Tag Archives: #Abuse

Fantasy

Bishop, Anne; Daughter of the Blood (Black Jewels I) (1998)

Leave a comment


Anne Bishop‘s Black Jewels trilogy is one of my favorites and I have read it four or more times. One of the reasons I like it so well is that  it is NOT a romance. Well. I don’t think so. Daughter of the Blood is book one of that trilogy.

In the gray world above, I hear myself howling with laughter. Far below me, in the psychic abyss that is part of the Darkness, I hear another howling, one full of joy and pain, rage and celebration.

Not just another witch coming, my foolish Sisters, but Witch.

We move between the three realms of the Blood: Kaeler, Hell and Terreille. Kaeler and Hell are considered dark realms, places where old rules of protocol still rule. They share the main site of the Queen of the Dark Realms’ seat, The Black Mountain, also called Ebon Askavi. Hell is a Realm of forever-twilight, a realm for the demon-dead who are not yet ready to go to the Darkness and their Guardians. Kaeler is for the living.

Once, the Blood had ruled honorably and well. The Blood villages within a District would look after, and treat fairly, the landen villages that were bound to them. The District Queens would serve in the Province Queen’s court. The Province Queens, in their turn, would serve the Territory Queen, who was chosen by the majority of the darker-Jeweled Blood, both male and female, because she was the strongest and the best.

Back then, there was no need for slavery to control the strong males. They followed their hearts to the queen who was right for them. They handed over their lives willingly. They served freely.

Back then, the Blood’s complicated triangle of status hadn’t leaned so heavily on social rank. Jewel rank and caste had weighed just as heavily in the balance, if not more. That meant control of their society was a fluid dance, with the lead constantly changing depending on the dancers. But in the center of that dance, always, was a Queen.

Terreille, while supposedly not a dark kingdom, has no honor any longer due to the influence the High Priestess of Hayll has had on the Realm for centuries. Rules of Protocol no longer apply and Queens do exactly what they want no matter how depraved.

Just once, I’d like to serve a Queen I could respect, someone I could truly believe in. A strong queen who wouldn’t fear my strength. A Queen I could also call a friend……………..

She was a scrawny little thing, about seven years old. Calling her plain would have been kind……………

“I-I heard you. You wanted a friend.”

Lucivar Yaslana is the first of our main characters who meets Witch, the one whose coming was prophesied. He was given to Queen Zuultah to do with as she wished as long as he was kept alive and whole. She is typical of Terreille Queens, Queens who do not show care for their subjects or for the people in their courts. It is a dangerous realm to be male or female with dark birth jewels or even to be landen (those without jewels).

He was tired and old, and the loneliness he carried inside him all his life had become too heavy to bear. He no longer wanted to be a Guardian, one of the living dead. He no longer wanted the half-life a handful of the blood had chosen in order to extend their lifetimes into years beyond imagining. He wanted peace, wanted to quietly fade back into the Darkness………..

This girl was alive! ….. She couldn’t be more than seven years old………

Then she turned and looked at him. As he watched the summer-sky blue eyes change to sapphire, the surf swept him away.

Ancient eye. Maelstrom eyes. Haunted, knowing, seeing eyes….. Witch.

Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, the High Lord of Hell, the High Priest of the Hourglass is another main character. He becomes Jeanelle Angelline’s father of the heart. His highest wish is fulfilled almost 50.000 years after its foretelling. Through that meeting, Witch finds a person who promises to teach her to the best of his ability and to never lie.

Daemon let out a cry as the jar slipped from his hands and shattered on the bathroom floor. He sank to his knees, hissing as a piece of glass sliced him, and stared at the powder, tears of pain and frustration welling in his eyes. Without the powder to help heal the wounds, he might still be able to heal them to some extent, still be able to stop the bleeding … but he would scar. And he didn’t need a mirror to know what he would look like.

*No!* He wasn’t aware of sending. He was only trying to relieve the frustration.

A minute later, as he knelt on the bathroom floor, shaking, trying not to vent the sobs building in him, a hand touched his shoulder.

Daemon twisted around, his teeth bared, his eyes wild…..

The touch, when it came again, was hesitant, cautious. He shivered as it gently probed his back. Shivered because along with exhaustion and dismay, that gentle touch was filled with a cold, cold anger……….

