Reviews in Gifs and a Few Others

Apparently, the hot new thing is to review books online complete with a bunch of wiggling, dancing, mugging gifs from our favorite movies and TV shows. I’ve seen a few of these reviews in the past (both positive and negative) and they crack me up. This one of For Darkness Shows the Stars by the blog Writer of Wrongs might be my new favorite, not least because it includes the following:

“Anyway, here’s the deal. Centuries ago, scientists decided to play God and do experiments on themselves, making themselves superior creatures by cheating death, illness, and human frailty with something called the ERV vaccine. The aptly named Luddites are all:

and want no part of these shenanigans. So they don’t take the vaccine, which turns out to be a good move, since because all this war and apocalyptic-ness transpires because of it.”

Oh, man, I love that gif. Like, I want to dress up like that gif for Halloween.

It also had this one, which if I am not mistaken, is a PUPPET OF SEVERUS SNAPE:

And when these two come together… Oh sweet lord. There is such Unresolved Sexual Tension. Kai is grand, important, and clearly furious at Elliot’s betrayal. Elliot has missed him like crazy and her heart is  one big open wound. They just keep hurting each other, even though they’re both trying to do the right things, even though they both think they’re right. And I just wanted to cry and smush their faces together and go “PLEASE JUST LOVE EACH OTHER! PLEASE!” But there are romantical misunderstandings galore. And the rest of the narrative does not disappoint. There’s mean nasty Baron North, Elliot’s utterly heinous father, lovely complex side characters, and pain. Lots and lots of pain.

I can’t even. Anyway, go check it out.

A few others of note:

In a post entitled “No One But You”, the blogger So Obsessed With claims: “I’ve read so many bad books inspired by Austen that I’m more wary of which ones I try these days” but then, once she takes the plunge, declares: “AND I LOVED IT! This is the complete opposite of a bad Austen retelling, y’all…You could see how Persuasion was woven throughout, but it was done in a caring and thoughtful way. Peterfreund doesn’t just lift from the original. You can tell she studied it, learning its nuances, and used it to inspire her own work.”

And the blog Bitching, Books, and Baking (which SB will tell you are like, three of my favorite things) says:

“There is no blind acceptance, no radical overnight changes in a person’s belief structure. Instead there is shock and repulsion and angst and much, much fretting! Oh the emotional torture! Look! It managed to stay so politely constrained and English, while still being, er…not. Kuddos for letting your human characters be human…and also, for allowing a character to trudge deep into her own religious believes without thumping at the reading audience.

“The letters! Oh the letters! Filled with the brutal honesty of children, conveying every emotion from loathing to love, they chronicle a forbidden young friendship and romance that will pound every ounce of feeling out of your heart. Totally beats it, with much grrrring and exclamation of “YOU WILL FEEL THIS!”

“This was some of the most excellent world building I’ve witnessed in dystopian YA. We can believe whatever we’d like about apocalyptic events and how we would handle them and rebuild from them but this story kept in mind one very clear fact- that at the end of the day, regardless of the bells and whistles of whatever far-fetched technological advances you care to believe we might make in the future, we will always be human and there isn’t much that we instantly accept. This world didn’t change over night, nor did it recover over night. It was gradual, it was slow, and it took a life time to get there.”

Which is kind of fun, in light of the recent discussion vis-a-vis religion.

Related: the blog Flashbulb Reviews picked up “Foundlings” the other day, and, while disclosing that they approached it from a highly “conservative” point of view (without expounding on what, precisely, that means), called it “an interesting, well-written, hard, controversial little short story that turned out to be more thought-provoking than I originally anticipated; there’s something for everyone to mentally chew on here. And really, isn’t that the point for a story such as this?”

Please note: “Foundlings”, is one of the works currently eligible for a Nebula and/or Hugo nomination this year. And you can read it for free.

So there you have it. Here I am, subverting expectations and converting one Jane Austen fan to science fiction at a time. Mwahahaha.

Also, guys, on a totally UNRELATED note, I wrote 4,500 words yesterday. I never do that. I’m prodigiously proud of myself, and I’m also trying to console myself with what will doubtless be a huge drop off today.