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Florida Betty posted:I read the first one, and liked it (it's fun, though definitely not great), but the second was really, really bad. I couldn't even get through it. The third in the series is supposed to be out later this month, and I'm not going to bother. I hope the movies are better. Captain Mog posted:One book that should really be on that list is "The Raven Boys" by Maggie Stfievator. It's about a group of rich prep school boys living in Virginia who search endlessly for an old urban legend in the hopes that it will grant them each one wish. A girl named Blue (I know) moves to town with her psychic family and decides to help them on their quest. There's a lot of metaphysical/occult weirdness involved and the writing is absolutely fantastic. I know all of that sounds vague, but it's one of those works that are hard to get a handle on and sound odd if you attempt to explain.
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Oct 9, 2013 06:04
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While this thread is bumpin: I'm reading A Series of Unfortunate Events right now. I guess it's more kid-lit instead of YA, but I'm sure there's overlap there. I'm on book 6 of 13 and I'm kinda devolving into a really strong love-hate relationship with the series. I love that it perfectly captures a child's preternatural sense that life sucks and the world is awful, and in the early books Olaf is a far more menacing villain than, say, Kronos in Percy Jackson, but the books keep getting longer and longer and my patience for Handler's (admittedly on-the-mark) pre-junior high sub-Douglas Adams "zany" humor is rapidly diminishing, I feel like 13 books is waaay too long for a book series, by a factor of like 2. The Complete Wreck box set is really slick, though.
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Oct 9, 2013 06:37
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elbow posted:I liked this book well enough, but it really bothered me that Blue has no personality, and no friends. She's defined 90% by her friendship with the boys, 10% by her family, and 0% by herself. That's not the kind of book a teenage girl should read, I think. This is sort of a staple of YA paranormal romance (really, any kind of romance, now that I think about it) with a female protagonist as of late. The author intentionally writes them with as few defining characteristics as possible in order for the reader (ideally a teenage girl or failing that her 40-something mother) to be able to project themself onto that character with minimal obstruction (ie: character traits that run counter to what the implied reader is imagined to be by the author). ...Anyway, someone was talking about YA horror a while back and I thought I should bring up a trilogy that I'd just started reading a little while ago. It doesn't really have a name to, it's sort of informally called the "John Cleaver" trilogy and consists of three books, "I am Not a Serial Killer," "Mr. Monster," and "I Don't Want to Kill You," by Dan Wells. The books center around a boy named John Cleaver who's a diagnosed sociopath and self-identified potential serial killer. He goes to drat-near painful lengths to try and live a normal life, but then people in his home town start getting murdered by what looks to be a serial killer. Tempted by the chance to "study" a real killer up close, he sort of becomes a teenage cross between Sherlock Holmes and Hannibal Lecter and is in just as much danger of becoming a killer himself as he is of getting killed. I'd been aware of Wells for a while after listening to the podcast he does with Brandon Sanderson and two other authors called "Writing Excuses" and he plugged the book multiple times, so I figured I'd give it a go. It's really goddamn creepy and does a good job of showing you just how hosed up this kid is. Wells has gone on to do other things, he's got a YA dystopia series out right now called "Partials," but this one was his debut and I highly recommend it.
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Oct 10, 2013 07:48
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Qwo posted:While this thread is bumpin: I'm reading A Series of Unfortunate Events right now. I guess it's more kid-lit instead of YA, but I'm sure there's overlap there. I'm on book 6 of 13 and I'm kinda devolving into a really strong love-hate relationship with the series. I love that it perfectly captures a child's preternatural sense that life sucks and the world is awful, and in the early books Olaf is a far more menacing villain than, say, Kronos in Percy Jackson, but the books keep getting longer and longer and my patience for Handler's (admittedly on-the-mark) pre-junior high sub-Douglas Adams "zany" humor is rapidly diminishing, If my memory serves, the books start becoming an entirely different animal starting around the eighth or ninth. Keep going. E: Wikipedia has the seventh one as the one in which things start to go off the rails.
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Oct 20, 2013 22:02
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Chieves posted:If my memory serves, the books start becoming an entirely different animal starting around the eighth or ninth. Keep going.
