Book Review: Corridor by Robin Parrish

In Robin Parrish's first attempt at writing a Young Adult novel, I would venture to say that he succeeded in writing something worthy of that genre. Although this story can easily reach its demographic, readers of all ages can enjoy it as well. It is full of mystery, suspense, and fast-paced action. Parrish's Corridor is written on a level comparable to O. Henry and Phillip K. Dick. Like so many of his other novels, Corridor starts off with a bang, barely giving his readers a chance to get used to the settings before flinging them into action. This is appropriate in his new novel because that is exactly what Troy Groggin, the main character, deals with. Troy wakes up in a place called the Corridor not remembering where he last was. The Corridor turns out to be a maze of sorts that tests its runners' physical and psychological skills while asking one question of them: how badly do you want to live? Troy finds the answer to that question as his will is beaten time and again only to have his world shattered by one final choice.

If there is one thing readers should remember before reading Corridor, it is to not try to figure out the ending. I read the story in two sittings, quite the feat for me even taking the book's short length into consideration, and all the while my mind kept racing to figure out what was going on. Even as I write this, I believe that the next time I read it something else will happen. That is the power Parrish has over his readers. He uses science fiction the way it was meant to be used, the way pioneers such as George Orwell and Ray Bradbury intended its use. Parrish uses Corridor to take his readers down a different kind of rabbit hole, one with very few hopes of escaping.

All this does not mean that Parrish's writing is flawless. His use of language is a little weak, most notably when a seventeen year old boy exclaims “Oh crud.” Troy makes this comment well after his many near-death encounters, and although I know that somewhere out there may be a seventeen year old boy who says “Oh crud” after almost dying for the umpteenth time, it isn't likely. I find it difficult to believe that a seventeen year old boy in that situation wouldn't swear, even if the words aren't spoken on the page. Parrish's first five novels were published under a Christian publishing house, and this one is represented by a Christian literary agent. However, he himself has said that he doesn't want to be pigeonholed as a “Christian author” but rather as an author who happens to be Christian. That being said, I don't think it's too much to ask that, after Parrish brings us into a world that we should have no right believing in but because of his writing we do anyway, he doesn't lose his readers' belief through his use of overly genteel language.

The biggest distraction for me, though, was not necessarily in Parrish's writing as it was in the editing. Troy is first referred to as runner thirty five thirty seven (3537), but later he thinks about how three thousand seven hundred and thirty four (3,734) people came before him. This was only one of the inconsistencies that should have been picked up in the editing process but, unfortunately for Parrish, wasn't. Thankfully, because of his effective world-building talent, these issues don't deter the reader enough from the novel to not read it. Overall Parrish did a great job of creating characters the reader can care for, a world the reader can believe in, and a story the reader can enjoy.

Corridor is available as an ebook for just $2.99 on the Kindle and the Nook. It is also available for POD (print on demand). For more information, visit his website at the link on the right.

A New Year

It has been almost one full year since my last post. I am the kind of person who gets excited about something, then kind of lets it go. Well, the blog is back and, at the risk of being too cliche, better than ever. I have decided on a few New Year's resolutions. Along with finishing painting my room and organizing the house in which I am currently living, I have also made it my resolution to write more. That last one starts with this blog. However, things don't just happen. Everything has a reason, and every reason has a story. Here's mine.

Just a few days ago as I was cooking pasta sauce and chicken noodle soup, my cell phone vibrated, indicating I had a text message. I set my phone up to receive tweets from some people, and that's what this was. I am currently following Robin Parrish on Twitter. You can read an earlier post to find out about him, or you can click on the link on the right and go to his website. Anyway, this tweet was to let his avid followers know that his latest book was almost done and that if a few people wanted to, they could e-mail him and he would send a pdf of the book to be reviewed. I instantly e-mailed him with a request, thinking that nothing would come of it. However, less than ten minutes later, I received a reply with the book. I was so excited that I nearly forgot to finish cooking. After portioning out the food into containers and refrigerating them, I started browsing the internet, reading up on Robin Parrish and other book and writing related things. I then decided to look at my blog. I knew I had no followers, since I didn't have any last time I posted, and that was a year ago, but I just wanted to look at it. Rereading my posts and thinking about reading and writing got my creative juices flowing again. It's been a long time since I felt this enthusiastic about writing, and I have Robin Parrish to thank for it.

