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| 1626396132
| 9781626396135
| 1626396132
| 3.77
| 116
| May 17, 2016
| May 17, 2016
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did not like it
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I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. No outside considerations went into this review. I re I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. No outside considerations went into this review. I really, really wanted to enjoy this book, and not just because, as a queer woman, I feel bad on principle for knocking a lesbian romance story. The thing is, I also wanted to enjoy it because the synopsis promised an exciting, tension-filled adventure and that... just isn't what I got. The history between Claire and Sochi should be the heart of it all. The synopsis certainly promises something dynamic between them - a cat-and-mouse game, or a race to the treasure, or bitterness slowly becoming reconciliation. In actuality, though, they don't even see each other for over half the book, and it takes them several more chapters to exchange words; when they do, despite each woman being bitter about the break-up for her own reasons, there's hardly any recrimination. After half a book of build-up, the way they rebuild their relationship is laughably easy. (view spoiler)[Notably, this is because their break-up was engineered by a man angling for Claire's job who wanted her out of Peru - a twist which is incredibly easy to predict after seeing the break-up from both women's points of view. Not... that there's really any reflection on what he did, what kind of a betrayal that is of Claire, his supposed friend. He also never faces consequences; the closest to confrontation between him and Claire/Sochi is over the phone, as he's leaving the country. It's all resolved in the most boring, passive manner possible. (hide spoiler)] I understand the desire to write about relationships between women that aren't angsty, truly. But the danger there for an author is that the relationship ends up falling flat instead. Claire and Sochi have no major ideological disagreements, or really arguments of any kind; the one time one of them gets angry at the other, it's illogical, manufactured to delay their relationship within the book. They are not, as the synopsis, suggests, on different sides of the conflict over looting Peruvian artifacts; everything is misunderstandings, easily resolved and forgiven. There's no negotiation, no tension, no battle of head over heart. The non-romantic plot is much the same: slow in pace, without much draw or a sense of stakes. The antagonist is almost cartoonish - he literally refers to his machinations as his "Plan of Ultimate Retribution". (view spoiler)[This plan, by the way, seems to have already been set in motion by the time he's defeated, but there's absolutely zero mention of whether or not it actually destroyed the Peruvian economy as intended. This seems like something worth addressing? (hide spoiler)] The treasure hunt relies almost entirely on Claire's supernatural visions, not her actual skill - I'm not an archaeologist, but I was left with the feeling that she hadn't really displayed the skills of her profession at all in the book. Everything she needs is (eventually) handed to her. Overall - perhaps the problem here is the misleading blurb, which promises a far more exciting story than what's actually inside. A resounding disappointment. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 20, 2016
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Jul 2016
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Jun 20, 2016
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Paperback
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| 0803736819
| 9780803736818
| 0803736819
| 3.93
| 1,916
| Jan 10, 2013
| Jan 10, 2013
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it was ok
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Edit: went and scanned through some other reviews, most notably this one and decided that finishing this book is not worth my time, as it doesn't soun
Edit: went and scanned through some other reviews, most notably this one and decided that finishing this book is not worth my time, as it doesn't sound like any of the problems I had with it so far are fixed by the end. So: official DNF at 45.3%. I've got better things to read. Original: Currently on page 185 of 408 and setting the book aside for a day or two to decide whether I want to continue or just call it a DNF here. This book has potential, I'll give it that. The concepts behind Renee's character (strictly adherent to the letter of the law in a very naive fashion, estranged from her family and desperate to prove herself) are interesting, and her friend Alec also offers good potential for complexity and an opportunity to push Renee's growth forward. The broader conflicts could also make for a rousing plot. The thing is that this doesn't feel vibrant or developed enough, and other elements detract severely from these aspects. It reminds me a bit of Frozen, actually, in that I can see the good ideas there that just haven't been refined or explored enough to make the actual final product good. I could probably overlook that, though, on account of it being a debut novel, but there's a bigger problem. That problem is Korish Savoy. I really, really shouldn't have an issue with this character. Conceptually, he's a type that I love - a military prodigy who commands unquestioning respect from his men, with some serious personality flaws and secrets in his past - but as he is in this book, I can't stand him. His behavior in general is childish, disrespectful, and undignified to an incredible degree. His attitude towards the heroine, Renee, is worse. Look. I grew up on Tamora Pierce, I'm used to - and quite fond of - stories about girls spitting in the faces of their detractors and proving their worth in previously male-only roles. The thing is that Pierce's heroines actually get to do that, and have supporters around them. Renee, by contrast, has no one really supporting her, and Savoy beating her down every chance he gets. Moreover, the narrative itself beats her down. She trains all summer, presumably in both strength and sword, and still can't hold her own. She continues her strength training throughout the fall and still sees no results. At the point I've currently stopped reading, I'm not really sure what's going on here. This isn't a try-fail cycle, just continuous failure undermining Renee's efforts and her faith in herself. I find myself having a hard time rooting for her simply because I don't feel like she's being allowed to make progress towards her goal, and that gives me little faith in seeing a payoff. Savoy is a critical part in all of this. I get that I'm supposed to like him and find him sympathetic, but I find that a wee bit difficult when from the very first class he teaches he exploits and rags on Renee's own insecurities. He continues to do this - making her feel worthless and as if she really doesn't deserve the place she's working so hard to earn - throughout the book. Even when he spars with her on their own time, he puts her down. In almost 200 pages, I think he might have offered her positive reinforcement maybe once. The rest of the time he makes her feel like shit. And then there's the literal, actual beatdown.