jade_sabre (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jade_sabre) wrote2009-07-29 08:45 pm
jade_sabre) wrote2009-07-29 08:45 pm
Entry tags:
in which Jade is reading Graceling
First of all like why is it every summer there’s some big song about unrequited love? Last year it was “Realize” and this year it’s “You Belong with Me” GAH TAYLOR SWIFT WHY. WHY. (answer: because it is fun to belt in a country accent.)
(yes I know songs about unrequited love happen all the time...maybe it's more a question about why there's always one that hits me.)
(OH MY GOD I actually watched the Taylor Swift music video BAD PLAN.)
Anyway, just a couple thoughts on Graceling, which I am currently plodding through.
Maybe it’s partially because I’m reading this book while waiting to find my copy of Silver on the Tree and I’m grumpy because I really want to finish that one*, but man, I wish this book had been written by a better writer. Like, Susan Cooper’s books are thick and juicy and the prose is invisible except when it needs to be visual, and things are understated, and the sentences are fun to read.
Graceling is…all right. Like, I’ve come across the first thing I’ve really liked—halfway through the books, when she realizes she has an ability to put herself to sleep that other people, uh, don’t have. I picked up on that earlier—she always tells herself to go to sleep, and then immediately does—and the realization she had was pretty well done. Although the thing it’s connected to—my Grace is survival, not killing—is LAME. I want her Grace to be killing! I want her to struggle with that, to have to KEEP struggling with that, for the rest of her life. Pansying it down makes the story more blech.
(I actually stopped reading in order to make this post right after reading that part where she figures it out. I have momentarily lost the willpower to keep reading.)
Also, on the back cover, it says the author dreamed up this novel about a girl with a power making friends with a boy with whom she was utterly incompatible. I will assume that her intentions changed since then, because the idea of Po and Katsa being utterly incompatible is, uh, laughable. At the very least.
And the politics? Maybe they get better later on, and maybe I should stop being a spoiled MWT brat, but so far it just feels so…heavy-handed. Everything does. The fighting reads like transcripts from our pirate RP, when Vaahn and Sorel would fight, which was basically composed of Rob giving me guidelines on how to write fights in general, and then us plotting out the different moves—i.e., a pastiche of “someone who knows how to fight telling someone who doesn’t know how to fight how to write fighting, and then the writer being as minimalistic as possible.” Now, maybe Ms. Graceling Author knows how to fight, but it doesn’t read like she does. (I openly acknowledge my fail at writing fight scenes, especially of the hand-to-hand variety, and have been digging in my heels about fixing that, i.e. going to the aikido or karate or tae qwan do clubs and saying PLEASE HELP MY UNCOORDINATED SELF UNDERSTAND THESE THINGS.)
And the politics, which could be really interesting, are incredibly simplified, and maybe that’s just because Katsa, with her bullheaded cut-the-crapness, doesn’t really care about the intricate details, but it feels thin.
Also Katsa? I honestly don’t know how I feel about her. Again, I feel like it’s because the writing is heavy-handed—and again, maybe this is a stroke of genius reflecting Katsa’s character—and indelicate, especially when it comes to explaining or describing how she thinks. But I feel like there must be a better way to do it. I’m willing to forgive the overly clichéd things, esp. the bicolored eyes (because lots of people have them!), but there’s still a sense of…I don’t know. I can’t tell if I’m overly metareading it or what.
And then there’s the whole I AM A STRONG FIGHTER WOMAN (I liked the part where she was like I don’t need him to protect me! Okay I need him to protect me and I will protect him even more! OH MY GOD WHY THE HELL DID I END UP WITH A GUY I WANTED TO PROTECT THIS SUCKS!) and I DON’T LIKE BABIES OR THE THOUGHT OF GETTING MARRIED. Rather like with Nobody’s Princess, I am kind of tired of this type of character. Especially because I don’t understand why she can’t want these things. I mean, okay, I understand that Katsa the character doesn’t want these things. It would be less frustrating if I didn’t keep running into fighter-chick characters who don’t want these things. (And yes, most of them change their minds, and it might be refreshing if Katsa didn’t change hers, but at the same time—hold that thought, it’ll pop up again in a later paragraph.)
