heart. Someone has redone her makeup for the cameras”
You know, until now I have read this in a “oh how horrible silly, I am not going to read this book”
But now? I am going to end up wonder at the sanity of anyone claming this is a good book with a strong feministic lead.
But makeup is stupid and shallow unless it’s being worn by Katniss to make her look fiercer.
If you’re doing another one of these, I’d suggest The Mortal Instruments. It’s a pretty decent book, though there’s still stuff to bitch at.
When I read this I could not for the life of me make out what the Capitol woman’s death was supposed to be saying to us. I refused to believe we were supposed to cheer on her death, so I explained it to myself by saying that this symbolised Katniss’ moral decline or somesuch. After reading these excellent reviews, I don’t have that much faith in the author anymore. I mean..what.
As for other books to do, how about Eon, and the sequel Eona, by Alison Goodman? It’s a story about a girl disguised as a guy in an incredibly misogynist Ancient Chinese themed fantasy world with spirit energy dragons (funnily enough, none of the characters’ names are Asian at all). It’s by an Australian author and it’s been quite successful across the pond, so I want to support it, but eh. I thought there was some great stuff in there, like a really positive depiction of a transgender character, but also some stuff I really really hated.
If this was the first book, I’d be confused about it too. It’s something where it’s hard to read as anything but a bad action. But after the first two books and the general weirdness with female characters and appearance, I’m sure it’s supposed to be righteous and not wrong. Especially with how her death is completely swept aside in favor of telling Katniss everyone who died did it for her.
It’s been present throughout the whole book that Katniss just doesn’t have the right mindset for war. At least, I don’t think so. Take Gale for example when he planned the trap for the Nut. It’s war, people are going to die. He has the better chance of getting through the war with mental scars but could still return to his life. But then Katniss, even though she’s psychotic, had to be all ‘oh, we can’t do that!’ So you know the war is going to screw her over. At first I thought it was because she saw the good and bad in both sides, (rebels and Capitol) and couldn’t really pick a side, but that probably only makes sense in my head.
Then again, when she does something like murder an innocent woman and continue to point out catty things about her makeup, it throws my whole theory above out the window.
Katniss’ morality strikes me as pretty shallow. That is, she objects but she never seems to care. That’s why she comes off as stupid rather than compassionate when she objects to things. It really seems like a matter of her just not understanding what’s going on.
Re Suggestions for next time: WWZ: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (son of Mel). It’s a collection of anecdotes from survivors of the zombie apocalypse. I believe it’s being adapted into a major motion picture. For what it’s worth I thought it was aright but did fall short of the hype.
And then there Were None by Agatha Christie. A group of people with dark secrets get trapped on an island. One of them is a murderer and begins to pick them off one by one. I think it would be fun to do a chapter by chapter read of a murder mystery novel.
I’d also like to see you tackle something Orson Scott Card. Ender’s Game is a good book that lends itself to a good nitpicking. I’d love to see you turn your hyper-critical gaze on the travesty that is Ender’s Shadow and it’s increasingly shitty sequels. Other crappy OSC novels for your consideration are Empire (EVIL DEMOCRATS try to take over America with their army of Mecha) and Lost Boy’s (in this horrid semi-autobiographical “horror” novel Card preaches about how wonderful it is to be Mormon and advocates overprotective parenting).
WWZ was another one I considered recommending. I honestly found it kind of… boring. The anecdotal structure left it without a strong enough narrative arc to really be scary/impactful, I thought.
“Empire (EVIL DEMOCRATS try to take over America with their army of Mecha)”
Oh my God, that sounds EPIC. I’m going to have to put in a vote for that one, especially after how Hamlet’s Father managed to break my brain with just the premise and few short excerpts. I would love to see a more in-depth critique/Let’s Hate of an OSC book, and this one just sounds like such pure fun!
