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Fallen #1
Fallen
There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.
Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.
Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce—and goes out of his way to make that very clear—she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret… even if it kills her.
Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.
Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce—and goes out of his way to make that very clear—she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret… even if it kills her.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published December 8, 2009
About the author
Lauren Kate
29 books26.2k followersLauren Kate is the author of novels for adults, teens, and children, including the rom-com BY ANY OTHER NAME and the young adult series, FALLEN. She lives in Laurel Canyon with her family.
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December 5, 2013
"In this lifetime you're nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school. Even if your death wouldn't accomplish something so long-awaited, glorious, and grand, I'd still relish this moment, killing you."
I'm sorry, was I supposed to agree with absolutely everything the evil villain said and wait, with baited breath, for her to kill Lucinda Price painfully on my behalf?
This review has spoilers, by the way.
I have a list of rules for authors. Kind of like a checklist to ensure that their novel is going to be good. This book breaks them all. For posterity I'm going to list exactly which ones and why.
1. Don’t assume that your audience isn’t as smart as you.
Statistically speaking, you’re probably sitting on a fat, old average like the rest of us. Try to flex our grey matter. Please.
Lauren Kate thinks we're idiots. She really, really does. The prologue basically immediately informs the reader that Lucinda Price has been reincarnated and that black shadows follow her around ready to engulf her and take her away. The title of the book is Fallen, and at page 51 Daniel's last name is revealed to be Grigori. Anyone with half a brain already knows the gist of this story. That Daniel is a fallen angel and the Lucinda Price is his loved one reincarnated. yet 389 pages later, Lauren Kate pulls this out like it's some kind of massive reveal. No. Fuck no. Having your main character come to a conclusion almost four hundred pages after the reader is just an insult. You never learn more than this by the way. Other than a vague explanation as to the true function of the shadows - that is it. *Kat's attempts to pierce her own eyes a la Jocasta*
2. Don’t cover up bad writing and plot with a sexy, smoldering character.
Chances are they won’t be nearly sexy, or smoldering enough. It is painful to read badly written literature so just get it right the first time, please.
The writing in this novel is terrible, by the way. The editing is even worse. Perhaps the copy-editor had a hard time focusing on the text while her brain hemorrhaged as well. The sentences were choppy, they flowed poorly and the word choices were sometimes just plain weird.
5. Characterization is everything.
This doesn’t mean that your characters have to be likable at all times – or likable at all. But they have to be interesting, worth reading and fleshed out. They have to react to situations within their character or in relation to their personal growth and they have to reflect the plot and the changes in your story.
Characterization... where do I even start. *sighs* okay. Here we go, but this is going to be painful and filled with profanities.
Lucinda Price - If I ever saw this girl in the street, I would probably punch her in the face. I have never read such a useless, pathetic, tragically stupid female protagonist IN MY LIFE.
Luce's first encounter with Daniel results in him flipping her off. After that he ignores her, rejects her, accuses her of stalking him, ditches her, suggests that she is annoying, accuses her of being an intruder... the list goes on. GET A HINT, WOMAN! HE DOESN'T LIKE YOU! Only he does, and why they fall in love or want anything to do with each other is probably the only fucking mystery in this whole book. No wait, I scratch that. They DO belong together. They're both prats. I wouldn't wish them on anybody else.
She's a useless, stupid idiot and he's a selfish, moronic asshole. It must be true love. Daniel treats Luce like shit. Luce accepts Daniel's treatment of her (the fact that she does this causes ME to agree with Daniel's assessment), internalizes it, agonizes over it and still goes back for more. Again and again. The ONE time. I mean it. ONE FUCKING TIME that Luce sticks up to Daniel and tells him not to treat her like an idiot (the idiot that she is) he kisses her (probably just to shut her up - for which I'm eternally grateful) then she immediately stops requesting that he treat her like an adult and an equal and he goes right back to muttering cryptic things without explaining them because her puny female mind couldn't possibly comprehend them.
Oh. And ANOTHER thing! She obsessively stalks him, against all odds seeks him out again and again. Finally, when he DOES tell her the truth, what does she do? She runs away. That's right. Like a big fucking pansy, it turns out that her puny female mind really CAN'T handle information. I feel like muttering that scene out of anchorman where Ron Burgundy says:
"I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It's science."
Daniel is crap. Need I say more? Crappity crap crap CRAP! "Oh dear, I love this girl, but if I kiss her she's going to DIE!"
Well here's a fucking idea, dickhead, DON'T KISS HER! (Or don't kiss her on the lips *winks* at least not the ones on her face! *Chuckles evilly*) when she shows up, as she inevitably will, run away. Go to a club and pick up a chick and take her home for "coffee" or to show her your special angel wings. Whatever floats your boat. Don't stick around and interact with her and torture yourself by getting close.
Other characters in this book are two-dimensional. If there were such a concept as one-dimensional, I'm sure Kate would have striven to achieve that instead. They are stand in cardboard cut outs and easily forgettable and inconsequential.
6. Your story needs to have an actual story.
It needs to have conflict, resolution; climax, dénouement; beginning and an end. They don’t always need to occur in the standard order, but something needs to happen.
Can you read that, Lauren Kate? Something needs to fucking happen! Not just 401 pages of stalking! That's not a fucking story!
7. Research.
Know what the hell you’re writing about and put the work and research into your story. Nothing is more annoying then reading a book about an Anglican Preacher in the seventeenth century burning witches, when you know perfectly well how very historically inaccurate that is.
This author knows nothing about angels. Or the Bible. Or religion. She shows no concept for the Biblical nature of angels, their real function, how they differ from humans. It's. Just. So. Fail. Kill me now. I felt like putting on my sexy librarian outfit, pulling out my cain (hyuk hyuk) and giving a very interesting instruction about the Bible in both its modern context and the times in which it is historically acknowledged to be written as well as the spiritual nature or angels and demons and heaven. Probably would have been a lot more fun than reading this book because I look very sexy in my outfits and I give great feedback to my students!
And finally - the last rule that this story broke:
8. Consider what message your story is telling.
Remember that usually, and historically, stories don’t usually exist just for the hell of it. Stories have messages and meaning. They teach us and give us a perspective on life. Storytelling carries a great responsibility because there are few things more emotive to people than stories.
My husband and I have been together for seven years now and I can confidently say I love him. I love him. I think about him. I know him. Most of all, I know WHY I love him and I know WHY he's perfect for me and why nobody else on this planet would ever do.
Fallen seems to think it has something to say about Love. Albeit, I wonder if even it knows what its opinion on love is. Maybe that love conquers all? No, not really since in the book it doesn't. Maybe that love is eternal? Well, yeah maybe. An eternal pain-in-the-ass is the theme it really seems to be going for.
However, I hate the version of love in this book. It's some mystical, unexplainable tie in this book. Something that just is without any further information provided. I can't help but compare Daniel's alleged "sacrifice" in losing Luce over and over again because he keeps selfishly kissing her (when he kisses her she dies apparently) with real love. If he really loved her then he'd leave as soon as he caught a glimpse of her. He'd move across the country. He'd keep running from her until the end of time for her own good.
When I compare it to how completely unselfish my husband is with his love, I can never excuse either Daniel or Luce for their actions.
The relationship in this book is so unbalanced. There is SO much information that Daniel never gives her because she just needs to trust him and apparently her fragile little female mind won't be able to handle it. Then of course, there is the complete and utter power imbalance in their relationship. This book is almost an argument against feminism. To make the boy love you, you must accept his treatment and patiently wait out his scorn and derision. You're supposed to obsess over the boy of your dreams and imagine who he is in complete contradiction to the person he's shown you to be. Somehow this is supposed to be romantic. This is supposed to be real love.
Well, I live real love. I live it every day in its very boring, mundane existence. I live with my soulmate and we go day from day. This book is nothing like love. This book knows obsession, hormones and drama. It knows nothing about love. It is devoid of respect, attention, tenderness and the freely giving love that I know to be real.
The back of the book has a teaser for the next book stating:
"Can you bear the... TORMENT
The next book in the Fallen series by Lauren Kate"
The answer is: No. I really, really can't bear it. I'll leave it to people who don't mind having their braincells sucked into a black hole of anti-feminist propaganda.
This review can also be found on my blog, Cuddlebuggery Book Blog.
I'm sorry, was I supposed to agree with absolutely everything the evil villain said and wait, with baited breath, for her to kill Lucinda Price painfully on my behalf?
This review has spoilers, by the way.
I have a list of rules for authors. Kind of like a checklist to ensure that their novel is going to be good. This book breaks them all. For posterity I'm going to list exactly which ones and why.
1. Don’t assume that your audience isn’t as smart as you.
Statistically speaking, you’re probably sitting on a fat, old average like the rest of us. Try to flex our grey matter. Please.
Lauren Kate thinks we're idiots. She really, really does. The prologue basically immediately informs the reader that Lucinda Price has been reincarnated and that black shadows follow her around ready to engulf her and take her away. The title of the book is Fallen, and at page 51 Daniel's last name is revealed to be Grigori. Anyone with half a brain already knows the gist of this story. That Daniel is a fallen angel and the Lucinda Price is his loved one reincarnated. yet 389 pages later, Lauren Kate pulls this out like it's some kind of massive reveal. No. Fuck no. Having your main character come to a conclusion almost four hundred pages after the reader is just an insult. You never learn more than this by the way. Other than a vague explanation as to the true function of the shadows - that is it. *Kat's attempts to pierce her own eyes a la Jocasta*
2. Don’t cover up bad writing and plot with a sexy, smoldering character.
Chances are they won’t be nearly sexy, or smoldering enough. It is painful to read badly written literature so just get it right the first time, please.
The writing in this novel is terrible, by the way. The editing is even worse. Perhaps the copy-editor had a hard time focusing on the text while her brain hemorrhaged as well. The sentences were choppy, they flowed poorly and the word choices were sometimes just plain weird.
5. Characterization is everything.
This doesn’t mean that your characters have to be likable at all times – or likable at all. But they have to be interesting, worth reading and fleshed out. They have to react to situations within their character or in relation to their personal growth and they have to reflect the plot and the changes in your story.
Characterization... where do I even start. *sighs* okay. Here we go, but this is going to be painful and filled with profanities.
Lucinda Price - If I ever saw this girl in the street, I would probably punch her in the face. I have never read such a useless, pathetic, tragically stupid female protagonist IN MY LIFE.
Luce's first encounter with Daniel results in him flipping her off. After that he ignores her, rejects her, accuses her of stalking him, ditches her, suggests that she is annoying, accuses her of being an intruder... the list goes on. GET A HINT, WOMAN! HE DOESN'T LIKE YOU! Only he does, and why they fall in love or want anything to do with each other is probably the only fucking mystery in this whole book. No wait, I scratch that. They DO belong together. They're both prats. I wouldn't wish them on anybody else.
She's a useless, stupid idiot and he's a selfish, moronic asshole. It must be true love. Daniel treats Luce like shit. Luce accepts Daniel's treatment of her (the fact that she does this causes ME to agree with Daniel's assessment), internalizes it, agonizes over it and still goes back for more. Again and again. The ONE time. I mean it. ONE FUCKING TIME that Luce sticks up to Daniel and tells him not to treat her like an idiot (the idiot that she is) he kisses her (probably just to shut her up - for which I'm eternally grateful) then she immediately stops requesting that he treat her like an adult and an equal and he goes right back to muttering cryptic things without explaining them because her puny female mind couldn't possibly comprehend them.
Oh. And ANOTHER thing! She obsessively stalks him, against all odds seeks him out again and again. Finally, when he DOES tell her the truth, what does she do? She runs away. That's right. Like a big fucking pansy, it turns out that her puny female mind really CAN'T handle information. I feel like muttering that scene out of anchorman where Ron Burgundy says:
"I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It's science."
Daniel is crap. Need I say more? Crappity crap crap CRAP! "Oh dear, I love this girl, but if I kiss her she's going to DIE!"
Well here's a fucking idea, dickhead, DON'T KISS HER! (Or don't kiss her on the lips *winks* at least not the ones on her face! *Chuckles evilly*) when she shows up, as she inevitably will, run away. Go to a club and pick up a chick and take her home for "coffee" or to show her your special angel wings. Whatever floats your boat. Don't stick around and interact with her and torture yourself by getting close.
Other characters in this book are two-dimensional. If there were such a concept as one-dimensional, I'm sure Kate would have striven to achieve that instead. They are stand in cardboard cut outs and easily forgettable and inconsequential.
6. Your story needs to have an actual story.
It needs to have conflict, resolution; climax, dénouement; beginning and an end. They don’t always need to occur in the standard order, but something needs to happen.
Can you read that, Lauren Kate? Something needs to fucking happen! Not just 401 pages of stalking! That's not a fucking story!
7. Research.
Know what the hell you’re writing about and put the work and research into your story. Nothing is more annoying then reading a book about an Anglican Preacher in the seventeenth century burning witches, when you know perfectly well how very historically inaccurate that is.
This author knows nothing about angels. Or the Bible. Or religion. She shows no concept for the Biblical nature of angels, their real function, how they differ from humans. It's. Just. So. Fail. Kill me now. I felt like putting on my sexy librarian outfit, pulling out my cain (hyuk hyuk) and giving a very interesting instruction about the Bible in both its modern context and the times in which it is historically acknowledged to be written as well as the spiritual nature or angels and demons and heaven. Probably would have been a lot more fun than reading this book because I look very sexy in my outfits and I give great feedback to my students!
And finally - the last rule that this story broke:
8. Consider what message your story is telling.
Remember that usually, and historically, stories don’t usually exist just for the hell of it. Stories have messages and meaning. They teach us and give us a perspective on life. Storytelling carries a great responsibility because there are few things more emotive to people than stories.
My husband and I have been together for seven years now and I can confidently say I love him. I love him. I think about him. I know him. Most of all, I know WHY I love him and I know WHY he's perfect for me and why nobody else on this planet would ever do.
Fallen seems to think it has something to say about Love. Albeit, I wonder if even it knows what its opinion on love is. Maybe that love conquers all? No, not really since in the book it doesn't. Maybe that love is eternal? Well, yeah maybe. An eternal pain-in-the-ass is the theme it really seems to be going for.
However, I hate the version of love in this book. It's some mystical, unexplainable tie in this book. Something that just is without any further information provided. I can't help but compare Daniel's alleged "sacrifice" in losing Luce over and over again because he keeps selfishly kissing her (when he kisses her she dies apparently) with real love. If he really loved her then he'd leave as soon as he caught a glimpse of her. He'd move across the country. He'd keep running from her until the end of time for her own good.
When I compare it to how completely unselfish my husband is with his love, I can never excuse either Daniel or Luce for their actions.
The relationship in this book is so unbalanced. There is SO much information that Daniel never gives her because she just needs to trust him and apparently her fragile little female mind won't be able to handle it. Then of course, there is the complete and utter power imbalance in their relationship. This book is almost an argument against feminism. To make the boy love you, you must accept his treatment and patiently wait out his scorn and derision. You're supposed to obsess over the boy of your dreams and imagine who he is in complete contradiction to the person he's shown you to be. Somehow this is supposed to be romantic. This is supposed to be real love.
Well, I live real love. I live it every day in its very boring, mundane existence. I live with my soulmate and we go day from day. This book is nothing like love. This book knows obsession, hormones and drama. It knows nothing about love. It is devoid of respect, attention, tenderness and the freely giving love that I know to be real.
The back of the book has a teaser for the next book stating:
"Can you bear the... TORMENT
The next book in the Fallen series by Lauren Kate"
The answer is: No. I really, really can't bear it. I'll leave it to people who don't mind having their braincells sucked into a black hole of anti-feminist propaganda.
This review can also be found on my blog, Cuddlebuggery Book Blog.
June 13, 2021
-
Part One: The Leaking Package
So a couple of years ago I revisited Twilight—cut to me getting the jump on the COVID Twilight resurgence—and wrote an ultra-serious high brow review where the only thing missing was a Harvard-style reference list of the 45 Buzzfeed articles and Aminos I scoured to find out what Edward Cullen’s star sign was (spoiler: it’s gemini, and I didn’t even end up putting it in the review. Which makes it not a reference list, but an actual bibliography).
I told myself I’d take a short break and then have another go at reviewing some 00’s classic YA, because… Why not? I ended up enjoying Twilight far more than I anticipated. Yes, it was bad, but it wasn’t ‘Shadowhunters TV show’ bad, in that I could get through it without the nagging feeling that I was doing something illegal.
But what started as a “short break” turned into three years. Which—happens. Anyway, for my next foray down Memory Lane (which, at this point, feels more like Memory Gauntlet, complete with razor wire, rabid dogs, and Sky TV salespeople) I decided to pick up one of my most formative YA 00’s hits: Fallen by Lauren Kate.
Now, when this book came out in December 2009, I was slap-bang in the middle of the target demographic. I had just turned 15; Instagram and Snapchat didn’t exist yet, and I had a slider phone whose keys went clickety-clack. I also thought I was straight, which in retrospect gives meaning to the phrase “one day we’ll look back on this and laugh”.
When I originally read this book, I hated it—but that doesn’t mean anything. I was an angry, lonely teen, and back in those days, Twitter was in its relative infancy, so if we wanted to vent our rage we couldn’t simply form an online motorcycle gang and pick a stranger to harass. We had to work to make nuisances of ourselves. Which leads me to my…tumultuous history on Goodreads. But the point is that my loathing for this book (and for Twilight!) was obviously disproportionate, with the hyperbole clearly played for laughs. Did I truly hate this book? Was it really as bad as it seemed?
