Review: Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan (spoiler-free)

A little story about the cover: I like my covers to match.
I was upset when I found out it would not match the first book.
I still like the original cover of Unspoken better, but am happy to accept this one.

Oh, lawd, this book broke me.

And put me back together.

And broke me again.

Several times.

What is there to say about Sarah Rees Brennan's writing that I didn't already say in my Unspoken review? The woman is hilarious. This book may be even funnier than Unspoken. But the woman is also evil, and Untold may also be even more heartbreaking.

Characters

I'm a sucker for a good character. Any good character, really. But these aren't just any good characters. You're going to wish you had a Kami Glass, Lady Sleuth, in your life. Kami is not only witty and entertaining, but she has the endearing quality of being so objective that she sees both the best and the possible worst in everyone. She's no damsel in distress, but she's not an invulnerable stone either. You're going to simultaneously want your own Jared Lynburn and hope that you never, ever get one. He's a bad boy but he doesn't really know why. He's full of anger and despair but also lightness and vulnerability similar to Kami's. You're even going to love the overly-boy-friendly Holly, who most other books would have turned into a teenaged nemesis in a frenzy of girl-hate. She's wide-eyed but also logical, friendly but also lonely. All of the characters are so beautifully complicated, I could go on and on, but I'll spare you. Just. Yes. Good.

The above is a direct quote from my Unspoken review. Every single sentence of that still applies, but this time I won't spare you. Because now I have to talk about Angela, Rusty and Ash too. I love Angela because she's a total badass without even trying-- no, really, she does not try. If there's something that Angela has to try to do, she does not do it (I had a kind friend point out that Angela and I are spirit sisters in that way). That's the Montgomery way. People are scared of Angela because one glare says she can end you and then immediately take a nap-- not because it took so much effort, but because being awake isn't really her thing. Angela likes having people scared of her, because it means they won't mess with the people she loves. Rusty is similar in that if you make him do a thing, he will request a snack and a nap. He takes exactly two things seriously: Angela and Kami. If you make one of them cry, he will punch you. And then he will make a joke about his dashing good looks and irresistible charm.

As for Ash, I was never quite sure how I felt about him before, but I know now. He is a beautiful squishable puppy dog. He is the non-Lynburn Lynburn, where Jared is the Lynburn non-Lynburn. Don't make that face at me! I am making sense!

Pacing, plot and all that good stuff

Well, I stayed up until 3:30a.m. to finish it. So.

The hacky sack

I already mentioned the breaking and the putting back together and the re-breaking. The hacky sack is back. Literary masochists, I call upon thee to preorder this book right now! You will not be disappointed! You'll laugh (a lot), you'll want to strangle some people (mostly Jared, "the most infuriating idiot in all the land"), you'll dance with glee and throw imaginary sparkles into the air because finally everything seems good and right, and then you'll realize there are too many pages left. Too many pages. TOO MANY PAGES.

And once again you'll be lying on the cold, hard ground, shaming no one but yourself because you knew SRB was trouble when she walked in. You let yourself hope for too much, and then she did that thing she does, because she gets her lifeblood from your tears.

But it was fun, and I'd do it again. And not just for the part where Jared and Ash both decide they want Rusty.

★★★★★

Review: The Dream Thieves (!!!!)

Hi, Ronan. Looking super tormented there, aren't you?

★★★★★

I'm still a little bit in shock that I got this ARC, but I will put forth a valiant effort to make this review coherent (and spoiler-free... we'll see how that goes).

Only, it's not going to seem so much like a *review* as an enumeration of the things I love about this book, this series, and these characters. Yeah? Yeah.

The Dream Thieves starts off a little bit after where The Raven Boys ended, though it doesn't specifically say how long it's been. It's summer in Henrietta and the search for Glendower is still on, though it seems all of its participants have a different reason for wanting to find the Welsh king. Adam wants to find freedom, Gansey and Blue want to find something more, and Ronan's just along for the ride-- he's got his own demons to face, anyway, related to that thing? That thing that happened? At the end of the first book? Yeah, that.

