Title: Torment
Author: Lauren Kate
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!
So Luce is flown to San Francisco airport, which apparently has the absolute fastest baggage retrieval ever, because in no time Luce and Daniel - without whom she's a complete, utter, and very limp nothing evidently - are approaching Daniel's car, which is an Alfa Romeo, and which happens to be Luce's dream car. As Daniel informs her, it used to be her car in a previous life. Need we go into the Romeo Giulietta here and the fact that Kate actually used the term 'star-crossed lovers' in vol 1?!
Kate seems to have some sort of problem with plurals. She thinks biceps has a singular form! No, biceps relates to the number of skeletal attachments, not to the number of muscles! There is no 'bicep', just like there is no tricep! Sorry Laurie!
Next comes the magic - and it’s dangerous and uncalled for especially given that it's practiced by Daniel who is supposed to be keeping Luce safe: he shrinks her bag to fit into the trunk, an act of magic which apparently lights him up like a beacon to the evil powers that be. Then he spends a lot of time telling her that he can’t tell her anything. He does tell her that she's enrolled in a new school up the coast from SF, but I have to ask, what’s the point?! She's seventeen, She's in so much danger that he feels he has to hide her away in a camouflaged school (like The Evil One would have the Devil of a job trying to figure out where it is? Seriously?) But if she's going to be hiding away all her life, then what’s the point? How is she ever going to have a career? And if she isn’t, what, exactly, is she studying for? Angel University?!
When she asks him to tell her everything that he's been up to since they've been apart (for all of three days?! Just how clingy is this woman?) he babbles on about a 'Council of Angels' meeting'. Honestly? Where, exactly, is god?! I always thought he was supposed to be in charge! Is he being non-existent again? Because every time we hear of these religious stories, whether in book or film, it’s always the case that the god is useless and it’s entirely up to humans (or in this case humans, half-breeds and angels) to carry the day. God - who could protect her instantly and permanently - apparently has no interest whatsoever in this oh-so-special girl! As Al Pacino's character describes him in the excellent Devil's Advocate he's an 'absentee landlord"!
And what the hell airport did Luce land in? Kate describes the drive into the city over a roller-coaster of hills and dales, but the SF airport is right in the middle of the city on the shoreline! No hills. The city's right there; to get to Fort Bragg you drive north out of the city not into it! Was Kate doing angel dust when she wrote this?!
On the journey - however misguided it is, Daniel points out a mobile home park where Luce used to live in a two room cabin (so how in hell did she have her own room?!) long before it was a trailer park, but when she asks him about the first time they ever met, he makes like a clam again, so it isn't just Luce who's spineless. What a jerk Daniel is! Since Luce is the light and also his buddy, I think from now on I shall refer to them as Dani of El and his bud light...maybe not!
I don’t know where Kate gets this reincarnation from given her context. It’s not in the Bible. Yes, there are some delusional characters in there who question whether Jesus, for example, is the reincarnation of Elisha or Elijah or whatever, but the Bible is really one life and you're done, as unjust as that is in this context. In point of fact, it’s not until the NT that we even get an after-life! There's no such thing in the OT, and there's no mention of any scheme of reincarnation. That's not a Judaic idea at all.
As a special treat, Dani of El parks in Mendocino and literally flies Luce to Fort Bragg, or more specifically, to the protected grounds of the Shoreline school. She wakes up the next day to discover that she's sharing a room with an obnoxious 'Nephilim' (more on this anon) called Shelby who, for reasons unknown and unexplained, was evidently not told she was getting a roommate that night. Shelby wasn't actually there in the middle of the night as it happened, not arriving home until the wee hours of the morning, and then through the window!
So they go to breakfast. Luce notes that this place smells faintly of the ocean, but it’s not really like home - on the east coast? I don’t know what the deal is with that. She lived on the east coast when she was in the Dover school where her boyfriend burned, but her parents were living just a few miles from her school in Georgia, so what that's all about I have no good handle on.
