Amanda

Don't go into this book expecting anything exciting. It does exactly what it says it's going to do. It's a dystopian, teenage love triangle. It's The Hunger Games without the violence. It's Twilight without the supernatural, the stalking, the Mary Sue... and everything else that's horrible about Twilight.

The writing is okay. If it were from one of my students, I'd probably give it a C+ or a B-. It's not bad, but it could be better. She has a major case of the telling, especially in the beginning. She expects that her readers know what's happening during the Match ceremony, she doesn't give many details about what's happening, and instead glosses over it.

She does get better as the story progresses, but it's never quite enough to make up for the lackluster beginning.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides is about me. It's like he took the story of my life, added some more interesting parts, set it back in time and published it. As such, reading this book was a deeply personal experience.

The book follows me... I mean Madeleine (which is just one of the many superbly awesome names in the book) as she graduates from Brown in 1982 with a degree in English, hoping to go to grad school to further study 18th Century-literature. Her sometimes-friend Mitchell Grammaticus (seriously, how awesome is that name!) is a graduating religious studies major who is going to travel the world and hopefully not return until the recession is over. Madeleine's boyfriend Leonard Bankhead (probably the most accurate name, and I mean, really.) is supposed to graduate, but a hypomanic state lands him in the hospital after he missed enough classes to be forcibly dropped.

Speaking of mania, a major plot point in the book is Leonard's manic-depression (or, what is now called Bi-Polar disorder). Yet another example of Eugenides' bizarre ability to know my life. His portrayal of BP disorder is real and not such a big deal. Leonard is a superior asshole, but he was an asshole while he was on Lithium he was an asshole when he decided to stop Lithium, he was an asshole when not on Lithium, and guess what, he's an asshole on a different dose of Lithium. Not such a large character arc, but I'll get back to that in a minute.

While the story jumps from character to character a la Beloved, only it's clearer who is actually talking, the center focus is definitely Madeleine. Her struggles while living with Leonard and still trying to get into grad school after doing poorly on the GRE. The two men in the story are completely absorbed in Madeleine, trying to get her, keep her, please her and fuck her. In this way, The Marriage Plot is very similar to Eugenides's other works, especially The Virgin Suicides. Madeleine is placed on a pedestal by the two main men in her life, one that is not necessarily deserved and is hard for her to live up to. Both Leonard and Mitchell paint her as the perfect woman, loving and unselfish, but Madeleine knows that is not always the case.

The story continues on in this fashion, getting Madeleine's point of view of certain events, followed by Leonard's of the same event and Mitchell's experiences overseas. One thing all the stories have in common is the constant thought of Madeleine and Leonard.

Being ever the Eugenides book, no one is perfect. All of the actions are very real, making the book an exceptional experience of the brilliantly mundane. Sure, there are no sword fights or huge declarations of undying love, but there are seemingly real people living out the fictionally real lives to the best of their ability.

In the beginning of the book, I was rooting for Madeleine and Leonard to make the leap and become the couple for life, but then Leonard's asshole-ness made it perfectly clear that he and Madeleine, or he and any person, really, could and should not be together. He uses her throughout the book and never takes any responsibility. It's either the meds' fault he couldn't get it up, or it's his parents' fault for passing on their complete disfunction. But he never takes a step back and realizes that while being Bi-Polar wholly and truly sucks, it is not a reason to treat the person who loves you enough to almost wipe your ass for you like shit. Once it became abundantly clear that Leonard was not going to change his ways, and that Madeleine would never actually leave him, I began looking forward to Mitchell's sections.

I'm not going to give too much more of the plot, I'm just going to say that Mitchell and Madeleine do end up being together, but the book doesn't end with them together. No one is really happy at the end, except possibly Madeleine. She is living in New York, going to grad school at Columbia and finally on her own. And that's it, that's the whole end to the book.

I really enjoyed reading this book but Eugenides's style is one that is so subdued that it can sometimes be very hard to pay attention. His characters make the book. They are all so real that the book could have easily been a biography. That's what Eugenides does best, put real characters into real situations and make it interesting. He focuses on real life and sometimes that's enough.

