Connie Willis managed to make Aliens Made Them Do It, Fake Marriage, and First Contact boring.
Since I was bIt's hard for me even to type these words.
Connie Willis managed to make Aliens Made Them Do It, Fake Marriage, and First Contact boring.
Since I was bored as shit reading this, I've had a lot of time to think about why this book is so bad, and I've made a little list.
1. For these tropes to work, you have to care about the characters.
Ideally, they would be three-dimensional or likable in some way. Unfortunately, Francie is just a faint carbon copy of Briddey from Crosstalk: a woman with no boundaries (seriously, Connie, you seem to think that’s cute and it is NOT CUTE) and minimal personality (“mom friend” is a role, not a personality) who seems to have no existence beyond the pages of the book. (Does she have family? Friends aside from Serena? What does she do for a living or for fun? What did she major in? You’ve gotta give me something). She also has no thought for anything but what the plot needs her to do. ((view spoiler)[Why did she decide the alien who abducted her was her friend who she needed to help? It is, like so many other reasons for her choices, never made clear. (hide spoiler)])
Wade is even worse -- I cannot think of one interesting thing he did or said. (view spoiler)[If he'd been the con man he claimed to be, at least that would have been something (hide spoiler)]. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout of Charlie Chaplin and the book would actually get significantly more interesting. (view spoiler)[He is a literal Man in Black and he is still supremely bland. How is this POSSIBLE? (hide spoiler)]
Connie Willis mentions her husband and daughter in the afterword. She does not mention that many human relationships for any character in the book, unless you count the two random guys from work that Francie mentions twice. That’s just. That’s weird. That’s something that needs explaining, and Willis doesn’t.
It is very, very hard to care about the textual equivalent of two pegs from the board game Life getting fake married because an alien they just met forced them to.
2. For these tropes to work, you have to understand them, and Willis clearly doesn’t.
For one thing, two of those tropes rely on chemistry between the characters, and unfortunately Willis comes from the Here’s a Guy, Here’s a Girl, You Do the Math school of romance, where characters fall in love without knowing anything about each other or having any chemistry. (The entire last quarter of the novel, I had Kristoff from Frozen saying “You got engaged to someone you just met that day?” in my head. They know nothing about each other! (view spoiler)[Francie doesn’t even know Wade’s real name! (hide spoiler)] I don’t care about their marriage except to want it not to happen because it is a terrible idea!)
For another thing, all three of those tropes rely on stakes, and this is where the novel falls apart completely. The only stakes we know about for the first 75% of the book are Francie’s, and the only thing she cares about is missing Serena’s wedding. And. Look. That’s just not enough. Once she got abducted by an alien, the wedding ceased to matter. (“I got abducted and was tied up in a car at the time” is a fully acceptable reason for missing your own wedding, never mind a friend’s.) She’s not even scared of the alien for that long! For me to care about the stakes as written in this book, I would need to understand why they matter so much to Francie, and of course I don’t, because I don’t know much about her background or personality or anything beyond “she’s hideously overinvested because she’s the mom friend.”
It is very very hard to care about a book where the stakes are “a peg from the board game Life might miss a wedding.”
3. The humans in a first contact book should not be just as alien as the alien.
Every human here has at most two personality traits (Francie’s are mom friend and talkative; Joseph’s are rich and likes Westerns a lot) and not one of them acts like an average human, so they’re just as weird and unrelatable as the alien is.
Also, authors have two choices when they’re writing a story where the character’s ability to meet their basic bodily needs is limited, as in a story about being tied up in a car with an alien who abducted you. They can either pretend no one ever needs to pee or drink water, in which case polite readers will pretend along with them. (I am not that polite; I’m always the reader going “they’ve been locked in this room for more than a day, so it fully smells like old pee at this point.”) Or they can acknowledge them and then meet the needs or discuss what happens when you don’t. Willis chooses the path that never works: mention the needs from time to time, never or rarely meet them, and it’s fine and doesn’t affect the characters at all. I tell you what: a human who can be without anything to drink for at least 20 hours in a desert on a road trip and still function normally and talk constantly isn’t human to me.