As they reach the "mess hall" which is very well-appointed and suitable for rich kids, completely the opposite of Sword and Cross, Shelby reluctantly and snottily imparts that the school is home to a bunch of Nephil. On that topic, Hebrew words which end in 'im', such as Cherubim, are plurals. The singular in this case would be Cherub. Kate finally addresses the fact that Nephilim is a plural, having Shelby make cheap excuses for Kate's inappropriate use of the term. Not a bad idea - blame a character for your phobias and peccadilloes?! I must use that!
The startling thing to Luce, however, is that she's a celebrity here. She is spoken of almost reverently, and there's a certain amount of hero worship over her story: her reincarnations, her star crossed love, and her attachment to the hawt Dani of El. This, of course, begs the question that if every one of these people knows so much about her, why - in god's name! - has she been kept so resolutely in the frigging dark all this time?
Her first class is jointly conducted by a good fallen angel Jessica (isn't that a contradiction in terms?) and a bad fallen angel Steven (isn't that a tautology?) just to keep things fair! What? What's with the 'fair' crap? I thought all was fair in love and war and this is both! Oh well, go with the flow and see where we get washed up.
And the award for Best Split Word goes to Lauren Kate for her novel Torment where, on page 148, she splits 'demonstration' across two lines into demon-stration! That was hilarious! But unfortunately, Kate also gets the award for most obnoxiously and nauseatingly whiny-assed heroine ever. It’s really hard to have to keep on reading Luce's absolutely endless whining about how she can’t be with Dani of El. Who, in their right mind, would actually want to be with Luce in one lifetime, let alone across scores of them? Which decent self-respecting person would want to be with a clingy, helpless, whining, self-absorbed partner like her? Honestly? It's like every other thought that crosses her mind is about how much she wants to be with him and how unfair life is to her. It’s really hard to read those parts.
So why go on with this? Well tossed in with the tropes and pains is the occasional nice bit of writing and of plot development - and even humor1 rare, but there in tiny doses. Yes! The story itself isn’t so bad; it’s the protagonist who's a pain in the patootie. So I hope you'll forgive the occasional snark as this goes on!
So Luce starts getting to know someone called Miles (shouldn't that be Kilometers in this day and age?) and unloads a lot of her baggage onto him, but this does not a thing to improve her demeanor, not even by one iota. I'm actually suspicious of Miles, quite frankly. In one of their classes with Jessica and Steven, the two of them show the class how to unfold one of the shadows - called an 'announcer' - and see what's inside it. This makes no sense at all in context except as a ham-fisted plot device to give Luce something more to do on her own. Evidently shadows are like archived news clips from the history of the world. The one they see in class is Sodom and Gomorrah, and since these clips are from one's own life, this means that the teachers were actually at the destruction of those Biblical cities.
After that class, Luce goes to see Jessica to try and learn more about the shadows, and ends up outside her office eavesdropping on yet another partial discussion. She hides and sees Roland - of her time at Sword and Cross school - come out of the office, so she follows him and talks with him. He tells her nothing about what’s going on, and invites her to a beach party to which she goes and ends up meeting Daniel secretly. Daniel spends just a few minutes with her. He tells her nothing about what’s going on, and forbids her to leave the school under any circumstances, then he flies off. What a worthless jerk he truly is.
Arriving back in her dorm room, Luce finds an envelope under her door with a bus ticket and a typewritten note purportedly from Daniel, telling her to take the bus and meet him later than night. Not printed - typewritten! Luce, quite obviously by now the world's most monumental moron, stupidly, blindly believes it’s from Daniel, and she does exactly what she's told to do, ending up alone, near the fishing docks, in this deserted town very late at night. As she hears fishermen coming up from the docks (at that time of night?!), she backs into the shadows, and she sees Cam Briel, the bad guy from the previous novel, strolling by! He sees Luce and angrily asks her what she's doing there, then he throws her to the floor as an arrow flies over their heads. Next he's up and running to overpower the angel who tried to kill Luce, and he kills her with one of her own arrows. Then he drives Luce back to the school and tells her she cannot leave because of the extreme danger she's in! He tells her nothing about what’s going on.
