Review: Amy Plum - Die For Me

***Rating: 1/5 Stars***

Ok first of all, let me just say that I thought that the basic concept of "Die For Me" was kinda awesome. It was original and put a different spin on the whole 'zombie' scene. That said - It was absolutely brutal trying to get through it and ignore the empty, stereotypical, plastic dialogue. 

My biggest problem with this book? The characters. All of them. There was not a single character that actually had any real depth to them. They were all under developed caricatures. The worst offenders included our heroine, Kate, and her love interest Vincent. There's a fair amount of fuss made about how since her parents died Kate has become a mature, cautious young woman. That is a complete load of garbage. Kate comes across as being ridiculously whiny and naïve. Vincent is in much the same boat (as are his 'kindred'). I don't care how often they reanimate as teenagers - they have lived for decades and you'd hope that some of that age and experience would manifest in their present day behaviour, rather than being plagued by temper tantrums befitting of teeny boppers and rich kids. 


To top it all off, Kate is just so blasé about the whole undead situation. Her entire stance seems to be "Oh - you're actually a zombie, whose touch can force me to be calm even though I should be running around screaming like a lunatic, and you become a corpse every month like clockwork? Nah that's cool. I'll just come over and have some popcorn over your dead body while I wait for you to come back to life" - In what universe is that considered normal? 


She takes it to the extra creepy level when she kisses his corpse. Because that's what it is. Like it or lump it, for three days every month Vince is dead. His spirit may be 'volant' but his body is dead. There is no comparison in this to vampires. None. Vampires may be 'Undead'. But they're conscious. What Kate is doing, is making out with a unfeeling, empty, corpse. Dead things aren't attractive. Maybe someone should tell Kate. 


As if all of that weren't bad enough, but they you have to deal with cliché after cliché, terrible dialogue, tacky - TACKY mistakes like making a supposedly agoraphobic protagonist go to a café, and your typical paranormal romance insta love. Did I mention that the dialogue was terrible?? There are way too many cringe worthy moments to even list. 


I would not recommend this book. I know that many people have rated it really highly and it seems to be one of those books that you either love or hate. Twilight was better than this book. It held so much promise but at the end of the day was just a massive let down. I'm going to give Book 2 (Until I die) a shot, just on the off chance that Amy took all the criticism to heart and improved the sequel, but I'm not holding out much hope. 

Thoughts on the Divergence Series By Veronica Roth

I'm a little confused with this plot line. Amanda Ritter was talking about Divergent individuals being more flexible. She said that when they are "abundant among you" THEN it would be time to seek out the rest of the world and help them. however - we KNOW that divergent individuals have been pretty much ritualistically weeded out of the population from the time of the originals. Tris' mum specifically states that her mother (who it stands to reason was a dauntless member) told her to leave dauntless and go to abnegation because she was divergent and it was not safe for her to stay.

If divergent people took so little time to appear within the society then it sounds less like a case of 'we need people with flexible minds out here in the real world' and more like they wanted to see how long it would take people to rebel against a society of strict controls, even when those controls were considered normal and entrenched in each individuals subjective perception of their world. It's as if they're trying to ascertain what conditions would have to be present to provide a catalyst for change.

Divergent people are more prevalent within the oppressed group of the 'Factionless'. This does make sense as having tendencies towards multiple factions means that to a certain extent, in order to be able to function within one of the factions they have to repress some other part of their personality or rebel against the faction - both paths are hard to sustain and ultimately are likely to lead to either their demise or ejection from their factions. What is interesting about this situation however is that they don't rebel until their society has hit a crisis point. YES - Evelyn was planning a rebellion. But what kind of a rebellion takes an entire decade to plan with no attacks, or protests or any kind of action taken until that final moment? It wasn't until someone was threatening to change the way their society was structured that people were able to fight. By attempting an evil take over, Jeannine showed each individual within their society that they have power to affect the world around them and that unless they're willing to fight for it, anyone can come in and take it away from them.

Finally, looking to the actual structure of the society, Amanda Ritter stated that "We have formed your society in a particular way in the hope that you will rediscover the moral sense most of us have lost". This involved them splitting the society into Five Factions - Amity, Dauntless, Erudite, Abnegation and Candor. Each faction represents some essential element to humanity, but not as she insinuates to do with human nature, but morality. Human nature and morality are two completely different things. The sense of morals that our society bestows on us is not necessarily what would have been our 'natural instinct'.   Morality is a form of social control, which is why its ok to cannabalise people in some parts of the world and not others.

