subscribeChalice by Robin McKinley
Friday December 12, 2008
Last night before bed I finished Chalice by Robin McKinley. Having read every novel she’s written, it was an interesting contrast to her “canon,” if you will. Chalice was like no other book she’s written and yet it was also clearly Robin McKinley, having hints of everything she’s written woven throughout, jumping out at me at intervals to evoke images of The Blue Sword or Outlaws of Sherwood or Deerskin or even Sunshine.
I enjoyed it a lot, but it brought up a lot of issues with me (independent of the novel itself) that I found I was thinking about while reading this, especially because I read her blog and have a sense of who she is apart from her novels — and because I analyzed two of her books for my senior honors thesis and because of that I find I think of those books often.
Firstly, the book was not broken into chapters but sections and parts, similarly to Sunshine. The third person narration was smooth and zigzagged and jumped back and forth through the story’s timeline to flesh out the characters and narrative in a way that was distinctly McKinley and natural, but in a way I think may confuse young readers. (Even The Hero and the Crown’s structure tripped me up as a precocious 14-year-old when I first read it.) Mirasol is really well-drawn and she was full of contradictions and she made mistakes and learned from them. I liked that bit a lot. (Of course I always like protagonists who are (1) clumsy, (2) mistake- or accident-prone, (3) full of faults or have one large fault, either recognized or not, etc.) The Master is also terrifically interesting, flawed, mysterious, and unusual. None of the other characters really stuck with me in anything more than in a “name-with-description” sort of way, though, and while I don’t mind in this case, I think I would have been bored with this story had it not pulled me along with a series of quick scenes, bursts of image and snippets of world-building detail, and a very tight attention to the storyline. The plot simply follows Mirasol’s perspective as she works to orient herself to her new position and then heal her land, second-guessing herself the whole way, which was interesting in that this book was really solely about Mirasol. I suppose I’ve read enough books lately with multiple plots or converging storylines that it took me a moment to settle into this narrative but in hindsight I really did appreciate and enjoy it.
The book was also short. I found I was mostly through it before I realized and I was pleasantly surprised about it. It felt right, too. I love it when a novel seems to stretch to perfectly fit inside the space in which it is written, rather than having a feeling of being condensed or too drawn out. It is lovely when a novel hints at a richness of world but only hints, rather than demanding to show you everything the author has come up with and figured out. I always prefer worlds where the author clearly knows ten times more about the world than any reader will ever actually know — or at least the author succeeds in giving the impression of such a rich world and tricks the reader into believing his/her mastery of it.
The language was consistent and distinctly British-y, with an old flavor to its diction, vocabulary and its prose in general that I both enjoyed but found I was hesitating over, wondering how young would be too young to encounter this book. Its story and themes lean toward the G-rated fairy tale at times but its language is much thicker and more difficult than a reader younger than middle school would be able to chew through easily, nor would it probably sustain the interest of a younger reader. Bryan is someone who was — and still is — frustrated by books where the language is more of a barrier to image than a vehicle for its further evocation, if that makes sense. I find myself often writing to a Bryan reader, or a younger version of myself, as my imagined reader (I always find I write with one in mind). This imagined reader is rarely the Chalice sort of reader.
In that regard I kept finding myself wondering about literacy issues and getting children and young adults into reading in this age of computers, video games, and instant-gratification entertainment. I’m fiercely interested in attracting readers who may normally not read a book and get them into my world, to pull them in deep enough that they might want to stay a while. This is not to say that a book like Chalice can’t do that but I think it’s a harder sell to a kid than say, Twilight, which is a terribly sad thing, considering how beautiful, warm, evocative, and wonderful Chalice was compared to… well. I won’t rehash it here.
I wondered, during and after reading Chalice, if Robin McKinley, with a book like Chalice, could be considered a writer’s writer. And if so, is that a good thing? I think it is. Heck, I want writers to read my work and say, “Her writing is something.” Don’t all of us want that kind of peer-level validity?
Look at where this “review” has gone. I’m so terrible at reviews, aren’t I? I riff, really, which is definitely why I do call them “reactions” — I think that’s a more accurate term.
Back to a “review”: I liked it. It’s my first hardcover purchase in who knows how long (I am cheap and proud to admit that I use libraries and second hand books and all of that to get my reader’s appetite fulfilled) and I’m glad I made it. I’ll read it again. It was multilayered. Its world was relatively simple and clean — no messy histories or backstories thrown in, but hinted at, slowly brought in as it pertains to the main plot. Which I loved. While there was a lot of telling — a lot of telling — the language was lovely and the scenes she threw in between the exposition to show earned those passages of expository telling. None of the passages seemed inserted or forced, which can really irratate me in a fantasy novel. Everything fit with the style of the narrative, as well. So yes, I recommend it.
The argument: Bella is no Buffy, to her detriment.
Friday December 5, 2008
I found this article yesterday on an author’s blog and I absolutely agree with the article (and the author’s sentiment, though I won’t link back out of courtesy to the author’s post’s request). The article’s author makes a terrific, and alarming, point about the potentially dangerous and potent message of the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. (I emphasize potentially. Not every reader will read them this way, nor should they, but the message is there, to be seen.) [A warning, dear readers: spoilers for the Twilight series will abound.]
As the article states:
If only Meyer had taken Buffy as her template. If only she had used that groundbreaking series as her foundation and built on it. If only there was a Whedonesque intelligence and modern, feminist sensibility informing Twilight and its successors. If only.
