Be a Hero!

Haven't been up to much these past weeks. Game Crazy went out of business so I ended up getting around 10 games for twenty dollars. Very good deals considering some of the titles. I'll probably talk about them as time goes on.

I read Dragonfly by Julia Golding. Its at young adult fantasy book about two young people arranged to marry and how they overcome various cultural clashes. The plot expands to encompass more, but it feels spoilery to mention anything other than it gets actiony. I read the book not expecting the action and it was a bit of an odd shift I had to adjust for.

Pluses:

• Locales besides fantasy Europe, and decent culture build up
• A dark skinned protagonist (which may be just the fantasy I read, but a rarity). And he's not alone.
• Quick reading (at least for me).

Minuses:

• The villain starts off awesome, but decays as time goes on.
• Feels overly moral simplistic in certain parts.
• Not much character development aside from the main two characters. And there are some side characters which I really wanted to see more of.
• One moment where I went wtf. Spoilers (highlight)-> Essentially the heroine is harassed by some guy. The climax of this problem ends with some people in high places essentially saying they know that the guy is a harasser and will protect her. Its supposed to be a moment of awesome/heartwarming, but only begs the question that if they knew this guy was a harasser, why not warn the girl. The guy is important so I can see why they don't kick him out of the group, but at the same time a few sagely words could have prevented a lot.

Verdict: Its odd. Although I could nitpick this book forever, I actually enjoyed it. Its a pretty mindless read, but a decent one. The biggest problem (for me) is that the romance is much better than the rest of the plot. I really enjoyed the two characters overcoming cultural differences, and learning (sometimes struggling) to get along. It feels very different from a lot of fantasy that I come across. So the turn to the epic fantasy plot was a bit sad for me.