Amity	Peace and bliss
Dauntless	Fearless and Protectors.
Erudite	Intelligence and Progress
Abnegation	Selfless and Controlled
Candor	Honest and Accepting

By splitting the factions in this way they have divided people into different aspects of morality, seeking peaceful solutions, protecting people, progress for the sake of progress and the betterment of society, being charitable and putting others needs before your own and the biggie, being honest and learning to accept honesty from others. Each of these are valid, admirable morality traits. However by dividing them, each faction is FORCED to become a twisted version of what it would be otherwise. Without selflessness, Dauntless becomes a ruthless machine that thinks nothing of eliminating 'weaker beings' rather than having bravery, to protect the society that dwell within the walls of their compound. By valuing peace, neutrality and bliss above all else, Amity rejects anyone that would upset the balance and interrupt their happiness and hence have no qualms about drugging their faction members. They become carictures - nothing but brainless hippies because they are literally high, all the time - even if that's not really a choice on their part.

Each faction becomes fiercly loyal to their own people, to the point of the almost ritual rejection of parents from other factions. And it is because of this loyalty that the non divergent members of Dauntless are able to rise up, because they can see their own faction being controlled against their will. And it is for this reason that  Candor is unable to fully participate in the rebellion. They are loyal ONLY  to their own faction, and because they do not have the same level of vested interest, or bravery, that Dauntless does, the only way they know how to approach the situation is through one that relies on the old balances of power, not the new social order that Erudite is attempting to strong arm on the people.

So. My question is this. What really is the point of the social experiment that characters of the Divergence trilogy find them in? Is it just a social experiment gone wrong or is it something more sinister on the part of those who reside outside the world we've seen so far?  

Vampires, Zombies and Angels Oh My!

I've been reading a lot of YA Dystopian/Fantasy novels and I've gotta say the chicks in these books amaze me. At the moment I'm reading "Die for me" by Amy Plum, which if I'm honest really isn't that great a book. The characters are all superficial and there doesn't appear to be any real depth to the story line. There's a lot of fuss made about how Kate is a mature young woman and Vincent seems like he's struggling to keep up the dual identities of 'tall, dark and handsome tough guy' and 'buff, uber romantic, clingy puppy'. Neither character is really pulling it off. I'm finding them both to be incredibly shallow and immature. For someone who is supposed to be mature  - Kate is ridiculously whiny and naïve. The same can be said for Vincent and his roomies. I don't care how often they reanimate as teenagers - they have lived for decades and you'd hope that some of that age and experience would manifest in their present day behaviour, rather than being plagued by temper tantrums befitting of teeny boppers and rich kids.

ANYWAY - back to my original point. The heroine's of these novels are all so damn tolerant. "Oh - you're actually a zombie, whose touch can force me to be calm even though I should be running around screaming like a lunatic, and you become a corpse every month like clockwork? Nah that's cool. I'll just come over and have some popcorn over your dead body while I wait for you to come back to life" - In what universe is that considered normal?

And unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years you will undoubtedly have heard of Twilight. I'm sorry I don't care what any one says but there is nothing even vaguely threatening about a man who sparkles. What was Stephanie Meyer thinking when she wrote that? As they say in Moulin Rouge, Diamonds are a girls best friend. So what does Edward do? In order to show his great big scary badassness he drags her to the last patch of flowery sunlight left in the forest and shows her how sparkly he is? Me? My first instinct in that situation would be to laugh, raucously. If Edward wanted to frighten Bella then rather than lighting himself up like a display at tiffany's he should have gone found himself one of those deer he likes so much and forced her to watch him butcher it.

But the examples don't end there. I am a absolutely massive fan of The CW's Vampire Diaries, but I'll be damned if I can understand why Elena puts up with all the vampires. As much as I am an Damon Salvatore fan-girl I think it also needs to be pointed out that despite Damon repeatedly murdering Jeremy (and a host of other misfortunates), Elena still forgives him. Its almost as if she's sitting there weighing it up in her mind "Damon looks really yummy in that leather jacket… but he did kill Jer, again… but… Jeremy still kicking soooo I guess its ok!"

I think that the first time I've actually seen a normal, healthy response to being told that [BLANK] is a vampire was in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments book series. Simon is forced to do a big reveal and tell his mum that he's a vampire. And she - understandably - freaks out and calls him a demon and barricades her house with holy symbols and other anti-vamp paraphernalia. Whilst this is regrettable, as Simon is a *cough* good vampire (He only ever bit that one little girl...and apparently that's ok. He just couldn't help himself!) it's the only time I've ever seen someone have a rational reaction to vampirism. Vampires are creatures that need blood to survive, and the blood of choice is always human. We're a walking juice box to them, all they have to do is tap a vein and voila! Dinner is served. It seems completely insane to me that so many books turn what should essentially be a horrifying hunter of the night, into friendly companions who end up being more like super heroes with a drug problem. 

This is not to say that I don't absolutely adore vampire diaries or twilight and the host of other YA books with these kinds of flaws, however it'd be good to see the protagonist's start to show some savvy and survival instincts rather than just accepting that the monster hiding beneath the handsome face is actually friendly.