The "Beautiful Creatures" quartet by Kami Garcia and Margret Stohlr can be beautifully intricate . . . or beautifully confusing.
Beautiful Creatures: Ethan Wate has wanted to escape Gatlin since he could remember. To be free, not to be cooped up with in the predictable parameters of small-town Southern life. Before he gets a chance to make good on his dreams, a girl in a hearse pulls up in the school parking lot, and his life changes forever. Soon, Ethan has stopped asking how he can get out of Gatlin, but how he can get in to the secrets that the old town holds.
Beautiful Darkness: Lena Duchannes blew Gatlin away, almost quiet literally, on her sixteenth birthday. She put off the decision of her lifetime--Should she become Dark or Light?-- for another year, but the guilt at causing her uncle's death has ravaged her mind. Already she's pulling away from Ethan and showing Dark tendencies, such as running away with a strange Caster boy. Concerned and worried Ethan hits the charts with a new friend and finds that the extent to which Lena's mother will go to make Lena Dark is beyond imagination--even in a world where anything is possible.
Beautiful Chaos: With Lena finally Claimed, life in Gatlin should finally be going back to sweet, sweet normalcy. But plagues of grasshoppers, drought, and scorching heat are ravaging the land, even though it's the middle of December. The high-society ladies of Gatlin have decided that it must be the End of Days, but the Casters know better. Lean broke the Order when she was claimed, and now Mortal and Caster worlds alike must suffer. Ethan is the only one who has all of the pieces of the puzzle in his hand, and when he puts them together he arrives at a sickening conclusion: For the world to survive, one of them must die.
Beautiful Redemption: The sacrifice has been made, but down in Gatlin no one is willing to let matters be with one of their own buried in the ground. They must bend Heaven and Earth, putting themselves at risk for death themselves at the hands of their old enemy. The peril on the other side of the veil is great as well as Ethan risks it all to return to the place he once fought to escape.
My two favorite books in this series are "Beautiful Creatures" and "Beautiful Chaos." "Beautiful Redemption is pretty decent, while my reaction to "Beautiful Darkness" was 'Wha . . .? That was random." But, more on that later.
Yeah, I know that this is a romance story, okay? Deal with it. They also fight evil-demon thingies and evil relatives. And such. So, yeah. And Lena is strange and writes long skirts and funky necklaces and writes depressing poetry, so that makes everything okay. Anyway . . .
It's very interesting that these books are written from the perspective of a male. They're obviously aimed towards girls (though, I know a guy who likes them), but they're written by two women. I say kudos to them for being able to pull it off. No offense to you, males, if you're reading this, but it is very hard to write from your perspectives, I not being one of you. And, most books aimed at girls have girl main characters. Easier to relate to and all that. Ethan, though, is very easy to relate too. Which propels the book to its status. If you couldn't relate to Ethan, at least, then the second book is too difficult to even attempt to pursue.
That leads me to my special rant, written out specifically for you on "Beautiful Darkness." Wow. Okay, when you write/read fantasy, you generally come to accept that each fantasy world you enter comes with a certain set of rules. In "Eragon" by Christopher Paloni, it is accepted that using magic saps some of your energy. In one book, Eragon gets exhausted from causing rocks to hail down on someone. If, in the next book, he was able to lift an entire mountain using magic without any extra reserves of magic, then everyone would be outraged because he just violated the rules of the world Christopher Paloni created for him. Does that make any sense? In the book, the characters operate by the rules which are set down, much like we must operate by the rules of physics and all that. Because flying isn't possible. You would look twice at someone who started flying right in the middle of the street, right? Because that violates the 'rules' of this world. So, why in the name of all that is did Kathy Garcia and Margret Stohl make Sarafine pull the ---- out of ----!? That made no sense! They never said that they couldn't do it, yeah, but they never explained why she could! Very random. I was very outraged. And what was the deal with that place that ---- ----- took Lena? It was hardly mentioned in the rest of the books. It was just this random place that they needed to make their story work. But a story only works if it works within the parameters that's already set out for it.
Anyway. Sorry, I've been planning that rant for some time.
One of the best things about these books are the characters. We've already established that Ethan is pretty darn awesome. So is Lena. There are a bunch others, though, that all deserve and honorable mention; Link, Liv, Ridley, John, Amma, Macon, the Sisters. They are all fantastically quirky. Hardly any cookie-cutter in them at all, which is fantastic and keep the whole thing very interesting to read. I think that you start reading these books for the cool titles they have (Oh, come on, admit it."Beautiful Creatures" is one cool title.) and keep reading for the characters. They're the sort that stay with you long after the last cover of the last book has been shut.
One thing that I don't get, though; a bunch of people have names that begin with 'L' and are four or less letters long. That makes it pretty hard when you speed read. All during "Beautiful Darkness" I kept tripping up. "Wait, isn't Lena supposed to be--Oh, wait, that word was Liv." Yeah. That might just be an issue for me, but, you know . . .
Even though some of the books don't follow all of the 'rules' and though they are very mushy and romantic, for each of their bad qualities they have details and twists that redeem them. And, believe me, the result is very beautiful.
Even though these are popular books, I can't find an official site on it. But, as half the world knows, there is a movie out (heh heh heh), so here's the link to the IMDb trailer of that. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1559547/ I would advise you to watch the featurette (is that what it's called?) of Ridley meeting Ethan and Link because it is very amusing. Also, I want it for the record that no one in the movie looks like they do in the book, and in the book they look better. And that the dude who plays Ethan is not extraordinarily good looking. Just saying.
