Oscar Wilde is not blonde.
As you know, I have more books than any one human being can possibly read in a timely fashion. In keeping with my promise to work on reducing the pile, yesterday I read a book I had picked up "on spec." It had a seemingly interesting premise (ex-Marine works as psychologist to the supernatural) and some decent cover art/reviews from other authors.
I realized it was terrible about 7 pages in.
Don't get me wrong...the idea is still very interesting. It's the execution that's the problem. The book falls into the Laurell K. Hamilton imitation arena, and we all already know how I feel about the original, don't we? (there is, incidentally, a plug for Ms. Hamilton's books in this novel, by which I can only assume the author intends to direct people to a more interesting author in the genre). The men are all gorgeous, most perternaturally so, except one (he's also pretty much the only one that would really rather kill her than sleep with her, so there you go). The heroine plays extremely fast and loose with her professional morals and character consistency (as, for instance, when she has sex with her vampire patient's vampire brother on the side of a mountain, although they met scant hours before, she was furious with his chauvanistic attitudes and his decision to spank her not 15 minutes earlier, and, I repeat...his brother is her patient. And she's attracted to him, too. But apparently this just doesn't matter, because the guy is very hot). The editing is atrocious, enough to make one suppose that either the initial editor has no grasp of basic grammatical rules, or something went horribly wrong in the proofing stage. Commas are missing, verb tenses don't agree, parallel structure is constantly undermined, and random, inappropriate capitalizations are used.
Continuity is also a problem as far as the events. The first few pages mention a "Human/Paramortal War", but little else is said about it. Toward the end of the book, the protagonist is most anxious to prevent any serious conflict between humans and "paramortals," because the initial revelation just went so well that there are very few people prejudiced against the vampires, lycanthropes, fey, and ghosts (as anyone who even vaguely studies human nature will tell you: yeah, right. Fairytale monsters are real, but everyone's ok with that, cause they're just so darn cute...). Why call something a war if there was no serious conflict? Was it like the Cold War? Because when a "bad-ass" ex-Marine Special Forces uses a word like "war," I'm expecting something pretty serious.
The protagonist is too much of a cipher. We are told that she is cool, beautiful, stacked, and bad-ass, with a tendency toward violence and unexplained commitment phobia. She also happens to look exactly like the gold-digging bitch the hero used to be in love with (a fact which should come out in his therapy, surely?). Her actions, in the main, do no show us the capable, clever woman she is supposed to be. Instead, she comes off as unprofessional, defiant of authority (which, to the author's credit, several of the other characters call her on, wondering how she lasted as a soldier if she wouldn't take orders. Not that it's ever explained.), spoiled, pouty, foolhardy, and, worst of all for this type of heroine, whiny. Yes, she has some funny lines, an interesting former unit, and some moments where she lives up to what the author tells us she is, but they are few and far between. I don't even think the author likes her very much. She has her spanked twice (in the toddler-acting-up-in-a-store sense), threatened with premeditated physical harm both by the bad guys and the ones who are supposed to at least like her, and placed in dangerous situations that we don't care about, because the spanking and a drugged kidnapping are the worst examples of physical damage she sustains while dealing with all of these creatures that could snap her in two with their pinkies. She is also remarkably mentally resilient, until she's not because we need a touching scene showing how the hero's protective side is ok, rather than outdated and jerky.
Precious little is shown of her profession, though we are repeatedly told that she is legitimate and good at her job. In the ourse of doing said job in the novel, she is unhealthily attracted to one patient, stalked and metaphysically molested by another, and nearly eviserated by a third. She provokes those around her for no better reason than showing how tough she is, a trait that would be less than desireable in a therapist, though expected in a Marine. Her own supernatural power (come on, you know she has one), is empathy...which only rarely kicks in if it's telling her something other than how pissed off or horny the hero is. For instance, she is one room away from a place where people have been recently tortured and killed...and the empathy is nowhere to be seen. Maybe it shuts down in moments of extreme stress, though you would think, like other senses, it would do the opposite. Guess we'll never know.
Speaking of characters, when writing vampires, you have to decide and stick with one very important idea: how are they going to talk? Will it be formal and extremely correct, or will it be more modern? You can't switch in the middle (and no vampire should ever say the words "vampire sugar daddy" without a heavy dose of irony). It's like rewriting Austen and having Darcy say "Ok." It does not and never will work.
The novel also plays fast and loose with time. She can't pursue a relationship with the client she has the hots for for a year after the end of his therapy. Weeks pass, we are told - apparently more weeks than we expected, because suddenly there are 6 months left. A chapter or two later, more weeks pass, and suddenly there are only 3 months left. What the hell are they doing in the meantime?
