Critique: Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles #3) (Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl)

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

I have three miscellaneous observations.

After three novels, I have a confession to make: I hate Lena’s poetry. It’s awful and painful.

They just walked across dead grasshoppers. Gross.

Ethan notes than Liv says ‘strawberry’ in two syllables. It never occurred to me that Americans didn’t say it with two syllables.

 

The Giggles

 

This book made me hungry for me. The humour from the first book was revitalised in a glorious comeback. Like when Amma saves watermelon rinds for Link’s mother because they’re both sour.

Ridley made me chuckle a lot. ‘It begins with B and rhymes with bitch.’ Perfect! (Well, ‘bitch’ should have had quotation marks but we can’t have perfection.) Also, ‘Books? Carry?’ left me in hysterics.

One of Ethan’s aunts repeatedly shouts, ‘Fanny!’ Considering what ‘fanny’ means in the UK, I couldn’t help but giggle. The aunts made me laugh again because they’re convinced ‘if’ is short for ‘iffin’.

Mrs English is with Ethan’s dad and Ethan thinks, ‘But here she was, existing all over my father.’ Brilliant.

Aunt Grace claims she read a fact in the ‘Reader’s Digestive.’ Sounds like my kind of magazine!

 

 

Thinkers

 

When a novel makes you stop reading and ponder a thought for a moment, that shows a level of depth that is not required but greatly appreciated.

Macon notes that being hungry is an ‘incredible inconvenience.’ Firstly, yes, it is: it’s something so normal that people don’t think about it. Secondly, even though Macon says it like it’s new despite him having experienced hunger before, even though he was a caster (not an incubus) until he was at university. So he has experienced hunger before. Perhaps it’s only having lived without it that he realises it’s inconvenient?

It’s good to see Ethan correcting Link’s perception of voodoo. Correcting bad misconceptions was especially important in this book because we only see the negative side of voodoo.

We have a touching moment when Ethan thinks about his dead mum: ‘on a bad day it meant maybe she had never existed at all.’

‘The future can be changed. Fate cannot.’ This is brilliant, solving the conflict people have over free will and determinism.

Another interesting thought is Ethan wondering ‘if wishing was the same thing as praying.’

The final observation is that the maths ‘test really didn’t matter… the pie really did.’ I can sympathise with that.

 

 

Problems

 

These weren’t massive problems but they were still distracting.

In the same paragraph, we have Link speaking and internal monologue from Ethan. If it’s not Link, it shouldn’t be in Link paragraph.

Lena and Liv’s argument at the party is epic. Apart from one line of thought. Lena blames it on a furer cast. Yet two pages later, Liv repeats this observation and Lena scoffs, asking if Liv really thinks it’s ‘some kind of cast’. Then when Liv says it’s a furer, Lena boasts that she said it was a furer first. What a mess.

Link is a quarter incubus and yet food is completely inedible. Surely the three-quarters mortal in him still needs some food? Surely as most of him is mortal, most of his nutrition would need to come from mortal sources? Food could still be less pleasurable so Link would still be justified in missing his full enjoyment of food. So having these facts as more consistent would remove the humour.

Abraham says Ethan’s had a few trysts with a Caster. But since the first book, we’re constantly reminded how mortals and casters can’t physically be together. Does Abraham not know the meaning of ‘tryst’? (Or is it the authors?)

When Ethan says goodbye to the departed Prue, Amma slaps him and tells him not to scare her like that again. I’ve read this book several times but I don’t understand what scared Amma.

It’s mentioned that Serafine accidentally set herself on fire. But no, it was clear that Lena used the fire Serafine created in order to burn Serafine.

The book ends with Amma trying to stop Ethan killing himself. It’s really emotional. You feel for Amma, her love and loss. But Ethan has to die for the order of the universe to be restored. So you feel for Amma even more because you know she won’t win. It was truly a beautiful construction. One thing let it down, though: the bokor releasing enslaved spirits. They did nothing other than be sent away by Macon. They didn’t properly seem like a threat that could disrupt Ethan’s plans. They should have been either amplified or cut from the script.

 

 

The pace of this whole book was consistently speedy and it managed not to trip over its own feet. The story flowed nicely. It was leagues ahead of book two in terms of quality. I regained my hope for the series.