And hell, maybe it would be more interesting to read about a Graceling who a) had the Grace of killing and b) really wanted kids but was terrified of a) her inability to deal with kids (same side effects of being the king’s personal thug, being really good at killing, etc. etc. etc.) and b) the fact that she might inadvertently hurt her children if she got angry with them or something.
WHY CAN’T STRONG FEMALE HEROES WANT KIDS IS BASICALLY WHAT I WANT TO KNOW. Because I, who consider myself a pretty strong female, and who wants to go out and change things and get my Ph.D. and be a respected professional in my field and do lots of things, I want to do things and then settle and have my family. And I know that now, while I’m going through all the STRONG FEMALE times of life—it’s not something I’m going to suddenly decide I want ten years down the line. That is, I’m not a strong female who says I DON’T WANT KIDS but will decide later I DO WANT KIDS.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that—I mean hell, I don’t know if I’ll ever have kids, and it’s not like any of us are never going to change our minds past this point—but the overabundance of STRONG FEMALE HEROES who do that makes me feel—I don’t even know. It’s kind of like when I was first coming to ND, and it was all like YOU WOMEN SHOULD GET OUT AND DO GREAT THINGS, and I was all like so I kinda want to just be a suburban mom, and then I felt like that wasn’t good enough, or something. (I have since gotten past that feeling, fyi.) I guess I would just like to read about a strong fantasy heroine who wants to be a mom.
(Side note: my NWN 2 cleric Laura is rather like that. She goes out and kicks all kinds of butt, but really it’s just so that at the end of the day she can go home, because the whole reason she set out in the first place was to protect her home. I mean, she didn’t want to be a mom—or rather, didn’t think that would ever happen to her, heh heh heh—but it wasn’t something she was antagonistically avoided, and when it did happen she was perfectly happy.)
(…must not write sequel fic must not write sequel fic…)
Anyway, it would also be unsatisfying for her never to want kids because I get the feeling that Po wants kids, and I don’t care how unhappy he’s willing to risk being, at some point it reaches the realm of “unfairness.” I mean, these two are no Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, wherein you sit down and shut up and suck it up and take the unfairness because oh God, there’s no way it’s ever going to be different (and the guy has issues too, while Po’s only issue re: Katsa seems to be the fact that homg he can read her mind and that ticks her off, and his issue re: the world is his Grace, which is admittedly a pain, but it’s not an inherently negative thing, and he doesn’t really seem to have any bad qualities).
As for her and Po hooking up…I was a little surprised by the level of the sex scene, and also by the fact that it came halfway through the book, what. It feels like the story is mostly over! I mean, they still have work to do (and oh my God if they get married her freedom will be automatically transferred over to him okay okay I get we’re trying to show that she has a specific view of marriage and that yes most marriages were like that but I don’t see why she thinks it will be that way with him but maybe I’m just being too forward thinking, especially considering Katsa’s emotional dumbness), and maybe she was trying to get the plot of the novel to be not just about the romance, but what?
Also, re: the hooking up, Po kind of came off as a desperate slut (oh God I feel so bad for him), and Katsa’s mental processes are just…I dunno. Maybe it’s just the writing. Maybe I’m just reacting against the writing when there’s actually nothing wrong with it. But meh. The whole thing where she figured out hisGift Grace just wasn’t quite—carried off—I don’t know.
I did enjoy the scene where Po took his shirt off and Katsa was like BLANK THOUGHTS BLANK THOUGHTS.
(Also are Raffin and Brann gay? I secretly ship them.)
I guess at this point I’m enjoying it well enough (or I was, before say the last two chapters), and I definitely admire the author’s imagination and vision (and map-drawing skills), but the whole thing has been a bit mis-firing, and occasionally strays too close to clichés that push my buttons. It just seems like this book could have been so much better than it actually is. (And I guess it actually is pretty good? So maybe I should just lower my standards…
…or go reread The King of Attolia.)