So that's my story. If you went through my older posts, I will tell you this: I still plan on writing about writing; I still plan to write reviews; and I still plan to write about my endeavors as a reader and writer. I hope you find these posts helpful, fun, insightful, and overall enjoyable. I guess only time will tell. (AHH! More cliches!)

Stephen King is wierd

I finally realized today what it is about Stephen King's books that have frightened people over the years. It's not the monsters or scary scenarios. King's biggest strenth has always been his characters, and that is from where the fear comes. The first part comes from the fact that people can see themselves cast in a scenario similar to that, so they can empathize with characters stuck in certain situations.The second, and even scarier part, is that people can envision someone they know to be the "bad guy" in King's novels. Those people are usually the good looking, sweet-tempered guy or girl, as is the title character in King's story Blockade Billy. I've heard so many people say that King must be evil, or he probably worships satan, or he burns Bibles. No, he just knows people, and that is what makes him such a good writer.

That being said, Stephen King is wierd. I don't just mean wierd, either. He can actually be boring. Don't get me wrong, I think the guy is a great writer. He is one of my inspirations, one of the reasons I want to be a writer. I still enjoy reading his books. The problem is that he writes the same thing over and over again. I do believe that some of his characters are very realistic, but he uses the same characteristics in almost all of his stories. First of all, sex (and I don't mean gender) is very prominent in his stories. And this isn't your run-of-the-mill, everyday ordinary sex. His characters get freaky, such as the female protagonist in the other story in Blockade Billy, entitled Morality. The character, Nora, ends up begging her lovers to hit her. In fact, the novel Gerald's Game is almost exclusively revolved around sex. Next, there is always at least one character who plays the not-quite-all-there character who really wants to help out and thinks he or she can make a great contribution when really he or she just gets in the way. Think of it as the Barney Fife character, if you will. This character can be on the side of either the bad guys or the good guys, sometimes even both. Finally, the main bad guy is usually as slippery as a snake who very successfully manipulates his people into thinking his or her way is the right way and who never reaches redemption and goes down fighting all by him or herself or ends up killing him or herself. I don't mean to offend anyone, but this is basically like a Hitler character, the ultimate bad guy, if you will.

It makes sense that some of the characters would be like that, but when I read King's books lately, it's kind of like a broken record. I understand that this is what got him famous, but let's spread some variety. I still love reading his works, and I don't think I will stop as long as he is writing. In fact, most of the problems occurr in his novels, but his short stories are some of the best pieces of writing in the literary world. I just wish he would put more focus there. No disrepect, Mr. King. I'm just saying, is all.

"All Quiet on the Western Front" By Erich Maria Remarque

Okay, so I'm cheating here. I had to read this book for my History class and I had to write a paper for it. Instead of writing an original review here, I'm just going to let you all read my report on it. Enjoy.

Erich Maria Remarque's third, and by far most successful, novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, follows the life of Paul Baumer as a German soldier in the full throes of the First World War. He goes about his military life both in the barracks and on the front with his comrades and, because of the war, closest friends. Paul struggles with not only avoiding his own death, but also the agony, guilt, and grievance of dealing death to others.


Paul Baumer goes through the steps of the war almost mechanically; He smokes cigarettes, plays pranks, participates in sexual liaisons, and devours whatever meals are available to him while between visits to the front. He avoids bombs and gunfire, and watches as many Germans die while in the thick of the battle. He comforts his friends during difficult times, and he reassures his mother that, yes, he is okay but he will be going back. Nothing is new for him until he is put on guard duty watching over a bunch of Russian prisoners, noting how they cast their differences and animosities aside to band together when German soldiers often fight over the pettiest of things.