What you have instead in Meyer’s work is a depressingly retrograde, deeply anti-feminist, borderline misogynistic novel that drains its heroine of life and vitality as surely as if a vampire had sunk his teeth into her and leaves her a bloodless cipher while the story happens around her. Edward tells her she is “so interesting … fascinating”, but the reader looks in vain for his evidence.
(A disclaimer: I absolutely love Buffy and Joss Whedon; go rent Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Go. Now.)
After reading that, my first thought was, Oh, thank God someone just came out and said it in a respectable newspaper. We passionate, obscure bloggers can only do so much.
To stumble-upon-ers: I am a writer and lover of books about kick-ass girls who do things, who save their worlds, who break stereotypes and shatter tradition. I wrote a whole thesis on this. I am fervently critical and passionate about this. When I read a book in the genre I love that praises the passive female protagonist — or rather, praises her for being special when she is not — I get mad. Had the books been written from Edward’s perspective, or in third person, one could probably argue that poor Bella is not so much the protagonist — the one who makes the action happen… because she’s not — but rather the Female Love Interest, or Designated Love Interest to the more vibrant Edward. It’s so much his story. She reacts to him. In New Moon, when Bella is mostly on her own for the book with Edward’s decision to take a break, she isn’t alone. No. She finds a new male on to whom she can latch — Jacob. It’s not so much her story as the story of the dependent relationships she forms.
It’s Bella who is our narrator, Bella who is our guide into this fantasy world. But rather than guide is in and stake out her own space within it, she gets subsumed within it and dissolved by it, replaced with a character who is only a shadow of a strong, independent female; a shadow of the woman Edward keeps insisting she is. Meyer tells us how wonderful Bella is. She never shows us. Poor Bella loses herself in her relationship with Edward.
Granted, Bella has moments. Those moments are what kept me clawingly optimistic throughout my reading of the series. Whenever the plot pulled my hopes down, I clawed out of that hollow of despair and said, “No. Bella will eventually Kick Ass. She has to prove she’s Awesome. After all, why else would both Jacob and Edward love her so much? She has to be Awesome.” But that moment never came — not really. When it kind of did — in a subversive, (passive) way in Breaking Dawn (Bella’s shield) — I was disappointed. Bella doesn’t determine her own destiny, like some fantasy protagonists. She isn’t faced with a destiny she didn’t chose and proves she can brave it and make the best of it, like others. She’s not a fantasy hero or even a heroine. She’s a tragic gothic stereotype of a heroine who, rather than dying spectacularly, just keeps on living.
Here’s another disclaimer: I am engaged to be married. I will be married in March to my soulmate, a man for whom I would do anything and who would do anything for me. I am not some crazy feminist writer/blogger who loves Women Who Do Things and say that women can’t do things with men hanging attached to them. Of course women can do things while in love, while in relationships — any kind of relationship with any one, for that matter. Women can be independent and be committed at the same time. Isn’t that the trait the media most praises in a successful career mother? The woman who is able to balance kids, husband, job, personal life? She is the ideal to which we women in western society are supposed to ascribe, to shoot for. (Which, in itself, is still sad; that women are still seen to have “complete” lives only when surrounded by that nuclear stereotype, regardless of her personal sense of completeness or fulfillment with her own life, whatever or whomever it may entail.)
And then there’s Bella. When she finally finds the balance, she’s not Bella at all, she’s some thirtysomething analogue whom we don’t recognize from the “normal” teenage girl she once was. One could argue Bella changes and grows throughout the series. I argue, rather, that she inconsistently fluxes between melodramatic anxiety and passivity until she transforms into someone who is most certainly not an organic incarnation of a grown-up Bella but rather a forced shell of who we’re told she is based on roles she is given — wife, mother, vampire… non-human being.
What’s interesting, in the context of me speaking about this on this blog, is the thought that’s occurred to me that criticizing books on this blog while being an author myself is a little… well, iffy? But I suppose the other way to look at it is this: If I met Stephenie Meyer in real life, and she asked me, “What is your honest opinion of my books?” I would, frankly, be honest. I immediately and superficially enjoyed her books — I did — but they left me unsettled. The more reflecting and discussing I’ve done, the more unsettled I’ve become. I am still unsettled, even more so after letting Breaking Dawn sink in. (My enthusiasm was so short-lived.) I won’t be able to re-read them. I know that. Having read them as a happily-in-a-relationship twentysomething, not a depressed 17-year-old bemoaning her lack of love life — oh, how those years changed me — I have a completely different view. Reading those books as a mother, I’d feel different yet again. I suppose the ultimate beauty of a blog is that you don’t have to read it or agree with what I say, but hopefully my point of view might have given you a new view from which to consider while forming your own.
But, strangely enough, I am glad these books exist. I am glad I read them.
I am sad about their ridiculous popularity, but I am a firm believer in the idea that dialogue is that which expands our minds and enables us to grow as human beings. Without two (or more) sides to any view or argument, where would the growth be? Without different opinions, what kind of people would we be?
I suppose, ultimately, what I’m hoping for is for more novels and stories (for children and young adults, especially) from the Kick Ass Woman (or strong, assertive young woman or girl) point of view. I want more books that show women doing anything and everything men can do — and have done — in both real life and in existing literature of every genre. I want female characters in fantasy that display the same depth, complexity, assertiveness, and power of many male protagonists in fantasy.