*side note: Will Stanton/Jane Drew is the most outright depressing thing I have shipped all summer. AND THEY ARE TWELVE. I mean, the Gemma Doyle ships just turn into disasters. But this? He’s an Old One! She’s normal! WILL THEY EVER BE ABLE TO BE TOGETHER I DON’T EVEN KNOW, BUT I SHIP THEM SO HARD.
edit: after writing this rant, I went back to the book, and maybe I feel better now, because it's picked up some. The prose is this section is a little smoother, although there's still the occasional "*wince* I'm not sure this character speaks in a consistent manner." I think I like the book best when it's doing cute little back-and-forths with Katsa and Po. It's small things, but there are witty little sentences that make me smile from time to time. And this whole DO WHAT I SAY THING is...what, is it a big thing to convince her marriage is okay? (Not plot-wise, but character-wise.)
I'm still not quite buying the realness of it, which is the only word I can think to use, which is strange considering how very real it seems it should be--blood from a skinned rabbit dripping and sizzling into a fire, the way the snow crunches. It's almost like an overload of those kinds of details, like she's trying a little too hard. (Also, the whole traveling thing is making me think of The Thief. THISISADIFFERENTBOOK, SELF.)
(yes I know songs about unrequited love happen all the time...maybe it's more a question about why there's always one that hits me.)
(OH MY GOD I actually watched the Taylor Swift music video BAD PLAN.)
Anyway, just a couple thoughts on Graceling, which I am currently plodding through.
Maybe it’s partially because I’m reading this book while waiting to find my copy of Silver on the Tree and I’m grumpy because I really want to finish that one*, but man, I wish this book had been written by a better writer. Like, Susan Cooper’s books are thick and juicy and the prose is invisible except when it needs to be visual, and things are understated, and the sentences are fun to read.
Graceling is…all right. Like, I’ve come across the first thing I’ve really liked—halfway through the books, when she realizes she has an ability to put herself to sleep that other people, uh, don’t have. I picked up on that earlier—she always tells herself to go to sleep, and then immediately does—and the realization she had was pretty well done. Although the thing it’s connected to—my Grace is survival, not killing—is LAME. I want her Grace to be killing! I want her to struggle with that, to have to KEEP struggling with that, for the rest of her life. Pansying it down makes the story more blech.
(I actually stopped reading in order to make this post right after reading that part where she figures it out. I have momentarily lost the willpower to keep reading.)
Also, on the back cover, it says the author dreamed up this novel about a girl with a power making friends with a boy with whom she was utterly incompatible. I will assume that her intentions changed since then, because the idea of Po and Katsa being utterly incompatible is, uh, laughable. At the very least.
And the politics? Maybe they get better later on, and maybe I should stop being a spoiled MWT brat, but so far it just feels so…heavy-handed. Everything does. The fighting reads like transcripts from our pirate RP, when Vaahn and Sorel would fight, which was basically composed of Rob giving me guidelines on how to write fights in general, and then us plotting out the different moves—i.e., a pastiche of “someone who knows how to fight telling someone who doesn’t know how to fight how to write fighting, and then the writer being as minimalistic as possible.” Now, maybe Ms. Graceling Author knows how to fight, but it doesn’t read like she does. (I openly acknowledge my fail at writing fight scenes, especially of the hand-to-hand variety, and have been digging in my heels about fixing that, i.e. going to the aikido or karate or tae qwan do clubs and saying PLEASE HELP MY UNCOORDINATED SELF UNDERSTAND THESE THINGS.)
And the politics, which could be really interesting, are incredibly simplified, and maybe that’s just because Katsa, with her bullheaded cut-the-crapness, doesn’t really care about the intricate details, but it feels thin.
Also Katsa? I honestly don’t know how I feel about her. Again, I feel like it’s because the writing is heavy-handed—and again, maybe this is a stroke of genius reflecting Katsa’s character—and indelicate, especially when it comes to explaining or describing how she thinks. But I feel like there must be a better way to do it. I’m willing to forgive the overly clichéd things, esp. the bicolored eyes (because lots of people have them!), but there’s still a sense of…I don’t know. I can’t tell if I’m overly metareading it or what.