(view spoiler)[ The point at which I stopped reading - where I actually got too angry to continue - was when Seaborn defended this and referred to it as 'besting you [Renee] in a sparring match'. He watched this happen - he should have known that she was in no state to actually spar, that she could barely manage to move her sword in an attempt at parrying, let alone actually hold her own against a warrior so much more skilled than she was (as well as older, heavier, stronger, and taller). Calling that a 'sparring match' is absolute bullshit. It was a beating. It was a brutal, vicious beating administered to a sixteen year-old who was already panicked and confused. Moreover, it continued far beyond the point where the lesson was learned, and with very little context - the only explanation given was angry and short. Renee was given no time to speak for herself, was put into a situation where she literally could not defend herself physically, and reduced by pain and humiliation to cowering in fear like a kicked dog. I do not care what Savoy's reasons were. I don't. I really don't. So Seaborn says he did it to keep her from getting thrown out outright - that doesn't make what actually happened okay. Moreover, it doesn't make Savoy sympathetic. If he actually had Renee's interests at heart, he could have explained to her what was going on either before or after. (Instead, afterwards he has the incredible nerve to ask her to stop crying because it upsets him - TELL ME WHY SHE, OR I FOR THAT MATTER, SHOULD GIVE A FUCK. HE JUST BEAT THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF HER. HIS FEELINGS??? NOT THE PRIORITY. IN FACT HE DESERVES TO BE UPSET, IF NOT WORSE.) The thing is that even if Savoy's option was the best possible one, the fact that Verin allowed it in the first place makes me disgusted with the Academy as a whole and him in particular. That isn't a disciplinary action that treats the disciplined party like an adult who understands what they did wrong, or even like a child who needs to learn. It's what an abusive adult does when they feel someone in their power needs to be 'punished', more for the adult's desires than for the actual benefit of the person in question. It felt uncomfortably like someone taking out their rage at the world by kicking their pet. (hide spoiler)] Everyone and their brother in this book wants to tell me that Savoy's not that bad. Seaborn defends him and makes him out to be a ~tragic hero~ ("I think no one should be that skilled at tying a bandage one-handed" excuse you sir that hand got injured after he said, and I quote, "I will hurt you enough to prevent travel" to A GODDAMN UNARMED 16 YEAR OLD WHILE HE HELD A SWORD TO HER THROAT. DO NOT ASK ME TO FEEL PITY FOR THIS MAN. "I also believe having to hurt you reopened that wound" yes because he was forced to do what he did, compelled by some magic from above - wait, he was just following orders? ohhhh. I guess we're in a world where that's an excuse, now.); Cory won't hear a word against him even as he's putting balm on Renee's spectacular collection of bruises (really, she's not allowed to be angry at someone who beat her? that's fucking sick.). And oh, when he asks her not to cry he pleads, as if her tears hurt him - presumably because of something wrenching in his backstory but really, why the fuck do I care at this point. Savoy runs roughshod over Renee and the more I think about it, the more I feel like he's usurping her agency at every turn. This is oddly reminiscent of my problems with Nightshade, actually; I get promised a strong heroine but instead find a girl who's only nominally strong, because the other (male) characters in the story refuse to let her actually make choices for herself. (for fuck's sake, Savoy won't even let Renee not put on his coat when it's clear she wants to not be anywhere near him.) Every single time Renee tries to make a decision for herself, or make a change for herself, he steps in. He beats her down in sword training. He 'defends' her to Verin. It is only by his allowance (after the interference of another male character) that she accompanies the other characters on their quest - and she's only there because she tagged along after Alec in the first place! Chapters from Savoy's POV make it clear that he has no respect for Renee's efforts to build her strength. Every time she tries to eavesdrop he knows where she is, and even when she's standing out of sight he's somehow aware of her every action. As long as he's in the picture, Renee does nothing without his interference or tacit permission, and at this point I really just want to drop-kick him into the Grand Canyon because he's controlling the whole damn book. (view spoiler)[how much will you bet me that his father is the Family brother who ran off, changed his name, and joined a mercenary corps. Actually don't take that bet because you'd lose; there is no way in hell that's not gonna be a twist. (hide spoiler)] On a different note - what does it take to get more than two named women in a book about a girl's coming of age? Seriously? Why the hell is a story supposedly about Renee finding her place in the world so incredibly filled with dudes? Ugh, I don't know. I really do see promise in this book, but I just... I don't think I can put up with Savoy for over 200 pages more. I don't caaaaaaaaaaaaaaare. He's taking over the narrative and doing it no favors whatsoever and I am so, so sick of it. We'll see how I feel in a few days, I guess. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 22, 2013
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Dec 22, 2013
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Dec 22, 2013
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1515095282
| 9781515095286
| 1515095282
| 3.53
| 382
| Apr 01, 2007
| Jul 25, 2015
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it was ok
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(review to come)
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 14, 2012
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Feb 15, 2012
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Paperback
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| 4.18
| 1,747,530
| Aug 07, 2012
| Aug 07, 2012
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did not like it
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Welp, this Popular YA Series sure isn't for me. And when I say 'isn't for me' I mean 'sometimes I was reading this and it was so painfully, agonizingl
Welp, this Popular YA Series sure isn't for me. And when I say 'isn't for me' I mean 'sometimes I was reading this and it was so painfully, agonizingly mediocre that I forgot why I expend the effort to read anything'. At least bad books are identifiable as outliers; this was just... bland. It was like taking a big bite of cardboard and chewing and chewing until you felt like you were going to be eating cardboard forever and what was the POINT anyway. The thing that drives me craziest, though, is that there's a good story here. It's just not Celaena's. 1. Characters Celaena Sardothien (not her real name) is our protagonist and principal viewpoint character. She's eighteen years old, of which the last one was spent in a hard labor camp, and somehow at the age of seventeen became the most renowned assassin in the land. This is an assertion that makes me leery of her as a character, because quite frankly that's not how expertise works, especially with regards to something that requires a great variety of skills. Early on in the book I was optimistic that she would demonstrate these skills and/or reveal more about her training, and that her status as 'Adarlan's Assassin' would make sense. This was not to be. More on the lack of Celaena being proficient later. There was one other quality that was established quickly and made me care for her far less than I might have: girl hate, with a side of hypocrisy. "I hate women like that. They're so desperate for the attention of men that they'd willingly betray and harm members of their own sex." Now, character flaws are a good thing! AND YET. In a book where