Yes. It was. This book is—I can’t even think of an accurate descriptor for it. It’s laughably awful. When I started reading this, I was in bed at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, having arrived home from an extremely long hike with stabbing pain in my elderly hips; I propped myself up against the pillows and thought, “This’ll be nice. A little wander into the past. To a simpler time.”
On page 10, I was crying. They were partly tears of laughter, and tears of pain, but also of this book merely existing. I can’t believe somebody went through the final pass pages of this and said, “Yeah. That’s good stuff. Let’s charge real money for this.”
Interestingly, this book was not created in isolation by Lauren Kate—meaning that she shouldn’t take the full blame for it (because “blame” is the only word I can think of to accurately convey how blisteringly crap it is). An announcement here from 2008 introduces Tinderbox books, a book packager whose emblem is on the inside cover of the Fallen hardback. There’s also mention of it on Publishers Weekly here. Intrigued, I did some more digging, but information on this company is scarce. This appears to be the website for it here, but other than that, it’s quiet.
Why Tinderbox has faded into obscurity, I don’t know. Despite the dire quality of this book, it did well on submission; the author’s agent arranged an auction between publishing houses, but went on to accept what seems to have been a substantial pre-empt from Random House (now Penguin Random House). For background: a pre-empt is when a publisher makes a single take-or-leave-it offer, rather than bidding in an auction. In the Publishers Weekly article, the agent states that this single offer blew all others out of the water, defeating the need for an auction. In short: this book (and the Twilight craze that raised the tide at the time) made everyone involved with it $$$.
Part Two: Write me a Nightmare
The profit margin is not an indictment on anyone who worked on this book (nor is the movie, which I can only describe as Unwatchable. Or the horrifying possibility of a TV show. But I don't intend to talk about these cursed motion pictures any further than that. It's done, we've acknowledged it, now let's move on). Money in publishing—namely, income inequality in publishing—is a thorny issue, but that’s not Lauren Kate’s fault. I suppose what keeps me up in the dark of the night is that this book sold more than 10 million copies across 30 countries, meaning that at every corner of the globe, printed more than 10 million times, are these absolute gems:
- “Physically, she was fine. It was just that in every other way—emotionally, psychologically, romantically—she couldn’t have felt more broken.”
- “A salty, nervous taste filled her mouth, but she couldn’t swallow it away.”
“Every time she saw their tongue rings flashing, Luce felt a lonely pinch inside her chest.” (It’s no less ludicrous in context.)
- “The Grigoris do not sleep. Seemed possible; Daniel did always look tired.” (At this point, there is no real evidence that Daniel is anything other than a human boy with a bad haircut.)
- “He dipped her low and kissed her fiercely, as if he were angry, and each time his lips left hers, even just for half a second, the most parching thirst ran through her, making her cry out. This time, she knew they were wings, and she let them wrap around her body like a blanket.” (What were wings? His lips?)
- "Then he started to really kiss her, softly at first, making subtle, lovely pecking noises in her ear."
- "She didn't usually get involved with rocker guys—but then again, none of them had ever pulled the desk next to her even closer, plopped down beside her, and stared at her with eyes quite so green."
There are also these little nuggets that have aged worse than a dead fish on a hot day:
- “She was still trying to figure out…whether this shaven-headed guide standing before them was a man or a woman”
- “‘We’re not talking about him,’ Arriane said quickly. ‘I mean she-man in there’. […] ‘Whaddya think—dude or chick?’”
- “The gender of most of the faculty here is an ongoing, schoolwide debate.”
- “Have you replaced me already with some reform school cutter?”
- “She—at least Luce thought she was a she—had a frizzy wad of brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, calves like ham hocks, and yellowing “invisible” braces covering her top teeth.” (Worth noting: these kinds of physical descriptions are only ever used for women.)
- “Even at a school full of crazies, Luce was well aware that this instinct was insane.”
- “[...] it was clear from her first brief and but genuine smile that she had some coarse affection for the crazy girl.”
Do not misunderstand me. This book was published twelve years ago, and it's clearly a small silly story with no bearing on anything, so I’m not seeking any kind of reckoning for this. That would be utterly absurd. But if this book reminded me of anything, it was that “simpler times” never existed. The more you know [shooting star].
Part Three: Kudzu up the Wazoo
I could go on and on about the terrible writing and the awful characterisation and the overuse of the word kudzu, or the fact that Roland is constantly, awkwardly referred to as “the dreadlocked boy” or “the kid with dreadlocks” as if this book is afraid to say that he is Black, but while I was reading I had this weird epiphany: Luce is not the main character of this book. In fact, Luce is not a character in this book. This book—no, this series is about Daniel. Start to finish.
Let’s dig in. I have the benefit of hindsight here, in that I’ve read the whole series. So the convoluted explanation for all this is that [spoiler if you care, which I bloody well hope you don’t] Luce is actually also an angel (we’re going to pretend angels aren’t all brothers and sisters here), who was originally in love with Lucifer. He turned into a fuckboy, so she got up in Daniel's business instead. This pissed off both Lucifer, and also God, for whatever reason, and Daniel then begged clemency for Luce which resulted in both of them being banished to Earth for eternity.
But the interesting thing is this happened six thousand years ago (we’re also going to pretend that Hubble’s constant and the Higgs mechanism don’t exist in this universe), meaning Daniel has been awake, and alive, for six thousand years while Luce reincarnates over and over again. I did the mathematics here, and based on the short accounts of their various love affairs I estimate they spent an average of about three weeks together every seventeen years over the course of 6000 years. So:
6000/17 = 353 (that’s 353 times they’ve met)
Each meeting lasts 3 weeks (on average, given the various anecdotes of their prior lives)
353 x 21 (days) = 7413 days
7413/365 = 20.3 years
So over the course of 6000 years, they have spent a very sporadic 20.3 years together. That is considerably less than my current lifetime. But adding to this is that every time they come together, they have to start anew. Luce doesn’t know who Daniel is or why she’s drawn to him; she is a blank slate.
On the other hand, Daniel is emotionally old. His lived experience is bottomless; he can’t possibly relate to the 17-year-old Luce, and there’s no reason why he should want to. His relationships with her are formulaic, fleeting, and boring, and as a person she is utterly unremarkable. The most shocking thing she’s ever done is have a shrill, embarrassing lover’s quarrel with her silly boyfriend in front of God and get evicted from her shared living complex (along with the rest of the heavenly host. Even in that, she is not unique.)
So it’s not Luce that Daniel is in love with; it’s the idea of her. He is a bored, agitated, ancient immortal, trapped on Earth in a mortal body because of one foolish mistake he made millennia ago. Time means nothing to him, and there is no reason for his affection for Luce to be just as strong after 6000 years as it was during their fanciful fling in Heaven (especially when he has spent a collective 0.34% of that time actually in Luce's company, during which she has no idea who the fuck he is). So what is he looking for with her?
Part Four: The Sunk Cost Fallacy
So while Luce experiences 6000 years in disjointed chunks, Daniel is waiting. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. What is he waiting for? He’s waiting for something to happen. The hollowness in Daniel’s life is ironically what motivates him—he doesn’t have the same connections with the other angels as they have to each other, despite the fact that their small, broken lives revolve around the astoundingly selfish choice that he and Luce made. But the spectacular thing about this is that Luce, who was complicit in said choice, need not suffer the same way that Daniel does. She’s the one who dies a lot (The One Who Dies A Lot should be her FBI code name) but she lives these charmed, quiet human lives, without the horrendous yoke of immortality around her neck. She doesn’t know what her choice costs everyone—she is unaware that she broke the fucking universe.
Daniel is the one who lives with that decision. And at this point, the healthiest decision would be to walk away from this pointless, shallow love affair. So why doesn’t he?
The sunk cost fallacy refers to a situation wherein a person continues a project or behaviour (usually despite it showing no or little hope of substantial return) due to the resources that have already been invested in it and can’t be recovered. This, not “love”, is one of the main reasons why Daniel continues to pursue Luce despite the fact that there is nothing to gain out of this romance. Look at it this way: the series ends with both of them turning into mortals and living a small life together. But… What are they going to do now? Go to the movies? Self-isolate at home? Get a cat? Seriously?
Their romance is not a romance, but a lifestyle. A desperate, addictive form of self-harm. For 6000 years, Daniel has been compelled to finish what he started—to prove everyone wrong, and to ensure that the sacrifice he and his friends made was worth it. That, as well as the time he has wasted, is the sunk cost. He and Luce have ruined scores of lives with this tomfoolery, but only Daniel is left aware enough to shoulder that burden. It’s torture, but how is he supposed to stop now? Can he ever just throw up his hands and say, “I’m done”? Of course not. It’s not possible for him to do that. So against everything that’s good and right in the world, he continues to pursue Luce despite knowing that each small, pathetic little romantic entanglement between them will result in her being roasty-toasty chargrilled, and the clock resetting to 0. It is a vicious, violent cycle of meeting, kissing, dying, and being alone. Being alone, and meeting, and kissing, and dying.
But that’s not to say he gets nothing out of it, no. Daniel has experienced everything: every corner of the globe, every possible human interaction, and I’m assuming every single Cosmo-endorsed sex-pretzel. The only eternally new, inexhaustible thing—the only thing he can always come back to, the same way an addict comes back to a substance—is Luce. She is constant low-cost newness, untainted and uncomplicated; she is soul food. But on top of that, she is reliable. There is no dance required. She is extremely low effort. The high of fresh, new infatuation never goes away with her, and more than anything else, she is a quick, ugly little jolt of adrenaline that breaks up the horrendous monotony of Daniel’s existence. Reliably there, reliably impressed, and never difficult. As a source of fast, cheap excitement, she is a well that never runs dry; a project that's never finished. She is the Wordscapes of girlfriends.
Part Five: It's Still Better than Halo
Through Luce, Daniel can live vicariously. He can recapture a small kernel of his lost youth, and remind himself of what he once was: young, bound to a master, emotionally whipped for any semblance of individuality. But doesn’t that also sound like a lonely existence? Any way you look at it, Daniel suffers. Heaven or Earth—there is no safe place with him. So he stays still, surrounding himself with friends who medicate with thrill-seeking, who dress themselves up in disingenuous costumes, who struggle—the way Cam does—to foster any meaningful attachment. 1 + 0 is still 1, and so my only conclusion is this: that Lucifer, Cam, and Miss Sophia are not the villains here. The villain is loneliness, from which Daniel has no escape. He watches Luce wander blissfully through her small, stupid little lives, dying the instant she realises what selfish fools she and Daniel were to condemn their friends to this horrendous fate. But he won't let her off too easily: he chases away other suitors (Miles, Cam) lest they spoil her sweetness, her malleability, the role he’s created for her in his theatre of compulsive cruelty. He will go after her to satisfy his need to feel, to exist, to have a purpose, despite the fact that it unfailingly results in her brutal and violent death.
It occurred to me along the way that Daniel’s interactions with Cam—which are volatile, hostile, and emotionally charged—echo the fantastic dynamic between Hannibal and Will in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. For them, Alana is a proxy, the same way that Luce is a proxy for Daniel and Cam, and to an extent the other angels too. He is detached from them, cold and bored and distant, but because of Luce, he has a reason to interact with them. To touch them, to shout at them, to fill his day with something other than torturous waiting. To express what is no doubt a bottomless well of ancient hatred inside him. To share space with the only people who truly understand the hell he is living.
This is not a love story between Daniel and Luce. It is a long, lonely, wistful romance between Daniel and the youth he threw away.
Part One: The Leaking Package
So a couple of years ago I revisited Twilight—cut to me getting the jump on the COVID Twilight resurgence—and wrote an ultra-serious high brow review where the only thing missing was a Harvard-style reference list of the 45 Buzzfeed articles and Aminos I scoured to find out what Edward Cullen’s star sign was (spoiler: it’s gemini, and I didn’t even end up putting it in the review. Which makes it not a reference list, but an actual bibliography).
I told myself I’d take a short break and then have another go at reviewing some 00’s classic YA, because… Why not? I ended up enjoying Twilight far more than I anticipated. Yes, it was bad, but it wasn’t ‘Shadowhunters TV show’ bad, in that I could get through it without the nagging feeling that I was doing something illegal.
But what started as a “short break” turned into three years. Which—happens. Anyway, for my next foray down Memory Lane (which, at this point, feels more like Memory Gauntlet, complete with razor wire, rabid dogs, and Sky TV salespeople) I decided to pick up one of my most formative YA 00’s hits: Fallen by Lauren Kate.
Now, when this book came out in December 2009, I was slap-bang in the middle of the target demographic. I had just turned 15; Instagram and Snapchat didn’t exist yet, and I had a slider phone whose keys went clickety-clack. I also thought I was straight, which in retrospect gives meaning to the phrase “one day we’ll look back on this and laugh”.
When I originally read this book, I hated it—but that doesn’t mean anything. I was an angry, lonely teen, and back in those days, Twitter was in its relative infancy, so if we wanted to vent our rage we couldn’t simply form an online motorcycle gang and pick a stranger to harass. We had to work to make nuisances of ourselves. Which leads me to my…tumultuous history on Goodreads. But the point is that my loathing for this book (and for Twilight!) was obviously disproportionate, with the hyperbole clearly played for laughs. Did I truly hate this book? Was it really as bad as it seemed?
Yes. It was. This book is—I can’t even think of an accurate descriptor for it. It’s laughably awful. When I started reading this, I was in bed at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, having arrived home from an extremely long hike with stabbing pain in my elderly hips; I propped myself up against the pillows and thought, “This’ll be nice. A little wander into the past. To a simpler time.”
On page 10, I was crying. They were partly tears of laughter, and tears of pain, but also of this book merely existing. I can’t believe somebody went through the final pass pages of this and said, “Yeah. That’s good stuff. Let’s charge real money for this.”
Interestingly, this book was not created in isolation by Lauren Kate—meaning that she shouldn’t take the full blame for it (because “blame” is the only word I can think of to accurately convey how blisteringly crap it is). An announcement here from 2008 introduces Tinderbox books, a book packager whose emblem is on the inside cover of the Fallen hardback. There’s also mention of it on Publishers Weekly here. Intrigued, I did some more digging, but information on this company is scarce. This appears to be the website for it here, but other than that, it’s quiet.
Why Tinderbox has faded into obscurity, I don’t know. Despite the dire quality of this book, it did well on submission; the author’s agent arranged an auction between publishing houses, but went on to accept what seems to have been a substantial pre-empt from Random House (now Penguin Random House). For background: a pre-empt is when a publisher makes a single take-or-leave-it offer, rather than bidding in an auction. In the Publishers Weekly article, the agent states that this single offer blew all others out of the water, defeating the need for an auction. In short: this book (and the Twilight craze that raised the tide at the time) made everyone involved with it $$$.
Part Two: Write me a Nightmare
The profit margin is not an indictment on anyone who worked on this book (nor is the movie, which I can only describe as Unwatchable. Or the horrifying possibility of a TV show. But I don't intend to talk about these cursed motion pictures any further than that. It's done, we've acknowledged it, now let's move on). Money in publishing—namely, income inequality in publishing—is a thorny issue, but that’s not Lauren Kate’s fault. I suppose what keeps me up in the dark of the night is that this book sold more than 10 million copies across 30 countries, meaning that at every corner of the globe, printed more than 10 million times, are these absolute gems:
- “Physically, she was fine. It was just that in every other way—emotionally, psychologically, romantically—she couldn’t have felt more broken.”
- “A salty, nervous taste filled her mouth, but she couldn’t swallow it away.”
“Every time she saw their tongue rings flashing, Luce felt a lonely pinch inside her chest.” (It’s no less ludicrous in context.)
- “The Grigoris do not sleep. Seemed possible; Daniel did always look tired.” (At this point, there is no real evidence that Daniel is anything other than a human boy with a bad haircut.)
- “He dipped her low and kissed her fiercely, as if he were angry, and each time his lips left hers, even just for half a second, the most parching thirst ran through her, making her cry out. This time, she knew they were wings, and she let them wrap around her body like a blanket.” (What were wings? His lips?)
- "Then he started to really kiss her, softly at first, making subtle, lovely pecking noises in her ear."
- "She didn't usually get involved with rocker guys—but then again, none of them had ever pulled the desk next to her even closer, plopped down beside her, and stared at her with eyes quite so green."
There are also these little nuggets that have aged worse than a dead fish on a hot day:
- “She was still trying to figure out…whether this shaven-headed guide standing before them was a man or a woman”
- “‘We’re not talking about him,’ Arriane said quickly. ‘I mean she-man in there’. […] ‘Whaddya think—dude or chick?’”
- “The gender of most of the faculty here is an ongoing, schoolwide debate.”
- “Have you replaced me already with some reform school cutter?”
- “She—at least Luce thought she was a she—had a frizzy wad of brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, calves like ham hocks, and yellowing “invisible” braces covering her top teeth.” (Worth noting: these kinds of physical descriptions are only ever used for women.)
- “Even at a school full of crazies, Luce was well aware that this instinct was insane.”
- “[...] it was clear from her first brief and but genuine smile that she had some coarse affection for the crazy girl.”
Do not misunderstand me. This book was published twelve years ago, and it's clearly a small silly story with no bearing on anything, so I’m not seeking any kind of reckoning for this. That would be utterly absurd. But if this book reminded me of anything, it was that “simpler times” never existed. The more you know [shooting star].
Part Three: Kudzu up the Wazoo
I could go on and on about the terrible writing and the awful characterisation and the overuse of the word kudzu, or the fact that Roland is constantly, awkwardly referred to as “the dreadlocked boy” or “the kid with dreadlocks” as if this book is afraid to say that he is Black, but while I was reading I had this weird epiphany: Luce is not the main character of this book. In fact, Luce is not a character in this book. This book—no, this series is about Daniel. Start to finish.
