TWIB-II 43
Aug. 4th, 2008 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI read four books this week: one in Japanese, three in English, and one solely in preparation for the lulz.
1) New Moon - Stephenie Meyer
New Moon in a nutshell:
A female lead, so nondescript that any reader can project themselves onto her, is adored by every male character in the book, no matter how she leads them on or how poorly she treats them. And, no matter how she leads them on or how poorly she treats them, they never begin to resent her or turn their adoration toward a character who truly returns their affection.
But make no mistake--it's not like she's taking advantage of them or anything! After all, she's so good at heart and she values their friendship so much and the fact that they want more hurts her so deeply... (Just not deeply enough that she's willing to stop letting them hold her hand, rest their heads on her shoulders, take long walks on the beach with her, go to movies with her, fight for her affections in front of her, or otherwise keep trying to date her every time she gets within fifty feet of them.)
Meanwhile, Nondescript Lead Character is is bound by Bonds of Eternal and Undying Love to an unbelievably handsome, intelligent, kind, gentle, and rich vampire. A vampire, not only shorn of the unstoppable libido, androgyny, or amorality that makes said creatures intriguing, a vampire who's head over heels for her, sleeps with her every night, but never pressures her for sex. When he leaves her (for her own safety, you know!), she's plunged into a deep(ly unbelievable) depression from which she might never recover. Can their creepily manipulative and obsessive True Love endure the obstacles of their star-crossed fates?
No wonder teenage girls (and a certain demographic of adult women) go crazy over these books as though they were legalized cocaine. Read the "Twilight Saga" for the wish fulfilment or for a good groan. But hundreds of rave reviews to the contray, well written fiction they ain't.
2) RuneWarriors - James Jennewein & Tom S. Parker
This book could have been much better had it known what it wanted to be. Instead, it's a weird mishmash of accurate historical elements, standard YA fantasy tropes, and humor that runs the gamut from intentional anachronisms and self-deprecatory Princess Bride-esque genre riffing to lowbrow body function slapstick.
This is unfortunate, because the descriptive prose in the straight fiction passages is quite nice in places and the historical elements well researched, the YA elements pedestrian but not horrible; and had the authors only chosen a single tone and stuck with it, RuneWarriors could have been a decent straight fantasy novel or zany genre parody. None of these elements, however, work well when shoehorned into the narrative with no overarching structure to make sense of them.
It's not the content that's the problem, it's the tone. Young readers drawn to the book's over-the-top humor will be bored by the many passages where RuneWarriors takes itself seriously, those looking for a serious fantasy adventure story will find the humor annoying, and both the humor and fantasy will disappoint readers pulled in by the historical fiction elements. I'm not quite sure what Jennewein and Parker were attempting with this novel, but whatever it was, they didn't achieve it.
3) Sword - Da Chen
I read Da Chen's autobiographical Colors of the Mountain last year and was interested to see how he held up as a writer of children's fiction. Damn well, as it turns out.
This book contains some of the most beautiful writing I've encountered in quite some time. It's spare, but utterly effective. The prose in some books leaves me with an idea of the scenes and settings the author is describing; the prose in Sword left me with vivid mental images. Chen has an absolute genius for describing martial arts battles--I didn't think it was possible to pull this stuff off convincingly outside of an actual wu xia film1, but he does it. In spades. I literally could not put the thing down once I'd picked it up. Do yourself a favor and read it.
1Or in a non-Chinese literary medium.
That will be all.
1) New Moon - Stephenie Meyer
New Moon in a nutshell:
A female lead, so nondescript that any reader can project themselves onto her, is adored by every male character in the book, no matter how she leads them on or how poorly she treats them. And, no matter how she leads them on or how poorly she treats them, they never begin to resent her or turn their adoration toward a character who truly returns their affection.
But make no mistake--it's not like she's taking advantage of them or anything! After all, she's so good at heart and she values their friendship so much and the fact that they want more hurts her so deeply... (Just not deeply enough that she's willing to stop letting them hold her hand, rest their heads on her shoulders, take long walks on the beach with her, go to movies with her, fight for her affections in front of her, or otherwise keep trying to date her every time she gets within fifty feet of them.)
Meanwhile, Nondescript Lead Character is is bound by Bonds of Eternal and Undying Love to an unbelievably handsome, intelligent, kind, gentle, and rich vampire. A vampire, not only shorn of the unstoppable libido, androgyny, or amorality that makes said creatures intriguing, a vampire who's head over heels for her, sleeps with her every night, but never pressures her for sex. When he leaves her (for her own safety, you know!), she's plunged into a deep(ly unbelievable) depression from which she might never recover. Can their creepily manipulative and obsessive True Love endure the obstacles of their star-crossed fates?
No wonder teenage girls (and a certain demographic of adult women) go crazy over these books as though they were legalized cocaine. Read the "Twilight Saga" for the wish fulfilment or for a good groan. But hundreds of rave reviews to the contray, well written fiction they ain't.
2) RuneWarriors - James Jennewein & Tom S. Parker
This book could have been much better had it known what it wanted to be. Instead, it's a weird mishmash of accurate historical elements, standard YA fantasy tropes, and humor that runs the gamut from intentional anachronisms and self-deprecatory Princess Bride-esque genre riffing to lowbrow body function slapstick.
This is unfortunate, because the descriptive prose in the straight fiction passages is quite nice in places and the historical elements well researched, the YA elements pedestrian but not horrible; and had the authors only chosen a single tone and stuck with it, RuneWarriors could have been a decent straight fantasy novel or zany genre parody. None of these elements, however, work well when shoehorned into the narrative with no overarching structure to make sense of them.
It's not the content that's the problem, it's the tone. Young readers drawn to the book's over-the-top humor will be bored by the many passages where RuneWarriors takes itself seriously, those looking for a serious fantasy adventure story will find the humor annoying, and both the humor and fantasy will disappoint readers pulled in by the historical fiction elements. I'm not quite sure what Jennewein and Parker were attempting with this novel, but whatever it was, they didn't achieve it.
3) Sword - Da Chen
I read Da Chen's autobiographical Colors of the Mountain last year and was interested to see how he held up as a writer of children's fiction. Damn well, as it turns out.
This book contains some of the most beautiful writing I've encountered in quite some time. It's spare, but utterly effective. The prose in some books leaves me with an idea of the scenes and settings the author is describing; the prose in Sword left me with vivid mental images. Chen has an absolute genius for describing martial arts battles--I didn't think it was possible to pull this stuff off convincingly outside of an actual wu xia film1, but he does it. In spades. I literally could not put the thing down once I'd picked it up. Do yourself a favor and read it.
1Or in a non-Chinese literary medium.
That will be all.
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better you than me
on 2008-08-05 11:36 pm (UTC)Re: better you than me
on 2008-08-06 04:21 am (UTC)B) The first three books are baaaaad, don't get me wrong. But bad in the way you sometimes opt for Hardee's when you could be eating sushi instead. You know the sushi is both good for you and delicious, but really, for whatever reason, you just want crap instead. That said, the people who hype the the Twilight "saga" as if they were Really Good Books probably have not read 1/100 of the books you've read in the past five years, so know where their "praise" is coming from.
C) If you want to read them w/out investing the money or library wait, say the word. I can hook you up.
Re: better you than me
on 2008-08-07 01:59 am (UTC)Re: better you than me
on 2008-08-07 02:10 am (UTC)Also, no fair talking about good series without mentioning what they are. I cry foul!
no subject
on 2008-08-14 06:43 am (UTC)I have "Sword" in my TBR pile. Glad to see you gave it such a great review :)