Book Rant (Sort of ... Plus Other Stuff): The Blood of Olympus

I. Blood of Olympus and All the Spoilers

So almost 20 days after release, I finally finished Blood of Olympus. I kept putting it down, because I was honestly bored with the plot and couldn't quite follow what was going on because there were A MILLION story lines going on at once.

I'm sorry, RR. I love you, but this could have been better. This whole series could have been better. There were a lot of highlights, especially with Nico, who was such a great character in the original PJO series. And Reyna, who probably had some of the best moments in BoO. And I could tell RR was making a huge effort with the diversity and you know, imparting good life lessons for the childrens, etc. But the plot was weak and the cast was way too big to do anything effective. Also, nobody will ever be as good a character as Percy. Seriously, no one.

But I don't necessarily regret reading the new series. I will always enjoy what the original PJO series brought to me, and of course, all the characters hold a special place in my heart. Now that it's finally over (yeah, I'm going to ignore all the continuing offshoots that RR is certainly going to aggressively profit off of in the future), I can say, it was a pleasure growing up with Percy. I started reading in '09 (when this blog started!) and finished in '14. It's been a very good five years.

II. Life

Life is, as far as I can tell, really, really good right now. I'm on my third year of law school. I'm almost done. I cannot wait to be done. I have to say--law school has not been the most emotionally healthy time of my life, to which I'm sure a lot of people who've gone through it can attest. But sometimes you have to go through some unpleasant stuff to get to the good parts, and that's what I keep telling myself. And I have been better at not letting the little things get to me.

I have a lovely job lined up in DC, and I will be moving to DC in January. Early, because I'm doing a my final semester there. I love DC more than I love any city ever, and I can't wait to live there. I am so tangibly happier in DC. I'm crazy excited. My next novel is set there, and let's be real, it's mainly because I want to write a lengthy love letter to the city of my heart.

III. NaNoWriMo

And finally, speaking of my next novel, I am forcing myself to do NaNoWriMo this year. I have an abundant amount of free time, and currently, I'm spending it watching reality TV. This time should be spent at least toward something that will yield some actual work product. So I'm going to write. I haven't been successful in writing for a long time, and I'm afraid if I don't get to it, I will lose this habit. Writing is something that brings me a lot of joy if I persist, but sometimes, I really HAVE to persist.

But I did NaNo in '09, and if I could finish while being a full time student and working 20+ hours weekly at the paper, I don't see why I can't do it when I have virtually no work until December. So let the adventure begin, I suppose.

Probably mentioned it in an earlier post, but the premise of my novel is a boy, Sawyer Thomas, who has hyperthymesia--an affliction that gives him a virtually perfect autobiographical memory. This means he can remember everything that has happened to him with extreme detail. He can recall exactly what happened on any given specific day. This presents a problem when his girlfriend, Annie Rose, passes away in a car accident. It leaves him with a crippling inability to return to the places they frequented, because the memories there are too strong. Eventually, he decides that in order to take his life back, he's going to go back to all of those places, the places that belong to her, and do something extreme there that he will have new memories to crowd out the old ones.