Book Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (SPOILERS)

I don't often do book reviews on this blog. The last one I did was over two years ago. I usually keep this blog focused on movies and TV shows. In fact, I've only done four book reviews total on this blog and three of them were for the Hunger Games trilogy. So yeah, this is a bit unique for me. But at the same time, it's been a long time since a new Harry Potter book got released. Nine years to be exact as The Deathly Hallows was released to world in July 2007. I definitely reserve the right to make exceptions on this blog, especially when it comes to wizarding world of Harry Potter. Now if we're being technical, The Cursed Child is not really a book. It's the "special rehearsal edition script" of the new Harry Potter play put in book form for the world to read. For the sake of being simple, I'm choosing to classify this as a book review because I'm definitely not reviewing the play itself as I don't live anywhere close to where it's being put on. No talking about the play production, the acting, the casting choices, etc here. Just the story that I read. And it's been a week since I read it. I figured I'd give people time to read so that I can do an all-out spoiler review of this because that's the only way to do this in my opinion. Consider yourself warned. Let's begin!

Since this is the first time I've discussed anything Harry Potter related on this blog (the final movie was released July 2011, six months before I officially started this blog), allow me to do a brief history of my experience with this franchise. I didn't keep a record of the exact dates of when I read each book, but I remember not quite jumping on board right away. Looking at the release dates, The Sorcerer's Stone was released in the U.S. in September 1998, which would've been the beginning of my fourth grade year. I think I remember The Goblet of Fire being released before I was sucked in. That was released in July 2000 both in the U.S. and the U.K., which was the summer before my sixth grade year. I also think I remember my sixth grade teacher reading The Sorcerer's Stone to us, which I'm pretty sure was what actually got me hooked on the series. So let's say it was my sixth grade year when I got into the series, which would've been sometime shortly before or shortly after my 12th birthday. When I was finally sucked in, I was in for life. This was such a magical world in many ways and I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed reading every book and enjoyed watching every movie. And yes, I did like all the movies, but we'll dive into those later this year before the release of Fantastic Beasts.

When they announced that they were making a new play with the script being released in book form to the world, I was ecstatic. I purchased The Deathly Hallows the midnight of its release during the summer following my high school graduation and was done within a day or two. That was the end of an era for me, which was sad. When the final movie came out five years ago, that was even sadder because I thought that was the end Harry Potter in any form. This is a franchise that began in Elementary School for me and finished (or so I thought) well into my college years. That's a big chunk of my life growing up. I feel that these Harry Potter stories are a part of who I am because of it. Thus I love this idea of beginning a new era of Harry Potter starting with this play right now and the new spin-off movie later this year. These are exciting times! As this is such a great universe with so much story potential, I hope this is the beginning of many new Harry Potter stories, be it prequels, spin-offs, sequels, or whatever. In a day where Hollywood is definitely obsessed with sequels, remakes, and adaptations, I'm often an advocate of them pushing on the breaks a bit. But not with the Harry Potter universe. This is a world that needs to be mined and explored in depth. Bring on the new plays, new books, new movies, or new TV shows. I'm totally down with it all!

With all of that said, I'm about to do something with this universe that I've never done before. I've never hated any of the books. I've never hated any of the movies. But I suppose there is a first for everything. And I really hope it's the last. Because I absolutely hated Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. HATED. With a fiery passion. I bought it the day after it was released for about $17 and I really wish I could get my money back. And the time I spent reading. In fact, I kid you not, I finished this story out of complete obligation because I knew it wouldn't be fair to voice my opinion unless I had finished it. But halfway through reading, I had no desire to finish. I got through most of it that first night because it's a really fast read. But when I woke up the next morning, instead of jumping right in, I literally stared at the book for several moments and then decided to do something else before finishing it off. I didn't want to. Compare that to when I read The Deathly Hallows. I literally lost the ability to do anything else but read and thus I finished The Deathly Hallows in less time than I did The Cursed Child. At 759 pages, The Deathly Hallows has well over twice as many pages as the 308 pages that is The Cursed Child, with quite a bit more words per page. That should tell you something in and of itself.

You can probably tell that this is going to be a long post, but it's one that needs to happen. And if you have made it to this point and haven't read this story, this is your final spoiler warning. Let's get into specifics because there is a lot to say. First off, this is a story that should've been written as a book by J.K. Rowling before being turned into a play. And she should've taken her time with it. I have absolutely no problem with the idea of Harry Potter books being adapted into plays. In fact, I think that's an excellent idea. But let it be a book first. I definitely knew what I was getting into when I purchased this, so it's not like I was shocked to see a script of a play instead of a book. But if I'm being honest, reading a script for a play is just not the same as reading a book. The reason why reading the Harry Potter books was such a great experience is that a book can do something that a play or movie can't. You can go into far greater detail. You can take your time. You can really get lost into the universe or world that your book takes you into. I loved spending time with all of the characters in Hogwarts. I loved the detail that the books allowed and all the quality time I spent with the characters in Hogwarts. Due to the nature of this being a script for a play and the play having a limited time, this element of spending quality time with our characters is just not there and thus everything feels rushed.