There’s actually someone already doing that one: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?567332-Where-I-read-A-liberal-reads-Orson-Scott-Card-s-Empire-series
I know this is old, but that Agatha Christie book, I think I’ve read that. Did it originally have ‘nigger’ in the title? BTW as a kid I thought that referred to an animal, by the way it was used in nursery rhymes, which is what I’m thinking the book title was referencing.
The original title was “10 Little N*ggers”, because British nursery rhymes are wtf, which was changed to “10 Little Indians” for the US release, which was finally changed to “And Then There Were None”, to be more PC, and it’s a better title anyway.
Of course, they didn’t edit out the book’s repeated use of the word n*gger, so the original title did serve as a better warning. Like a brightly-coloured frog but with racism instead of poison.
The version I have (the 2011 edition) actually replaced all instances of the N word with “soldier boys,” including in the poem at the beginning. I was surprised to learn about the original title, to say the least.
edit: The 2009 version has this change as well. Not sure how far back it goes.
Funnily enough, even though the latest (2008, if I’m not mistaken) translation was based off the “And Then There Were None” title, the best-known Brazilian translation by far is still the original one, based off the “Ten Little Niggers” title. There was also a mid-50’s translation which, for some reason, was translated as the Portuguese equivalent of “The Invisible Avenger”.
Huh, well, my edition’s from 1985, so I guess they clued up some point after that. It has “Formerly published as Ten Little N*ggers” on the back, and all in-book racism remains intact.
Cassie Clare, ugh. I gave the first one a try out of morbid curiosity and only managed about 75 pages before I ran screaming. Clary = Sue, and with more than a passing resemblance to Ginny. Jace or whatever his name was = uninteresting Draco clone.
The writing is horrendous, nonsensical, has the worst rendition of the Watchers I’ve ever seen, and according to one methodical amazon review that quoted page by page, really poorly edited.
Simon was actually a really funny character. Too bad he’s in such a shoddy book. I also heard there was canon gay later on, but I seriously just could not wait through it.
I’m glad to hear you’re thinking of doing more chapter by chapter ones, though. I’ve been really enjoying this Let’s Hate, and was dreading that it’d end. (though you’d probably welcome it at this rate)
I’d also like to see you do the mortal instruments series. I’ve read them all, since someone decided they would make an excellent present. If your’re even slightly familiar with her shoddy plagiarist fan fic, ripping into them should make for an interesting read. (For us, at least.) It has a couple good lines, but I don’t trust Clare enough to think she made them up by herself.
On a different note, I’d like to personally thank you for your constant Puella Magi Madoka Magica references. I usually don’t watch anime, but if you thought it was praiseworthy I thought I’d give it a shot.
It was amazing. A fantastic twist on the magical girl genre. So, thank you for that, as well as wadding through these terrible books for our entertainment.
Glad to hear it! Reading bad stuff always helps me appreciate better stuff, and Puella Magi definitely deserves to be more popular than the Hunger Games.
Honestly, I wanted to see you read Gregor The Overlander, but you may want nothing more to do with Suzanne Collins after this. Boy goes into sewer, finds humongous cockroaches, rats, and bats, there’s a war…something like that.
I actually liked that series. (It’s called ‘The Underland Chronicles’ as a whole) I read Hunger Games, liked it yet saw holes, but if I’m remembering the books correctly the main character in TUC actually has morals. I mean, he’s this eleven-year-old kid who tries to do the right thing. Except there are war themes, I guess you could call them, (genocide, massive weapons of destruction, things like that) in each book. So you might have fun picking apart at those, Farla.
alright, wow sorry about those gratuitous caps and general last post. But my suggestion is Divergence by Victoria Roth. The writing in it is actually fairly decent, it’s just everything else that’s rather utter crap. We’re explicitly told in no uncertain terms within the first two chapters that the protagonist is incredibly smart, selfless, and brave. The test that decides their future is basically a quizilla quiz made by a twelve year old (I’m still surprised that one of the ‘tests’ wasn’t what her favorite color was) and some good general overall sueishness going on.
