Trin's Best of 2010

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2010 was a year of mostly mediocre books for me, so I was hard-pressed to choose at least 4 that were really good enough to be worthy of the 'best of 2010' title. Additionally, only a couple of books I've read this year were actually 2010 releases, and I've reviewed only two or three of them. Oh well.

So, here's my best of '10 list, in no particular order:



The Separation (2002) by Christopher Priest

What can I say? It blew my mind. I've since read The Affirmation and I had a hard time deciding which one of the two was better. Priest's unreliable narrators are simply awesome.

(Here you can read what Thrinidir thought about The Separation)

The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009) by Carrie Ryan

The one book on this list that I've actually reviewed :) I put it on this list partly because it really was one of the best books I've read this year, but also the most surprising one (in terms of quality).

You can read my review of Forest of Hands and Teeth here.

The Long Price Quartet (2006-2009) by Daniel Abraham

Definitely one of the best fantasy series I've read lately. I admit that I've not yet read the last book, but the first three were really good - and, which was even better, the quality went up with every next book (instead of down, as it so often happens). I honestly liked all of it - the setting, the characters, the plot.

Lavinia (2008) by Ursula Le Guin

This was my last (finished) read of 2010. I heard a lot of praise for Lavinia, but I hardly imagined that it will be that good. It was really nice, finishing a year of mostly unimpressive books with an unexpectedly good one.

Lavinia will be reviewed here; I'll probably put the review online next week.

Biggest Disappointments:

Empress by Karen Miller. First book I was unable to finish in a long, long time, partly because the plot was going nowhere, partly because the protagonist was so incredibly annoying.
The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan. After the surprisingly good first installment in the series, I expected something equally good from the second book, but got a lukewarm plot and boring protagonist instead.


Books I expect most in 2011:

The Islanders by Christopher Priest -this will be his first novel in a long time and I'm curious what it will bring.
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss - I liked The Name of the Wind, but this book will probably decide whether I'll keep following the series or not.
The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan - I got the impression that not many people liked The Steel Remains, but I actually enjoyed it. I just hope that the sequel will be as good or better.
His Father's Fist by Matthew Stover - Yay! ^^ After Blade of Tyshalle, which was great, I found Caine Black Knife a bit disappointing, mostly because it was very short and ended, if I remember correctly, with a huge cliffhanger. Naturally, my hopes for His Father's Fist are high.


Last, but not least, let me wish you all a happy 2011 :) May it bring as much joy as possible.

Carrie Ryan - The Dead-Tossed Waves (Book Review)

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Gabry lives a peaceful life in the town of Vista, helping her mother man the lighthouse, never even thinking of setting a foot outside city limits. But when her best friend Cira invites her to explore the nearby amusement park ruins, Gabry can't refuse, not if she doesn't want Cira's cute brother, Cathcher, think that she's a coward. As they cross the fence and find themselves in the forbidden territory, Gabry and Catcher are getting along really well … until the group is surprised by the Unconsecrated.

After reading two of her books, I think I can safely say that beginnings are clearly not Ryan's forte – they always seem a bit too familiar. The beginning of The Forest of Hands and Teeth reminded me of The Village, and the one in The Dead-Tossed Waves could be its long lost twin brother. The protagonist is, again, a teenager, which was a huge disappointment in itself, since I was hoping for an older, more mature Mary. Instead, we get Gabry, a shy girl who doesn't like doing any of the forbidden things her peers like – for example, climbing over the town fences. We soon learn that Mary is still around, that she is, in fact, Gabry's mother, but we don't really see much of her.

What bothers me about Gabry is that she is predictable, which makes her a bit boring. Most of the time, she's either feeling guilty about something (usually for all the wrong reasons) or is being a bit of a drama queen, all the while expressing her feelings in great detail, with more than just a bit of pathos. i.e.: [minor spoiler]

“All the times I wondered about my mother. When I tried to remember her voice and her smell. When I felt empty and wrong for having forgotten her.” (pg. 306)

In fact, this was completely new for me; after Gabry found out that Mary is not her real mother, she surely spent lot of time fussing over how Mary never told her the truth, but never mentioned anything about trying to remember her real mother or 'feeling wrong for having forgotten her'. [end of spoiler]

Sometimes, however, there is a surprising lack of reaction from her. [another spoiler] When she kills someone in self-defence, there are no feelings of guilt, no nightmares or anything.

“I knew I killed him and yet hearing it from someone else – knowing it for sure – makes it somehow different. I realise then that there's a difference between the possibility of hope – the idea of things we can never know – and the starkness of reality. The weight of knowledge.” (pg. 213)

After that, Gabry spends no more thoughts on the incident. [end of spoiler]

As in Forest of Hands and Teeth, characters other than the protagonist are reduced to archetypes. There's Mary, the mother who gives advice and serves as a role model, Cira, the best friend, Catcher, the boy Gabry was in love with before she first left Vista, and Elias, the boy she's in love after she leaves Vista. Gabrielle's dilemmas about who she was and who she is now, complete with the two guys she is/was in love with, reminded me a bit of Scott Westerfeld's Pretties, where the protagonist struggles with similar questions.

