It’s time to do another tag! I’m doing this both on the blog and on my YouTube channel so keep an eye out for the video as well. I’ll be doing the “No Disclaimers” Book Tag, which no longer has an original video on YouTube so I’m not sure who created it. I went looking for recently posted YouTube videos with the phrase “book tag” in the title on Monday, and this video by Alfred: In the Bookcave was one of the most recent results, and he has tagged everyone who cares to do it, so that’s what I decided to do.
Honourable mention to a brand new original tag, The InterRail/Euro Rail Book Tag Part 1 by Book Time with Elvis that was created yesterday. Looks interesting, I like this guy’s chill style, and I’d like to do it sometime. It strays from traditional book tags, though, in that not all of the questions you’ll be answering require picking a book or an overly bookish response, and I promised a book video for the channel today.
I’m going to admit right here that I’m not sure how the name of this tag is supposed to play in. It wasn’t addressed in the video I found and the original isn’t available, so that information is probably lost. I’m thinking maybe we’re not supposed to explain our answers and just rapid-fire pick something, but that makes for a boring post and I haven’t been instructed to do that, so I’m not going to.
1. What trope in books annoys you the most?
“The World That Never Progresses” is a trope I really hate in the realm of science fiction and fantasy. We’re presented with future Earth, or we’re on a different world and we get time jumps or a snapshot of the past, and nothing significant has changed. Society behaves the same way, technology doesn’t look very different, governments work the same way, etc. Middle Earth looks exactly the same in Bilbo and Frodo’s time as it did when the rings were forged. Ender’s Game could be 20 years from now or 2,000 years from now (and the world of the sequel is not significantly changed despite being thousands of years later.)
Star Wars, which is a franchise I’ve loved since childhood and still love, presents an odd variation on this trope in that technology is futuristic and very advanced but it’s “a long time ago in a galaxy far away.” 90% of the speaking characters are human or appear to be descendants of humans, but it’s “a long time ago.” Why aren’t we amazing space-faring space cowboys now? What happened?
2. Which writer(s) do you feel is over hyped?
Rick Riordan. If he has a new release any given year, and he usually does, he’ll win the Middle Grade & Children’s category of the Goodreads Choice Awards, but I feel like he’s coasting on the success and popularity of his Percy Jackson books and everything’s actually pretty formulaic and unoriginal after a few times around. Once you’ve read 2 or 3 Rick Riordan books, you’ve read them all.
3. What are your least favorite books you’ve read since starting booktube?
Option 1: Excellent Idea, Terrible Execution
Rise of Knight and Sword
One Sword Saga Book One
by Miriam Wade
Included in my “Did Not Finish” compilation post in March.
This book has a fascinating premise, a librarian working her mundane job in the magical realm of Camelot where both magic and modern technology exist. The execution on this one… not so much. We start with our librarian character waking up, getting dressed, walking down the hall to the bathroom, brushing her teeth in the bathroom, thinking about the fact that she just woke up and she’s going through her morning routine. You know, the snapshots crammed into the 20-second montage at the beginning of a comedy film. Except this isn’t a comedy film and that passage lasts far, far longer than 20 seconds reading time. The rest of what I sat through before deciding to DNF didn’t improve. This book needs a developmental editor to tear it down to the bones and find the plot.
Option 2: The Prologue Story Was Better
Stolen
The Stolen Series Book One
by Marlena Frank
I featured this one in the same DNF post as above, but I was actually listening to the audiobook because of this tour where I ended up just spotlighting the book and not sharing my review.
This is post-apocalyptic Alice in Wonderland, except the cowardly gryphon character is insufferable, the plot once our “Alice” (Shaleigh) is “stolen” and taken to this version of Wonderland is nowhere to be found, and the story that was being told about Shaleigh’s relationship with her father before she left the real world was infinitely more interesting.
It might have been doable for me as a slow read that I pick up here and there between other reads if I was reading it as an eBook and not on a tour deadline, but I was listening to the audiobook, and the narrator seems to have trouble with the vowel sounds. I have no idea if the landscape’s shrubbery looked like “pillow forms” or if there is a (fictional?) species of shubs known as “pellowfirs.” No one has ever “been” anywhere, they’ve “Ben” places. (I know, that one’s regional, I’d be forgiving if the errors were all just a single, identifiable regional accent.) Nobody came to a “halt,” which happened a lot (repetitive word choices!) they all came to a “holt.” “Came to a holt” implies they arrived at an animal’s den, not that they stopped moving.
Option 3: Racism in a World Without Women
Infernal
The Chronicles of Stratus Book One
by Mark de Jager
Apparently this question is just all the books from that March DNF post.