Some authors have and are succeeding at this in certain subgenres of fantasy (Robin McKinley, Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, Shannon Hale, Patricia Briggs, Jeaniene Frost); some have partial yet luadable success (Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials). Some books featuring male protagonists have casts of female characters with terrific complexity and depth (Jim Butcher, Sherwood Smith, Robin Hobb, George R. R. Martin) and some with female protagonists have surprised and pleased me with the journeys of those protagonists (Trudi Canavan). We have to keep going, though. That’s why I write, that’s why I’ve always wanted to write.
As I’ve said, this also means novels featuring male main characters/ protagonists/ heroes with co- and supporting female characters who are equal to their male counterparts in complexity, emotion, and range of possibility. This is starting to happen more and more frequently; however the waif/weak/incompetent female love interest still exists, though, as supposed counterpart to her brave, heroic, and intelligent male protagonist. Why does this happen in fantasy? Think of the successful marriages you know: those couples are not fractionally as imbalanced and mis-matched as quite a few fantasy couples tend to be. Fantasy characters deserve to be as real as any real person, as any good, realistic character in any other genre.
Parents should get involved and responsible in this discussion, as well, for the sake of their young readers (in terms of children’s and YA literature). They should recognize which books contain which messages and be able to respond intelligently and with good information to the questions curious kids and teens will inevitably ask in response to books that provoke such thought. Regardless of the book, its characters, or its message, if it provokes serious intellectual conversation, I think that’s a terrific and laudable thing.
House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
Tuesday October 28, 2008
Last night I finished House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones’s most recent book and the third book set in the world of Howl’s Moving Castle after Castle in the Air. I read both Howl’s and Castle in college, and I am a huge fan of the Miyazaki film adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle, despite the plot differences (I actually really do enjoy Miyazaki’s interpretation and story, and it pretty much has the same themes/conclusion anyway). Considering that in the last month I’ve read both Conrad’s Fate and her Dalemark quartet — and thus have been high on her style of storytelling — it was only natural that I raced through this book gleefully.
And I did love it. It was such a fun, clever book. The plot is simple: The sheltered, teenaged Charmain is volunteered to look after her Great-Great-Uncle-by-marriage’s house while he recovers from an illness. While living in and exploring this house, Charmain discovers a door that has many ways to it and encounters several crazy, funny, and fascinating characters, including, of course, Mrs. Sophie Pendragon and her family. Hilarity, magic, and life lessons ensue culminating in a satisfying, classically Diana Wynne Jones style of revelation-conclusion. (In that regard it was very Conrad’s Fate.)
I have to say, though, this book felt more like a Chrestomanci book than Castle in the Air did. Had Howl (and yes, he of course has a role in the book) not been so very… Howl, he would have been very Christopher. (For those of you who have read the book: Christopher would never have pulled the Twinkle stunt. Never. He’s much too haughty.) Even so they’re very similar characters — both somewhat selfish and self-important, both powerful magic users (in different worlds with different systems of magic; Howl is a wizard, Christopher is a nine-lifed enchanter) — but also distinctly different. Howl is obsessed with his appearance in a vain, almost endearingly self-conscious way; Christopher is fastidious and prim. What’s interesting too is that these men capture the attention and admiration of those around them but their wives are very simple, compared to them. Though Sophie is certainly a spitfire compared to Millie (in Charmed Life Millie, not the younger versions of Millie).
Charmain was an interesting protagonist, as was Peter as the sidekick/counterpoint character. I’ve never really encountered a character who is really a cleverly, well-drawn “sheltered” character who nonetheless thinks she can do anything she puts her mind to — and fails and fails at it. Her successes are brilliant accidents. Then there’s Peter, also sheltered but much better and more practically educated but anything he sets his mind to — with perfect form, perfect methodology — ends up going hilariously awry. Together they make a bumblingly real pair. I saw them so vividly in their arguments, their pitfalls and disasters, and their terrific successes. Talk about terrific characterization.
Then there’s Sophie, Morgan, Calcifer, and Howl. There is something to a series (or companion books) when you know certain characters already so you can appreciate the riotous one-liners that the author throws out there. And there are a lot. They are terrific. I laughed out loud the most reading this book than I have reading any book in a long while. Witty banter is all well and good but sometimes it’s just a really well-timed one-liner that can bring you to giggling tears. That, and Diana Wynne Jones is absolutely excellent when it comes to the set-up and pay-off. She sets up a lot quickly and drops clever details constantly, but you can never tell when a set-up will pay-off — but when they do… they are perfect. Maybe these books are simply perfectly in line with my particular brand of humor? (I absolutely did find myself laughing a lot while reading the Chrestomanci books and the Dalemark books — The Lives of Christopher Chant and The Crown of Dalemark probably involved the most laughter of their respective series.)
One aspect I really enjoy about the Howl’s and Chrestomanci books are the fact that the kids and teenagers involved as protagonists and supporting cast are always at the point in their plots where they’re still learning how to do things and they make mistakes. Frequently. Neither are they usually “in school” but they’re usually outside of a consistent structure (or fight to escape that structure) and they find themselves in a place where they have to create their own structure, goals, and discipline. (Thank God for an alternative to the “school story”-driven plot of Harry Potter.)