Dreams and nightmares collide with reality in The Dream Thieves, making it everything I ever wanted and feared in a book. The series takes an unexpected turn-- monsters-- but does so in a cohesive way that, instead of seeming totally out of the blue (sorry, Blue), feels right. I mean, of course there's going to be bigger magic in the second book. The first book was largely setup for this one: a small Virginia town with complicated characters who have distinct histories and personalities, with a dash of magic sprinkled in to tell you where it's all going. Book two is about taking you there and playing out the consequences of what happened in book one. And oh, are there consequences.

Dream Thieves centers much more on Ronan than Raven Boys did, and I wouldn't have it any other way (okay, perhaps I'm hoping the next book is more about Gansey. But I have a soft spot for Gansey that is currently controlling all of my thoughts). That's not to say the other characters didn't play just as big a role as they did in the first book, it's just that it's Ronan's turn for some character development. Ronan has been steadfastly Ronan, no hesitation to express his feelings with fists rather than words, and a self-hatred that ran so deep you'd need a pickaxe and a flashlight to actually see it.

If you're a Ronan fan, this is your book. He is essentially the main character this time around, and while he doesn't change so much as learn like the rest of them, his character development is staggering. Plus you learn A Thing about him that might make you go WHAT? (but if you're like me, you'll love the Thing).

Oh, and since the bad guy in Raven Boys died at the end of that book, we need a new one. And we get one. A few, actually, but I'm going to focus on the one. Because I actually love him, and not in a love-to-hate-him-because-he's-the-bad-guy way. I mean he is not just a villain but a character, with emotions and a past. He's such a character that he's barely a villain. He's so not-really-a-villain that I just replaced the word "villain" with "bad guy" twice in this paragraph. Bad Guy Boy #2, by the way, seems like he came straight from Blue's head, as he is everything she hated about raven boys before she actually knew any raven boys.

Moving on. What's that? The masses want to know about Blue's prophecy? The vision tree visions? Are Blue and Gansey going to fall in loooove? Well, suckers, I'm not telling you *George Lopez voice* NOTHING! I'll just say that, yes, there is kissing, but no, it is not what you think. Remember. Blue is sensible. She's not going around kissing boys who could die because of it. I'll also say that there were parts that made me squeal and bury my face in my hands, and immediately following the squealing came collapsing in despair, yelling CURSE THIS UNFAIR WORLD.

Which is how I like it. 

Once again the writing, setting and tone are just flawless. You've never read books like these before and you probably never will again. It's a calculated mix of creepy, mystical, comedic and gothic, which is a gross oversimplification but it almost gets the point across.

Finally, I feel like the most important thing in these books is the friendship element. The characters are so complex that their relationships have to be pretty malleable to fit all of their pieces at the same time-- and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes something breaks and someone gets hurt. But they move on. They're those friends who are so comfortable with each other that anyone else feels isolated on the outside of the bubble, looking in. They have big, explosive fights when they can't see something from the same point of view, but they're too close and they need each other too much to dwell on it. That is something I find so rare in YA lit that I want to hug Maggie Stiefvater for making these characters act like real people.

I mean, when one eats around the fruit at the bottom of her yogurt cup because she doesn't like it, another one will say, "but that's the best part!" and finish it for her. When one of them can sense that another is feeling tense, he will make jokes about pigeons to make it better. Even when two of them don't get along 90 percent of the time, they have an unspoken understanding to be there for each other because the common enemy is anyone outside the bubble. That's how it works.

Basically, I love this book as much as the first book, if not more. I haven't decided yet if I like it *more* because I've now read the first book three times and I'm so familiar with it that it feels like a part of me, while I've only read this one once and it's still a strange alien entity. Here, have a chart:

★★★★★

That is actually one million stars, but it looks like five.

P.S. The Gatsby references are still relevant.

Review: Icons

Welp, that happened. Unfortunately.

It's always interesting to see how an author fares as a solo act when for so long she has been part of a team-- and a rather popular team, at that. I wanted to know if I'd like Margaret Stohl's writing on its own, not because I was such a huge fan of Beautiful Creatures, but because I was not. I was expressly indifferent (even antagonistic, sometimes) toward that series and toward MC Ethan in particular, and I wanted this to be more up my alley. I wanted to like a story told by Margie Stohl because I have met her and she is awesome.

Alas, you don't always get what you want.