And then there’s the whole I AM A STRONG FIGHTER WOMAN (I liked the part where she was like I don’t need him to protect me! Okay I need him to protect me and I will protect him even more! OH MY GOD WHY THE HELL DID I END UP WITH A GUY I WANTED TO PROTECT THIS SUCKS!) and I DON’T LIKE BABIES OR THE THOUGHT OF GETTING MARRIED. Rather like with Nobody’s Princess, I am kind of tired of this type of character. Especially because I don’t understand why she can’t want these things. I mean, okay, I understand that Katsa the character doesn’t want these things. It would be less frustrating if I didn’t keep running into fighter-chick characters who don’t want these things. (And yes, most of them change their minds, and it might be refreshing if Katsa didn’t change hers, but at the same time—hold that thought, it’ll pop up again in a later paragraph.)
And hell, maybe it would be more interesting to read about a Graceling who a) had the Grace of killing and b) really wanted kids but was terrified of a) her inability to deal with kids (same side effects of being the king’s personal thug, being really good at killing, etc. etc. etc.) and b) the fact that she might inadvertently hurt her children if she got angry with them or something.
WHY CAN’T STRONG FEMALE HEROES WANT KIDS IS BASICALLY WHAT I WANT TO KNOW. Because I, who consider myself a pretty strong female, and who wants to go out and change things and get my Ph.D. and be a respected professional in my field and do lots of things, I want to do things and then settle and have my family. And I know that now, while I’m going through all the STRONG FEMALE times of life—it’s not something I’m going to suddenly decide I want ten years down the line. That is, I’m not a strong female who says I DON’T WANT KIDS but will decide later I DO WANT KIDS.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that—I mean hell, I don’t know if I’ll ever have kids, and it’s not like any of us are never going to change our minds past this point—but the overabundance of STRONG FEMALE HEROES who do that makes me feel—I don’t even know. It’s kind of like when I was first coming to ND, and it was all like YOU WOMEN SHOULD GET OUT AND DO GREAT THINGS, and I was all like so I kinda want to just be a suburban mom, and then I felt like that wasn’t good enough, or something. (I have since gotten past that feeling, fyi.) I guess I would just like to read about a strong fantasy heroine who wants to be a mom.
(Side note: my NWN 2 cleric Laura is rather like that. She goes out and kicks all kinds of butt, but really it’s just so that at the end of the day she can go home, because the whole reason she set out in the first place was to protect her home. I mean, she didn’t want to be a mom—or rather, didn’t think that would ever happen to her, heh heh heh—but it wasn’t something she was antagonistically avoided, and when it did happen she was perfectly happy.)
(…must not write sequel fic must not write sequel fic…)
Anyway, it would also be unsatisfying for her never to want kids because I get the feeling that Po wants kids, and I don’t care how unhappy he’s willing to risk being, at some point it reaches the realm of “unfairness.” I mean, these two are no Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, wherein you sit down and shut up and suck it up and take the unfairness because oh God, there’s no way it’s ever going to be different (and the guy has issues too, while Po’s only issue re: Katsa seems to be the fact that homg he can read her mind and that ticks her off, and his issue re: the world is his Grace, which is admittedly a pain, but it’s not an inherently negative thing, and he doesn’t really seem to have any bad qualities).
As for her and Po hooking up…I was a little surprised by the level of the sex scene, and also by the fact that it came halfway through the book, what. It feels like the story is mostly over! I mean, they still have work to do (and oh my God if they get married her freedom will be automatically transferred over to him okay okay I get we’re trying to show that she has a specific view of marriage and that yes most marriages were like that but I don’t see why she thinks it will be that way with him but maybe I’m just being too forward thinking, especially considering Katsa’s emotional dumbness), and maybe she was trying to get the plot of the novel to be not just about the romance, but what?
Also, re: the hooking up, Po kind of came off as a desperate slut (oh God I feel so bad for him), and Katsa’s mental processes are just…I dunno. Maybe it’s just the writing. Maybe I’m just reacting against the writing when there’s actually nothing wrong with it. But meh. The whole thing where she figured out his
I did enjoy the scene where Po took his shirt off and Katsa was like BLANK THOUGHTS BLANK THOUGHTS.
(Also are Raffin and Brann gay? I secretly ship them.)
I guess at this point I’m enjoying it well enough (or I was, before say the last two chapters), and I definitely admire the author’s imagination and vision (and map-drawing skills), but the whole thing has been a bit mis-firing, and occasionally strays too close to clichés that push my buttons. It just seems like this book could have been so much better than it actually is. (And I guess it actually is pretty good? So maybe I should just lower my standards…
…or go reread The King of Attolia.)
