The Diabolic

by S.J. Kincaid

    What does it mean to be human? S. J. Kincaid tackles that question with this trilogy. Humanity has perfected Artiffical Intelligence centuries ago, back when the elites of society moved to space, some making a home on small astroids and other living on the emperors enormous space ship. With advance technology, advance security is needed to protect vulnerable human beings, so a creature called Diabolic's, are created.

These beings are man-made, but they look like humans, only they have superhuman strength and speed, and they are bought and programed to protect one person.The protagonist is a diabolic by the name of Nemesis, and she's programed to protect the daughter of a lesser noble of the empire. The daughter is called to do business on the emperors ship, however, the nobles knew of the emperors cruelness and that if they sent their daughter, they probably would never see her again, so they used beauty bots and made Nemesis look exactly like her and sent the diabolic instead.

Nemesis has a hard time fitting in and understanding subtleties of humanity, but she doesn't care what happens to her, as being there was protecting her charge who remained behind.

After everything goes wrong, and Nemesis loses her charge, but fell in love with the youngest prince, she never sees herself the same again. This trilogy is a 11/10.

I loved how we got to see Nemesis be strong, but also unsure, she wanted love but didn't feel like she deserved it because she had been told her whole life that she was below humanity, meant to serve one person and since she'd lost her, Nemesis had felt useless. She didn't think she had a heart that could love, until it was broken.

Then the prince, after faking insanity in order to be left alive, falls in love with her. They team up, and Nemesis becomes empress, but then her husband is poisoned and soon he is destroying his entire empire, taking it down from the top. Nemesis can't tell if he has actually gone insane or just acting to keep his head, but he plays her, lies to her, even ordered her death and it broke her heart.

One of the things I really appreciated about Kincaid's writing style was that she skips over Nemesis gaining support thought the galaxy, she doesn't slow the plot with her parading around, but she simply made the revolution happen, but since we've all read about how they happen in different novels, she kept it to small rebel groups on the emperors ships and kept it realistic, and to the point.

The plot whet to a planet only one time, so I'm glad she didn't take us back and step by step write out how humanity was rooting for Nemesis to stop the oppressive empire.

I recommend this trilogy to anyone who likes space, sci-fiction, deeply cunning characters, friendship and romance. I would love to see this made into a movie but it could never do it justice to how beautiful Kincaid describes Nemesis's tragic and complicated world.

:)

Shadow and Bone Series

Shadow and Bone 

by Leigh Barduo

I really enjoyed this series! This was Bardugo's first series, I read Six of Crows first, but Shadow and Bone really helped me understand the power of the Grisha. Overall, I'd say this was a hero's story, with Alina as our hero. 

This series was about how the world has a natural balance, and there are Grisha who have a type of ability, and there are three branches, the Corporalki, Etherealki, and the Materialki. 

The Corporealki deal in the living and the dead, as in bodily functions. The Etherealki are summoners, meaning they can summon wind, or fire, or water. Materialki can create things, they're tinkerers.

This story focuses on two summoners, the Darkling and Alina. The Darkling has been around for hundreds of years, and he can summon darkness. Alina is born and turns into the Sun Summoner, she can summon light, and they are the only two of their kind. The Darkling is well feared and the second hand of the king, still a servant, but royalty in his own right among the Grisha. 

The future of the world falls to Alina, who is the only one who has power equal to the Darkling, and she wants to stop the rule of darkness. 

I want to talk about one character in particular. Nikolia Lanstov, bastard prince of the realm. The whole second book was about this man, and his impact on Alina's life. 

He was charming, smart, resourceful, not vengeful or power hunger, he helped Alina right away, tired to court her but didn't get upset when she rejected him. He was almost too perfect.

The reason he is my favorite character is because he always kept calm under pressure. He was Alina's rock, always confident and had something up his sleeve, a back up plan. Of course, he suffered an attack by the Darkling, he had to be shown breaking down, for the reader to understand this was it. Once Nikolia broke down, that's when the story gets desperate. 

He also reminds me of Kaz Brekker, from Six of Crows. I believe he was the inspiration for Kaz, who always had a plan, was calm, kept his head in bad situations. Kaz felt more real, though, because Kaz had a lot of baggage and lot of pain from his past that caused him to hold everyone at a distance. Kaz had less sass and did more brooding.