The reason for the 50 whiplashes was that Daemon augmented Saetan’s power to save Witch. Using power for anything is forbidden without his owner’s permission. As far as he remembers, his entire life has been in the ownership of Dorothea, the High-Priestess of Hayll. Daemon is know as the Whore of Hayll and The Sadist, due to how he reacts to continuously having his body rewarded to Queens or Ladies loyal to Dorothea.

……….. Two black leather books appeared, floating before her. She took one, leafed through to the last written page, called in a pen, and made a notation.

That contract was finished. It hadn’t taken the fool as long to die as she would have liked, but the pain had been exquisite. And the money had been very, very good.

She vanished the book and opened the other one, checked the entry she needed, wrote out her menu, and with a flick of her wrist sent it to the kitchen………

Surreal’s mother was murdered when she was 12 years old. After that she survived as a street-walker. Sometimes she killed her clients. Daemon saved her from her brutal life by taking her to good Red Moon house where they could teach her how to be a better paid whore in a safer environment. Daemon taught her how to hide bodies and kill discretely. She owes him a great deal.  Surreal is the fourth main character of Daughter of the Blood.

POV in Daughter of the Blood is everyone’s but Witch’s. What we learn about Jeanelle Angelline is what they share. Anne Bishop managed to make each of the four POV different from the others. Daughter of the Blood is a dark story that does not pander to those who need people to be simple. Instead, it shows us how differently people handle horrific experiences and how fragile our hold on reality is. Some of the story bears the mark of a first novel.

I’m fairly certain this is a serial you either really like or dislike. Some call it fluff and superficial and others call it magical and amazing. It is representative of the 1990’s and early 2000’s fantasy literature, before urban fantasy and glossy vampires became the rage.

Animals, Fantasy

Kotzwinkle, William: Doctor Rat (1976)

2 Comments

Doctor Rat gives voice to the horrors of the laboratory as seen from the eyes of the lab-animals. Driven insane by the experiments performed on him, many of them without anaesthesia, Dr. Rat encourages the other animals to do their best to be supportive of the torture they experience.

“He’s sensitive chap and it was his exquisite sensitivity that caused him to dream up the item that’s become the latest rage here at the lab: the fabulous removal of the eggs from a female rat’s body—to the tail, to the ear, to the stomach. And for the past twenty-three days, he’s been grafting them to their eyeballs!”

In 2014 one of the Nobel Prizes handed out was for showing why our brain is a GPS system. Two of those who won that prize were May-Britt and Edvard Moser.

In this video, the Moser’s look like nice people. They cuddle the rats and talk about creating lesions on their brains. As far as labs go, this lab is far from the worst. However, this video does illustrate the human position as apex predators.

One argument for experiments like the ones in Dr. Rat or the ones in the labs at NTNU goes something like this “What about medical advancement and further knowledge about improving lives?” I don’t buy that argument at all even though I have benefited and benefit from animal and human experiments. There is no good argument for humans treating lab animals the way cats treat their victims.

I could not read Dr. Rat in one go. Some of the other stories I read can be as violent, but Kotzwinkle‘s writing dug his claws of horror and despair into my brain. In the end, there is a balancing event against the torturers (not only researchers) that in no way makes up for the terrible lives of these animals. Not that such treatment surprises, or even shocks, me. This is the way many humans treat other humans. After all, humans are both predator and prey in our genetic make-up.

“What are they doing to me, Doctor Rat?”

“Let me just check my notes… yes, here we are. You’ll be the tenth rat this week to have his brains sucked out by a pneumatic tube.”

While Dr. Rat is horror, it is also humour, humour of the darker kind, the kind I like. As satire, the story does its job of criticizing society’s proclivity towards violence.

Excellent story. Most definitively recommended.

Reviews:

Mystery

Edghill, Rosemary: Speak Daggers to Her (Bast Mysteries 1) (1994)

Leave a comment
Image is a “Ten of Swords” Tarot card
Image is a “Ten of Swords” Tarot card

I will speak daggers to her, but use none. (Hamlet: III,ii)

 More than twenty years ago Rosemary Edghill was caught by the mystery of the sudden death of a healthy young woman in her 20’s. Add to that the ethical violations within the New Age Community that were not taken seriously and Speak Daggers to Her was born. (FM Writers)

“Miriam’s dead.”