It's hard to review Icons because it didn't really even feel like a story to me. It felt like a bunch of characters thrown into a situation they didn't understand, with some people tossing facts at them until suddenly they think they've got it all figured out. I, however, still don't have anything figured out. What are the Icons, exactly? Why did the House of Lords come? Why are they called that? Why does the Embassy work with them? What are they doing that is so horrible it incites a Rebellion, and why have they gotten away with it for so long? What does any of it have to do with Dol's and Ro's and Tima's and Lucas's powers?* These questions should have been answered in book one. Book two should be about progressing the story along, not filling us in on the background information that the first book left out. This book does a horrible job of explaining itself, to the point where I was so confused I felt like I was trying to swim to the surface of the ocean with no knowledge of which direction was up. I wanted to just give up, stop swimming, see if maybe I'd float to the top somehow despite the fact that I'd been down so long that all the air was gone from my lungs. Holy extended metaphor, Batman. I'm just trying to give you a sense of how I felt reading this book-- that it was neverending and even a little suffocating.

[*It's possible that if I read the book again, I'd find the answers to at least some of these questions. But I am not going down the read-a-book-a-second-time-to-see-if-you-like-it-better road again.]

I haven't read very many alien books, so I can't tell you which ones come out on top of this one, but I can tell you that there are many of them. Even as someone whose experience with alien books pretty much starts and ends with The Host, the concept behind Icons did not seem groundbreaking to me. Coupled with the snoozefest of a narrator and the barely-interesting other main characters, that pretty much makes this a no-go for me. I didn't like it. 

I give this two stars because I did start to care a little about the characters toward the end. Lucas, especially. I have a soft spot for the morally confused, the ones who are torn between two different versions of right and wrong. Dol got a whole lot more empowered and became less of a looking glass in the last few chapters, too, at which point I breathed a sigh of relief. I saw what Ro and Lucas saw in her (and no, you're not going to see me complaining about the love triangle. They happen; get over it). Also I was told Ro underwent some kind of "change" that made him more endearing, but I would've preferred to be shown this change, because I don't actually know what it was. And Tima-- well, Tima was always pretty awesome. If a little obsessive and weird.

Can't say I'd recommend this one for fans of alien invasions; instead, I predict that I'll end up recommending The 5th Wave, which grabbed me more in the first page than Icons did in the whole book.

★★☆☆☆

Review: Nantucket Blue

Dear Contemporary Young Adult Authors,

I know I am not too old for this genre. I know it because some of my favorite books are from this genre, and they are smart, thoughtful and romantic. I know it because there are books in this genre that don't make me roll my eyes at the teenaged main characters as if I hadn't been their age five years ago.

Contemporary young adult books should not make me feel old by comparing myself with the characters. I am a young adult. The problem is when the protagonists of these novels are not young adults, but rather immature teenagers pretending that they're near-adults just because they're chronologically close to adulthood.

Please stop writing teenagers this way. I realize that yes, there are teenaged girls who judge other girls, and come up with ridiculous lists about why they like the boys they like, and think they can force themselves to fall in love with someone (or force someone to fall in love with them) and basically just live without consequences and run and run and run away from all of their mistakes, because they're young and being young means you don't have to account for your actions. But honestly? I don't want to read about those teenagers. I don't want to read about the petty arguments, or best friends who throw away their friendships without even talking about it or discussing why this is happening, or the gossip that is not in any way related to the storyline. I don't want to read about shallow characters with nary a deep thought to be found until the very end of the book. If you're expecting me to relate to a character like that (which, let's face it, is kind of the point of the contemporary genre), you are insulting me.

This is not to say I object to characters who make mistakes. Humans make mistakes, so I expect characters to do so as well. But honestly? There's a rather thick line between "making a mistake" and "doing something stupid and ignoring it or running away instead of facing it."

Just pay attention to actual young adults in real life. You might stop severely underestimating us.