Remarque does a remarkable thing with this novel in that he not only portrays war in all its naked, raw, glory, but he does so from a German soldier's point of view and manages to get people who would have been on the other side of the conflict to be able to see that they dealt with a lot of the same issues. Young men being pressured into joining the army was always thought of, in the US, as a US stereotype. The Germans were hungry for world domination and therefore they all wanted to fight this war and they all knew how much it meant to them. As shown through the conversations amongst Baumer, Tjaden, Muller, Katczinsky, and Kropp, many of the very young soldiers didn't even know what they were fighting for, they just knew that people indoctrinated them with ideas of that's what good Germans do.

What was more was that Remarque did not try to make the force opposing the Germans out to be the evil entities that Americans have made Germans out to be. Baumer understands that most of the soldiers on the other side are just about as, if not more, clueless than he. It creates a feeling, not of sympathy as with most war novels that want readers to sympathize with the protagonists, but of empathy. This is not just empathy from the reader, although the bit of it that is from the reader is more targeted to the circumstances rather than the characters, but an empathic line is also created amongst the characters.

Most of this empathy between characters is Baumer empathizing with soldiers on the other side of the dispute. He empathizes with the dying Frenchman and he empathizes with the imprisoned Russians, although with the Russians, a bit of envy lies under the surface as Baumer is witness to their comradeship they are forced into. Empathy can be found between comrades as well. When Baumer is injured along with his last surviving friend, Katczinsky, Baumer makes well sure that they get on the same train together. While it is true that one reason for this is that Baumer does not want to be alone, it can also be argued that he wants to see to it that Katczinsky has someone with him who he can see understands the pain he is going through.

Remarque's most important accomplishment with this book is the way he dealt with the issue of war all together. There are many war novels and movies out there that, while they don't portray war as the best possible option, don't deter the idea of war as a good possible option. They have brave warriors, young and old, face each other in tests of strength, stealth, stamina, and strategy and, even though the story may not be told from the “good guys'” point of view, always has the reader rooting for somebody, usually the protagonist. The readers want the protagonist to destroy the antagonist and they know that, at all odds, that will eventually happen because the author wants to give readers what they want.

What Remarque does instead is to challenge the reader to not choose a side. He wants the reader to see what all anti-war novelists want readers to see, which is quite simply that war is bad. How is it that this author achieves this virtually flawlessly while others struggle to put out something mediocre at best? The answer is in how the authors personify the war itself. While most authors will have the main character's best friend killed off giving him just the motivation he needed to lop the head off of some unsuspecting high-ranking official, bringing the awful war to a halt, Remarque has his characters come right out to the reader and ponder what the motivation for this war really is. He then goes further and has his main character wonder about his own personal motivation, and he can find none. The catch: he has no motivation for not returning to the war.

The only sanctuary Baumer finds in all of this is the company of his comrades, whether sexing up some women across the river, on the front line facing death, or longing for the comrades while on leave, Baumer feels more whole with them than with his family at home. He even goes as far as to call these men his brothers, and unlike other war novels, Remarque actually goes out of his way to let the reader know that Baumer means this quite literally. By doing that, he makes the novel less about the war and more about the characters and their relationships with each other. This creates a cause and effect where, during the few scenes of the actual war, readers are even more disgusted with it, bringing Remarque that much closer to his goal of proving that war is bad.

What I expected to get out of this book was some sort of commentary on the political motivations behind the First World War. What I got instead was an insight to turn-of-the-century Germany and the struggles its residents dealt with while trying to fight a war nobody quite understood. I expected to get a clearer concept of the why's and the how's of the war. Instead, it all became even more blurred, not because the author didn't know what he was doing, but because there is no honest way to show what nobody knew. This book was truly about war at its finest hour, and that in itself should be enough to cause anyone to think two, three, four times before causing war, before declaring war, before signing up for war. Remarque finally drove home the point that we all knew all along but didn't quite understand: War. Is. Bad.

