The Serpent's Shadow Book Review!

Surprise! A second birthday gift from Ashley!

To celebrate my 18^th birthday, I've finished a book and I can't help but write a book review! IT'S A MUST READ!

The Serpent's Shadow by Rick Riordan! It's the third book in his Kane Chronicles using Egyptian mythology to craft an enjoyable read that never fails his readers!

After all Sadie and Carter Kane have been through, sending Rick Riordan audio recordings to explain to the world what they've been up to, losing best friends left and right, and given immense responsibilities for 14 and 15 year olds – not to mention their dramatic love lives driving them crazy, it's all come down to this. The final battle with Apophis, the evil god working to destroy all of civilization, will either cost the Kanes lives or live to see the end of the world. In this epic show down of friendship, loyalty, brother and sister love, crazy mythology thrown left and right...it's a book you can't put down.

The most exciting part for us readers (or maybe just me) but you finally get to see what happens with Carter Kane and Zia Rashid! Questions swirling around Zia answered! And an ending hopefully leading us on to even more books.

My favorite characters in this book are Sadie Kane, Walt Stone, and Anubis the god of death. These guys are seriously the best trio/couple to exist in Egypt!

Not only is the story a must read but I encourage parents to nudge their kids about reading ANY book by Rick Riordan. Kids absolutely love reading these books and teenagers all over the world. What I've seriously noticed at book signings and movie crazies for Riordan's books is how much kids want to read thanks to these awesome books and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the books for you parents to sheild your childrens eyes. These books are a learning experience about mythology in Greece, Italy, and now Egypt!

Honestly I couldn't have asked for more from Rick Riordan once again. He never fails the world with his awesomeness and his story telling is beyond brilliant.

If you are interested in reading this series or any series by Rick Riordan keep in mind when he wrote his books! The Percy Jackson and the Olympians (6 book series) is the starting point. After that is the sequel series Heroes of Olympus but he started writing the Kane Chronicles as well. I only mention this because he continues to mention Greek mythology in the Percy Jackson world in the Kane Chronicles and I SERIOUSLY am starting to wonder if Riordan is planning to combine these three series into one eventually.

Read The Kane Chronicles if you want to see what I see!

The Truth About BOOKS and their MOVIES

With movie franchises you constantly hear things like "the movie wasn't good enough...nothing like the book." But when it comes to books made into movies there's a lot to consider and even a new mindset going into that movie theater.

Franchises including The Hunger Games, Eragon, Twilight, and even Percy Jackson-fans have never truly been happy about these movies and there is only so much the movie industry can do to make us "happy." The closest fans have ever become "happy" about the movie adaption was The Hunger Games but it took a community to create those feelings among the fans.  

As an old Hunger Games fan myself I saw the fan community grow into a network of leaders and family. The vibe some of these websites introduced to the Internet early on was how people started reacting to the series: Retweets on Twitter constantly of fans enjoying the Hunger Games and their own personal info to share with the rest of the community, Blogs posting of Hunger Games events for the holidays where they encourage YOU to get involved...

There was so many sites like www.thehungergamesDWTC.net ; www.thehob.org ; www.hunger-games.com ; www.hggirlonfire.com ; www.myhungergames.com that have really created the fans to grow and prosper positively way before news that the series was becoming a movie.

For even more examples of their unity with the fans are people like Sam Cushion, a music writer who does unofficial music for the Hunger Games and the Matched trilogy on iTunes. On Facebook you have pages like District 9 3/4 to unite Hunger Games fans and Harry Potter fans. Even a page called The Hunger Games Army so fans can get together and go crazy with spoiler alerts together.

But what really got me was the Facebook page called: Let's not make Hunger Games a twilight thing with "team Peeta" or "team Gale". This is actually a brilliant idea because what really got people rolling was the disaster over the Twilight series franchise.

When I was in the 8th grade (2008-2009), I remember finishing the whole series in one week then I noticed literally every student in the hallways carrying a Twilight book in hand. For a while that was "the Trend", everyone read the books-everyone talked about the series...then the movie came out.