If this were the only issue with this story, I was totally willing to accept that. I knew I wasn't going to be able to dive into great detail with story, but I was still excited for some good characters and an intriguing new story in this wizarding world. I was excited to see where all my beloved characters were 19 years later and I was hoping that I would develop a new found love for this new generation of Harry Potter characters. And I'm not going to lie, this had a good start. Here we have Harry's son Albus going to Hogwarts for the first time right along with Ron and Hermione's daughter Rose. Rose is essentially like a clone of Hermione and wants to make sure she does everything Hermione did in the exact same way. Albus is a little more relaxed in this element, but he's super nervous that he'll get sorted into Slytherin. Harry assures him that if he doesn't want to be sorted into Slytherin, he won't be. The sorting hat takes his wishes into consideration. That's how it works. Right? Anyways, they both run into Scorpius Malfoy, son of Draco Malfoy. Albus and Scorpius start to become good friends, but Rose is like, heck no. Steer clear of him. But Albus makes friends with him anyways and thus we have some interesting tension right off the bat. Harry's son becoming friends with the son of Harry's longtime rival and enemy at school? That's pretty interesting.

Enter Hogwarts. Rose goes to Gryffindor. No surprise. Scorpius goes to Slytherin. Also no surprise. Albus' turn under the hat and he gets sorted into... Slytherin? Wait, what? I thought he was dreading that. And given the rules of the sorting hat as established in the original book series, there's no way he should've been sorted into Slytherin. Unless he had a change of heart on the train ride. Or unless he had a change of heart when he saw his new friend be sorted into Slytherin. Neither of which this story gave any clues of, so I doubt that was the case. Instead I got the feeling that he hated this and essentially had his hopes and dreams crushed. Which is kinda interesting, but kinda annoying because we're kinda breaking the rules here. Oh well. This actually didn't bother me too much because I liked the idea of having our protagonist this time around in Slytherin and having his best friend be the son of Harry's enemy. There seems to be this stereotype in the Hogwarts world that all the heroes come from Gryffindor and all the villains come from Slytherin, while the other two houses are more of an after thought. So I was ready for them to flip the script on this. We already had some interesting dynamics set up and some honest, believable tensions ready to happen. I was all ready to thoroughly enjoy this new year in Hogwarts with all of these new characters in this situation.

Next year at Platform 9 3/4. Wait, what? No! Tell me this isn't happening. Tell me I read that wrong. Those were my exact thoughts when I read that. We literally went from the sorting hat scene to one Quidditch class scene with Madame Hootch that was taken almost directly from The Sorcerer's Stone (that will become a theme with this play) to next year at Platform 9 3/4. We're page 22 in this script and we've already started year two for Albus. This was the second big twist of the play, but this time around I was not in. I did not like this idea at all. I really liked the previous formula with the books where each book was one year at Hogwarts. That gave us plenty of time to develop our characters and our story. Given the fact that they had a really intriguing set-up, I honestly felt short-changed that I wasn't able to experience that first year of Hogwarts. When that time jump happened on page 22, this play lost me. Page 22. And keep in mind, act one, scene one, actually starts on page 7. That's the 16th page of actual dialogue and story out of the 308 pages total. I spent the whole play hoping that this story would recover after I felt like I got brutally slapped in the face on page 22. Spoiler for the rest of this review: it never did. In fact, it just kept getting worse.

Act one of this play goes from page 7 to page 86. Which by the way, there are 19 scenes in act one. That's an average of about four pages per scene. Many of those scenes are two pages or just a page and a sentence. And remember, our average word count per page is not very much at all. I'm not judging the play here as I'm not a play expert, but in many of the plays I've been to they have to spend at least a bit of time setting up each scene. With a ton of really short scenes throughout, I'm honestly curious to know how much of this play is setting up new scenes and how much is actual play. Not going judge there. Just honestly curious. Anywho, back to what I will judge, before act one is finished, not only have we jumped one year in time, but we have jumped three years in time. Suddenly I'm wondering if this short play is going to encompass Albus' entire time at Hogwarts. Thankfully that's not the case, but it's year four where we spend most of our time in this play. But not really at Hogwarts. There's honestly barely any time spent at Hogwarts here, which is frustrating in and of itself. Instead we get this really dumb story line where Albus and Severus decide to jump ship while on the train to Hogwarts at the beginning of their fourth year in order to go back in time and save Cedric Diggory.

That's right. We're going back in time to save Cedric Diggory. Why? Well, you got me. Out of all the people that died in the books, why Cedric Diggory of all people was chosen to be rescued in this story is beyond me. So many other people throughout the series would be totally worth trying to save. But this side character from The Goblet of Fire really seemed like a dumb choice. But yeah, Amos Diggory shows up at Harry's place complaining that Harry killed his son and Harry feels horrible and because Albus now hates his dad he's going back to save Cedric Diggory. Because we have time turners again. We'll get to those in a second. The daddy issues I speak of could've been interesting. The son of the legendary Harry Potter feeling over-burdened by the unwanted weight on his shoulders because of the family he was born into. That's another good setup. That a similar idea that the movie Creed followed, which worked like a charm. In this instance I was more annoyed by it. Albus doesn't like his dad. Harry fails at being a father. I mean, Harry never really had a father, so I can understand the struggle. But this just kept going for an unwanted length of time. I swear it was like the majority of the play. The could've called this Harry Potter and the Stuggles with Being a Father.