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Oct 20, 2013 22:07
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I just finished House of Hades, and it was pretty good. I enjoyed it more than I remember enjoying the last one. I was surprised (in a good way) by Nico being gay. You see a lot of pop lit being cowardly about such things. See: Harry Potter. In addition to be nicely inclusive, I thought it made a lot of sense for Nico and his history. Wittgen fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Oct 25, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 08:28
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nine-gear crow posted:This is sort of a staple of YA paranormal romance (really, any kind of romance, now that I think about it) with a female protagonist as of late. The author intentionally writes them with as few defining characteristics as possible in order for the reader (ideally a teenage girl or failing that her 40-something mother) to be able to project themself onto that character with minimal obstruction (ie: character traits that run counter to what the implied reader is imagined to be by the author). This is why I love championing Ally Carter and Richelle Mead. The protagonists are all fully formed characters instead of cyphers.
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Oct 21, 2013 10:15
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Out of curiosity, what kind of perspective and tense do people prefer for their YA novels? Honestly, I prefer third person past tense. I've heard the argument that first person gets you into the character's head better, but I'm not sure. I can see how it would, but at the same time, I've never had particularly more trouble getting into a protagonist's head in 3rd person. I've never much cared for present tense, but it seems like a lot of the YA I read lately is in present tense; so maybe it's really common.
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Oct 21, 2013 23:01
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The present tense of the Hunger Games jarred me throughout the first book, but then I got used to it. I prefer past tense, I think. But I don't mind between third person or first.
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Oct 22, 2013 03:06
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I grew up reading so much YA that first-person seems normal to me. Honestly, between first-person past, first-person present, and third-person past, I don't really care. Third-person present can be distracting at first, but I rarely notice once I get into the story. In most cases, if you asked me what perspective and tense a book was in, I wouldn't be able to tell you. Even with some of my favorite books that I've read over and over, I have a hard time recalling which one they used. Other people seem to find it way more noticeable than I do.
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Oct 23, 2013 06:52
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Wittgen posted:I just finished House of Hades, and it was pretty good. I enjoyed it more than I remember enjoying the last one.
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Oct 23, 2013 15:45
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AreYouStillThere posted:Anna Dressed in Blood was a pretty successful YA - not exactly horror but it was a little creepy and the chick was a badass ghost. I know nothing about publishing, though. So I started reading this book because of this post. I'm only three chapters in but I really like it. It might help that I also just started watching Supernatural on Netflix. I know it wasn't really put in here as a recommendation but thanks anyway!
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Oct 26, 2013 01:36
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Tupping Liberty posted:So I started reading this book because of this post. I'm only three chapters in but I really like it. It might help that I also just started watching Supernatural on Netflix. Great! The author is a super sweet lady too. For my own part, I'm reading The Mortal Engines which I'm pretty sure I'm doing because of this thread, and wow it is awesome so far. There is a freaking double digit body count for this book already, which is why I think it is YA instead of middle reader, even though the type face screams middle reader to me. I hope this doesn't mean I like steampunk 
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Oct 26, 2013 21:13
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AreYouStillThere posted:I hope this doesn't mean I like steampunk Nah, you're enjoying Mortal Engines, so that means you have good taste.
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Oct 27, 2013 20:19
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Starting to read House of Hades, barely got going, but I'm liking it. Also Blood of Olympus is a  as gently caress title.
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Oct 30, 2013 01:33
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I couldn't get through the first "Divergent" book so I just returned them to the library. Shame. I hate when a book that seems promising turns out to be a dud.
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Oct 31, 2013 05:36
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I just finished the audio book for Catching Fire. I read the whole trilogy in about 3 days a few years ago, so Catching Fire was more of a stepping stone from Hunger Games to Mockingjay. CF takes lots of knocks, it seems like, but man, it was really good. The second arena is much better than the first. And I like that Katniss is so flawed. I hope the movie ends up better than the first one did.
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Nov 1, 2013 03:14
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Wittgen posted:I just finished House of Hades, and it was pretty good. I enjoyed it more than I remember enjoying the last one. Though I never liked how Rick always has to describe the thoughts of a person based on their expressions in italics with a lot 90s DUDDDDE dialogue Also glad to see Diocletian get his due, he gets a bad rap when it comes to Roman Emperors, along with Nero I'm in awe of how many obscure myths Riordan brings up, I haven't heard of some of these monsters/characters 
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Nov 2, 2013 05:06
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Tupping Liberty posted:I just finished the audio book for Catching Fire. I read the whole trilogy in about 3 days a few years ago, so Catching Fire was more of a stepping stone from Hunger Games to Mockingjay. CF takes lots of knocks, it seems like, but man, it was really good. The second arena is much better than the first. And I like that Katniss is so flawed. I hope the movie ends up better than the first one did. I also enjoyed CF a lot. The arena looks amazing in the trailer.