Look. I could continue. I could mention the plot twists (100% predictable and obvious to the point where it’s actively irritating when the characters don’t figure it out). I could mention Willis’s incredible commitment to reciting destinations and distances, like some kind of textual Google Maps. I could mention so many things wrong with this book, but it all comes down to this: you’re going to need to bring your own characterizations and reasons to care, because this book doesn’t provide its readers with any of the above....more
Resoundingly meh. I will likely try another book in the series to see if some of the meh clears up a bit, but this specific book ranks just above readResoundingly meh. I will likely try another book in the series to see if some of the meh clears up a bit, but this specific book ranks just above reading the ingredients on packets in my pantry.
The main hook here is also my biggest problem with it. The main character, Amory Ames, has been married for five years to Milo, who is a tool. They have a relationship mostly characterized by him doing precisely as he wants when he wants and her not saying anything of substance to him at all. After five years of marriage, they communicate at roughly the level you'd expect between you and a guest at a wedding who you suspect may be related to you, but also maybe you don't know them at all, so you just kind of walk on eggshells and stay very neutral and internally hope for rescue. This is not what I look for in a marriage that can be saved, let me just say, so the author's "Will they? Won't they? (Get divorced, I mean)" gimmick is less compelling than I think she hoped it would be.
The book also has a number of lesser problems, including thoughtless sexism and some real characterization low points, plus a mystery that is, let's face it, neither challenging nor interesting. (I am, however, grateful that the author resolves the hideous love triangle in this book, so at least it isn't going to march on endlessly.)
This book is the supermarket white bread of books: fine if you're hungry, but never something you look forward to or linger on....more
Garmus writes well -- the book is a compelling, fast read. But I really, really did not enjoy reading this.
First, it's a huge problem that this book iGarmus writes well -- the book is a compelling, fast read. But I really, really did not enjoy reading this.
First, it's a huge problem that this book is marketed as humor. When I read something labeled humor, I don't expect the kinds of plot elements this book has. CW: sexual assault, suicide, death, sexism, homophobia behind the spoiler tag. (view spoiler)[This book features a graphic rape scene, a suicide, a ton of death on and off the page, domestic violence, and a great deal of hate, abuse, slurs, and public humiliation. None of it is funny. (hide spoiler)] And, look. I know STEM is unfriendly to women today and was super unfriendly to women seventy years ago. My mother got her Ph.D. in the 1980s and had to deal with a ton of sexism, plus a professor who flatly refused to give women a passing grade in his mandatory class. I -- really didn't need to see the very worst of it play out in graphic detail over and over and over and over until a deus ex machina shows up to fix things. That's not funny. It's just sad. There may be people who could somehow make this book funny at least part of the time, but Garmus is not such a person.
The book is also -- well, ahistorical probably puts it best. There are constant references to things that simply didn't exist. Just as an example, reverse mortgages weren't a thing when Elizabeth is supposed to have taken one out. (It also wouldn't be the financial instrument used in Elizabeth's case.) And Sweden didn't have subsidized childcare in this era. Elizabeth's primary example of subsidized childcare should have come from the US -- we subsidized childcare during WWII. Seems like she'd have known that.
And it's weird, given that this is a supposedly "woman power" type read, how many misogynistic tropes are in this book. There's the Demon Ex-Wife (Walter's), who somehow got everything Walter owned in the divorce even though this was before no-fault divorce and the Mean Girls Elizabeth encounters (Mrs. Mudford the teacher, Miss Frask the HR person, all the other gossipy, unkind mothers and secretaries), not one of whom has a speck of kindness to offer for most of the book. And then there's the Missing Women trope, because in a book about sexism, you'd expect more important female characters, and besides Harriet, there really aren't any. It's just. It's weird. It gives the entire book a strong vibe of Not Like the Other Girls Syndrome.
