Book review: The Siren by Kiera Cass

Kahlen has a deadly secret – she is a siren, and if she speaks even one word it could doom anyone who hears it. The only people she can be herself around are her siren sisters, Aisling, Miaka and Elizabeth, and Her – the Ocean which looks after them in return for their services. Kahlen is feeling unsettled with her life, masquerading as a student among humans, when she meets Akinli, a boy who handily understands sign language. Think of it as a teenager’s version of The Little Mermaid.

Sadly this is where the book starts to go downhill. Cass’s penchant for odd names made it difficult to really get into the story to start with, and the relationship between Kahlen and Akinli is too instant to be believable.

There are some redeeming features - the best character in the book was Her, and her relationship with the sirens as part mother, part warden and part employer was fascinating. It was also an easy read which would be good for a beach holiday.

I did enjoy it as a novel idea and something a bit different. It isn’t a terrible book, but it had potential to be so much better.

• RRP £7.99
• Published by Harper Collins
• ISBN 978-0-00-815793-7

Book review: The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan

It's no secret I love Rick Riordan's books, and I pre-ordered this as soon as I knew it was coming out. It didn't disappoint!

The story is the first in a new series in the Percy Jackson world. It follows on from the Heroes of Olympus series conclusion, but you don't have to have read that series to enjoy this book (there are a couple of references to previous books that will only make sense if you've read them, but they don't have any impact on following this story).

In a nutshell, this is a fish-out-of-water story. The Greek god Apollo has been punished by his father and king of the gods Zeus for his part in causing a war by being made human and thrown down to Earth. He believes the only way to get back to Olympus and be reinstated is to complete a series of trials, with the help of the demigods of Camp Half-Blood.

The book includes some characters from previous stories but the main focus is on Apollo and a feisty young demigod called Meg, who he meets when he first arrives in acne-covered-human form in New York. The story is told from Apollo's point of view, which is a brilliant ploy by Riordan as it not only gives an insight into the mind of a god but it shows the character development Apollo goes through during the story.

As with Riordan's other books, there are quests, prophecies, monsters, teenagers with supernatural abilities, mythical creatures and a generous dollop of fighting sprinkled with humour, great characters and excellent storytelling. I read the book in 24 hours - it grabbed my attention so well that while there were plenty of places I could finish a reading session, as soon as I put it down I wanted to know what happened next.

If you've already read the other Percy Jackson books then you should absolutely get this, and if you're new to Riordan's world then you should still get it, and pick up the other books in the Greek gods story arcs as well!

Book review: The Divergent series by Veronica Roth

Bookshelves are full of dystopian young adult fiction at the moment, but the Divergent series is in my opinion possibly the best offering. If you've read my previous reviews you'll know I really wasn't impressed with the Hunger Games trilogy, mainly because I didn't like the way the main character developed. In contrast, Divergent manages to create a heroine who has plenty of character development while staying believable and, most importantly, likeable.

I got the whole series in a box set, which contains the trilogy of Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant, as well as Four, a collection of short stories exploring the back story of the character Four. I suspect it was released to coincide with the film release of Allegiant. All the books are, of course, available individually as well, and the short stories that comprise Four are also available separately. The books are interlinked through a larger story arc, but each could also be read as a standalone story (with the caveat that if you started with Allegiant then you may get confused with the number of characters, who are introduced in the previous books more slowly).

The stories follow Tris as she breaks away from her own faction, where selflessness is highly valued, to join the brave and foolhardy Dauntless faction, before getting involved in a battle between the factions and the factionless, which leads to the revelation of a secret which changes their world completely. Tris is flawed, occasionally idiotic, but eminently likeable, while the world she lives in is imaginative and unique.

There is plenty of action, with fights, guns, explosions and conflict, and there is a lot of violence, but the stories aren’t gory at all, with the possible exception of one scene in the first book, depending on how squeamish you are. There is a sex scene, but it's written in such a way that it doesn't really show anything but still conveys the emotions of the scene. In an interview with The Independent newspaper, Roth said that was entirely intentional so as to not alienate younger readers. She said: "I was concerned about not alienating my very young readers. I remember reading books at that age and stopping because I wasn't comfortable. I'm not trying to talk down to them. It's definitely a scene of great intimacy. That's what was important. I didn't want to have smut on the page. I don't want to titillate."