I got like 15% through Divergent before tossing it away in utter disgust. And I read all three of the Hunger Games books AND all four of the Twilight books, so that’s kinda saying something…
Actually, Farla, even though I’m enjoying your scathing reviews, I do think you’re harsher than necessary in a lot of places. It’s okay, though, because it balances out all the people who think the series is made up of sparkly unicorn magic.
I am pretty picky. I’m curious, do you mean harsher in general or in the later reviews? Because by now I do pretty much hate everything about this series and I’m assuming the worst about it.
I wonder how much of the tigerlady thing was also a take that at furries. It seems the most likely that she *wanted* to be like that rather than she had one surgical alteration too many. The Capitol has ridiculous plastic surgery so they should be able to alter her looks again if she chose to. Maybe she couldn’t afford it or her line of credit ran out? Maybe even more surgery would put her right into the uncanny valley?
And if anything, she’s *more* willing to sacrifice herself than Cinna. She’s collaborating with rebel forces during a time of war and housing armed enemy soldiers. All Cinna ever did was design pretty outfits for kids so that rich people who wanted to fuck them would give them money, and so that afterwards, if they lived, they could be sold into sexual slavery. The biggest “sacrifice” he ever made was to make one particularly subversive dress.
Did Finnick die? I can’t even remember.
As for what next:
I’m gonna second Ender’s Game. It’d be nice to see a detailed review of it, since I’ve only really heard good things about it.
The whole Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix might be interesting as well. One character in particular, has all the traits of a huge fucking sue. She has a secret mixed ancestry from two ancient and extremely important families, is an orphan, has a magical animal sidekick, is isolated from all her peers, is somewhat of a magical prodigy, and is the only one in like a thousand years or something who can do a particular kind of necromancy. That said, I personally found her narrative was pretty enjoyable.
The books themselves are set in two areas, one that’s late 19th/early 20th century technology-wise (but no magic), and a sort of medieval place where just about everything’s done by magic and machine-made technology falls apart. The protagonists are all female necromancers who fight evil necromancers.
And there’s also Perdido Street Station. Which is a fantasy-steampunk hybrid. It’s hard to describe the worldbuilding because there aren’t a lot of parallels you can draw to other fantasy. There are women with giant scarabs for heads that need to use sign language to talk to humans (the males are all non-sapient insects that only interact with females to headfuck them), giant inter-dimensional poet spiders and parasitic psychic disembodied hands. The city it’s set in is sort of London-like, but it has secret police and people are punished by surgically altering them – usually to fit their crime, but sometimes to make them useful for industrial work. A young woman’s baby wouldn’t stop crying and she kills it somehow, maybe by smothering or shaking. They graft her baby’s arms to her head so that she will never forget what she did. So.. yeah.
There is a celebrity woman who had plastic surgery to look more like a cat, so I’d assume she was thinking of that person. Her knowledge of the world seems mostly based on TV-sphere things, and mainstream television only started to mock furries relatively recently.
I did get the impression that the woman did it on purpose. I’d guess that she was kicked out as a stylist because she wasn’t interested in innovating but trying to perfect her cat designs, and the rest of the capital was bored with the fifty-seventh rendition of the same basic outfit. The fact she had such a strict aim instead of just throwing together whatever was cool and how she has a number of modifications that would be easy to remove (a tail, for example) yet hasn’t makes me think it’s what she wanted.
As to what the book meant us to think, though, no idea at all. It reads as a mess of conflicting messages to me.
And if anything, she’s *more* willing to sacrifice herself than Cinna.
But Cinna made Katniss a pretty dress and didn’t wear too much makeup and also he was a boy, while she’s a hideous woman who doesn’t have any gemstone dresses for Katniss. Clearly she’s inferior to Saint Cinna.
And Finnick was torn apart by the lizardmen.
Suggestions? His Dark Materials? Talking animals! Disgusting romance! Twists! Retarded parallels drawn between religion here and religion in the story! An enormous fanbase!