A lot of the plots involve the children/teens making the very mistakes that grow into the problem of the novel itself that they have to solve. (Or, as in Christopher’s case in The Lives of Christopher Chant, finding his loyalties divided and all of his “good” intentions making everything worse.) These characters must take responsibility for their own mistakes and must bring themselves to ask for help, even when they think they don’t need it … these are themes that really resonate. They feel so particularly real. In Dalemark, for instance, there is a distinct element of fate and things beyond one’s control but even so the kids/teens are the ones who make the big choices and who must live with the consequences of those choices. Unlike in adult epic fantasy where sometimes the protagonist is forced along a path he/she doesn’t want nor choose, the element of choice is so vitally crucial to the plot of Diana Wynne Jones’s books. The kids/teens are the ones who convince and win others to their cause, who see the truth that some of the partisan, selfishly greedy adults can’t see. But these kids aren’t pure and innocent either. Dalemark’s Mitt, by fourteen, is a several-times-over criminal and manipulator; Eric Chant, called Cat, in Charmed Life, is almost cripplingly meek and shy; Christopher is so self-motivated and self-centered for so much of The Lives of Christopher Chant, almost every negative event in the book can be traced to decisions or neglectful actions Christopher has taken to make it so — all of which he has to then work to correct. Even Charmain, in House of Many Ways, finds that burying herself in a book whenever something goes awry doesn’t magically make the problem disappear; wishful thinking isn’t what changes things — taking action is the only way to change things.
So in conclusion to this rambling entry… Diana Wynne Jones’s House of Many Ways was a terrific book, though you’ll appreciate it a lot more if you’ve read both Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air first.
The Crown of Dalemark by Diana Wynne Jones
Saturday October 25, 2008
I just finished The Crown of Dalemark, the fourth and final book of the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones. I think this is going to be one of those books — series — I’ll need to re-read. Gosh, add these books to the to-buy list! I read the first two books — Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet — nearly two weeks ago now, and I finally, finally finished The Spellcoats, the third volume, yesterday. I started the fourth yesterday and finished it this evening. There was just enough space between the first two books, focusing on the characters of Moril and Mitt, respectively, and the fourth that I was eagerly able to tear through the fourth with only a little bemoaning of the lack of easy book reference. (When I finish a series book quickly I often need it at hand to reference something when a supposition about the plot of the subsequent books comes into my head, so I can verify and/or dismiss it.)
I took so long reading The Spellcoats because it’s written in a completely different, foreign voice from the others (first person, too) and it takes place hundreds of years before the events in the first, second, and fourth books — but its events help explain and illuminate the others, as well as provide the foundation upon which the fourth’s plot is built. I’m glad I didn’t skip it! (I admit, I was tempted. I saw Mitt and Moril’s name in the blurb of the fourth and I was almost — almost — off like a shot, skipping book three. Good completionist me, though! Saved by my own obsessive compulsive completionist nature. Also, looking back, the third book is unusually wonderful. The way it’s written is… beautiful. Its narrator, Tanaqui, is a clever thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl whose narration is actually her weaving. She weaves coats, on which she weaves the story of her and her family’s adventures, and so the book is actually the “translation” of this weaving. It’s a wonderfully unusual way to tell a story — and naturally has consequences for the story’s conclusion and the way the story is discovered and found later on in that world. How fascinating!
Which brings me to the point I found I’d come to after finishing the fourth book: I love Diana Wynne Jones’s stories. So, so much. Every novel of hers (and short story) I’ve read demonstrate a terrific efficiency of language, consistent — and quick! — characterization, and an imaginative level of storytelling that astounds me. Even this, her “epic fantasy quartet” was as good and wonderful, fully, as any of her Chrestomanci books or those set in the world of Howl’s Moving Castle. I obviously need to read more of her works, though I think I’ve hit the “big” “famous” ones.
But back to The Crown of Dalemark and the whole quartet. These aren’t perfect, to my sense, but then again, I am a completionist. I finished the fourth book and thought, “Oh, no! There’s no fifth book is there? Is there? IS THERE?” and moaned about it for a good ten minutes of frantic pacing and cleaning. (I do that when I finish a book. I need to extract my mind; I need to clean and moan about the bereft feeling I’m too often left with after leaving a terrific world. If Bryan is around I jump and try to give him the five minute plot summary and he looks at me, annoyed, and says, “You know I haven’t heard any of the words you just said at me, right?”)
Diana Wynne Jones leaves out a level of detail (and completion) that I wish I could see, but to some degree it fascinates me. These are, in truth, children’s books, and it gives a greater depth of the “what if” to leave a lot unsaid. I know as a kid I always asked myself (and when my parents read with me, they encouraged these questions, and I recall this vividly) about all of the detail left un-detailed. I noticed there’s a lot of lack of particular inflection after each character’s dialogue. Some authors use the dialogue to show the character’s personality (through a lot of particular adjective and verbs attached to the dialogue) but Jones (Wynne Jones? Diana? Ha.) has a knack for characterizing through short bursts of personality demonstration or anecdote more in general. She’ll demonstrate a character arguing back unnecessarily in an annoying manner and make a comment like, “And he was always doing nettlesome things like that” or “He was the last person you wanted to start an argument with” or the like, to demonstrate that person’s nature, so when you see dialogue pop up with a particular line of, say, “No I certainly will not” then you automatically find yourself inflecting the dialogue with an irritated tone and you can imagine the other characters making faces like, “Oh, not again!” And it’s so naturally implied! Maybe I’m simply an imaginative reader. Maybe I naturally thicken characters who on the page are simple structures of basic traits. But I think I can credit Diana with a lot more than that. She develops a richness in her simply-yet-complexly plotted children’s (and young adults’) books that is undeniable. And that’s why I love them.