there are precisely three female characters who get pagetime, and where one of them is largely cast as a shallow social climber (and hosts of other court ladies get written off as such), this stops being Celaena's character flaw and starts being a book flaw. It's not Celaena who treats women as untrustworthy and shallow, it's the text. Moreover, she doesn't show signs of growing out of it: she comes to trust Nehemia, but that doesn't change her mind regarding other women. Making an exception for one person isn't character growth. Also, the specific dislike directed towards girls with power of their own just makes me gag. But surely Celaena has other character traits beyond internalized misogyny and an unfounded reputation! She... likes books! This does literally nothing for her character and frankly, I'm sick and tired of authors just shoehorning 'bookishness' in without depth. She has conversations with Dorian and Chaol about books, which to my eternal frustration are skipped over. We barely even get titles! Do they discuss philosophy - the morality of killing in different circumstances, perhaps? What about history, or scholarly debates on the fall of different empires? Hell, even a conversation about bawdy romance novels would have fleshed out all the characters involved more than 'he named a few title and the conversation stretched on for hours'. It's all window dressing. This is page time which could have been spent on the book's plot. And speaking of things that are told rather than shown: Celaena's motivations. What are they, anyway? Initially her thoughts are all about escape, generally through violent means. Freedom is the goal that she's willing to kill for, either in the actual escape attempt or as the King's Champion... but when it's offered to her practically on a silver platter, she refuses it. This despite the fact that other competitors for the title of Champion are being systematically disemboweled. AND SPEAKING OF THAT. "Just know that there's not a moment that goes by when I don't wonder what it will be like to kill for him - the man who destroyed everything that I loved!" She's the main POV character. Before this line, she thinks about this in passing maybe two or three times. If this is supposed to be her internal conflict, why did the audience never get to actually see it? The two male points of the love triangle - because of course there's a love triangle - are the Crown Prince, Dorian, and the Captain of the Guard, Chaol. Of the two, I have less to say about Chaol: he was bland and didn't really develop (except developing feeeeeeeeeeeeeelings for Celaena), but he wasn't well the utter mess that Dorian was. Both dudes are clearly here to fall in love with Celaena more than anything else, so that's a problem from the start, but dang, Dorian, what the hell. How is this guy alive, actually; I'm genuinely curious. He's the son and heir of a hated tyrant, which makes him a very logical target for assassins and rebels, and yet he brushes off a man being killed and disemboweled as 'probably just a drunken brawl'. Twice. He says this twice. This is someone who is literally too stupid to survive in his position. Unfortunately he doesn't realize this, because we get this gem: "I'm not married because I can't stomach the idea of marrying a woman inferior to me in mind and spirit. It would mean the death of my soul." See. The thing about this. Is that Dorian never actually interacts voluntarily with any women other than Celaena, Nehemia, and his mother. I'm not surprised he considers the court women 'inferior in mind and spirit', because he doesn't fucking bother to talk to them. (By the way, see above re: this book has a woman problem.) He doesn't try to see them as people at all, though it's strongly implied he may just sleep with them anyway. And about that. Dorian is apparently incapable of understanding boundaries. There is an absolutely agonizing scene, which I suspect is meant to be cute/funny, when Celaena is dealing with menstrual cramps and he intrudes on her. She repeatedly tells him to go away, in no uncertain terms, and his response? Is to insist that she's not really in pain and is doing it for attention, and that this ploy will end with them sleeping together. This is, at best, the behavior of a selfish child who doesn't understand that other human beings have needs. At worst, it's the behavior of a man who doesn't listen to a woman's 'no'. That the woman in this case could supposedly kill him doesn't matter; if he doesn't listen to her words, he doesn't respect her. And if he doesn't respect her, they're not a healthy couple at all. There is, however, one SHINING LIGHT in the darkness of this pathetic cast, and that is Princess Nehemia. My kingdom, if I had one, for this to be rewritten as her story. She is demonstrably clever, cunning, acerbic, and brave; she's collaborating with rebels against the very man whose castle she's inside, and she knows far, far more than she's telling. Nehemia has a cause, Nehemia has motivations, and scenes with her in them were by far the best of the book. Her introduction, in which she and Celaena made fun of the glass castle in a language no one else knew, was honestly Celaena's best scene. Unfortunately, I already know Book 2 spoilers. (view spoiler)[And I am FURIOUS. Kill off the black princess because of a man's grudge? And not even a grudge against her, but against the main character? What is she, Celaena's accessory? She can't be a pet, because the fucking dog gets to live longer. Bad enough that she dies in the second book, but so much worse that it doesn't actually have anything to do with her. She's championing a goddamn insurgency, for goodness sake; surely there are other people who want her dead for herself! There's such a long tradition of characters of color existing only to serve white characters/white character arcs - a tradition, by the way, into which Nehemia sadly falls in the first book, what with spending her time behind the scenes using forbidden magic to keep the white girl alive - that killing her off to punish Celaena is just the arsenic cherry on top of the frosted shitcake. Especially because she should have carried the story in the first place. (hide spoiler)] And then there's Kaltain. Who... despite the way she was initially cast, as a shallow social climber, actually wound up my second favorite character. Again, we see a person with goals, but also with a pretty serious weakness (view spoiler)[in the form of opiate addiction, which I was not expecting (hide spoiler)]. She's a girl with simple, self-interested goals - she wants the protection of rank, which I actually found pretty sympathetic. She's also getting played by much scarier people, which is why I could never actually hate her. Kaltain wants safety, and doesn't understand the risk surrounding her because she pursues her goal too single-mindedly. That's interesting to me. Other characters include the EEEEEVIL King, his unpleasant and sexually forward hench-duke, and the hench-duke's champion who is creatively named... Cain. That one was real subtle. But honestly, while there was a moment which might have hinted at depth in Cain, none of them moved beyond shallow characterization. As well rubber-stamp their foreheads with 'BAD' and go on. 2. Plot What plot. No, I'm serious: the actual plot didn't show its face until 47% of the way through the Kindle book (and given that that includes a preview of the sequel, it's even further through the actual book). Before that we get a Hunger Games-esque Champion competition which is glossed over more often than not. This is all there is to string narrative tension on for half the book (okay, except for the murders, but Chaol is the only one who gets worked up about