The thing about this series is it starts off tolerable enough. There’s not too much to complain about in terms of writing. It’s just fascinating to watch Philip Pullman (the author) on his quest to take a dump on religion and how it causes the plot and the characters and the reader’s patience to disintegrate.
Plot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials#Series
TL;DR Version: A girl named Lyra (who is a compulsive liar – hence the name) tries to save her friend.
Book 1: http://uruchai.net/~meelis/Kris/Northern_Lights/Book%201%20-%20The%20Golden%20Compass.pdf
Other suggestions: Harry Potter. I’m begging you. It’s asking for it.
I kind of liked His Dark Materials, actually. As an atheist, I think that Pullman’s jabs at religion were pretty spot-on and didn’t interrupt the flow of the story very much.
As another atheist, I thought His Dark Materials was mostly just irritatingly irrelevant to real-world religion even as it seemed to think it was making some kind of a point. You can’t really say anything about religion in the real world by writing about a fantasy universe where original sin is an empirically observable substance, a medical-ish procedure can be carried out to make it stop sticking to people but that procedure leaves you zombified, the original sin substance is also actually what angels are made of and some other stuff, God exists but it turns out he’s just a poser, and the church is trying to prevent a second fall (well, if I remember correctly that was what they were doing, anyway). In TV Tropes terms, it’s basically a huge honking Space Whale Aesop. It’s like writing a book in which fetuses are sapient and can have conversations with you and expecting this to have some kind of relevance to whether abortion is ethical in the real world where fetuses aren’t sapient.
Also there was a horrible romance that made me want to throw the last book at the wall in disgust.
Though all of this comes with the disclaimer that it’s been years since I read them, I don’t remember the details well anymore and parts of it were probably lost on me, and romance (beyond cute silly crushes) involving preteens squicks me to hell and back (and did even more so at the time).
If Farla has interesting stuff to say about it I’m all for her tackling it, but if there isn’t too much worthy of comment I’d rather she read something more illuminating.
I think tigerlady is suppose to be the literary version of ‘cat woman.’
Peeta is an enabler. They are stuck in a room on a suicide mission, several have already died and they are now realizing how dumb and impossible the whole thing was so naturally, they should cheer Katniss on even more in her stupidity. Then again, she is smarter than they are. When Katniss is saying she made up the dumbest mission ever, the normal response would be, “We can’t think about that, we’re here now, we need a new plan to move forward.”
Adding to my own post, it was the one time Katniss accurately assessed the situation and Peeta swept away all of her culpability.
Thus reassured that they won’t be betrayed because a woman scorned etc etc
LOL, I didn’t even see it that way but so true! It seems you have given up at any positive female interactions at this point. I just hated that Katniss diminished this woman because of how she looks and because she couldn’t be a rebel sympathizer despite being willing to help and having a secret room.
Anyway, I know, I know, I am late to the party. I just wanted to add that Katniss’s hatred of women is normal for a child who so hates her mother and idolizes her father. However, like so many other things, nothing comes of it and it is never pointed out as part of her how her childhood damaged her.
Mm, that’s a good point about Katniss. It’s a shame it’s not consistent, though – she’s decidedly neutral to minor female characters with a defined plot role, like Cinna’s female counterpart or butcher-lady or Gale’s mom, so it’s not like she’s isolated herself from women.
I was wondering: have you read any of Whitley’s reviews of the series?
She just did this chapter of Mockingjay:
http://readingwithavengeance.tumblr.com/post/73370040953/mockingjay-ch-23#top
Holy shit. Farla has a twin!
Also this is reminding me how one issue I did have with the Catching Fire movie was how conspicuous having two major female characters be non-verbal turned out to be in movie form. But then it kind of made up for that by making Joanna even louder than she was in the books and having Katniss be friendly to her except for when she’s doing something that would reasonably be upsetting to Katniss.
I’ve seen a couple but they cover very similar ground so they’re not too interesting for me to read.