It was Lace on the phone, which meant that Miriam was Miriam Seabrook, and Miriam was my age. People in their middle thirties don’t just up and die.

“Bast?” Lace sounded half-a-step away from hysteria. “We were going out to dinner and I used my key and she was lying there on the bed and I thought she was asleep–” Lace took a deep breath and started to cry in high weepy yelps.

“Did you call the police?”

I thought I was fine — after all, I wasn’t the one who’d walked in and found my lover dead — but my jaw muscles ached when I pushed the words out. Not Miriam. Not dead. I didn’t even know her very well, I plea-bargained.

“I can’t. You know I can’t. You know what they’ll do to me — oh, please, please, can’t you come over?” Lace started to cry in earnest, a real Irish peening for the healins.

New York City, like many large cities, is a place people go when they seek others like themselves. Sometimes “The Establishment/ Society” frowns upon the existence of certain alternative lifestyles. Bast, Miriam and Lace belong to the 1990’s neopagans and Witch community in New York. Or as Bast describes themselves:

“overeducated ex-hippies trying to unscrew the inscrutable, trying to make sense of life through ritual and gnosis.”

When Bast arrived at Miriam’s apartment and saw that, yes, she was definitely dead and Lace was gone, Bast called the police. Before they arrived she removed an occult necklace from Miriam’s body.

“a mummified bird claw of some kind, with the stump wrapped in silver wire so she could string it on the chain. The nails were painted red.“

That claw freaked Bast out, as did Miriam’s message on her answering machine:

“… There’s this weird stuff, and I’ve got to see you. … It’s too weird. I’m scared. I think they’re going to – ” The voice stopped abruptly, …

Miriam had been the kind of person who wanted desperately to be part of the occult society. She wanted “The Truth” yet never found it. Each failure brought her into contact with stranger and stranger pagan traditions. She and Bast had eventually become semi-friends, so there was no real reason for Bast to involve herself. Except for that claw and the message from Miriam. Those factors worried Bast and would not leave her alone. Then Bast finds a book of spells with a picture of Miriam being torn in two. Add to that a mysterious phone call and Bast wants to find out if there was anything suspicious about Miriam’s death. Because nothing about the body indicated there would be. But guilt has its own way of gnawing at us, and guilt was Bast’s entry into the world of detection.

Speak Daggers to Her is not about magic, although we do learn a great deal about what being a modern witch entails. We also get a look at coercive groups within Neo-paganism. Groups that use the tools that abusive partners and leaders have always used, grooming and secrecy, and regular people doing things they thought they never would.

I bought the omnibus Bell, Book, and Murder and liked the stories so much I gave a friend of mine a paperback copy. Definitely recommended.

Reviews:

You may buy Bell, Book and Murder at Amazon

Fantasy

Gaiman, Neil: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013)

2 Comments
By Arwen (Silver moon lioness)
Artist: MarimoLee (Ifleebells)
By Jana Checanty
By Mia (On a moonlit night)
By Stênio Santos
By Sunil Kainth
By Elizabeth (The Bosetsu)
Ursula Monkton by Erik Evensen
By Amber (Hearing Sounds)
Source: Graham Tiller on Flickr
By Sarah (Sawebee)
Artist: Prisca Ludwig
Artist: Kyle Scott
Artist: ???
Artist: Margreet DeHeer
By Mr. Fryday
By Margie
By Laura Ketcham
By Grant Ake
By Katya Shvedova
Source: Amazon
By Audrey Benjaminsen
Source: City Magazine
Limited edition: Subterranean Press
http://www.otherland-berlin.de/tl_files/bilder/content/AUSLESE%20-%20Buecher/us-books/2013/gaiman-ocean.jpg
Source: Inglisz komon
Artist: Marco Serpieri
Artist Clifford Harper | Agraphia Press
Ursula Monkton’s transformation by Link Choi
Source: Sognando Leggendo
By Carlos Lerma
By Anna Irilaya
Cartoon by Letícia Robini
By Michael Fox
Source: Amazon.de
Source: Economy decoded
By Wenderss
http://media.comicbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane-gaiman.jpg
Artist: Tim Hodge
By Macreff, 2013
Artist: ???