that). Moreover, Celaena has been instructed to pretend to be mediocre, so even the few tests we do see rarely have any tension. They're just endless "she could have kicked everyone's asses, but didn't" which, hoo boy, doesn't do anything for that whole problem where Celaena's skills are all talk, no action. The lack of tension around the competition is linked to something else that I found frustrating, which was the way that Celaena's time at the prison camp was handled. Or rather... not. Not handled. At all. Aside from one cliche nightmare sequence and a bit of glancing at slaves and feeling sympathy, Celaena shows no signs of having being forced to work hard labor for a year. Given that this is a place where people apparently don't tend to survive a few months, is it unreasonable to expect that she show some evidence of the trauma she's been in? Again: the reader is inside her head for most of the book, but we never see how Endovier changed her. She is, apparently, as cocksure and confident as she was before her arrest. Now, I understand the desire to have a protagonist who can dish out some smack-talk, but there's an easy way to solve this: have that confidence be a projection, and let Celaena's inner perspective show the impacts of what she's gone through. It'd make her a lot more complex as a character, and really color her interactions with the other members of the cast. And since her consolation prize if she loses the competition is to go back to the labor camp, it'd give the tests a lot more weight, especially early on when she's in poorer physical shape and therefore at more risk of losing. The actual plot is... interesting. Unsurprisingly, it would have benefited from being introduced earlier, in no small part because it completely reshapes the worldbuilding as the reader understands it. This makes some things more forgivable ((view spoiler)[for instance, the clear Mary/Jesus parallels at the Christmas-analogue, and the fact that the goddess of the hunt is called, I SHIT YOU NOT, DEANNA. (hide spoiler)]), but is also an abrupt change to drop that far into the story and difficult to reconcile. When everything comes to a head, it's an avalanche, and unfortunately one which actually back-seats Celaena herself. Without spoilers: she would not have survived the end of this book without the direct and powerful intervention of several other people. This could be a statement about the power of friendship, except that Celaena hasn't done jack shit for the rest of the book, so it ends up just being another instance of her not accomplishing things everyone in the book has insisted she's capable of. 3. Miscellaneous I'm running out of characters here so let's wrap this up with some bullet points: - The fixation on Celaena's physical appearance is painful to read. There's an entire paragraph at the beginning about what color her eyes are. I'm only grateful they're not described as 'shining orbs'. - I haven't studied that much fencing, but even I know that the fencing in this book is bad. You don't hold blades against one another, you retreat and disengage, especially if you're physically smaller. And the phrase 'deflected the blow and parried' may be an editing error, but it made me cringe. Parrying is deflecting the blow. - I don't believe for a second that Nehemia needed to be shown basic fencing footwork by Dorian, and I'm surprised Celaena did. - Yeah, yeah, magic has been 'gone from the land' for a while. But Celaena believes in it enough to respect the magic forest they ride through from Endovier, so why doesn't she ever even consider that the murders in the palace are also supernatural until it smacks her in the face? - Everyone remarks on this but: Celaena adjusts her door hinges so they creak loudly. AND THEN DORIAN AND CHAOL SNEAK UP ON HER REPEATEDLY. The first time is right after we're told no one would be able to sneak up on her. Dorian pulls this off drunk at another instance. Chaol once winces at the creaking noise, but manages to approach Celaena with her still asleep - she wakes up at his footsteps, but not at her own noise trap. Honestly. What kind of assassin is this girl? Because the picture I'm getting is not of a competent one. - Some gross, awkwardly thrown in fetishization of virginity: He was fairly certain she was a virgin, but did Dorian know it? It probably made him more interested. That sound you're hearing is me gagging in the background. Add to this that she has a ~tragic lost lover and her talking about him is made into bonding between her and Dorian and. ugh. The romance in this book is so painful to me. - Professional assassin never once considers that a bag of candy left in her rooms might be poisoned. Professional assassin stuffs her face without knowing where the food came from. Professional assassin is lucky she got betrayed to the king instead of just flat-out killed before this book started. (view spoiler)[- She goes from 0 to 60 in suspecting Nehemia of murder without even thinking it through. Really, Celaena, they're killing competitors - who stands to gain from the competition? Not Nehemia. (hide spoiler)] And finally: "I name you Elentiya, 'Spirit That Could Not Be Broken'." [image] 4. The Takeaway This was, to say the least, not my cup of tea. Butttttt a lot of the ways in which it was weak are things I know to be amateur writer problems. Consensus among reviews I've read seems to be that the second book is much better, which is promising. However, because of the spoiler I already know for that book, I have less than zero interest in reading it, or the rest of the series. I may give Maas another chance in the future. If so, though, it'll only be after she's wrapped up this series and I've read reviews assessing how she did wrapping up the entire narrative. (This means no A Court of Thorns and Roses for me.) If the consensus on the end of this series is good and her next project sounds interesting, it'll be worth my time. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 10, 2015
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Jan 07, 2011
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||||
| 1599901684
| 9781599901688
| 1599901684
| 3.44
| 6,237
| Mar 04, 2014
| Mar 04, 2014
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did not like it
|
Like many people who picked up this book, I love Shannon Hale's other work. Her Bayern series, in particular, does a fabulous job of blending fairy ta
Like many people who picked up this book, I love Shannon Hale's other work. Her Bayern series, in particular, does a fabulous job of blending fairy tales with complexity and realism (which is to say, people who live through the kind of traumatic stuff that happens in fairy tales actually have to deal with trauma and recovery). I'll hold Enna Burning up as an example of splendid characterization any day. I'd seen the bad reviews of this - I knew it was probably going to let it down. But I love Shannon Hale, dammit, so I checked it out anyway. And this... this is not the Shannon Hale I know and love. Other reviewers have pointed out that she had five books out in 2014, so that could well be a factor; this certainly does read as dashed off and under-polished, and that kind of deadline pressure would definitely contribute. The sense that I had, though, was that the biggest problem Dangerous had was how far it was from Hale's other work. Where her prior successes have been fairy tale adaptations and fantasy, this is an original sci-fi concept. Where her characters have been courtly and medieval, here she's dealing with modern teens. And where many of her most interesting conflicts have been internal, here most of the conflict is external. It left me with the feeling that she was trying to branch out, but not really willing