Forbidden. Eternal. A love to die for…

⁸/₁₀
This review will might contain spoilers.

“Torment” was published September 28th 2010 by Delacorte Books. It is the second instalment of the popular fallen-series by Lauren Kate. I was so luck that I got to meet her and interview her last October (-Click-), so my copy of Torment is signed too. Even though I’ve had this book for a while I haven’t read it because I wanted to wait a little while so it wouldn’t be such a gap between reading the second book and the third book (summer 2011)

First off I want to review the cover. The cover on the first book, Fallen, was the thing that made me by that book in the first place. “Torment’s” cover is just as unique. The cover captures the feeling of the book, it tells you about the frustration you will fall during reading and it also represent the frustration and desperation Luce feels through the whole book. The cover is in grey-style, there isn’t colours. I guess we can see the beach of Shoreline, the school Luce have to stay at for 18 days. Even though Shoreline is a colourful and sunny place the cover fits, because it shows Luce’s lack of interest in being at the school and it portrays her feeling of loneliness even in a crowd.
I think the cover, which is similar to the “Fallen”-cover ( think it is the same designer and designer group behind both covers), is really giving you the actual story you are going to face. The cover isn’t just made in a certain way to attract readers, it really captures the story and feeling of the book.
The only thing I didn’t like about the cover was the reddishness on the author’s name, i didn’t look too well with the silver text and white elsewhere on the cover (The reddishness doesn’t show on the picture)

The story in Torment reaches over a short amount of time: 18 days, each chapter is one day (more or less) and there is nineteen + prologue and epilogue. We go through days where Luce attends classes for nephilim (offspring of angels and humans) and learns about the crazy world she got throw into in “Fallen.” Daniel leave Luce so she have to face Shoreline on her own. During some of the fist days she gets to know more about the shadows which is called ‘’The announcers’, she makes some new friends:
Shelby: Her sarcastic, vegan roommate that have the habit to change her hair when she wants a fresh start. In the beginning she talks Luce into bleaching her hair blond.
Dawn: Luce’s look-a-like that gets into a lot of trouble when Luce is unrecognizable with her new hair.
Miles: The nice guy that is nice to her from day one and on, and the guy that kisses her in after she gets grounded for sneaking off campus to go to Vegas.
The teachers at Shoreline is a fallen angel and a demon; Francesca and Steven. Even the two of them are on opposite sides and eventually will have to fight to their death in the final battle, they are in a relationship.

During Luce’s stay at Shoreline she learns that the lines between good and evil can be blurry and that good and evil sometimes have to join sides to fight something even worse. Even though this is a concept that Luce can’t comprehend.
It’s also very interesting to  learn about Luce’s past lives with Daniel, but this is also something that starts off more of Luce’s melodrama.

What  I didn’t like about this book is the very fast development in friendship. I know you often can meet a person you feel like you have known forever, but I don’t find it very realistic in books when the main character just seem to get all the people around her almost at once. Luce is at Shoreline for 18 days. During those 18 days, her friend from the school before Sword and Cross, Callie, manages to give up waiting for Luce’s weekly phone call, Luce becomes good friends with Shelby and Miles.  During “Torment” I find Luce very melodramatic and from time to time she is just annoying. But of course I don’t find Luce annoying enough to stop reading. And these two things and the fact that the book is extremely slow for the first 250 pages makes me give it 8 out of 10 points (before I started writing this review I was about to give it 5 or 6 out of ten, but I reconsidered and found it a little harsh.

“Torment” is a good read and I think it’s well written, a few times it can be a predictable. For a while before the fast-pace at the end my head was screaming: “Oh, some on Luce! You should see this, you should know!” In the end I think this is a good and entertaining book.

As and overall I think this book builds up in the end enough to make you want to read more. But I don’t think that “Torment” leaves enough tension to make me thirst for the third book, but it leaves me satisfied enough that I’ll wait patiently for it. I think the development of the characters might will pace down a little in the third book and make them more realistic. And the cover for the third book is just as good as the two previous ones.

Passion will be out this summer.

Signed,
Lindea

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A talk about fallen angels and writing.

October 22rd I was so lucky that I got an interview with the author Lauren Kate. She’ve published three books(“The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove”, “Fallen” & “Torment”) and two books in the fallen series coming out during the next year.

Rebecca and I met Lauren at a the little lounge at The Hilton Birmingham Metropole.

LINDEA: As a writer, have you ever experienced self-doubt in your writing skills or your manuscript before submitting any of your manuscripts? 

LAUREN: Lots of it. I wrote two novels before writing Fallen, and I got a lot of rejections from publishers. At several points I thought about quitting, but all it would take to succeed was only person to say yes.
And it got a lot easier once I got an agent.

LINDEA: What kind of research did you do before and during writing [Fallen]? Do you have any special religious background? 

LAUREN: I don’t think my background has a ton to do with what’s in the books. I tried to do logically research but not necessary in a religious sort of way. I had a scholar at graduate school, an angelologist and she led me to a lot of texts. I did a lot of research about two years ago, before I started writing Fallen, so I read a lot. About the devil, three books on Satan and then I read by the same author, Jeffrey Burton Russell, The history of heaven, and I have an angel dictionary which has the different names of the different kinds of angels. And I really like Harold Bloom, which is a scholar I think is very great on angelogy and research.
I have also read the bible, which have less angel references than you might think. And they usually are in the extra biblical texts. Like “the Dead Sea scrolls”.
I have “the other bible” where all those text are included.

LINDEA: What do you think is the best writing tips out there?

LAUREN: The first tip is to be really open to new experiences and think that every opportunity can go into your books. And to have a blog, it makes you available.
I also think that “finishing what you start” is a overlooked piece of advice, because it’s so easy to start something and be inspired and then quit when it gets a little hard. So I always try to finish what I begin, through the ruff parts ‘til the end.
And then a third thing: Finding a sort of reader which you trust, someone who can read your work and offer feedback. It’s important to have someone else’s eyes to look at it.