Two reviews for the price of one!

Two books up for review since the first review is so short, and because I missed a review last week.

The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier: How To Solve The Mysteries Of Weak Writingby Bonnie Trenga. Reviewed by N. Vivian on October 13th, 2008.

Cute is really the best word for this book. Each chapter opens with a 'case write-up' that uses a ton of whatever grammatical error the chapter itself is covering. They cover the usual suspects (ha ha, I am witty, no?): passive voice, misplaced modifiers, unclear pronoun usage, excessively long sentences, etc etc. The book does a decent job explaining what each error is, and giving some generic ways to fix it. Then the chapter ends with a basic recap, and tell you to go back and read the original write-up to find and fix all of the mistakes. Nothing amazing or particularly insightful, but still pretty useful. What I felt was lacking from the book was an explanation of why someone would make that mistake. I mean, the passive voice is used I use the passive voice a lot. Why? I'm not entirely certain. Giving some insight into the 'why's' of the mistake would mean that I could potentially stop myself from making that mistake by recognizing the danger signs.

2.5 Stars

Aerie by Mercedes Lackey. Reviewed by N. Vivian on October 13th, 2008.

Oy. First, let me tell you, Misty was my favorite author for years. From sixth grade till at least partway through high school, she was heads and shoulders above any other author I could name. It's true that I didn't go to the extreme of buying each book as soon as it was published, but hardcovers are expensive and I was just a kid. Still, the minute one came out in paperback, they were clutched in my hot little hand. Staying up till four in the morning, eating Sweet Tarts, reading the newest Valdemar book, and reveling in the early morning silence of my house...that was the closest approximation to heaven I could fathom for a long time.

That being said, Aerie was a disappointment in a long string of disappointments. It is still better than that fiasco she calls One Good Knight, but that's pretty much the textbook definition of "damning with faint praise". This book actually had the climactic battle scene. It is the last novel in the Jouster series, following the further adventures of Kiron and his fellow Dragon Jousters as they try to integrate themselves into society and keep the newly formed borders of Altia safe from their outside neighbors.

Kiron is having trouble with his girlfriend, who wants girls to have equal rights to dragon eggs as guys do. Kiron is resisting and blah blah blah romantic 'tension' that goes through the first three-quarters of the book. Putting an additional strain on their relationship is this other chick who is falling in love with him. Why does she love him, you ask? Why, only because she's been the loyal friend and companion to Kiron's mother, and his mother has decided that her son's future is best served by marrying her son off to Chick and have them live on the old family farm--once Kiron finds a way to take it back.

Kiron knows none of this, and when he finds out, doesn't really care. He's too busy being friends with the High King and Queen, the leader of the Dragon Jousters and trying to save the world. There's plenty of interpersonal wangst as Kiron deals with his girlfriend, Chick deals with her feelings for Kiron, Kiron deals with his mother, and the elite group of female Dragon Jousters deal with each other. As has been very much a hallmark of Misty's recent books, nothing is really explained or described very deeply. There's no real character growth, motivations are shallow, and even the big scary enemy seems added as an afterthought--we get no real detail about them.

I really miss the days of Magic's Pawn and The Lark and the Wren. Back when characterization, continuity, and craft actually mattered to her.

When all is said and done though, the book itself is fairly fun. It isn't deep, thought-provoking, or narratively complex, but it's still a good way to kill a few hours without really exerting yourself. This is the perfect "break from studying for finals" book. Flufftastic. And there's lots of Egyptian mythology window-dressing, which is always fun to have. Just don't expect to get much in the way of plot development, and brace yourself for the deus ex machina OF DOOM that IS the climax of the book, and you'll be fine.

2.5 stars

In books I trust,
N. Vivian

Mr. Spock, MacGuyver, and Sara Connor walk into a bar...

The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes & Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes, Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, and Sue Viders. Reviewed by N. Vivian on October 1st, 2008

Let's kick off the new month with another review, shall we?

My biggest argument with this book is that it is filled with cliches. I'm not referring to the archetypes, of course (anyone who picks up a book about archetypes and expects something new and fancy is an idjit), but the way they used archetypes in their descriptions. The way everything was described, I felt like I was reading a romance novel primer, even though they took examples from all genres. They used a lot of 'cutesy' terminology, which I found tedious. For example, when describing interactions between the BOSS and the BEST FRIEND archetypes they use:

The BEST FRIEND says the BOSS:
* is rude
* a tyrant and (they did not include and 'is' here, so the BOSS a tyrant)
* a captivating dictator

The BOSS says the BEST FRIEND:
* is small potatoes
* weak, and
* true blue

...oookay.