Another thing that's missing in this book is people of color. The author seems to think that people of color didn't exist in the US until, say, 1968.
I don't know. This book seemed like it was trying to be uplifting, but a plot that says exceptional women must endure endless harassment, assault, and oppression until the last 10% of the story, when (view spoiler)[a random rich person shows up to save the day in part because of who the woman had a relationship and a child with (hide spoiler)] is just not very uplifting to me. ...more
This was largely too meh to review -- like, I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, I just moved my eyes across it until the (extremely obvious) ending. BThis was largely too meh to review -- like, I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, I just moved my eyes across it until the (extremely obvious) ending. But I do want to note that the author promises a huge plot hole, and he thinks he's joking, but he's not. There are three, but one of them is indeed huge. Benjamin, buddy, next time you write anything, GET SOMEONE WHO KNOWS ABOUT CHILDREN TO READ IT. ...more
Okay, so I am still not loving this author's dedication to harming women and children, but that's also the nature of the subgenre in which he writes, Okay, so I am still not loving this author's dedication to harming women and children, but that's also the nature of the subgenre in which he writes, so I'm not blaming him for it, either. I did enjoy the rest of this book a lot, though -- the place, the people, and most of all the mysteries, which are solvable but not easily so. Difficult balance to hit! (view spoiler)[Also, there are some improvements from the first novel: there IS a female character in this who is not a victim, and Duncan DOES have an actual relationship, even if the author kind of ... skipped out on all the emotional aspects of developing that. (It's fine. He's not in this for feelings.) (hide spoiler)]...more
It's hard to talk about anything I liked about this book without spoiling it, so I'm going to start with the things I didn't. There's a ton of violencIt's hard to talk about anything I liked about this book without spoiling it, so I'm going to start with the things I didn't. There's a ton of violence against women in this, much of it described in loving detail; there's also a bunch of homophobia, sexism, and so on. (There's racism, too, but it's largely in absentia. Reading this, you'd think that Glasgow in 1969 had absolutely no people of color in it at all, which seems high unlikely given that England in *15*69 definitely did. That's 400 years to move a bit north, and I think probably people managed it.)
Also, the main character is a cop, and while overall the depiction of cops is, uh, pretty negative, I'd say the author subscribes to a "mostly bad apples but there can be good ones!!!" belief system, at least about the cops in 1969, which ignores the systemic problems that underlie the bad apples.
And while I'm being as spoiler-free as I can -- I did like the solution to this mystery. It is that rare beast: a serial killer novel that works as a mystery. (view spoiler)[(It's even rarer if you consider the solution to that mystery. Truly, this is a unicorn mystery novel in some ways.) (hide spoiler)] This mystery is 100% solvable as written AND I did not solve it until like 65%, which I very much enjoyed.
I think I can also safely say outside a spoiler tag that I enjoyed the setting, mostly because the author clearly is very into it. He loves throwing in Gaelic (?) words and mentioning landmarks and describing areas, and I very much enjoyed googling them all.
And now back to the spoiler tag to talk about the narrative. (view spoiler)[McCormack is gay. Now, admittedly, the author is a man (presumably cis) married to a woman, and he's not exactly delving into his character's sexuality or life. (It is very "gay men in the Time Before Tolerance had grim, sad lives with no community," but that makes some sense for a cop.) But one thing he is doing that I found interesting -- several characters in this get narratives, including three of the four victims. They're all more emotional, open, and revealing than McCormack. He gives fragments of his background and some of his immediate reactions and very little else. He's so remote and closed-off, even in his own head, that I would have suspected he was the killer if the series hadn't been named after him. I think this is McIlvanney's attempt to get into an extremely closeted man's head, and it does work. McCormack has compartmentalized his life so much he stays that way even in his own thoughts. (hide spoiler)]
Overall, while this is not exactly my kind of mystery -- too many cops, women appear only as victims, lots of lovingly-describe gore -- I really did enjoy this. I'll read the next one. ...more
EDIT: Downgraded to three stars because “not bad for the genre” isn’t actually good, and I had to read my own review to remember I’d read this.