Love,

Me

Okay, let me break it down for you: this book has 'middle-of-the-road, forgettable summer read' all over it. The main character is ridiculously insecure and judgmental (she's probably insecure because of her own penchant for judging other people-- she feels like they'll do the same to her, and it's her own black hole of STOP CARING SO MUCH ABOUT THE LIVES OF PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW PLEASE GOD I BEG YOU); the plot is predictable, frustrating and unimpressive; the romance is barely romantic; and the setting is not so much transporting as... just there. Instead of feeling like I was in Nantucket, reading this book felt like constructing a diorama of Nantucket and being forced to watch the story unfold through little plastic people and places. Not to mention there were so many times when something would happen in one paragraph and I'd have to go back and read the last paragraph again to figure out what was going on-- especially since the book is written in the past tense, and flashbacks were not distinguished with different language (instead of saying "I had gone" in a flashback, it would still just say "I went," which made it seem like it was still in real time). Characters would be given first names before the first-person narrator had even been introduced to them and learned their names. It just didn't make sense.

All of that said, I was at least able to finish the book because I didn't get bored. It's not a bad story. I just happen to be completely indifferent to it. No attachment to the characters, and the only relationship I really cared about was left unresolved, so I'm feeling a bit annoyed. I'll forgive the author because it's her debut novel, but next time I want more.

★★★☆☆

Rounding up from 2.5/5 stars.

Review: This is What Happy Looks Like

It's no secret, but perhaps you could call it a lesser-known fact, that I am a huge fan of Jennifer E. Smith. Last year, I preordered The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and read it all in one night. Granted, I'm pretty sure that book has less than 300 pages.

I was expecting this book to be around the same size, so I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it and found, like, 400 PAGES. *happy dances* Which is not to say that I didn't still finish it all in one night-- rest assured that I did. I turned to the prologue and I was gone from this world. This book just pulls you in immediately with its unique premise and its self-awareness. Actually, most of Jennifer's books are self-aware: the characters acknowledge what a ridiculous and unrealistic turn their lives are taking, and how if they saw it in a movie they'd scream at the television because it was so unbelievable. And yet, these books are nothing if not believable. This one in particular takes a concept that is totally out-there (movie star accidentally emails regular girl, they begin witty correspondence, then he arranges for his next movie to be shot in her town so they can meet), and spins it so that it really doesn't seem that unusual. It unfolds naturally, like there should never have been a moment when you doubted it.

So, like I said, it pulls you in-- but what makes me love it so much is that it doesn't chew you up and spit you out. Don't get me wrong, I love angst and pain and damage as much as the next person, but sometimes you just need a break. Sometimes you don't want a fantasy/paranormal/dystopian book where there's always the possibility that someone will die around the next corner. Sometimes you want a contemporary book that doesn't rest on tragedy (I've kind of been avoiding the contemporary genre lately because it seems like every book is about girl-whose-parents-died or girl-whose-parent-has-cancer or girl-who-was-in-an-accident-and-her-boyfriend-died-and-oh-yeah-she-was-pregnant. It would be fine if these books could balance the tragedy with humor, a la TFiOS, but they all seem to believe that the two cannot coexist, which is just emotionally draining and tends to result in a distant narrator with frustrating psychological issues).

Maybe that means I'm only giving this book 5 stars because it was a relief from my ennui with the genre, but I don't think so. Plain and simple, there just need to be more books like this in the world. Sure, it doesn't exactly ask The Big Questions or make you Think Real Hard, but it does tell you the story of these characters who you come to care about. The secondary characters may leave something to be desired, but the primary characters more than make up for it. The whole book could have been just the two main characters, Ellie and Graham, sitting around and talking to each other and I'd probably still write love letters to it.

My favorite thing about Happy was the easy relationship between Ellie and Graham. They didn't even know each other but within a few emails they were bantering like old friends. The moment Ellie said "Some pig!" I had officially sold my soul to this book, knowing that it would not use my soul for torture, but rather to feed it cotton candy and shelter it under a rainbow.

I even think the writing in this one is a step up from Probability. It's more lyrical (especially the parts where Ellie and Graham say what happy looks like to them, and I was like, please let me live in this book forever) and the attention to detail is what makes it such a good story-- from the Charlotte's Web references to whoopie pies, it doesn't really leave anything hanging there while you're waiting to get back to it. [Oh, and about the whoopie pies: I felt so ~cultured~ the whole time because I've actually had one before. They DO exist!]

The ending was bittersweet and slightly open-ended, which is exactly my favorite kind of ending. It leaves you with hope but doesn't spell anything out for you-- so anyone with an imagination can close the book with a sense of satisfaction and having done something right by picking up this book.