An evil demon-like humanoid thing is eviling his cannibalistic way through town trying to rediscover who he is and why he made this change to himself that had the unfortunate side effect of wiping his memory. Love the concept, hate the execution, and there’s a thread of racism in here.
First of all, the demon-like character is devoid of emotion, which is probably the right choice for a demon but this is a single POV first-person novel so we get no respite from the emotionless play-by-play. This needed either a second POV or third-person narration breaks.
Second, there are no women in this world. Not a single one. I can only assume that in this version of Earth, humans reproduce asexually. Forget named or speaking characters, there isn’t a single woman in sight.
Third and most vile, demon dude is the evilest man to ever evil and he’s also the blackest person anyone has ever seen, including himself. Boys fear him and assume he’s evil because he’s so black. This is likely meant to be a hint at the ending the cover is also clearing giving away, that he’s actually a dragon and probably has black scales, but it comes off racist. The author (White, I might add) lived in Africa and should be more racially sensitive by conditioning.
4. What is a terrible ending that ruined an otherwise quality book?
Mockingjay
The Hunger Games Book Three
by Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay is the conclusion to the original Hunger Games trilogy, and whether or not you like the complete 180 it does in the middle (I promise I won’t say more) I’ve seen quite a few reviewers share my opinion of the epilogue. It sucked. It was way too rushed and gave us information about the characters we weren’t really wondering about while writing off others in a sentence or two. This book either needed to be left to go out with a bang at the end of the last chapter, or the epilogue needed to be significantly longer. What we got was worse than nothing.
5. Which fictional characters do you wish were not killed off?
Spoilers much? If you don’t like spoilers, skip to the next question.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Herr Thiessen
6. What are some of your bookish pet peeves?
The book promises one story and delivers another. All of the problems going on would be solved if two characters would just sit down and talk to each other (especially when they’re both making complete opposite assumptions about what the other is thinking.) A white author goes out of their way to write a BIPOC POV character but doesn’t take care to make it sound like a BIPOC voice (character enjoys white privilege, etc. and just generally doesn’t read BIPOC besides their physical description.)
7. What are some books you feel should have more recognition?
Of Honey and Wildfires
Songs of Sefate Book One
by Sarah Chorn
Gaslamp Fantasy
Published 28 April 2020
Rated 5 Stars!
Sarah Chorn is one of my new favourite authors. Check out the review here!
All Bags Go to Cleveland
by C. S. Hale
Paranormal Romantic Comedy
Published 21 August 2020
Rated 5 Stars!
This ended up being my favourite indie read of 2020 and made it onto my Top 20 of 2020 list. Check out the review here!
Becoming Human
by Amy Michelle Carpenter
YA Science Fiction
Publishing 8 December 2020
Immortal Works
Rated 5 Stars!
This was my very late introduction to the world of YA category Sci-Fi and it made me wish Science Fiction authors were writing for YA autdiences when I was the target age. Check out the review here!
8. What are your thoughts on censorship and banning books?
This is a tough question. There is definitely a time and place to pull a book from certain shelves, but I feel like most of the time it’s the wrong time, the wrong place, and the wrong reasons. It’s probably easier to cover the right time and place and leave “everything else” as the wrong ones.
It makes sense for libraries and other educational holdings to purge out-of-date material when new material is available and to require students and researchers to use the most up-to-date resources. Caveat: I am not condoning the textbook publishing industry’s practise of shuffling the chapters around, adding a new intro paragraph, and charging $400 for a new edition that has absolutely no new information. That’s not at all what I’m referring to! I’m more referring to scientific journals and the like.
It makes sense to move older texts that contain harmful prejudices into collections that don’t just let the public loose without providing supportive information. A public library in 2021 shouldn’t have history books in general circulation that present 18th-century colonial understandings of Native American culture as fact, for example. Does that mean those books should be destroyed? No, not necessarily. But it shouldn’t be presented alongside a book from this decade written by a Native American individual on the same topic as if they’re equally valid sources of information and let little Suzie unwittingly take it home as a source for her social studies essay on Native American culture.
I also do think it’s perfectly appropriate to stop supporting authors who use their platforms to cause harm, and if that goes as far as a book store choosing not to sell Rowling’s work anymore or something similar, that’s the store owner’s choice and right. There will still be other stores and libraries making those books available, but that store owner doesn’t become part of the chain of money exchanging hands and maybe a potential reader who wasn’t aware of the issues surrounding the author is saved from a purchase they would have regretted later on after they found out another way.
9. Tag Someone!
I’m tagging… all of you! If you’re reading this post or watching the video version, and you have a platform to do these tags, you’re tagged! (No pressure, of course, but I’d love a pingback or a comment dropped on my video if you do it so I can check out your responses.)