Let’s dig in. I have the benefit of hindsight here, in that I’ve read the whole series. So the convoluted explanation for all this is that [spoiler if you care, which I bloody well hope you don’t] Luce is actually also an angel (we’re going to pretend angels aren’t all brothers and sisters here), who was originally in love with Lucifer. He turned into a fuckboy, so she got up in Daniel's business instead. This pissed off both Lucifer, and also God, for whatever reason, and Daniel then begged clemency for Luce which resulted in both of them being banished to Earth for eternity.
But the interesting thing is this happened six thousand years ago (we’re also going to pretend that Hubble’s constant and the Higgs mechanism don’t exist in this universe), meaning Daniel has been awake, and alive, for six thousand years while Luce reincarnates over and over again. I did the mathematics here, and based on the short accounts of their various love affairs I estimate they spent an average of about three weeks together every seventeen years over the course of 6000 years. So:
6000/17 = 353 (that’s 353 times they’ve met)
Each meeting lasts 3 weeks (on average, given the various anecdotes of their prior lives)
353 x 21 (days) = 7413 days
7413/365 = 20.3 years
So over the course of 6000 years, they have spent a very sporadic 20.3 years together. That is considerably less than my current lifetime. But adding to this is that every time they come together, they have to start anew. Luce doesn’t know who Daniel is or why she’s drawn to him; she is a blank slate.
On the other hand, Daniel is emotionally old. His lived experience is bottomless; he can’t possibly relate to the 17-year-old Luce, and there’s no reason why he should want to. His relationships with her are formulaic, fleeting, and boring, and as a person she is utterly unremarkable. The most shocking thing she’s ever done is have a shrill, embarrassing lover’s quarrel with her silly boyfriend in front of God and get evicted from her shared living complex (along with the rest of the heavenly host. Even in that, she is not unique.)
So it’s not Luce that Daniel is in love with; it’s the idea of her. He is a bored, agitated, ancient immortal, trapped on Earth in a mortal body because of one foolish mistake he made millennia ago. Time means nothing to him, and there is no reason for his affection for Luce to be just as strong after 6000 years as it was during their fanciful fling in Heaven (especially when he has spent a collective 0.34% of that time actually in Luce's company, during which she has no idea who the fuck he is). So what is he looking for with her?
Part Four: The Sunk Cost Fallacy
So while Luce experiences 6000 years in disjointed chunks, Daniel is waiting. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. What is he waiting for? He’s waiting for something to happen. The hollowness in Daniel’s life is ironically what motivates him—he doesn’t have the same connections with the other angels as they have to each other, despite the fact that their small, broken lives revolve around the astoundingly selfish choice that he and Luce made. But the spectacular thing about this is that Luce, who was complicit in said choice, need not suffer the same way that Daniel does. She’s the one who dies a lot (The One Who Dies A Lot should be her FBI code name) but she lives these charmed, quiet human lives, without the horrendous yoke of immortality around her neck. She doesn’t know what her choice costs everyone—she is unaware that she broke the fucking universe.
Daniel is the one who lives with that decision. And at this point, the healthiest decision would be to walk away from this pointless, shallow love affair. So why doesn’t he?
The sunk cost fallacy refers to a situation wherein a person continues a project or behaviour (usually despite it showing no or little hope of substantial return) due to the resources that have already been invested in it and can’t be recovered. This, not “love”, is one of the main reasons why Daniel continues to pursue Luce despite the fact that there is nothing to gain out of this romance. Look at it this way: the series ends with both of them turning into mortals and living a small life together. But… What are they going to do now? Go to the movies? Self-isolate at home? Get a cat? Seriously?
Their romance is not a romance, but a lifestyle. A desperate, addictive form of self-harm. For 6000 years, Daniel has been compelled to finish what he started—to prove everyone wrong, and to ensure that the sacrifice he and his friends made was worth it. That, as well as the time he has wasted, is the sunk cost. He and Luce have ruined scores of lives with this tomfoolery, but only Daniel is left aware enough to shoulder that burden. It’s torture, but how is he supposed to stop now? Can he ever just throw up his hands and say, “I’m done”? Of course not. It’s not possible for him to do that. So against everything that’s good and right in the world, he continues to pursue Luce despite knowing that each small, pathetic little romantic entanglement between them will result in her being roasty-toasty chargrilled, and the clock resetting to 0. It is a vicious, violent cycle of meeting, kissing, dying, and being alone. Being alone, and meeting, and kissing, and dying.
But that’s not to say he gets nothing out of it, no. Daniel has experienced everything: every corner of the globe, every possible human interaction, and I’m assuming every single Cosmo-endorsed sex-pretzel. The only eternally new, inexhaustible thing—the only thing he can always come back to, the same way an addict comes back to a substance—is Luce. She is constant low-cost newness, untainted and uncomplicated; she is soul food. But on top of that, she is reliable. There is no dance required. She is extremely low effort. The high of fresh, new infatuation never goes away with her, and more than anything else, she is a quick, ugly little jolt of adrenaline that breaks up the horrendous monotony of Daniel’s existence. Reliably there, reliably impressed, and never difficult. As a source of fast, cheap excitement, she is a well that never runs dry; a project that's never finished. She is the Wordscapes of girlfriends.
Part Five: It's Still Better than Halo
Through Luce, Daniel can live vicariously. He can recapture a small kernel of his lost youth, and remind himself of what he once was: young, bound to a master, emotionally whipped for any semblance of individuality. But doesn’t that also sound like a lonely existence? Any way you look at it, Daniel suffers. Heaven or Earth—there is no safe place with him. So he stays still, surrounding himself with friends who medicate with thrill-seeking, who dress themselves up in disingenuous costumes, who struggle—the way Cam does—to foster any meaningful attachment. 1 + 0 is still 1, and so my only conclusion is this: that Lucifer, Cam, and Miss Sophia are not the villains here. The villain is loneliness, from which Daniel has no escape. He watches Luce wander blissfully through her small, stupid little lives, dying the instant she realises what selfish fools she and Daniel were to condemn their friends to this horrendous fate. But he won't let her off too easily: he chases away other suitors (Miles, Cam) lest they spoil her sweetness, her malleability, the role he’s created for her in his theatre of compulsive cruelty. He will go after her to satisfy his need to feel, to exist, to have a purpose, despite the fact that it unfailingly results in her brutal and violent death.
It occurred to me along the way that Daniel’s interactions with Cam—which are volatile, hostile, and emotionally charged—echo the fantastic dynamic between Hannibal and Will in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. For them, Alana is a proxy, the same way that Luce is a proxy for Daniel and Cam, and to an extent the other angels too. He is detached from them, cold and bored and distant, but because of Luce, he has a reason to interact with them. To touch them, to shout at them, to fill his day with something other than torturous waiting. To express what is no doubt a bottomless well of ancient hatred inside him. To share space with the only people who truly understand the hell he is living.
This is not a love story between Daniel and Luce. It is a long, lonely, wistful romance between Daniel and the youth he threw away.
August 18, 2015
First off, I'd have given this book zero stars were it possible, but since it isn't I gave it one star. This book is full of fail, end of story. There is no other way to describe this book, really.
That's a lie. There is another way to describe how bad this book is. Take everything that sucked about the Twilight series and multiply that by any number (except zero. Or one. Or any negative number. Aw, crap, you know what I mean). Because really, this book is a bad version of Twilight except with fallen angels instead of vampires. Oh, and, compared to this book, Twilight is a friggin' literary masterpiece. That's how bad this book is.
You think Bella is irritating? Meet Luce Price, the most irritating protagonist ever. She's stupid (yet still somehow incredibly smart, according to her grades), a creepy stalker, and has zero sense of self-worth or shame.
When Daniel, this story's "hero", flips Luce the bird and then proceeds to treat her like garbage--on several occasions--what does Luce do? She instantly becomes obsessed with Daniel and breaks into the school records room to find out more about him. Not once does she think she might be crossing a line by going through someones private records. Obviously, talking to him--like a normal person would--to find out more about him, is out of the question, amirite? Oh, and when a guy treats a girl like garbage that is actually code for TRULUV4EVA.
Look, I could go on and on about how idiotic this book is, but I won't since I have better things to do, like, write hate mail to the publisher of this book. Seriously, I'd be hard pressed to find a book that is worse then this flaming pile of garbage, and had I a time machine I'd use it to go back in time in order to stop myself from ever reading this book.
To sum up my review: Worst. Book. I've. Ever. Read. EVER. (yes, the second 'ever' was entirely necessary) An incredible waste of time and money, and ink, and trees...I could go on (and on and on...). This book makes babies cry.
Edit: As of February 26, 2010 over nine hundred goodreads users think this book is amazing*. Amazing?! Really??? I mean, don't get me wrong, I fully understand really liking a book that has little to no literary value (see my guilty pleasures shelf for proof). But amazing? Come on people! Five stars really should be reserved for the classics--great literary works, or something that really moves you emotionally; makes you think on a deeper level then usual; makes you want to be a better person.
It is beyond me that anyone truly loves this book. Seriously.
I'm sure a lot of you are wondering why, if I hated this book so much, I read the entire thing. Originally, after only reading the first few chapters of this book I hurled it across the room in a fit of anger (and no, I'm not a rageaholic. This book--the fact that it was published and I was duped into wasting money on it--just enraged me that much). But I had to finish it. I just had to. Because I was dumb enough to believe it got better--but it didn't. It just got worse and worse as the book continued. The absolute worst part is this book is 452 pages long, and the first 400 pages contain no plot whatsoever.
Though I already mentioned how much I dislike the protagonist I feel I should add: Luce is an insipid creature (read: TSTL). All she does is think of the most mundane crap--stuff that isn't in the least bit important or interesting--it almost makes you want to take a drill to your own head. At one point she even wonders what size shoe Daniel wears--mind you this is during the same period if time he's sending out strong 'I hate Luce' vibes like nobody's business.
And yeah, for a girl who may or may not have accidentally on purpose killed the last boy she liked, it's truly creepy how easily she gets over it and readily moves on to the nextvictims boys. Is she that messed up and desensitized? Seems to me Luce is a sociopath and should be in prison, not reform school.
Speaking of said reform school: It's laughable how the security is practically non-existent. Did the author do any research on reform schools? I mean, come on! These teens--not counting Penn--are at this reform school because they are more then a little dangerous to themselves and/or others. They are there to be reformed, not kindasorta babysat.
I really could go on about the massive plot holes contained in this novel--of which there are several--but I won't. I'm just going to say one last thing: I'm shocked that something this bad could be published and then--I kid you not--be optioned for a film. Really Disney? You really want to take this horribly written excuse of a novel and make it into a movie? Are you that hard up for script ideas? Really??? Fine, go ahead. Perpetuate the death of all good literature. Celebrate mediocrity. Rape the young minds of our society. I mean, everyone else is doing it, why not join in. As long as you make a buck who cares, amirite???
---
*Quick review of goodreads rating system: five stars='amazing', four stars='really liked it', three stars='liked it', two stars='it was okay', one star='didn't like it'
---
UPDATE (06/27/11): Over 300 people like this review. Yay. I WIN THE INTERNET! Or at least I win a medal in the Crazy Rant About A Horrible Book category. I'd like to thank everyone who made this possible: Goodreads friends, followers of my reviews and everyone else who read and voted for my review--I couldn't have done this without any of you. Also, special thanks go out to Al Gore, the creators of Goodreads, Delacorte Press, whoever green-lighted this book, all the trees that selflessly laid down their lives so this book could be put into print and, of course, Lauren Kate. Peace Out.
Wolverines!
That's a lie. There is another way to describe how bad this book is. Take everything that sucked about the Twilight series and multiply that by any number (except zero. Or one. Or any negative number. Aw, crap, you know what I mean). Because really, this book is a bad version of Twilight except with fallen angels instead of vampires. Oh, and, compared to this book, Twilight is a friggin' literary masterpiece. That's how bad this book is.
You think Bella is irritating? Meet Luce Price, the most irritating protagonist ever. She's stupid (yet still somehow incredibly smart, according to her grades), a creepy stalker, and has zero sense of self-worth or shame.
When Daniel, this story's "hero", flips Luce the bird and then proceeds to treat her like garbage--on several occasions--what does Luce do? She instantly becomes obsessed with Daniel and breaks into the school records room to find out more about him. Not once does she think she might be crossing a line by going through someones private records. Obviously, talking to him--like a normal person would--to find out more about him, is out of the question, amirite? Oh, and when a guy treats a girl like garbage that is actually code for TRULUV4EVA.
Look, I could go on and on about how idiotic this book is, but I won't since I have better things to do, like, write hate mail to the publisher of this book. Seriously, I'd be hard pressed to find a book that is worse then this flaming pile of garbage, and had I a time machine I'd use it to go back in time in order to stop myself from ever reading this book.
To sum up my review: Worst. Book. I've. Ever. Read. EVER. (yes, the second 'ever' was entirely necessary) An incredible waste of time and money, and ink, and trees...I could go on (and on and on...). This book makes babies cry.
Edit: As of February 26, 2010 over nine hundred goodreads users think this book is amazing*. Amazing?! Really??? I mean, don't get me wrong, I fully understand really liking a book that has little to no literary value (see my guilty pleasures shelf for proof). But amazing? Come on people! Five stars really should be reserved for the classics--great literary works, or something that really moves you emotionally; makes you think on a deeper level then usual; makes you want to be a better person.
It is beyond me that anyone truly loves this book. Seriously.
I'm sure a lot of you are wondering why, if I hated this book so much, I read the entire thing. Originally, after only reading the first few chapters of this book I hurled it across the room in a fit of anger (and no, I'm not a rageaholic. This book--the fact that it was published and I was duped into wasting money on it--just enraged me that much). But I had to finish it. I just had to. Because I was dumb enough to believe it got better--but it didn't. It just got worse and worse as the book continued. The absolute worst part is this book is 452 pages long, and the first 400 pages contain no plot whatsoever.
Though I already mentioned how much I dislike the protagonist I feel I should add: Luce is an insipid creature (read: TSTL). All she does is think of the most mundane crap--stuff that isn't in the least bit important or interesting--it almost makes you want to take a drill to your own head. At one point she even wonders what size shoe Daniel wears--mind you this is during the same period if time he's sending out strong 'I hate Luce' vibes like nobody's business.
And yeah, for a girl who may or may not have accidentally on purpose killed the last boy she liked, it's truly creepy how easily she gets over it and readily moves on to the next
Speaking of said reform school: It's laughable how the security is practically non-existent. Did the author do any research on reform schools? I mean, come on! These teens--not counting Penn--are at this reform school because they are more then a little dangerous to themselves and/or others. They are there to be reformed, not kindasorta babysat.
I really could go on about the massive plot holes contained in this novel--of which there are several--but I won't. I'm just going to say one last thing: I'm shocked that something this bad could be published and then--I kid you not--be optioned for a film. Really Disney? You really want to take this horribly written excuse of a novel and make it into a movie? Are you that hard up for script ideas? Really??? Fine, go ahead. Perpetuate the death of all good literature. Celebrate mediocrity. Rape the young minds of our society. I mean, everyone else is doing it, why not join in. As long as you make a buck who cares, amirite???
---
*Quick review of goodreads rating system: five stars='amazing', four stars='really liked it', three stars='liked it', two stars='it was okay', one star='didn't like it'
---
UPDATE (06/27/11): Over 300 people like this review. Yay. I WIN THE INTERNET! Or at least I win a medal in the Crazy Rant About A Horrible Book category. I'd like to thank everyone who made this possible: Goodreads friends, followers of my reviews and everyone else who read and voted for my review--I couldn't have done this without any of you. Also, special thanks go out to Al Gore, the creators of Goodreads, Delacorte Press, whoever green-lighted this book, all the trees that selflessly laid down their lives so this book could be put into print and, of course, Lauren Kate. Peace Out.
Wolverines!
April 30, 2016
Evidence of this book's similarities to Twilight:
1. New girl at school
2. Mary Sue
3. Girl attracts the hottest guys even though she has no personality or depth or anything remotely interesting about her
4. Guy is extremely mysterious (because he stands at a corner and glares at everyone passing by) rude, and tells the girl to stay away from him
5. Guy follows her around, and the girl isn't fazed whatsoever
6. Guy is 100-and-something-years-old and girl is 17
I don't understand. What is it with YA paranormal romance writers and making their characters complete dimwits with no depth. I'm tired of these dull, boring, weak, characterless girls. It's a damn shame I've had such shitty experiences with YA books in my life. It makes me want to give up on the YA romance genre for good.
1. New girl at school
2. Mary Sue
3. Girl attracts the hottest guys even though she has no personality or depth or anything remotely interesting about her
4. Guy is extremely mysterious (because he stands at a corner and glares at everyone passing by) rude, and tells the girl to stay away from him
5. Guy follows her around, and the girl isn't fazed whatsoever
6. Guy is 100-and-something-years-old and girl is 17
I don't understand. What is it with YA paranormal romance writers and making their characters complete dimwits with no depth. I'm tired of these dull, boring, weak, characterless girls. It's a damn shame I've had such shitty experiences with YA books in my life. It makes me want to give up on the YA romance genre for good.
April 5, 2012
I didn’t like this book the first time I read it, when it was called Twilight.
February 24, 2017
1 Star
Geeeeez.
This was quite the YA train wreck.
And I probably should have known better.
But, I saw this on the library shelf...its protective and majestic plastic library jacket just gleaming with promises of fantastical wonder...and I was drawn in like the total sucker I am.
But then reality hit.
Sigh.
