Blogtober #15 - Light & Dark, Good & Evil: A Thought's Post

"Darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good."

I have mentioned this quote from the book Marked a couple of times and how I wasn't quite sure that I agreed with what it said. Well, I finally sat down and organized my thoughts and this is what I have come up with.

In regards to books, I think this quote sums up excellently the change in modern culture's opinion on good and evil in books. Things that are evil and dark, like vampires, or dragons, werewolves, and so on, are not evil and dark. Things that are good and light, like elves, and fairies, and angels, (probably most importantly GOD), are not good and light. Modern fairytales leave you with a sense of confusion. You grew up reading stories where the dragon was evil and had to be slain, yet now they are a fad, everyone wants a dragon. Vampires were once heartless, soulless creatures who would suck your blood out because they needed it to survive, now you are presented with 'vegetarian' vampires, and vampires with morals. Then you get Christians mixed in, like the People of Faith in Marked, and you loose that boundary of morals even more. People with Christian morals are the oppressor, the bad guys (in Marked the People of Faith are clearly that, because that is the great misconception society has about Christians today).

Moving deeper into it, however, you are presented with even more complexity. You have stories (Fantasy) and humans (reality) and those are jumbled together and mixed up to where there is no fantasy and no reality. Modern society gives mythological creatures souls and morals, makes them good, and goes and makes humans (mostly Christians) the evil thing to be gotten rid of.

"The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”  - G.K. Chesterton

We grew up believe that dragons could be conquered. Now our children are growing up believing that humans should be conquered with dragons.  People with authority should be ignored and defeated. You wonder why teens today are so depressed? It's because the morals they grew up on, that humans can defeat the giant, undefeatable monsters like dragons has been twisted. No longer can you look towards yourself to defeat the dragon, because maybe the dragon (no matter how 'good' it is) cannot be defeated. Humans are being characterized as the evil to be defeated. Seriously think on it, humans are evil, they have to be killed using vampires, or werewolves, or dragons, they don't allow for the complexity of human nature to come through. In Marked Zoey is no longer a human, she is a vampire. Every human that she knows (her grandmother being the one exception) is the bad guy (or at least so weak that she can easily rule over them), and don't get her started on the oppressive People of Faith. It clamors for teens to start to worship the goddess Nyx, because she is the almighty, beautiful, and good goddess, whereas the People of Faith's god, (AKA the Christian God) is the degrading, ugly, and evil god. Wonder why there are shootings in school? Look at what they read. It tells them that things that do exist (humans, God, Christianity) are evil, and the things that are evil (vampires, gods and goddesses) are good. Wouldn't you be utterly depressed if there was only evil in this world? They don't realize that there is good out there, because all they read about is that the good in our world is actually evil.

Taking the words of Neil Gaimen, who is paraphrasing the earlier quote from G.K. Chesterton:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

And remember to 'read the right books' (C.S. Lewis Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader reference there.) Because...

"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." - C.S. Lewis

Blogtober #13 - House of Night, book one - Marked

     Browsing my Facebook a couple of weeks ago, I spotted a post from one of the many book pages I like. The post contained a quote from Marked, book one of the House of Night series. This is the quote:

"Darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good."

     I found the idea interesting and worth pondering (I still don't know what I make of it), and posted it on my page. From there my lovely bibliophile friends said I should read this series (granted I did not know about it until then).
     So my friend loaned me the book and I just finished reading it. It was an okay read. Some parts were confusing, sometimes contradictory. The writing wasn't anything to rave over. It's not terrible to where I would be against reading the other books in the series, it just...I think it would rate a point higher  than Twilight.

     First off, at the beginning I was thoroughly confused (It actually took me the entire first chapter to realize vampyres = vampires. major brain fail there.). 'Vampyres' are not some mythological, unknown, thought to not be real idea, but actual 'creatures'. There is a school/coven and many of the famous actors, actresses, singers, writers, and so on are vampyres. There are certain types of vampyres called Trackers, and they track down humans to turn into vampyres. Those humans are then 'marked' (hence the title of the book, since this covers what happens immediately after Zoey, the protagonist, is marked) and go to the House of Night, a boarding school/coven for vampyres. The Cast ladies did not go right out and say that this is the case, it took some figuring out from the information given.

     There were also some parts that seemed to contradict earlier statements/actualities in the story. But in order to double check on those I would need my own copy and a pencil to mark them out with, so don't hold me to this statement.

     There was also much cursing (quite a few f-bombs were dropped), scenes that were hinting at sex/sexual activities, and to put bluntly, and explicit scene of attempted oral sex (ewwwwwww).

     Soooo....yeah.....Maybe I should retracted my earlier statements about being willing to read the other books. Not only did many of these 'romance' scenes make me a little uncomfortable, I wish I could read a teen book like this (which has a fantastic plot concept, a bit poorly executed) were the romance wasn't physically based, or where the two involved had a 'spiritual' attraction after two interactions. Give me some relationships like those from Harry Potter, or The Rangers Apprentice, and that would be fantastic.

     On a slightly lighter note, what's with all the blondes in the book? It's like the population in House of Night is 95% blonde, 5% other. Wow. That and there were some clichés/Mary sue descriptions. And I couldn't connect with any of the characters from the story, and I think that says a lot. If you can't connect with a character, then what kind of story is it?




    One of the goals for this blog is to provide information for parents and readers alike to find 'clean' reads suitable for their children or themselves. In all my reviews I will mention general themes from the book, language, sexual/romantic interaction, and violence.

     Themes:
 Vampyres (Vampires), Greek mythology, coming of age, survival, monsters, death, magic

       Language:
  Language throughout, F-bomb dropped by the second chapter, around ten (maybe more) f-bombs total, along with other cursing.

       Sexual/Romantic Interaction
  Heavy on sexual talk/images. Blood is used as a sexual play toy, oral sex, touching inappropriate areas.

       Violence
 Heavy on blood. One scene were a boy dies coughing up blood is descriptive. Knives, rituals, murderous ghosts.

      I would give Marked a rating of heavy PG-13

      On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = horrible, 2 = OK, 3 = I liked it, 4 = I really liked it, 5 = I loved it), I would give Marked a 2