Books and the Bees

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Posted by Sadie , Monday, September 6, 2010 4:44 AM

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on the importance of book covers, which draw the readers in and get us past the bad blurb on the back; the covers are also used by the publishers to package a weak book into a pretty looking package to convince the reader to try it, whilst attempting to cover the myriad of failures within the book. Unfortunately Halo is one of these books.

My Co-worker and I were dying to read Halo, we’d both had it on our lists for months waiting for it to come out because honestly we were enchanted by the cover of this gorgeous book. Sadly once we’d opened our copies we soon realised that it left a lot to be desired from an author with multiple titles already on the market. Alexandra Adornetto is only 18 years old, she wrote her first book at the age of 13, unfortunately her age does nothing for her here, and contained within the most gorgeous book cover of the year is the musing of a teenager. Admittedly this is a YA novel, it is written for teenagers but nothing annoys me more than reading passage after passage of internal musings while the main characters personality is being leeched away by the author using her or him as a device to allow them to question the world around them. If I wanted to read this type of novel, there is a whole section of them called Literature novels, and invariably they are done better. Another perpetrator of this crime is Christopher Paolini, and I’m sure he isn’t the only one, but he is also a young author who is still growing up in the world and maybe this inexperience is what has lead to playing out their issues with the world in print.
Hello Twilight fans! I’m sure there are some of you out there, isn’t there? And let me guess you LUVED HALO. It doesn’t surprise me is the slightest, Halo out twilights twilight. Not only is the main female character a vessel of nothingness without a personality, it is a void which lets the reader fill herself into Bethany’s shoes. Beth is an Angel, so naturally she had just fallen to earth to begin her mission in making the humans in Venus Cove better people (I’m intentionally ignoring the Pink Elephant in the room with this one, yeah its religious, yes that is something I cannot stand in a book, but it was to be expected with this one, only deserves a mention there are bigger issues with it) which makes her an empty vessel, who has to learn about the human race from scratch, something she apparently didn’t study for (that should teach the kids not to cram before an exam). This leads to Beth musing constantly about the human race, boring us with her opinions of how humans behave.
Enter Xavier, school captain, with a dark past. Of course he is also Beth’s love interest, and that dark past, psh Beth is an angel that dark past isn’t worth mentioning. Completely glossing over the potential for a story out of his past, Adornetto speeds into creating an Edward and Bella dynamic. Portraying Beth as falling madly in love with Xavier, (for no discernable reason, she just saw him and loved him, after only saying 2 words to him) forsaking any type of sense in her pursuit of Xavier, after the token struggle they’re in love. Yay love! How nice except it is the only story line for well over 200 pages, on how much Beth loves Xavier and he her, completely with the puke inducing lines and sickly comments. A curious aside to this, which adds lovely to the dynamic of Edward and Bella, Xavier becomes Beth’s protector, because inexplicably she cannot look out for herself at all, not even able to make sure she eats enough. This here was enough to almost make me put it down, Beth isn’t just a vessel she is a weak supernatural figure, an angel who is suppose to be strong or at least capable, but no she is weak female more suited to looking more beautiful than any of the other girls and possibly cooking, but Adornetto didn’t even give her that, she can’t cook- at least Bella could cook.
Sadly Halo cannot match its cover; it cannot even come close to matching any of the recent realises in this genre. Reminiscent of Evernight, Fallen and Twilight, this is a weak read with no real storyline or thought behind it, not only is every possible opportunity to create a riveting story line passed by, it is done in favour of insipid lines and pathetically weak female characters. I wouldn’t recommend this to any young females, with Bella running around we only really need one horrible example of femineity in popular literature, and authors shouldn’t be adding to this, we want strong capable females in the future, inspired by the books they read, inspired by Elizabeth Bennett’s, Valkeryie Cains, April Dunnes, Alannas, Katniss Everdeens. NOT inspired by the females who are only completed by the males who are they’re protectors and ultimately their controllers.