They could've also called this Harry Potter and his Stupid Child. The other half of why all these father/son issues didn't work for me outside them spending too much time with it was that Albus Potter is one of the stupidest, most annoying, and most unlikable protagonists in any book or movie that I have watched or read in quite some time. Hey, I hate my father, so let's go back in time and save Cedric Diggory. Once our plan fails and we have screwed up the timeline, let's go back in time again and screw it up even more, causing him to kill his father and thus make it so he was never born and making it so his best friend has to find Snape and Hermione and save the world. Then once Scorpius has saved the world, let's have this genius idea to NOT give the time turner back, but go destroy it on our own away from Hogwarts. And not just that, let's invite Miss Crazy Lady, Delphi the daughter of Voldermort, to join us in destroying it. Of course they don't know the real identity of Delphi at that point, but the fact that she was so totally on board with the whole idea of time travel to change how things transpired should've at least clued them in to the fact that she should not have been invited back. That of course leads to the fourth act of them getting stuck in the time period where Voldemort killed Harry's parents.

Yikes! How many dumb decisions can one dumb teenager make in one short, 308-page story? But fine. Even if we just chalk that off to a dumb teenager doing dumb things like all teenagers do, how about we then address the biggest issue of this entire play? The thing that allowed them to do all these dumb things. The time turner! The object itself is not a bad idea. The idea of time travel is also not a bad idea. The problem here is that they freaking broke their own rules of time travel! I'm perfectly fine with the idea of alternate timelines. I love the Back to the Future trilogy as well as CW's superhero TV show The Flash. Both use alternate timelines and do a great job with it. But both of those universes set that time traveling rule up from the very beginning. The Harry Potter universe set up a different set of rules back in The Prisoner of Azkaban that I think was one of the best set of time travelling rules in the history of like ever. It's the single timeline rule. While you're going through the story, these random events start happening that aren't explained until later. Once you learn of Hermione's time turner, it all makes sense. These random events were future Harry and company coming back through time to save the day. Happening at the same time on the same timeline as our current events.

I absolutely freaking love The Prisoner of Azkaban because of this. It is by far the best stand-alone story in the entire Harry Potter universe. I would still pick The Deathly Hallows as my favorite book because of all the emotion and the huge payoff it gives after years of building up to that moment. But in terms of story, The Prisoner of Azkaban takes the cake as the best individual story and that's because of this brilliant use of time travel that just blew my mind. And the character of Sirius Black, of course. But that's irrelevant to this current review. First off, in general if you start with one set of time travelling rules in your universe you need to stick with it, whether it be single timeline, alternate timeline, or whatever. Second, if the rules you set up in the first place are some of the best rules of time travel ever set up, WHY IN THE FREAKING HECK WOULD YOU EVER DECIDE TO BREAK THOSE RULES AND DO SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Forget for a second that our specific time-travelling adventure was a really dumb, boring adventure that I was not invested in at all. I was absolutely furious at the idea that they broke their rules. It made my blood boil while I was reading and it makes my blood boil as I type this right now. Enough to make me yell at you in all caps because of it.

Just a second ago, I told you to forget for a second that our specific time-travelling adventure was really dumb. Let's unforget that now. Should I remind you that the whole point of their adventure is to go back in time to save Cedric Diggory? Cedric freaking Diggory!? Not Harry's parents. Not Dobby. Not Fred Weasly. Not Lupin and Tonks. Not Dumbledore. Not Snape. Not Sirius Black. Cedric Diggory. Even if we look at it with the idea that Albus wants to get back at his father by righting one of his father's wrongs, are we really going to look at ourselves in the mirror and say that the most wrongful death in the entire Harry Potter universe that Harry directly or indirectly caused was that of Cedric Diggory? I mean, we have a time turner, right? We broke our time-travelling rules, right? We can literally go back and save anyone, right? We could even go back and save Harry's parents, making it so that Harry is no longer super famous. That would benefit Albus, right? It would cause a whole bunch of other consequences that they would have to go back and fix, but that would make for an interesting story. But no. We decide to go save Cedric Diggory. After breaking our time-travelling rules. And a big portion of this story is doing this then fixing what they did.

Enter act four. After going back in time to save Cedric Diggory and royally screwing up everything else, thus causing Scorpius to re-save the world with Snape and Hermione, the latter of which was kind of a fun sequence, Albus and Severus end up getting stuck back in the time period right before Harry's parents get killed. I purposely brought up that as an example of what they could've done because that's kind of what happened in the last act. Except this is Delphi's workings. Delphi, who we initially thought was Amos Diggory's crazy niece and thus Cedric Diggory's cousin. Turns out this was just a ploy. Now if we're going to set up another villain after Voldermort, we have to make sure we do a dang good job because of how interesting of a villain Voldemort was. A fantastic option is to have it be a follower of Voldemort who happens to be still around and wants to continue what Voldemort started or somehow try to bring him back. Preferably the first option because I'm down with creating new villains to fight instead of having it always and forever be Voldemort. But if we want to do the second option, then fine. That works for now. And if we want our villain to be a crazy powerful witch, that's cool, too.