Also, the reader knew there was a plan coming up, in Six of Crows, but it was never explained to us before. The reader just saw the plan unfold and had no idea if what was happening was part of the plan or not, but I really liked that. It made the story more interesting. In Shadow and Bone, the reader always knew the plan ahead of time, so of course something had to go wrong or else we get would the same thing twice in a short amount of time. 

Nikolia was one of my favorite characters, and I liked the ending of the series as well. It fleshed out the last of the 12 stages of a hero's journey by Alina loosing her power, but it went to hundreds of others. Sure, she lost her own magic, but she got the man she loved and her freedom.

:)

Joseph Cambell's Monomyth

Reading Update

    In my Reading Fiction course, my professor started class by saying he was going to change some of our lives that day. 

Simultaneously, he was going to ruin every movie, book, and basically story telling for us. 

He did this by showing us Joseph Cambell's Monomyth concept. 

I have a huge interest in writing as well as reading, as they kind of go hand-in-hand and I found this very interesting for not only a readers perspective but a writers. The monomyth is the idea that every hero's story can be broken down into these 12 different stages and has 8 different archetypes.

    In this installment, I want to breakdown these steps, and in later posts, I'll use this to breakdown the different books I read and talk about on this blog.

    I'm going to start with the 12 different stages.                            

1. Ordinary World - This is usually the environment/ lifestyle the hero exists in when the story starts.

2. Call to Adventure - The problem is presented to hero, who is the only one who can stop it

3. Refusal of the Call - Denial of responsibility, the hero doesn't believe they can stop/solve the problem.

 

4. Meeting the Mentor - The Mentor is the one to gives the hero what they need to know to succeed.

5. Crossing the Threshold - often the same person as the mentor, they accept the hero as worthy of the journey/trust/responsibility.   

                                                       
6. Test, Allies, Enemies- Hero meets friends, enemies and has a test of some sort.

7. Approach the Inmost Cave - This is something the hero goes into that changes them, they "exit the cave" a different person, with a different motive or perspective and surprisingly often they do leave an actual cave, hence the name of this step.

8. Ordeal - This is the fight for all the marbles, the climax, the final battle, the last heist, what have you.

9. Reward- This is the peace, or the crown, or even the spouse they want set out to get.

10. The Road Back- usually skimmed over, but the return home, back to the place they started. 

11. The Resurrection- The hero sees how much they've changed and how they are going to proceed. 

12. Return- The hero can't fall back into life how it was before their journey. 

The 8 different Archetypes are:

1. Hero

2. Mentor

3. Threshold Guardian

4. Herald 

5. Shapeshifter

6. Shadow

7. Trickster

8. Allies

    Now, this structure works for hero stories, and don't have to happen in any particular order and one character or object and serve as multiple archetypes. 

I am wondering about other stories, as not all stories are hero quests and journeys, and I founded the basic:

Man vs. Man

Man vs. Nature

Man vs. Society

Man vs. Self

This are very simplistic, for example the hero joinery might have all of these plots going at different points in the story. I think these are good things to keep in mind to make your story deeper. 

:)

Summoner Series

Summoner

by Taran Matharu

     The Summoner by Taran Mathrua is a unique middle grade fantasy series. It's set in a world with elves, dwarfs, orcs, and humans all sharing the same content. Matharu created unique cultures and ways of life for each of these creatures, which we got to see throughout the series.

Of course, not all of these groups are seen as equals, humans and orcs reign as the most powerful, with elves, dwarfs and at the bottom of the chain of command. The orcs and humans have been at war for years, and orcs had the advantage of using animals to fight for them. These were not just any animals, but demons, who were attached to a magician.

Humans figure out how to capture and command demons also, as well as use the demons energy to cast spells. Our protagonist is a boy of 12 years in the first book, The Novice, and he learns he has the ability to capture a demon and perform spells by accident, using a book an old traveler gave him. 

Once he summoned this demon, his life was never the same. These books go through the main characters training and fighting in the war, fighting for equality between dwarfs, and elves. He is a radical in every way. He befriends members of all races and becomes a noble while having a commoners background, if anyone can create ties between them all, it's him. 

This was a great read with larger than life characters and side characters. The world building was really unique and I enjoyed seeing all different types of demons that Matharu created. I liked how proactive fletcher was, he made things happen and made decisions, sometimes main characters just have things happen to them repeatedly, but this one was in charge despite being 14 by the end of the series.

I defiantly recommend this series for anyone who's looking for an easy, fast-paced, enjoyable tale about friendships and equality.

:)