to let go of the conventions of her previous books. (Case in point: writing a character who swears a ludicrous amount, and then compounding the absurdity of it by replacing his curses with 'bleep'. In the text. I wish I was kidding.) The fact is that to make this genre shift you have to jump with both feet, not just stick your toe in a little bit. This was the sticking the toe in thing. What comes out is a chaotic mess. There is, quite frankly, way too much going on in this plot - between three and four antagonists at any given time; mysteries that are dropped and picked up again with little rhyme or reason; bursts of vaguely described action interspersed with time-skips of weeks or months. The supporting cast are a collection of cardboard cutouts with sketchy defining traits, none of whom get much chance to develop or reveal depth. The only character aside from Maisie who gets a lot of focal time is Wilder, and let's be real here: the boy's a tool. Even when he comes clean about everything, he's still a tool. Even before all the action and drama, he's a tool. ("Besides the foxy Latina on my right," really??? Really? This is supposed to be a love interest? and then later - "I can't help myself..." as they're making out and he reaches for her pants. Yeah, real gem of a boy here. (view spoiler)[And of course, he also gassed her family home, nearly killing her parents. There's that little thing, which apparently??? is forgivable??? What the hell is going on here? (hide spoiler)]) There's just... there's really nothing to recommend this book, in the end. The pacing is bad, chapters too short and cutting off oddly. The characters are flat and dull. The concepts could have been interesting had they been thoroughly explored, but by the time the alien technology is explained the book is almost over. New plots and conflicts duck in and out with no rhyme or reason, and then are magically resolved at the end with even less logic. Character death or injury means nothing, because the characters had no real weight to them. A resounding disappointment. I can only hope Hale's Princess Academy sequels are more up to her usual standard of quality, and that this was an aberration. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 10, 2016
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Oct 03, 2010
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Hardcover
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| 0553588486
| 9780553588484
| 0553588486
| 4.44
| 2,557,567
| Aug 06, 1996
| Aug 2005
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did not like it
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Ten years and five hundred comments later and men still think I care if they disagree with me. WARNING: If you enjoyed this book, even a little bit, yo Ten years and five hundred comments later and men still think I care if they disagree with me. WARNING: If you enjoyed this book, even a little bit, you may not want to read this review. It will probably make you angry. Heaven knows that the book made me furious, and I intend to turn every bit of that wrath back on it. Instead, I suggest you read karen's review, Brigid's review, Joyzi's review, or any other of the gushing four and five-star reviews here. If video reviews are more your style, I suggest Melina Pendulum's vlog about this book. Realistically, I know a lot of you are not going to listen, which is why the edit is here. At least it will slow you down a little. EDIT: adding one more thing because, despite the warning and the redirect links I kindly provided, I have indeed gotten the kind of sexist bullshit comments I anticipated. Before you launch into the usual defense, therefore, I give you this: "Alternatively, some fans may find it tempting to argue “Well this media is a realistic portrayal of societies like X, Y, Z”. But when you say that sexism and racism and heterosexism and cissexism have to be in the narrative or the story won’t be realistic, what you are saying is that we humans literally cannot recognise ourselves without systemic prejudice, nor can we connect to characters who are not unrepentant bigots. Um, yikes. YIKES, you guys. And even if you think that’s true (which scares the hell out of me), I don’t see you arguing for an accurate portrayal of everything in your fiction all the time. For example, most people seem fine without accurate portrayal of what personal hygiene was really like in 1300 CE in their medieval fantasy media. (Newsflash: realistically, Robb Stark and Jon Snow rarely bathed or brushed their teeth or hair). In real life, people have to go to the bathroom. In movies and books, they don’t show that very much, because it’s boring and gross. Well, guess what: bigotry is also boring and gross. But everyone is just dying to keep that in the script." Source. Here's the scoop on this review. For a book that I hate, I usually write a lot. After suffering for several hundred pages, I have pleeeenty of things to say. I've never hated a book that was quite as long as this one quite as much as I do, so I've had to alter my review so that I can say everything I want to without going over the character limit. The first part is an unorganized rant. I marked pages with particularly annoying quotes on them; for these rants, I broke the book into segments of 100 pages and wrote up quotes and responses for each segment into separate blog posts. These are all linked below. The second part will be a more organized rant masquerading as a review. MAKE NO MISTAKE: THIS IS A 'HATER' REVIEW. IF ANYTHING WAS GOING TO CAUSE ME TO SPONTANEOUSLY DEVELOP THE ABILITY TO BREATHE FIRE, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN THIS BOOK. Part 1: Pages 1-100 Pages 101-200 Pages 201-300 Pages 301-400 Pages 401-500 Pages 501-600 Pages 601-700 Pages 701-807 Part 2: There are books I don't like. There are books I loathe. And then... there's this book, which did its level best to drive me to drinking. [image] and I don't even like alcohol. I wanted to like this. I wanted it to be as excellent as so many people insist it is. There are some books that I went into expecting them to be horrible, but this isn't one of them. Oh, my hopes were high here - it was recommended by a plethora of great authors, including the guys of Writing Excuses, who I absolutely love. Reviewers who I greatly respect rated it four and five stars and wrote at length about how awesome it was. Other people praised the book as "the greatest achievement of the fantasy genre so far" and Martin as "the greatest fantasy writer of all time". It's those last two that are most important, I think, because I love the fantasy genre - always have, and hopefully always will. Fantasy is what got me into reading (well, Harry Potter, specifically) and it's been one of my mainstays for as long as I can remember. I bought this book in large part because it was so often touted as, if not always the greatest achievement of the genre, one of the major works of fantasy published in our time. Having recently read several works by Brandon Sanderson, all of which were innovative, highly readable, and deeply philosophical, I was excited to see what Martin (by all reports an even better writer than Sanderson) could do. I expected my mind to be blown, repeatedly, and to be faced with the challenge of writing a review for a book so staggeringly brilliant that I could hardly think straight after finishing it. That is far, far, far from what I got. First of all, this book is definitely not what I think of when I hear the word 'fantasy'. It's certainly far from my definition of 'high fantasy'. Now, I realize that my definition of 'high fantasy', which includes pervasive magic, unusual creatures, and a setting that is vividly far from the real world, is