in which Jade is reading Graceling
Jul. 29th, 2009 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jade_sabreFirst 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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Re: *just finished it*
Date: 2009-08-05 04:54 pm (UTC)