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Tuesday September 16, 2008
Reading the day away hurts the brain.
I just finished Breaking Dawn. Gasp. I’m still on hold for it from the library… which I should go cancel. My friend lent me her friend’s copy — haha — and so I devoured that between last night and this morning (while managing, might I add, to get a full night’s sleep). I’ve got an awful lot to say on it but in the interests of spoilers, I won’t say it all here.
I suppose I liked it. Some parts of it I somewhat hated. Some I said “Finally!” about. Overall, I think I am “bleh” about it.
Actually I think I would have preferred Books 2 and 3 to be a heck of a lot shorter and sweeter and this book to be tidier, and then just, you know, have that. Or, well, maybe Book 1 shorter, too. I think they’re just awfully long and filled with lots of stuff that doesn’t need to be there. Efficiency of language and all of that. It would have been an excellent trilogy. If the POV had been different I would have liked it more, too. I grew to dislike the first person the longer the series went on as Meyer seemed to have more and more trouble keeping a rein on her writing style to keep it within the bounds of the perspective she chose… I mean, she even switches perspectives (at the end of 3 and a part of 4) and that’s just… not… well, I just didn’t like it. Write it in third person if you can’t contain it in one, I think. I’ve read some really, really successful first persons that play up on the inherent tunnel-vision-ness of the first person POV by which Meyer kept seeming stifled. Or be more consistent in the POV switches. I’ve read successful chapter-switching first person POV novels, and those are great if a bit complicated when done well. Oh, well.
I’m going to go spoiler lite and speak in (annoying) generalities for the rest of this, but as a general warning, stop reading if you don’t want any surprises spoiled.
I liked Bella’s character a heck of a lot more in Book 4. But that’s also because she changed significantly (which I incidentally didn’t like; if Bella in Book 4 was the only Bella, it would have been great. But I’ll get into that later.) The change wasn’t a gradual thing, like it should have been. I didn’t like the sudden, sharp shift in personality. It made sense given what happened — I doubt Meyer could have done it differently and had it still be convincing without reworking some of the plot or timeline, at least — but I didn’t like how weak Bella’s personality was all along, leading to this. Book 2 Bella is a miserable nuisance. Book 3 is all… oy. Better but still not ideal. She’s more authentically teenagerish in Book 3, though. I get that she’s not a modern heroine, she’s a throwback to the nineteenth century’s gothic heroine period (has Meyer read any of those early nineteenth century gothic novels? Did she expect any of her teenaged readers to have read them?) and maybe a bit of Austen. (The man-must-save-me-from-my-circumstances Austen, not the strong-willed, self-determined woman Austen; I don’t believe Bella had Elizabeth’s Bennett’s fire. Maybe something of Anne Elliot’s moping. Actually, some of that, yes, I see that. But probably only because I’m throwing Anne onto a Book 2/3 Bella and seeing if it might stick. It might.) Anyway.
The whole plot of Book 4 was sort of, well, unsurprising. I guessed every leg of it a few hundred pages before it occurred, and when it did, I was still shocked that I was right, because when I’d made those predictions to myself, I said, “Wouldn’t that be hilariously ironic? Because that would make this book long! And look how long it is!” And it happened. And I was… bitter? Annoyed that I figured it all out? For one of the predictions I actually thought to myself, “Too bad it’s going to turn out in Way A, because Way B would totally make things crazy! If that were to happen, then this and this and this could happen… But Way A is totally going to happen so there’s no use in further speculation.” And guess what. Way B happened. My speculation was correct. I was shocked because I had never thought Meyer would… do that. I do personally love figuring out the plot of books but… but… there were no surprises. None. Even the swooping-in-at-the-last-minute moment at the end was unsurprising. I was sort of “Sigh.” I suppose not every author can pull a fast one on me. I love it when they do, though.
But really, was I expecting this book to be amazing? No. I was expecting it to be just on the wrong side of tolerable. I am surprised that it was better than tolerable. Enjoyable, diverting. Fun. Was it because Meyer finally embraced more fantasy than she had ever used? Probably. She took risks and ran with them, trusting we’d follow. I think in doing so she lost some readers, those who followed her books for the love story and not the fantasy. (Though if they survived the werewolf revelation, I am surprised to think that they wouldn’t be able to survive anything. Vampires are one thing; shape-shifting can be something else entirely, but what came in Book 4 is no more shocking, really, than anything else — fantasy-wise. It was shocking for other reasons, which I can get into at another time.) And I was surprised too that I was in the vampire camp so firmly from Book 1. I am so often in the werewolf/shifter camp that I was surprised when Book 3 came down to it, forcing me to ally with Edward or Jacob, that I was unhesitatingly Edward.