The reEDIT: Downgraded to three stars because “not bad for the genre” isn’t actually good, and I had to read my own review to remember I’d read this.
The real test of any Nero Wolfe variation — and this is most certainly a Nero Wolfe variation — is whether reading it is at least as fun as rereading a Rex Stout would be. This book doesn’t pass that test. But I did still enjoy reading it.
First, why it doesn’t pass: look, if you’re going to do first-person narration in a Nero Wolfe variation, you are opening yourself up to comparisons to Stout’s style, and Spotswood doesn’t even come close. The writing is good enough for government work, pretty much. Also, the mystery — Stout made great mystery plots. This mystery I solved in the first third, in every detail, and then had to wait with excruciating patience for the great detective and her assistant to figure it out. And, finally, the sense of place and time is seriously lacking here. Stout admittedly had the advantage of actually living in the places and times in which he set his books, but I expect better from writers of historical fiction than this. This has a number of anachronisms and really mushy, vague descriptions. Spotswood didn’t even bother to give specific numbers when it came to currency or specific descriptions when it came to most meals, let alone give specific addresses and detailed outfits. Stout would never, and because it’s a Wolfe variation, ever glossed over piece of research is really, really noticeable.
Okay, so why is it still a four star book? Because it’s not a bad modern mystery novel. I enjoyed the characters, at least enough; Pentecost is a lot less interesting that Wolfe (probably in part the fault of the narrative; it’s Archie’s intense interest in Wolfe that makes him interesting), but Parker is a great character. And I enjoyed the story. The pacing stumbles here and there, but it mostly works; it’s a good, fast, light read. And most of all because — well, let’s face it, even in modern mysteries there’s not much disability and queerness, and in this book, Spotswood does a pretty good job of both. I have hope that he’ll get better at the rest of it, and if he does, his books will be great.
I picked up this book hoping it would be Rex Stout, but queerer. It’s not. But it is still worth a read. And given that I am (obviously) quite a Rex Stout fan, the fact that I read an entire Nero Wolfe variation and didn’t want to throw my ereader across the room even once is a sign that it is, actually, quite a good book....more
It took me a bit to get into what this book was doing, so I spent the first part rolling my eyes at the Victorian orphan who has violet eyes and belieIt took me a bit to get into what this book was doing, so I spent the first part rolling my eyes at the Victorian orphan who has violet eyes and believes in free love and casts off all societal mores, but after a while I realized it isn't supposed to be even remotely historically accurate. It's pulp fiction from an alternate universe, pretty much. It's also very meta. Like, it's full of nods to classic novels -- the main dude's last name is TEMPLETON-VANE, ffs, and he goes by the alias STOKER -- which I enjoyed. This is a book full of those kinds of sly winks that let you know it isn't taking itself, or anything else, very seriously. And as such, it is good at what it does.
My main problem with it is just that I ... did not care for the main dude or the heroine's relationship with him. In the beginning, she compares him to Cabanel's Fallen Angel, and that's very accurate. Alas, I am not into "weeping in sulky self-pity because I did a dumbass thing, but I'm weeping while being super hot, so it's all good" character types. And I am also very over immensely privileged white guys who are so full of their own angst and tragedy that they have no room left for kindness or basic human decency (but they still have a ton of room for random bouts of rage!). Both of those things describe Stoker/Templeton-Vane to a T. I am not about this, and I'm not going to get more patient with it, or enjoy a bunch more books of an exceptional, free-thinking woman investing a ton of energy and thought and work into that dude, so I am tapping out.
But if you're not as done with that character as I am, this is otherwise a fun book, and it might be great for you. ...more
This series continues to be light and distracting, which is particularly impressive since this whole plot involves quite a lot of child abuse and chilThis series continues to be light and distracting, which is particularly impressive since this whole plot involves quite a lot of child abuse and child death, normally something I can't take under any circumstances. But this book is also a perfect example of two of the major problems with this series as it goes on. Talking about that requires spoilers, so I'll cut tag when I get to them, although I am only spoiling things any halfway attentive reader will figure out in the first few chapters.