Thank you, to my sister-in-law for giving me a copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

In December, right before I turned seven my family moved from Australia to Norway. One of my memories tied to that move is stepping outside the plane into the middle of Norwegian winter. Moving was not something I wanted, and winter did not help.

Soon I was driving slowly, bumpily, down a narrow lane with brambles and briar roses on each side, wherever the edge was not a stand of hazels or a wild hedgerow. It felt like I had driven back in time. That lane was how I remembered it, when nothing else was.

Memory can be triggered by scent, sound and sight. All of a sudden you find yourself re-visiting a time you had forgotten. Neurons spark neurons and whatever filing system you have going for you opens a memory file.

If you’d asked me an hour before, I would have said no, I did not remember the way. I do not even think I would have remembered Lettie Hempstock’s name. But standing in the hallway, it was all coming back to me. Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me. Had you told me that I was seven again, I might have half believed you, for a moment.

As others have mentioned, we never discover what the name of the main character is. For the most part he is called “the boy”, and that is how I think of him. Neil Gaiman’s statement that the story is meant for adults fits my feeling while reading the book. There is enough terror (not violent) for a younger audience to enjoy it as well.

At seven years of age, children have little say in their lives. Moving to Norway was not my choice. Nor does the boy have much influence on his own life. There are a few episodes that illustrate this. To me, the episode with the cat stands out the most. Utter disregard of the possibility that the boy might be devastated shocked me. Yet, looking back at my own life, children were presumably fine with whatever the adults chose. In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, adults are judged more believable than the boy. So it is when I look around at the parts of the world I have encountered. My Asperger brain is completely baffled by this phenomenon. When the boy’s enemy states

“And what can you say to her that will make any difference? She backs up your father in everything, doesn’t she.”

I am reminded of many family situations that have crossed my life-path. No matter what one parent does or says, they have the backing of the other. Utterly incomprehensible.

Being without power to decide anything about their lives is something children come to semi-accept. At the same time there is a continuous battle between adults and children to have the ability to decide. We see some of that in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The boy does not give in to the powers that be, although it might, at first, seem that way to the adults.

The Hempstock women became a safe haven for the boy. For me that is hilarious because some of the most dangerous episodes happen while together with one of them. But they sought to protect him and make his life safer by fighting for him with the means at their disposal. These means aren’t exactly regular ones.

I loved the Hempstock women. I want to be like the Hempstock women.

Definitely recommended.

Reviews:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane can be found at biblio.com

Adaptations:

Trivia:

Translations:

Fantasy, Young Adult

Jackson, Ros: Diabolical Taste (Kenssie II) (2014)

Leave a comment
Cover art: Laura Hollingsworth
Cover art: Laura Hollingsworth (really like this cover)

Diabolical Taste is funny, sad and exciting. Satire often seems to bring out those feelings in me. The relationship between Rak and Kenssie is definitely an abusive one. Kenssie is the only one who can walk the painful journey of accepting that her illusions are just that. The whole demonic thrall system reeks of abuse.

Rak and Kenssie perfectly illustrate the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves and the people we have chosen to love. Coming to realize that one’s relationship is a destructive one must be excruciatingly difficult. As with all addictions, the first and most difficult step has to be acknowledgement.

Kenssie’s power to “eat secrets” seems to be an incredibly powerful tool. She is only 16 years old and still trying to figure out the powers she began fully utilizing in The Secret Eater. This eating of emotions and thoughts to nourish themselves is a great way of getting across the importance of our inner lives.

We meet some cool and dangerous characters in Diabolical Taste. Otis the human is particularly interesting. Toward the end of the story we discover something funny about him. Seneb, the love demon, is another character I enjoyed. Feeding on love as a demonic power is fascinating yet perhaps strange. Grief, on the other hand, is a perfectly understandable demonic meal. We also have a fear eater in our story. Both made me take a closer look at myself.

I loved reading Diabolical Taste. It left me with a sense of sadness and pride for the demon Kenssie had become.

Ros Jackson provided me with a copy of Diabolical Taste in return for a review.