Now the difference here between myself and everyone else around me was my reaction to the first Twilight movie. EVERYONE all of a sudden hated the series, saying the movie was TERRIBLE. That really made a dent into the Twilight community and the series has never been the same among people today.

What happened here was the community of Twilight. Before this uproar of hatred the community was very obsessive over the series with some amazing podcasts on Zune Marketplace, some who even went to the place where they were filming the movie in Oregon; MANY websites all about the series, bands formed from inspiration for the series, the books themselves even changed the location of Forks, Washington FOREVER.

Honestly the Twilight community is great but the people didn't find that very appealing on the outside. Even worse Twilight has become a franchise that the future has learned mistakes for so they don't mess up.

Franchises are a constant issue today because of the PEOPLE. But the most ironic thing about the Twilight series was when The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 1 came out and the true fans emerged out of the crowds of hatred and showed that they still love the series. Kids at school wore clothing for Twilight to go see the movie in their clothing...just like they had in the fall of 2008.

For teens around my age today (14-18 wars old) have gone through this Twilight boom around middle school time (5th-9th grades) where teens are constantly pressured and bullied. Twilight became something among middle school students as something terribly stupid. We fans had to hide our fandom out of fear and walls built by kids at school and even on the Internet.

What the Hunger Games did right was a change in the community. They created unity, passion, leadership, and trust among the fans. What was even more amazing was the casts reacting to that 100%, telling the media they're Team Katniss, wearing Mockingjay pins at the premier.

For the amazing Eragon series, there IS NO Eragon community but they do have a HUGE FAN BASE but no community online really. The series is a huge hit but there isn't much of a way for fans to connect. The movie is discussed constantly as a terribly bad adaption to the book where there wasn't enough want for another movie (Eldest) to hit the big screen. There WAS talk of remaking Eragon the movie but that was the end of it-more like a moot point. With the last book, Inheritance, out the fandom has silenced. There was SO MUCH POTENTIAL in this series but there was no ball moving to back it up.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan is an interesting case... When the first movie came out there were lines going out the door at my movie theater for DAYS. But the issue here was the movie ended up being a huge disappointment in a million ways, even I gave in on this one but I still loved the series to death!

Rick Riordan's book signing last fall for Heroes of Olympus book 2 came to Olympia, Washington where I drove down to meet the mastermind. A kid asked him a very important question where Riordan's answer has never left my head since. The kid asked if he was proud of The Lightning Thief movie and he told over 1,000 kids and parents that day that he has NEVER seen the movie because he's got the best version of the movie in his head.

Even though Rick Riordan is the author of the Percy Jackson and Olympians and the Heroes of Olympus series we can do exactly what he says to heart.

What disappointed fans will complain most about with movies are sentences like: "the character isn't like how I imagined", "they took out a bunch of info", "Why did they change it?"

But what we must keep in mind is the fact that books can describe beautiful scenes in detail for pages but that's horror for movies. Movies can't explain what's on those 3 pages because it's a visual film and they have a time frame of under 3 hours of movie where a book (if you made it into a movie down to every single word in the book) would be an 8 hour movie.

It's literally impossible to make a movie  exact to fan's likings. But all our perceptions of the books are completely different from the kid next to you in math.

But it's exactly like what Rick Riordan said in Olympia less than a year ago where we can do the same no matter who we are or what we do: "I have the best version of the book in my head."

Cassandra Clare must know some Psychology

After reading her #1 New York Times Bestseller: Clockwork Prince, Cassandra Clare never disappointed me with her master piece of a Victorian era with Shadowhunters and the unbelievable connection to her Mortal Instruments series. Yet I couldn't help but notice something truly remarkable about Clare's characters and how she can come up with beautiful complications for her plots.

You see, in both Mortal Instruments series and the prequel series: The Infernal Devices, Clare comes up with these characters and these truly dramatic conflicts that somehow fit together in both series but anyone can get a kick out of it.

In the Mortal Instruments, you can't help but find it like a soap opera that's 100% not corny! I'll tell you what really gathers the fan base of this series together: the conflict Clare brings in is the strange affection between two characters (Jace and Clary) who struggle with the fact that they are brother and sister. Or are they?