Because of this, Delphi almost works for me as a villain. First problem is that she relies way too much on these kids for her plan to work. Second problem is that she's really gullible in the end and gets stopped too easily. But the biggest problem that I can't get over is that she is Voldemort's daughter. But not just that, she's the daughter of Voldemort AND Bellatrix. Because apparently Voldemort was off fooling around with Belatrix while he was waiting to execute his grand plan. Not that he has any moral standards he has to follow, but that's just a disturbing idea. And one that doesn't make much sense. I thought Voldemort was incapable of loving. So are we saying that he fell in love with Bellatrix and had a child with her? Or are we saying that he decided to have a child with her in order to continue his legacy in case he failed, which would infer that he wasn't confident that he would succeed? Pick your poison, I guess. The play doesn't give us any details and regardless of which way I try to think about it, I'm not sold. Belatrix and Voldemort having a child is a huge twist that makes no sense to me at all. I would've prefered Delphi to simply be a follower of Voldemort. Not a daughter of Voldemort.

I could go on about this play. There's so much more I could discuss, but since I've rambled on so long anyways, I'll call it good for now. In summary, this story lost me on page 22 and never recovered. The time jump to year four frustrated me. I didn't like Albus Potter as a protagonist. The father/son issues between Harry and Albus went on way too long. We freaking broke our time-travelling rules to go on an uninteresting time-travelling adventure centered around saving Cedric Diggory. And our twist-ending that Delphi is the daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix was both disturbing and made no sense. I didn't even discuss that this is essentially like a fan fiction of Harry Potter that combines the third, fourth, and seventh books into one instead of coming up with a new, original story. I don't know whether I should blame J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, or Jack Thorne for this (those are the three names on the cover of my copy). Perhaps all three. But this is an overall disaster. I'll return to the Harry Potter universe on this blog later this year with my ranking of all eight movies followed by my review of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in November. Hopefully that'll be a better experience. If I were to give this a grade, I would say it deserves a 3/10.

Book Review: Tennis Shoes Adventure Series: Sorcerers and Seers

Picture courtesy of yours truly. Yes, this is the exact copy that I read

It's not often that I do book reviews on this blog because it's not often I dive into books. However, there are some series' that do a great job a sucking me into them and one of those long-standing series' is the Tennis Shoes Adventure Series. The first book in the series, Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, came to the world in the same year that I did, so you can literally say that I grew up with this series. I first picked up the books when I was a young teenager (or maybe earlier) and now as an adult I still enjoy travelling back in time with these characters. They are characters that are so well written that I feel a true attachment to them as if they were my neighbors across the street growing up. The book at hand that I just finished is book 11 of the series called Sorcerers and Seers and it is just as good as any of the previous 10. In fact, the whole series feels like one long book and at the conclusion of Sorcerers and Seers, I became immediately excited for books 12 and 13 that Chris Heimerdinger will have coming up soon.

Haven't heard of the Tennis Shoes Adventure Series? Let me briefly explain. Jim Hawkins and Garth Plimpton were best friends growing up around Cody, Wyoming. Together with Jim's little sister Jenny, the three of them found a cave near their home and went exploring. This cave led them down a long path to a beautiful room that they called the Rainbow Room. This room miraculously worked as a time-travelling cave that led the three back to the time of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon. Yes, this is a series of books directed towards an LDS audience. Can non-LDS people enjoy it? I suppose. But the great thing about these books is that it was a great way to learn about the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is an amazing book of scripture. Its focus is bringing the reader closer to Jesus Christ with the many inspirational teachings that it includes. And it will do just that. The Book of Mormon also claims that it's not a history book, but yet one can't help being fascinated with the many great stories included. The Tennis Shoes Adventures Series dives into these stories and it is done so well that upon reading them, I feel like I am going down to the land of the Nephites right along with the main characters.

The first book in the series is a very simple story. So is the second for that matter. Both books are their own story as well. Each additional book after, there are more characters added, especially as Garth and Jim grow older and have families of their own. Jim, Garth, and Jenny are still there, but the stories become more focused on their kids. Also the stories get more complex and intricate as it goes on, and even expands over to the other side of the world via the New Testament mainly. Heimerdinger also gets bolder with the paths he goes down and the creative liberties he takes. Is everything perfectly accurate? Well, that's impossible to know because the Book of Mormon is not a history book and thus is sometimes sparse on the details. So in creating a fictional story, in order to make it good, one has to include creative liberties. Perhaps when this world when our lives are over and we get to look back on everything, perhaps we might find out that certain things aren't quite the way it was written in the Tennis Shoes books, but who cares? It's a lot of fun. Plus, Heimerdinger gets kudos because he does a ton of research before he writes and usually will include his findings in chapter notes, explaining certain points and reminding us what points of fiction he created. Have the fun is reading those chapter notes and gaining that knowledge that he shares.