 

Critique: Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles #2) (Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl) 2/2

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Grammar

 

There weren’t so many glaring mistakes in this book’s punctuation.

Okay, so the first mistake made me chuckle: they wrote ‘Ya’ll’. This is to mean ‘you all’, clearly. But the abbreviation is the ‘ou’ so that’s where the apostrophe of abbreviation should be, hence ‘y’all’.

Quite often a character will say a sentence with the explicit purpose of making reference to a specific word. This word should be in quotation marks but this doesn’t happen in this book. There’s ‘an activity the Sisters referred to as exercising.’ The ‘exercising’ should be in quotation marks. ‘Thelma always called the Sisters girls.’ The ‘girls’ should be in quotation marks.

 

 

Culture Shock

 

This book didn’t have as many as the previous one. Yet somehow these are more shocking.

Ethan pronounces mayonnaise like ‘mann-aise’. Um, what?

They’re dissecting pigs in summer school. Does this really still happen?

Prue finds it weird that Liv puts milk in her tea. But why wouldn’t you?

Aunt Prue asks Ethan to reach into her handbag (it says ‘purse’ but here in England, ‘purse’ refers to a small case in which money is kept). Yet Ethan refuses because it’s not polite. But she told him to do it, so it wouldn’t be rude. In fact, isn’t refusal to help a lady rude?

 

 

Plot Weaknesses

 

These weaknesses aren’t dents: they’re more like holes with jagged edges. If events are flimsy, so is the plot; if events are impossible, so is the plot. Everything from that point on becomes impossible (in this book and, more worryingly, the rest of the series). Of all the problems a plot could have, this is by far the worst.

            Ethan and company bump into a group of incubuses. Ridley uses her siren powers to make them leave. Earlier the readers were told sirens couldn’t control an incubus. How then can Ridley control a whole pack? Yet the whole plot relies on this event (otherwise the characters would’ve died and thus the plot ends): the fact that this event is incompatible with what we already know, it’s a serious plot hole.

            Macon’s light magic drives off the vexes and the incubuses. It doesn’t dive off the Dark Casters, however. They should have stopped Ethan from going up the alter but they didn’t. They let him do that, even though they knew it would stop what they wanted to happen?

 

 

Thoughts

 

These moments gave me pause for thought.

Lena feels cold. We already know that Dark Casters feel cold so this is worrying, showing which direction Lena is leaning. It’s interesting to note that Dark Casters are aligned to fire. Maybe they need the fire to warm up?

Link kicks the box in Aunt Caroline’s attic. But why would you kick someone else’s property? How could anyone be that rude and disrespectful? So much for being a southern gentleman.

Why have the authors called ghosts ‘shears’? Just changing the name for the fun of it? I know ‘caster’ is used for ‘witch’ and ‘incubus’ for ‘vampire’ but that doesn’t mean everything should be changed. It should only be changed for a genuine reason.

It says ‘Liv had been quiet until now.’ She last spoke half a page ago and they’ve all been having a general conversation since then so it’s not like Liv is acting in a noticeable way.

Ethan tells us that ‘Link had never liked the dark.’ Link just gave a speech that provided us this information so we didn’t need to be told. People don’t forget that quickly! (Also, why show and tell?)

Lena thinks she hurts all who love her. John convinces Lena to go to the Great Barrier because magic has no ‘labels or judgements’. But this just makes Light and Dark actions more acceptable, hence Lena would use Dark magic more often. So she’d hurt her loved ones more often, completely destroying the reason she went to the Great Barrier in the first place.

Ethan mentions people, incubuses clearly aren’t included within this classification. This seems rather odd. It’s a common mistake to think ‘people’ and ‘humans’ are synonyms. Even if this was a true synonym, this would mean incubuses aren’t human. But clearly they are. Not only can incubuses interbreed (and create fertile offspring) with humans but when an incubus is created with a bite, their genetic make-up doesn’t change. On both these counts, incubuses are part of the human species.

 

 

My biggest question surrounds Serafine taking Ridley’s powers away and returning them to the Dark Fire, where caster magic comes from. In essence, Ridley has to live like a mortal.

This made me think: is it possible to take powers from the Dark Fire and giving this to a mortal, hence making them a caster? Hence making it possible for mortals and casters to touch?