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Nov 4, 2013 09:48
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bowmore posted:What's the first and best YA that comes to mind if I wanted to read something awesome? I really love the Unwind series by Neal Shusterman. The "last" book came out this month, but then it was revealed in the acknowledgements that there is a fourth book now. It's a book about a world where abortion is illegal but you can retroactively abort your teenager if they're not living up to their potential. They don't technically "die" because all of their parts are harvested and used for transplants. Shusterman does a really great job of imagining all of the possible repercussions of this. It's a really great read and the quality of his writing is great. Now, Allegient on the other hand... I did make it through the first two books of the series and enjoyed them, but then I was disappointed with this one. The quality of her writing didn't really improve over the series and this book is told from two different points of view- sadly, I sometimes had to go back and recheck whose point of view I was reading... she was not very good at differentiating voices. Disappointing, but I'm glad I finished the series.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:16
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Allegiant is a prime example of one of these late-series books that publishers are in such a hurry to rush out and make bucket-loads of cash off of, they don't bother to edit enough, and Allegiant really suffered from it. (See also: The Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire. Not all of these have bad books later in the series, but they all have books that would have been significantly better with some judicious editing.) Veronica Roth is not a particularly great writer to start with, but her editors did enough with the first book in the series that it managed to highlight her strengths (building suspense and keeping the reader turning pages). With the later books, they obviously didn't do this, and the second and third books are sloppy messes that don't make sense and aren't even fun to read. I really wish that publishers would do a better job with these later books in their series. I understand why they want to get them out quickly, but in some cases I think it stops series that otherwise might be read a few generations on down the line from becoming actual classics. Yeah, they'll sell now while the hype machine is still running, but once the hype has died down, there will be literally no reason to read the second two books in the Divergent series. They're that bad.
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Nov 5, 2013 21:51
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Oh man I just came here to ask about Allegiant because of the bad reviews it's getting on Audible. Only listened to the first one, which I enjoyed, but I guess the next 2 aren't worth getting. Started listening to Mistborn, it's good stuff.
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Nov 6, 2013 04:18
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Thanks for the thoughts about tense and person, guys.aslan posted:Allegiant is a prime example of one of these late-series books that publishers are in such a hurry to rush out and make bucket-loads of cash off of, they don't bother to edit enough, and Allegiant really suffered from it. (See also: The Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire. Not all of these have bad books later in the series, but they all have books that would have been significantly better with some judicious editing.) Veronica Roth is not a particularly great writer to start with, but her editors did enough with the first book in the series that it managed to highlight her strengths (building suspense and keeping the reader turning pages). With the later books, they obviously didn't do this, and the second and third books are sloppy messes that don't make sense and aren't even fun to read. That's a shame. The Divergent series sort of interested me, but I guess it's not going on my list. I'm having a hard time putting into words how upset it makes me about publishers rushing things. I can understand the urge to have the next book, now, I can (this is part of the reason I typically wait until a series is done before I read it), it's just, ugh. You're letting the author down, you're letting the readers down, (which in turn lets the author down again). I understand it from a business perspective as well, but as you said, it probably will bite them later. I wonder if this will push more authors towards self publishing (after all, if their editors/publishers aren't doing their job, why bother with them). Not sure how I feel about that though.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:24
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Is Codex Alera not considered YA? Because if it is, people in this thread should really read it. And if it isn't, people in this thread should really read it.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:47
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Finished House of Hades and holy poo poo whoever said that it had a lot of character development wasn't kidding, its pretty impressive that he gives all the main 7 a moment to shine in their own subquest. Also I love how his interpretations of Nyx and Tartarus, almost Lovecraftian in the details Also I admit I got sad about Bob and Damasen 
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Nov 8, 2013 00:50
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achillesforever6 posted:Also I admit I got sad about Bob and Damasen Good. Now you know you're human.