My review of The Secret Eater

Fantasy, Young Adult

Allison, P.G.: Missy the Werecat (2012)

Leave a comment

Missy the Werecat - PG Allison

The cougar works a powerful magic on the human imagination. Perhaps it is envy. This majestic feline personifies strength, movement, grace, stealth, independence, and the wilderness spirit. It wanders enormous tracts of American wilderness at will. It is equally at home in forest, desert, jungle, or swamp. An adult cougar can bring down a full-grown mule deer in seconds. It yields to few creatures, save, bears and humans. (Mountain Lion Foundation)

Now take a look at one of the descriptions of Missy from Missy the Werecat. Missy has just come back from the wild, rescued a family and is thought to have been kept a prisoner for two years:

She moved with a smooth grace but also exuded strength and power, somehow giving an impression of greatness in spite of her only being a teenage girl. …

entering the room in full command of herself, alert and aware. Fearless. With depths that could not be penetrated. This Missy was not at all a victim, in any way …

Pretty similar, don’t you think?

After Missy comes back down from the mountains, having learned to control her changes, she befriends a girl called Alice. Alice was being sexually abused by her step-father and Missy stepped in to stop it. Stepping in while Alice was still so young, in addition to giving Alice the support she needed, helped Alice work her way through the sexual abuse as much as possible.

During a period of my life I went through some sexual abuse periods myself. To have had a Missy in my life at that point would have made a great difference. However, the norm in such cases is to have them explained away or denied. It’s simply too difficult for non-pedophiles to think that there are people out there who get turned on by such things.

Throughout her whole story of Missy the Werecat, P.G. Allison was carefully open about the darker sides of life. At the same time she made sure we understood the importance of people like Missy in the lives of those being affected by predators. Sometimes it takes a predator to hunt down other predators and, as most of us come to know, not all predators are out to hurt people.

Missy the Werecat is very US in its style. It is definitely written for a younger audience. Some violence was explicit and some sexual content was also explicit, yet it was explicit in an age-appropriate manner. I was surprised by the balance between sexual and violent content as I am not used to that from US authors. To make up for that there were the standard moralistic teachings found in US stories. In the end that did not matter to me and I for one was glad that such a person/mountain lion blessed the lives of so many people (and frightened the ☠@✴# out of others).

Missy the Werecat on Amazon US

Adventure, Fantasy

Zamin, Mira: The Puppet Queen: A Tale of the Sleeping Beauty (2012)

Leave a comment
The Puppet Queen
Cover image: “Sweet Nothings”:
John William Godward (1861-1922)
Cover design by Mira Zamin
800px-Sweet_Nothings_by_Godward
Dolce far Niente (1904)
Gorgeous painting

Various versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale have been around since the late 1600’s. The Puppet Queen adds itself to that list and keeps itself somewhat bleak in the tradition of folk-tales.

Twins, fraternal ones, can be as different from each other as any other pair of siblings. Selene and Auralia are like night and day. Auralia is the serene and proper one while Selene is the dark-haired girl in fine, torn tunics, tumbling into trouble any day of the week. Auralia is ready to embrace adulthood while Selene thinks the whole thing sounds like a bore. For a girl growing up in a society such as the one described in The Puppet Queen adulthood could be very constricting, and for a girl like Selene adulthood would probably have been excruciating to adjust to.

Life in the world of folk-tales tends to be fraught with danger. Curses, wickedness, murder, rape, and abuse of various sorts seem to trail through them all. There is always a way out, but that way tends to carry a high price and the “hero” must find it in them to pay it. If not – well …

The curse of Sleeping Beauty and of The Puppet Queen is one of sleep. Sleep for a castle in Sleeping Beauty and sleep for a whole country in The Puppet Queen. The only one to escape the curse in The Puppet Queen is Selene, and Selene it is who must save the day.

I think what I liked most about The Puppet Queen is that it stayed true to the spirit of folk-tales. People in the middle-ages knew how to tell stories. That these stories are used as a base for modern tales only shows the quality of the stories and their value as teaching tools.