If this were the case, has it happened before? Considering Serafine’s a Dark caster (who despise mortals), I doubt she’d do it. Light casters, on the other hand, would be inclined to do so.

Serafine can only return Ridley’s powers because she’s super strong and a Catalyst, having an affinity for fire. Light casters don’t have an affinity for fire so they might not be able to take powers from the Dark Fire and put them inside a mortal.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Unfortunately, this isn’t a positive section.

After the slow start and middle, the latter stages of this novel had a far better pace. A lot was done but it never felt rushed. That was good writing.

The conclusion of this book was necessary for the events of the third book to make any sense. (This may seem like an obvious point but it applies especially strongly in this situation.) So most of this book felt like filler, in all honesty.

The fact that there were such massive plot holes was disappointing. Whilst these plot points don’t seem major, their consequences are problematic.

All-in-all, I don’t reread this book. Apart from Liv, it isn’t a good way to spend my time. The thing of real interest are my questions about the Dark Fire but this doesn’t really count because it’s my speculation, not world-building provided by the authors themselves.

 

Critique: Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles #2) (Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl) ½

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Ethan being Stupid. Again.

 

I know Ethan is still legally a child but my goodness he is stupid sometimes.

Take when he thinks, ‘The songs never lie.’ Yet this is only the second Caster song he’s heard. There aren’t enough examples of the songs being truthful to say they always are. If he said he believed this song because the last one was truthful, that would be fine.

About Lena and John, Ethan wonders, ‘How long has she been hanging out with him without telling me?’ Excuse you, Ethan, but she doesn’t have to tell you anything. And she can be friends with whomever she chooses.

About Liv, Ethan says ‘every time we were together, we found our way into trouble.’ This statement simply isn’t justified. In this instance, it’s only the possibility of trouble. No trouble has actually occurred yet. Plus they’ve only found themselves in trouble once before. Plus Ethan and Liv have been together plenty of times without getting into trouble. So Ethan’s statement is bizarre in its inaccuracies.

Ethan says he never told Marion about the Arclight in the visions. But he had that vision a day or two ago and this is the first time he’s seen Marion since then so of course he hadn’t told Marion about the Arclight yet.

Talking about a frisky dream, Ethan says, ‘All my dreams are that kind of dream, L. I’m almost 17.’ Surely you’ve been having those kinds of dreams for far longer than that? Is 17 the magical turns-you-horny age?

 

 

Ethan and Lena

 

Ethan is being possessive over Lena and it’s a bit creepy, to be honest.

Within the space of a page, twice there’s mention of the electricity that Ethan feels when he touches Lena. Both times they were presented as new information which was rather lazy. Heat is always a by-product of the couple’s interaction and then randomly a chandelier swings wildly. Not only is this the only instance of movement but this is the only instance of anything but heat being produced during their touching. This is a lack of consistency.

The first one hundred and thirty-four pages are spent Ethan whining that it’s not the same between him and Lena. It doesn’t feel like much is happening, with no sense of suspense to justify the delay. So one could rightly perceive this as padding. Yet this makes the reader feel exactly how Ethan is feeling: lost. So this long delay in plot could equally be terrible writing or brilliant writing.

Lena spends a lot of energy and emotional capital telling Ethan that John was just a friend. And yet in the same breath she refuses to accept Liv as just a friend to Ethan. Come on.

 

Amma

 

Amma spends this book being… peculiar.

We still have the occasional howler. My favourite being, ‘You look like you fell into a cookie jar and couldn’t find your way out.’ Fantastic. However, every other time Amma uses ‘into’, she says ‘inta’. This is the only time she says ‘into’. This mistake should have been noticed by the editor.

Amma bangs her spoon, the One-Eyed Menace, on the table which breaks a spell. We never see the One-Eyed Menace is a magical context ever again. Ethan does steal the spoon but he does nothing with it. He doesn’t even think about it. We don’t see it again. So why bother showing the readers he stole it?

 

 

Olivia

 

Olivia is an English Keeper-in-Training.

It’s really refreshing for the cleverest character to also be funny. Not only that but she’s the funniest character. She calls one person a prat and then calls herself a genius, with neither shame nor pretence. When Link tells Ethan off for not telling him Liv was ‘hot’, she replied, ‘I find that rather tragic.’

