Review: Dream of Perpetual Motion (& more!)

Talk about a labor of love, or half-love. It took me so very long to get through The Dream of Perpetual Motion that I wonder if the first couple of months were worth it. I feel that most of the action-packed, sensical part of the novel was stuck towards the end. I know the back-story was important, but having finished it, it seemed terribly disjointed from the ending. Do not get me wrong, this was a fantastical idea and a glorious, steampunk, timeless world, but I just wanted to finish it after a while. I no longer wanted to relish in the descriptions, but to finish the book.

I would definitely recommend it to you, readers, if you have not already done so, to read this novel at least once. I couldn’t do it again, unless I was to skip to the end. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is a lack connection between the two “main” characters if they could be called that. The overall sensation I got from this book was that it was at war with itself. The one half of the story wanted to grow and flourish in the future it still saw, and the other half wanted to half-heartedly tell of a past much better forgotten. The characters are all well developed but I think that the narrative relies too much on the reader’s own imagination to fill in the blank pieces of the story. Maybe this is just a personal thing, but there are certain aspects that I believe are not to be left out of a story.

Moving on from that very short (and unexciting) response to Dream of Perpetual Motion, I have some exciting news for any writers. November: typically a very grey and gloomy month, maintaining some remnants of or just beginning to flourish with the changing colors of fall, also the eleventh month of the year. November also happens to be National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The official slogan for NaNoWriMo is “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon.” They consider a novel to be a literary work of significant length: aka 50,000 words of a story woven together. If the 50,000 word limit is reached by the 30^th of November at midnight, then this novel could go on to be reviewed, edited, and possibly passed on to publishing. I mean, this is no small feat. We all have jobs, or school, or  both in some cases. But still, this is a chance to push yourself as a writer. On average, you would have to type 1,667 words per day to reach the 50,000 word limit in 30 days; but some days you will write more and some you will write less.

I will be participating in this, for the first time. Hopefully, I will achieve my goal of finishing my collection of short stories. There is nothing but your own personal judgment for incompletion. No one will say anything if you don’t finish. Although, there are cheerleaders to keep you going, and you can also brag by posting your word count.

Also, I will begin reading the Beautiful Creatures trilogy since that caught my eye, after having seen the movie. And like most other versions, the book is definitely better than the movie, thus far. It’s been a while since I have delved into any sorcery-based, YA novels/series (most of the books on my shelf belong to that vague “fiction” blanket genre). So far, this is a welcome break from my normal literary pretention, and from all of the intensely thought-heavy novels that I have read. After I finish this series, it’s back to 1Q84 for me.