Beautiful Creatures (Book 1)

Es gab ein paar Schwächen aber ich mag das Buch irgendwie

Can't believe it, I finished this book... after.... 11 months or something like this and the only thing that made me go on reading it was the expectation of writing a review about it so... Here it comes. I try to avoid spoilers and I will mark them. Grammar mistakes could happen since I'm not a native speaker, sorry for that. First of all: If you enjoyed reading this book; good for you. I'm not insulting you or your taste in books, I just have a different opinion. Thanks. Things I liked, because you always start with the positive things... The basic idea. The idea of letting the girl be special and the boy gets introduced into this new, magical world. The magic system itself. It was something different and I enjoyed reading about the magic stuff. And NOW I can start talking about the things I didn't like, about the issues I had with this book. My now Ex-Boyfriend read the first pages, because I was interested in his opinion. He was like: "Oh, a famous book about two girls romantically involved? That's cool." ... "It is... not about two girls?" "Nope." "Wait... Oh. Ethan. Sure it's not just his NAME that is male?" I get it. There are probably boys with interests that are not typical "male". There are girls who's interests are not tpyical "female". However, there's a reason why linguistics are able to say: Oh, this text was PROBABLY written by a man and this one by a woman. It has something to do with tendencies in our way of writing and thinking and that's a totally normal thing to do. But Ethan has a more female inner voice than the most girly girllike girl you could imagine! It felt like the authors never ever talked to a single 16-year old boy. Or a 16-year old anything. It felt like they were like: Oh, let's be special. Let's create a special snowflake boy. Well. Where's the point in having a boy then if readers tend to confuse him with a girl? I think it's kind of insulting how little interest was shown in getting to know how a boy thinks about the world. He didn't feel slightly relatable. The oh so stereotypical setting. You have a small, southern town. And it fulfills every. Single. Stereotype. the world has about small, southern towns in the USA. It's not like this can never work. In Under the Dome Stephen King showed that playing with stereotypes can create an awsome story. But giving the impression that this version of Gatlin should be taken seriously .... didn't work out well. It felt like a parody, but since you know it's NOT a parody it was slightly embarrassing. The length. Over 500 hundred pages for introducing a conflict, trying to solve this conflict and then.... you've got 20 pages for the showdown. Sorry but that's boring. The growing love story was more like: "Ooooh, let's hang out. No wait. Oh yes. Nooope. YES! Nope. Yes, but... No, but... Okay, let's do this." And that was it. 500 pages full of boring love conflicts, instead of focusing on the real problems, mixed up with stereotypes and situations were I was like: What...? But not in the way of: OMG, what's happening?!? I need to know what's happening next! More like: What the hell... that... doesn't make sense, why whould they... What? ... Why? ... -.-'' That leads to the next problem; the villains. They could have been so cool! Everything could have been awsome and they could have made the story so much better! But nope. They were there... but actually no one cared. "Oh, one of the main villains is at the party and destroyed it? Let's ground Lena for it even though she's totally innocent and give her the feeling she is as useless and freakish as everyone thinks she is instead of chasing the evil cousin out of this town and protect my niece and try to figure out the great evil scheme behind the curtains! I'm such a great uncle. High Five!" And the end? What the HELL happened to the villains? Lena was like **SPOILER** creating a fire circle and OH NO! I'm a powerful, dark Caster but my daughter and her mean fire circle are too strong! Let's run away guys! First let me stab my daughters boyfriend and then vanish like nothings happened. **SPOILER FINSHED* I could probably find more and more and more things I'm annoyed with but I think my list is sufficient. Here the short form: 1. Ethan is not a girl? Really? Oh... 2. A stereotype for you, and for you, AND for you! Stereotypes for everyone! 3. STOP UNLOGICAL CONFLICTS AND FOCUS ON THE REAL PROBLEMS 4. Who needs villains anyway?

Nachdem sich Ethan am Ende von "Eighteen Moons" vom Wasserturm gestürzt hat, um die Ordnung und so die Welt zu retten, steigen wir mit ihm in den vierten Band der Caster Chronicles ein. Für das grosse Finale haben sich die beiden Autorinnen schon vom Aufbau her etwas Neues einfallen lassen. So ist die ganze Geschichte in drei Bücher unterteilt. Im ersten und dritten sind wir an Ethans Seite, im mittleren Teil sehen wir, wie es Lena ergeht. Ethan und das erste Buch konnten mich gleich wieder in die Geschichte ziehen. Er wacht in seinem Zimmer auf, doch irgend etwas ist anders. Lena reagiert nicht auf sein Kelten, dafür dringt ein altbekannter Duft, eine vertraute Stimme zu ihm hoch. Als er seiner Mutter gegenüber steht, weiss er, dass er doch tot ist - oder besser gesagt in einer anderen Dimension, in der Anderwelt ist. So hat sich nicht nur der Aufbau sondern auch das Setting geändert. Leider fehlte mir das Südstaaten-Flair, das den Vorgängern einen ganz speziellen Charme verpasst hatte. Die Anderwelt war für mich nicht richtig fassbar, ich konnte sie mir nicht wirklich vorstellen. Da Ethan und Lena hier getrennte Wege gehen und beide dem anderen nachtrauern, haben Kami Garcia und Margaret Stohl eine eher düstere, zum Teil karge, ja sogar hoffnungslose Atmosphäre geschaffen. Schön fand ich, dass die meisten Charaktere auch in diesem abschliessenden Band nochmals einen Auftritt hatten. Und einmal mehr muss ich sagen, dass Amma meine ganze Sympathie bekam. Ein wirklich toller, facettenreicher Charakter, der sich in die Herzen der Leser bäckt. Nachdem bei mir mit Band 3 der Tiefpunkt erreicht war, haben die Autorinnen hier wieder etwas mehr gezaubert. Vor allem der erste Teil hat mir richtig Spass gemacht und hat sich flott weglesen lassen. Lenas Teil wies meiner Meinung nach dann wieder die eine oder andere Länge auf, doch dann wurden alle Stränge zusammengezogen, es wurde nochmals richtig eingeheizt und endete in einem schönen, schlüssigen Finale, so dass ich zufrieden auf diese Reihe zurückblicke. Fazit: Mit "Nineteen Moons" findet die unsterbliche, unheilvolle, grenzenlose und ewige Liebe von Ethan und Lena ein Ende, das mich zufrieden zurückblicken lässt. Trotz kleineren Mankos hat mich die magische Reihe im Caster-Universum sehr gut unterhalten.