The crux of this mystery is the question of whether or not a Lieutenant Wade murdered five people, three in England and two in India, ten years before the book's setting. He certainly fled from the military police when they came to question him, and the hunt for him was only called off because they believed he'd died in his escape attempt. Bess was a teenager when that happened, and she remembers him well, so when she encounters someone who has said he saw Wade, she's concerned -- and when she sees Wade again herself, her interest is fully engaged.(view spoiler)[
It's very clear early on that Wade didn't do the murders, and by the midpoint of the book, Bess has had ample opportunity to figure that out, because a number of cover-up crimes, including two more murders, have been committed, all triggered by Bess's investigation. Her thinking process goes like this:
Bess: So many crimes have happened to cover up those early murders! All while Lieutenant Wade is in France and singularly unable to commit crimes in England! Bess: He's obviously still guilty, but it is a ding-dang mystery who is committing those cover-up crimes, and how, and also why, given that Wade is the only one with a motive for them, what with his guilt. Bess: Oh dear, he's just arrived for influenza treatment at my station, and he's aware I recognized him. He's afraid of being arrested. But he cannot flee like he did last time. Bess: Well, the sensible thing to do to avoid arrest would be to be captured by the Germans. [He is captured by the Germans] Bess: That is PROOF of his guilt! Oh dear.
I read that sequence with my jaw dropping, because -- Bess isn't supposed to be illogical or senseless, and that conclusion is both. And she keeps on doing this in the middle of the series -- jumping to conclusions, clinging to them despite all evidence to the contrary, and then only solving the mystery by total luck. (hide spoiler)]
(Also, speaking of luck -- Bess must have some kind of probability drive at her disposal, because it is amazing how she always manages to randomly encounter people relevant to the crime.)
Basically: don't read this series for the plot. It will drive you up a wall. Read it, if you're going to, for the low-emotional-involvement distraction and the setting. ...more
The first book of this series was reasonably well plotted. This book is an absolute disaster in search ofOh my god, what is happening to this series?
The first book of this series was reasonably well plotted. This book is an absolute disaster in search of a plot. Notable highlights:
-Bess and Simon just randomly drive through England in search of one random dude, even though they have, at best, 1.5 clues about where that dude is, that, again at best, narrow it down to an entire county -Bess and Simon just happen to stop for the night in the same barn where that random dude is hiding -A completely unrelated OTHER random dude just happens to be in the same area, acting completely insane even though he isn't, apparently solely to confuse the issue (which he knows nothing about).
And so on. This is a string of improbable coincidences masquerading as a plot. The mystery itself is equally ridiculous, and Bess and Simon don't figure out the very obvious key issue until waaaaay too late.
Meanwhile, something terrible has happened to Bess's characterization. She's weirdly timid and newly terrible at detecting, which is weird for someone who is surrounded by murder all the time. At one point, she's walking with someone who has just made it clear that she does have an answer Bess needs, and when that woman indicates that she doesn't want to say anything, Bess is basically like, "WELP, cannot possibly ask a question now! Dang. Sure a pity. But what can one do?" At another point, Diana tells Bess a name, but Bess can barely hear her. Bess thinks it's Evering, and asks everyone she meets about Evering, with no result. Later she gets a letter from Simon, who has spoken to Diana, telling her it's Everard. And Bess ... still thinks it might be Evering, even though she has found no one by that name and couldn't hear what Diana said. She even asks Simon if he's SURE it was Everard. It's like she can't grasp that she heard wrong. (Also, as is typical of the Charles Todd plotting at this point, this entire sequence is completely irrelevant. It's not even a red herring.)
And, sadly, the writing quality of the series has declined dramatically, too. It may actually be an editing problem -- lots of repetitions, lots of mistakes (and I don't just mean the name change of a fairly major character), lots of inconsistencies, but all things a good editor would catch.
