lit_stacks's Reviews (579)

I had a picture book version of this as a child and, as it turns out, just reading the children's version was perfectly adequate. The only apparent reason why this book is longer than twenty pages is because of the in-depth descriptions of the surroundings that Irving provides. It's a classic and an easy read, but probably not even worth the time.

I love these books because they are such fun and you always know what you're going to get. I love reading these books after particularly sad or serious books (this one came after Allegiant and what a relief it was that I had this on my Kindle at the time).

There were good parts and bad parts to this book, which is why it is stuck right in the middle of the scale with a 2. Genetic inequality is so interesting especially for a future concept considering the advent of human genome mapping and genetic testing that we are experiencing in our time. However, Roth tries to stuff this huge concept into a book that also has to wrap up numerous other storylines and the whole thing is just lost. It might have worked if she had made this more than a trilogy, but that is not the case. (I do understand that there are books coming out about Four, but the main set of books is a trilogy). The book also leaves so much unexplained. Tris only resets a small part of the Bureau, why are the other cities accepting that Chicago now thinks that GD’s and GP’s are equal? Is this concept not rooted in the entire government? And now for the important part, Tris did not have to die. I’m not going to act like her death did not affect the rating for this book because it did. Because it was worthless. And I’m mad about it. There are certain deaths in books that cause great anguish but are worth it, or had to happen. Like Fred’s death in Harry Potter. It would have been unrealistic for the Battle of Hogwarts to have occurred without the death of a major character, so Fred had to die. But Caleb had already volunteered to die for Tris, and even if Tris had volunteered to go into the chamber, David did not have to be there. And even if David was there, she didn’t have to die. Roth had set her up as basically a superhero in all of the preceding pages of Allegiant, so why couldn’t she survive a couple gunshot wounds? Tobias’ grief wasn’t even satisfying for me either as he was only sad for approximately a day and then the book jumps forward two and a half years so Roth doesn’t have to face the difficulty of what she’s done. Overall, this was a typical YA trilogy, young love, kissing scenes described in painstaking detail, a frustrating girl who doesn’t understand romantic advances. All of which I find very compelling. So if you’re like me, just stop reading after Tobias and Tris have sex and then your life won’t be ruined by needless death.

I just cannot bring myself to be anything but disgusted by these people. I am equally filled with disgust that such a brilliant writer as Donna Tartt is wasting her talents on such terrible plotlines. This sad, sad group of rich sociopaths, plus an obligatory poor person, justify killing a member of their group because he might tell someone that they had committed a murder. Don’t worry, they only murdered a farmer, not Voltaire (their perspective, not mine). Now, I attended a school full of rich kids where I watched a girl self-identify as poor and then cry into her Free People skirt and then pull tissues from her Coach purse. Where I’m from, poor people don’t even have knockoff Coach purses, they have malnutrition. I was so disgusted by the environment of this school that I transferred. So it was not an enjoyable experience reading about an environment that I had fled. And maybe that’s why I just could not identify with these characters, because not even Richard was poor, though he acted like it. Perhaps Donna Tartt was just trying to challenge herself and her abilities by making people like such unlikable nerds, and she has succeeded if taking a trip through the Secret History tag on Tumblr is any indication. What concerns me is her negligible respect for actual Greek history. The history in this book is just downright false, which only a Classics major (guilty as charged) would understand. So her readers are simply lapping up these characters without realizing that they are actually really, really stupid. Their one claim to fame, intellect, which they lord over the masses, is actually a lie. At one point, Henry actually insinuates that the Greeks did not like the sea, which is absolute bullsh*t (I don’t have Tartt’s gift for eloquence). Very little of the Greek mainland is actually travellable, so they had to use the sea. This was actually the only clue that they were bad Classics scholars that the common reader might have picked up on when in actuality there are many other nuanced things that are just incorrect. For example, their Greek translations are bad. This was one of many reasons that I had to throw this book down multiple times. The other reasons mostly have to do with the fact that the characters were snotty rich snobs with no concern for human life or different social strata. And if there’s anything that I can’t stand more than rich snobs, it’s rich snobs who think they’re poor, so this was not the book for me. The three stars are awarded simply on the fact that Donna Tartt is an actual genius with words, which is the only thing that kept me going until the end of this Greek tragedy.

These books should be banned for children but not because of the extreme anti-Church viewpoints, the denial of God's existence, or the obvious sexual "hinting" that occurs, but because of the sheer emotional brutality of them. Between Lyra leaving Pan on the shores of the Underworld and Will losing his father just after he meets him to Will and Lyra having to leave each other just as they fall in love.

The Golden Compass was a solid, interesting book with plenty of action and fantasy involved. But the most compelling thing about the Golden Compass was Lyra, a strong female lead. So when a strong male lead is introduced in the Subtle Knife, you would expect the story to improve further. But, alas, Will's introduction turns Lyra into a whiny, annoying, stupid girl. Suddenly you remember that she is 12 and Will (though also 12) seems as if he is 18 and babysitting the annoying girl. The Amber Spyglass devolves even further as Pullman goes on an insane anti-Christianity rant. I'm sure all this stuff probably goes over the heads of children who are young enough to be influenced by it and is understood by those who are firm enough in their own beliefs to either agree with the book or to disagree with it. In fact, I read this book as a child and had to reread it as an adult just to remember what happened, indicative of what a weak story this is.