This thing was about 100 pages too long...while still simultaneously feeling like it was 100 pages too short of actual information.
You know, "INFORMATION," AKA...
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS GOING ON
The "mystery" of what/who Daniel and all the other keys players in this thing are were withheld until the last 30 pages of this 420+ page jackfest, and not only that, but I felt like we were moving at the pace of molasses.
High viscous molasses.
Traveling uphill.
On carpet.
I mean FUCK, come on.
I don't know if I should beat my own ass for starting this...
Beat my own ass even harder for finishing this...
Or just call it a day and straight off myself over the fact that I am actually considering reading book two.
Find me at:
Geeeeez.
This was quite the YA train wreck.
And I probably should have known better.
But, I saw this on the library shelf...its protective and majestic plastic library jacket just gleaming with promises of fantastical wonder...and I was drawn in like the total sucker I am.
But then reality hit.
Sigh.
This thing was about 100 pages too long...while still simultaneously feeling like it was 100 pages too short of actual information.
You know, "INFORMATION," AKA...
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS GOING ON
The "mystery" of what/who Daniel and all the other keys players in this thing are were withheld until the last 30 pages of this 420+ page jackfest, and not only that, but I felt like we were moving at the pace of molasses.
High viscous molasses.
Traveling uphill.
On carpet.
I mean FUCK, come on.
I don't know if I should beat my own ass for starting this...
Beat my own ass even harder for finishing this...
Or just call it a day and straight off myself over the fact that I am actually considering reading book two.
Find me at:
December 4, 2013
A more formal review of this book is on my blog which is still new. xD Check it out!
Updated: March 9th, 2012.
Also everyone, click here. *sigh* A fucking movie. Just what I needed.
Luce.
Lucinda. Fucking. Price.
You'd still stalk a guy even after he flipped you off when you first locked eyes with him? Even if he told you STRAIGHT IN THE FACE that he didn't want ANYTHING to do with you.
Why? Just...why?
I mean, he's hot. I get it. But what the fuck about Daniel Grigori is even remotely close to sweet? Or did you not want sweetness in your boyfriends? Did you actually want to be treated like doormat covered with shit? Maybe you're a masochist, then. No surprise there.
You know who was sweet and available and equally hot? You know who didn't treat you like a pile of crap?
But of course, Lauren Kate decided to make him the bad guy in the end. You all know who I'm talking about. I was just starting to like him, too.
Actually, I do like Cam. He may be the bad guy, but I'd take him over Daniel any day.
But seriously. Daniel just pissed me the hell off. And it also pissed me off how Luce constantly stalks him and doesn't have any self respect to just, oh, I don't know, MOVE ON AND STOP TORTURING YOURSELF OVER HIM, MAYBE?
He's. Not. Worth. Your. Fucking. Time.
I MEAN COME ON. THE GUY FLIPPED HER OFF HERE, FOR GOD'S SAKES. AAAAARGH I'M SO FRUSTRATED. WHOEVER FINDS DANIEL GRIGORI DESIRABLE NEEDS THEIR BRAIN CELLS CHECKED.
Seriously though Luce, you can forget about him and move on, you know? You don't always have to be a sad, whiny bitch that gets humiliated and pointedly ignored by the hot guy. You can just keep your chin up and not give a fuck. You can be better than that.
But no. You choose not to be. You choose to be a pathetic stalker that doesn't give two shits that the hot guy is basically treating you like dog poo. And I despise you for that.
Ugh. These two are probably one of the most irritating YA couples out there, right next to Ever and Damen.
Did I mention how closely this book and Evermore resemble each other?
1. Stupid, irritating, obsessive, outcast heroine.
2. Immortal, muscular, mysterious, flawless, jackass hero.
3. Reincarnation bullshit.
4. The chick dies every time they "fall in love".
Honestly. The romance really is the main thing about this book that I just hate so much. Luce is annoying and Daniel is the epitome of asswipe. Besides the romance, the characters were just so damn unlikable.
Except for Penn. Sigh, she was the only decent character in the whole book. And she just
There was no plot, and the characters sucked. I'm not gonna comment on the mythology and stuff because lots of people already did that and I didn't really care for it.
Okay, I'm done. Thank God I got that off my chest.
See this review here to see a short, one sentence review that practically sums up my feelings.
Updated: March 9th, 2012.
Also everyone, click here. *sigh* A fucking movie. Just what I needed.
Luce.
Lucinda. Fucking. Price.
You'd still stalk a guy even after he flipped you off when you first locked eyes with him? Even if he told you STRAIGHT IN THE FACE that he didn't want ANYTHING to do with you.
Why? Just...why?
I mean, he's hot. I get it. But what the fuck about Daniel Grigori is even remotely close to sweet? Or did you not want sweetness in your boyfriends? Did you actually want to be treated like doormat covered with shit? Maybe you're a masochist, then. No surprise there.
You know who was sweet and available and equally hot? You know who didn't treat you like a pile of crap?
But of course, Lauren Kate decided to make him the bad guy in the end. You all know who I'm talking about. I was just starting to like him, too.
Actually, I do like Cam. He may be the bad guy, but I'd take him over Daniel any day.
But seriously. Daniel just pissed me the hell off. And it also pissed me off how Luce constantly stalks him and doesn't have any self respect to just, oh, I don't know, MOVE ON AND STOP TORTURING YOURSELF OVER HIM, MAYBE?
He's. Not. Worth. Your. Fucking. Time.
I MEAN COME ON. THE GUY FLIPPED HER OFF HERE, FOR GOD'S SAKES. AAAAARGH I'M SO FRUSTRATED. WHOEVER FINDS DANIEL GRIGORI DESIRABLE NEEDS THEIR BRAIN CELLS CHECKED.
Seriously though Luce, you can forget about him and move on, you know? You don't always have to be a sad, whiny bitch that gets humiliated and pointedly ignored by the hot guy. You can just keep your chin up and not give a fuck. You can be better than that.
But no. You choose not to be. You choose to be a pathetic stalker that doesn't give two shits that the hot guy is basically treating you like dog poo. And I despise you for that.
Ugh. These two are probably one of the most irritating YA couples out there, right next to Ever and Damen.
Did I mention how closely this book and Evermore resemble each other?
1. Stupid, irritating, obsessive, outcast heroine.
2. Immortal, muscular, mysterious, flawless, jackass hero.
3. Reincarnation bullshit.
4. The chick dies every time they "fall in love".
Honestly. The romance really is the main thing about this book that I just hate so much. Luce is annoying and Daniel is the epitome of asswipe. Besides the romance, the characters were just so damn unlikable.
Except for Penn. Sigh, she was the only decent character in the whole book. And she just
There was no plot, and the characters sucked. I'm not gonna comment on the mythology and stuff because lots of people already did that and I didn't really care for it.
Okay, I'm done. Thank God I got that off my chest.
See this review here to see a short, one sentence review that practically sums up my feelings.
January 23, 2014
Boring, lacking interesting characters, boring, terrible love interest, Bella Swan, boring. There are so many things I could rant about the 30% that I read, but instead I shall review this is one gif.
November 2, 2011
This book is fucked
March 19, 2010
Reading this book was like walking through fog, or to pull description from the book, with black shadows blocking my view of everything, only it's not the black shadows that got in my way but the MC, Luce, and the author, Kate. I have no idea what the school looked like (no more that a glimpse of this and that) or what the characters were like (same thing, just glimpses that don't add up to anything) or even what was going on in any of the action scenes because a) Luce doesn't notice anything except for the guys she's obsessed with and b) Kate wants to keep her readers in suspense so she makes sure not to tell you anything worth telling. I know sexual tension is the driving force in paranormal romances, but the plots have to at least make sense, as do the settings. This reform school with cameras everywhere was lacking in adult supervision even for a normal boarding school level. I wasn't ever satisfied with an explanation why Luce, present at the scene of a tragic accident, needed to be at reform school in the first place.
Luce makes sure to tell us she's a 4.0 student, brilliant at everything, and then proceeds to be the most dim-witted narrator I have ever read. As annoying as she was, the comment that bugged me the most was actually that as a swimmer she knew butterfly as the fastest stroke. Anyone who's been in a pool knows it's freestyle. That's why it's called freestyle: you can swim any stroke, but that's the fastest. Luce was obviously not a swimmer, despite her telling us she was, she was obviously not smart enough for calculus, despite her telling us she was, and she was obviously not worth notice from all these guys, despite her telling us she was. By the middle of the book, I was so frustrated with all her cobwebs of thought I wanted to swipe them away so I could see anything in this story. She spends the book describing her eternal lust for Daniel, except when Cam is around and she's distracted by her lust for him, but she's too dense to realize that either of them like her. This book is almost five hundred pages of Luce's internal dialogue of self-deprecation and confusion with the story sometimes happening in the background.
Every time anything remotely interesting starts to happen, Kate falls back on two tactics to keep her readers from learning anything: a) her vacuous heroine who doesn't understand any of the blatant clues and therefore doesn't ask the right questions, or b) scene interrupters with a passive heroine who lets every other character in the book control what she does. Luce zips from half-scene to half-scene without any of it being developed, as much a spectator to her own life as we are. We never get to understand the other characters, the undertones of their relationships, or what they're doing at the school in the first place. Kate stifles any progression in character, plot, everything, so she doesn't ruin those spoilers she's saving for the next book. But we, like Luce, aren't supposed to notice that we aren't getting any answers. We're supposed to be consumed by the hot, mysterious guys, gripping the pages in suspense.
The only reason I finished this book is because I wanted to prove my suspicion that Kate did not intend to give her readers any answers. Don't expect to find out what the black shadows are. Don't expect to learn what's behind this relationship that is the whole point of the book (all Kate gave us was a bunch of empty sexual tension that was as clipped and unsatisfying as the rest of the book). Don't expect to find out who all is after Luce and why. Don't expect to learn anything about any of the characters or find out anything that you can't already figure from the title, which Kate waits until the end to drop that revelation like it's an enlightening bombshell when she gives us nothing else.
The only part of this book I agreed with was this diabolical monologue from what is supposed to be the climax, while the real climax is happening elsewhere: "You're nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school. Even if your death wouldn't accomplish something long-awaited, glorious, and grand, I'd still relish this moment, killing you." That's sad when you're rooting for the villain to take out the heroine. Sad because the cover had such promise.
Luce makes sure to tell us she's a 4.0 student, brilliant at everything, and then proceeds to be the most dim-witted narrator I have ever read. As annoying as she was, the comment that bugged me the most was actually that as a swimmer she knew butterfly as the fastest stroke. Anyone who's been in a pool knows it's freestyle. That's why it's called freestyle: you can swim any stroke, but that's the fastest. Luce was obviously not a swimmer, despite her telling us she was, she was obviously not smart enough for calculus, despite her telling us she was, and she was obviously not worth notice from all these guys, despite her telling us she was. By the middle of the book, I was so frustrated with all her cobwebs of thought I wanted to swipe them away so I could see anything in this story. She spends the book describing her eternal lust for Daniel, except when Cam is around and she's distracted by her lust for him, but she's too dense to realize that either of them like her. This book is almost five hundred pages of Luce's internal dialogue of self-deprecation and confusion with the story sometimes happening in the background.
Every time anything remotely interesting starts to happen, Kate falls back on two tactics to keep her readers from learning anything: a) her vacuous heroine who doesn't understand any of the blatant clues and therefore doesn't ask the right questions, or b) scene interrupters with a passive heroine who lets every other character in the book control what she does. Luce zips from half-scene to half-scene without any of it being developed, as much a spectator to her own life as we are. We never get to understand the other characters, the undertones of their relationships, or what they're doing at the school in the first place. Kate stifles any progression in character, plot, everything, so she doesn't ruin those spoilers she's saving for the next book. But we, like Luce, aren't supposed to notice that we aren't getting any answers. We're supposed to be consumed by the hot, mysterious guys, gripping the pages in suspense.
The only reason I finished this book is because I wanted to prove my suspicion that Kate did not intend to give her readers any answers. Don't expect to find out what the black shadows are. Don't expect to learn what's behind this relationship that is the whole point of the book (all Kate gave us was a bunch of empty sexual tension that was as clipped and unsatisfying as the rest of the book). Don't expect to find out who all is after Luce and why. Don't expect to learn anything about any of the characters or find out anything that you can't already figure from the title, which Kate waits until the end to drop that revelation like it's an enlightening bombshell when she gives us nothing else.
The only part of this book I agreed with was this diabolical monologue from what is supposed to be the climax, while the real climax is happening elsewhere: "You're nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school. Even if your death wouldn't accomplish something long-awaited, glorious, and grand, I'd still relish this moment, killing you." That's sad when you're rooting for the villain to take out the heroine. Sad because the cover had such promise.
March 30, 2022
Fallen (Fallen #1), Lauren Kate
Fallen: There's something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori. Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price's attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He's the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move. Upon arriving Luce at her new school, she encounters a fearsome Randy and shy boy Todd, along with Gabbe, a pretty blonde-haired girl; and Cameron, an attractive looking boy whose second time being sent to Sword and Cross. Cam offers to take Luce to her dorm room, but is abruptly interrupted by Arriane Alter, a self-described psychopath with long black hair. Arriane takes Luce under her wing, which agitates Cam.
Arriane takes Luce to the outside grounds of the school, and demands that Luce cut her hair in the same style as her own. While working on Arriane's hair, Luce notices a scar on her friend's neck, and a shock band on her wrist. She tells Luce that she will not ask questions of her past, as long as Luce makes the same promise, which she does. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز پنجم ماه مارس سال2015میلادی
عنوان: فروافتاده (سقوط کرده)؛ نویسنده: لائورن کیت؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده21م
فروافتاده: چیزی بسیار آشنا درباره ی «دانیل گریگوری» وجود دارد، او مرموز و گوشه گیر است، «دانیل» توجه «لوسی پرایس» را از همان آن، که او را در نخستین روز خود در مدرسه ی شبانه روزی «شمشیر و صلیب» در «ساوانای جورجیا» میبیند، برمیانگیزد؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 01/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 09/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Fallen: There's something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori. Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price's attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He's the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move. Upon arriving Luce at her new school, she encounters a fearsome Randy and shy boy Todd, along with Gabbe, a pretty blonde-haired girl; and Cameron, an attractive looking boy whose second time being sent to Sword and Cross. Cam offers to take Luce to her dorm room, but is abruptly interrupted by Arriane Alter, a self-described psychopath with long black hair. Arriane takes Luce under her wing, which agitates Cam.
Arriane takes Luce to the outside grounds of the school, and demands that Luce cut her hair in the same style as her own. While working on Arriane's hair, Luce notices a scar on her friend's neck, and a shock band on her wrist. She tells Luce that she will not ask questions of her past, as long as Luce makes the same promise, which she does. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز پنجم ماه مارس سال2015میلادی
عنوان: فروافتاده (سقوط کرده)؛ نویسنده: لائورن کیت؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده21م
فروافتاده: چیزی بسیار آشنا درباره ی «دانیل گریگوری» وجود دارد، او مرموز و گوشه گیر است، «دانیل» توجه «لوسی پرایس» را از همان آن، که او را در نخستین روز خود در مدرسه ی شبانه روزی «شمشیر و صلیب» در «ساوانای جورجیا» میبیند، برمیانگیزد؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 01/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 09/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
September 2, 2016
4.5 Stars
I was really excited about reading Fallen, the cover is absolutely gorgeous and I just had to have it! Luckily I received an ARC, thanks to Random House Children's Books. This is another book that has had a lot of hype recently and, as with Hush Hush, it had a lot to live up to. I have read negative as well as positive reviews, so I went in with a completely open mind, and I wasn't disappointed.
The story starts out a little slow at the beginning and not a lot really happens in the way of action until half way through the book. The days Luce spends at Sword and Cross reform school, where she has been sent after an incident with a fire, which killed her ex-boyfriend, does become a little repetitive and drawn out and all I really wanted was the story to get going. But I think the author was trying to set the scene, give us some really well developed characters and lots of suspense before revealing all. In retrospect, I liked this approach as sometimes a story can move along quickly but then have no depth at all.
There are many characters in Fallen, all of which I think are really well rounded. Even those that are not the main focus still have their own story and you feel they are all central to Luce's life. Although none of the characters are particularly 'dangerous', there is a darkness about Daniel and Cam that is subtle but definitely there. As each character grows and a little more is revealed about them, you realise that there is more to each of them which is not necessarily what you first thought. Nice twists and turns kept my interest and I was very intrigued as to how this book would pan out. The atmosphere is dark and edgy too and each detail of Luce's surroundings is described well and at times I really felt as though I was there.
Luce herself is a nice character. She is interesting and I think she will develop into quite an intriguing female protagonist. Sometimes she is quite witty and feisty, but at other times she can be a little slow on the uptake. But overall, I'm looking forward to seeing how she develops and deals with the revelations which occur at the end of Fallen.
Cam and Daniel, who are the two main love interests for Luce, are both delicious. They are very different from each other and at first I wasn't quite sure who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. As I got to know Daniel, I began to like him more and more and could completely understand why Luce is so captivated, and almost hypnotised, by him. He is gorgeous, and a very sexy fallen angel, *move over Patch!*
Verdict:
The story does take time to get going and is definitely a slow burner, but I think it is well worth the wait, so be patient. The ending is exciting, albeit a bit rushed; maybe a few pages from the beginning would have been better used at the end. I was left with a few questions, but that's okay, as I know there's another book coming, and I can't wait! Fallen is a brilliant read and has set the scene for what I hope will be a very exciting series.