So what does the biggest dipsquat in California do having been advised by both the "good' guy and by the "bad" guy to stay in school because she's in mortal danger?? She leaves the school again - twice! On the first of these occasions, she goes on a school trip on the luxury 130 foot yacht. Honestly? What 130 foot yacht isn't luxury? On this occasion it’s fortunate that she is there because Dawn, one of two ditzy friends Luce has made in addition to Shelby, is knocked overboard by a shadow, and Luce is the only one with the presence of mind to grab a life preserver and jump in after her. Something tries to pull Dawn under, but Steven comes after them in a raft and hauls her out of the water, ordering both of them to say nothing about this thing pulling them under, even as Luce watches welts rise up on Dawn's ankle, in the shape of fingers. Again, no one tells Luce (or Dawn for that matter) diddly squat about what's going on.
Next, Luce inveigles Shelby into helping her trap and look into a shadow. She's tried it before, by herself, and had no success, so this time she and Shelby do what they saw the teachers doing, stretching it out, and Luce is able to look in on one of her past lives. She sees her own picture, with Daniel, in a frame on a shelf, and notes a laptop computer and an address on an envelope. These were her parents in a very recent, previous life and she can go see them! Shelby steals her ex-boyfriend's Mercedes and they drive to Mount Shasta where they find the bungalow in which her older parents live, but while she can play peeping Tom in their window, she can't pluck up the guts to go talk with them.
So let’s review the story so far. In her entire time in Sword and Cross, which admittedly was problematical, Luce never once asked anyone to fill her in on what’s going on because she was so self-obsessed about Daniel and her so-called life. Now she's in a wonderful school, with decent, supportive people, all of whom know much more about things than she does, yet never once does she ask anyone there to fill her in on what’s going on because she's so self-obsessed about Daniel and her so-called life. Daniel, who is supposed to love her, never once fills her in on what's going on and she never asks because she's so self-obsessed about Daniel and her so-called life, preferring to act like a clueless thirteen year old, instead to taking the mature approach and taking charge of her life! And we’re supposed to what? Admire this girl? Root for her? Empathize with her? She makes me sick. She's the worst hero ever.
I'm committed to finishing this volume because as I said, the overall story itself is interesting, but the protagonist is utterly worthless. I've never quite been in this position before! I can see how people who are less discriminating and less demanding than I am might be addicted enough to plow through five volumes of this stuff, but I'm done after this vol, because I honestly don’t care what happens to Luce or to Daniel, and I think after two volumes I've given Lauren Kate more than a fair chance to win me over. I started out wanting to like it and trying to like it, but Lauren Kate has made far too hard to even want to like Loose Price! And if this is the best that 'angel stories' have to offer (at least as judged by how popular this series evidently is), then I can’t see why I should read any more of these no matter who has written them! Problematical as it was in parts, I'd recommend SJ Day's 'Eve of...' series over any series like this one. But it's not YA kosher! So maybe it’s really time to write one of my own?
Well Dani of El keeps on pumping up the jerk-o-meter. We learn that Shelby and he once had a one-nighter; and that's only the unfaithful act by him that Luce knows about Meanwhile Luce is still pursing her quest to rape the shadows for all they've got. She tries to capture a large sickly looking one, but Steve is spying on them and the shadow breaks up when she grabs it.
Right before that happened, she saw Cam in the forest, covered in blood, claiming he's just killed some of the Sophie assassins who were after her. None of that makes any sense. Sophie the Librarian had the entire book to kill her in vol one and did nothing. Now, suddenly, Luce needs to be taken out?!
Right after that incident, Luce is called into Steve and Jessica's office (where Jessica isn’t), and Steve talks to her about the shadows. He shows her a copy of a Plato book (which is illustrated! Lol!) and makes mention of Plato's remarks regarding how things look different when all you can see of them is their shadows. And people think this man was some sort of a great thinker?! But Steve's lesson is that shadows can be dangerous and she needs proper training if she's going to ignore the warnings she's been given, and go after them anyway. And we know by now that Luce is far too stupid a person to give any regard at all to warnings she receives, no matter who gives them to her and no matter how valid she knows for a fact that those warnigns are. No wonder she's always died young in her previous incarnations!