And so anti-Bella. Really, I was fed up with her by the end of Book 3. The choice, ugh. Maybe I was more irritated with the marketing? Maybe. I am glad she was redeemed in part in Book 4 but in doing so she really wasn’t Bella. I mean, I can’t name it precisely. I think I felt condescension toward Bella in Books 2 and 3. The vast majority of my female friends and acquaintances are stronger women, plain and simple, than Bella was. I’m talking strength of character, of purpose, of will. You can’t feel so “meh” about a character for so long and then immediately cheer with her and enjoy her without stopping and thinking, “Wait. This is not the same character.” The changes she went through were abrupt and rough and told to me (ugh, telling versus showing) and I don’t think Meyer convinced me of why Bella changed except for the excuse of the new balances of power. She spends so much time on really strange moments and details but not enough time, space on the page, on this change of Bella’s that is so unbelievably crucial to the plot. I mean, if my life with the man of my dreams shifted that abruptly for the same reason tomorrow, my personality would not change that much in a few days and I can say that with absolute certainty. I know my loyalties and heart would change and grow appropriately, but I would not suddenly become a different person. Change takes time that Meyers did not make me feel I was living through with Bella emotionally. Additionally Meyer made it seem like Bella’s character jumped from 18 to 35, from self-conscious to ferociously self-assured, and I’m supposed to believe that easily, just like that. I don’t think so. She changed Bella too falsely, too rapidly, given what had transpired so recently in book time, in Books 2 and 3. If the change had been gradual, from the start of the series to the end of it, I would have bought it. But Bella was so eighteen years old in Book 3. Devil’s Advocate: I realize the events of the first half of Breaking Dawn were so earth-shattering, so life-altering that Bella really does have to change. But Meyer failed to convince me of the emotion, of the grounded-in-reality-truth of that change from Character A to Character B.
Other writers have done it and blown me away. To use a few fantasy examples from other authors whose books could be classified as “coming of age” or “young adult”: Robin McKinley’s Deerskin does it shockingly well. Heart-breakingly well. Lissar changes completely while retaining her sense of self and I believe every moment of it because of how grounded in raw emotion and power her experiences are. McKinley’s Aerin in The Hero and the Crown has a similar forged-in-the-fires-of-hell life-changing experience, and she changes because of it, too. I mean, hell, one of the best character changes ever has to be Frodo’s in The Lord of the Rings. Harrowing experiences over approximately the same time frame as Bella’s (actually Bella’s is more, I believe) and he is irrevocably altered in a gut-wrenching, proud, and really profound way. (Robin Hobb’s Malta in her Liveship Traders Trilogy is another character who changes sharply and realistically, as is Fitz in the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, though his change is over the course of years.) Bella’s change didn’t hit me like that at all. It didn’t feel real.
Getting more and more spoiler-ific here, I thought the events and moments in the series were certainly enough to have moved Bella to discover that sort of power of character on her own but Meyer made Bella’s humanity such a handicap, made being a vampire so perfect and desirable, it’s so hard to compare it. I don’t know how I feel about humanity being a handicap. How being painted as utterly frail and breakable and not… well, in any other way, is any way… relatable? I mean, we are breakable, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen humans painted that way in a fantasy series with supernatural characters. Humans are so much more than that. But then again, her vampires are so human — she doesn’t make them very different — I suppose I can see why she would malign humanity so much when her vampires are that unrealistically cool. In a way, that’s one thing I profoundly do not enjoy about the series. Bella cannot embrace herself as who she is, she has to become someone else — something not entirely human — to finally love herself. I don’t know how that settles with me. The analogy is imperfect, of course, to real life — as all fantasy should be imperfect, not one for one, analogies to real life — but even so. It’s discomfiting.
I sit uneasy with a message that in order to be able to love and be proud of yourself have to both find someone else to complete you and to fundamentally change (in essence, your genetics) in the process.
But of course, cynics will say that about any kind of all-consuming love, or that lots of life-changing events seriously alter the people they happen to. I’ve been asked to my face why I need Bryan to love, cherish, and marry me, when I have to sacrifice my single, individual self to become the us that comprises us? And it is a sacrifice to become an us. You are no longer your own entity in a couple. You are who you become together. You can change and grow and become wiser together. But… I’m also still irrevocably myself. Bumbling faults and all. Gah. It’s such a web of tangled thoughts, that. I could discuss that for a long time.
There are a lot of aspects of the book I’d want to discuss more but in the interests of remaining vague, I won’t. You can talk to me about it, if you like.
I suppose that’s how I think of the Twilight Saga. It’s good, it’s fun; it has its moments of utterly asinine melodrama that make me want to cry with frustration, and it has its moments of beautiful, really adorable romance. It also is pretty good with action and politics; its characters are varied, intriguing, and engrossing. I was without a doubt constantly engaged with the book. Will I buy the series and read it again and again like I do many others? No. It just wasn’t worth it. But I am glad I have read it.
Romance novels & Twilight ranting
Tuesday July 22, 2008
I’ve read three books lately: Walk on the Wild Side by Christine Warren, and A Hunger Like No Other and No Rest For the Wicked by Kresley Cole. (The titles. I KNOW. Oy.) They’re all three legitimate romance novels and I’m a bit embarrassed to say I really enjoyed them. You get past the gratuitous “generous curves” and “intense arousal” descriptions and, well, the plots are good and the characters fun and well-drawn. I probably liked Cole’s better, but only because it’s a new world with new supernatural rules and I really liked them. (I was a little bit like, “Valkyrie?! Awesome!!”) They actually reminded me a lot of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter books, but in a way that Kenyon’s books can be a bit kitschy and a little, well, full of themselves, Cole’s were sort of pure adrenaline. The Dark-Hunter plots are not as thick as Cole’s plots were (though the thinner plots probably help keep the series moving forward at its ridiculous rate of perpetuation) and Kenyon’s are a lot more predictable. Lots of stuff goes on in Cole’s books apart from the romance. (Yay for actual, really awesome world building and creative fantasy! Kenyon only gets bonus points for every fourth or so book; a few are re-reads for me, the others, um, not so much. And that’s what I judge a book by — it’s re-read-able-ness.) And the romance aspect is a lot more complicated than in Kenyon’s. (The girls don’t give it up right away. Yay!) The men all being 6′5″ and well-muscled, though? If that’s how it is across the genre… I suppose I will have to deal with their lack of handsome male protagonists who stand at a normal height. Sigh. (Then again, I suppose most women don’t read romance novels to see normal men described in vigorous detail, eh?)