I like the way Mira Zamin showed how difficult it was for Selene to withstand Gwydion. Their relationship was clearly an abusive one. But for Selene to break out of that relationship just wasn’t done in the days portrayed in the story. Perhaps she manages to do so and perhaps she doesn’t, but her experiences are the experiences of many women in relationships today. He who was once Prince Charming might well turn into King Terror. I appreciated Princess Selene’s resilience and the way she kept on going no matter what. Her main goal was to break the curse and she would endure what she must to reach her goal.

So, yeah – I enjoyed The Puppet Queen.

Reviews:

Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, Young Adult

Hicks, Michael R.: Final Battle (In Her Name – Redemption) (2009)

4 Comments
Final Battle
Cover art by Michael Hicks. Stock images from bought from Dreamstime.com and edited in Photoshop

I feel the need to warn readers of the Redemption trilogy. Toward the end of Final Battle there is a violent scene that could trigger those of you who have experienced abuse (sexual). It is relevant to the story. Now you are warned. In spite of my warning, my personal belief is that the story of Reza Gard and his way toward his destiny can be read by older young adults and, of course, ancients like myself.

Reza’s near-death-experience and meeting with the First Empress put him in a coma and there he remained for the next half-year. Final Battlefelt as much about Jodi Mackenzie as about Reza. She has some rough times ahead of her but does her very best to be a person who remains true to what she considers honorable.
Honor is not something one would equate with Thorella (Reza’s arch-enemy) or the new president, Borge. These two are men who are so caught up in their own vision of reality that they have lost all grip on the real world. Sadly, they are both highly intelligent and extremely wealthy and therefore able to adjust the world to fit their psychosis. That is, up to a certain point. Hicks writes insanity and greed well.

Now that I think about it, I have met people like Thorella and Borge although these people have been without Thorella and Borge’s means. It is not an experience I would recommend. I prefer people who live with gentler versions of reality.

It turns out Reza has a son, the first male child born to Kreelans in 100000 years who is able to function in society. The Kreelan history is a tragic one. Even if they brought it upon themselves through the choices of their ancestors, the tragedy is still a fact. Now there is finally hope. Yet something is amiss with the Kreelans. They seem to have lost all interest in fighting. One might even say that they are experiencing a mass-depression.

Reza is essential to the Kreelan race. All that he has gone through has honed him into a key that is capable of unlocking their next step in evolution.

I am going to end this review by saying: When I started reviewing Empire I discovered I had forgotten a couple of things. I opened up my e-book and that was it. Michael R. Hicks forced me to read the trilogy again. That is a pretty mean trick when it comes to me. After all it had not been long since I read it the first time. I imagine Hicks is going to pull the same stunt the next time I open up Empire. This trilogy is a definite keep.

 Reviews:

My review of Empire and Confederation

Fiction, History, Humour

Flagg, Fannie: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1987)

Leave a comment

My first meeting with Fannie Flagg (or Patricia Neal) was on the film-creen. I am trying to remember just how far back she and I go, and I believe I might have a tentative meeting period set at Grease the movie (with Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta).

When I encountered her literary work I had become an adult. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe became a movie. I got to meet the two friends Idgie and Ruth whose experiences made me laugh and cry.

Cover photo: Arthur Rothstein

Another few years down the road, I picked up the novel and fell in love again. Fannie Flagg became one of my favorite authors just a few pages into the book. And now, just a few weeks ago my dad fell in love as well, and not just with Fried Green Tomatoes. Having read one of her novels, he just had to borrow the rest of the Fannie Flagg novels I have in my library.

Part of his love for her work lay in the time period described. These were tough times in the US and the rest of the world. They weren’t called the depression years for nothing. Alabama struggled with recognizing women and non-christians/whites as equals.

I would have wanted Idgie for a friend. Her love, fierceness and loyalty toward Ruth is priceless. Ruth needs someone like Idgie to be able to see beyond the prison that life made for her.

I love the humour in the novel. When the search for Frank Bennett is on and Sheriff Kilgore eats at the cafe is priceless. Another moment occurs right after when the Sheriff steps into the beauty parlor with his men and gets thrown out all embarrassed at having overstepped the gender boundaries.

The story of the storyteller, Cleo Threadgoode, and her listener, Evelyn Couch, is heart-warming and uplifting. I still carry the images of the changes in Evelyn from the movie in my head. Her change in the novel are just as immense.