So onto the actual book at hand, Sorcerers and Seers. The specific story line covered is actually the fourth book of the specific adventure we are going on. A lot of ground is covered in the first three books of this adventure that I'm not going to spend time catching you up on. I'm also not going to talk much about the specific characters we are following and what they are going through. What I do want to bring up is the events that we are witnessing at this point, as this book dives into some pretty major parts of scripture.

The first time period is in Jerusalem during the last week of the Savior's life. These stories are common among all Christians and most non-Christians as well. But it is great experiencing it first-hand with these characters. One of the high points of this book series was back in book four when we were there with our characters in the land Bountiful when the Savior appeared to the Nephites. We got a glimpse of what it would be like living there at the time when the Savior came. And now we get to be on the other side of things. We spend time with the Savior before he dies. Specifically with this, we are with the family and friends of the Savior. We experience first-hand what that week was like. We watch the drama of that week begin to unfold as we learn more about people such as Judas Iscariot and Nicodemus. But we don't get too far into the week during this volume. Just the first couple of days. It's pretty awesome reading through this, but in terms of the focus of this novel, it actually gets the least amount of attention.

Getting a bit more attention in the novel is the second time period, the final battle in the Book of Mormon between the Lamanites and the Nephites on the Hill Cumorah. We're actually split into two parties with this one. The first party is with Mormon. Spending time with Mormon, we get a taste of what it was like for him right before the final battle. The Nephites are just plain awful people. Some of the scenes depicted are rather hard to read, but it's realistic to the time period and you just feel for Mormon. You also gain a ton of respect for Mormon as well as he handles things in the best and most humble way possible despite the circumstances. A lot of political intrigue in this aspect of the story. Also in this time period is where the majority of our characters are. But instead of being with Mormon they are on a journey towards Mormon and the Hill Cumorah. This is the most tense parts of the book as this gang is essentially sneaking their way through enemy territory towards their destination. Ambushes and attacks are waiting for them on every side at every step.

And finally, we have the part of the story that is focused on most. This part is actually super fascinating because we dive into one aspect of the Book of Mormon that is often over-looked. The main character in this one is Josh, the son of Garth. He's spent time as a commander in the Nephite armies, but when his dad Garth arrives, the two of them, plus another named Marcos get sent on a mission by Mormon to hide the sacred gold plates in the caves where Mormon keeps everything. But tragically, the plates get stolen by one of the most evil men in the Book of Mormon, that of Akish the Jaredite. And suddenly we dive right into the middle of the Jaredites. In Ether chapters 8-9 it tells of this very tense drama. Omer is the king at the time, but he gets the kingdom overthrown by his son Jared. Not happy with this, Jared's two brothers fight Jared, take the throne back, and give it to their father Omer again. Jared's daughter sees the sorrow of her father and comes up with a plan. She teams up with the wicked sorcerer Akish by dancing for him and thus giving him the desire to marry her. But in order to do so, killing Omer and giving her father Jared the throne back is required. So Akish sets out do so, but Omer is warned in a dream to get out, so he does. Jared gets the throne back. Omer is not dead, but apparently the daughter of Jared is satisfied, so her and Akish marry. But Akish isn't done. He and his followers were deeply into secret combinations of the devil and thus Aksih murders Jared on the throne and takes the throne for himself. After some time passes, Akish gets jealous of one of his sons and starves him to death. This doesn't sit well with Akish's other son and in turn that son goes and joins Omer. Pretty soon a huge civil war occurs over the space of many years between Akish and his sons that leads to the death of all but 30 Jaredites.

Yes, this is the story we dive into for most of the book. And it's fascinating. It fits very well with our other two time periods, the battle at Cumorah and the last week of the Savior's mortal ministry. Of course Chris Heimerdinger is so invested in all this that he has created a story that has essentially written itself. This is the sign that Heimerdinger is an expert story teller. He's created a world and characters that are so well written, that ending prematurely would not do it justice. It was once that that this series would end with book 11, but nevertheless book 12 and book 13 are on their way. I'm excited to see where this all goes. While we have dove into this epic parts of scripture, we have not yet hit the height of the conflict in either story. The betrayal and crucifixion are still a couple days away. The battle at Cumorah has not yet commenced. And the huge civil war that almost wipes out all the Jaredites has not yet happened. But they are about to. And it should be a fascinating ride when they do. What will our characters do? Will they escape the huge events? Or will they get caught up in these events and be forced to live through them? We will see!

Overall, if you are a fan of the Tennis Shoes Adventure Series, this is a book you will like. And perhaps since this book did come out in 2010, you have already read it. But if you are like me and for some reason, your life got so busy that you never made quite made it through the series, I suggest that you pick it back up. For me, the five year gap between book 10 and book 11 threw me off. When book 11 game out, I didn't immediately jump back in, thus it was close to 10 years of time where I went without reading a Tennis Shoes book. But there came a point where I told me self that it is time. Time to jump back in. I love myself for doing it because Sorcerers and Seers is an excellent addition in Chris Heimerdinger's epic Tennis Shoes Adventure Series. So yes, I would recommend you do the same as I did. Tell yourself that it is time to jump back in. You won't regret it. And if you've never given these books a chance, I suggest you pick them up because they are great reads. I don't give books a grade when I review them, but if I did, this book would get one of the higher grades.