Whoa, parenthetical commentary much? Sorry. Eh. Um.
(Tangent: Acheron comes out next month. So. Frickin’. Excited. I never said I wasn’t a Sherrilyn Kenyon fan…)
It’s funny. I know I’ll never write romance but I do enjoy reading it (so long as it’s paranormal romance; even in the romance genre I need genre to keep me interested). Sometimes when I’m reading regular fantasy, though — for an adult audience — I do wish there was a bit more than, like, a chaste kiss going on. Or, like, “and then they had sex, and it was amazing.” I mean, movies tend to have more than chaste kisses going on, for Pete’s sake, when it matters. (Granted I’m only all for any romantic stuff if it fits in the plot. Gratuitious sex scenes need not be added for me, thanks.) Bitten by Kelley Armstrong is a good example, actually: more than chaste kisses but it’s not the plot’s focus, though those scenes are integral to the plot’s development in terms of the characters’ developments and emotion. In Bitten, Armstrong just basically makes the intimate scenes as descriptive as any other scene — it’s just another scene. But every scene in that book matters. Strolling through downtown Toronto on a business lunch break, running through a thick forest as a wolf, discovering a dead body half-buried under a bridge… And I appreciate the novel because of that. Her scenes also have really good pithy descriptions and are full of action, and none of the wonky romance language. (Sometimes the vocabulary in a romance novel has me rolling my eyes or laughing — like, really? Really? You used that adjective and adverb combination? Really? Whenever things fit stereotypes, I laugh.)
It’s a fine line for me, I suppose, the “sex scene” business in a book. And in YA Fiction, it’s an even finer line. Yes, some teenagers have sex, yes some abstain until college or marriage or what have you — but you see a very interesting sort of reflection of that reality in YA fantasy that makes it seem as polarized as I’ve made it sound. For the most part, I’ve seen, it’s sex or no sex. Kiss or all-the-way “and they had sex.” Fantasy is a reflection of our reality placed within a fantastic background. It stands to reason that all aspects of a teen’s reality should sort of make their way into a well-written novel, if there is a legitimate place for it. For teens, it’s not just sex or no sex. There’s a hell of a lot of confusing, angsty middle ground. And there’s so much drama associated with it, ripe for the novelizing. Rarely do I see teen novels — in the fantasy category, mind you — that actually make use of that middle ground when the need arises. It’s sort of an all-or-nothing thing, and that confuses me. (i.e. Right before the climax, or at the very end of the denouement, the characters either kiss or they do it.) For example, you have Tamora Pierce’s Trickster’s Choice/Trickster’s Queen with Aliane actually, well, having sex, and then Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl’s Princess Isi being all, well, chaste in an utterly Princess-like fashion. Both characters are approximately the same age — seventeen to eighteen, ish — but that sort of polarity (and you’ll see more of what I mean if you’ve read those particular novels) is what I’m talking about. Admittedly, for Isi it fits her culture and character, but I was a little put out by Aliane’s sort of, well, what happened there. (Those aren’t my favorite Pierce books, and that’s one of the big reasons why.) It seemed sort of added.
For my books, my characters’ sexual activities (or complete lack thereof) are based on a wide combination of factors, just as any person’s sexual activities are. In what I write, as in reality, there are situations and characters who will and do experience the plenty, the lack, the good, the painful, the awkward, the embarrassing, the misunderstood. Et cetera. I’m not planning on purposefully including or not including anything unless it fits. And I both like/hate the pre-climax/end-of-denouement kiss/sex thing. I mean, you either need the bolstering before you go to battle or you get the reward once you’ve survived — it’s an overarching fantasy thing, not just YA. But in real life you have bumbling flirtation, awkward kissing, betrayed lovers, stuff that’s a heck of a lot more complex than just the pre-battle bolstering or post-battle reward.
This whole discussion brings me around in some ways to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga and its beating-around-the-bush with teens, sex, love, commitment, and marriage. (I won’t actually reveal the plots here but I do plan to get into it, so watch out.) Oy. I have and can go on and on and on about this. Bella is presented as a stereotypical (and in a lot, a lot of ways uninterestingly stereotypical) teenager. But she and Edward have nothing short of a ridiculously, unusually atypical relationship with its attenuating circumstances involving physical, well, involvement. Edward and Bella, for lack of a better way to say it, can’t get jiggy (cough, 1997, cough) — or, for that matter, even a little carried away — without consequences. Jacob throws a wrench into the chaste machine in his own way in book two (and by wrench I mean some repressed-hormone-tongue-action) and by the third book, it’s all a bunch of non-real confusing relationship-y stuff. How’s a normal girl supposed to look at that fantasy plot (admittedly involving werewolves and vampires but ultimately still about teenagers) and apply it as a mirror to her reality? (Believe me, if you’ve read these books, you’ll see what I mean; you’re probably hopelessly confused otherwise.)
