So here are the top four:
Pokemon Blue 99 (38%)
Matched 96 (37%)
Battle Royale 81 (31%)
Delirium 78 (30%)
Combined with the secondary poll on what people don’t want, we get
Matched 96-36 = 60
Delirium 78-39 = 39
Pokemon Blue 99-76 = 23
Battle Royale 81-77 = 4
This is why it’s important to vote in both polls.
So it seems I should go with Matched, which has almost as many votes as Pokemon Blue and far fewer antivotes. Graceling should wrap up one week before the end of this month, at which point I’ll be posting the first few chapters of WWZ and carapace fic (you will learn to love them or else) until June. Depending on the situation, I might just go with Pokemon Blue anyway, it’ll have more to do with how much time it looks like I’ll have to work on these.
The polls will remain up for a bit in case this does not properly reflect your will, after which I’ll throw up a new set. I checked out Unwind, which was brought up a while ago and immediately dismissed on the grounds I don’t need to touch things everyone agrees are stupid, and discovered that actually it was well received and actual professionals in charge of actual reviews they get paid actual money for said things like “the power of the novel lies in what it doesn’t do: come down explicitly on one side or the other.” The sides being if murdering a thirteen year old for their organs is right or not.
So that’ll be added to the polls next, along with sequels to stuff I’ve already done. So if you really, really want to learn what happens next in the book series about if raping thirteen year olds is right or not or any of the rest, you can vote for that soon. And if you have more suggestions, you should give them now because I can’t edit the polls once I put them up.
Edit: adding links into the Future Books post, so people can check out the books’ openings easily.
Maybe he meant the sides of pro-choice and pro-life? I mean, the thesis is that both political viewpoints are compatible with murdering thirteen-year-olds for their organs, so, uh, that is a KIND of impartiality.
Yeah, but if I say the Republicans want to hunt humans for sport, and the Democrats want to sacrifice people to Cthulhu, and then write a book where they compromise by hunting extra people so they have plenty to give to Cthulhu, no one would describe it as not coming down explicitly on one side or the other. They would describe it as me bashing both groups at once.
But maybe they wouldn’t if you got a publisher who marketed it as something really relevant and insightful and deep!
Basically I suspect the problem here is “critics” being unwilling to point out when the emperor has no clothes.
Goodreads loves it too. It has a higher rating than Graceling or Wither. And higher than Sabriel, too, which is an outrage.
Also:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unwind_(novel)#Awards_and_honors
…okay I give up.
There’s this series called Magic in Manhatten – the first one is like Bras and Broomsticks. I remember them being really sweet. You should try them!
This is more a hate-based enterprise. There’s generally less to say about good things.
Ok, so granted I only got two chapters into Matched before I got distracted, but I honestly think that while it’s not exactly good…at least the main character isn’t a horrible fucking person. Not bright, but she’s at least a decent human being.
Well, the object of the poll is to pick what you want me to tear apart for a month, so consider it in that vein.
I forget… was Fever from Lauren DeStefano something you were interested in doing or not?
I’m going to eventually check it out if only to see what new horrors she’s managed. Don’t want to do it for a while, though.
If it makes you feel any better, more stuff happens in this one than the last.
Given the content of what did happen in the first one, that just fills me with a quiet horror.
Reading the summary of Matched on wikipedia, it sounds exactly like The Giver only with a teen love triangle.
I wonder if that was the pitch. You can just see someone looking at the book and saying that it’s okay, but if only the main character was a girl torn between which hot boy she wanted to pick.
I actually read Unwind and liked it, but it required a hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief. It’s more enjoyable than Graceling, I’ll say that much.
It would’ve been a lot better if it had been set in an alternate universe where Unwinding was an established, acceptable practice, instead of setting it in our world where it was an “answer” to abortion. Absolute nonsense.
I completely agree. I also have to confess to liking it, I just had to pull a GladOs at times and go “dont think about it dont think about it dont think about it” whenever we were reminded this wasn’t an alternate universe.
Eh, Wither was prettily written. Atlas Shrugged does a good job of selling its premise. Presenting something vile with skill is no less reprehensible than doing it badly, and probably more harmful.
It’d be one thing if the backstory was incidental, but it’s being set up to remark on real issues, so it has to be judged on that axis.
Will November be carapace month again? You got so much done last year, and it’s been a few months since you did any carapace reviews.
I was just thinking about that, and yes, most likely.
Hurray! o/
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