Mockingjay: Book Review

WARNING: The following contains lots of SPOILERS. Only continue if you have read the Hunger Games trilogy.

Continued from my Hunger Games review followed by my Catching Fire review

And now for the controversial grand finale! Mockingjay was my initial purpose of writing all these Hunger Game reviews. Almost everyone I have talked to expressed to me that they hated the ending of this series. Of course I never let them tell me why, but after finishing it, I didn't hate the ending and now I plan on defending it along with the rest of the series by giving my thoughts on it.

Up to this point in the series, the perspective of first person present has worked beautifully and is rather ingenious. This is where it starts to fail. The Hunger Games is the beginning of everything, Catching Fire is where the rebellion picks up, and Mockingjay is full out war. Katniss is chosen by the lead of the rebellion to be the face of the war. The Mockingjay. After some debate in her mind, she accepts the role. With this, the main goal of the rebellion leaders is not to put a 17 year old girl at the head of the army. They want to keep her alive and so she is protected. I think this adds to the realistic part of things. Katniss is not a soldier. Sure she is trained with a bow and has survival experience from the Hunger Games, but she is not a perfect choice for the leader of the army and immediately putting her in that position would be poor writing. However, given the style of the first person present, we are stuck inside the confines of Katniss's mind and the consequence for this book is actually a rather boring first three-fourths of the book. Not only is she hidden in the underground living quarters of District 13, but she is a complete mess. Suzanne Collins actually does a fantastic job of putting us in the mind of a 17 year old girl who has gone through quite the traumatic experience in the past couple of years. The Hunger Games have really set her back emotionally and mentally. Not only did she spend several weeks inside of a stadium fighting for her life, worrying every second of that about being killed, but she has to worry about dangers to all of her family and friends. To add to that, she has two guys that are in love with her and she has no idea what to do about it. Given all that circumstance, yes, Collins does a very good job of giving us the emotions and feelings of someone who just went through that and in one aspect it is very interesting. In another aspect, being inside the mind of a 17 year girl who is going through all of this is not really the place I want to be. So thus for most of the book, all of the action and conflict that are being held away from Katniss is also being held from us as readers. We get most of the intense action and story line from second hand sources instead of experiencing it ourselves and that is not what I want from an epic finale.

Keeping in mind this previously mentioned thought, let's go off on a quick tangent to talk about this Mockingjay movie. I'm interested to see what they plan on doing with this. First off they are splitting it into two movies. This could be extremely bad or it could be fantastic. It all depends on the point of view. If they decide to go strictly with the book and follow Katniss the whole time, the last half of the second Mockingjay movie will be good, but the first movie will be completely awful and boring. However, if they choose to not focus solely on Katniss, this could be great. The book can't show us all of the action that is happening around the land because it is confined to Katniss's head. But the movie can. It can veer away from Katniss while she is whining, complaining, and suffering underground in 13 and show us the war. For example, there is a point in the book where a group of people go to rescue the captured Peeta. We don't see anything in the book. We just get the report of what happened when they return. However, in the movie we can travel with that group and watch them first hand as they rescue Peeta and that will be a lot more interesting. Moral of the story, the storyline of the final book is actually a really good one, but the perspective that it is forced to follow holds it back a lot in this one whereas it made it really interesting in the first two.

Let's now fast forward to the ending. After much drudgery in the first three-fourths of the book, the finale comes about with Katniss finally training as a soldier and going out with a special group to attack the capital. What happens is a total non-happy, non-fairy tale ending. It was heart wrenching and awful. After I finished, I sat and just pondered about the book for at least an hour digesting what I had just read. After much pondering, I decided that I really liked the ending. This is a book that initially seems like your run of the mill fictional story, but in fact it is quite unique in that it takes a surprisingly realistic approach. Think about it. This is a war. Are wars happy? No. Specifically this is a civil war against a tyrannical leader and that tyrannical leader only cares about staying in power and doesn't really care too much about the welfare of the people under him. Is one 17 year old girl going to march into that capital and save the world with a perfectly happy ending, no harm done? In a fairy tale story, of course. That's what the readers want. Realistically, though? No. And Katniss doesn't save the day. Well, not in this instance anyways. She ends up running on a goose chase through the capitol, watching a bunch of her good friends in her group get killed. It ends up with her being stranded on her own, almost making it to the capitol, but watching her sister get blown up right in front of her, while she catches on fire and almost burns to death herself. The capitol was defeated, but not by a 17 year old girl that started to go mentally insane.