Basically, This is What Happy Looks Like... is what happy looks like.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 

Review: Clockwork Princess. I have waited so long.

This review is going to be... difficult. Here are some things you should know about me in advance:

1. I hate change. I hate change as much as Holden Caulfield hates change. I hate change as much as the Doctor hates change. I just really. Hate. Change.
2. I hate goodbyes. Especially when it comes to saying goodbye to my favorite characters. I don't like being forced to do it.
3. I try really, really hard to be positive. But sometimes I just can't.

That said, what you're going to get here are two different reviews written by the same person (me), about the same book. Review #1 is my positive side rearing its optimistic head. Review #2 is my selfish side, who can't stop focusing on things I wish had been different.

Review #1

Clockwork Princess was everything I expected it to be and more. Which says a lot, coming from a girl who has been counting down since December 11, 2011, when I finished Clockwork Prince. I've spent the past 15 months in a general state of anxiety over these characters' lives-- lives that infiltrated my music, landing me with a 22-song playlist entitled "worse than demon pox," lives that have been in my mind for so long now I've forgotten what it was like not to have them there. I've made friends over these lives and I've thought about these lives as if they were a part of me. Because they are. And now I've turned the last page on these lives. This is all I get.

And I'm okay with it.

This book completely blew me away. The attention to detail is nothing short of extraordinary, and as usual, the characters come to life on the page. I admit I was caught off guard by Jem and Will's tendency to trade places in this one-- Jem being the reckless one and Will being the responsible one for a change-- but it was realistic too. Will couldn't have gone on acting as he always had; there was no reason for it. He didn't have to be that person anymore, the person who distances himself using calculated cruelty and measured thoughtlessness. In that person's place is the person whose heart is broken. He's not going to be the same unstoppably snarky Will who could make a joke out of any situation. To have portrayed him as that person would have been a disservice to the character, for it would have made him seem invulnerable even after everything that has happened to him.

He's pushed everyone away for five years, believing it to be for their own good if nobody loved him. He finally opens himself up to the girl he loves, and finds out she's engaged to his best friend. He believes she doesn't return his feelings, and he can't even talk to the one person he wants to talk to about it because that person is the one causing him pain. No, the Brighter Burning Star is not going to shine quite so bright anymore.

"The hero's journey is not from weakness to strength, but from strength to weakness." Will Herondale is the definition of this. And, make no mistake about it, he is the hero of this story. He and Tessa may have decided that he was not a hero-- one of my favorite scenes in any book, ever-- but they were looking at it from the perspective of real people. To them, they are not characters in a book, so Will is not a hero any more than anyone is a hero. But we, as readers, can view Will the way he views Sydney Carton or Heathcliff-- though we know he is not the same as them. That's right, folks: Will Herondale is not Sydney Carton. He is better. He had reasons for his self-hatred and the way he acted, more than Sydney Carton ever did. Will's love for Tessa is not the kind that prevails only through destruction-- he would give his life for her happiness, but Tessa refuses to be Lucie Manette. They prevail together. Their love gets them through a war; all Sydney Carton's love for Lucie got him was an honorable death.

As for Jem... well, he is steady, as always. He has not changed much, except to become happier and also sicker. He faces unafraid the shadows that creep closer to him every day. He's an open book. This is what I love about Will and Jem: their stark contrast to each other. Where Jem is light, Will is dark. Where Jem is a flame, Will is a star. Where Jem is strong in the face of crippling weakness, Will is weak in the face of crippling strength. [before you go telling me that "crippling strength" doesn't make sense, think about it. Will has always had to be strong, to never show vulnerability, and it nearly ruined his life.]

As for the ending, "bittersweet" doesn't even begin to explain it, though it's probably the word that comes closest. Everybody gets what they want, but everybody has to sacrifice something. My favorite thing about it, though? One relationship really stands out. My favorite relationship. To me, it was always clear why Will and Tessa loved each other, but in this book they lay it out for everyone to see. They don't let there be any doubters left, nobody left to say "but why does Will have such strong feelings for Tessa?" or "but how can Tessa love Will when Jem is so much nicer?" He loves her because she's infuriatingly inquisitive and stubborn, because she listens to him and makes him laugh and remembers his words, because she loves the same books as he does, and because she could never help but see the good in him. She loves him because he says the things she thinks but would never say, because he loves the same books and has a remarkable memory for quotes, because he thinks up ridiculous songs and sees the truth in everything, and because they are unusual in the same ways.

