Review: City of Fallen Angels

By: Cassandra Clare

Genre: YA, urban fantasy, romance

# of Pages: 424

Rating: 3 out of 5

City of Fallen Angels is the fourth book in Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments series, which was originally supposed to have ended after City of Glass, the third installment of the series. Although I am a huge fan of the TMI series, as well as The Infernal Devices prequel trilogy that Clare is working on in tandem with TMI, I can't exactly say that City of Fallen Angels lived up to my expectations.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!

I LIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

I do believe that it's been a while. Almost 2 months. O.o I'd lie and say that a lot happened within those two months if it meant that it'd make it sound better, but yeah... All that happened was I graduated college and now have my BA in English with a writing concentration. Woot!!! My final month of classes was still with paper writing and panicked studying, as well as the strangest allergic reaction I've ever had. My right arm was spasming to the point that I was hitting myself in the face with my shoulder. Just imagine having those really bad hiccups that make your eyes water and your chest hurt...only you're not having hiccups... Your arm is just spasming like that because your prescription medicine reacted with an OTC sinus medicine you started taking the day before... Yeah.... It was strange and terrifying. We were all afraid I was having a seizure and I had to leave work 3 hours early. Thankfully, it was just an allergic reaction...

Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi

There's some exciting news for yaoi lovers! The anime adaptation of the Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi (The Best First Love in the World) manga has finally started airing in Japan!!!! I have been waiting for this to start since it was first announced that the anime was going to be made back in January of last year, and was starting to lose hope. :( After hearing about AIC having to drop the remake of Ai no Kusabi and the developers of Sex Pistols postponing to release date of the second OVA for nearly a year, things were looking bleak in the yaoi anime community. Thankfully it made a comeback with the quick release of both Koisuru Bouken OVAs (which are delicious), but I was still desperately checking Aarinfantasy several times a week to see if any news had been released about Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi.

Why have I been so excited about this anime? Well...the creator is Shungiku Nakamura, the amazingly talented woman behind Junjou Romantica. Junjou was a breakout and break-through anime for the yaoi genre, opening doors that had only been knocked upon by the genre in the past. With two seasons and twenty-four episodes, Junjou Romantica is the longest yaoi anime (yaoi, not slash or shounen-ai) that has ever been released. Add the fact that the show was done beautifully to that mix and it's heaven! Sure, there are shows like Gravitation, Sukisho, and Loveless that are all at thirteen episodes a piece, but...yeah... The Gravitation adaptation is just horrible, Sukisho is more silly than anything else, and Loveless, while good, is really a shouta anime. Junjou Romantica went into uncharted territories, kicking ass and taking names all the while.

Music Corner - featuring ONE OK ROCK

I FAIL!!!!!!! I said I was going to try and do at least one "Music Corner" a month, and I completely missed March. T___T Oh, well! I'm here now at the beginning of April with ONE OK ROCK!! :D

ONE OK ROCK was formed in 2005, and is made up of Taka (vocalist), Toru (guitarist), Ryota (bassist), and Tomoya (drummer). They have a distinctive musical sound. Those whose ears are trained to the sound of Japanese rock music will notice their origins immediately, but their sound could also be described as being more "American sounding" than most other Japanese rock bands. This can sometimes be a problem with other bands (as many people listen to Japanese music to escape the mediocre sound of American music), but OOR has managed to find their niche and mesh the two different sounds together in a way that is near perfection.

I'm relatively new to OOR, but the moment I heard "Jibun Rock" I became a fan. Their earlier music (which contains rapping a la Linkin Park) is interesting. I like the rapping and it adds a different flavor to their music, but at the same time, I'm quite pleased with the new direction their sound has gone in. Taka's voice is distinctive and nearly all their melodies are catchy as hell! There are many times where Taka sings in English, and it's actually English...not Engrish!

As they don't have many singles yet, this post won't be nearly as long as the one for MUCC was, but I'm going to follow the same sort of pattern. Song title, year, snippet of translated lyrics, and video. Unlike with MUCC, though, I'm not going to put asterisks beside my favorites...because I love them all!! Heheh. There aren't many, so take a listen to all of them. :D If you don't feel like listening to them all, I would recommend giving "Koi no Aibou Kokoro no Cupid," "Liar," "Jibun Rock," and "Answer is Near" a listen. :)

Happy listening!

The Joys of Drafting

If you could call it that... Heheh. For the second time this semester I needed to pump out a short story draft to submit to my Fiction Writing class. Saying it was tough would be the understatement of the century.

I actually started working on a draft for this round of workshops when the first round was still going on. I had the most amazing and inspirational dream that would not leave me alone, so I decided I would write it. Problem was that it's just a bit too long...and epic...and did I mention long? Heheh. So rather than start from the beginning, I decided to write my draft starting at a point just after halfway through the story, when the main character reaches a very important realization that affects the rest of the entire story.

Halfway Point: Darkest Mercy

By: Melissa Marr

Genre: YA, romance, urban fantasy

# of Pages: 327

Current Page: 147

Rating: 5 out of 5

I am terribly sad to see this series come to an end. I've been there since Wicked Lovely was released in 2007, fawning over the beautifully intricate story since the very beginning. There is just something so musical in the way Melissa Marr weaves her tales and plays with her characters. There is a reason she's my favorite author, after all. Heheh.

I would love to do a summary of Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange, Fragile Eternity, and Radiant Shadows in order to give a good idea of the plot leading up to this particular book, but I'm too afraid of giving away spoilers. T__T What I can sum up without throwing spoilers left and right, however, is that the Wicked Lovely series is the story of the courts of fey (Summer, Winter, High, and Dark -- the Shadow Court added in Radiant Shadows) and the struggles that lie between them. By this point in the story, the world of Faerie (in which reside the High and Shadow Courts) has been sealed, leaving the Summer, Winter, and Dark Courts alone to decide how to handle the oncoming war against Bananach, the faery embodiment of War and Chaos, and the many fey she has managed to draw to her from all courts. A large part of the story is also Aislinn's internal battle between her feelings for Seth, her best friend, and Keenan, the Summer King. Ink Exchange and Radiant Shadows are two "sister novels" to the WL series. Some say that they don't need to be read in order to understand the goings-on of the rest of the story, but I disagree. Radiant Shadows is actually my favorite of the novels to date, and a lot of integral plot occurs in there that is necessary to understand the magnitude of what is going to happen/happening in Darkest Mercy.

March Madness

Believe it or not, this is my favorite time of year. It's funny how many double takes and/or dumbfounded looks I get from people when they learn how much I love college basketball. Yes, I realize that my love of anime and Japanese music and such makes me a nerd, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy other things!!  I live for college basketball and seeing my two teams do so well this year has made it even more exciting.

I was born in Syracuse, NY and the Orange have been my father's team since long before then. I was raised on their sports, even though I didn't really know what I was watching until I hit elementary school. The Orange are my go to team. I have shirts, hoodies, stole my dad's old Syracuse blanket, and used to have Otto stickers on my bedroom window. Even though they aren't the best team in the league when it comes to football (they actually won a bowl game this year, though!), they are one of the very best in basketball. They started this season off ranked number one in the nation. Then, unfortunately, Fab Melo was injured and they took a rather ungraceful fall down through the rankings. : ( Even so, they still made it to the semi-finals of the Big East tournament, only to be beat by UConn in overtime. Seeing them go into that overtime was sooooo exciting, considering the last time UConn and Syracuse went into overtime in the Big East tournament (2009), they ended up playing through six overtimes before Syracuse finally won. That year was even more exciting because Syracuse was pitted against my other favorite teams for the Big East championship.