not the definition you'll find if you look the term up online. I also don't care. Seeing as the critical definition appears to characterize high fantasy solely by the fact that it doesn't take place on our Earth, and as this definition is written as if high fantasy and sword-and-sorcery are mutually exclusive, I'm inclined to conclude that whoever wrote said definition is pretty damn stupid and carry on with my own outlines of what makes fantasy high, low, urban, epic, or any other subcategory or combination thereof. That said - this book? High fantasy? Not as far as I'm concerned. It is, to say the least, distinctly lacking in the requisite elements of the fantastic. [image] Is it possible that Martin is going for a 'the magic comes back' subplot over the course of the series? Definitely. Do I give two shits about the rest of the series? NOPE. This book comes off as a pathetic attempt at fantasy by someone who doesn't really care about the genre, or doesn't know much about it. It mostly struck me more as an alternate universe War of the Roses fanfiction, with some hints of magic thrown in in a halfassed attempt to give it a place on the genre fiction shelves of bookstores. You can explain to me over and over how Martin intended to make his world 'gritty' and 'realistic' and I will tell you over and over that that shouldn't matter: that it is possible to have a fantasy which is gritty, realistic, and also utterly fantastical. It's even possible to do it without losing the particular areas where Martin seemed to be trying for gritty realism: since he chose to make all of his characters of the nobility anyhow, he wouldn't have had to worry about overglorifying the lives of the peasantry, as one might with a more economically diverse cast. Now, I'm willing to give Martin the benefit of the doubt a little bit on the possibility of the 'magic comes back' thing, because there did seem to be elements here that could become fantastical if fully explained later. The problem, of course, is that they're tossed out without background, let alone proper explanation, and so feel jarring and out of place - not a coherent part of the world, but bits tossed in to be linked together later. Right now... all they managed to do was trip me up, throw me ass-over-teakettle out of the story, and leave me blinking at the page in confusion and not a little bit of frustration. (And yeah, maybe part of why I'm so sore about this is that, like I said, I started this book not long after reading some Sanderson, and Sanderson is basically the king of seamless, fantastical, elegant worldbuilding, so pretty much anyone looks bad in comparison, but still.) If I had to assign this book to a genre, I'd call it 'low fantasy', because as far as I'm concerned it was running too low on the qualities that make fantasy what it is. It's about as much fantasy as fanfiction that translates characters to the modern day is - namely, basically mundane with a miniscule twist. The characters of this book also stand out... and not in a good way. [image] There are a lot of them - eight POVs and plenty more on the side - and not a single one of them is likeable. They all had the potential to be, which makes it worse. Bran, the Stark boy who learns too much and is crippled as a result, could have an interesting arc if it weren't so slow and drawn-out. The hints of genuine pathos-inducing story are definitely there. They're also present in the chapters focused on Catelyn, who is the closest Martin gets to a truly nuanced character. Ned Stark, Catelyn's husband, is supposed to be the noble one - too bad his 'nobility' comes off as stupidity instead. Jon Snow, Ned's bastard child, is a truly stereotypical fantasy character: the super special 'outcast' who is nonetheless generally loved except by those the narration makes a point to show as bigoted and cruel, who never really has to work either for physical skills or personal growth, and who gets gifted by the narrative with an absurd number of SUPER UNIQUE TRAPPINGS, including an albino wolf (really, Martin, REALLY? Are you secretly a fourteen year-old girl writing horrendous anime fanfic or something? Answer: no, and the comparison is insulting to fourteen year-old girls.) and a bastard sword that was a family heirloom of a noble house not his own. Arya is by far the most entertaining of the Starks, but only because she fulfills all sorts of rebellious-noble-girl-learns-to-fight tropes that I'm quite fond of. Sansa's chapters made me set the book down for days on end; she is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most insipid, annoying, airheaded character I have ever read and she has not a single whisper of a redeeming quality. Tyrion Lannister is what Jon Snow could have become without the heapings of Gary Stu in his youth: a bitter middle-aged man with father issues who turns to sex and crudity as his only defense; somewhat akin to Catelyn, he had the potential to be interesting and nuanced if his behavior hadn't been played dead straight. And there's one more: Daenerys Targaryen. Oh, Dany, Dany, Dany. I could write a dissertation on Dany and everything that went wrong with her story - but I don't have that kind of time. For those of you not familiar with this most epic of George R.R. Martin's characterization and plot failures, here is a summary: (oh and spoilers, but I honestly can't be bothered to tag it.) When we first meet her, Dany is thirteen years ond and about to be sold (effectively) into marriage with Khal Drogo, a warlord of the Dothraki people, by her abusive and not-a-little-bit-crazy brother, Viserys. Viserys has convinced himself that Drogo will help him take back 'his' kingdom - this being the Seven Kingdoms where the rest of the book takes place - hence the whole 'selling his sister to be To which my primary objections are: 1. The blinding obviousness of the ending 2. The fact that this single plotline - this single POV among eight - is so far distant from and so barely related to the others 3. The fact that Dany being raped is never treated as what it is, and that the relationship between her and Drogo is portrayed as love. [image] The first two are self-explanatory; the third, of course, is the big thorny problem. Now, I can sort of understand the perspective which argues that Dany is taking control of her sexuality - she comes to enjoy sex and even to initiate and control it at times. However, SHE IS AT NO POINT OLDER THAN FOURTEEN. There's a reason that such a concept as an 'age of consent' exists - there is an age at which teenagers are genuinely immature and probably shouldn't be making life-changing decisions like, say, things that could get them pregnant. Now, I understand that in the medieval times like those that this book is based on, girls were getting married and having children a lot earlier, and that people in general were more mature at an early age. However, Dany shows none of that maturity until after she's been with Drogo for weeks - if not months. When she's married to him, she is if anything unusually innocent for her age. It's a little hard for me to accept the idea that she's taking control of her sexuality when she's so young and clueless that her first sexual experience is a choice only inasmuch as she chooses not to fight back. Not fighting back, by the way, doesn't mean it's not rape, particularly in the situation that Dany is in (vastly younger than Drogo, vastly weaker, browbeaten by her abusive brother and told over and over that her obligation is to do whatever her husband wants). Nor are her later sexual experiences ones of choice; in fact, it is explicitly stated that even when she had horrible saddle sores and could barely walk, she was expected to be available for sex and treated as such. If