*side note: Will Stanton/Jane Drew is the most outright depressing thing I have shipped all summer. AND THEY ARE TWELVE. I mean, the Gemma Doyle ships just turn into disasters. But this? He’s an Old One! She’s normal! WILL THEY EVER BE ABLE TO BE TOGETHER I DON’T EVEN KNOW, BUT I SHIP THEM SO HARD.
edit: after writing this rant, I went back to the book, and maybe I feel better now, because it's picked up some. The prose is this section is a little smoother, although there's still the occasional "*wince* I'm not sure this character speaks in a consistent manner." I think I like the book best when it's doing cute little back-and-forths with Katsa and Po. It's small things, but there are witty little sentences that make me smile from time to time. And this whole DO WHAT I SAY THING is...what, is it a big thing to convince her marriage is okay? (Not plot-wise, but character-wise.)
I'm still not quite buying the realness of it, which is the only word I can think to use, which is strange considering how very real it seems it should be--blood from a skinned rabbit dripping and sizzling into a fire, the way the snow crunches. It's almost like an overload of those kinds of details, like she's trying a little too hard. (Also, the whole traveling thing is making me think of The Thief. THISISADIFFERENTBOOK, SELF.)
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I'm skipping reading the meat of the post 'cause I don't want to be spoiled, but let me know how you end up liking the rest of it. I trust your judgment on this *pressurepressurepressure*
…or go reread The King of Attolia.)
Always a viable option. I'm trying to stop myself from reading it, even though I just reread QoA. I keep telling myself I need to read NEW books, not ones that I've read over and over. King of Attolia is covered up right now so it won't tempt me as much and I'm working on The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson. I'm not far enough into it to pass any judgment, but I'm hoping it will be good. I haven't put it down yet, and I will put down a book if it starts to lose me, even in the first chapter or two.
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at the same time, this isn't one where I can sit back and say, "I want to read it from HIS POV," either. (like, say, Twilight, wherein Midnight Sun, for all its terrifyingness, is a much more interesting book.)
oh well. still have a third of the book. may have major twist/revelation that totally blows me away. (am not counting on it.)
I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW. Except now I have to finish Graceling FIRST and then go back and start over with "Silver on the Tree" (and by "start over" I mean "refresh myself on all the bits involving Jane because I love her and JANE/WILL FOREVER I'm so scared for my ship"). but I owe KoA a reread this summer, too.
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You do owe it a reread, 'cause then you have to go read that fic by
Also, just think of your poor darling Costis, languishing between the covers of the
bedbook all alone, wishing you wouldsex him upread about him. How can you do that to him?Silver on the Tree? Is that one of your fics? No, I guess not the way you're talking about it. *is out of the loop*
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Oooooooooooooooooooooooh yes rereading that fic would be awesome. Also I owe her a real review; my last one was a bit, uh, spastic.
...ILUSOHARDFORTHISBRBLOLINGFOREVER
hahaha no, it's the last Dark Is Rising book. *lalalalas at the thought of fanfic*
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Oh, The Dark Is Rising. Gotcha. Yeah. I need to read those. Got the first two just chillin' on the shelf. XD One day!!
There are just too many books and too little time. And I have a baaaaad tendency to read more than one at a time and never get a single one finished.
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where are you
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my fillings are great! the right side of my face was slack-numb for a while, but i drooled charmingly to make up for it. as one does.
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and then MWT can spend the rest of her life writing short stories about the bab[ies] for fantasy anthologies and we will BUY MULTIPLE COPIES OF THEM TOO.
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but the whole dynamic would be different and while yes, MWT loves shaking up her dynamics, babies are even more totally defenseless than queens who haven't learned how to fight.
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I feel like there's heaps of books (maybe not strong fighter chick books? I can't think of that many I've read recently) where it's an unspoken assumption the woman will want children and have them as a natural end to romance. Even if the main character in The blue sword doesn't talk about wanting children we see them all cutely pop up as a natural epilogue at the end. And the ones who don't seem like they are just trying to rebel against the mores of their societies, whereas Katsa seems to just not want kids. Which is how some women are but they aren't in books that much. (the anti-marriage thing I take as a product of the society where you don't get to run around doing your own thing and being independent after you're married, even if you're husband is nice, becuase that wasn't marriage).
