Sunday, August 21, 2011

Oh Halo, Halo, Halo.

Honestly, I think when I read this book, my brain cells died a little bit. 

First of all, Bethany is a total idiot and is so clueless that I don't know how she even remembered to breathe when she woke up every morning. 

Bethany: *wakes up in the morning and starts turning blue and thinks, ohhhh what am I supposed to do? It's really important...... * 

Me: yes! Die, Bethany, die! 

Bethany: *body begins to spasm as it's deprived of air it's on the tip of my tongue.... * 

Me: No you don't! It's all a dream; you don't need anything! 

Bethany: * Oh, yeah, I remember! Breathe...or whatever! body takes a huge racking breath* 

Me: Awwww dammit. 

That's not even an over-exaggeration people; this is one idiot narrator. She doesn't even know what freaking toothpaste is for, or how to even brush her teeth! And her boyfriend has to remind her to drink water because she can't possibly remember that herself. Then, to add insult to injury, every other page she gets those "cramps" in her chest whenever she's far away from her hubby. You know what those pains really are Bethany? I'm not really sorry to inform you, but those pains in your chest are more than likely mini heart attacks that will lead to one major one that ends your pathetic life. So you should probably go to the hospital tomorrow, as long as you remember to breathe next morning and don't die that way first. 

Please just die. 

And what the hell (pun half intended) is up with the name Bethany? Even her lust love interest Xavier has a more angelic name than she does! I honestly don't think it's that hard to come up with a more angelic name than that, anything than that. It took me about two seconds to go online, type angelic names, and find these names of some actual female angels (although some debate whether female angels exist, but just for argument's sake, lets assume that there is): 

1. Anahita 

2. Anauel 

3. Ananchel 

4. Barbelo 

5. Bath Kol 

6. Gazardiel 

Wasn't that easy, folks! 

Now, I understand that if you enrolled into a normal, 21st century school with a name like Bath Kol, Barbelo, or Anahita, that you would be given many stares and probably wouldn't be best if you're trying to stay "under the radar" *gag* and change it to a more common name like Bethany. Sadly, Bethany never says she has a different name, and that's what she was given by God, so obviously Adornetto didn't have the foresight to think that up. I guess the poor guy upstairs has just been around too long to care about what he names his angels, who just aren't that important anyways, right? 

Gah. 

While we're talking about upstairs, may I just say that Adornetto failed in describing it and the angels who I guess floated around up there. From what I've read in the Bible, whenever people meet angels and see their true forms they are completely, totally, and utterly terrified and the angels have to calm them down. The way Adornetto describes them, as big floating balls of light or essence or whatever isn't exactly terrifying. If an angel came down from heaven whose name was Bert and said "do not be afraid" as a big ball of light, I'd probably snigger and then one of my younger cousins would think it's a huge firefly and trap it in a jar. Then I'd have to tell the poor fella to let Bert go, because he has more important angelic things to do, like watch himself glow. 

 
Hey, guys! Bert's back to play! 

Coming back to how she described Heaven, I guess you could say more like the lack of description. Yay, a lot of puffy clouds, so it must be Heaven! 

Her description of it reminds me of my little sister. We have a town near us that ends in "haven" but my sister-being only five-thought it said "heaven" so whenever we got close to the sign of it on the highway, she'd go, "are we in heaven yet?" Now we'd all say "awwww" because it was freaking adorable, but we know it's wrong. That's how it is with Adornetto; it's kind of cute that she tried (not even nearly as adorable as my sister), but she just missed the mark. By a mile. 

 
See, even the puppy agrees with me! It's just a no, Adornetto. You can't argue with the cute. 

While we're still on the topic of Adornetto's heaven I'd honestly be pretty scared if Bethany was my guide to Heaven since that's what she describes her job as. She'd probably pick up my little ball of light and let it slip through her fingers and I'd fall back through clouds. That's probably why she got sent down to Earth to find all of the little balls of light that she dropped, the klutz. 

Yeah, I kind of hate this chick. 

Since we're on the whole mission subject, there's one big thing that I don't understand: why on Heaven and hell and Earth above would God send one of the highest Archangels, Gabriel, to a sleepy little costal town when, according to them, this is only a slightly important place and there are much bigger battles being fought around the world? Throughout history there is one main constant during war: you send your best men to the most important spots of battle because the big battles like Normandy, Gettysburg, Stalingrad, and so on are the fights that can be the "turning point" of the war. You just do not send someone with the strength like Gabriel supposedly has to somewhere like that. And he didn't even do anything! He just "learned to be a human" How does learning to be a human have anything to do with saving the world from darkness, exactly! I mean if that's all it took I could just learn to slither around like a snake, be high and mighty like a cat, totally ignorant to the what's going on around like a dog, and become the President of the United States. Oh, wait......... 