This ending was perfect because it gave everyone what they wanted the most, without being too Happily Ever After. Tessa's immortal; she cannot have either boy forever. But she got a lifetime with Will, and Will with her-- that was all he ever wanted. He deserved his happy ending, and he got it. Jem, presumably, gets the same: the lifetime he promised Tessa a long time ago. We don't know where it goes, but we don't really need to-- Will and Tessa ended up together (Tessa insisting that Will be only Will, not a polite version of himself), and then Jem and Tessa ended up together. Happy, but with a price.

Review #2

I'm not going to take back the positive things I said in Review #1 about the book itself, but in this review I'm going to be selfish and state my grievances about things I wanted and did not get.

I wish that Clockwork Princess had not lacked the humor that both Clockwork Angel and Clockwork Prince had. No matter how depressing Clockwork Prince was at times, no matter how much Will hated himself, he could always be counted on for a well-timed joke. I miss that about him. He's still the same, he's still got that Herondale bitter humor, but he seems to be hiding it now that he's stopped hiding other things about himself. Clockwork Prince was a better kind of pain.

I wish that I had never had to say goodbye to Will Herondale. I was hoping the spirit in Tessa's angel, after leaving the star mark on Will, would extend its protection to him, and that that would somehow make him immortal too. I didn't want to see him age while Tessa didn't, and it kind of seemed like Cassie wrote herself into a corner with Tessa's immortality. While I appreciate that nobody cared that he looked old enough to be her grandfather even though he was her husband (because they were Will and Tessa) I wanted things to be different. I wish that his death had been an active scene instead of a remembered one-- that I could know what his last words to Tessa were, how he felt about his life, whether he wished he could stay with her. For so long now I've felt like I understood him, and then in his last moment he became a distant story from 70 years ago.

Basically, I just wish the epilogue had not happened. I wish Jem had stayed a Silent Brother-- or better yet, just died. I'm not saying this because I wanted Jem to die; I'm saying this because I have always been used to the idea that he would. I always thought Jem was too. He believed in reincarnation, and it just doesn't seem consistent to me that he suddenly decided to throw away his next life, where he was sure he'd meet Will and Tessa again, for longevity.

The only way to describe how I really feel about the ending is subverted. I had things that I knew would happen and things that I hoped would happen, and yet I feel like I've been played. I cared too much about one person, when the ending was written for people who couldn't choose. It was written to satisfy everyone with mild feelings, and in the process it alienates everyone with strong feelings.

I know I should be happy for the characters, for their happy endings. None of them were dissatisfied with what they had in the end. I should be happy because Magnus says the first one always hurts the worst, and Will was the first one. But I can't help it-- to me, it's always been Will and Tessa. I feel like the epilogue undermined everything these three books had built, like it's not fair that Will had to be the one who died first. Will, the one who was always the most alive, ends up being the one glossed over first. Meanwhile, Tessa is young forever and Jem gets his youth back, and they get their second chance. The irrational side of me kind of sees this as a cop-out. Will and Jem never get their second chance. I feel betrayed on Will's behalf. For me, no one would be able to follow Will Herondale. No one would be enough after that-- not even Jem Carstairs.

All in all.... yeah. Like I said, this was difficult for me to write. I can't choose a side. While I appreciate every single thing about this book and I think it's about as genius as a fantasy/paranormal book gets, the ending was just not what I wanted, and I can't help but take that into consideration. The choice not to find a way around Tessa's immortality seems less about the story and more about the message, which is a problem for me. 

★★★★½

That missing half-star pains me.

Your argument is invalid: Trolls.

