Friday, February 27, 2009

Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books

currently reading: Feed
reading next: Wake

Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books
written by Francesca Lia Block

(this is a collection, so I'm splitting the reviews up...kind of)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0064406970.01._SX140_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Weetzie Bat: I went into this expecting, well, a story. A fairy tale, as promised by the summary. Instead...I kind of found a jumble of gibberish. Parts (the decipherable ones) of the gibberish were interesting, parts were just weird. This was horribly description heavy, and looking back, I still really can't figure out where the *plot* is. It seems...quite pointless, really. I thought it really tried way too hard to be quirky and it shows. The thing I did like was the fast pace, although I really would have liked to get to know the characters more.

Witch Baby: I did not like the POV shift. Again, if they're entitled the Weetzie Bat books, they should be in Weetzie's point of view, and I think that sort of continuity would have worked a lot better, instead of the rampant disconnectivity between the stories. This one was also very plotless, in addition to being predictable. Nothing special.

Cherokee Bat: Again, absolutely nothing special. Still plotless (this really more than most of the others). It should have stayed in Weetzie's point of view, honestly, Witch Baby and Cherokee are just *dull*. The original three at least had an interesting story (particularly Weetzie and Dirk, I would have loved to see that explored more!). I just didn't care about what happened here.

Missing Angel Juan: Oh, boy was I relieved to see first person! This story moved along very nicely and kept me interested. It really starts to become evident here that while the stories are advertised as fairy tales, there's really *nothing* supernatural about them other than Witch-Baby being called a witch. That's really it.

Baby Be-Bop: Surprisingly enough, this actually turned out to be one of my favorites. I liked that we got to go back to the roots (although the placement was strange, shouldn't this have come first, or at least second?) of the story. Parts of this were bad. They were just random, in a bad, non-quirky, non-interesting, thoroughly confusing way. But the ending, the ending was just too sweet.

Overall thoughts: I was highly disappointed. I expected...a series. This seemed like just pointless drabbles. Still, as pointed out in the end, maybe it's just supposed to be stories, everyone's life stories? I would have loved to see interconnectivity in these life stories, though. I feel like a huge opportunity was wasted.

Weetzie Bat: 4.5/5
Witch Baby: 3/5
Cherokee Bat: 1.5/5
Missing Angel Juan: 4/5
Baby Be-Bop: 4.5/5

Overall: 3.5/5


3 comments:

  1. Love the honesty in your reviews. You're a better person than I am. If I don't like the first book in a series, and it's not one of those two or three books in one, I won't keep reading. The names of this one are intriguing but books about the supernatural and fairies should have, you know, supernatural and fairy stuff in them.

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  2. I've already commented here but I must comment again because I've nominated you for an award! Come take a look . . .

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  3. Dangerous Angels is one of my all time favourite books :)

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