Divergent Summoning

Intro

Last night/this morning during a random bout of insomnia, I wrote a review, finished a book, and wrote another review. Since it's Monday and there aren't any Sunday night shows I'm watching quite yet, I thought I'd go ahead and post my reviews. I'm also a little foggy and rambling a bit so I'll just jump into the spoiler warning now.

There is a short Housekeeping section after the Long Hot Summoning review.

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not read Divergent or any of The Keeper's Chronicles, please leave the blog and return later. It's not actually my reviews with the spoilers this time, it's the character lists I've decided to start including. I think the spoilers are minor, but even minor spoilers can annoy people so... spoiler warning.

Divergent by Veronica Roth - Review

Characters:

• Beatrice/Tris - Main Protagonist, Chooses Dauntless over Abnegation, Divergent.
• Caleb - Tris' brother. Chooses Erudite.
• Four - Dauntless initiate trainer. Tris' love interest.
• Will - A Dauntless initiate.
• Christina - A Dauntless initiate.
• Jeanine - Erudite leader.
• Eric - Dauntless leader.
• Peter - A Dauntless initiate.
• Tori - Dauntless tattoo artist. Had a Divergent brother.

Review:

I had honestly forgotten I'd wanted to borrow my sister's copy of Divergent until she came into my room and handed it to me. I didn't even start reading it right away. I was, after all, in the middle of two other books. However, once I started Divergent, I couldn't put it down. Divergent took me three nights to read. Not because it's short, but because the pull of the story made it hard to stop reading.

But here's the thing, I never became emotionally invested in any of the characters. If I'm not emotionally invested, then I don't usually keep reading. This time I was much more interested what was going on in the wider world of Divergent than any of the character drama. The tiny bits we got were intriguing. I wanted more. I didn't get it. I'm going to blame that on Tris. She wasn't nearly as curious or intuitive as she should have been as a main character. She's isolated, confused, and reacts more than acts throughout the entire book.

It really bugs me, now I think about it, that I have no emotional bonds with any of the characters. Emotional bonds are what usually keep me reading a book or watching something. It's what I tend to focus on while reviewing, too. But I have nothing to say about any of the characters of Divergent or what happened to them. I am ambivalent to them all, even, and perhaps most disappointingly, Tris. I should care about the main character and I don't. That signals a problem.

I am now going to talk about the end of Divergent, because it above all else bugs me. The story had finally started to pick up. There was actual tension going on. And then it just stopped. There were some speculations on Tris' part as to what the next step would be and she expressed uneasiness about her situation and the people she was in it with. And then it just stops. There isn't an actual resolution. There aren't any mysteries solved. Just nothing. Done. Huh?

The copy of Divergent I was reading had a chunk of the next book, Insurgent, in the back. I took a peek at it and, well, it picks up directly where Divergent left off. It's like someone had taken a larger book and chopped through the spine only to recover both halves as different books. Again: Huh?

My recommendation, if you are at all interested in reading Divergent is to have Insurgent on hand. I'm not even sure if it's out yet, to tell the truth. I also don't really care at this point. I most likely won't be picking up Insurgent. Divergent just didn't grab me like it should have. Yes, I finished it quickly, but that had more to do with the pacing than anything else.

Extras:

My copy of Divergent had a Faction Quiz at the back. It's essentially a test to figure out which faction you would be in if you lived in the Divergent universe. Mostly A's = Abnegation, mostly B's = Amity, mostly C's = Candor, mostly D's = Dauntless, and mostly E's = Erudite.

I am happy to report that I do not fit into a faction. I chose 3 C's, 3 E's, and a B. Mostly nothing. If this quiz was The Sorting Hat, I'd be a Hatstall between Candor and Erudite, apparently. Or else I'm Divergent. Meh.

If you'd like to take the quiz yourself, you can do so HERE.