The book is broken down into 4 sections: male archetypes, female archetypes, using the archetypes to create new characters, and interactions between archetypes. Each section is set up much like a textbook, with little notes in the margin. I'd've preferred if the notes in the first two sections contained useful information, instead of reiterating which characters from literature and film embody said archetype, which is also included in the text, but I can live. The first two sections gave the archetype title (BOSS or BEST FRIEND), a brief description, qualities, virtues, flaws, background, possible careers, and two different ways the archetype could develop. The BOSS, for example, could be a princess-type character, or a trailblazer, or something else entirely. Nothing incredibly groundbreaking here, but still interesting information to have.

Section three explains using the archetypes to create characters. There are: core archetypes, where the character is 'just' one archetype (Mr. Spock is the PROFESSOR, Ellen Ripley is a CRUSADER); evolving archetypes, where the character starts at one archetype and evolves into another (Sara Connor goes from being a WAIF to a CRUSADER); and layered archetypes, where a character has a smattering of two or more archetypes (MacGyver is both a WARRIOR and a PROFESSOR). I did have fun using this section to assign archetypes to the characters in all of my role-playing games. The last section described the way the archetypes interacted with one another. The first part described the female archetypes interacting with other females, the second was males with other males, and the last was describing mixed-gender interaction (where I got my BOSS/BEST FRIEND example above.)

One great thing they did in this section was explain how the two clash, mesh, and change. The side notes in this section then give examples of how two characters from media embody these. But they don't only choose examples that go through all three steps: American Beauty's BOSS (Carolyn) interacts with the BEST FRIEND (Lester), and only clash. I appreciated them using a variety of examples, instead of staying within the strict 'Clash-Mesh-Change' pattern. I felt some of their examples were a bit dated, but it did come out in 2000.

Overall, The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes & Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes is fairly useful, if only as a jumping off point. People who feel like they have a good grasp on characterization already will probably find this tiresome in the same way the first few weeks of English class is, while the teacher ascertains that, yes, everyone here can use a period correctly. Still, it's a good jumping off point, and afforded me lots of fun as I figured out other characters from books, movies, and games that aligned with which archetype, though the archetype selection was fairly limited (I've got another book here with 45 archetypes. Fancy, no?) The book might have gotten a higher score, but I hated how they felt they had to completely capitalize every archetype every time they used it. I'm sure it was annoying in the above four paragraphs...now imagine reading the whole book like that.

3 stars

Rejected Much?

The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman. Reviewed by N. Vivian 09/22/08

Received, read, and finished the book within a day. It is excellent; not only is it helpful and informative, I even found it mildly entertaining. It's divided into 19 chapters, and each chapter focuses on problems that catch an agent's or an editor's eye and cause them to toss the manuscript, generally before having read much more than the first five pages. The chapters are arranged in order of likelihood of getting your manuscript rejected, and so, it starts off with very concrete ideas and rules, and as each chapter goes on, the ideas and advice get more theoretical. Chapter One is about presentation; granted, the kind of paper your manuscript on has no bearing on the quality of the work itself, but a lot of editors won't look at it anyway. As Lukeman says, editors (and their overworked assistants) have to plow through thousands of manuscripts, and are just looking for reasons to toss yours out of the window. Refusing to comply with industry standards is a quick and easy way for them to justify it. Also in the first chapter, he mentions the idea of researching the agents and editors you're sending your manuscript to, and sending it only to people who work with titles like yours--sure, you might lose out because the editor just picked up a book similar to yours, but sending a horror manuscript to a horror editor still gives you a higher chance getting accepted than sending a horror novel to a romance editor. Chapter 2 is about the abuse of adjectives and adverbs, 3 about the way your manuscript 'sounds', and on and on until Chapter 19, which discusses progression and pace. If your book hasn't been rejected by any of the reasons outlined in the first 18 chapters, then you're probably golden.

Lukeman gives examples about all the issues he discusses, so you can see exactly what is wrong with the problem under discussion, though he doesn't go very deep into fixing those issues (especially as he gets more metaphysical). Sure, Chapter 1 explains exactly what your margins should be (an easy fix), but it's much harder to give specific advice on appropriate story hooks (Chapter 14) or subtlety (Chapter 15). Still, he points out the problems, making them easy to spot in your manuscript, and he admits up front in his book that this is a "Don't Do" rather than a "How To" book. If you can see that you have a specific problem, you can go out an buy a ton of books related to that issue. He does give exercises to do at the end of each chapter, most of which involve sitting down with your manuscript and going over it with a fine tooth comb. I've tried a few with my Nanowrimo project, and they did seem to help.

In all, a good book. It won't tell you how to write your novel, or give you the magic best-seller formula, or even be able to fix a manuscript that's just hopeless, but it does give you a lot of tools to make it better. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to get published. I found it so helpful, I went out and bought another one of his "how to get published" books.

5 stars

In books I trust,
Nu