Dani of El keeps sneaking visits to his bud light, and each time he thrills her, tells her nothing, and hurries away. After being treated like dirt by him for a volume and a half, Luce is finally becoming a tad nit bit miffed. Hey, do you want to see a picture of Luce? Get a copy of the ancient and venerable Dictionary of Fallen Torment, and look up 'doormat'; there's a picture of luce right there.
So right after Luce's parents ask her if she can make it to their house for Thanksgiving that year, a hamfisted segue into an invitation from Miles drops into her lap and I'm guessing she's going to ditch her parents and take him up on it. Maybe her name should be Luce woman? We'll see.
Well I've finished this volume now and I have to say that I can't recommend this. Not only did Lauren Kate fail to pull it out of the fire, she torched it with napalm. The first volume was barely passable, but two volumes of non-stop whining by the female protagonist is two volumes way the hell too much. Two volumes of the female protagonist not being told anything by anyone and having zero spine to go find out; two volumes of failing to pursue questions (when she has prime opportunities to do so) which would help her to understand; two volumes of doing outright stupid things that put her friend's lives at risk, and two volumes of being so self-obsessed that even when she realizes what the stakes are, her every waking thought is: "What about me?" This is way too much to stomach. No one should be asked to put themselves through the torment of Luce Price's non-stop, juvenile self-pity parade.
Let's wind up the summary. So Luce starts falling for Miles. Daniel, even though he's treated Luce like crap and she should kick him in his angelic orbs and a ditch him permanently, goes into a sob-fest and a jealousy fit over it. Luce takes Shelby and Miles to Las Vegas through a shadow window even though she's been told endlessly that she cannot leave the school grounds because its dangerous and people can get hurt. Arriane rescues her from that. No one tells Luce anything and she never asks because she's so absorbed by how sad she is over Daniel, her loser boyfriend. Dawn, who looks superficially like Luce, especially after Luce becomes a peroxide blond, gets kidnapped and then returned unharmed for no reason! Luce determines she must talk with Dawn but never ever ever everjust often enough to make her feel wretched - and this jerk-off, no-good, clueless, heartless, piece-of-trash dipstick tells her nothing at all about anything.
Luce, who thinks she will not be able to leave the school grounds for Thanksgiving with her folks nevertheless lets her best friend Callie buy an airline ticket to join her with her parents! Fortunately for Callie, Luce finally gets permission to go, but has to go to Sword and Cross for them to pick her up, because she's been consistently lying to her parents - the parents she loves more than anything - about what's going on in her life. When she gets there for Thanksgiving, everyone and their uncle turns up - all the angels, including Molly who dumped meatloaf over her head in vol 1, and Cam, and several Nephilim and her best friend (to whom she's also told lies when she's actually deigned to contact her at all). The angels have a "fight" against the outcasts - basically zombie angels - and the angels win. Luce still asks no questions, and at the end, she claims she is taking charge of her life and promptly opens a shadow at random and steps blindly though it. How is this taking charge of her life by any definition?! It's casting her fortune to the wind, which is pretty much exactly what she's done since day one, only this wind is coming from the asses of angels
Seriously. That's how brain-dead stupid the ending to this novel is. The series is nothing but a massive helping of Luce sickly wallowing in how badly done to she is, in acting so stupid that she's more like an eleven year old than her age, in being told nothing and in failing to ask question which will reduce her ignorance even when she has golden opportunities to do so, and in doing illogical and pointless things which get actually her nowhere. From the reading I've done, vol 3 is nothing but Luce reliving her past lives by going through shadows. Who in their right mind wants to wallow some more with her in that? How is that going to help her address the current dangerous situation?
I don't care what happens to Luce or Daniel or any other character in this story. They can rot in hell for all I care because I have been given no reason to care and every reason to feel nauseous over the two main protagonists. What they have isn't love, it isn;t transcendent, it's a co-dependent blood letting and both of them need serious psychiatric help. This series is a mess and I refuse to waste any more time on it.