I (finally) finished Mastiff by Tamora Pierce last night. I say finally because I feel like I have been reading this book for a really long time, but that is mostly due to these last weeks being the start of school. It really only took me about 3 weeks to read this almost-600-page book.

Before I can really get into this review, I have to admit something. I love Tamora Pierce. I have since I discovered her Lioness Quartet in 6th grade. To this day, one of the highlights of my life was interviewing her after the first Beka Cooper book came out. So, I knew I was going to love this book before my Nook automatically downloaded it in late October (did I mention my first purchase on my Nook was the aforementioned Lioness Quartet and the preorder of this book?).

That said, this books did not earn my love by simply existing. It took a bit to warm up to again, possibly because it had been a while since reading a Beka Cooper book, so to suddenly jump in with the third book was a bit of a shock. Especially because the book starts with Beka burying her fiancé. I reeled because I didn't remember Beka even having a fiancé, let alone that he died. For the first ten pages or so, I was freaking out, thinking I really needed to reread the previous books, which is quite a daunting feat a week before classes start.

Thankfully, the previous two books, Terrier and Bloodhound are also on my Nook, so a quick glance of the ending of Bloodhound let me know that I had not missed anything, that almost 2 years separates the two stories, and the Holburn was no where in the previous book. Which fits, because he is not technically in the third book, either.

Without giving too much away, Mastiff follows Beka, Tunstall, Lady Sabine, Achoo, Pounce and Farmer, a mage from the Blue Harbor Kennel as they search for the kidnapped prince of Tortall. This Prince Gareth is the ancestor of Prince-cum-King Jonathan from the earlier (later?) Tortall series, as Beka is George Cooper's ancestor. The exact number of generations between the characters in these books and the characters from the other Tortallan books is unknown, which is something else that confused me.

This confusion is totally my fault. Somewhere I got the idea the Beka was George's grandmother, which made some of the names in this book, specifically that of the Prince, confusing. I reread Alanna over the summer, so I was more familiar with those books, including the character of Duke Gareth of Naxen, one of the knights that taught Alanna to fight when she was Alan, and then fought by her side when Duke Roger decided to go apeshit. So, for a good part of the beginning of the book, I thought that the prince in question would grow up to become the duke in question, who is also Jonathan's uncle. So, yeah, I was a little off.

My confusion on these two parts is probably what made the book seem a bit slow to start.

After getting over the headache, I was able to start fully investing myself into the reading. Which was just as good as I have come to expect from Pierce. Full of action, feature strong characters and good motives. I was a little dismayed over the lack of Rosto in the book, because I was convinced that he and Beka would get together, thus forming the bond between law and rogue that shines in George. That didn't happen, but don't worry, there is still that touch of romance that leaves the 13-year-old in me smiling from ear to ear.

The central focus of Mastiff is the slave trade in Tortall, but really the story could have happened anywhere. It is a terrible glimpse into what the world of slavery is. How people are bought, sold, killed and disposed of like they are play things. How people can treat others that are deemed below them. It is a disgusting world full of untrustworthy and genuinely ugly people. Pierce showcases this world as the seedy, yet perfectly legal underbelly of Tortall. Parents selling their children for extra cash, children kidnapped by slavers when the season is right, and the rich getting richer on the backs of those with nothing but their names and the rags covering their bodies.

All of this is set in a conspiracy plot that involves some of the highest nobles in the land.

The book begins with a show of death at the hands of the conspirators. Guards, slaves, workers, friends are all dead when Beka is summoned to the Summer Palace to begin her Hunt. I'm going to stop telling the story now, except to say that Mastiff ends similarly, with the attack of the kidnappers. Only at the end, the attacks are for the King and not against him, and they are done in the open, with mercy and warning.

Overall, I am very satisfied with this book. It has kept me up the last two nights, unable to put it down. When I did finally convince myself to turn off the light, I was still awake thinking about it. It completely captured me, as I knew it would. When I finished it last night, I immediately began wondering when Pierce is going to release another series. Since this is the last of the Beka Cooper stories, I cannot wait to see which character in her wonderful kingdom will be next.

So, yeah, I'm a fangirl. But, seriously, go read this book, and all of Pierce's other books while your at it. It's totally worth it, and there are almost 30 of them, so it's something that will keep you happy and reading for a while.