Long Hot Summoning by Tanya Huff - Review

Characters:

• Diana Hansen - Keeper
• Claire Hansen - Keeper, Diana's older sister.
• Dean McIsaac - Bystander, Claire's love interest.
• Austin - Cat, Claire's partner.
• Sam - Cat, Diana's partner.
• Kris - Mall Elf, Diana's love interest.
• Arthur - Yes, that one.
• Lance - Not Australian
• Meryat - Evil Mummy
• Hell - Snarky hole in the ground. Root of all evil, yada, yada, yada.

Review:

As I get more and more of these reviews under my belt, I realize there are just some books I can't go into very in depth at all. That's not necessarily because they're bad, but because I don't really have much to say about the intricacies of character and plot. This last installment of The Keeper's Chronicles is one of those books that's really brilliant, but you have to read it to understand exactly why.

The story starts out fairly simply with Diana's first real Summons following her graduation from high school. It then expands to include Claire, Dean, and Austin before splitting off into the A Plot and the B Plot. The A Plot follows Diana, Claire, and Sam while the B Plot follows Dean and Austin. The story rattles along between the A Plot and B Plot until it hits a refrigerator and further splits into the C Plot and D Plot. The C Plot follows Claire and eventually Lance while the D Plot follows Sam and Arthur. Everything eventually melds back together following a pink explosion and we end up with: "Oh. Happy endings all around, then."

Despite the somewhat convoluted plot explanation I just gave, Long Hot Summoning is fairly easy to follow. Add in the usual Pop Culture references, literary references, and Rules and you end up with a mostly satisfying read. I don't exactly understand the connection between minivans and Hell, but that didn't detract from the story at all.

I highly recommend picking up Long Hot Summoning, especially if you liked Summon the Keeper and The Second Summoning. You won't regret it.

Housekeeping

Don't forget to A) comment below and B) come back tomorrow for the Sleepy Hollow review. Oh, and definitely don't forget that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is premering tomorrow at 7PM US Central Time on ABC. I can't wait!

Love ya, Jessie

Second Summoning - Review

Intro

Though I haven't had a chance in the last couple of days to sit down and play some Pokemon, I did have a little niggle in regards to a book review I haven't done. According to my update on Goodreads, I finished The Second Summoning at the beginning of this month. It's long overdue for a review, so that's what I've got for you today.

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not read Summon the Keeper or The Second Summoning by Tanya Huff, please leave the blog and return later. I'm lousy at keeping my reviews spoiler free.

The Second Summoning by Tanya Huff - Review

The Second Summoning is, in my estimation, mostly a world building book. It's the second book in the Keeper's Chronicles trilogy and, as such, is very much the middle book. We continue to follow the journey, and mishaps, of Claire Hansen, Austin, and Dean McIssac. We are reintroduced to Claire's family, most notably her little sister, Diana. We are then introduced to the world around Diana, which has been made both better and worse through her high school career.

The main drive of The Second Summoning is an accidental creation of an angel who isn't exactly an angel, Samuel, and his demonic counterpart, Byleth. The creation of the angel is caused by a combined effort of Diana, Claire, and Dean. They then must track him down and deal with whatever problems were caused by the demonic counterpart. Of course, the angelic and demonic entities appear to be teenagers and hijinks ensue.

What I found really interesting about The Second Summoning was the way things like angels and demons were dealt with. They are, ultimately, pieces of the "light" and the "dark" with no actual personality ascribed to them. This, of course, changes when it turns out that someone messed up while Samuel was being formed and so he ends up essentially being a teenager. And, as dark and light must be balanced, Byleth ends up as a female teenager. The way the pair are dealt with by Claire and Diana is much more interesting than the moral dilemma they bring up in the book itself. Sam ends up as Diana's cat and Byleth gets sent off to live with an elderly couple she'd terrorized earlier in the book.

As always with this series, there are tons of pop culture references and Keeper/Bystander arguments. We get a much better look at what a Keeper actually does while seeing Diana in school and Claire on the road. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we got a lot more Austin quipping about various things along the way, because he's a cat and not to mention it would be disrespectful to cats.

I also feel like I do a horrible job reviewing these books. My recommendation is to go out and read them for yourself. They're a lot of fun, even on second or third read-through.

Don't forget to feed the cat.

Love ya, Jessie.