And I liked that they had sex in the middle of the story to get that first lust out of the way which made more room for the romance to continuing developing in the rest of the story. I'm not sure the rest was completely carried off (suspect you might be right the author was trying to focus on politics/action more after that) but hey I appreciated the attempt.
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*just finished it*
And the prose! It's like she couldn't make up her mind whether or not she wanted to write in High Fantasy style ("the child" the child the child you know the more you use that word the more I start thinking "younglings" just saying), and so she had some Serious Sentences and then she had some more...down-to-earth? not really but less High Fantasy sentences (and those, frankly, were much better). Oh. And then she had fragments. Which were probably supposed to be all about impact or emphasis, but she used them the same way every time, and 99% of the time it was unnecessary and distracting. Especially as the novel wore on.
I'm also with you on the unfortunate names (heck, "Katsa" is an approximation of "Katsuh," a nickname of one of my best friends) (frankly I said from the moment "Po" showed up that I preferred "Prince Greening"). On the one hand, Bitterblue is a weird name, on the other, it's kinda cool--but none of the other names involve real words, so it's weirder than it is cool. And her plot was interesting--also, that plot was totally different from the type of story the beginning of the book was telling, c.f. multiple-personality disorder--but I also kept catching glimpses of the story it COULD have been.
I can't decide which story out of all of them I wanted the most (the Bitterblue one, the Council one, the Katsa/Po learning to fight/beat Randa one, etc. etc. etc.), but I wish they hadn't all been smashed together.
And I still feel like she went overboard with the details--in such a way that she was trying to prove she knew all this stuff and ultimately came across as sampling a lot of basic facts about all this stuff (from fighting to survival and back again) without being able to dig deeply into them. Maybe it's just first-timerness, and therefore a tendency towards an overabundance of cliche, but still. I mean, maybe she's done a lot of wilderness training and stuff. But from reading the book, I doubt it.
...I kind of laughed my way through the very end. This book really is better than I'm giving it credit for, but it could have been SO AWESOME. (...I still think it would've been better if her Grace was killing, and that was that. Like, nope, no way out of it. Po is blind, and he just can't see [omg metaGrace what?], and that's the end of that.
Gen's hand is gone and to have it back would he lose Attolia? And see Attolia lost to the Mede?)Re: *just finished it*
Re: *just finished it*
Oh I really hope the prequel is about the siblings that ruled the seven kingdoms. I thought that sounded like an interesting story--really, I was hoping for a lot more about the seven kingdoms, because dude, seven little kingdoms all fighting each other! The intrigue!
And I pretty much agree with you on everything re: plot, other people loving it (well, I remember everyone loving it--I need to go back and find the actual reviews people wrote)/the hype, and reading it as a first novel. Although I did end up going "I bet a lot of the reason this is so problematic is that it is a first novel" and "this book really is better than I'm giving it credit for, but it could still be better and it deserves to be better." Also I am tired of average-to-sub-par first novels getting rave reviews. I would rather have honest ones--it's possible to praise and critique at the same time, for crying out loud. (And I too am glad to have found someone to agree with! Because I was afraid, re: everyone else loving it, that I would be all alone. XD)
Re: *just finished it*
Re: *just finished it*
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Also:
…or go reread The King of Attolia
HA!
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WHY CAN’T STRONG FEMALE HEROES WANT KIDS IS BASICALLY WHAT I WANT TO KNOW.
I'm a fan of more recent books and I'm getting frustrated at the whole "since she's a strong female character she must reject all inherently female activties!" Sometimes it's pulled off well but so many times it feels as if the author just doesn't know their character, although it's been a while since I read Graceling so I forget exactly what I thought about Katsa.
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I read Graceling, and at first, I have to say that I was hooked to it (as in, I couldn't put it down while I was reading it)... up until a certain point. Know when she killed Leck? That was totally anti-climatic for me (partly because I wanted Po to show up and show that he's just as capable as her... he's sort of my favorite character), and the whole 'kill-the-enemy' scene took one line.
