Just Reviewed Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” and “Insurgent” at SBR

Folks, even though my novel AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE is just out, that doesn’t stop me from reading and reviewing other people’s books.

Though if the legions of fans who loved Veronica Roth’s DIVERGENT but hated book two of her trilogy, INSURGENT, happen upon my review of both books — which I posted not ten minutes ago over at Shiny Book Review (SBR for short, as always) — they may wish I’d refrained.

Why? Because, oddly enough, I truly enjoyed INSURGENT, but I just could not get past the initial implausibility of DIVERGENT. Ms. Roth’s setup  of the five factions which rule near-future Chicago, much less the whole idea that someone who doesn’t truly fit into any of the five factions would be shunned or excluded from society, was too hard for me to get past. But I firmly bought into the five factions’ system coming apart, which is why I enjoyed INSURGENT so much.

This is not the prevailing wisdom on “the Internets.” To put it mildly.

For those of you going, “But Barb! DIVERGENT had some really good writing! Why didn’t you like it?,” the answer is simple: The plotline made little sense. And that was too hard for me to get past.

Yes, the writing in both books was good. I liked Ms. Roth’s heroine Beatrice “Tris” Prior and believed in her characterization, I also liked her boyfriend Four/Tobias, and I believed in what she was going through in both books — but only to a point.

And because it was far easier for me to believe that a near-future Chicago that had somehow been ruled by five and only five factions for some lengthy period of time was now starting to come apart at the seams because five factions just couldn’t do the job any more — and because I believed that when a society breaks down, there’s lots of mayhem, carnage, and graphic violence — it was far easier for me to buy into INSURGENT than DIVERGENT, most particularly because the stuff I liked about DIVERGENT was at the very end of the book.

Which was exactly the stuff I couldn’t discuss in my review without spoilers.

Anyway, there’s one other really good thing about the Divergent trilogy (of which I’ve now reviewed the first two books) — there was no unnecessary love triangle!

YAY! YAY! YAY! (I’d keep cheering, but I’m sure you get the point.)

At any rate, I plan to review ALLEGIANT, the concluding book of Ms. Roth’s trilogy about Tris Prior, in the next few weeks over at SBR. So if you can’t wait for the movies (must. have. movies!), please be sure to check out my forthcoming review . . . ’cause I never know exactly what I’m going to say next. (And that’s the beauty of it. Right?)

 

My novel, “An Elfy on the Loose,” Is Now Available

It’s been a long time in coming, but my first novel, AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE (now with a subtitle of “Book One of the ELFY duology”) is now available at Amazon.com and will be available soon at all major e-book retailers.

**Edited to add: AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE has also “gone live” at BN.com (Barnes and Noble’s website), as Paul Howard told me in the comments. If you have a Nook and want to read AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE, now’s your chance!

Now back to our regularly scheduled post.**

I’m very pleased that AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE is now out, even though I hadn’t expected it to “go live” on Amazon tonight, of all nights — but as it has, I figured I’d best skedaddle and get a blog post up, pronto.

For those of you who want a sample, please go here and read the first five chapters of AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE . . . then, I hope you’ll go to Amazon and get the e-book, as it’s on sale for a limited time at the low price of $3.99.

Because I’m a new author, and because I’m decidedly not well known, it is anyone’s guess as to whether or not AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE will do well enough to warrant an actual “dead tree” edition (that is, a paper edition).

For all I know, this e-book copy is all that we’re likely to get. So I hope you’ll enjoy it in the spirit intended.

In other words, if you want to read my novel because you’ve been intrigued about Bruno the Elfy and Sarah his human companion and want to know all about Sarah’s house (which is an Elfy trap of major proportions), or if you want to figure out why a Dark Elf would go to Northern California, or if you even want to know why Bruno’s mentor Roberto is worth saving despite being more than a bit of an butthead sometimes, now’s your chance.

I also hope that if you read and enjoy AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE, you won’t be averse to letting people know my book exists. Because I need all the help I can get . . . and I’m not shy about saying so.