The Internet Alphabet

One day a typo gave me a strange idea:
Enter one letter into the Address bar and hit enter. See what website comes up.

I now present the Internet Alphabet.

A is for Apple Computers
B is for B'Tselem
C is for C-Span
D is for D-Link
E is for E! Online
F is for F-Secure
G is for Gmail
H is for H-Net
I is for iTools
J is for Jennifer Lopez
K is for K Desktop Environment
L is for Council of Europe Portal
M is for Texas A&M University
N is for Blue Web'n
O is for O'Reilly Media
P is for PFLAG
Q is for Q4Music
R is for The R Project for Statistical Computing
S is for McDonalds
T is for T-Mobile
U is for University of Minnesota
V is for Channel [V]
W is for White House
X is for X.org
Y is for Yahoo!Messenger
Z is for Z Communications

Silverwing is teh "Meh"

I finished it sometime last week. I didn't like it then, so I decided to sit on it. Still don't like it.

The problem is that it's presented as a stand-alone novel, but it's not. The mythos in the series is interesting, except that the story does nothing with it. The main story is dull; basically a road trip story only with bats. I found the background stories and the legends more fun to follow than the main characters. Buuuuut, the story creates a deep and complex mythos and DOES NOTHING WITH IT. This would be fine if the book didn't focus so much on it. It feels that I was promised a grander story, but got ripped off. I'd understand it if the stories were presented earlier and then dropped, as that would connect to an event in the main plot, but they run through the whole novel.

The only thing I can think of is that the author was presenting the message that our histories should be recorded and protected or else time, war and overactive imaginations would corrupt them. Such a message feels too deep when compared to, well, everything in the foreground of the novel. In fact, it's like there's two stories here: the shallow foreground story and a deeper background story. Problem being that the foreground goes through the motions of a normal novel, while on the other hand the background just flatlines and doesn't do anything. Speaking of which... ( Spoilers! )

Turns out the story continues in Sunwing and Firewing. I don't know if I'll continue through with those. I just don't like the main characters enough; I'm not attached and don't care what happens to them. Well, except Frieda. I liked her. She was fun in colony meetings and pwned the other leaders. ^^

The only bright side is that Oppel's writing style has a nice, smooth flow to it. If you don't read inbetween the lines, it goes down easy. Hopefully, he'll go on to write something more entertaining.