I also agree with the whole marriage thing. A lot of people are upset with people like me who feel like she was an idiot not to have accepted Po, because she was trying to be strong. And I couldn't pinpoint what I felt was wrong, and thought that you actually did that perfectly. Why couldn't strong women also want a family? I don't know why this has to be a rule or something. And I didn't know why she just made a big deal out of it! Why couldn't it be just like... okay, let's get married, but I keep doing what I like to do, and you can keep doing what you like to do, because I have seen relationship that worked out like that. Her grieving that she would lose her freedom didn't make sense to me, because while she is unconventional, she thinks that marriage will all of a sudden make her conform? Do you understand me? lol, I probably lost you...
Oh, and I know you're in the search of a strong female character who can also be feminine. I don't know if you've read "Goose Girl" by Shannon Hale (which is my favorite series before Queen's Thief came along). It's targeted for younger audiences, but Anidori, the heroine there, can be strong when she needs to be, but is also a reluctant heroine who's... well, I won't spoil things for you. But I do recommend that if you want to see a strong, female character who doesn't cry with the idea of marraige.
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Oh yes, that scene was so anticlimatic. I hate anticlimatic villain deaths. IF WE'VE BEEN BUILDING UP TO A FIGHT, I WANT A REAL FIGHT.
I completely understand you! I think with the whole "grieving for loss of freedom" thing, we were supposed to understand that Katsa's only understanding of marriage was the ones she had seen...but it was very clumsily and obtusely done, and mostly just frustrating, and like you said, why should her marriage be like that? I mean, they shouldn't necessarily get married now, since she's obviously so confused about what it means, but the way she's just like NOPE NEVER HAPPENING SHUT THAT IDEA DOWN was really frustrating. (Especially because they're basically married anyway. Come on.)
!!! It is funny you should mention that, because I just started reading The Goose Girl yesterday. I have a complexish relationship with Shannon Hale (everything she does is awesome! WHY DOESN'T IT GEL WITH ME?), but I'm giving her another shot, and, well, I do love the fairy tale and, well, I am an utter sucker for the arranged marriage trope, so we shall see how this goes! I will let you know what I think. :-)
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(Anonymous) 2010-10-04 11:35 pm (UTC)(link)I HATED that scene! I hated the whole ending... if it wasn't for Po, I would dislike the whole book. But Po's like the saving grace for me (and he just *had* to go blind, didn't he? 'Cuz he's my fave and all....). If it wasn't for Po, it'd be like Fire for me. Have you read Fire? I stopped reading it halfway through, and asked my friend to read it and just narrate what happened. Lol, I just lost interest after all the careless sleeping around thing, and I couldn't relate with any of the characters, *especially* Fire. I don't know why... I guess I'm just a firm believer that nobody would ever look perfect in the eyes of everyone... I just couldn't grasp the idea that everyone was falling in love with her. Like, I know she's a monster and all, but that wasn't a viable excuse to me. Hehe... oh well, I shouldn't be rambling, in case you haven't read it.
I know, Katsa says it like she'd never change her mind. And I didn't understand the part where she compares being married to Po to being controlled by her uncle. Po is... not like that at all.
Really?? That's a strange coincidence. Oh yeah, Goose Girl is great. It was basically my whole bar to base other books on for a long, long time, until I read Queen's Thief. I know what you mean about Shannon Hale. I read all her other books, even the adult one, and she was basically at her best in the Goose Girl. The Bayern Series was pretty good, but I found Enna Burning and Forest Born kind of lacking the magical touch Goose Girl had. Still, the characters are enjoyable.
Oh, and while we're on the topic of strong female who can also be feminine, I'd recommend Sabriel too. I read it a long time ago, and plan to do a reread to refresh my memory. ^^ Also, maybe you'd like to check out "Raging Quiet" by Sherryl Jordan. When I read it, I was just amazed by the lessons the author gets through. This book is one of those that is really underrated, but still a pleasant read. I wouldn't say it's as good as The Thief, but it's still pretty good, and the heroine falls under the category we're talking about.
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Also, I have Fire lying around, and it sounds like it has an interesting premise--rather like Graceling did--but I haven't been able to bring myself to sit through Kristen Cashore's writing again. Is it really worse than Graceling?
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