Internet trolls are the ugliest of all trolls

So, tonight I have had the displeasure of being directly confronted by a troll on the Internet. Have we all been there? I feel like it is a universal belief that everyone has been there, but certainly I have not been there very often. When it happens to me, I'm sometimes a little bit shocked, because I try to be fairly agreeable on the Internet. I have a knack for seeing every single possible side of an argument-- it's why I'm so indecisive. I often can't pick which side I think is right. So when someone attacks me because they disagree with me on something, it sets me off. I don't think that's an unreasonable reaction. What maybe is a little unreasonable is that I have an oddly physical reaction to trolls who direct their hatred toward me, which is that my hands shake and I find my facial temperature rise a few degrees.

When this happens, my immediate response is to type as quickly as I can in defense of myself. I don't know why I feel the need to defend myself to strangers on the Internet; but I do. I'm sure this is not uncommon. But tonight's troll wasn't just attacking me, he was attacking everything that I find good about the Internet, everything I like. He was attacking the foundations for many of my friendships and my hard and fast belief that the things I like are worth liking.

And that is something that makes me angry.

The troll's argument is that books like Divergent and The Hunger Games are not worth the adoration they have been given by "idiot teenage girls" (direct quote, because apparently only girls are foolish enough to like these things and guys are superior). Now, let me clarify that I am neither an idiot nor a teenage girl. But these are two of my favorite series. The troll is obviously a book snob who believes that the name of the author carries more weight than the words he or she has written-- he probably sings of his love for Kerouac and Thoreaux and Salinger from the mountaintops, but scoffs at the names Rowling, Collins and Meyer. He cannot distinguish between "literature" and "classic literature," or between "classic literature" and "good literature."

As someone who can distinguish between these, I could have responded to this by explaining that while The Hunger Games may not be classic literature yet, it is still literature. And good literature at that. These books have knocked even the toughest of critics off their feet. As someone who enjoys reading both modern and classic fiction, the Hunger Games books are steadfastly my favorites of all time. And I have bookshelf after bookshelf full of other books-- from classic to historical fiction to paranormal to contemporary and beyond-- to which I can compare them. I will read just about anything fiction. To illustrate my point, let me tell you that that this week I finished reading the Vampire Academy series and then started reading A Tale of Two Cities. I'm no stranger to appreciating a variety of books.

The thing is that the troll, well, is.

The troll does not understand that just because a novel isn't lyrically written with grandiose vocabulary, or driven by descriptions of every single thing that happens or exists in the novel, does not mean that it isn't literature. I could have set him straight by explaining exactly why The Hunger Games is fodder for teenage girls and literature enthusiasts alike, but I think this guy already did a pretty good job of that. It would be a waste of my time.

What I feel like I do need to defend, however, is my right to like The Hunger Games, even if the troll doesn't. I have a right to be a part of the Divergent fandom, because to me, there is no reason not to be a part of it. I guarantee you that every single person in that particular fandom is well aware that those books are not perfect-- but we have a right to love these series and these characters, because we do love them. We can see past faults, and it's worrisome that some people cannot. There is nothing inherently wrong with the message or the themes portrayed in the series, as there are with a series like Twilight. There isn't the overall idea that a girl is incomplete without a boy, or that it's okay to change everything about yourself in order to be with someone else. There are no ideas that set society back. But even if there were, we'd still be allowed to like it. People are allowed to like Twilight. I am allowed to enjoy anything I want to enjoy. To love the things I love with or without anyone else's consent. My love for them is not hurting anyone-- certainly not the troll himself-- and so I don't see why it should stop.

You cannot take away someone's right to like things. You can use your words to belittle us all you want, call us idiots, try to make us feel like we're not smart because we read a certain type of book, but you cannot take away from us the things that have made us feel better, the things that tell us we are not alone. That's what these books do for us, and your telling us that we're wrong for feeling that way is just proving to us how little you know about the world. Your argument is invalid. Take your blows to make yourself feel stronger, but you're not making us any weaker. We've built communities around the things we love-- can you honestly say you've accomplished as much? What has your hatred built?

We are people who read stories. We can spot foreshadowing, metaphor, and parallelism the second we lay eyes on it, whether it's in The Hunger Games or Moby Dick. We analyze and question and intellectualize everything. We know the importance of storytelling, which is more than we can say about you. Because if you don't understand why the world needs these stories, you don't understand why the world needs stories. Period. Every story is important, and it's a shame that anyone would live in denial of that just because he takes pride in classifying himself as a literature snob.