So my biggest criticism with these books is mostly the fact that I have trouble reconciling Bella’s predicament with anything any normal teenager would face in her own reality. The choice between two different guys’ loves is one thing — unusual in and of itself outside of a Hollywood script; and Bella is still, by the third book, relatively unremarkable, mind you, despite Meyer’s failed attempts to prove otherwise — which makes the whole Bella / Edward / Jacob quandary even more complex. If Bella were a hero/heroine worthy of their adoration I would put this whole argument aside. Entirely. But she’s not. She’s just… well. As far as I can tell she is The Right Girl at the Right Time, and barring any Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix-like bombs (after-the-fact prophecies), I am not convinced she’s very special. Plus, the issues that arise when discussing anything involving teens and sex arise in an even more mature format here between Bella, Edward, and Jacob — sex, marriage, children, immortality versus mortality, even potential suicide! (Romeo and Juliet, gag a little) — and make Bella’s choice a bit, well, unreal.
Or, well, EMO. EMO EMO EMO EMO. All she’s missing is the black eyeliner and My Chemical Romance on repeat on iTunes.
Cough. Um. Yes. Moving on and circling back.
Fantasy is not unreal fiction. Fantasy holds a warped mirror to reality to better highlight issues, ideas, and characters through a fantastic lens, enabling an author certain storytelling freedoms. But ultimately fantasy, like any genre, is still rooted irrevocably in our reality and as such still needs to feel real. And I want — I really do — to feel like I’m in Bella’s shoes. But I can’t. By the end of that third book things have gone so far out of my own spectrum of understanding and experience that I cannot even really enjoy it anymore. That said, I know others do enjoy it — others not as flippin’ critical as myself, and I know I am critical — but I wonder just how many feel absolutely rivetedly connected to Bella and her CHOICE. Because really. Really? Who has that choice? Who can even symphathize enough with Bella to the degree to feel riveted by that choice? Evidently a heck of a lot of teenagers. And it makes me so confused. I am not that far out of my teens. Is this what teenagers think is hopelessly romantic? Is Meyers warping the romantic dreams of teenagers by hinting that this could happen to any average girl? It makes me wonder if she is. And if she is, it makes me wonder and worry a little about the elements on the table for discussion in these books — sex, marriage, children, immortality versus mortality, even potential suicide, as I said.
It’s not even that, per se. It’s also to do with Meyers’ inconsistency — though it may also be her attempt to display a teenager’s wide-ranging, ever-changing emotions and feelings and beliefs.
I wonder if these teenagers have read Jane Austen. (Talk about consistently chaste and lovely stuff. Ah, Austen.)
I’m getting really worked up about this!
So.
Let me pose a spoiler-filled scenario to myself, non-fantasy, and let me see if I can wrap my head around this. So let’s say Bella’s choice is not between a century-old vampire who looks 17 — Edward — and a Native American werewolf who really is 16 — Jacob. Rather it’s between a sensitive, handsome, book-loving, science guy who’s an expert in martial arts, but he has had a disease preventing him from being able to father children — let’s call him Sedward. Sedward wants to wait until marriage to have sex, and he’s promising a happy, un-divorce-able eternity together with him and his loving (but strange) family. In the other corner we have a 6′5″ football player with a love of motorcycles but with a surprising intellect and winsome smile — let’s call him Racob. Racob is perfectly healthy in the testicular sense. Racob is much younger and more immature than Sedward but he’s got that much in common with Bella, who’s more around Racob’s age. Bella’s dad loves Racob and is cooler to Sedward, but he wants Bella to be happy. Both boys are Bella’s type, in their own way, and she’s torn between her older, more persisting love with Sedward, whom she believes to be her soulmate, and her fiery, sudden passion for Racob, who is vociferously offering her the moment, contrasting with Sedward’s promise of eternity. See the quandary? Now, see, I’ve made the situation somewhat human. BUT. What girl is really going to have that choice — at eighteen, no less? For “Sedward” Bella would give up college, give up a normal life, but for “Racob” she would give up Sedward. And then there’s the whole sex thing. She can’t have sex with Sedward — gah, Edward, until marriage with him, as per his deal, at which point he’ll turn her. She wants to be turned Oh So Badly. Then there’s Jacob with his hot mouth (ugh) and muscle-y physique and his “but you can have my babies, Bella” ridiculousness — THEY ARE TEENAGERS, COUGH — and his hatred of Edward. Jacob’s a hell of a lot more immature than Edward.(Jacob cannot see that he too is a monster as Edward is, being a werewolf himself, whereas Edward is consistently The Bigger Man and is much more, well, frickin’ mature. Though he is a LOT older than he looks.)
So that’s the LONG — or the short, depending on whether or not you really believe that’s all I have to say on the matter, cough — of why I am so quasi-excited/not excited for Breaking Dawn. Because really. The book’s plot more or less revolves around Bella’s choice and such. And I hope to goodness she chooses Edward for my own sanity. And I’m shocked by that actually because I’m almost always in the “Have the werewolf babies!” camp. (Yes, it’s come up a few times across the genre. Yes, I am usually anti-vampire. Yes, werewolves are usually awesome.) But the way Meyer has characterized them… I mean, she characterizes them as a part-gang, part-football team, part-frat house. I can see the appeal to a teenager but really…? Really? Frick, REALLY!?
Obviously I have no opinion on the matter.
EDIT: Read my rant on Breaking Dawn here.
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