I was really excited about reading Fallen, the cover is absolutely gorgeous and I just had to have it! Luckily I received an ARC, thanks to Random House Children's Books. This is another book that has had a lot of hype recently and, as with Hush Hush, it had a lot to live up to. I have read negative as well as positive reviews, so I went in with a completely open mind, and I wasn't disappointed.
The story starts out a little slow at the beginning and not a lot really happens in the way of action until half way through the book. The days Luce spends at Sword and Cross reform school, where she has been sent after an incident with a fire, which killed her ex-boyfriend, does become a little repetitive and drawn out and all I really wanted was the story to get going. But I think the author was trying to set the scene, give us some really well developed characters and lots of suspense before revealing all. In retrospect, I liked this approach as sometimes a story can move along quickly but then have no depth at all.
There are many characters in Fallen, all of which I think are really well rounded. Even those that are not the main focus still have their own story and you feel they are all central to Luce's life. Although none of the characters are particularly 'dangerous', there is a darkness about Daniel and Cam that is subtle but definitely there. As each character grows and a little more is revealed about them, you realise that there is more to each of them which is not necessarily what you first thought. Nice twists and turns kept my interest and I was very intrigued as to how this book would pan out. The atmosphere is dark and edgy too and each detail of Luce's surroundings is described well and at times I really felt as though I was there.
Luce herself is a nice character. She is interesting and I think she will develop into quite an intriguing female protagonist. Sometimes she is quite witty and feisty, but at other times she can be a little slow on the uptake. But overall, I'm looking forward to seeing how she develops and deals with the revelations which occur at the end of Fallen.
Cam and Daniel, who are the two main love interests for Luce, are both delicious. They are very different from each other and at first I wasn't quite sure who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. As I got to know Daniel, I began to like him more and more and could completely understand why Luce is so captivated, and almost hypnotised, by him. He is gorgeous, and a very sexy fallen angel, *move over Patch!*
Verdict:
The story does take time to get going and is definitely a slow burner, but I think it is well worth the wait, so be patient. The ending is exciting, albeit a bit rushed; maybe a few pages from the beginning would have been better used at the end. I was left with a few questions, but that's okay, as I know there's another book coming, and I can't wait! Fallen is a brilliant read and has set the scene for what I hope will be a very exciting series.
November 17, 2009
*This review has some spoilers for plot!*
Just as vampires are becoming old hat in YA literature, angels have swooped in to take their place in the pantheon of paranormal romance heroes--who knew? I was rather dubious of the whole trend (and still am), but boy, do I love me some Old Testament crazy, so I thought, "Let's see what they do with this." Even with my low expectations, I found this disappointing!
We begin with Daniel Grigori (whose last name gives the whole thing away if you know your stuff), a fallen angel cursed to fall in love with the same girl every seventeen years for eternity. The girl in question is Lucinda a.k.a. "Luce" Price, who has just entered Sword & Cross, a reform school for troubled teens, after the mysterious death of a classmate that she perhaps caused, but doesn't remember. As soon as she sees Daniel, she's drawn to him, and soon feels increasingly certain they have met before, and she'll do anything to try and discover his secrets.
Unfortunately, Luce is a pretty dumb heroine. She spends the entire book mooning over a guy that is mean to her every chance he gets and then mopes around feeling sorry for herself. That's kind of it. At one point she talks about how she knows Latin and French and had a 4.0 GPA at a top prep school, etc. but she sure doesn't read that way! She's not a strong character--she's not feisty, she's not witty, and, worst of all, she's passive. She doesn't do anything so much as things happen to her.
Daniel and Luce fall for each other time after time, but the author doesn't try very hard to make either Luce or Daniel interesting. Did the author think it wasn't necessary to show why they would fall in love with each other? Both were no more than cardboard cutouts. I don't think they even had a real conversation at all before they decided they were each others' ~true love~. I don't care if they've technically known each other for centuries, make them interesting in this incarnation!
I actually agreed with one of the "villains" when she said, "In this lifetime you're nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school...I'd still relish this moment...killing you." I don't think that's supposed to happen.
Some other things:
*The climactic battle--which had no real build-up--takes place off-screen!
*The "villain" wasn't threatening and came off more as a simpering monologuer rather than clever or creepy. And he wore gold eye shadow.
*People did not smile in pictures in 1854, among other things!
*How are some fallen angels on the "good side" and others aren't? Fallen angels already chose Satan over God, no?
There are just so many interesting things an author could do with this subject, but it's so flat. There's just not enough of the mythology here to make it worth my while.
Oh, but I do like the cover. And I'll still recommend this to girls who liked Twilight...because it still manages to be better than Twilight.
Just as vampires are becoming old hat in YA literature, angels have swooped in to take their place in the pantheon of paranormal romance heroes--who knew? I was rather dubious of the whole trend (and still am), but boy, do I love me some Old Testament crazy, so I thought, "Let's see what they do with this." Even with my low expectations, I found this disappointing!
We begin with Daniel Grigori (whose last name gives the whole thing away if you know your stuff), a fallen angel cursed to fall in love with the same girl every seventeen years for eternity. The girl in question is Lucinda a.k.a. "Luce" Price, who has just entered Sword & Cross, a reform school for troubled teens, after the mysterious death of a classmate that she perhaps caused, but doesn't remember. As soon as she sees Daniel, she's drawn to him, and soon feels increasingly certain they have met before, and she'll do anything to try and discover his secrets.
Unfortunately, Luce is a pretty dumb heroine. She spends the entire book mooning over a guy that is mean to her every chance he gets and then mopes around feeling sorry for herself. That's kind of it. At one point she talks about how she knows Latin and French and had a 4.0 GPA at a top prep school, etc. but she sure doesn't read that way! She's not a strong character--she's not feisty, she's not witty, and, worst of all, she's passive. She doesn't do anything so much as things happen to her.
Daniel and Luce fall for each other time after time, but the author doesn't try very hard to make either Luce or Daniel interesting. Did the author think it wasn't necessary to show why they would fall in love with each other? Both were no more than cardboard cutouts. I don't think they even had a real conversation at all before they decided they were each others' ~true love~. I don't care if they've technically known each other for centuries, make them interesting in this incarnation!
I actually agreed with one of the "villains" when she said, "In this lifetime you're nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school...I'd still relish this moment...killing you." I don't think that's supposed to happen.
Some other things:
*The climactic battle--which had no real build-up--takes place off-screen!
*The "villain" wasn't threatening and came off more as a simpering monologuer rather than clever or creepy. And he wore gold eye shadow.
*People did not smile in pictures in 1854, among other things!
*How are some fallen angels on the "good side" and others aren't? Fallen angels already chose Satan over God, no?
There are just so many interesting things an author could do with this subject, but it's so flat. There's just not enough of the mythology here to make it worth my while.
Oh, but I do like the cover. And I'll still recommend this to girls who liked Twilight...because it still manages to be better than Twilight.
June 5, 2018
The story follows Luce as she’s put in a reform school because well people think she’s a pyromaniac who killed a guy in a fire and is crazy. She goes to the reform school and meets let’s just say a bunch of weird people who have each been here for a long time for who knows what and decides to make them her friends. I know I would have either ran away from that school or never interacted with anyone because someone might just be a murderer. But that’s not the case in this book.
Luce sees Daniel on her first day itself and feels like she knows him and for some reason gets it in her head that she wants to find out everything about this guy because she likes him even though he’s cold and seems like he doesn’t want anything to do with her. The romance part of this book really threw me off because neither of the characters do anything or exhibit any characters for the other person to like and are practically strangers but still end up falling in love. Which is very absurd considering the fact that nobody falls in love with a random guy because they seem familiar, but in this case I guess she feels her love for him in the past. And there is also the part where he’s rude to her or brushes her off for no reason but come to her rescue all the time, I mean just tell her who you are in the beginning and get it over with or go away and don’t look back.
This would be a whole lot more meaningful if we were told how they fell in love in the first place, and I hope that at least the first time they fell in love it was more believable. Throughout this book there was not a single thing mentioned about either of them or their personality that made them intriguing or desirable in the slightest. We all love some sass or humor or loyalty or a badass streak that makes us fall in love with characters but all those things were given to the supporting characters and not the protagonists themselves which is kind of disappointing.
Luce is not a great protagonist. It’s not that she’s a bad person or anything, but she’s very innocent, trusting, and naive at some points it gets a little irritating. I mean at one point she gets in a car a guy in the reform school sent to pick her up and take her somewhere, SOMEWHERE. You know that’s how murders and horror movies start right?! Why would anyone with any ounce of common sense get in a car a guy in a REFORM school unless they have a death wish or zero self preservation skills.
But I am going to give the characters a chance I don’t dislike any of them and given time maybe they’ll reveal more of their personalities and will prove to be great people.
That was a lot of negative about the characters but I did enjoy the premise of the plot. I am Interested in seeing where the whole fallen angel thing and the war that’s been going on for centuries is headed. I do want to see where the characters are taken considering it’s a 5 book series
The greatest part is in all of this I think is that the other people she meets like Arienne are more interesting than Daniel or Luce. I’m not saying I hate them I’m just saying I need more reason to like them. I will be continuing this series because I want to see where the plot goes and I want to see if there’s like a final war or something, because who doesn’t like a good war.
Luce sees Daniel on her first day itself and feels like she knows him and for some reason gets it in her head that she wants to find out everything about this guy because she likes him even though he’s cold and seems like he doesn’t want anything to do with her. The romance part of this book really threw me off because neither of the characters do anything or exhibit any characters for the other person to like and are practically strangers but still end up falling in love. Which is very absurd considering the fact that nobody falls in love with a random guy because they seem familiar, but in this case I guess she feels her love for him in the past. And there is also the part where he’s rude to her or brushes her off for no reason but come to her rescue all the time, I mean just tell her who you are in the beginning and get it over with or go away and don’t look back.
This would be a whole lot more meaningful if we were told how they fell in love in the first place, and I hope that at least the first time they fell in love it was more believable. Throughout this book there was not a single thing mentioned about either of them or their personality that made them intriguing or desirable in the slightest. We all love some sass or humor or loyalty or a badass streak that makes us fall in love with characters but all those things were given to the supporting characters and not the protagonists themselves which is kind of disappointing.
Luce is not a great protagonist. It’s not that she’s a bad person or anything, but she’s very innocent, trusting, and naive at some points it gets a little irritating. I mean at one point she gets in a car a guy in the reform school sent to pick her up and take her somewhere, SOMEWHERE. You know that’s how murders and horror movies start right?! Why would anyone with any ounce of common sense get in a car a guy in a REFORM school unless they have a death wish or zero self preservation skills.
But I am going to give the characters a chance I don’t dislike any of them and given time maybe they’ll reveal more of their personalities and will prove to be great people.
That was a lot of negative about the characters but I did enjoy the premise of the plot. I am Interested in seeing where the whole fallen angel thing and the war that’s been going on for centuries is headed. I do want to see where the characters are taken considering it’s a 5 book series
The greatest part is in all of this I think is that the other people she meets like Arienne are more interesting than Daniel or Luce. I’m not saying I hate them I’m just saying I need more reason to like them. I will be continuing this series because I want to see where the plot goes and I want to see if there’s like a final war or something, because who doesn’t like a good war.
February 27, 2017
“What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours?”
Firstly, I really loved the movie even though everybody says it's bad or a copycat of Twilight. Yes, I must admit Fallen and Twilight have many similar things. Daniel and Edward. Luce and Bella. The insta-love that ignites so fast. But nowadays, some books are written from that same plot, however, the narration and the writers' strategy are the most important to make their books different despite of the plot.
“The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment.”
Fallen starts with a girl named Luce. She's sent to the school that everyone here ends up with their crime. She makes friends, though some of them hates her, Luce manages to pull off the attention of these two boys, Daniel and Cam. Cam is hot, he's the dark side of her love interest while Daniel is someone Luce can't even have because he tries to push her away all the time with no reasons. Yet Luce doesn't give up, she stalks him, digs up his past, and is angry when she thinks that Denial belongs to another girl. That's insane ! I mean I liked the story, of course, but some of her behaviors were creepy as hell, and I couldn't believe that she was the center of this book where every man seemingly revolves around her.
I didn't like the overly descriptive way of writing style. I sometimes like it when it gives me some feelings to appreciate the scenes or characters instead of being bored, but in this book, I got nothing from that narration, NOTHING, as if the author wanted to prolong the story and she failed to answer all the questions she dumped between the chapters. Alas, they're not answered and left me curious for book two after finishing this.
“The tender pressure of his lips soothed her, like a warm drink in the dead of the winter, when every part of her felt so cold.”
What made me like this book was the dynamic of the story, which is abundant and gripped me from the first page. That being said, Deniel is such a jerk when he first meets Luce, he even flips her off and I thought, "How does this happen ? OMG ! he's a jackass" Then the story continues to the part where Luce finds a truth about her past life and she makes a stupid choice eventually, I hated her so much then. But I couldn't stop reading, I was incredibly addicted to this book. Although I might give up if I read other books and this kind of predicament happens. Anyway, Fallen has something that kept me plowing through it without stopping and looking back to what I've done or how I can finish this book without a break.
Admittedly I enjoyed Fallen more than I thought. Maybe it's the fact that I saw the movie before the book, so it helped and guided me a lot about where I should expect or get the most out of it. Naturally, the pace is undeniably sluggish that you can skip the first half of the book and you'll surely understand the rest of it.
“You're still here," he whispered.
"They couldn't drag me away.”
And I ship Cam so hard. Loved this bad boy !
https://goo.gl/phGhtg
January 6, 2016
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
Hmmmm, I wonder what my friends thought of this one????
^^^^^“This should end well,” said no Mitchell ever.
Let me begin by swearing to all of you that I’m not becoming one of those “rage reviewers.” You know who I’m talking about. They are the people who seem to only choose books they know right from the jump they will hate and then write up a huge rant only to repeat the process over and over and over to infinity and beyond.
Fallen had actually been on my TBR since its release – along with eleventy billion other books and since it was YA and part of a series (which I have zero more evens for) it just kept getting bumped further and further down the stack. But thennnnnnnnnnnn 2016 rolled around and those damn “must read” lists started popping up all over my Facebook (this was on a "soon to be a movie" list) and they are my kryptonite and I get all “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!” I also unapolagetically liked The Twilight Saga when I read it and this was supposed to be for “fans of Twilight” (I know boo hiss, whatevs) so I figured what the hell.
I did not realize the salespitch "for fans of Twilight” meant I was going to be reading Twilight 2.0. I mean Fallen followed the plot points of Twilight to a T. From the not-so-meet-cute betweenBella and Edward errrr, I mean Luce and Daniel in the cafeteria . . .
to the saving ofBella’s errr DAMMIT! I mean Luce’s life from a runaway skull crusher . . .
to coming to her rescue and whisking her away in his fine automobile . . .
(okay, that part was a little different since he didn’t own a car and had to “borrow” the nearest jalopy he could find, but you get the picture.)
to showing her his mad skills . . . .
which, of course, meant Fallen was basically a kissing book . . .
I thought I was going to be lucky enough to escape the super creeper scene, but nope. No such luck . . .
We are talking this book was nearly a complete regurge of EV.ER.Y.THANG. Now, there were a few differences – like stuff actually happened in Twilight, but jackshit happened in Fallen.Bella and Edward errrr Luce and Daniel also attended a reform school rather than regular high school (but no details were ever really provided explaining why – that’s how they get suckers to buy all the other books in the series) which eliminated the need for meddling parental units from the story . . .
There also wasn’t a wicked hot werewolf love triangle thrown in which really sucked for me (#teamjacob4eva) . . . .
And although the love could be described as “insta” it made a bit more sense since the two had loved and lost each other for centuries so the combo of deja vous and horny teen made it a bit less pukey. Also, the chicks who friended Luce weren’t total assholes like Jessica and Daniel wasn’t a vampire. Instead he was . . .
Ha! I keeeed. He was an angel.
On any other day this might have earned 2 Stars from me, but when a story makes me appreciate the fact that an unpolished turd like 50 Shades really WAS simply “inspired” by Twilight and not a blatant ripoff I’m like . . .
So it only gets 1.
To all the fangirls out there who are just waiting in the wings to tell me how wrong I am? Save your breath – I’m not interested in starting out the new year by feeding trolls so . . .
Hmmmm, I wonder what my friends thought of this one????
^^^^^“This should end well,” said no Mitchell ever.
Let me begin by swearing to all of you that I’m not becoming one of those “rage reviewers.” You know who I’m talking about. They are the people who seem to only choose books they know right from the jump they will hate and then write up a huge rant only to repeat the process over and over and over to infinity and beyond.
Fallen had actually been on my TBR since its release – along with eleventy billion other books and since it was YA and part of a series (which I have zero more evens for) it just kept getting bumped further and further down the stack. But thennnnnnnnnnnn 2016 rolled around and those damn “must read” lists started popping up all over my Facebook (this was on a "soon to be a movie" list) and they are my kryptonite and I get all “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!” I also unapolagetically liked The Twilight Saga when I read it and this was supposed to be for “fans of Twilight” (I know boo hiss, whatevs) so I figured what the hell.
I did not realize the salespitch "for fans of Twilight” meant I was going to be reading Twilight 2.0. I mean Fallen followed the plot points of Twilight to a T. From the not-so-meet-cute between
to the saving of
to coming to her rescue and whisking her away in his fine automobile . . .
(okay, that part was a little different since he didn’t own a car and had to “borrow” the nearest jalopy he could find, but you get the picture.)
to showing her his mad skills . . . .
which, of course, meant Fallen was basically a kissing book . . .
I thought I was going to be lucky enough to escape the super creeper scene, but nope. No such luck . . .
We are talking this book was nearly a complete regurge of EV.ER.Y.THANG. Now, there were a few differences – like stuff actually happened in Twilight, but jackshit happened in Fallen.