I really enjoyed the books, the stories, the characters, the world, the quality of writing, the descriptions, dialogue and the way the series resolved, which is not how you might expect! I definitely recommend the series.

• RRP £12 for the box set
• Published by Harper Collins
• ISBN 0007591374

2016 writing resolutions

I've been so quiet this year because I really haven't been writing that much. I did finish my second draft of Witness, which I'm happy about, but I couldn't seem to get any inspiration for much else, what with life and a growing baby bump distracting me.

So writing resolutions for 2016:

1. Revise Witness.
2. Write some standalone short stories.
3. Do NaNoWriMo again this year.
4. Finish Thief.
5. Try different styles of writing, like telling a story through a diary, only using dialogue, a ghost story, etc.

It's April, welcome to Camp Nanowrimo

Usually in April I decide to do the blogging A-Z challenge, but this year I've decided to give it a miss. It's not that I don't enjoy blogging (or indeed, that I don't need the kick up the backside to blog!), but I'd rather spend my writing time on my Camp Nanowromo project this year.

In the time it takes me to think of a write a coherant blog post with pictures, I can have typed out about 1,000 words of a first draft, and I have so many ideas for stories at the moment that I really want to get them down on paper to see if they'll actually work.

 

So far today, I've written just shy of 1,000 words and started my story. It's called Fallen Star and it's about the Zodiac - sort of along the lines of Percy Jackson with the Greek Gods.

Fingers whizzing across the keyboard...

Lots of questions all wrapped up in one subject this month, so, in keeping with the subject, I'll try to answer as fast as I can.


Speed Writing
How fast do your first drafts go? Do they take you a year? A month?

Honestly it depends on what I'm writing. I've got a whole pile of drafts that haven't ever been finished properly. Mostly these are NaNoWriMo novels where the missing chunks are outlined but I just haven't had the motivation to finish.

When I'm enjoying writing a story then I'd say on average about a month to get the first draft nailed down. The number of stories that progress past that stage is actually very small though, but that's another story!


Is your speed more of a NaNoWriMo style writing or trying to nail down each word perfectly the first time? What suffers because of your speed? 

I don't really change the way I do drafts for NaNoWriMo - I write to try to get down the picture in my head as fast as possible, and if it comes out sounding just right then that's fantastic. Usually it comes out in the form of an outline first, then gets fleshed out into a first draft. I do the same when I'm writing NaNo - the only difference is that I don't delete anything when I'm doing NaNo!

Bonus: What was your shortest novel? Your longest? And what was the main problem in each?

I think my shortest was a children's story that started out as five separate short /stories and then turned into one long one. The main problem with that was that I found I was repeating description a lot. I don't know if that's because I was trying to build wordcount for NaNo, or because I was just seeing the characters with the description first, or if it was because I was thinking I hadn't described them enough, but I really really overdid the description.

The longest is probably one that I'm working on at the moment which is already at 50k and only about half done. I haven't re-read it properly yet to know what problems it has, but I expect I'm find plenty...

Who likes short shorts? We like short shorts!

Short Stories
Do you write them? Do you hate them? Do you think they're lovely but there's no market for them? For those who wish to be published, many people will tell you that short story publications get your foot in the door. And while that is definitely true, I'm not sure how many people really focus on the short stories. So tell me about your own views on them. Have any been published? Are you looking to publish some?

I love reading and writing short stories - I would say 75% of the stories I write are shorts or flash. I like the challenge of creating a well fleshed out character and making a fully fledged story in a limited amount of words, and there's so much that you learn from short stories that you can then transfer into novels to make them better.

I haven't had any shorts published yet but I'm looking to do so. I've got a little pile of shorts at various stages of editing that are waiting for me to get back to them ready to submit somewhere.


Bonus: What is your favorite magazine/anthology of short stories? Send us a picture of the cover! (Especially if you have a favorite issue.)

I suppose my favourite magazine would have to be the People's Friend. My grandma used to get it regularly and I would look at the children's pages, and now my mum gets them occasionally and leaves them in the bathroom for reading when you're, ahem, 'sitting down'... I like that the stories are inoffensive and generally feel-good, and that you get all sorts of stories in one issue.

I like anthology story books as well, and the best one I read recently was Other Worlds, a collection of 10 YA sci-fi/fantasy stories by Rick Riordan, Shaun Tan, Tom Angleberger, Ray Bradbury and others.