And the ongoing flaws of the series are still evident, of course. It continues to be entirely white and straight and colonialist. The authors genuinely seem to believe that people of color and queer people didn't exist before, oh, 1971. Or, more likely, they'd prefer to pretend they didn't. And they seem to want to stand up and cheer for colonialism.
Man. I am going to continue on, but at this point I am not sure my interest in the setting can make up for everything the series has become. ...more
This isn’t a mystery novel. It’s a thriller. Not only is there no way to figure out who the killer is, the killer isn’t even mentioned until 85% of thThis isn’t a mystery novel. It’s a thriller. Not only is there no way to figure out who the killer is, the killer isn’t even mentioned until 85% of the way into the book. And the plot is — it’s bad, folks. Like, this writing team went from “guessable, but it’s still a solid mystery plot” in the first book of the series to “there is barely a plot of any kind” in this book.
I’m still enjoying the setting, so I guess I will keep reading the series, but wow. Disappointing as hell. ...more
This series continues to be very readable, but my qualms are growing.
First, I really do wish there were people writing books set in this place and perThis series continues to be very readable, but my qualms are growing.
First, I really do wish there were people writing books set in this place and period — homefront of WWI — who didn’t seem to yearn so very strongly to go back to those days. I am increasingly sure that, once again, I have failed to find those people. These authors have that distinctive whiff of “gosh, it sure was better in the old days!” And that whiff in part comes from their choice not to include people we know existed at that time, including people of color (except as servants in single-line roles) and queer people (at all, ever; queerness was invented in 1975, apparently). I guess, if given a choice between this and outright racism and homophobia, I’d take this, but why are those the only two options for this setting?
And, second, I am increasingly afraid that the endgame romance of this series is between Bess and Simon. Simon was Bess’s father’s batman when he was in the Army and now works for him in some undefined capacity, driving him around, acting as his assistant, and corralling his daughter. Simon has been either under Bess’s father’s command or in his employment for his entire adult life, as far as I can tell. And he’s known Bess since she was six, and as someone who was in and out of her household that entire time, he also helped care for her. As a fun bonus, their relationship veers between him supporting her and him giving her orders, often with her father’s voice/weight behind them; he is literally in loco paternis much of the time. And in this book, there are a lot more orders than support. (He also rescues her, because of course he does. That’s romance!) In a word: ew.
But! These are relatively light reads, so I am continuing, even as my qualms grow. ...more
I actually enjoyed this quite a bit! It would be a four star book were it not for the things I've got to spoiler cut to talk about. Note: I'm going toI actually enjoyed this quite a bit! It would be a four star book were it not for the things I've got to spoiler cut to talk about. Note: I'm going to discuss the solution to the mystery, so these are big spoilers indeed.
(view spoiler)[I solved the mystery very early. I don't necessarily consider that a problem; it's a hard line to walk, making a mystery solvable without making it obvious. Not all authors can do it, and not all of them need to. I enjoyed this despite Bess's thrashing around to solve a mystery that was entirely too clear from the beginning -- I'm interested in the period and it's well written and I liked the characters. That would have been more than enough to make me really like this.
Except. Except that the killer is the brother with clubfoot. And that clubfoot is presented as, simultaneously, proof of his adulterous origins and the reason for his murderous rampage. And the thing is, I knew it. I knew as soon as Timothy limped onto the scene that he'd be the killer, because of how detective novels tend to treat disability. (I also wondered why he wasn't treated at birth, given his social class. They certainly knew how to at the time he was born. But that's a side question.) I deeply hate the use of disability as an outward sign of inner badness, and I equally hate when disability is the reason for that evil.
I also did not love the signs that the authors, shall we say, seemed entirely too willing to embrace the beliefs and mores of the times, but they were only signs, and I am hoping I won't see more of that. (hide spoiler)]
I'll give the next book in the series a try, because I did enjoy parts of this very much, but I don't necessarily recommend this one. ...more
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