There also wasn’t a wicked hot werewolf love triangle thrown in which really sucked for me (#teamjacob4eva) . . . .
And although the love could be described as “insta” it made a bit more sense since the two had loved and lost each other for centuries so the combo of deja vous and horny teen made it a bit less pukey. Also, the chicks who friended Luce weren’t total assholes like Jessica and Daniel wasn’t a vampire. Instead he was . . .
Ha! I keeeed. He was an angel.
On any other day this might have earned 2 Stars from me, but when a story makes me appreciate the fact that an unpolished turd like 50 Shades really WAS simply “inspired” by Twilight and not a blatant ripoff I’m like . . .
So it only gets 1.
To all the fangirls out there who are just waiting in the wings to tell me how wrong I am? Save your breath – I’m not interested in starting out the new year by feeding trolls so . . .
December 28, 2017
This book was pretty good!!! But after the next few books, THIS SERIES WAS DNF-ED. -_-
So here's the average girl who gets sent to this mysterious school, and then.....you know it!!
A HOT DUDE COMES IN AND SWOOPS HER AWAY.
THAT'S IT.
So yes, this is ur typical story about a girl getting hypnotized by avery bad boy.
But don't worry, now's where the 'action' comes in! We've got a crazy girl, a hot sex god, and her awesome and ridiculous friends.
(.........this is going to go great...............)
However, this book has mystery, angels, and all that suspense and FEELZ.
It wasn't too bad for me, but people's, I hope you enjoy the next few books. This series started getting slower and slower and if you hate reading meaningless words................-_-......YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
But besides the point that this was a total fail for me, the first book was definitely enjoyable!!
You guys will (hopefully) like it. ;)
So here's the average girl who gets sent to this mysterious school, and then.....you know it!!
A HOT DUDE COMES IN AND SWOOPS HER AWAY.
THAT'S IT.
So yes, this is ur typical story about a girl getting hypnotized by a
But don't worry, now's where the 'action' comes in! We've got a crazy girl, a hot sex god, and her awesome and ridiculous friends.
(.........this is going to go great...............)
However, this book has mystery, angels, and all that suspense and FEELZ.
It wasn't too bad for me, but people's, I hope you enjoy the next few books. This series started getting slower and slower and if you hate reading meaningless words................-_-......YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
But besides the point that this was a total fail for me, the first book was definitely enjoyable!!
You guys will (hopefully) like it. ;)
December 21, 2010
Fallen is one of those books that should not be judged by its cover. Despite the alluring, ambiguous plot promised by the book jacket, this book fell flat in way too many areas.
The story is about Lucinda Price, who is sent to Sword and Cross boarding school after being suspected of arson. She also claims to have seen shadows stalking her, which only adds to the paranoia people presume of her. There, she meets some nice friends - but no one compares to the attractive and mysterious Daniel Grigori. He keeps sending her mixed messages: sometimes he tries to keep Luce around, and other times he flicks her off. Despite his roller coaster attitude, Luce finds herself being pulled toward him like a moth drawn to a flame, and will sacrifice anything to get closer to him.
The beginning of Fallen was not that bad. It seemed like a typical exposition in an urban fantasy - character goes to so and so place, meets so and so people, finds him/herself attracted to so and so, etc. However, this book continued to crawl at a snail's pace the entire story. Nothing in the first 400 pages seemed relevant or necessary to the plot as a whole.
The characters were irritating for the most part. I did not connect to Luce or Daniel. So when the two characters I did not connect with connected with each other, their relationship seemed forced and awkward. There was no explanation of why or how they fell in love, and the author did not craft the chemistry well.
Fallen will appeal to many readers because of its lustrous cover, but ultimately contains average writing and does not satisfy.
Want to read more of my reviews? Follow me here.
The story is about Lucinda Price, who is sent to Sword and Cross boarding school after being suspected of arson. She also claims to have seen shadows stalking her, which only adds to the paranoia people presume of her. There, she meets some nice friends - but no one compares to the attractive and mysterious Daniel Grigori. He keeps sending her mixed messages: sometimes he tries to keep Luce around, and other times he flicks her off. Despite his roller coaster attitude, Luce finds herself being pulled toward him like a moth drawn to a flame, and will sacrifice anything to get closer to him.
The beginning of Fallen was not that bad. It seemed like a typical exposition in an urban fantasy - character goes to so and so place, meets so and so people, finds him/herself attracted to so and so, etc. However, this book continued to crawl at a snail's pace the entire story. Nothing in the first 400 pages seemed relevant or necessary to the plot as a whole.
The characters were irritating for the most part. I did not connect to Luce or Daniel. So when the two characters I did not connect with connected with each other, their relationship seemed forced and awkward. There was no explanation of why or how they fell in love, and the author did not craft the chemistry well.
Fallen will appeal to many readers because of its lustrous cover, but ultimately contains average writing and does not satisfy.
Want to read more of my reviews? Follow me here.
July 12, 2021
i’m truly at a loss of words (not really) because chapter 15 this girl said “i would die for him” after saying she loved him when they had ABSOLUTELY NO CHEMISTRY OR ANY CONNECTION. THIS MAN BARELY HAD ANY PAGE TIME AND APPARENTLY IM SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THIS RELATIONSHIP WTH I’M SO MAD😭
*takes breath* AND IM SUPPOSED TO UNDERSTAND WHY THIS PIECE OF BREAD HAS ANOTHER LOVE INTEREST THAT IS FIGHTING FOR HER AFFECTION. ITS TWILIGHT ALL OVER AGAIN PLSSS😭😭
*takes breath* AND IM SUPPOSED TO UNDERSTAND WHY THIS PIECE OF BREAD HAS ANOTHER LOVE INTEREST THAT IS FIGHTING FOR HER AFFECTION. ITS TWILIGHT ALL OVER AGAIN PLSSS😭😭
July 12, 2021
Don’t look at me like that. It’s the nostalgia, okay?
March 7, 2011
I know that constant cussing makes a critical review look immature and unintelligent... but you know what? FUCK that. A disgusting, awful, jackass-glorifying book like this deserves to be cussed out, especially after I sat through most of it.
And I'm going to cuss this book out, in the style of the 'Fuck you' speech from 25th hour. And I don't care how stupid my review is going to look.
FUCK THIS MOTHERFUCKING BOOK.
Fuck this book, with writing and plot that is so dry that you literally feel dehydrated reading it. And what was the plot? NOTHING was the plot. Nothing happened. Nothing fucking happened. It was just Luce being a masochist and enjoying being treated like crap by Daniel, while she complained that another guy she was fooling around with wasn't good enough for her because he wasn't a jackass like Daniel.
Fuck Luce, that cheap copy of Nora from Hush, hush and Bella Swan. No personality, no interests outside assholes, plus she seems to be completely okay with men who treat her like shit. Because nice guys just don't cut it: they have to flip her off for her to gain interest. They have to try to control her life when they barely know her, they have to stalk her, be an asshole to her, and make-out with her in the aftermath of telling her to shut up. Nope, the angry assholes are the sexiest apparently. She goes through most of the book complaining about how much she loves Daniel when all he does is treat her like shit. But when she starts to actually think about that fact all Daniel has to do is 'kiss her roughly' and all is forgotten.
Fuck Daniel. Daniel was nothing more than a goddamn asshole. That guy is NOT romantic. That guy is a manipulative, stuck-up, selfish, ungrateful asshole who deserves to be fucking castrated. And fuck anyone who thinks he is romantic and that his actions and behaviour are all justifiable. You also deserve to be fucking castrated.
Do you honestly think it's romantic for a guy to flip you off?
Do you think it's romantic for a guy to decide who you should date, who you should hang out with, what school you should go to, and where you go in general?
Do you think it's romantic for a guy to tell you to shut up after you try to prove him wrong for thinking you are stupid?
And do you think it's okay for him to just be able to kiss you to make you forget?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you need to see a psychiatrist. No joke, go and get a psychiatrist. Because men like that are not romantic. What's wrong with a normal guy who treats you like an equal, with nothing but respect and kindness? Oh that's right, he's not a douche bag who wants to control your life. I'm sorry, how dare I forget?
Also, WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT HOW AWESOME HE IS AT FUCKING JUMP ROPING???
Fuck this book, which has more similarities to Hush, hush than it does Twilight, by the way. Here we have competition between Daniel and Patch for who gets to be the bigger asshole, the stupid girl who enjoys men who treat her like shit and does GOOGLE SEARCHES on them. And random shit happening until the end where random drama and fallen angel shit is thrown in that no one will care for anymore at that point. I couldn't finish this because the slow pace, the dryness and the stupidity in this book drove me insane. When I closed this book I literally shouted 'FUCK YOU' at it.
And fuck the person who made the cover, not even bothering to give credit to the original model, who had to find out her face was being used when she saw the book in the bookstore. Who knows how to use stock properly? -raises hand- When you use stock you HAVE TO GIVE CREDIT TO THE ORIGINAL ARTIST AND/OR MODEL OF THAT STOCK. IF YOU DON'T AND DO NOT ASK THE MODEL FOR CONSENT, YOU ARE STEALING.
Original pic: http://cait-shoxxi-stock.deviantart.c...
Fuck this fucking piece of disgusting literature. I'm sick of seeing abusive romance being glorified as the one true romance. And I'm sick of seeing women in real life using these books as inspiration.
ASSHOLES ARE NOT ROMANTIC. IF A GUY FLIPS YOU OFF, TELL HIM TO GO FUCK HIMSELF. AFTER THAT, MOVE ON AND GO FIND A NICE GUY.
And I'm going to cuss this book out, in the style of the 'Fuck you' speech from 25th hour. And I don't care how stupid my review is going to look.
FUCK THIS MOTHERFUCKING BOOK.
Fuck this book, with writing and plot that is so dry that you literally feel dehydrated reading it. And what was the plot? NOTHING was the plot. Nothing happened. Nothing fucking happened. It was just Luce being a masochist and enjoying being treated like crap by Daniel, while she complained that another guy she was fooling around with wasn't good enough for her because he wasn't a jackass like Daniel.
Fuck Luce, that cheap copy of Nora from Hush, hush and Bella Swan. No personality, no interests outside assholes, plus she seems to be completely okay with men who treat her like shit. Because nice guys just don't cut it: they have to flip her off for her to gain interest. They have to try to control her life when they barely know her, they have to stalk her, be an asshole to her, and make-out with her in the aftermath of telling her to shut up. Nope, the angry assholes are the sexiest apparently. She goes through most of the book complaining about how much she loves Daniel when all he does is treat her like shit. But when she starts to actually think about that fact all Daniel has to do is 'kiss her roughly' and all is forgotten.
Fuck Daniel. Daniel was nothing more than a goddamn asshole. That guy is NOT romantic. That guy is a manipulative, stuck-up, selfish, ungrateful asshole who deserves to be fucking castrated. And fuck anyone who thinks he is romantic and that his actions and behaviour are all justifiable. You also deserve to be fucking castrated.
Do you honestly think it's romantic for a guy to flip you off?
Do you think it's romantic for a guy to decide who you should date, who you should hang out with, what school you should go to, and where you go in general?
Do you think it's romantic for a guy to tell you to shut up after you try to prove him wrong for thinking you are stupid?
And do you think it's okay for him to just be able to kiss you to make you forget?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you need to see a psychiatrist. No joke, go and get a psychiatrist. Because men like that are not romantic. What's wrong with a normal guy who treats you like an equal, with nothing but respect and kindness? Oh that's right, he's not a douche bag who wants to control your life. I'm sorry, how dare I forget?
Also, WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT HOW AWESOME HE IS AT FUCKING JUMP ROPING???
Fuck this book, which has more similarities to Hush, hush than it does Twilight, by the way. Here we have competition between Daniel and Patch for who gets to be the bigger asshole, the stupid girl who enjoys men who treat her like shit and does GOOGLE SEARCHES on them. And random shit happening until the end where random drama and fallen angel shit is thrown in that no one will care for anymore at that point. I couldn't finish this because the slow pace, the dryness and the stupidity in this book drove me insane. When I closed this book I literally shouted 'FUCK YOU' at it.
And fuck the person who made the cover, not even bothering to give credit to the original model, who had to find out her face was being used when she saw the book in the bookstore. Who knows how to use stock properly? -raises hand- When you use stock you HAVE TO GIVE CREDIT TO THE ORIGINAL ARTIST AND/OR MODEL OF THAT STOCK. IF YOU DON'T AND DO NOT ASK THE MODEL FOR CONSENT, YOU ARE STEALING.
Original pic: http://cait-shoxxi-stock.deviantart.c...
Fuck this fucking piece of disgusting literature. I'm sick of seeing abusive romance being glorified as the one true romance. And I'm sick of seeing women in real life using these books as inspiration.
ASSHOLES ARE NOT ROMANTIC. IF A GUY FLIPS YOU OFF, TELL HIM TO GO FUCK HIMSELF. AFTER THAT, MOVE ON AND GO FIND A NICE GUY.
March 4, 2010
There's nothing I dislike more than a book that's just downright boring with less than intriguing characters. Oh wait, silly me, yes there is! I can't stand this new trend of shoving shallow storylines into needless series and trying to hook the reader with an annoying cliffhanger. Not right IMHO. This book came across as an incomplete story, where there were many questions left unanswered, and done so in such a sloppy manner that they came across as plot holes. For me, this book was a mental equivalent of a migraine, sound familiar? Sorry, but that's how I felt.
The mysterious, supposedly good looking Daniel wasn't squee-worthy or engaging enough to hook me for another few books. Can't quite pinpoint it, maybe it was his hostile behavior for more than half the book that I just couldn't get over. He flipped off Luce when he first saw her? Did I read that right? Why? So contrived. He ran brrrrrr.... too cold for my taste.
I think the main issue I had with this book were the outstanding questions I have. For example, can someone please tell me what the heck these shadows, errrr wait, announcers, whatevs... What are those? What purpose do they serve? Were they there to protect or harm Luce? What's the difference between the dark and silver/grey shadows? What is up with Roland? The fires?? What caused them? How come no one cared that Todd died in the fire? What really went down the night Trevor died? What was the purpose of introducing over a dozen characters in the first three chapters when a majority didn't even play a part in the rest of the story? What are the angels/demons fighting for and why do they fight when they know neither side will ever be victorious, according to Daniel? How could finding out the truth physically kill Luce? WT?? My list can go on.
This is the second book I've read on fallen angels and maybe it's just not my cup of tea, but I didn't find the concept engaging enough to carry me through for another couple of books. But most importantly, I think regardless of this book being set up as a series, it should still be able to stand on its own and provide the reader a conclusive ending, with just enough intrigue to whet your appetite for more, not have you looking in the back cover for missing pages. Not interested in continuing with this series and I'm surprised I finished this book.
The mysterious, supposedly good looking Daniel wasn't squee-worthy or engaging enough to hook me for another few books. Can't quite pinpoint it, maybe it was his hostile behavior for more than half the book that I just couldn't get over. He flipped off Luce when he first saw her? Did I read that right? Why? So contrived. He ran brrrrrr.... too cold for my taste.
I think the main issue I had with this book were the outstanding questions I have. For example, can someone please tell me what the heck these shadows, errrr wait, announcers, whatevs... What are those? What purpose do they serve? Were they there to protect or harm Luce? What's the difference between the dark and silver/grey shadows? What is up with Roland? The fires?? What caused them? How come no one cared that Todd died in the fire? What really went down the night Trevor died? What was the purpose of introducing over a dozen characters in the first three chapters when a majority didn't even play a part in the rest of the story? What are the angels/demons fighting for and why do they fight when they know neither side will ever be victorious, according to Daniel? How could finding out the truth physically kill Luce? WT?? My list can go on.
This is the second book I've read on fallen angels and maybe it's just not my cup of tea, but I didn't find the concept engaging enough to carry me through for another couple of books. But most importantly, I think regardless of this book being set up as a series, it should still be able to stand on its own and provide the reader a conclusive ending, with just enough intrigue to whet your appetite for more, not have you looking in the back cover for missing pages. Not interested in continuing with this series and I'm surprised I finished this book.
February 14, 2012
EDIT: Forgot to add original half-started review at the end. Fixed!
Some time back I postulated on Facebook that all YA PNRs were trying to be the Doctor and Rose, and that they were all failing miserably. I never meant that idea to make it into a review, and yet... well, here we are, aren't we? So welcome to a review in which I use Doctor Who to explain this burgeoning genre in general, and Fallen in particular. Even if you don't know the show, it should be fairly cogent.
Let's start with the 'why'. Like I said, I never meant this idea to make it into a review, so... why did it?
Because there is nothing else I can bring myself to do for this book. It's not quiiiiite horrible enough for a point-by-point refutation, like I did for Hush, Hush. But it's too eye-gouging for me to do chapter by chapter mini-reviews (though I did get through the first four or five like this; the results will be at the end of this final review.) Heaven knows I can't write a coherent/eloquent 'ordinary' review. If I don't make a complete mockery of this book using my current Fandom of Choice, I won't review it at all, and if I don't review it then why the fuck did I read it?
So here goes... YA PNR in terms of the Doctor. Somewhat pic-heavy.
When the Doctor says to Rose in 'School Reunion' that "You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of my life with you," he perfectly captures the essential conflict that (I believe, at least) ought to be at the heart of many of these PNRs. It's not the 'I want to kill you but I love you' conflict: it's the 'I'll go on forever and you will inevitably die and there is nothing I can do about it'. That's what makes the romance poignant. There is a time bomb attached to it, even if the reader never has to watch it go off, and every moment we watch the couple together is more poignant because we know they only have a limited number of moments left. If I had my wayand Twilight had never been published this is the kind of story that would fill the subgenre. And your immortal characters, who wouldn't necessarily be male, would be more like the Doctor than they are right now.