Book Review: Nightmare by Robin Parrish

Robin Parrish has accomplished something in his latest novel, Nightmare, that I have yet to see anywhere else. He almost perfectly intertwines two genres, horror and mystery, in two parallel storylines. The reader gets to jump back and forth in alternating chapters between the adventures of Maia Peters as she searches for a missing friend, Jordin Cole, and the thrilling, yet somewhat terrifying, exploits of the world of the paranormal as Maia and Jordin explore some of America's most haunted locations. With each haunt, more of the mystery is uncovered for the reader. However, the clues come at the risk of experiencing the all too realistic scenes of horror as ghosts creep through the walls and skeletons crawl out of the closet. Nightmare is a literary entree that mixes in a pinch of Agatha Christie, a dash of Stephen King, and just a bit of Dan Brown for controversy. Although it is categorized as Christian Fiction, Nightmare will be enjoyed by Christians and secular audiences alike.

That's that for my official review. Now for my personal one. Ever since picking up his debut novel, Relentless, on a whim to review for college, I have been a fan of his Robin Parrish's work. I gave the book the good review it so rightly deserved (I'll post it later), requested an interview with him, and decided that I would read just about anything he writes. So far I have been true to my word. I enjoyed the rest of the Dominion Trilogy (of which  Relentless was the beginning), but thought his first stand alone novel, Offworld, was only okay at best. After hearing about  Nightmare, I told myself I would read it, but stay objective as I wasn't sure if Parrish lacked the skill for a stand alone novel, if he was going to be a one-hit wonder (the trilogy as a whole counting as one), or if he would knock my socks off. Well, I'm not wearing socks, but that's because my feet hurt. The fact is that Nightmare is a really good novel. It isn't quite a great novel, though, and that is through no fault of the author's. In a recent post on his blog (there's a link to it on the right), Parrish ponders whether he is in the right category, having been pigeon-holed into Christian Fiction. Let me first note that he also said he loves the people he has had the opportunity of working with at Bethany House and every opinion in this piece is mine and does not reflect the author's personal beliefs. I honestly think Parrish is stuck in a limbo. His work doesn't seem to be "Christian enough" to be taken seriously by the people who stride to the Christian Fiction section of their local Borders or Barnes and Noble, but it also seems "too Christian" to be accepted by the secular culture, especially since he's already breached the label of Christian Fiction. The other problem with his work is that it needs a better editor. Once again, this is no fault of Parrish's. Every author needs an editor (as I type this I keep asking my wonderful fiancee for help with words and whatnot) to take a piece that is really good, as is Nightmare and make it great, which is just the beginning of Parrish's potential. I enjoyed Nightmare thoroughly and will continue to read anything Robin Parrish's publishers deem worthy to publish. I just wish for his sake that readers would take him more seriously. I know I do.

I'm just saying is all.

Natalie Maines and Stephen King have something in common

I am sitting here with my fiancee watching the documentary about the singing group The Dixie Chicks called "Shut Up and Sing." For those of you who do not know, in 2003, Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks made a side comment about the then president of the United States, George W. Bush. What she said got blown out of proportion. Soon after, a lot of Bush supporters suddenly boycotted the all-girl band. This included their sponsors for that tour, Lipton, backing out of the sponsorship. A lot of Americans started calling them names, treating them like dirt because Natalie said something slightly negative about their dear president. The worse part was that the comments the Bush fans made portrayed them as being slightly stupid and not at all informed about The Dixie Chicks, their music, or what was said.



Fast forward to the year 2010. Bestselling author Stephen King, in comparing her to J.K. Rowling, said, "The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good." I am sure you all could imagine how intelligently the fans of Meyer responded. They wanted to know just who hell does Stehpen King think he is. They wanted to point out that Stephenie Meyer is more popular now than he is or ever was. I even stumbled across this gem: "i mean, how many hits on one of stephen kings books? how many on, well whatever random book by [Stephenie Meyer]? who's got most succes? who's best? well, probably the one with most succes. and who is he to decide anyway?"