She regularly picks up on everyone else’s shit. Like when the boys say, ‘Ladies first’, Liv replies, ‘Men only say that when it’s something horrible or dangerous.’

            I know it’s stereotypical but I really connected with Olivia over tea. At one point she says, ‘Tea is meant to be hot, sir.’ My soul curdles with the thought of intentionally drinking cold tea.

            There’s one thing about Liv I don’t like: instead of ‘Caronlina’, she’s written as saying ‘Carolin-er’. No. American accents have a rhotic R and most English accents do not, so ‘runner’ would be ‘run-urrr’ and ‘run-uh’ respectively. But just because English accents turn ‘er’ into ‘uh’ sounds doesn’t mean it turns ‘uh’ sounds into ‘er’ sounds. Otherwise we’d be saying ‘peet-zurrr’ for ‘pizza’. So for the authors to say Olivia say, ‘CArolin-er’ has no basis in fact. (We know Liv has a Standard English accent from other characters’ perceptions of her speech, meaning she doesn’t have a rhotic R.)

 

Critique: Tick, Tick... Boom!

This musical is about the musical writer Jonathan Lawson.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

We see the fictional depiction of Jonathan performing a musical in front of a crowd (also called Tick, Tick… Boom!), explaining the backstory of Superbia, another musical he wrote. But then this turns out to be the origin story of Rent, his breakthrough musical. So this musical is about a musical about a musical about a musical.

 

 

The songs were great.

They had clever lyrics, excellent backing music and the songs fit their scenes perfectly. The only problem is they’re not songs I’d ever want to listen to again. The final song and the song beginning ‘I feel bad that you feel bad that I feel bad’, but they’re applicable to life whereas the other songs are only applicable to the circumstance they’re sung in. This demonstrates Lawson’s ability to write songs about literally anything. This makes the audience feel his frustration all the more when he can’t write the key song for Superbia.

Coming back to the ‘I feel bad’ song, the choreography was amazing. The singers sat on stools and didn’t move their legs yet they were still so expressive with their movements. That was such an amazing scene.

Jonathan goes swimming and on the bottom of the pool, a stave and musical notations appear of the lined tiles. This was so clever. Plus it means he has that crucial key song.

This key song is a solo. When we hear it at the presentation, Jonathan hears his singer sing it as well as his girlfriend. They sang as a duet in harmonies, something that’s impossible when singing alone. Sometimes one would start whilst another was finishing and then they would sing together, yet the latter wouldn’t have time to say all the lyrics between finishing and then re-joining. Singing together and taking it in turn to sing different verses would have been perfect but the solo was altered into being a duet. Credit where it’s due, the song did make a pretty duet. Still, the decision to have this solo song as a duet was a poor one.

 

Jonathan and his bestie have an argument, in which the bestie shouts, “You’re writing musicals in your living room. You’re not saving the rainforest!” So hilarious.

But the argument takes a more serious turn because the bestie, being gay, can’t marry or have kids. Their friends are either dying of HIV or are afraid they’re next.

“So excuse me for enjoying my life while I still have time.” That sentence really hits home. Especially because Jonathan keeps on saying he’s running out of time: Jonathan’s version pales in comparison to that of his bestie.

 

Now for some miscellaneous points.

Jonathan thinks his time is running out because he’s turning thirty. Why are Americans obsessed with turning thirty and feeling like their life is over? It’s a common troupe in American television and film. We just don’t have that in the UK. This theme of running out of time is why he hears the ticking of the clock. But his best friend puts this into perspective by revealing he’s HIV positive.

We only find out Lawson has a cat sixty-nine minutes into the film when he cleans the litter tray. It was such a random scene, especially because we don’t see the cat again.

Jonathan gets to his presentation room and finds it empty and he’s devastated that no one has come. Someone tells him what the actual time is and he replies, “Oh. That’s good.” The relief was clear and it was just so sweet.

 

As a whole, this musical had a flare and the main character had such a sense of desperation. On the outset, a musical about someone struggling to write a song doesn’t sound particularly appetising, yet the film itself was a buffet. Having the cat was a small oversight so the only thing that really let it down was the key song, the one that Jonathan had been struggling to write. It was like finding a worm in your salad, a mistake that didn’t need to happen.