But anyways......that's not good battle strategy and shows what little sense that Adornetto has. 

I take that back; she has no sense at all. 

Another proof of her having no sense is the whole stinking ending. I mean, wow, how.....zomg amazing! Their lurve is so high for each other that it burns so bright through Bethany that it saves the day! She couldn't have done it without him, who is supposedly a normal human, and she obviously couldn't escape the bonds herself, because only twu lurve conquers all! 

......excuse me while I go throw up all of that garbage. 

Okay, Bethany is all weak for a little while because of her new human body (because balls of light are so strong, too), but you can only use that excuse for so long and by the time she's kidnapped, I think she should have at least been able to break out of them herself. Sadly, that's not what happened because, according to Adornetto, that would make Bethany seem too strong and girls aren't able to do anything, not even think, without a big, capable guy like Xavier by her side! That's too much feminism for her! Not even Gabriel could have done it, who is higher up in the ladder in Heaven than Jake Thorn is in Hell, only Xavier could, our loser hewo! It just annoyed me so badly I think I screamed when it was over out of sheer frustration. 

This quote from the synopsis really bothered me, especially one specific part. "They must work hard to conceal their luminous glow, superhuman powers, and, most dangerous of all, their wings, all the while avoiding all human attachments." 

Can you guess it? 

If you guessed "luminous glow" you're right! I understand that they might have to slightly strain themselves to hide the rest, heck, if I was an angel I'd probably have a mini-romance with my gorgeous wings, but their luminescence? Unless they have no self control I don't think it's that hard to hide light. They'd be (and they were) pretty awful undercover agents if they can't snuff out a simple light. It's not like in Unearthly (which is everything Halo isn't) where she can't tell when she's going to suddenly burst into light, these guys in Halo just have a soft, cutsey little light that shouldn't require that much strain; they're heavenly beings, they should probably have enough control if they were picked for this! 

And don't even get my started on the "avoiding all human attachments" part. If you can't tell from the rest of my review; that's the biggest piece of bullshit I've ever heard. 

Ugh. Curse stupid plots that don't make any sense. 

Xavier and Bethany's "love" was what really got me. You meet the guy one time on the beach and you talk to him a couple times in/out of school and that automatically qualifies him as someone who is "trustworthy" enough to show him your true identity and is your "one twu love". Since Adornetto once again didn't study up on angelic lore, I'll fill you guys in: 

If you're an angel, God is your one and only love and if you even get slight feelings for anyone else, well, God is a jealous dude and will banish your sorry ass from Heaven for the rest of your existence. So, in all actuality, the very second that Bethany even felt the teeny tiniest feelings of like or love for Xavier, God would have stripped her of her wings and banished her. Then Bethany would have had to spend the rest of eternity pouting and not realizing why she did what she did was so, like, wrong! I guess not even the big man upstairs wanted to curse Earth with that and just let her do whatever the hell she wanted, even reveal her true identity to Xavier! If God gave her a name like Bethany, he's probably too busy with the rest of the Berts and Jim-Bobs getting trapped in jars around the Earth to notice such a huge infraction. 

.......I think I'm going to be sick again. 

I have a question. Why were all of the angels in this story only white? It kind of reminds me of how many churches and television shows picture Jesus: as a white man. If I remember correctly from the Bible, he was born in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and whether or not you believe he was Christ, just a prophet, a crazy person, or someone that never even existed, if he had been born in that region of the world, he definitely wasn't white. He would have had much darker skin and pretty much what you see when you look at your average middle-eastern man today. The only reason he went all Michael Jackson when you see pictures and such of him now is the church and the racist sentiments of people during that time. They couldn't possibly imagine the person they viewed to be their savior as, in their opinion, some dirty, savage, middle-eastern man, so in order to make him more popular with the rest of Europe and spread the religion they turned him white. 

So, if God's own son wasn't white, what's to say the angels up in heaven aren't from multiple races? I think it's just very closed-off of Adornetto to only make the angels that we have seen thus far white. Would it kill her to make even some part of her book good? Not all people in this world who are right and just are white people. And that can be proven by just walking down the street of wherever you live, so for her not to include people of other races as angels just makes her seem very naive about how the world actually works. 

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