Second part of the great ending was actually sort of a fairy tale ending, but tied up a theme that had been present since Catching Fire. That theme was remembering who the enemy was. After the capital was taken over and President Snow was taken into custody and the newly elected President Coin comes up with a revenge plan to make the Capital people do a Hunger Games with their kids. Earlier we learned how President Snow came to power and what we can see here is President Coin doing the same thing without people realizing it. When Katniss is granted her wish to execute President Snow, she shocks everyone, the reader included, when at last second she decides to aim slightly higher with her bow and murder President Coin. This here is the fairy tale ending coming in a way that no one expected it. By murdering Coin, Katniss has just saved the land from years more of dictatorship and is the cause of bringing back a normal government and this is actually quite genius.

Last but not least, the last part of the ending that I will talk about is the resolution with the relationships. The love triangle ends with Katniss being with Peeta and not Gale. I was surprisingly perfectly fine with this, even though I was a Gale fan for most of the series. Why was I fine with this? Mainly it was because Katniss couldn't be with Gale after what happened with her sister. He was one of the masterminds behind the plan to attack the Capital in the way that they did that caused the death of Prim. Sure, Gale wasn't directly responsible for the death of Prim, but in Katniss' mind, with her strong personality, this was something that she couldn't forgive and if she had, it would've been out of character and would've ensued in a poor ending. In the end I was still a fan of Gale, even if Katniss wasn't, but I determined that he deserved someone better. After Katniss' shocking murder of Coin, which seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back for her mentally, she went completely insane and was even suicidal. While being in the mind of someone in that mental state can be frustrating at times, I also appreciated it because it was very realistic. Someone who went through all that she went through would definitely feel and act that way, which is something most fictional books don't portray with their hero. But Katniss gets better and it is because of one person, Peeta. After her trial, the send her back to District 12 to start that rebuilding it and while she is almost a vegetable for a long time, she eventually gets out of it and that is because she has Peeta by her side. For most of the book, their love story is an act. While Peeta loves Katniss, Katniss doesn't feel the same. Does she love him in the end? Is it real? Yes, it is. It just took her a very long time to realize it.

To wrap things up, the moral of the whole series is presented in the final paragraphs before the epilogue. It states the following: "What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow light that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good." Yes, life is rough at times. And while we all may not have gone through everything that Katniss went through, we all have our struggles. And while it is perfectly normal to be scared, angry, sad, and depressed at times because of all that has happened to us, life does go on. And life does get better. This is the message that Suzanne Collins is teaching through the Hunger Games. Quite honestly, I feel that it is beautiful.

Catching Fire: Book Review

WARNING: The following contains lots of SPOILERS. Only continue if you have read the Hunger Games trilogy.

Continued from my Hunger Games review.

Most people thought that The Hunger Games was the best book in the trilogy. While I really enjoyed the Hunger Games, I personally felt that Catching Fire, the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, was the best. I took a break from reading during the semester, but when I picked it up at the start of Christmas break, I couldn't put it down. I finished the whole book in its entirety in three days. And if you know me, you will know that that's really impressive.

In Catching Fire, we get a little bit of a calming down period to start things off after the dramatic ending of the first book and the action in the second book. This differs quite a bit from the transition from book two and book three as Catching Fire and Mockingjay essentially act as if they were one book. The big drama in Catching Fire comes with the 75th annual Hunger Games, or the Quarter Quell as it is called, so its almost a year between the ending of the first book and the big events of the second. But we start out by setting the tone. First off Katniss gives to live a normal victor's life for a few months. She gets a new home in District 12 and gets spoiled with food and riches, something she's never been accustomed to. She gets to settle things with Gale, explaining to him that it was all an act between her and Peeta. The love triangle officially starts as Gale expresses his love for Katniss. Katniss is a somewhat typical teenage girl in this aspect in the sense that she needs attention from all her male friends but doesn't want to even think about marriage. Relationships are also out of the question, which does make her quite different at the same time. She is also experiencing nightmares from the Hunger Games, which is excellent because the element of realism starts to set in. If you went through what Katniss went through, you would have nightmares and other PTSD-like symptoms which is an element that most movies or stories just brush right over.

While not the ultimate conflict of the story, the Victory Tour is the first major event in the book and that is when Katniss gets her first glimpse into what she has unintentionally started. That conflict that is started that puts Katniss in a pretty big conundrum and that is what makes this a brilliant book. President Snow gives Katniss a personal visit, telling her that she's sparked a rebellion and that she needs to stop it or else he is going to kill everyone she cares about. How to do this? Convince everyone on the Victory Tour that her controversial actions were all for love. Katniss attempts such a feat and fails miserably. Now she decides that she has officially given up the "mend her actions" goal, but what is she going to do instead? Is she going to run away with Gale? No, especially not after he finds out there is an uprising? So what does she do? Well, put her plans on pause and jump to the Quarter Quell because her and Peeta are going back into the arena as the competitors are chosen from a pool of previous victors.