As mentioned before, Gabry's reactions can be a bit unusual regarding the situation given. When some of her acquaintances die and the others, including her best friend, are to be exiled, Gabry doesn't seem very shocked by the deaths but is very concerned about how she ran away and left her peers alone with Mudo (aka Unconsecrated aka zombies), even though they don't seem to be friends of hers and she couldn't do much to help them either way. [minor spoiler] When Mary, on the other hand, tells Gabry that she's in fact not her biological mother, Gabry throws a fit about her being someone else's daughter and Mary being selfish. Even worse, she keeps being a drama queen about it, thinking about how Gabry is not her real name and how Mary is not her real mother.[end of spoiler] She also has some very unconvincing issues with being courageous – she is too afraid to follow Mary into the Forest but gladly and without much fear returns to zombie-infested wastelands to see a boy she likes, despite the danger.

Where Mary was atypical but likeable, Gabrielle is the typical 'good girl' who always does the right thing, but I still found it hard to sympathise with her. Her problems mostly seemed overblown to me; she made so much drama about every little thing that I found it hard to feel for her when she talked about some more serious problems, using the exact same tone.

I have no problem with books that are mostly character-driven, as The Dead-Tossed Waves certainly is, but they tend do be very hit and miss, especially since everything depends on the protagonist and how well the reader likes him/her. The Forest of Hands and Teeth was really good mostly because Mary was an interesting, refreshing character. Sadly, Gabrielle is not such a character – we've seen her type many times before. Since the plot backing her up has some problems with being predictable, and, at times, corny, The Dead-Tossed Waves is a huge disappointment for me. The book in itself is not so bad, but it doesn't even come near to living up to it predecessor.


3/5






Trin



Related posts:
-Trin's review of The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Carrie Ryan - The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Book Review)

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Zombie apocalypse came and went, but generations later, there is still a group of survivors left – not that zombies are gone, though. Mary is a teenager growing up behind well-guarded fences in the middle of Forest of Hands and Teeth. Her village, run by the Sisterhood, is in constant danger of being overwhelmed, but Mary has other problems: the boy she fancies decided to marry her best friend and her mother just got bitten by one of the Unconsecrated.


When I first heard about The Forest of Hands and Teeth, I was all 'Yay, another post-apocalyptic book!' and was eager to see how this particular zombie apocalypse turned out. The beginning was not what I expected, though - the setting is interesting, but the world of Forest of Hands and Teeth only works if you don't think about it too much. The zombies (or the Unconsecrated, as Mary calls them) are presented as if they were an unstoppable force of nature, even though it's not clear where they all even came from, seeing how it's been generations since the original outbreak, and they seem to be able to swarm even the most prepared villages. People from Mary's village also seem to have a habit of wandering too near the fences, there seems to be an unlimited amount of fence material and the more I read about how the village works, the more similar everything seemed to The Village. Luckily, this village is not the main focus of the book, but instead only provides a background for the protagonist's various problems and dilemmas.

Mary is a typical teenager – stubborn, a bit naïve and capricious. This was why I had a hard time deciding whether Forest of Hands and Teeth is a YA book or not, because she, despite her age, is also a very non-typical YA character, mostly because not only she's far from perfect, I also find her very hard to empathise with. She rarely speaks her mind and abides by the norms of the society she's trapped in, even though she despises them; any rule-breaking she does seems coincidental. She is quick to notice other people's failings, slow to realise her own and most of the time completely passive. Even though she mentions all kinds of sacrifices she's willing to make, those, too, would require only minimal participation from her (for example, agreeing to a 'scandalous' proposal, but not voicing it). I actually found all that pretty refreshing – I'm used to YA protagonists who are rebellious, active, and all in all the person most teenage readers would love to be. I can't imagine that many teenagers would want to be Mary, but she does strike me as a pretty realistic character.

The other Mary's personality trait that I found atypical was her inability to be satisfied with anything that doesn't go according to her various daydreams. She is unhappy with a boy who fell in love with her because he is not 'the one', and never gives him a chance to prove himself; when she finally gets to be with the boy she supposedly loves, she quickly gets bored and starts longing to fulfill her long-time wish to see the ocean. Where a more typical YA character would realise (probably with a little help from a good friend) that they've been too selfish ans try to make amends, Mary chooses her wish over everyone she knows and leaves them to their own devices and unknown fate.

That's actually what made the book for me and what I liked most about it. Mary is stubborn, unreasonable and selfish, but not annoying; the reader may not agree with her decisions, but has to go along with them. True, the setting (and the zombies) is there only to provide a background and other characters are not nearly as lifelike as Mary - mostly, they're only archetypes (the best friend who grows distant, the older brother who loves her sister despite a grudge, the two love interests who (of course) both fall in love with her, the strict teacher …) for Mary to interact with, but Mary herself is a very nicely written, realistic character; the journey to her realisation of what she really wants is what makes this book well worth reading. I can't wait to see what the sequel (The Dead-Tossed Waves) will bring.


4/5



Trin



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Yet another skipped week. Study time = crazy time.