The Importance of Character Motivation

Posted on by Colin McMahon

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading The Mark of the Dragonfly, a young adult (they say Middle-Grade but I contest it) piece of fantasy. The novel follows Piper, a gifted young mechanic who rescues Anna – a young girl – from the clutches of a shadowy pursuer. The two store aboard a train that is on route to Noveen, the capitol city of this particular fictional world. While Mark of the Dragonfly is set in a unique fantasy world and stars three compelling protagonists, I found an issue that severely hampered my enjoyment of the later chapters. This problem underscores the focus of today’s post: the importance of character motivation.

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A Monster Calls: When the Wild Things Grow Up

Posted on by Colin McMahon

Most young adult fantasies are safely detached from the real world. They exist in fictitious lands that bare only certain semblances to our lives. While many tackle familiar issues, the screen of the alien is always there to obscure everything. Not too much for the message to be lost, just enough for it to be fun. A Monster Calls smashes through that screen, picking the reader up into a world feels every bit as beautiful and terrible as the one we wake into each day of our lives.

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An Inconvenient Truth: The Soul of an Octopus (a Review)

Posted on by Colin McMahon

In life, there are some truths that are harder to face than others. The truths that are especially hard to deal with usually focus on some life-altering aspect of our routine. The theory of animal intelligence is not new, but it is disquieting to a number of people for very clear reasons. We kill animals. We eat animals. We test products on animals. How much harder does it become to do these things when we face the reality that author Sy Montgomery calls on us to realize: animals are not just blank slates of tissue. They have thoughts, they have feelings, they have souls.

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