So a while ago I wrote about expectations and how they can ruin a book if they happen to be different then you expected. Well I’m here again to say I now partly disagree with myself. (After all according to Emerson “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”)

The other day I was at the Library and there amongst all the normal teen fiction and fantasy was The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I liked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series (which I read a long time ago) and I like old books, and it just seemed so out of place and refreshingly different so I picked it up. On the cover was a picture of dumb looking old school dinosaurs and the title immediately put me in mind of the movie Jurassic Park. These two things, made me think it would probably be full of description and have a lot of cannon fodder being eaten by giant rampaging dinosaurs. Then the first chapter was about a flimsy, despicable girl that the main character was madly in love with, but who refused to marry a nobody. This started making me very nervous. A whole book about a guy risking his life for a girl that doesn’t deserve him did not give me high hopes.

Well to keep this thing simple: I was wrong about the cannonfodder, the excessive use of dinosaurs, and the love story. And it made the entire story SO much better. Although some of the science  parts were quite unrealistic (because they just didn’t know as much as we know now) all the characters were very well written. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was humorous and intelligent.

Expectations: I guess it just depends on the expectations. If you want something to happen and it doesn’t its depressing. But on the other hand if you think something is going to happen but you hope it doesn’t and then your hope is fulfilled, well that makes for a much happier ending.

Not that this is that profound or anything, but I thought it was interesting.

The cover praise says “fleet and fun. . . a welcome breath of fresh air.” Not quite the words I would have used, unless Lord of the Rings solemnity is a “breath of fresh air.” But despite that, this is a quality book, worth rereading. It is unusual and imaginative. Talk about some excellent first lines — maybe we should just call them hooks. Brandon Sanderson, the author,  kept me jumping, he was continually surprising me, and making life very interesting. It is a high fantasy novel, not a series, although it easily could have a sequel. His world is very detailed, and I was surprised about the amount of religion he put in. If I was to write about a fictional world I think I would be hesitant to write much about religion. The Aon alphabet was also very cool. His characters are strong, and believable, and he doesn’t kill them all off (I wondered at one point). Not all of his characters are particularly likeable, but most have depth. Sorry I’m not going into specifics, I don’t want to give away anything. So yeah, if you like Fantasy, especially High Fantasy, and you don’t mind a little violence and death and destruction, try this one out. It’s a little hefty but very worth it.
I also recently read Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier which is equally hefty, equally good, and still rather depressing at times. But it is a retold fairytale. So if you like Fantasy, especially Retold Fairytales, and you don’t mind a little hopelessness, dress descriptions, and jerks, try this one out.

The last three books I’ve read all had bad endings. Bad endings leave a bad taste in your mouth (or at least mine!) and ruin the rest of the book. But as I was thinking about bad endings I realized that most of the reason why they are bad is because my expectations are different then the outcome.

If I had realized that Normandy took over and slaughtered the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings before I started the book The King’s Shadow, it wouldn’t have been quite so depressing. Although I think it would have helped if the author, Alder, had made Evyn write a personal memoir of Harold. Instead he is saved from death just to write twenty blurbs about Harold’s life (like where he went and who he fought) that any monk from the time could have written, it just seemed pointless.

O Pioneers I expected to be a story of hardship and toil, long suffering and companionship. If I had known it was about a late 1800′s love affair gone bad, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated with the ending. Because of course I wouldn’t have read it in the first place.

So I guess I shouldn’t blame bad endings on the authors, I should blame it all on me. After all it’s my own expectations that ruin it, right?

Greetings,

Z9484 said I could add some posts of my own, I’m afraid mine will be less computer based, but a wide variety is good right?

Well anyway, I recently went on a Redwall binge. Meaning I read every single one of the Redwall Series by Brian Jacques I could get my hands on. Again. Sixteen of them. That was not my first intention. I originally just picked up Mariel of Redwall because I had been thinking about it, but then I had to read the Bellmaker, because it has the same characters, and then I read Marlfox, because I wanted to see how much Mariel and Songbreeze are alike. And it just snowballed from there.

But this was meant to be a review of the whole series. They are a series of comic but dramatic anthropomorphized animal fiction, most of which centers around the Abbey of Redwall, it’s inhabitants, and its founder Martin the Warrior. Continue reading →