Some authors are slightly aware of this, and they try to give us a little more Timelord in our Fallen Angel breakfast cereal.
Most of them got very, very confused and started writing about Daleks as romantic leads.
Sure, it gave you a candy heart, but it still wants to FUCKING KILL YOU. AND ALL OF YOUR GODDAMN RACE.
Daleks are not romantic. When you see a Dalek you either run away screaming and hope it doesn't kill you when your back is turned or you blow it the hell up. Very rarely do you care about its horrible past or its horrible present or how much it claims to love you because underneath all of that it still wants to kill you. There's a reason they've been recurring villains for nearly all of the show's run. What is it, thirty odd seasons now? And these salt-shaker-shaped aliens still inspire fear in small children and cause adults to hide behind couches.
Patch, from Hush, Hush, is a Dalek. Except he's a sneaky one; but he still fulfills the ultimate requirement: namely, wanting to kill people. Actually, he's a Dalek with sex drive.
Daniel is less of a Dalek, but he's still no Doctor. No, he doesn't want to kill Luce. Um, wait, actually? That's not so sure. He does kiss her at one point expecting her to explode into bitty pieces and die. Which is, you know, not a good thing if you actually are in love with the girl.
Anyhow, that's the one point. I expected that. If that had been all that was horrible about this book, I might have finished my chapter-by-chapter review. But there was a breaking point...
From there, it was all downhill.
It's the jump rope scene. After that, I just couldn't take this book seriously. I read this one aloud to my friends at lunch once and couldn't even finish; we were laughing too hard for me to read. Since you out there can't benefit from my dramatic reading, I'll just give you the passage to which I refer...
I'm absolutely not shitting you. That is word-for-word what was in this book. Could you take it seriously after reading that? Really. Either Lauren Kate is trolling and getting paid (in which case good for her) or she has no idea about pacing and scene choice and how to use language properly AT. ALL. This passage is ridiculously purple-prose'd, aside from being unnecessary (did it advance the plot? Nope...) and completely inane. I didn't need to know about Daniel's 'sculpted knee'. I also didn't need to know about his 'graceful, narrow feet'. Frankly, I could care less how much Luce wants to jump his bones when she sees him. What's next? "She felt her heart beating faster with desire as he bounced lightly from one hopscotch square to the next"?
Jumping rope is not sexy. It never will be. End of story. This should have been cut at some point in the editing process and it explains a LOT about the final product that it was not.
The good news is that now I can see the book as just silly. Like Christopher Eccleston dancing in a souped-up phone booth.
Nah, this has nothing to do with the content of the review. I just like the gif.
Let's talk about Daniel and Luce a little more... just briefly. Most of what needs to be said about this 'romance' has already been said, none of it good. About the only thing I can come up with to mention that's positive is that Daniel's not nearly as bad as Patch the Dalek. He's still not good, though. There's one scene worth addressing... and like the jump rope sequence above, I have it here in its entirety.
I'm going to set aside the fact that none of that is how a teenager would talk. Two things, one brief: SHOW, DON'T FUCKING TELL. If Luce is so smart, why haven't we seen this before? Even something like her sense of direction should have come up in a narrative that's written in third person limited. Because none of it did this is just a massive, pointless infodump.
Number two: It's not romantic to be told to shut up in any circumstances, but particularly in these... first, because Daniel was telling Luce to stop talking about being smart- way to try and quash any expression of intelligence she might be inclined to- and second, because she'd already stopped talking. He had no reason to say it other than to assert dominance over her. "HE MAN IN COMMAND OF PUNY WOMAN, STIFLE STREAM OF STUPID PUNY WOMAN WORDS" is not romantic, and yet that's what Daniel just did.
Basically, when he's around Luce, he's like this:
Except, you know, nowhere near as hot.
Despite the fact that it's Luce who dies once every 17 years, Daniel manages to make it about him. And it's all about him. He's like Rand Al'Thor from the Wheel of Time- what's the word that means someone the Wheel bends its weaving around? That kind of thing. Even Luce 'bends' around him- to the point of character derailment, actually, or it would be if she had established a character from which to derail.
For once, I have to agree with the book.
However, I should take this time to point out that this is a horrible trick. Defining your character by telling the reader how she's changed, not by showing how she was before? EPIC FAIL. Writer cop-out. STOP. DOING. THIS. EVERYONE. Really. It was old the first time I encountered it; that's how bad of an idea this is. Maybe it's harder to actually develop a character and then have it make sense for them to deviate from their personality, but you know what?
There's one more thing which I unfortunately do not have a Doctor Who picture for. Oh yes, and spoilers. Do you care? Thought not.
Somehow, if Luce is killed once and for all (and would someone, please?) it will bring about the End of Days. I think. The plot wasn't really clear. But this couldn't happen before because she was raised in religion. This life, though, she was born to a pair of agnostics and never baptized and... do you see where this is going?
Agnostics will cause Armageddon.
According to Lauren Kate, that is.
I can't get past the first stage of my reaction: WHAT THE FUCK?
I welcome debate, if anyone would like to defend this book. However, if your entire defense comes down to 'DANIEL IS HAWT AND THEIR LOVE IS SO PUUUUURE', well... there's just one thing to say and I'm going to say it now:
And now, to end the review on a positive note, have some cute:
Really, there are better things you can do with your time than read this book. Go watch Doctor Who, for one!
The chapter-by-chapter, before I gave up, spoilertagged so it doesn't screw with my formatting:
Some time back I postulated on Facebook that all YA PNRs were trying to be the Doctor and Rose, and that they were all failing miserably. I never meant that idea to make it into a review, and yet... well, here we are, aren't we? So welcome to a review in which I use Doctor Who to explain this burgeoning genre in general, and Fallen in particular. Even if you don't know the show, it should be fairly cogent.
Let's start with the 'why'. Like I said, I never meant this idea to make it into a review, so... why did it?
Because there is nothing else I can bring myself to do for this book. It's not quiiiiite horrible enough for a point-by-point refutation, like I did for Hush, Hush. But it's too eye-gouging for me to do chapter by chapter mini-reviews (though I did get through the first four or five like this; the results will be at the end of this final review.) Heaven knows I can't write a coherent/eloquent 'ordinary' review. If I don't make a complete mockery of this book using my current Fandom of Choice, I won't review it at all, and if I don't review it then why the fuck did I read it?
So here goes... YA PNR in terms of the Doctor. Somewhat pic-heavy.
When the Doctor says to Rose in 'School Reunion' that "You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of my life with you," he perfectly captures the essential conflict that (I believe, at least) ought to be at the heart of many of these PNRs. It's not the 'I want to kill you but I love you' conflict: it's the 'I'll go on forever and you will inevitably die and there is nothing I can do about it'. That's what makes the romance poignant. There is a time bomb attached to it, even if the reader never has to watch it go off, and every moment we watch the couple together is more poignant because we know they only have a limited number of moments left. If I had my way
Some authors are slightly aware of this, and they try to give us a little more Timelord in our Fallen Angel breakfast cereal.
Most of them got very, very confused and started writing about Daleks as romantic leads.
Sure, it gave you a candy heart, but it still wants to FUCKING KILL YOU. AND ALL OF YOUR GODDAMN RACE.
Daleks are not romantic. When you see a Dalek you either run away screaming and hope it doesn't kill you when your back is turned or you blow it the hell up. Very rarely do you care about its horrible past or its horrible present or how much it claims to love you because underneath all of that it still wants to kill you. There's a reason they've been recurring villains for nearly all of the show's run. What is it, thirty odd seasons now? And these salt-shaker-shaped aliens still inspire fear in small children and cause adults to hide behind couches.
Patch, from Hush, Hush, is a Dalek. Except he's a sneaky one; but he still fulfills the ultimate requirement: namely, wanting to kill people. Actually, he's a Dalek with sex drive.
Daniel is less of a Dalek, but he's still no Doctor. No, he doesn't want to kill Luce. Um, wait, actually? That's not so sure. He does kiss her at one point expecting her to explode into bitty pieces and die. Which is, you know, not a good thing if you actually are in love with the girl.
Anyhow, that's the one point. I expected that. If that had been all that was horrible about this book, I might have finished my chapter-by-chapter review. But there was a breaking point...
From there, it was all downhill.
It's the jump rope scene. After that, I just couldn't take this book seriously. I read this one aloud to my friends at lunch once and couldn't even finish; we were laughing too hard for me to read. Since you out there can't benefit from my dramatic reading, I'll just give you the passage to which I refer...
But Luce's body got the better of her mind when she caught another glimpse of Daniel. His back was to her and he was standing in a corner picking out a jump rope from a tangled pile. She watched as he selected a thin navy rope with wooden handles, then moved to an open space in the center of the room. His golden skin was almost radiant, and every move he made, whether he was rolling out his long neck in a stretch or bending over to scratch his sculpted knee, had Luce completely rapt. She stood pressed against the doorway, unaware that her teeth were chattering and her towel was soaked.
When he brought the rope behind his ankles just before he began to jump, Luce was slammed with a wave of deja vu. It wasn't exactly that she felt like she'd seen Daniel jump rope before, but more that the stance he took seemed entirely familiar. He stood with his feet hip-width apart, unlocked his knees, and pressed his shoulders down as he filled his chest with air. Luce could almost have drawn it.
It was only when Daniel began twirling the rope that Luce snapped out of that trance... and right into another. Never in her life had she seen anyone move like him. It was almost like Daniel was flying. The rope whipped up and over his tall frame so quickly that it disappeared, and his feet- his graceful, narrow feet- were they even touching the ground? He was moving so swiftly, even he must not have been counting.
(P. 134-5)
I'm absolutely not shitting you. That is word-for-word what was in this book. Could you take it seriously after reading that? Really. Either Lauren Kate is trolling and getting paid (in which case good for her) or she has no idea about pacing and scene choice and how to use language properly AT. ALL. This passage is ridiculously purple-prose'd, aside from being unnecessary (did it advance the plot? Nope...) and completely inane. I didn't need to know about Daniel's 'sculpted knee'. I also didn't need to know about his 'graceful, narrow feet'. Frankly, I could care less how much Luce wants to jump his bones when she sees him. What's next? "She felt her heart beating faster with desire as he bounced lightly from one hopscotch square to the next"?
Jumping rope is not sexy. It never will be. End of story. This should have been cut at some point in the editing process and it explains a LOT about the final product that it was not.
The good news is that now I can see the book as just silly. Like Christopher Eccleston dancing in a souped-up phone booth.
Nah, this has nothing to do with the content of the review. I just like the gif.
Let's talk about Daniel and Luce a little more... just briefly. Most of what needs to be said about this 'romance' has already been said, none of it good. About the only thing I can come up with to mention that's positive is that Daniel's not nearly as bad as Patch the Dalek. He's still not good, though. There's one scene worth addressing... and like the jump rope sequence above, I have it here in its entirety.
"You think you're so smart? I spent three years on a full academic scholarship at the best college-prep school in the country. And when they kicked me out, I had to petition- petition!- to keep them from wiping my four-point-oh transcript."
Daniel moved away, but Luce pursued him, taking a step forward for every wide-eyed step he took back. Probably freaking him out, but so what? He'd been asking for it every time he condescended to her.
"I know Latin and French, and in middle school, I won the science fair three times in a row."
She had backed him up against the railing of the boardwalk and was trying to restrain herself from poking him in the chest with her finger. She wasn't finished. "I also do the Sunday crossword puzzle, sometimes in under an hour. I have an unerringly good sense of direction... though not always when it comes to guys."
She swallowed and took a moment to catch her breath.
"And someday, I'm going to be a psychiatrist who actually listens to her patients and helps people. Okay? So don't keep talking to me like I'm stupid and don't tell me I don't understand just because I can't decode your erratic, flaky, hot-one-minute-cold-the-next, frankly" - she looked up at him, letting out her breath - "really hurtful behavior." She brushed a tear away, angry with herself for getting so worked up.
"Shut up," Daniel said, but he said it so softly and so tenderly that Luce surprised both of them by obeying.
(p. 326-7)
I'm going to set aside the fact that none of that is how a teenager would talk. Two things, one brief: SHOW, DON'T FUCKING TELL. If Luce is so smart, why haven't we seen this before? Even something like her sense of direction should have come up in a narrative that's written in third person limited. Because none of it did this is just a massive, pointless infodump.
Number two: It's not romantic to be told to shut up in any circumstances, but particularly in these... first, because Daniel was telling Luce to stop talking about being smart- way to try and quash any expression of intelligence she might be inclined to- and second, because she'd already stopped talking. He had no reason to say it other than to assert dominance over her. "HE MAN IN COMMAND OF PUNY WOMAN, STIFLE STREAM OF STUPID PUNY WOMAN WORDS" is not romantic, and yet that's what Daniel just did.
Basically, when he's around Luce, he's like this:
Except, you know, nowhere near as hot.
Despite the fact that it's Luce who dies once every 17 years, Daniel manages to make it about him. And it's all about him. He's like Rand Al'Thor from the Wheel of Time- what's the word that means someone the Wheel bends its weaving around? That kind of thing. Even Luce 'bends' around him- to the point of character derailment, actually, or it would be if she had established a character from which to derail.
But. Luce was proving day after day that- especially when it came to Daniel- she was incapable of doing anything that fell under the category of "normal" or "smart".
For once, I have to agree with the book.
However, I should take this time to point out that this is a horrible trick. Defining your character by telling the reader how she's changed, not by showing how she was before? EPIC FAIL. Writer cop-out. STOP. DOING. THIS. EVERYONE. Really. It was old the first time I encountered it; that's how bad of an idea this is. Maybe it's harder to actually develop a character and then have it make sense for them to deviate from their personality, but you know what?
There's one more thing which I unfortunately do not have a Doctor Who picture for. Oh yes, and spoilers. Do you care? Thought not.
Somehow, if Luce is killed once and for all (and would someone, please?) it will bring about the End of Days. I think. The plot wasn't really clear. But this couldn't happen before because she was raised in religion. This life, though, she was born to a pair of agnostics and never baptized and... do you see where this is going?
Agnostics will cause Armageddon.
According to Lauren Kate, that is.
I can't get past the first stage of my reaction: WHAT THE FUCK?
I welcome debate, if anyone would like to defend this book. However, if your entire defense comes down to 'DANIEL IS HAWT AND THEIR LOVE IS SO PUUUUURE', well... there's just one thing to say and I'm going to say it now:
And now, to end the review on a positive note, have some cute:
Really, there are better things you can do with your time than read this book. Go watch Doctor Who, for one!
The chapter-by-chapter, before I gave up, spoilertagged so it doesn't screw with my formatting:
December 16, 2009
This is a tricky book to review, for a very simple reason: I did not know what this book was about, or what kind of book it was, when I started reading it, and the slow reveal made for a pleasurable, interactive reading experience. So, I'm torn. On the one hand, I want others to have the same experience, which would mean I would have to keep mum about the plot etc. On the other hand, I really really want to talk about what actually happens. See? Torn.
I admit, unashamedly, that I bought this book for its cover (please, click on the image to get a better view, it's worth it). 2009 has been a very, very good year for YA covers, and this is easily in the top 5 (don't ask me what other books are in the top 5, because it's like the Tardis: bigger on the inside). It's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Composition, typeface, colour, atmosphere - it has it all.
Since I got it for the cover, and on the vague assumption that it would be some kind of paranormal romance book (they usually are, with covers like this), I came to it with virtually no expectations. This turned out to be a great advantage for the novel, because the prose isn't its strong suit. "But what is it actually about?" I hear you asking. Let's not rush into these things. I'm still gawking at the cover ...
Lucinda Price hasn't had the easiest of childhoods. Since she began seeing shadows at a young age, her worried parents have dragged her around to psychiatrist after psychologist, hoping for answers. Only by lying has Luce managed to get off the hated medication and have a semblance of a normal life - until, one night at a beach party, the boy Luce was with dies and everyone, including Luce herself, wonders what she had to do with it.
She is packed off to a reform school called Sword & Cross in Georgia by a judge and her parents, a place dating back to the Civil War, complete with its own cemetery and church-turned-gym. The students are strange or crazy, many with tracking bracelets on their wrists; there are security cameras everywhere and a fence to keep them in. Within her first hour there, she is befriended by Arriane, and her eye is drawn to a gorgeous boy called Daniel. She feels like she knows him somehow, but after a friendly grin he gives her the finger. It's just the start of an immediate animosity on Daniel's part that Luce can't understand, or reciprocate.
She also befriends Penn, a ward of the school since her father, the groundskeeper, left her an orphan; and Cam, a green-eyed, handsome boy, makes it clear he's interested. But Luce can only think of Daniel, who wants nothing to do with her. As the appearance of the shadows increases, and her strange dreams of being held in Daniel's arms high in the sky persist, Luce is drawn deeper into a world of timeless love and a timeless battle between good and evil.
So that's my spoiler-free review - except that I've left a few hints you can choose to ignore or dissect, as you please. If you're really wondering what kind of paranormal this is, [spoiler!:] the title gives it away [/spoiler:]. If you're like me, you won't even notice. It meant nothing to me until I started putting the clues together - and it was fun doing it that way, figuring it out as I went. You WILL figure it out a LONG time before Luce does. Considering that hers is the only perspective we get (and the only reason we don't get her first-person narration is so that Kate can include a prologue and epilogue from Daniel's perspective) and that we start out with the same clues she does, this is somewhat surprising. She is a bit slow on the uptake.