anything, her eventual enjoyment of it seems more like a psychological block put up as a survival tactic than genuine pleasure in the act or love for Drogo. Yet, despite the fact that this situation is obviously, beyond a shadow of a doubt, rape, it's never addressed in-text. If anything, it's portrayed as a positive experience for Dany, one that makes her stronger and enables her to stand up for herself. [image] Stupid me; I thought that the cancerous expansion of rape-as-love was limited to abusive jackass love interests in YA paranormal romances; clearly, I was wrong. It's everywhere, people. We are all completely fucking doomed. Which brings me to one of the other major frustrations I had with this book: the sex. Ummm... what to say? I thought reading some of the V'lane bits of Darkfever while sitting next to my mother on the plane was uncomfortable; to my utter shock, that was nothing compared to reading the sex scenes of this book alone. No worry about someone looking over my shoulder and reading about MacKayla Lane getting hot and bothered - and yet even more awkward. Why? Well, as one reviewer put it (and I wish I could remember who to give them credit), they're written kind of as if they're these tremendous mythic events. I cringe at the very thought of quoting them, but to give you a little idea of what they're like... (worst romance sex scenes you've ever read) - (bizarre flowerly euphemisms) + (gratuitous use of the word 'manhood')*(general strange reverence for penises above and beyond the norm) + (incidences of incest) = Game of Thrones sex scene. In general: AWKWARD. [image] (Just to be sure you feel my pain.) This book felt male-oriented in a way that is so painfully forced that it made me distinctly uncomfortable. I don't mean that women can't enjoy it - obviously, as all the reviews I linked back at the top demonstrate, they can and they do. I mean that the book itself felt as if it were written for the most stereotypical male audience imaginable. As Tatiana described it, it reads like a soap opera for men. Because MEN want lots of violence, sex, swearing by female genitalia, and paper-thin motivations, right? Which is exactly what Martin dishes up. [image] and so is the book he's produced. I thought at around the halfway point that I'd finish the book and be able to watch the HBO show to get the rest of the series without suffering through more awkwardly described sex scenes (not to mention the rest of it). By the time I finished, though, I had developed such a virulent hatred for this book, its author, and everything related to either of the above that I start grinding my teeth just reading praise for it. Watching the show would be vastly to my detriment - mostly because neither my hand nor my bank account would do well after I put my fist through the screen of my laptop. In conclusion/summary: [image] [image] [image] [image] Oh, and to the diehard defenders of this series, like those who were plaguing Keely's review, who like to tell people who disagree with them that GRRM is the greatest writer of ALL TIME and that the female characters presented herein are feminist (or, to use an exact quote, that "GRRM has written some of the most independent, self-reliant heroines ever to grace the fantasy genre. It's more than half the reason he's so beloved. His female characters disdain male attention, are always smarter, faster, deadlier, and braver than any of their male counterparts. Kinda like feminists with swords" which is complete and utter bullshit), I have only one thing to say: [image] THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 21, 2011
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Nov 10, 2011
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Feb 04, 2009
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0886774144
| 9780886774141
| 0886774144
| 4.10
| 14,974
| Jul 05, 1988
| Jul 05, 1988
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liked it
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At the time I first read it, this was the first Mercedes Lackey book set on Velgarth I'd come across. I would later pick up Arrows of the Queen, but a
At the time I first read it, this was the first Mercedes Lackey book set on Velgarth I'd come across. I would later pick up Arrows of the Queen, but at that point all I'd read of her work was the Bardic Voices series - which I'd quite enjoyed. As introductions to fantasy worlds go, this is by and large a good one. The characters of Tarma and Kethry remain some of my favorites in any Lackey book. (Kethry's granddaughter Kerowyn is probably my ultimate fave.) They're dynamic and engaging, have an interesting relationship and compelling conflicts, and are exactly the kind of heroes I love rooting for in classic sword-and-sorcery tales. (Given that they got their start in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthologies, this is little surprise.) There were a couple of things I'd forgotten between that first readthrough and this second. First was the fact that the first T&K story isn't included in this volume. It was later published in the 'third' book of the series, Oathblood - which is really just a collection of missing stories, not a whole narrative in and of itself - and I've read it once there and once in the S&S volume where it was originally published, but it's been a long time since either and I was somewhat thrown off by the missing information. The second thing that I'd forgotten is that this book, for all that it's somewhat disjointed, actually has a coherent overall arc in the development of Tarma and Kethry's relationship. They're still very new to their partnership and each other, and they spend the entire book working out problems so that they can function together better. It's gratifying to read, because I feel like this kind of complex relationship progression is... well, not exactly a hallmark of the sword and sorcery subgenre, as well as because it makes both of them much more realistic, sympathetic characters. The third thing I'd forgotten was... less pleasant. The last third or so of the book follows a chain of events starting with bandit attacks on trading caravans and ending in a much larger confrontation. Near the beginning, Tarma and Kethry do something very out of character, and it just goes downhill from there. Trigger warning for rape in the spoilers that follow. (view spoiler)[Kethry 'punishes' the bandit leader by laying an illusion over him that makes him look like a frail young woman, then ties him to his own horse and sends him back to his camp, in full knowledge and expectation that he will be gang-raped. In fact, she seems to expect him to be raped and then murdered. This is out of character in several ways - for one, she and Tarma could have followed the horse back to camp and captured those remaining bandits and brought them in for trial; for another, I don't think it takes much elaboration to explain how illogical it is for someone who is geas-bound to protect women to use femininity as a punishment and deliberately send someone to be raped. The bandit, however, survives, and eventually makes a deal with a demon who has a grudge against T&K. This leads to the revelation that the bandit enjoyed being assaulted - really, the whole scenario just gets grosser and grosser. Not one female or female-appearing character makes it out of this part of the story without being assaulted. The demon is eventually punished by being locked in the same frail female form as the bandit - meaning that Lackey has used femininity as retribution not once but twice here. It's revolting from top to bottom, completely out of place in the book, completely out of character, and just generally an embarrassment and a disgrace. (there's also the comparatively minor writing foible of the complete deus ex machina that ends the tale. Really, this book should be reissued without the whole sequence.) (hide spoiler)] Were it not for that disastrous segment, this book would still probably be five stars; however, given that, I cannot in good conscience rate it higher than three. Much as I love Tarma and Kethry, their relationship, and most of their escapades, this book is not their finest hour. One more note - as anyone who's read a decent amount of Lackey knows, her books tend to have a lot of sexual violence in them. They're very much a product of a time where women's narratives in fiction were mostly 'rape & revenge', and so I would advise any readers sensitive to or triggered by such content to avoid most of her work. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 2013
