#dimensional characters

Armin’s very existence becomes a contradiction Annie cannot ignore. He embodies everything she was forced to abandon—compassion, vulnerability, hope—and yet he continues to live, adapt, and even succeed in ways that shouldn’t be possible.

His presence stirs a tangled storm inside her: resentment for his supposed “weakness,” envy of his courage, and a quiet grief for the humanity she was never allowed to keep.

But beneath all these conflicting emotions lies something far more powerful: curiosity.

For Annie, Armin becomes a direct challenge to her worldview. If he can remain human in a world overrun by monsters and cruelty, then perhaps the humanity she buried deep within herself isn’t as dead as she once believed.

Yet that spark didn’t begin with him. It had already been lit before she ever reached Paradis—when her father’s wholehearted repentance and confession of unconditional love began to stir the long-suppressed longing for connection she had carried her entire life.

So when she approaches Armin, it starts as a cautious investigation—practical, strategic, easy to justify. But the more time she spends near him, the harder it becomes to maintain the emotional distance she has always depended on. Despite every intention to remain detached, Annie finds herself forming a genuine attachment, one she never planned for or meant to allow.

Armin becomes both a reflection of what she had lost and a quiet reminder of the small, fragile pieces she might still be able to keep. In him, she recognises traces of the person she once imagined she could be—kind, courageous, unafraid to hope—and that recognition unsettles her.

He becomes more than just another soldier in her orbit and more than a convenient ally. He becomes someone whose presence lingers with her, someone she finds herself returning to—not out of strategy, but out of something far softer, and far harder to name.

Over time, her bond with Armin exposes the deepest fracture within her—the divide between who she believes herself to be and who she actually is. In her mind, she is still an inherent monster who destroys everything in her wake; Yet beneath that hardened self-image remains the kind, merciful, deeply compassionate young woman she has always been—the one who still longs for connection, and who is still capable of sincere love.

Through Armin, she is forced to confront this buried truth, a reckoning that both terrifies and strengthens her: the realisation that she still has a choice.

She can retreat into the world she was shaped to survive—cold, controlled, and governed by the instincts of kill or be killed—or she can step toward the unknown, risking the fragile peace she clings to for the possibility of something more. Something better. A future richer, gentler, and more human than anything she has ever allowed herself to hope for.

But the freedom of choice never comes without freedom of consequence.

A single act of mercy would expose her darkest secret and, worse, leave her vulnerable to the one terror she fears above all:

Betrayal by the person she had allowed herself to need and trust… and the heartbreak that threatened to crush whatever remained of her as a result.

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So, someone I adore to the ends of the earth as both a writer and a person publicly released a new book today.  It's a dark adult novel.  An EXTREMELY dark adult novel.  I'd steer children well away from it, but, if you're mature enough to handle graphic or unsettling scenes and enjoy a good gangster story, I'd recommend this to the moon and back.  It left me feeling charged, like my body was buzzing with the story's potent electricity when I finished.  What book am I talking about?  The Evil and the Pure.

http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Pure-Darren-Dash-ebook/dp/B00ERVIJ9M/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1391301721&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Evil+and+the+Pure

In the shadowy underground of the world, there's darkness in the sweetest people and gentleness in the roughest. They go together like this, hand in hand, the shadow and the light, the bad and the good, the evil and the pure. Sometimes, you'll be surprised which side takes precedence. This is something that winds its way throughout in THE EVIL AND THE PURE. From the onset, the use of voice in this novel is spectacular. It grabbed me from the start and didn't let me go until long after the final page where my head remained reeling. It uses a colloquial, well-crafted narration that provides insight beyond the limited scope. It lets the readers develop an intimate relationship with the main characters, letting the reader see their lives come together and intertwine, then individually fall apart. The pacing is smooth and carries you right through, where personal promises of "just one more page" are hard to keep. It was an engaging read, but by no means does that mean it's light, playful reading. It had moments of pure darkness with some of the most vile monsters because of how plausible and REAL they are--because they're HUMAN, in all of their wiles and perversion, greed and guile. Personally, I absolutely adored this. This book was gangsters and grit. It brought forth some characters I positively love and others that make me feel ill. It had me cringing and on the edge of my seat in rotating intervals. Definitely not a book for the under aged or overly squeamish, but so, so potent and powerful. If you like gangster stories and are willing to venture down the crooked path of sex, money, drugs, and mobsters, this fantastic, gritty, gripping work has your number.

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Now, I'm not going to go about trying to spoil anything for you guys, but I do want to talk about it a bit, or, at least, the characters.  I've mentioned a time or two before about the importance of making characters multidimensional.  I think enough of us have seen ones that are all-powerful or so perfect the sun shines on them alone.

The truth is, a character should be like a person, with qualities both positive and negative.  All of the main characters in this book have traits that are often seen as admirable--or at least relatable--in many respects, whether it's their gentle soul, love and faith, work ethic, charisma, ability to maintain calm under fire.  Those aspects do not make up the sum of the characters, however.  Some of them do deplorable deeds, some are considered weak, some are utterly evil.  Even the protagonists you want to root for aren't static good.  The good guys are anti-heroes in the truest sense, and they're flawed--sometimes deeply so--and even the villains have have pitiable moments.