I am not a fan of the Twilight books. I gave the first one a shot, did not like what I read, and put it down. This is after reading in the USA Today's bestseller list that Meyer wrote books like The Host, a story about a woman caught in a love triangle with a man and, I am not making this up, the alien possessing her. I closed the paper, flopped it on the table, and vowed never to read anything she wrote. Still, I was curious what all the rave was about. After all, that was how I started reading Harry Potter and became an addict of that great piece of literature. I respect Stephenie Meyer for being able to enter a market as uncertain as fiction writing and making a name for herself. I also respect that, so far as I can tell, she has not "retaliated" against Stephen King the way her fans, who really need to be put on a leash, have. It is unfortunate for her that now, because of this uproar due to the comment made by Stephen King (who is no stranger to controversy, so this does not really affect him), people are seeing her fans for what they are: ignorant, uninformed, closed-minded people whose reading histories probably do not stray very far from what can be found in Cosmo or Seventeen. I plan to be a published author one day. I hope to be able to take criticism from whomever and say, "well, that is okay because I am still a writer." I hope to be able to handle whatever anyone says to me or about me, positive or negative, with the same lack of emotional backlash that Meyer has displayed. Most importanly, though, is that I hope my fans are not as, pardon me but, utterly dumb as her fans.

Just saying, is all.

What I Alone Can Say

I knew from starting this blog that I wanted my first real entry (not my introduction) to be about how I "became" a writer. I had been a writer most of my life, but it took a while for me to discover myself. This is an essay I wrote about that experience of self-discovery and I would like to share it with you, my readers. It is titled "What I Alone Can Say".



It was Monday and I was a sophomore.

I walked into my SRT (Student Resource Time) class for what was homeroom under a different name. Another school day was underway, yet I only had eyes for fifth period Creative Writing. It seemed as if my writing career began in that fifth period class, but it didn’t. It didn’t begin in SRT either, even though that was where I discovered it. It didn’t even begin with Mrs. Liechty, the teacher who led me to that discovery.

It all began in second grade.

November 1992. The Webster Elementary second grade class had to write about Thanksgiving. I chose to write a very poorly edited story about how Thanksgiving came about. It was my first story, and it was only 99 words long. In April of 1993, still in second grade I wrote two more stories for school, one about toads and one about frogs. They were my first stories in cursive and they both displayed my apparent love for amphibians.

October 18, 1993. Three days before my ninth birthday. I wrote a story with a moral (we were learning about Aesop) for my third grade teacher, Mrs. Houin, titled “Wolf and Dog.” My spelling was getting better, but my grammar still needed work and my punctuation skills were atrocious. Five months later, I created a fictional story to inform why termites ate wood and a story based (not loosely) off the character of Pink Panther. Again, my spelling was improving, even if my grammar and punctuation weren't. To top it off, I was the most optimistic of all my classmates, making sure to add a nice “Happily Ever After” to the end of each story.

October, 1994. I may have been nine or ten, but I was in the fourth grade either way. I wrote a story called “Adventures in Basketball,” which may have been what the movie Space Jam was based after. April and May brought two more pieces of writing, still with terrible grammar and punctuation skills (not to mention sloppy handwriting that never truly left me). However, these two pieces were slightly different. The first, simply titled “Reading,” was a personal opinion piece on, that's right, reading. It showed a desire that not many other kids that age showed. The other piece, which I conveniently “borrowed” from a popular video game back then, showed my attention to detail, and ultimately myself as a writer, begin to grow.

November, 1995. It was my only story from fifth grade. The story was 23 words long, showed my lack of capitalizing a single letter, and only used two punctuation marks, both of which were periods. It was not my fiction this time that was enthralling. The fifth grade class had to fill out four pieces of paper, all having to do with what we liked to read and write, what we wanted to read and write, and what we thought of our writing, which included my answer to that question that I thought my writing was “unspeakably dispicable.”

The Plymouth High School sophomore class had been handed portfolios of their writing from second grade on. It was in Mrs. Liechty's SRT that I received mine, and it was then that I realized who I was. It was something that was handed to me but will never be taken away.

It was Monday and I was a writer.