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Nov 8, 2013 00:59
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If you have any interest in Harry Potter fan-fiction and the writers of it (either as a genuine aficionado or as a bemused fly-on-the-wall), you would do well to check out Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (the Eleanor & Park author). The protagonist, Cath, is a college freshman who happens to be the author of on-going FanFixx.net megahit "Carry On, Simon," which pairs boy wizard Also, the cover is adorable:  EDIT - Fair warning: if you don't have a lot of patience for pathetic geeks, you probably won't like this book. But I gotta say that, as a pathetic geek myself, I have a lot of affection for Cath. Pththya-lyi fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 06:10
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Caustic Chimera posted:That's a shame. The Divergent series sort of interested me, but I guess it's not going on my list. I'm having a hard time putting into words how upset it makes me about publishers rushing things. I can understand the urge to have the next book, now, I can (this is part of the reason I typically wait until a series is done before I read it), it's just, ugh. You're letting the author down, you're letting the readers down, (which in turn lets the author down again). I understand it from a business perspective as well, but as you said, it probably will bite them later. Editors absolutely do their jobs. Being a pro author means being able to write on deadline. Editing and revising a manuscript over the course of a year is perfectly reasonable for a 70k word book. I wouldn't really call that a rush. Part of the problem comes from a lot of newer authors signing up for three book contracts on spec; that is, the first one is close to finished but the other two exist only as summaries. There's no way to guarantee those other two books will turn out brilliant -- that's the gamble both publishers and readers are taking on when trusting a new writer. New writers are unlikely to turn down the deadline terms, because who would? But not a lot of them realize how much the process of publishing a book will gently caress with them. Book 2s are generally written in the period between book 1 being bought and being published. This can be kind of overwhelming, but since the outside world doesn't know you exist yet and your agent and editor(s) and publisher are all assuring you that you're amazing and everyone is so excited, it's not that bad. The main shift is from having all the time in the world to write to suddenly having a due date. But as long as you hit that due date, you get months and months of your editor's time to polish up the book. Book 3s are tougher for a variety of reasons. Your book 1 has gone out for review, and now you have a real sense of how successful (or, most likely, how unsuccessful) you're going to be. If all goes well, you have the expectations of lots of fans; if it doesn't, you feel like a failure who clearly doesn't know what you're doing. Either way, the stress levels rise and you can easily delude yourself about the quality of what you're producing, if you're even able to write at all. This on top of all the varying levels of marketing you're expected to do in addition to producing a new book. I have no idea what happened with Roth except to guess that she was never that great a writer to begin with, and is probably not someone who benefited from a yearly release schedule. Suzanne Collins is much, much more experienced and so doesn't have that excuse. Like, I know it's tempting to blame editors and publishers, but the reality is that your target audience in children's/YA publishing is gonna out-age your books if you take ten years between each volume. It's no different from, say, writing a TV series. Once you have an audience, they're only going to wait so long between volumes/episodes before they stop caring. If you can't write a decent to good book on that schedule, don't pitch a series.
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Nov 8, 2013 20:48
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I've thought about it, and you're right. I was a bit harsh. I guess I more just feel angry that I feel like the author is in a way throwing things away and I guess I'm looking for someone else to blame. But no, the author should know what they're getting into. But I do disagree on the aging out thing. Middle-grade, sure, but plenty of adults are reading YA books; and maybe this is me being obsessed with books, but I'd be willing to continue a series I aged out of, unless I determined it was total crap when I was older. Like, objectively crap. I mean, maybe not 10 years wait, but, at the same time, I'm certainly willing to wait for more than a year.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:22
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Well if it helps any, Veronica Roth's problem was one of plotting, not execution, so extra time wouldn't have helped anyway. The resolution that made everyone mad is what she says she planned from the get go. The aging out thing is definitely more of a MG problem (and I say this having once been a devoted fan of a series for 8-year-olds well into my late teens, so....). More adults read YA now, so more actual teens feel comfortable reading it instead of feeling like they have to age up to adult novels. The release schedule is really more about keeping up momentum. You only really know if a series has taken off when the third book releases. Until then, you want to constantly build up your base via word of mouth, which requires steady content that more and more people can get excited about. If you take too long between books, you risk losing steam as new properties enter the market to steal away interest. From what I can tell browsing the self-pub thread in Creative Convention, that's the tactic they suggest, too. But of course these are all commercial concerns, not so much ones that will create enduring classics. Not that I expect Divergent would have ever reached that status, anyway. You're really not missing anything.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:00
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I burned through all 4 HoO books and even though I didn't really care for any of the new cast (besides Leo), it was definitely better written than the PJ books. When I first read about it, I thought 'Well this is stupid', but the greek/roman split was actually done quite well, especially Minerva/Athena. The giants so far went down a bit too easy for my tastes though. The only real downside: I thought House of Hades was the final book of the series and now I have to wait for another year. But the most recent books I read were Zero Sum/Sight and Steelheart (is that even YA?), both with intelligent protagonists, who were capable of outwitting their opponents without using bullshit powers everywhere (thats probably why I dislike most of the new HoO cast). The main love interests in those book also had a similar feel to them, which gave the MC/LI a nice dynamic and especially in Zero Sum/Sight some really good dialogue. Can anyone recommend me books with a similar dynamic? >This edit is dedicated to 'definitely' and me finally looking up how the hell it is written Wuxi fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 22:13
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Wuxi posted:>This edit is dedicated to 'definitely' and me finally looking up how the hell it is written The key is remembering that "finite" is within definitely.  One of my language arts colleagues taught me that one.