Clare also brings in a new set of characters to the prequel series, The Infernal Devices, where the story revolves around 2 boys that are best friends (practically brothers) falling in love with the same girl. One boy dieing from an illness and the other who (mysteriously) can't have anyone fall in love with him.

Cassandra Clare comes up with these conflicts between people and throws them into an urban fantasy world of Shadowhunters, warlocks, werewolves, demons, and even vampires.

That's the trick, my beautiful writers! Psychology, the study of people, is the key to a beautiful spiderweb conflict and plot to create a story worth getting published! My older step sister took a couple classes on psychology and she told me, a girl studying to be an author, that when reading books she can't but notice the psychology of the characters.

For those of you who plan to get as much out of college as possible and plan to keep in mind writing books, TAKE SOME PSYCHOLOGY CLASSES!!!

Cassandra Clare has created an amazing artwork of books with beautifully crafted characters, plots, and a creative world that she has become quite successful. From my study of Cassandra Clare's writing and her breathtaking surprises that she could only have created from psychology research, I really think you should seriously consider taking psychology classes in college and use this knowledge to your advantage to come up with some amazing stories that will wow anyone who comes across them.

The most important: an OUTLINE

Last year, I was one of the young authors who entered James Patterson's Maximum Ride book: Fang - The Missing Chapter. One of the requirements was to include a proper outline. At the age of 15 and in the middle of the 9th grade I had no idea what an outline even was. Of course I watched James Patterson's video of the rules of this fabulous contest. When he got to mentioning the outline he kept ranting how it was ABSOLUTELY important and he wouldn't be so successful with out it.

He would have to plan each chapter in continuous action pactness. I still didn't understand what an outline was so I looked it up than later on asked for my mom's help. She explained that you go by roman numerals of the main event than you list under it in lowercase letters of what would be included.

Later in that school year I actually had to do an outline fora final and I was totally skilled to do it unlike the other freshman.

My grade actually learned about and how to an outline this past school year as sophomores. But it wasn't till quite recently in my book writing that I actually learned the importance of an outline. I(and my classmates)thought an outline was a comets waest of time and totally useless. I know some of you are agreeing with this notion but you are WRONG!

I used an outline, recently, to plan an ENTIRE trilogy! And I have NEVER done something like this!My stories in the past have all been failures/ incomplete failures. I realized that these stories were failures because they had no PLAN! These stories werent going anywhere! They just turned out as blagh...because they had no PLAN!

An outline is THE plan. You can have a sheer proof plan where you purposely have exciting-nonboring-funny-etc plan of your book/series.

When I used this amazing method, I generalized what I wanted done in the series. When I actually went to write, I realized I was doing what James Patterson was trying to teach us young writers: outline your story in a fast pace so the reader never gets bored or want to put down he book! His method makes authors so successful in heir careers!

"I've always known how I wanted to end the Vampire Academy series."- Richelle Mead. I have continuously wondered how and why she did this. I guessed that she did this so that she could create a kick-ass series in-between her beginning and her ending.

It was that but after learning the significant importance of an outline in writing a book series, I realized that she always knew how she would end the series from the very beginning because she planed(made an outline) of he entire 6 book series when she came up with the idea of Vampire Academy(and she did not come up with the vampire part because of twight, she said she got the vampires: moroi,dhampirs, strigoi; from Russian myhology. This creating process was during the time Stephanie Meyer was creating Twilight).

James Patterson was CORRECT! Outlines are he KEY to writing a successful book/series. No author has been successful without an outline(I don't actually know this for certain but it's definately true in the truth in this subject).

For proof of this method of success, look up on YouTube.com of Richelle Mead's 12 minute video of herself as a successful author. Look for a scene where she's in her office and she is standing infront of a whiteboard with post-it notes on it that are connected together by lines. This is her planning in diagram form of an outline.
Till next time, keep writing and reading books as much as you can! Successful books are successful for many important reasons...you just have to find them.
;)