When I first read this, I was a little disappointed as the book had such a great start and now appeared that it was just going to duplicate the same plot of the first one. Turns out that it doesn't really. I mean it kinda does at first, but the arena they get put into is quite ingenious as it is a clock shape and there is a different threat for each hour that they have to work through. Also new characters Finnick and Johanna have been suspiciously teamed up with Peeta and Katniss which puts them in a much different position then previously. But through all of this, the reminder by Haymitch rings through the mind of Katniss and the reader as well. Remember who the real enemy is. That remains a theme throughout this book and into the last one as well. Who is the real enemy? Right now its the capitol and at the end of this book when Katniss has the opportunity to kill the other competitors in the Quarter Quell she remembers this and pulls off quite the feat that leads to a fantastic ending. Through a complicated series of events mainly led by inventor victor Beetee, she destroys the arena, halting the games and throwing the already rampant revolution into full force.

Then all at once we as the readers get clued in on what in the heck has been happening at the same time Katniss does after being rescued on a hovercraft of rebels led new head gamemaker Plutarch and Haymitch. Rebellion is in full force. Plutarch has been the head of a secret rebellion alliance for quite some time. A lot of the victors knew parts of this plan and agreed to protect Katniss and Peeta. District 13 exists and will be key to the rebels overthrowing the capital. Peeta and Johanna are two that have been captured by the capitol now. How does Katniss respond to all of this? She acts like a 17 year old teenage girl and throws a tizzy fit. Only person that can calm her down is Gale, who tells her that although her mom and Prim are among those who are safe, District 12 has been blown up.

All of this equates to a book that it quite suspensful, dramatic, and action packed, with a touch of romantic tension/confusion. Excellent beginning, excellent body of the book, and absolutely fantastic ending. Once again, my favorite of the three.

Continue with my Mockingjay review.

The Hunger Games: Book Review

WARNING: The following contains lots of SPOILERS. Only continue if you have read the Hunger Games trilogy.

I'll be honest with this one, I had not read any of the books before I went to see the Hunger Games movie in the theater. For some reason I missed the initial Hunger Games book craze. Suddenly, when the movie was announced, everyone was going crazy and was super excited for the upcoming movie. That's when the books caught my attention. Did I read them then? Nope, not yet. I waited for the movie to come out and saw it opening weekend along with the rest of the world. Some people claimed the movie, or at least the back story of the movie was hard to follow without having read the books. Nope, not the case for me. I followed perfectly fine and came away from the movie officially sold.

After being very impressed with the movie, I eventually grabbed the book and read it over the course of the Summer. Yes, I take my time reading sometimes, especially when I already know everything that happens. But nonetheless, I was super impressed with the book. Although the movie did a great job in following the book, the book was better. And it was because of the perspective of the book that was obviously really hard to duplicate in a movie.  I've seen the first person style done before, but I've never seen the first person present. You are literally inside the head of Katniss. You are reading her thoughts the whole series and everything you see the way she sees things. Writing like this would obviously take some talent and effort to pull off and Suzanne Collins does just that. It is one of the more brilliantly written books because of that uniqueness. If the movie tried to pull that off, quite honestly it be a horrible movie, but they did a good job displaying it film the best they could. The advantage that the movie has is that because they aren't limited to Katniss's mind, they can show us more. They can show us things from Gale's perspective that we don't learn until the second or even third book. They can show the rebellions that went on during the games that Katniss doesn't know about until later. Lastly they can show us things from the gamemakers' point of view, specifically the storyline between Seneca Crane and President Snow, something that we don't about at all until Snow talks to Katniss personally in book two. Speaking of Snow, we get an early look into his evil ways, which we also don't get in the first book. But even with all this, the first book is still better than the first movie, although the tide could change in later movies, but I'll get to that later.

Beyond all this, the first book does a great job of setting the scene for everything, like the first book in a good trilogy should do. We are set in the distant future in the United States, but long after the United States has been destroyed and a completely new civilization has been set up. There is a capitol and 13 districts, although we don't learn about the rebellious district 13 until much later in the series.  We essentially have a dictatorship that is set up and has been going on for quite some time. 74 years before the first book took place, there was a rebellion that the Capitol suppressed, supposedly destroying District 13. The other 12 districts were punished by the setup of the Hunger Games, which consists of each of the 12 districts selecting one boy and one girl ages 12 - 18 to fight to the death with only one winner. The winner in theory gets spoiled by the capitol. However, we learn later that the victors actually get abused by the Capitol, making this worse.

 Is this a gruesome premise? Probably. This is definitely not a children's book and certainly doesn't have a fairy tale ending, which I will get into in greater detail in later books. But here in this first book, we have Katniss Everdeen fighting in the 74th annual hunger games after bravely volunteering for her 12 year old sister Prim. A fake romance is set up between her and fellow tribute Peeta Mellark that causes tension between her and her long time friend Gale. Does she mean for that to happen? No, she's just trying to stay alive. In the end when it comes down to her and Peeta, after initially being informed that both of them could survive, they are informed that only one can survive. Katniss pulls out some poisonous berries and comes up with a double suicide plan. Does she mean to defile the capitol by doing this and in turn spark a rebellion that spreads throughout the whole land? No, but this is exactly what happens and that beautifully sets the tone for the rest of the series as we end with Peeta learning her romance was all a game after it is all said and done, while Katniss gets to go home and face whatever consequences her actions have caused.

Continue with my Catching Fire review, followed by my Mockingjay review.