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Nov 9, 2013 02:18
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Hef Deezy posted:Well if it helps any, Veronica Roth's problem was one of plotting, not execution, so extra time wouldn't have helped anyway. The resolution that made everyone mad is what she says she planned from the get go. "The resolution that made everyone mad" isn't really what most readers are mad about, though. It's been getting the most press because a number of the early reviews focused on it to the extent of all else, but ask the average reader, and they're more upset about sloppy plotting, lack of distinctive voice between the two narrators, and world-building that falls apart when exposed to outside logic--bad writing stuff, not "I didn't like the ending" stuff. And if anything, readers seem to be more upset that Roth didn't sell Tris's death effectively enough, not that she killed her in the first place. The reasons that she died were not enough to justify her death from a plot standpoint--to steal a creative writing catchphrase, Roth didn't earn the ending. That's a major point of why so many readers reacted to the death the way they did. I certainly don't mean to point all the fingers at the editors. The major problem here is that Roth is just not an experienced enough writer for the story she was trying to tell, and as she got deeper into the narrative, that became more and more apparent. But I don't know how somebody can read the latter two books in the series and say that the editors and publishers didn't sit down on the job, either. There is no reason a book should ever be published with as glaring gaps in the premise of the entire conflict as these ones had! And they never would have if Allegiant had been coming from a first-time author. They were published the way they were because the publishers knew they'd sell millions of copies regardless. aslan fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Nov 10, 2013 |
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Nov 10, 2013 00:30
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aslan posted:I certainly don't mean to point all the fingers at the editors. The major problem here is that Roth is just not an experienced enough writer for the story she was trying to tell, and as she got deeper into the narrative, that became more and more apparent. People were reacting so strongly to the ending that the author actually posted a spoiler-heavy explanation to her blog about why she wrote it the way she did: http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/2013/10/about-end-of-allegiant-spoilers.html It's simultaneously cringeworthy and heartbreaking to read her attempt to salvage respect for a story that should've been told right the first time. It's like the book can no longer stand on its own without this giant footnote. Such a shame. I read Divergent and Insurgent and thought they were mediocre, but interesting enough to hold my attention. (They felt like a pale imitation of The Hunger Games, but I could be biased since I had been given the books with a note about how they were similar to THG. Collins' books were on my brain as I read Roth's.) I had been waiting on a copy of Allegiant from the library when I could finally no longer stand not knowing what people hated about the book -- I read the first few pages on Amazon a few days ago to get a taste, realized I couldn't get through an entire book that was written so poorly, and read a few dozen reviews lambasting the ending. I'm known for being a die-hard spoiler-avoiding completionist, especially when it comes to books/book series, but I feel like I dodged a bullet with this one.
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Nov 10, 2013 01:20
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aslan posted:I certainly don't mean to point all the fingers at the editors. The major problem here is that Roth is just not an experienced enough writer for the story she was trying to tell, and as she got deeper into the narrative, that became more and more apparent. But I don't know how somebody can read the latter two books in the series and say that the editors and publishers didn't sit down on the job, either. There is no reason a book should ever be published with as glaring gaps in the premise of the entire conflict as these ones had! And they never would have if Allegiant had been coming from a first-time author. They were published the way they were because the publishers knew they'd sell millions of copies regardless. Yeah, obviously HarperCollins itself doesn't care about quality so much as it cares about the 450k guaranteed sales in Q4 of 2013. But the publisher is not the editor; she didn't have the power to delay the book because it sucked, not with so much money on the line and so many marketing plans in place. Semantics, yeah, but I guarantee Roth got detailed revision notes and then just failed to deliver.
