Ever Bethany

Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex finally,jade_sabre_301*
LoL, Eoin Colfer. You do so like to play with us. I love that the only way to get around a situation was to use his own madness, and Artemis just does so. SO HIM.
I feel like he's regressed a bit from the end of the Colony, but it also makes sense in the situation--and is a great way to keep Artemis from growing too much for the series to continue.

As a writer, I'd guess Colfer heard outcry, though he was thinking of finishing out the series with that previous book, and this was a work-around, to return to the same tone.

*JADE-SABRE-301 I REMEMBERED THE NUMBER IN YOUR USERNAME WITHOUT LOOKING
ohm-gee, of course I had to check and be sure, that kind of freaked me out, haha

#

Dalja's Spring: Episode 2
I cannot watch this without the "Dalja is my Spirit Animal" "Dalja's HAIR is my spirit animal" conversation from darkeyedwolf's post on this show popping into my head every couple of minutes. Hah. Her hair is so precious.

BUT ALSO
it was my first time watching a K-drama episode in a week, and with all the scarcity of watching anything at all, it was all wide-eyed-wonder up in here, like hearing music has been.

"She is SO CUTE" my mind kept saying, boggling. TBH, I probably would have been thinking that anyway, but the magnitude of it was kind of unusual.

This actual episode was great because happily we've dispensed with all the narrative threads I dislike in the first episode (girl gets guy she's pined for, he's a rat's bastard, the complications are embarrassing) and get into the part *I* like in these kind of things.

The "fake" relationship being preserved for the thinnest excuses...the cute tension (though why does the boy always get the upper hand in this? I was so excited the one time Eun-Bi pulled a fast one in Ramyun Shop) ... and now a Favorite Ajussi entrance!
Who I don't usually talk about because his voice isn't dark chocolate death, but still.

You all *loved* Chime, so I felt bad to not fall in love with it. In fact, I'm pretty sure I should have fallen in love with it, but I'd just read the very different Folk Keeper by Billingsley and loved THAT, and for some reason, the overall scheme of the book was reminiscent of Among Others, so it got unfairly compared.



I am going to try it again sometime, because I skimmed over the first half of the book after the first chapter, and got caught up in it several chapters out from the end and actually read that carefully.

It's gorgeously set, with intriguing characters, and a fascinating world. I know I like it, it was just bad timing.

***

Entwined was rhinemouse 's recommendation that languished in my in-box until I was trying to find some gem of critique or something in our correspondence and came across it again.



This book suited me better, though I still didn't fall in love as much as I wanted to. I loved the family dynamic of all the 12 sisters (sure enough, when I read the back flap copy, Dixon cops to being one of many siblings--six sisters and then four brothers) and how we meet some of them at different points to get to really know them.

I did find it a bit uneven, evident of a new though talented writer--the dancing details were lovely, but it didn't really have a connective tissue with the poor, small country society in worldbuilding. (This is a nitpicky thing that didn't make me stumble at all while reading, but was realized when I was thinking about it later.) The denouement was a little hectic.

Overall, though, it was both charming and deeply felt. A good balance. There was dark magic, but light society scenes, in the vein of Regency-styled fantasy though not at all identifying as such.
(Forget the lovely (clockmaker!? SILAS, YOU LAYABOUT, you've been one-upped!) love interest, I want to marry the king and give him a couple of sons...)

Her blog, likewise, is charming with a dash of dark magic. ;) I do look forward to seeing more of her work! And...is it fair for her to be great at drawing as well as writing?
Just a point to ponder...

I read a short manga series the other day with your typical dash-it-off shojo premise:

Girl's discovered as a singer though she has no self-confidence about it, gets coerced into show biz by a hot guy, who is secretly her long-time musical crush, and they end up together.

I have never read this manga, but I already know what it's about...

The premise is cliche, but I read because sometimes these little two-shots have a heart to them, or at least something fun about them.

Not this one.



I think the main problem in it's lack of heart is something problematic with a lot of teen sports victory movies or artistic endeavor stories, too:

cheating on the actual work.

Mighty Ducks, super secret move special!


In this case, I think the person may not have been musical--and one of the strongest scenes is almost directly mirroring an early Skip-Beat! sequence.

It's not the lack of realism that bothers me though--it's all the potential that's squandered.


There's almost nothing as satisfying as seeing someone fight for what they want and achieve it. I love this about the Crimson Hero manga: the heroine has talent, and she also has a passionate drive, but that doesn't mean she gets what she wants, because the other teams aren't treated as idiots, and their own problems aren't treated as one pep talk away from disappearing.

And that is awesome.



As a YA writer, I really want to be able to get inside the pursuits other people love and know where the sticking points are, and also the parts that are the most exciting from the inside. If you're putting on a play, it's not the curtain call necessarily, or the praise afterward, but that moment of utter silence when you say a line with weight, or the laughter escalating through a sequence of jokes.

In this particular manga, I want to know why her voice was awesome, even though she thought her sister's was so good she didn't have to bother. I wanted to understand why this manager dude was frantic enough to get her to sing his song he'd date her with that as his motive.

Nothing. She was just implicitly awesome, and he was just destined to really fall for her because this was a shojo manga.



Chalk another one up to the MarySue. I think the ones about the arts annoy me the most. (I secretly kind of love the action-hero ones.) What about you?

Day 26

At this point no doubt you've been provoked to think of other books in answer to some of the earlier questions. FreeStyle Space! (Borrow this question again if your month has 31 days, and you're keeping track of that sort of thing.)

This question oughta come sooner in the questions, methinks, because I'm kind of worn out at this point... but let's see.



AH!
Frances Hodgson Burnett!

beth_shulman  brought her up in the comments, but I didn't remember her for the questions where she would have fit.


I loved A Little Princess when my mom read it to me, though the injustice had me so frustrated, and I was leery of the beginning. It was a foreign world I was encountering.

In my early teens I had a renaissance of interest when I discovered The Secret Garden was by the same woman, and I went looking for all her books. My passion for The Lost Prince did not quite stand up to the next time I read all these books in my 20s, but I understood what I loved about it. It had some weird mystical stuff, but the idea of being devoutly loyal to a cause, and that a friend could be raised up... it was just a book full of Sparkly Ideas.

Now I'm delighted by the idea of such richly gothic children's literature. She wrote unpatronizing stories where even the typecast characters had dimension. Something to aspire to...