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Jan 09, 2009
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0399135707
| 9780399135705
| 0399135707
| 4.05
| 17,800
| 1990
| Aug 20, 1990
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did not like it
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Look, I read a lot of McCaffrey when I was younger; I adored Pern, enjoyed Acorna, and even attempted Acorna's Children despite my deep fear of plague
Look, I read a lot of McCaffrey when I was younger; I adored Pern, enjoyed Acorna, and even attempted Acorna's Children despite my deep fear of plagues and dislike of plague plots in fiction. I never got around to The Rowan, I think largely because it had Sexy Women on the front and I knew that, as a middle schooler, that was not the kind of book I should be carrying around. But nearly 10 years down the line here I am, having tracked this book down in a quest to whittle away at my To-Read shelf. And boy, am I glad I didn't read it as a kid. Feeling this disappointed with an author I had loved* is bad enough, but if I had loved the book? This would have been devastating. (*with full acknowledgement of all of the frankly fucked-up views Anne McCaffrey held, I still like some of her work and nearly cried when I heard she had passed away.) This book is just... bad. There's no other word for it. As other reviewers have commented, it's interesting for about the first third, but then rapidly degenerates - as if McCaffrey forgot what a book is, or that plot and character development and conflict are key parts of a story, in the frankly incomprehensible desire to push the character of Jeff Raven to center stage. Let's be real here: Jeff Raven ruined this entire story. You see that plot synopsis about how the Rowan was destined to be the greatest Talent? Bullshit. Jeff Raven is stronger than she is. Not only that, but he's got no weaknesses - the Rowan, in one of the few examples of conflict this book has to offer, fights to overcome a fear of space travel, but Jeff can already do it right off the bat! (As a super special bonus, he denigrates her for being afraid and struggling with that fear.) He's charming and attractive, despite being incredibly overbearing and patronizing! A single contact with his mind and the Rowan is in love, and everything interesting about her is thrown out the window. Before his arrival, she was powerful but flawed, prone to brattishness, fear, and insecurity; after she's mellowed and complacent and consistently plays second fiddle. This could have been a character study of its titular character: McCaffrey could have explored the very real effects of the trauma Rowan suffered as a child, her effective indentured servitude to FT&T (and the limits thereof, because it was never clear how much freedom a Prime had to say 'no'), the structure of a society with all of these mental abilities... but instead there's a ham-fisted 'romance' and an even more ham-fisted alien threat, both of which are resolved quickly and without any struggle at all. If this were a debut novel I'd ask if the writer had ever heard of a try-fail cycle, but Dragonflight came out over 20 years before this. There's no excuse. There's really not. Some thoughts on McCaffrey's bizarre attitudes towards sex below. (view spoiler)[Having read a lot of her work before I wasn't entirely unprepared, but goddamn does the way she treats sex and romance have deep-rooted issues. There's the casual brushing-off of women who aren't sexually active/sexy (Capella, Siglen) as somehow lesser and out of touch with their emotions, which I kind of expect from sci-fi writers of a certain age anyway, but then... pretty much as soon as Jeff and Rowan meet in person, they fall into bed. You could write this off as their mind-meld thing having already told them everything they needed to know about each other, but we don't really see that intimacy - it's just that they're suddenly in love, and then they're even more suddenly fucking, and the cherry on top of the cake is that they can basically engage in... mind-sex, or at least mind-foreplay, pretty much all the time. Which Jeff does. Whenever he feels like it. His behavior is basically... if he were physically present, he'd be feeling Rowan up at work, or outright fingering her. There's no conversation about consent - about whether he should be trying to get her turned on while she's at work, or whether she's okay with him having that kind of control over her body. It's honestly really creepy, especially since it feels like they don't really know each other at all, and because the Rowan generally becomes passive and pliant around him as the book progresses. Moreover, she never returns the favor, which creates this godawful setup in which the hero has constant sexual access to the heroine's body, and she's only allowed to express her sexuality when he's already initiated it. (it's a sharp contrast with the first portion of the book, in which she sets out to seduce an older man and succeeds - where did that Rowan go?) And then there's the retrieval of her memories. A lot of negative reviews have talked about this, but it's honestly so awful that I have to add my voice to the chorus: what the FUCK happened here? Bad enough that he shows up furious with her for trying to help his planet (what?), but that he then uses that as impetus to tear her brain apart just makes it so much worse. The whole paragraph is shockingly violent: Jeff's tone had abruptly altered and his eyes narrowed. He caught her by the shoulders then and before she guessed his intention, he had pierced through every layer of privacy in her mind. She cried out at the force of his mental penetration as he also broke through the block that had remained intact against every other invasion. It's... pretty clear from the way that this is written that, howevermuch McCaffrey writes about his 'tenderness' afterward, this was not a loving gesture. This was a brutish exercise of power, in which Jeff used his strength to try and fix her, but never bothered to ask if she wanted to be fixed, or if she was comfortable with the intrusion. Moreover, he never faces consequences for this, never has to apologize for his methods or his presumption. It's another manifestation of that entitlement McCaffrey gave him to the Rowan's mind and body, and it's honestly terrifying. (It's also an example of plot points being overcome without effort - there's no technical skill required, just raw force, and the Rowan barely struggles with the restoration of her memories. Why does no one have to work at anything in this damn book?) (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 02, 2015
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Dec 03, 2015
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Sep 19, 2008
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Hardcover
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