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Nov 10, 2013 04:34
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I'm currently listening to The Book Thief on audiobook, really liking it so far. I'm trying to get through it before I see the movie. Has anyone seen it? Is it a good adaptation? You can just answer yes or no if you don't want to spoil anything. There's a crazy amount of Young Adult books being made into movies right now. Too bad they're mostly hit or miss. I'm surprised The Mortal Instruments got their sequel greenlit.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:57
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Tupping Liberty posted:I'm surprised The Mortal Instruments got their sequel greenlit. 'The gently caress you say? Jesus, according to Forbes, the producers pushed for it after being harangued by diehard fans of the series. Still, yay for the power of social media and fan mobilization, but... loving Mortal Instruments? Really. Oh well, at least it gives Lena Headey something to do while she's on hiatus from Game of Thrones, I guess.
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Nov 17, 2013 07:40
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Did they? I'm surprised too. Maybe it did okay enough internationally to justify it, and they think they can cut the budget down with the second one? I'm really interested in seeing how Divergent does as a movie. It seems like basically aside from the three biggies--Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games--almost every YA adaptation I can think of has failed both critically and commercially. Divergent has a fairly similar profile to those big successes--big sales numbers (not comparable to them yet, but might get up there if the movie does well), a fan base that has extended beyond young adults, a fandom that is highly invested in its love story. But the trailers look really bad so far (not to even mention the string of bad press and blog attention they got over Allegiant recently), and I'm wondering if they'll actually pull in anybody who isn't already a fan of the books. If a property like this, which has already sold a handful of millions of copies, can't actually get people in the theaters, then I could see a serious freeze on adapting YA books to film. At least for the blockbuster route. The Spectacular Now got a good indie adaptation this year, and The Fault in Our Stars, which is very likely to be a success given big sales/big fandom plus small movie budget, seems to be going down the same path. And I guess Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist did okay a few years back, although the movie was changed quite a bit from the book. The low-budget indie might open up an alternative path for YA adaptations beyond all the movies they're pitching as "the next Hunger Games"/"the next Twilight"/etc. Are there any other YA book-to-movie adaptations that are actually worth watching?
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Nov 17, 2013 08:08
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aslan posted:Are there any other YA book-to-movie adaptations that are actually worth watching? You mean legit worth watching or "so bad it's funny" worth watching? Because everything I've witnessed in the last decade and change that wasn't Harry Potter/Twilight/The Hunger Games has pretty much crashed and exploded on impact, and they were all first-in-a-series-that-will-never-get-made-now flops. If you by chance are looking for a "worth it for a laugh" YA adaptation, you can't go wrong with Eragon. Just the backstory behind it is more interesting than the movie itself, honestly. The series it was based off of was already kind of weak to begin with--it was essentially a Star Wars/Lord of the Rings crossover fanfic with ORIGINAL CHARACTERS DO NOT STEAL! written by a teenager who hit the jackpot when Carl Hiaasen stumbled across a self-published copy churned out by the guy's parent's small press book company. He then rushed it to Random House who beat down the kid's door offering to publish the second and third (and ultimately fourth) books in the series he was cooking up. Then 20th Century Fox optioned it for a movie, gave a guy who's only credits were VFX work the director's chair and dropped $100 million in his lap and signed a bunch of A-List actors like Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich and Rachel Weiz and proceeded to make a hilarious trainwreck of a movie. How bad is it? Robert Carlyle, an otherwise kind, generous and gentle man, apparently gets hostilely angry if you even mention that he was a part of it whilst in his presence, if rumours are to be believed. I watched it only once, but I distinctly recall chuckling through it the whole time. There was always just... something on screen at any given moment that was immersion-shattering enough to be funny. Watch it, laugh, and pray they at least don't gently caress up The Maze Runner too badly. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Nov 17, 2013 |
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Nov 17, 2013 11:15
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nine-gear crow posted:The series it was based off of was already kind of weak to begin with--it was essentially a Star Wars/Lord of the Rings crossover fanfic with ORIGINAL CHARACTERS DO NOT STEAL! written by a teenager who hit the jackpot when Carl Hiaasen stumbled across a self-published copy churned out by the guy's parent's small press book company. He then rushed it to Random House who beat down the kid's door offering to publish the second and third (and ultimately fourth) books in the series he was cooking up.
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Nov 17, 2013 13:37
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