I don't think this author ever learned the difference between telling and showing. The novel is mostly telling, even down to things similar to (not exactly, but I swore I'd never pick that book up again), "She was confused. 'I'm confused,' she said." It would be much better to have the characters' words and actions speak for them, rather than having the narrator tell us what's going on and how we ought to feel about it. I honestly think there are at least 2 chapters in that book with no dialogue at all...just the narrator telling us how they feel. This is fine, to an extent, but don't say things like "He felt both frustrated and confused by the tiny, delicate woman" (again, not a direct quote, but not far off). Describe the character's actions...don't tell us he's frustrated and confused, show us the picture of a man who is frustrated and confused.
While we're on the subject: REPETITION OF SENSORY PERCEPTIONS IS NO ONE'S FRIEND! I do not, for instance, need to know what the heroine smells like every time an interested male nearby feels like taking a sniff. I get it: snow, sunlight, clover meadow (occasionally, sun, snow on meadow, clover). You do realize that sunlight and snow don't have smells unless you have brain damage or are hopped up on PCP, right? But at any rate...unless her scent changes for a reason valid to the story (and intercourse, while apparently one of her very favorite pursuits, is not really valid to the story), do not mention it over and over again. Twilight handled the whole slightly-creepy vampire-smelling-you thing much more elegantly. Similarly, I don't need to read about the character's "Nile-green", "silvery", or "golden" eyes every time he or she looks at something intently. Once was enough.
Alternatively, don't go describing things we don't need. She gets all dressed up for a party, and the hero thinks she's really hot, and we have to read about everything, including her eye makeup. She is, of course, not really going to the party, and within 20 minutes of arrival has changed back into fatigues. So why the big description? So we know the hero thinks she's hot, which we knew already because he thinks it every time he sees her, and so she could later accidentally flash a ghost who, unbeknowst to her, has been molesting her in her dreams. It serves no purpose but to make it clear that she is desirable, something most of us probably got pretty clearly during the "sex-on-the-mountain-with-the-deadly-supernatural-creature-you-just-met-and-had-a-screaming-violent-argument-with-that-ended-in-you-being-turned-over-his-knee" scene.
So, with all these problems, why did I finish it? Because I finished Grimm Memorials, which I hated much more. Because the idea really is good, if only the author would write about that character, rather than focusing on the "I'm a former soldier, you can't tell me what to do" portion. Because there are some funny lines (Vampire: "I shall drink your blood and rip out your throat." Friend of protagonist: "And I shall fuck up your knee." [shoots him in knee with crossbow]). But I refuse to waste money on the sequel, even if they get her a decent editor.
I realized it was terrible about 7 pages in.
Don't get me wrong...the idea is still very interesting. It's the execution that's the problem. The book falls into the Laurell K. Hamilton imitation arena, and we all already know how I feel about the original, don't we? (there is, incidentally, a plug for Ms. Hamilton's books in this novel, by which I can only assume the author intends to direct people to a more interesting author in the genre). The men are all gorgeous, most perternaturally so, except one (he's also pretty much the only one that would really rather kill her than sleep with her, so there you go). The heroine plays extremely fast and loose with her professional morals and character consistency (as, for instance, when she has sex with her vampire patient's vampire brother on the side of a mountain, although they met scant hours before, she was furious with his chauvanistic attitudes and his decision to spank her not 15 minutes earlier, and, I repeat...his brother is her patient. And she's attracted to him, too. But apparently this just doesn't matter, because the guy is very hot). The editing is atrocious, enough to make one suppose that either the initial editor has no grasp of basic grammatical rules, or something went horribly wrong in the proofing stage. Commas are missing, verb tenses don't agree, parallel structure is constantly undermined, and random, inappropriate capitalizations are used.
Continuity is also a problem as far as the events. The first few pages mention a "Human/Paramortal War", but little else is said about it. Toward the end of the book, the protagonist is most anxious to prevent any serious conflict between humans and "paramortals," because the initial revelation just went so well that there are very few people prejudiced against the vampires, lycanthropes, fey, and ghosts (as anyone who even vaguely studies human nature will tell you: yeah, right. Fairytale monsters are real, but everyone's ok with that, cause they're just so darn cute...). Why call something a war if there was no serious conflict? Was it like the Cold War? Because when a "bad-ass" ex-Marine Special Forces uses a word like "war," I'm expecting something pretty serious.