Flagg managed the job of jumping between the storyteller and her memories. Her writing flows, boy does it flow. If you want to read a novel about life, then Fannie Flagg is the author to read.

The film Fried Green Tomatoes came out in 1991 and is based on the novel.

1992:

  • Oscars: Nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
  • American Comedy Award: Nominated for Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) and Funniest Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture
  • Golden Globe: Nominated for Best Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical and Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical and Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
  • USC Scripter Award: Nominated
  • WGA Award (Screen): Nominated for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
  • GLAAD Media Award: Won Outstanding Film
  • Wise Owl Award: Won Television and Theatrical Film Fiction
  • USC Scripter Award: Won

1993:

  • BAFTA: Nominated for Best Actress and Best Actress in a Supporting Role
  • BMI Film Music Award: Won
  • Young Artist Award: Won Best Young Actress Under Ten in a Motion Picture
Reblogged, Young Adult

Objectification’s Role in a Suicide

Link 1 Comment

Taking care of our young should be priority one, not driving them to kill themselves.

Amanda’s stalker was a terrorist in his own right. He tortured her through his relentless stalking. Nothing she did could help her escape. While I strongly doubt it, I hope that some part of him feels at least some shame.

BroadBlogs

More than sexual objectification was certainly involved in 15-year-old Amanda Todd’s death. But it seems to have played a role.

It all began when Amanda and a few of her middle school friends started videochatting with strangers just for fun. Some told her she was “stunning, beautiful, perfect,” a complement any 13-year-old would enjoy. Eventually, a man asked her to flash. And she did.

A year later this same guy found her and threatened to send the nude photos to her family, friends and her entire school if she didn’t “put on a show for him.” When she refused, he did.

Amanda became the laughingstock of the school and lost all of her friends. Anxiety and major depression overtook her life and she turned to drugs, alcohol and cutting to cover the pain.

She moved a couple of times, trying to get away, but her stalker always collected the names of…

View original post 346 more words

Fantasy

Briggs, Patricia: Alpha and Omega series

Leave a comment

Patricia Briggs books fall into the light-reading fantasy section. Her books are fun and easy to read. In the Alpha and Omega novels we meet werewolves and witches, vampires and fae, all capable of wickedness and heroic deeds. As usual in such tales the characters tend to survive the most amazing things. There is plenty of humor, some romance and lots of action in this series. The Alpha and Omega series has been set in the same world as the Mercy Thompson series.

Bran – the leader of the werewolves (Marrock) in the US lives in the hills of Montana. He has two sons, Samuel and Charles. We’ve met Samuel already in the Mercy Thompson books, although he does make a brief appearance in his function as a doctor. Charles is Bran’s other son. He has been born a werewolf, not something that should be possible. Charles is Bran’s assassin. If a werewolf steps out of order, it is his job to take care of the problem. His ability to remain cool and collected while killing is one of the main reasons for having such a job.

CRY WOLF (2008)

“Cover for omnibus” by Lindsey Look (Stunning cover)

Anna, Charles’ mate (to her surprise), has been living with a pack in Chicago. The other werewolves had been abusing her severely. When that came to the attention of Bran, Charles was sent to take care of the matter. That led to Charles and Anna’s wolves recognizing each other as mates. Anna is brought to Bran’s pack to live with them.

Walter Rice, a Vietnam veteran, lives up in the Cabinet Wilderness in Montana. One day he witnesses the attack on a young man and steps in to protect him. Rice ends up being mauled, but survives. When other mysterious deaths occur in the area a rogue werewolf is suspected and Charles is asked to look into it. He and Anna go.

HUNTING GROUND (2009) – Nominee for the Endeavour Award – for best book by a Pacific Northwest writer 2010

Cover by Dan Dos Santos

Charles is trying to convince his father to stay away from a convention of werewolves in Seattle. He feels his father will be in unnecessary danger from the European delegation. Charles’ intuition is acting up. Being an Omega, Anna is able to stand up to Bran without his Alpha influence taking over. After she has yelled at Bran, he is able to listen to what the two have to say.