Now, since I can't talk about the heavy symbolism or [blank:] undertones, or any of the fun stuff, because just not enough people have read it yet, let's talk about something else that's become indicative in YA fiction over the last few years. How many YA books have you read that are about a girl, often a lonely or isolated or virtually friendless girl, starting a new school year (either at their regular school or a new one), and encountering a hot new guy who for some reason or other pretends to hate her?
I can tell you how many I've read - in fact, I'll list them for you:
Twilight
Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
Deadly Little Secrets
Evermore
Evernight
Perfect Chemistry
The Vampire Diaries (kind of)
I bet you can think of lots more, and this list would be longer but I'm trying to limit how many of "these" I read. Possibly Marked should be on the list too, but I just can't remember. I've been told by trustworthy friends that Hush Hush is the worst culprit of all. And now we have Fallen.
To be fair, Daniel has a pretty good excuse, but when Luce flares up at his patronising "you don't understand" attitude and lets him have it, I had to say "Good on you Luce!" For much of the book, it's a puzzle-piecing read (and again, I really wish I could discuss the whole premise, but I made the decision not to give any spoilers and I'll stand by that), which makes it fun, but it's also hugely uneventful. That you only notice it in a vague sort of way is a good thing, but the prose still isn't strong enough to make this a really great book. It relies heavily on the formula mentioned above, plus symbolism and mythology, without questioning anything or being at all original.
One of things I really liked about Twilight (that others hated), was the original, or different, take on vampires. I'm not impressed by authors who utilise what's already out there - it's no challenge, and means they haven't really thought about it and lack imagination. Its a harsh criticism I know, but I've been reading adult Fantasy for years and years and originality is the big Sticking Point between good and bad Fantasy. I haven't put this book down as Fantasy, but the criticism still applies.
Another criticism I have brings us back to the prose: the descriptions were poorly drawn and sometimes conflicting. I had a hard time picturing the place - maybe because I've never been to that part of the world, but mostly because the descriptions were rather weak. I was also confused by the explanation of Sword & Cross, that it used to be a military outpost during the Civil War - and yet the only descriptions we get are of cinder-block dorms and a church that was built much later than the war. At one point she mentions had decrepit the place is, how it looks like it's decomposing, but mostly I couldn't visualise it at all. Even the church, with its vine-covered exterior, was a confusing site for me - especially considering it houses a large pool and other rooms. There just wasn't enough detail. Kate had the perfect opportunity for some beautiful atmosphere-building to match the lovely cover, but ultimately failed to deliver. I sometimes feel that YA authors are getting lazy. It's not enough to have all the elements there, to follow the formula. This book stands at 452 pages not because there are lots of words, but because the font is so damn big.
I will be reading the next book, Torment, though. The ending was just enticing enough, and Daniel said some lovely things that I've read before, and there's still plenty of things to be revealed that they're all being very secretive about. But I'll be hoping for more magic (of the reading variety), more passion, more originality.
I admit, unashamedly, that I bought this book for its cover (please, click on the image to get a better view, it's worth it). 2009 has been a very, very good year for YA covers, and this is easily in the top 5 (don't ask me what other books are in the top 5, because it's like the Tardis: bigger on the inside). It's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Composition, typeface, colour, atmosphere - it has it all.
Since I got it for the cover, and on the vague assumption that it would be some kind of paranormal romance book (they usually are, with covers like this), I came to it with virtually no expectations. This turned out to be a great advantage for the novel, because the prose isn't its strong suit. "But what is it actually about?" I hear you asking. Let's not rush into these things. I'm still gawking at the cover ...
Lucinda Price hasn't had the easiest of childhoods. Since she began seeing shadows at a young age, her worried parents have dragged her around to psychiatrist after psychologist, hoping for answers. Only by lying has Luce managed to get off the hated medication and have a semblance of a normal life - until, one night at a beach party, the boy Luce was with dies and everyone, including Luce herself, wonders what she had to do with it.
She is packed off to a reform school called Sword & Cross in Georgia by a judge and her parents, a place dating back to the Civil War, complete with its own cemetery and church-turned-gym. The students are strange or crazy, many with tracking bracelets on their wrists; there are security cameras everywhere and a fence to keep them in. Within her first hour there, she is befriended by Arriane, and her eye is drawn to a gorgeous boy called Daniel. She feels like she knows him somehow, but after a friendly grin he gives her the finger. It's just the start of an immediate animosity on Daniel's part that Luce can't understand, or reciprocate.
She also befriends Penn, a ward of the school since her father, the groundskeeper, left her an orphan; and Cam, a green-eyed, handsome boy, makes it clear he's interested. But Luce can only think of Daniel, who wants nothing to do with her. As the appearance of the shadows increases, and her strange dreams of being held in Daniel's arms high in the sky persist, Luce is drawn deeper into a world of timeless love and a timeless battle between good and evil.
So that's my spoiler-free review - except that I've left a few hints you can choose to ignore or dissect, as you please. If you're really wondering what kind of paranormal this is, [spoiler!:] the title gives it away [/spoiler:]. If you're like me, you won't even notice. It meant nothing to me until I started putting the clues together - and it was fun doing it that way, figuring it out as I went. You WILL figure it out a LONG time before Luce does. Considering that hers is the only perspective we get (and the only reason we don't get her first-person narration is so that Kate can include a prologue and epilogue from Daniel's perspective) and that we start out with the same clues she does, this is somewhat surprising. She is a bit slow on the uptake.
Now, since I can't talk about the heavy symbolism or [blank:] undertones, or any of the fun stuff, because just not enough people have read it yet, let's talk about something else that's become indicative in YA fiction over the last few years. How many YA books have you read that are about a girl, often a lonely or isolated or virtually friendless girl, starting a new school year (either at their regular school or a new one), and encountering a hot new guy who for some reason or other pretends to hate her?
I can tell you how many I've read - in fact, I'll list them for you:
Twilight
Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
Deadly Little Secrets
Evermore
Evernight
Perfect Chemistry
The Vampire Diaries (kind of)
I bet you can think of lots more, and this list would be longer but I'm trying to limit how many of "these" I read. Possibly Marked should be on the list too, but I just can't remember. I've been told by trustworthy friends that Hush Hush is the worst culprit of all. And now we have Fallen.
To be fair, Daniel has a pretty good excuse, but when Luce flares up at his patronising "you don't understand" attitude and lets him have it, I had to say "Good on you Luce!" For much of the book, it's a puzzle-piecing read (and again, I really wish I could discuss the whole premise, but I made the decision not to give any spoilers and I'll stand by that), which makes it fun, but it's also hugely uneventful. That you only notice it in a vague sort of way is a good thing, but the prose still isn't strong enough to make this a really great book. It relies heavily on the formula mentioned above, plus symbolism and mythology, without questioning anything or being at all original.
One of things I really liked about Twilight (that others hated), was the original, or different, take on vampires. I'm not impressed by authors who utilise what's already out there - it's no challenge, and means they haven't really thought about it and lack imagination. Its a harsh criticism I know, but I've been reading adult Fantasy for years and years and originality is the big Sticking Point between good and bad Fantasy. I haven't put this book down as Fantasy, but the criticism still applies.
Another criticism I have brings us back to the prose: the descriptions were poorly drawn and sometimes conflicting. I had a hard time picturing the place - maybe because I've never been to that part of the world, but mostly because the descriptions were rather weak. I was also confused by the explanation of Sword & Cross, that it used to be a military outpost during the Civil War - and yet the only descriptions we get are of cinder-block dorms and a church that was built much later than the war. At one point she mentions had decrepit the place is, how it looks like it's decomposing, but mostly I couldn't visualise it at all. Even the church, with its vine-covered exterior, was a confusing site for me - especially considering it houses a large pool and other rooms. There just wasn't enough detail. Kate had the perfect opportunity for some beautiful atmosphere-building to match the lovely cover, but ultimately failed to deliver. I sometimes feel that YA authors are getting lazy. It's not enough to have all the elements there, to follow the formula. This book stands at 452 pages not because there are lots of words, but because the font is so damn big.
I will be reading the next book, Torment, though. The ending was just enticing enough, and Daniel said some lovely things that I've read before, and there's still plenty of things to be revealed that they're all being very secretive about. But I'll be hoping for more magic (of the reading variety), more passion, more originality.
August 9, 2012
the main character was incredibly boring, annoying and flat. (the others too, actually, but let's stick with the main character to get to the point)
every few pages lucinda had to tell us how strong and mighty daniel was, how fascinating his hair was and how hurt and excited she felt, if daniel didn't even deign to look at her. let me quote from the book's only (sometimes) likeable character, penn (- yes, it was that bad):
“my point is,” luce said finally, “i’m not so superficial that all i’m looking for is a guy who buys me things.”
“not so superficial, eh?” penn asked. “then i dare you to make a non-superficial list of why you’re so into daniel. which means no he’s got the loveliest little gray eyes or ooh, the way his muscles ripple in the sunlight.” [...]
“he just gets me,” she said, avoiding Penn’s eyes. “i can’t explain it.”
“he gets that you deserve to be ignored?” penn shook her head.
i had to force myself to finish this book. luce was really obsessed with daniel and while obsessing (aka stalking) him, she amused/distracted herseld with cam. it was painful to read, i'm telling you. as a reader you constantly think: "ugh. get a grip on yourself! where's your dignity?".
don't get me wrong, i love books with angels, but only if done well. unfortunately, this was not it. this book could've been good, only it isn't. maybe a few books later, lauren kate's got the knack?
there are in fact many, many scenes in the book, which were not well thought out. i guess i'm in the minority here. oh, well.
January 27, 2011
Horrible. Just horrible and unreadable. That is all.
February 23, 2013
This book was a bit comfusing for me. The first half of the book was a little boring but the other half was very interesting.I dont know why but for the first time in my life I was annoyed by the 3rd person POV.
Luce
Luce is new to the "Sword and Cross" school and everything is so much different than she expected to be. From the fisrt time she lays her eyes on him she has this weird feeling that she already knows him.
Daniel
He made it clear from the very first moment
STAY AWAY FROM ME
And there is also this goodlooking guy , who cares about Luce but as the book was approaching the end he annoyed me so much.
Cam
He wants madly to be with her. He wants to protect her but he cant.
She is already falling for someone else.
The first half of the book wasn't interesting at all. It was only telling us how Luce is dealing with her new life.
The story started getting interesting when the fire broke out in the school while she and Penn where trying to find The Watchers book.
She felt lost and like that wasnt enough those stupid shadows wouldnt leave her alone.
All she remembered was something that couldn't be true.
Well , like all the paranormal young adult books here Luce had to learn the truth about Daniel's true identity.
Actually I believed that she would learn that he was a fallen angel and nothing else would happen but I was WRONG.
“What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours?”
What if a kiss could kill the one you love?
“You're still here" he whispered.
What if you were cusred to see your beloved die every seventeen years?
“I've already had to wait so long."
"How long?" Luce asked.
"Not so long that I've forgotten that you're worth everything.Every sacrifice.Every pain.”
The epiloge comfused me a lot.
Luce
Luce is new to the "Sword and Cross" school and everything is so much different than she expected to be. From the fisrt time she lays her eyes on him she has this weird feeling that she already knows him.
Daniel
He made it clear from the very first moment
STAY AWAY FROM ME
And there is also this goodlooking guy , who cares about Luce but as the book was approaching the end he annoyed me so much.
Cam
He wants madly to be with her. He wants to protect her but he cant.
She is already falling for someone else.
The first half of the book wasn't interesting at all. It was only telling us how Luce is dealing with her new life.
The story started getting interesting when the fire broke out in the school while she and Penn where trying to find The Watchers book.
She felt lost and like that wasnt enough those stupid shadows wouldnt leave her alone.
All she remembered was something that couldn't be true.
Well , like all the paranormal young adult books here Luce had to learn the truth about Daniel's true identity.
Actually I believed that she would learn that he was a fallen angel and nothing else would happen but I was WRONG.
“What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours?”
What if a kiss could kill the one you love?
“You're still here" he whispered.
What if you were cusred to see your beloved die every seventeen years?
“I've already had to wait so long."
"How long?" Luce asked.
"Not so long that I've forgotten that you're worth everything.Every sacrifice.Every pain.”
The epiloge comfused me a lot.
July 26, 2022
i read this for an upcoming adaptation analysis and let me just say that i have never met a heroine who had such little concern for her own wellbeing and safety like this girl luce is RECKLESS
May 10, 2012
If FALLEN is the future of YA supernatural fiction, then I fear for this genre. FALLEN is painfully dull and slow, with very little besides the concept of fallen angels and the suggestion of an impossible romance to recommend it to readers.
If the plot of FALLEN were to race a glacier, the glacier would win. From the moment Luce arrives at Sword & Cross, the plot feels like it’s always tripping over its own feet in order to explain itself, and to no avail. I don’t mind a gradually building plot if it contains atmosphere and sets up the exposition well, but the setting of Sword & Cross was never fully realized for me, and the events in Luce’s past that landed her at reform school never attained credibility. Luce floats through boarding school life in a series of disconnected and awkwardly written encounters with her schoolmates, none of which helped me understand Luce or any of the other characters. All of the action and scenes required to get the gist of the story occurred within the last 60 pages, and what happened was not worth plodding through 400 pages of irrelevance to get to that point.
All of the characters in FALLEN were static and artificial, something that less discerning Twilight-fangirling tweens won’t mind but that more well-read readers will definitely take issue with. Luce is about as passive as a bowl of rice pudding. You think Bella didn’t do anything for three-and-a-half 400-plus-page-long books? Luce just might make Bella look like head of the school spirit squad. She flits from scene to scene, never being fully integrated into the immediacy of the story and never coalescing into a comprehensive character. The thing I most remember about her was that she had short hair from when it got burnt off in a fire. If the way I describe a character is by the length of her hair and not any, I dunno, actual personality traits, you better believe that is a serious problem.
Along those same lines, Cam and Daniel were similarly bland male love interests whose only identifiable characteristic was their inexplicable—and inevitable, in this sort of book—attraction to Luce. I constantly got the two mixed up and couldn’t pick them out from a handful of YA male love interests if I had to. I am hardly questioning the appeal of stalker-y, unequal-power-dynamics love—there is a reason why so many of us love bad boys so much—but to have Cam and Daniel be so one-dimensional and predictable, while the story practically insists that we’re supposed to find them heart-stoppingly attractive…sorry, but I really don’t need that.
We’ve all heard the quiet rumblings that fallen angels might be the Next Big Thing in YA lit, but only if they’re done right. FALLEN read like a boarding school story with smatterings of the supernatural dashed throughout, the angels-and-demons element only manifesting itself in the final few chapters. It was a discomforting read because it was so detached from those elements of humanity that make even the most fantastical novel relatable: the Southern setting was never fully realized, and the characters were difficult to empathize with.
That being said, FALLEN getstwo stars from me [UPDATE: nope, not anymore, it's just terrible through and through] because I can totally see its appeal to middle school girls who have devoured the entire Twilight series and now desperately need something to read in between the next House of Night book and the Eclipse movie coming out in Summer 2010. It contains all the elements of a trendy YA bestseller: a paranormal element, a love triangle, two powerful love interests who compete for the same girl. Unfortunately, the great idea was poorly executed, and I won’t be following the rest of this series. However, consider asking your thirteen-year-old sister or cousin for her opinion on FALLEN, and you might get a totally different point of view, one that justifies why Random House believes that FALLEN will be huge in YA.
If the plot of FALLEN were to race a glacier, the glacier would win. From the moment Luce arrives at Sword & Cross, the plot feels like it’s always tripping over its own feet in order to explain itself, and to no avail. I don’t mind a gradually building plot if it contains atmosphere and sets up the exposition well, but the setting of Sword & Cross was never fully realized for me, and the events in Luce’s past that landed her at reform school never attained credibility. Luce floats through boarding school life in a series of disconnected and awkwardly written encounters with her schoolmates, none of which helped me understand Luce or any of the other characters. All of the action and scenes required to get the gist of the story occurred within the last 60 pages, and what happened was not worth plodding through 400 pages of irrelevance to get to that point.
All of the characters in FALLEN were static and artificial, something that less discerning Twilight-fangirling tweens won’t mind but that more well-read readers will definitely take issue with. Luce is about as passive as a bowl of rice pudding. You think Bella didn’t do anything for three-and-a-half 400-plus-page-long books? Luce just might make Bella look like head of the school spirit squad. She flits from scene to scene, never being fully integrated into the immediacy of the story and never coalescing into a comprehensive character. The thing I most remember about her was that she had short hair from when it got burnt off in a fire. If the way I describe a character is by the length of her hair and not any, I dunno, actual personality traits, you better believe that is a serious problem.
Along those same lines, Cam and Daniel were similarly bland male love interests whose only identifiable characteristic was their inexplicable—and inevitable, in this sort of book—attraction to Luce. I constantly got the two mixed up and couldn’t pick them out from a handful of YA male love interests if I had to. I am hardly questioning the appeal of stalker-y, unequal-power-dynamics love—there is a reason why so many of us love bad boys so much—but to have Cam and Daniel be so one-dimensional and predictable, while the story practically insists that we’re supposed to find them heart-stoppingly attractive…sorry, but I really don’t need that.
We’ve all heard the quiet rumblings that fallen angels might be the Next Big Thing in YA lit, but only if they’re done right. FALLEN read like a boarding school story with smatterings of the supernatural dashed throughout, the angels-and-demons element only manifesting itself in the final few chapters. It was a discomforting read because it was so detached from those elements of humanity that make even the most fantastical novel relatable: the Southern setting was never fully realized, and the characters were difficult to empathize with.
That being said, FALLEN gets
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