The protagonist is too much of a cipher. We are told that she is cool, beautiful, stacked, and bad-ass, with a tendency toward violence and unexplained commitment phobia. She also happens to look exactly like the gold-digging bitch the hero used to be in love with (a fact which should come out in his therapy, surely?). Her actions, in the main, do no show us the capable, clever woman she is supposed to be. Instead, she comes off as unprofessional, defiant of authority (which, to the author's credit, several of the other characters call her on, wondering how she lasted as a soldier if she wouldn't take orders. Not that it's ever explained.), spoiled, pouty, foolhardy, and, worst of all for this type of heroine, whiny. Yes, she has some funny lines, an interesting former unit, and some moments where she lives up to what the author tells us she is, but they are few and far between. I don't even think the author likes her very much. She has her spanked twice (in the toddler-acting-up-in-a-store sense), threatened with premeditated physical harm both by the bad guys and the ones who are supposed to at least like her, and placed in dangerous situations that we don't care about, because the spanking and a drugged kidnapping are the worst examples of physical damage she sustains while dealing with all of these creatures that could snap her in two with their pinkies. She is also remarkably mentally resilient, until she's not because we need a touching scene showing how the hero's protective side is ok, rather than outdated and jerky.
Precious little is shown of her profession, though we are repeatedly told that she is legitimate and good at her job. In the ourse of doing said job in the novel, she is unhealthily attracted to one patient, stalked and metaphysically molested by another, and nearly eviserated by a third. She provokes those around her for no better reason than showing how tough she is, a trait that would be less than desireable in a therapist, though expected in a Marine. Her own supernatural power (come on, you know she has one), is empathy...which only rarely kicks in if it's telling her something other than how pissed off or horny the hero is. For instance, she is one room away from a place where people have been recently tortured and killed...and the empathy is nowhere to be seen. Maybe it shuts down in moments of extreme stress, though you would think, like other senses, it would do the opposite. Guess we'll never know.
Speaking of characters, when writing vampires, you have to decide and stick with one very important idea: how are they going to talk? Will it be formal and extremely correct, or will it be more modern? You can't switch in the middle (and no vampire should ever say the words "vampire sugar daddy" without a heavy dose of irony). It's like rewriting Austen and having Darcy say "Ok." It does not and never will work.
The novel also plays fast and loose with time. She can't pursue a relationship with the client she has the hots for for a year after the end of his therapy. Weeks pass, we are told - apparently more weeks than we expected, because suddenly there are 6 months left. A chapter or two later, more weeks pass, and suddenly there are only 3 months left. What the hell are they doing in the meantime?
I don't think this author ever learned the difference between telling and showing. The novel is mostly telling, even down to things similar to (not exactly, but I swore I'd never pick that book up again), "She was confused. 'I'm confused,' she said." It would be much better to have the characters' words and actions speak for them, rather than having the narrator tell us what's going on and how we ought to feel about it. I honestly think there are at least 2 chapters in that book with no dialogue at all...just the narrator telling us how they feel. This is fine, to an extent, but don't say things like "He felt both frustrated and confused by the tiny, delicate woman" (again, not a direct quote, but not far off). Describe the character's actions...don't tell us he's frustrated and confused, show us the picture of a man who is frustrated and confused.
While we're on the subject: REPETITION OF SENSORY PERCEPTIONS IS NO ONE'S FRIEND! I do not, for instance, need to know what the heroine smells like every time an interested male nearby feels like taking a sniff. I get it: snow, sunlight, clover meadow (occasionally, sun, snow on meadow, clover). You do realize that sunlight and snow don't have smells unless you have brain damage or are hopped up on PCP, right? But at any rate...unless her scent changes for a reason valid to the story (and intercourse, while apparently one of her very favorite pursuits, is not really valid to the story), do not mention it over and over again. Twilight handled the whole slightly-creepy vampire-smelling-you thing much more elegantly. Similarly, I don't need to read about the character's "Nile-green", "silvery", or "golden" eyes every time he or she looks at something intently. Once was enough.
Alternatively, don't go describing things we don't need. She gets all dressed up for a party, and the hero thinks she's really hot, and we have to read about everything, including her eye makeup. She is, of course, not really going to the party, and within 20 minutes of arrival has changed back into fatigues. So why the big description? So we know the hero thinks she's hot, which we knew already because he thinks it every time he sees her, and so she could later accidentally flash a ghost who, unbeknowst to her, has been molesting her in her dreams. It serves no purpose but to make it clear that she is desirable, something most of us probably got pretty clearly during the "sex-on-the-mountain-with-the-deadly-supernatural-creature-you-just-met-and-had-a-screaming-violent-argument-with-that-ended-in-you-being-turned-over-his-knee" scene.
So, with all these problems, why did I finish it? Because I finished Grimm Memorials, which I hated much more. Because the idea really is good, if only the author would write about that character, rather than focusing on the "I'm a former soldier, you can't tell me what to do" portion. Because there are some funny lines (Vampire: "I shall drink your blood and rip out your throat." Friend of protagonist: "And I shall fuck up your knee." [shoots him in knee with crossbow]). But I refuse to waste money on the sequel, even if they get her a decent editor.
posted by EAK at 2:14 PM
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