Bran accepts Charles’ feelings and sends Charles and Anna instead as his representatives. Together they are to try to convince the other delegates of the need to go public. The other delegates aren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of going public. Here we see that the timeline is a bit back in time from the Mercy Thompson series. There the decision to go public has already been made and Adam is the werewolves’ outward face.

In Seattle people are being found dead and mauled. When Anna is attacked by vampires using werewolf tricks and magic, Charles has to figure out how to save the situation without getting killed by former lovers and new enemies.

FAIR GAME (2012)

Young Leslie has moved to California with her father. There she ends up in the capable hands of Mrs. Cullinan. When animals and children start disappearing (even Leslie’s new puppy) three people turn up at the neighbors and take her away. The neighbor and the three new people turn out to be fae. When one of them offers Mrs. Cullinan a favor as thanks for her warning, she says no thanks. Instead Leslie ends up being the one owed. But having learned that the fae were powerful and charming and that they ate children and puppies, Leslie was not eager to cash in her favor.

Fair Game is set a while after Hunting Ground but shortly after River Marked. Charles is struggling in his capacity as an assassin and Anna seems the only one capable of seeing it. She keeps on confronting Bran about it, and only Omeganess keeps her from shaking in her shoes. Because of the new rules, Charles no longer feels he is dispensing justice but rather murder and this is causing ghosts to haunt him.

When the FBI call the Marrock for help in solving a spree of murders, Bran chooses to send Charles and Anna to take a look. Anna gets to play good guy and Charles her bodyguard. In Boston Anna meets Leslie and they get to test each other’s intentions.

Alpha and Omega: Cry Wolf Graphic Novels published 2012 by Dynamite. Adapted by David Lawrence,  illustrated by Todd Herman with additional art by Jenny Frison and a cover by Dan Dos Santos.

Science Fiction, Thriller

Czerneda, Julie E: The Trade Pact Cycle

Leave a comment

TIES OF POWER (1999)

Cover art by Luis Royo

You know that feeling you get when its been ages since you read a book and then you discover again why you’ve kept it in your library. Julie E. Czerneda has been such a discovery. What a delight. Czerneda has the flowing ability. It’s like listening to good music reading her books.

In a sense the plot is pretty basic. Someone gets screwed and they set out to right the wrong. In Julie’s Trade Pact Cycle books this happens in a universe where the different races of intelligent life have joined in a Trade Pact. There are outsiders. One of these is the Clan – a group of people (look pretty much like humans) who have the ability to travel the M’hir (a place outside of regular space) and telepathic abilities. Some of the members of the Clan are extremely powerful and one of these is Sira – our female protagonist.

The Clan oppose her attraction to Jason Morgan, and Sira herself is afraid of what her power might do to this telepathic human. She is right to fear her own power. When Sira is attacked by the Clan, Sira sends Morgan off to recover what was stolen. Unfortunately a lot of her fury with the Clan is sent along and Morgan is having to fight the urge to express this anger through the book.

As Jason is sent off, Sira transports herself to the only place she feels she will be safe – the Drapsk space ship. She is correct. She is indeed safe on the Drapsk vessel, but that safety also brings a new set of problems Sira’s way. The Drapsk are very good at getting things their own way, and that way includes Sira’s time.

TO Wallpapers 3X Luis Royo 102 To Trade the Stars, papeis desktop image Luis Royo Art and PaintingTRADE THE STARS (2002)

Cover art by Luis Royo

To Trade The Stars continues a few months from where Ties of Power left off. Sira and Jason continue to trade but discover that somehow Jason’s telepathic abilities have become known. This is making it difficult to get good jobs. One does turn up for Morgan at Kimmicle (miner’s world), leaving Sira free to go to Plexis and Huido by M’hir. When she gets there, she ends up being kidnapped. We all know that Jason will turn the universe inside out to find her. He is not going to be alone in this search.

In the meantime Rael and Barac from the previous are stuck on Drapskii continuing what Sira began. They are both understandably frustrated with the Drapsk as the Drapsk are of a different species. When Barac gets a call for help from Huido, he leaps at the chance.

Once again I liked the prose of Julie. She writes seamlessly. Once again, I’ve found an author that has the gift of flow. Her books are just shy of 500 pages and that might hinder some from reading her books. Don’t worry, they are available as audiobooks at audible.com.